CHAPTER VII
A MEETING OF STARVATION AND EXCESS
Now an awful loneliness, like the loneliness of the grave, fell round Cuckoo. Like Judas, she could have gone out and hanged herself, but for one thing, the love in her heart that seemed so useless. In her muddled, illogical way, and to stifle gnawing thoughts of the betrayed Jessie, she dwelt upon this love of hers for Julian. What had it ever brought her? What had it brought him? To her it had given many sorrows, humiliations. She remembered them one by one, and they looked at her like ghosts. Her dawning recognition of her own degradation never yet come to surmise; her tearing jealousy when Julian went out to do as other men did, preceded by and linked with the knowledge of that dreary incident in which she played the part of accomplice, that incident which she always believed had started him on his journey to destruction; her acquaintance with Valentine and the arrows planted in her heart by him; her despair when she learned from him her own impotence; not yet counterbalanced by full trust in herself or in her power for good, despite the faith of the doctor; her vision of the constantly falling Julian, of the stone going down in the deep sea; her desperate adherence to the doctor's request to prove her will, rewarded now by an apparently useless starvation, and by this treacherous sale of Jessie, her truest, trustiest friend. Cuckoo reviewed these ghosts, and no longer prayed, but cursed. So long as she had Jessie—she knew it now—she had never been really quite hopeless, often as she had thought herself hopeless. She had never even been utterly without self-respect, because Jessie had always deeply respected her and had thus given her little moments of clean and cheering confidence. And she had never been absolutely alone. Now she was alone, and felt like Judas, a betrayer. By turns she thought of Julian lost and of Jessie sold to strange hands, strange hearts, in a cruel and a bitter world. But even now she did not think much or often of herself, for Cuckoo was no egotist. Her very lack of egotism must have been the despair of any good woman trying to rescue her. She sat at home and starved and betrayed now, not because her egoism shrank from the touch of the men of the street, not because she had any idea of the great duty a woman owes to herself—to keep herself pure—but simply moved by the dogged determination to do something for Julian. Were Julian dead Cuckoo would have gone out into Piccadilly again as of old, and earned the rent for Mrs. Brigg, and food for herself, and a sovereign or two to buy back Jessie. The circumstances of her life had stuffed cotton wool into the ears of her soul and rendered it deaf to the voices that govern good women. Cuckoo was pathetically incomprehensible to most people, because she was pathetically twisted in mind. But her heart grew straight and surely towards heaven.
The sale of Jessie had brought in enough money to keep Mrs. Brigg quiet for a little while, but not enough to satisfy her claim against Cuckoo, or to give Cuckoo food. It went as an instalment towards the rent. Now the landlady began to clamour again, and Cuckoo was literally starving. One night her despair reached a point of cruelty which drove her out into the street, not for the old reason, not at all for that. Cuckoo was sheathed in armour from head to foot against sin and its wages. Her obstinacy seemed to her the only thing that really lived in her miserable body, her miserable soul. It was surely obstinacy which pulsed in her heart, which shone in her hollow eyes, tingled in her tired limbs, flushed her thin cheeks with blood, gave her mind a thought, her will the impetus to mark time in this desolation. Cuckoo was like a hollow shell containing the everlasting murmur, "I'll starve—for him." Whether her starvation was useless or not did not concern her at this moment. She no longer even saw those ghosts. She seemed blind and deaf and dull in a fashion, yet driven by an active despair. Had Jessie been with her still, she could have stayed within doors. The little dog's faint and regular breathing, her occasional rustling movements, had made just enough music to keep Cuckoo still faintly singing even when her heart was saddest. Now her room and her life were empty of all song, and Jessie's untenanted basket—in which the red flannel seemed to Cuckoo like blood—was a spectre and a vision of hell.
So, on this night, Cuckoo put on her hat and jacket. She meant to go out, to walk anywhere, just to move, to be in the open air. As she went into the passage she ran against Mrs. Brigg. The gas-jet was alight, and the landlady could see how she was dressed. Suddenly Mrs. Brigg fell on Cuckoo and began slobbering her with kisses.
The old wretch actually began to whimper. She had been sore tried, and must have had a fragment of affection for Cuckoo somewhere about her nature. For she did not want to part with her, and the tears she now let fall were prompted not only by a prospect of money coming in to her, but also of pleasure in the thought that Cuckoo had not entirely gone to the bad. She wept like the mother who sees her child return from its evil way.
Cuckoo thrust her away without a word, violently. Mrs. Brigg did not resent the action, but fell against the passage wall sobbing and murmuring, "My precious, my chickabiddy!" while Cuckoo banged the hall door and went out into the night. Then the landlady, moved by a sacred impulse of pardon, bolted down to her kitchen and began to rummage enthusiastically in her larder. She knew Cuckoo had been near to starving, and had supported the knowledge with great equanimity while this prodigal daughter chose to wander in wicked ways of idleness. But now she killed the fatted calf with trembling hands, and made haste to set out a reverend supper in Cuckoo's parlour to welcome her on her return. The cold bacon, the pot of porter, the bread, the butter, all were Mrs. Brigg's symbols of pardon and of peace! And as she laid them on the table she sang:
"In 'er 'air (whimper) she wore a white cam-eelyer,
Dark blue (whimper) was the colour of 'er heye." (Whimper.)
It was like a religious service with one devout worshipper.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Cuckoo walked slowly along. It was a dark night, very still and very damp. The frost had gone. The stars were spending their brightness on clouds that were a carpet to them, a roof to poor human beings who could not see them. In the air was the unnatural, and so almost unpleasant, warmth that, coming suddenly out of due season, strikes at the health of many people, and exhausts them as it would never exhaust them in time of summer. Cuckoo, faint with hunger, fainter yet with sorrow, felt intensely fatigued. She did not consider where she was going, but just walked on slowly and heavily; but the habit of her life, profiting by her unconsciousness, led her towards that long street in which she had passed hours which, if added together, would have made a large part of her life. Piccadilly drew her to it as the whirlpool draws the thing which inadvertently touches even the farthest outpost of its influence. Presently she was at the Circus. The little boys upon the kerb, crying newspapers, greeted her with excited comments and with laughter. They had missed her for so long that they had imagined her ill, perhaps dead. Seeing her turn up again, they were full of greedy ardour for her news. They put to her searching and opprobrious questions. She did not hear them. Soon she was in the midst of the crowd. Yet she scarcely realized that she was not alone. No mechanical smile came to her face. It seemed as if she had forgotten the old wiles of the streets, put off forever the frigid mask of vice, that freezes young blood, yet makes old blood sometimes run strangely faster. What was the street to Cuckoo now, or Cuckoo to the street? Once it had at least been much, almost everything, to her. And she had been perhaps as much to it as one of the paving-stones on which the feet of its travellers trod. Now things were changed. The human wolf was in the snow still, but it no longer feared starvation. Rather did it live in starvation with a fervour that was untouched by anything animal.
Cuckoo walked on.
The crowd flowed up and down, in two opposed and gliding streams. The warm heaviness of this premature air of spring had brought many people out, and had even induced some of the women to assume costumes of mid-summer. There were great white hats floating on the stream, like swans. Bright and light coloured dresses touched the black gown of Cuckoo as with fingers of contempt. She did not see them. Many women who knew her by sight murmured to each other their surprise at her reappearance. One, a huge negress in orange cotton, ejaculated a loud and guttural: "My sakes!"
Unheeding, Cuckoo walked on.
A few of the men looked at her. More especially did those observe her who love vice that is quiet, sedate, demure, and unobtrusive. To these her pale, unpainted cheeks, her unconscious demeanour, her downcast eyes, and severely plain black dress and hat appealed with emphasis. One or two of them turned to follow her. She never heard their footsteps. One spoke to her. She did not reply. He persisted. When at last she was obliged to heed him she only shook her head. He fell away, abashed by the dull glance of her eyes, and wondering discontentedly why she was there and what she was doing.
Forgetting him instantly, she walked on.
Some one she had known in old days met her. It was the young man in the millinery establishment who had loved her for a week, and given her the green evening dress trimmed with the imitation lace. Since those days he had become strictly respectable, had married an assistant in the shop, rented a tiny villa at Clapham, added two childish lives to the teeming word, and developed on Sundays into a sidesman at a suburban church. Now he was on his way to Charing Cross from a solemn supper given by his employers at a restaurant to some of their staff. He recognized Cuckoo and the spirit moved him to speak to her. He touched her arm.
"Miss-er-Miss Bright," he said.
Cuckoo stopped.
"Miss Bright, you remember me? Alf Heywood!"
He was a little man, with a whitish face and wispy light brown hair. Now his pale brown eyes glanced up at Cuckoo rather nervously under rapidly winking lids. She stared at him.
"Alf Heywood?" she repeated, without meaning.
"Yes, yes; Alf Heywood, as was in Brenton's millinery establishment, top of Regent Street. Him as give you that green dress. Don't you recall?"
Cuckoo shook her head.
"Green, with white lace on it," he continued, with nervous emphasis.
Suddenly Cuckoo said:
"White; no, it was yellow."
Mr. Heywood was delighted at this evidence of recollection.
"So it was, so it was," he said. "But what I wanted to say was, that I'm sorry to see you here still."
"Eh?"
"Sorry to see you here. I'm married, you know, turned over a new leaf, with two children of my own, and come to see the error of my ways. I hoped as you—"
Cuckoo walked on.
Her dream of despair was not to be broken by Mr. Heywood and his new-found respectability. Fate shattered it to fragments in very different fashion. A sudden thrill ran through the crowd, coming from a distance. People began to pause, to turn their heads, to murmur to one another, then to press forward in one direction, craning their necks as if to catch sight of something. The street was almost blocked, and Cuckoo was entangled in this seething excitement, of which at first she could not divine the cause. Presently she heard shouts. The crowd swayed. Then a man's fierce yell cut the general murmur with the sharpness of a knife. Suddenly Cuckoo's dream fled. She pushed her way forward in the direction of the cry; she struggled; she crept under arms and glided through narrow spaces with extraordinary dexterity and swiftness.
"He's mad," she heard a voice say.
"No; only drunk."
"He'll kill the other fellow if he gets at him."
"The coppers will be on him in a minute."
Cuckoo was panting with her effort, but she passed the voices and came upon the core of the crowd, the man who had yelled—Julian. She saw in a moment that he was mad with drink. His hat was off; his coat was torn; his evening clothes were covered with mud. Apparently he had fallen while getting out of a cab. Two men—strangers of the street—were holding him forcibly back while he struggled furiously to attack another man, who faced him calmly on the pavement with a smile of keen contempt. This man was Valentine. Julian was screaming incoherent curses at him and wild threats of murder. The crowd listened and jeered.
Cuckoo caught Julian by the arm. He turned on her to strike her. Then his arm fell by his side. It seemed as if he recognized her even through the veil of his excess. The drunken man looked on the starving woman, and the curses died upon his lips. He began to shiver and to tremble from head to foot. Valentine made a step towards him, but some in the crowd interposed.
"Let him alone," they said. "You'll only make him worse. Leave him to her."
The cab from which Julian had apparently just alighted was drawn up by the kerbstone. Cuckoo, who had not uttered a word as yet, drew Julian towards it. He staggered after her in silence, stumbled into the cab and collapsed in a heap in the corner, half on the floor, half on the seat. She got in after him, watched by the crowd, who seemed awed by the abrupt silence of this yelling madman at the touch of this spectral girl in black. Cuckoo gave her address to the cabman. Just as he was whipping up his horse to drive away, she leaned forward out of the cab as if to the crowd—really to one man in it.
"He's my man!" she said, drawing her thick eyebrows together, and with a nod of her head. "He's my man. I'll see to him."
The cab drove off into the darkness.