CHAPTER VIII
AN AWAKENING
That drive in the night was taken in silence. Julian, a crumpled heap of degraded humanity, slept. Cuckoo watched over him, half supporting him with one thin arm. Exultation shone in her eyes and beat in her heart. The glory of being alone with this drunken creature, his protector, his guide, lay round the girl like a glory of heaven. As she looked at his white face, and pressed her handkerchief against the blood that trickled from his forehead, wild tears of triumph, passionate tears of joy and determination, swam to her eyes. She felt at last the pride and the self-respect of one who possesses a will, and who has exercised it. That was a justification of life to her mind. Something had given even to her the power to snatch this man to herself from the jaws of dark London, to carry him off, a succoured prey, from the world laughing at his degradation. She bent over him in the rattling cab and touched his face with her lips. Was that a kiss? She, who had known so many kisses, wondered. It was the going forth of her soul to purify with flame the thing it loved.
The cab stopped; Cuckoo shook Julian. He stirred uneasily, opened his eyes and shut them again, relapsing into something that seemed rather a sort of fit than a slumber. She called to the cabman to come and help her. Between them they carried Julian into the house and laid him out upon the horsehair sofa.
"He'll come to all right, lady," said the cabby, with a pleasant grin of knowledge. "There's a many it takes like that. It ain't nothing."
He paused for his payment, and then Cuckoo remembered that she had no money. The thought did not worry her; it seemed too far off.
"I ain't got no money," she said.
Cabby's jaw dropped.
"Wait a second," she said. "Go out, I'll get some."
The man withdrew doubtfully, then Cuckoo robbed Julian. She, who had never yet taken money from him, stole the price of his fare to her protection. Then she let the cabman out, locked the street door, and returned. She sat down by Julian, who still appeared to sleep. And now suddenly she felt that she was starving. She looked round the room; there was nothing upon the table. Mrs. Brigg, an hour after her "Te Deum," had been seized in the claws of reaction, and had repented of her generosity. Suspicions and doubts obscured the previous rapture of her mind. She bethought herself that Cuckoo might chance to return alone, still penniless; she remembered the rent still owing. Her impulse to kill fatted calves suddenly struck her as the act of a mad woman. As locusts clear a smiling country of all that nourishes, she swept the table of Cuckoo clear, impounding to her larder with trembling, eager hands the food that might never have been paid for. Thereupon she went to bed, nodding her old head, and muttering to herself with pursed lips.
So the eyes of Cuckoo looked in vain for something to stay the bodily misery that stole upon her as she watched by Julian. Starvation stripped away all the mists from her soul and left it naked with the burdened soul it loved. Despite her increasing pain of body, Cuckoo was conscious gradually of a light and airy delicacy of sensation that was touched with something magical. This awful hunger made her feel strangely pure, as if her deeds, which for years had clung round her like a brood of filthy vampires, were falling away from her one by one. They dropped down into the night; she was mounting into freedom. And, despite faint agonies which at moments threatened to overwhelm her, she had never felt so happy. Instinct led her to get away from the consciousness of her body by leaning utterly upon her mind. She sat down by Julian, bent over him, absorbed herself in him. One of his hands she took gently in her own. The little act baptized him hers in her mind, and she was aware of a great rush of happiness never known before. For she had him there in her nest, she alone. And she loved him. Even in his drunken sleep, even in his massacred condition of ugliness and hatefulness, he was so beautiful to her that she could have wept from thankfulness. The world had taken from her everything, the very little that she had ever possessed, the purity that every creature has once, the innocence that she had never understood, left her this tipsy, degraded, abandoned, tragic atom of evil. And a great glory was hers. She could have fallen upon her knees in blessing and thankfulness, forgetful of all her tribe of sorrows, conscious only that she was a woman crowned and throned. By degrees she forgot that she was starving, forgot everything in an ecstasy of pure passion and pride, an ecstasy that brought food, rest, calm, to her.
In the dawn Julian stirred and murmured incoherent words. Cuckoo bent down to hear them. But he slept again. And as the dawn grew, the light and airy feeling within her grew with it, till she seemed to be floating in the air and among soft, billowing clouds. At first there was light through them, light of the sun, strong and beautiful. But then it faded. And darkness came, and strange sounds like far-off voices, and a murmur as of waters deepening in volume and rushing upon her. They reached her. She put out her hands and thought she cried out.
The waters swept her away.
* * * * *
"Cuckoo! Cuckoo! What is it? Cuckoo!"
"She's a-comin'—she's a-comin' to."
"Give me some more water, then."
Cuckoo felt it very cold upon her face, and fancied at first that it was those rushing waters of her dream. But the darkness parted, showing her two faces close together, one old and withered and yellow, one young, but white and lined. At first she looked at them without recognition. Again she felt the cold drops of water dashing against her cheeks and lips, and then she knew Mrs. Brigg and Julian, and she saw her little room, and that it was morning and light. They helped her to sit up. She glanced wearily towards the table.
"What is it, Cuckoo?" Julian said.
"Food; I'm starving," she whispered, faintly.
Horror was written on his face.
"Starving! What the devil does she mean?"
He turned on Mrs. Brigg, who suddenly shrunk away muttering:
"I'll get something; breakfast—I'll get it."
Julian looked dazed. He was only recovering gradually from his drunken stupor.
"Starving—starving," he repeated, vacantly staring at Cuckoo, who said nothing more, only lay back, trying to understand things, and to emerge from the mists and noises in which she still seemed to be floating. Presently Mrs. Brigg returned and shuffled about the table with a furtive, contorted face, laying breakfast. The teapot smoked.
"Come along, my dearie," began the old creature.
But Julian thrust her out of the room. He brought Cuckoo tea and food, fed her, put the cup to her lips. At first she had scarcely the strength to swallow, but presently she began to revive, and then ate and drank so ravenously that Julian, even in his vague condition, was appalled.
"Good God, it's true!" he said. "Cuckoo starving!"
He sat by her turning this piercing matter over in his mind. Its strangeness helped to sober him.
"You eat too," she said.
He shook his head.
"Yes, yes," she insisted feverishly.
To pacify her he made a sort of attempt at breakfast, and felt the better for it. Together they progressed slowly towards the normal. At last the meal was over. Cuckoo lay back, feeling wonderfully better and calm and happy. But Julian's eyes were searching hers insistently.
"What have you been doing?" he said. "You've got to tell me. Starving!
What's the meaning of it?"
His voice sounded almost angry and threatening.
"I ain't got any money," she said.
"Why?"
She didn't answer.
"Why—I say?" he repeated.
"Because I've given up the street," she said simply.
"Given up the street—Cuckoo!"
He laid his hand down heavily upon one of hers.
"Since when?"
"Oh—a little while. It don't matter how long."
He sat glancing about the room.
"Where's Jessie?" he asked suddenly.
Cuckoo burst out crying.
"I had to—I had to," she sobbed.
"To do what?"
"To part with her."
"What! You've sold Jessie!"
Julian stood up. This last fact struck right home to him, banishing all his vagueness, setting his mind on its feet firmly.
"Jessie sold!" he exclaimed again, in a loud voice. "Cuckoo, why have you done this? Tell me—tell me at once."
She strove to control her sobs.
"I didn't know what to do to get you away from him," she said presently, flushing scarlet. "I didn't never see you; I didn't know where you was. I knew as you didn't like me going on the street. Once you asked me not to. Remember?"
Julian nodded, with a piercing gaze on her.
"So—so thinks I—I'll keep away; p'rhaps it'll get him back."
"Me?"
He sat down with a white face. All about him there was flame. He seemed to understand what he had never understood before, the wonder of the lady of the feathers, the mystery that had drawn him so strangely to her. He caught her in his arms.
"Oh, Cuckoo, Cuckoo," he said, brokenly. "You love me."
He laid his lips on hers, and pressed her mouth in a passion of emotion that was almost an assault. And still the fire was about him. She clung to him with her thin arms.
"That's it," she whispered, in reply to his words.
Julian held her in silence, felt her heart beating, the piteous tenuity of her little body, the weak grasp of her arms round him. These things broke upon him one by one with a crescendo of meaning that came like a great revelation, came to him shod with flame, winged with flame, moving in flame, warm like flame.
"You starved for me, sold Jessie for me," he whispered. "How I love you!
How I love you!"
And he crushed her close in an embrace that was almost brutal.
The door bell rang. Julian let Cuckoo go.
"He has come for me," he said.
She knew it too, and looked at him with a piteous, greedy questioning.
"I hate him now," he said in answer.
The door of the room opened. They both turned towards it. Valentine entered.
"I thought I should find you here," he said, stopping near the door. "Are you better, Julian?"
"Better?"
"Last night you were not yourself."
"I have not been myself for a long time," Julian replied.
"I had not noticed any change."
Julian made no reply. A dogged expression had come into his face. He was still sitting close to Cuckoo. Now he took her hand in his. As he did so, Valentine moved a little nearer, as if urged by a sudden impulse. He bent down to gaze into Cuckoo's face, and uttered a short exclamation.
"The battle!" he said.
An expression almost of awe had come into his eyes, and for a moment he hesitated, even half turned as if to slink away. But then, with a strong effort, he recovered himself and again fixed his eyes on Julian.
"Come, Julian!" he said.
"I will not come."
"I have a cab here waiting." Valentine spoke with an iron calm. "We had arranged to go to Magdalen's."
Julian uttered an oath.
"That devil!" he exclaimed. "I won't go to her. I am half dead. I am killing myself."
He pulled himself up short, then cried out savagely, and half despairingly:
"No, by God, you are killing me!"
He began to tremble, and looked towards Cuckoo as a man looks who seeks for refuge.
"You are treating me very strangely, Julian," Valentine said frigidly. "Last night you were drunk. You seemed to take me for some enemy, and struck me. Many men would resent your conduct. I am too much your friend."
"You—my friend!" Julian exclaimed bitterly.
"You!"
Abruptly he sprang up, tearing his hand out of Cuckoo's. He went over to Valentine and stared with a passion of perplexity and of loathing into his eyes.
"What, in God's name, are you?" he said, in an uncertain voice. "Are you man or devil? You are not Valentine—not the man I loved. I'll swear it. You are some damned stranger, and I have lived with you"—he shuddered irrepressibly—"and never knew it till now."
"You say I am a stranger?"
"Yes, with the face of my friend."
"How can that be?"
Again a misery of confusion and of fear swept over Julian.
"Whence did I come, then?" Valentine asked.
He began to have the air of a man bent on some revelation. An immense power infused itself through him. His blue eyes were utterly fearless. The moment of open battle had come at last. Well, he would not attempt to avoid it, to gain further uneasy peace. He would strike a final blow, secure of his own victory.
And Cuckoo sat watching silently. She remembered the night on which Valentine had half revealed the mystery to her, who could not understand it. Was he about to reveal it now to Julian? Her eyes flamed with eagerness, and again Valentine looked into them and faltered for a moment. Then he turned resolutely away from her, as if he gave his whole heart and soul to the business before him, to this Julian who at last began to shrink from him, to feel terror at his approach, even to repudiate him.
"From what have I come, then?" he repeated.
Julian paused, as if he sought an answer, looking backwards into the past. Suddenly he cried:
"From that trance! Yes; it was then. That flame going away, it was—it must have been—Valentine."
"You talk like a madman."
But Julian did not heed the sneer. He was passionately engrossed by the flood of thoughts that had come to him. He was struggling to wake finally from the dreary and infamous dream in which he had been walking—deceived, tricked, tyrant-ridden—for so long.
"But then Valentine is dead," he cried.
His face went white. He sank down, clinging suddenly to Cuckoo.
"Dead!" he repeated in a whisper.
The girl's touch was strangely warm on his hands, like fire. He looked up into her eyes, seeking passionately for that flame that now he began vaguely to connect with the Valentine he had lost.
"Or is he—?"
Julian hesitated, still gazing at the white and weary face of Cuckoo.
Suddenly Valentine said loudly:
"You are right. He is dead."
He laughed aloud.
"I killed him," he said, "when I took his place. Julian, you shall know now, what the lady of the feathers knows already, what a human will can do, when it is utterly content with itself, when it is trained, developed, perfected. I came through Marr to Valentine. I was Marr."
"Marr!" Julian said slowly. "You!"
"And Marr, too, was my prey. Like Valentine he was not content with himself. His weakness of discontent was my opportunity. I expelled his will, for mine was stronger than his. I lived in his body until the time came for me to be with you. Have you ever read of vampires?"
Julian muttered a hoarse assent. He seemed bound by a strange spell, inert, paralysed almost.
"There are vampires in the modern world who feed, not upon bodies, but upon souls, wills. And each soul they feed upon gives to them greater strength, a longer reign upon the earth. Who knows? One of them in time may compass eternity."
He seemed to tower up in the little room, to blaze with triumph.
"When you see a man go down, sink into the mire, and you say, 'He is weak—he has come under a bad influence'—it is a vampire who feeds upon his soul, who sucks the blood of his will. Sometimes the vampire comes in his own form, sometimes he wears a mask—the mask of a friend's form and face. The influences that wreck men are the vampires of the soul at work, Julian, at work."
His face was terrible. Julian shrank from it. He turned to Cuckoo.
"They feed on women too," he said. "On the souls of women. Men say that magic is a dream and a chimera. Women say that miracles are past, or that there never were such things. But the power of sin is magical. The death of beauty and of innocence in a soul is a miracle. My power over you, Julian, is magic. The bondage of your soul to mine is a miracle. Come with me."
"I will not come."
But Julian's face, his whole attitude, betokened the most piteous and degraded irresolution. This man, this creature, governed him despite himself. He felt once more for the hand of Cuckoo, and finding it, spoke again more firmly:
"I'll not come," he said. "I'll stay with her. I love her."
Valentine cast a malign glance upon Cuckoo, but again fear seemed to draw near to him. He made no answer.
"Only once I'll come," Julian said. "To-night. I lost Valentine in the dark. In the dark I'll seek for him, I'll find him again. Cuckoo shall come too, and the doctor. That flame—it went into the air. I'll find it—I'll find it again."
"Come, then—seek it—seek Valentine. But I, too, was with you in the dark. And in the dark I will destroy you. Till to-night then, Julian!"
He turned and went out.