Mrs. Brigg heaved a thick sigh and shuffled round upon her heels, which made a noise upon the oilcloth like the boots of the comic man at a music-hall.
"Well," she said with a sudden grimness, "I hope it'll be all right about the rent, that's all."
She vanished, shaking her head, on which a stray curl-paper, bereft of its comrades of the morning, sat unique in a thin forest of iron-grey wisps.
Cuckoo shut her door and sat down to think. But at first she had to receive the attentions of Jessie, who was even more surprised than Mrs. Brigg at her unexpected return, and who began to bark with shrill joy and run violently round the room with the speed of a rat emancipated from a cage. As she would not consent to repose herself again, Cuckoo at last put her into the next room, on the bed, and shut the door on her. Then she returned, lit all the three gas-burners and turned them full on, before she removed her hat, and definitely settled herself in for the evening. She was fearful, and dreaded darkness, or even twilight. The pulse of London beat round her while she stretched herself on the hard sofa, let down her touzled yellow hair, and frowned slowly as the unlearned do when they know that they want to meditate.
Now and then she rose suddenly on her elbow, half turned her head towards the window and listened. She had thought she heard a step on the pavement pause, and the cry of the little iron gate. Then, reassured, she leaned back once more. She had taken off her boots, and her feet, in black stockings gone a little white at the toes, were tilted up on the shoulder of the sofa. She fixed her eyes mechanically upon them while she began, all-confusedly, and with the blurred vagueness of the illiterate, to plan out a campaign. Not that she said that word to herself; she did not know its meaning. All that she knew was, that she wanted to put her back against the wall, or get into an angle, like a cornered animal, and use her teeth and claws against Valentine, that menacing figure with an angel's face. And what disgusted and drove Cuckoo almost mad as she lay there in the crude gaslight was the abominable fact that she was desperately afraid of Valentine. There was something about him which filled her not only with intense horror, but with something worse than horror,—intense fear. Why, she had all three gas-burners alight because, having met him that night and seen him watching her, she trembled at the faintest shadow and must see things plainly, lest their dim outlines should appal her fancy by taking his form.
Only once had the lady of the feathers known such enfeebling terror as this, on the night when she fled from the hotel in the Euston Road and left Marr dying on the bed between the tall windows. More than once, in her thoughts, had she loosely linked Marr with Valentine, puzzled, scarcely knowing why she did so. And, she repeated the mental operation now more definitely. They had at least one thing in common, this extraordinary power of striking fear into her soul. And Cuckoo was not accustomed to sit with fear. Her life had bred in her a strong, tough-fibred restlessness. She was essentially a careless creature, ready to argue, quarrel, hold her own with anybody, proud, as a rule, of being a match for any man and well able to take care of herself. She had knocked about, and was utterly familiar with many horrors of the streets, and of nameless houses. She had heard many rows at night; had been in brawls; had been waked, in the dense hours, by sudden sharp cries for help; was accustomed to be alone with strangers, men of unknown history, of unknown deeds. And all these circumstances she met with absolute carelessness, with a devil-may-care laugh, or the sigh of one weary, but not afraid. She was no more timid than the average English street-boy. Only these two men, one dead, one alive, knew how to dress her in terror from head to foot, brain, heart, and body. And so she joined them in a ghastly brotherhood.
But to-night she was making a conscious effort against the domination of Valentine, for the awakening of fear in her was counterbalanced by other feelings prompting her to fight. And once Cuckoo began to fight she felt that she would not lack courage. For she clung to action, and hated thought, walking clearly in the one, but through a maze in the other.
Despite her fear of him, something drove her to fight Valentine; only she did not know how to fight him. It was in a mood of doubt that she had wandered into Harley Street and bent to read the name on the door of Dr. Levillier. Julian's description of the doctor had appealed to her. The mention of his goodness, of his pure life, of his care for others, had impressed her, she scarcely knew why, and brought into her mind a desire to see this little man. Yet he was devoted to Valentine. And then Cuckoo, lying back on the sofa, felt heart-sick, wondering at the power of this man whom she hated and feared, wondering how she could ever fight against his influence over Julian; wondering, too, a little, why it was that she knew she must and certainly would fight it. For beyond the motive power of her love and jealousy, beyond the ordinary woman's desire to keep the man she admired from sinking to the level of the men she despised, there was another fiery and strong and urging insistent influence working upon her, working within her, crying to her, like a voice, to buckle on her armour and to do battle with the enemy. This influence came silently from without, and spoke to the lady of the feathers when she was alone, and never more clearly and powerfully than to-night. It wrestled with her terror of Valentine, and told her to put it away, to come into closer relations with him fearlessly, not to flee from him, but rather to watch him, dog him, learn what he was and what he was doing or trying to do. Yet fear fought this growing, stirring, strange warm influence that burned like a fire at Cuckoo's heart. She flushed and she paled as she lay there, with down-drawn brows and enlaced hands, her yellow hair falling over the hard, shiny horsehair of the sofa. She longed for some one to come to her who would give her counsel, help, courage, that she might fight for Julian, who was too spell-bound to fight for himself, and who was falling so fast, so terribly fast, into the abyss where men crawl like insects and women are as poisonous weeds in the slime of the pit.
Oh, for some one!
Involuntarily she sat up and extended her thin arms almost as if in a beckoning gesture.