And now a fear seized the doctor. He became aware that a drowsy spirit like the little sandman who threw the dust of slumber into the eyes of the children stole round the circle. In his hands were poppy-seeds and opiates, and his touch was magical with sleep. Valentine had surely evoked him by a strange effort of will. He came, and his feet were shod so that he moved without noise. He filled the atmosphere with heaviness, and with a murmurous melody, like the melody of the drooping streams that hang their silver ribands over the hills of the far Lotus land. Passing the doctor, he stole to the place where Cuckoo sat between Julian and Valentine. And then he paused. The doctor divined his mission, to weave a veil and cast a cloud of sleep around the lady of the feathers. The weariness of Cuckoo's life lay like a burden upon her, a heavy burden to-night, despite the wild wakefulness of her spirit, the passion of her answered love, the strength of her resolution, the purity that drew near to her at last with ivory wings along the miry ways. She, who was at last awake, and conscious of the glory of a woman's will to rescue and to shelter, was to sleep again. The sentinel was to be overcome at her post, that the enemy might penetrate the lines and seize the citadel. How heavy the air was! To the doctor it seemed alive with sleep, as the waters of the great sea are alive with death for the sailor who sinks down in them. He saw the weaving of the veil that was dropping gently round Cuckoo. He saw the cloud shrouding her in a scarcely palpable mist. Or was it his dream? Or was it his fancy? For it was dark. There stood the tiny, obstinate spirit by Cuckoo's side. His hands touched her forehead, and touched her white and weary eyelids, and the doctor knew that all the fatigues of her life trooped together, as at a word of command, and came upon her to conquer her. They pressed round, nameless wearinesses induced by acts which had made Cuckoo that which she was. And they seemed to whisper to her: "You cannot fight. You cannot protect—it is all over. You can only sleep—you can only sleep. Sleep! You are so weary. Sleep, for life, which has taken everything else from you, has left you that." Cuckoo's face was white with the story of her life, and with the wonder of her recent self-denial, and with the memory of her martyrdom when the little old man of the many dogs shuffled to the door, bearing from her the friend of her loneliness. Her eyes were hollow and desolate. It seemed that she gave heed to the voices and listened to the beautiful legend of the magic and the holiness of sleep. And as she seemed to give heed, the devil of the egoism of Valentine rose again before the doctor, sharply outlined and distinct, and smiled with the triumph of the egoism—that modern vampire—of all the world, terrifically unconquerable. Would Cuckoo sleep? The doctor debated this question silently and with an agony of anxiety. He felt as if the fate of worlds hung upon it, and the destinies of kings.
Would she sleep?
The obstinate spirit stood by her always, and the song of Valentine was a procession of triumph in the night.
* * * * *
Julian's thoughts broke upon the doctor fiercely, and swept him from his contemplation of Cuckoo. No drowsy poppy-bed was Julian's. The shadowy spirit of sleep strove not to influence him. No opiates gave him peace. No veil of gentle forgetfulness descended upon him. He was a human being plunged in the deepest abyss of fate, beneath the range of the starlight and the gaze of other worlds. He was trembling, stretching out his feeble hands in the blackness for guidance, sick with apprehension, betrayed, deluded. And now he began to writhe in the grasp of a new terror, for it seemed to the doctor that he, too, was conscious of the obstinate spirit that stood beside Cuckoo, and that he dreaded the approach of his doom in her slumber. He, too, murmured silently, "Will she sleep? Will she sleep?" If indeed she slept at the word of Valentine—Julian's last hope was gone. For he had now concentrated himself almost utterly on Cuckoo. No longer did he draw near to her half in awe, half in derision, led to her by the presence of the flame that flickered, something strangely apart from her, in her sad eyes. No longer did he set her and the flame apart. To him she was the flame, the only refuge, the only safety. For he sought the lost Valentine indeed, but with a strange hopelessness of ever finding him again. She must not sleep. She must not sleep. In her slumber the flame would die down, flicker lower and lower to a spark, to grey, cold ashes. And Julian in his distraction thought of himself as inevitably lost should the flame die, should Cuckoo sleep, ruled by Valentine. The fight was between Cuckoo, the flame, and Valentine. Everything else fell away and left Julian's world bare of all things save this one contest. This the doctor learnt in the darkness. But still the spirit of sleep kept vigil by Cuckoo, and the air grew heavy and full of slumber.
The doctor began to feel that his own powers were being strenuously attacked. Inertia grew in his body. He sat almost like one paralyzed. His limbs, at first heavy as if loaded with intolerable weights, gradually became numb, until he was no longer aware of them. He seemed to be merely a live mind poised there in the darkness, striving against the power that sought to sweep from its path all those that fought against it or dared, however feebly, to resist it. But his mind, poised thus in this strange circle of slumber, came by imperceptible degrees to have a grip upon the past. Imitating the mind that is enclosed within a drowning body, it gazed upon the wildly flitting pictures of the years that were gone. Regent Street by night rose up before it. The doctor saw, painted upon the background of the dense gloom in which they sat, the huge and vacant thoroughfare in the last watch of the night. Faint figures wandered here and there, or paused beneath the shadow of the tall blind houses, assuming postures of fatigue or of leering and attentive evil. But one moved onward steadily, scarcely glancing to the right or to the left. The doctor's mind, watching, knew that this moving figure was himself, and, as if with bodily eyes, he marked its course down the long vista of the dim street until it passed into more private ways of the town. It passed into more private ways, but not alone. A shadow followed it, and the face of the shadow was turned away. The doctor could not see it, but there rose in him the horror and the fear which had attacked him long ago, when he turned to pursue the thing that dogged him in the darkness. And he saw the shadow waver, pause, then turn to flee. And as it turned he thought that it had the soul, though not the face, of the new Valentine. Then suddenly a great anger against himself was born in him. Why had he been so blind, so deceived? He might have protected Julian. But he, too, had been a foolish victim of outward beauty, the prey of the glory of a face. He had not read the book of the heart. And other pictures succeeded this vision of the streets and of the shadows that walk in them by night. He saw Valentine singing while he and Julian listened. And the eyes of Valentine were as the eyes of a saint, but now he knew that behind them crouched a soul that was filled with evil. Slowly the air grew heavy. Slumber paced in the tiny room. The doctor struggled against it. But the colours of the brain-pictures faded. He saw them still, but only as one sees the world in a fog; looming forms that have lost their true character, that have assumed a vagueness of mystery, outlines at once heavy and remote, suggestive yet indefinite. And still the spirit of sleep keep vigil by Cuckoo.
* * * * *
There was a slight hoarse cry in the night.
"What is that?" Valentine said, sharply.
There was no reply. The doctor could have told him that the cry came from Julian, and that the lady of the feathers, leaning low in her chair, had passed from consciousness into insensibility.