"Give me a cup of coffee," he said.
The youth clattered his wares in excited obedience.
While he was pouring out the steaming liquid there drifted down to Julian through the grey weariness of the morning a painted girl of the streets, crowned with a large hat, on which a forest of feathers waved in the weak and chilly breeze. Julian glanced at her idly enough and she glanced back at him. Horror, he thought, looked from her eyes as if from a window. As she returned his gaze she hovered near him in the peculiar desultory way of such women, and Julian, glad of any distraction, offered her a cup of coffee. She drew nearer and accepted it.
"And a bun, my dear," she hinted to the sharp-featured youth.
"And a bun," echoed Julian, seeing his doubtful pause of hesitation.
The bun came into view from a hidden basket, and the meal began, Julian, Rip, and the lady of the feathers forming a companionable group upon the kerb. The lady's curious and almost thrilling expression, which had seemed to beacon from some height of her soul some exceptional and dreary deed, faded under the influence of the dough and currants. A smile overspread her thin features. She examined Julian with a gracious interest.
"It's easy to see you've been makin' a night of it, Bertie," she remarked casually at length, in the suffocated voice of one divided between desire of conversation and love of food.
"You think so?" said Julian.
"Think so, dear, I'm sure so! Ask me another as I don't know; do darlin'."
Julian took another draught from the thick coffee-cup that held so amazingly little.
"And what about yourself?" he said. "Why are you out here so early?"
The lady of the feathers cast a suspicious glance upon him. Then the horror dawned again in her eyes.
"I'm afraid to go home," she said. "Yes, that's a fact."
"Afraid—why?" Julian spoke abstractedly. In truth he merely talked to this floating wisp of humanity to distract his mind, and thought of her as a strange female David of the streets sent to make a cockney music in his ears that his soul might be rid of its evil spirit.
"Never you mind why," the lady answered.
She shivered suddenly, violently, as a dog just come out of water.
"Have another cup?" Julian said.
"And a bun, dearie," the lady again rejoined. She shook her head till all the feathers danced.
"Never you mind why," she said, reverting again to his vagrant question.
"There's some things as don't do to talk about."
"I'm sure I've no wish to pry into your private affairs," Julian rejoined carelessly.
But again he noticed the worn terror of her face. Surely that night she, too, had passed through some unwonted experience, which had written its sign-manual amid the paint and powder of her shame.
The lady stared back at him. Beneath her tinted eyelids the fear seemed to grow like a weed. Tears followed, rolling over her cheeks and mingling with the coffee in her cup.
"Oh dear," she murmured lamentably. "Oh, dear, oh!"
"What's the matter?" said Julian.
But she only shook her head, with the peevish persistence of weak obstinacy, and continued vaguely to weep as one worn down by chill circumstance.
Julian turned his eyes from her to the coffee-stall, in which the sharp-featured youth now negligently leant, well satisfied with the custom he had secured. Behind the youth's head it seemed to Julian that the phantom flame hung trembling, as if blown by the light wind of the morning. He laid his hand on the lady's left arm and unconsciously closed his fingers firmly over the flesh, while, in a low voice, he said to her:
"Look there!"
The lady of the feathers stopped crying abruptly, as if her tears were suddenly frozen at their source.
"Where, dearie?" she said jerkily. "Whatever do you mean?"
"There where the cups are hung up. Don't you see anything?"
But the lady was looking at him, and she now dropped her cup with a crash to the pavement.
"There's a go," said the sharp-featured youth. "You're a nice one, you are!"
Without regarding his protest, the lady violently wrenched her arm from
Julian's grasp and recoiled from the stall.
"Le-go my arm," she babbled hysterically. "Le-go, I say. I can't stand any more—no, I can't."
"I'm not going to hurt you," said Julian, astonished at her outburst.
But she only repeated vehemently:
"Let go, let me go!"
Backing away, she trod the fallen coffee-cup to fragments on the pavement, and began to drift down Piccadilly, her face under the feathers set so completely round over her shoulder, in observation of Julian, that she seemed to be promenading backwards. And as she went she uttered deplorable wailing sounds, which gradually increased in volume. Apparently she considered that her life had been in imminent danger, and that she saved herself by shrieks; for, still keeping her face toward the coffee-stall, she faded away in the morning, until only the faint noise of her retreat betokened her existence any longer.
The sharp-featured youth winked wearily at Julian from the midst of his grove of coffee-cups.
"Nice things, women, sir," he ejaculated. "Good ayngels the books calls 'm. O Gawd!"
Julian paid him and walked away.
And as he went he found himself instinctively watching for the fleeting shadow of a flame, trying to perceive it against the grey face of a house, against the trunk of a tree, the dark green of a seat. But the light of the mounting morning grew ever stronger and the flame-shaped shadow did not reappear.
Julian reached his chambers, undressed abstractedly and went to bed. Before he fell asleep he looked at Rip reposing happily at the foot of the bed, and had a moment of shooting wonder that the little dog was so completely comfortable with him. That it had flown at its master, who had always been kind to it, whom it had always seemed to love hitherto, puzzled Julian.
But then so many things had puzzled him within the last few days.
He stroked Rip with a meditative hand and lay down. Soon his mind began to wander in the maze whose clue is sleep. He was with Valentine, with Doctor Levillier, with the sharp-featured youth and the lady of the feathers. They sat round a table and it was dark; yet he could see. And the lady's feathers grew like the beanstalk of Jack the Giant-killer towards heaven and the land of ogres. Then Julian climbed up and up till he reached the top of the ladder. And it seemed to him that the feather ladder ended in blue space and in air, and that far away he saw the outline of a golden bar. And on this bar two figures leaned. One seemed an angel, one a devil. Yet they had faces that were alike, and were beautiful. They faded.
Julian seemed vaguely to hear the sharp-featured youth say, "Good ayngels! O Gawd!"
Was that the motto of his sleep?
CHAPTER III
A DRIVE IN THE RAIN
When Julian returned from Angelo's the next morning he found lying upon the breakfast table a note, and, after the custom of many people, before opening it he read the address on the envelope two or three times and considered who the writer might be. It struck him at once that the writing ought to be familiar to him and capable of instant identification. The name of his correspondent was literally on the tip of his mind. Yet he could not utter it. And so at last he broke the seal. Before reading the note he glanced at the signature: "Valentine."
Julian was surprised. He knew now why he had seemed to remember, yet had not actually remembered, the handwriting. Regarding it again, he found it curiously changed from Valentine's usual hand, yet containing many points of resemblance. After a while he came to the conclusion that it was like a bad photograph of the original, imitating, closely enough, all the main points of the original, yet leaving out all the character, all the delicacy of it. For Valentine's handwriting had always seemed to Julian to express his nature. It was rather large and very clear, but delicate, the letters exquisitely formed, the lines perfectly even, neither depressed nor slanting upwards. This note was surely much more coarsely written than usual. And yet, of course, it was Valentine's writing. Julian wondered he had not known. He read the note at last:
"DEAR JULIAN,
"I am coming over to see you this afternoon about five, and shall try and persuade Rip to restore me to his confidence. I hope you will be in. Are you tired after last night's experiences? I never felt better.
"Ever yours,
"VALENTINE."
"And yet," Julian thought, "I should have guessed by your writing that you were in some unusual frame of mind, either tired, or—or—" he looked again, and closely, at the writing,—"or in a temper less delightfully calm and seraphic than usual. Yes, it looks actually a bad-tempered hand. Valentine's!" Then he laughed, and tossed the note carelessly into the fire that was crackling upon the hearth. Rip lay by it, quietly sleeping.
Punctually at five o'clock Valentine appeared. Rip was still lying happily before the fire, but directly the dog caught sight of its master all the hair along the middle of its back bristled on end, and it showed every symptom of acute distress and fury. Julian was obliged to put it out of the room.
"What can have come over Rip, Valentine?" he said, as he came back. "This sudden hatred of you is inexplicable."
"Absolutely," Valentine answered. "But it is sure to pass away. There was something uncanny about that trance of mine which frightened the little beggar."
"Perhaps. But the oddest thing is, that while you were insensible Rip lay with his head upon your arm as contented as possible. It was only just as you began to show signs of life that he seemed to turn against you. I can't understand it."
"Nor I. Have you seen Marr to-day?"
"No. I haven't been to the club. I am so glad you don't know him."
Valentine laughed. He was lying back in a big chair, smoking a cigarette.
His face was unclouded and serene, and he had never looked more entirely
healthy. Indeed, he appeared much more decisively robust than usual.
Julian noticed this.
"Your trance seems positively to have done you good," he said.
"It certainly has not done me harm. My short death of the senses has rested me wonderfully. I wonder if I am what is called a medium."
"I shouldn't be surprised if you are," Julian said. "But I don't think I could be surprised at anything to-day. Indeed, I have found myself dwelling with childish pleasure upon the most preposterous ideas, hugging them to my soul, determining to believe in them."
"Such as—what?"
"Well, such as this."
And then Julian told Valentine of his curious notion that some wandering soul was beginning to companion him, and described how he had thought he saw it when he was gazing at the old woman in Grosvenor Place, and again when he was with the lady of the feathers.
"But," Valentine said, "you say you were staring very hard at the old woman?"
"Yes."
"That might account for the matter of the first appearance of the flame in daylight. If you look very steadily at some object, a kind of slight mirage will often intervene between you and it."
"Perhaps. But I have seen this shadow of a flame when I was not thinking of it or expecting it."
"When?"
"Just now. As you came into the room I saw it float out at that door."
"You are sure?"
"I believe so. Yes, I am."
"But why should this soul, if soul it be, haunt you?"
"I can't tell. Perhaps, Val, you and I ought not to have played at spiritualism as we should play at a game. Perhaps—"
Julian paused. He was looking anxious, even worried.
"Suppose we have not stopped in time," he said.
Valentine raised his eyebrows.
"I don't understand."
Julian was standing exactly opposite to him, leaning against the mantelpiece and looking down at him.
"We ought never to have sat again after our conversation with the doctor," Julian said. "I feel that to-day, so strongly. I feel that perhaps we have taken just the one step too far,—the one step in the dark that may be fatal."
"Fatal! My dear Julian, you are unstrung by the events of the night."
But the calm of Valentine's voice did not seem to sway Julian. He continued:
"Valentine, now that I am with you, I am attacked by a strange idea."
"What is it?"
"That last night may have its consequences; yes, even though we strive to forget it, and to forget our sittings. If it should be so! If anything—"
He was curiously upset, and did not seem able to-day to take the influence of Valentine's mood. Indeed, this new anxiety of his was only born in Valentine's presence, was communicated apparently by him.
"Everything one does has its following consequence," Julian said.
"It is the fashion to say so. I do not believe it. I believe, on the contrary, that we often do things with a special view to the doctrine of consequence, and that our intentions are frustrated by the falseness of the doctrine. Suppose I kiss a woman. I may do so with intention to make her love me, or, on the other hand, to make her hate me. The chances are that she does neither the one nor the other. She simply forgets all about such a trifle, and we go on shaking hands politely for the rest of our natural lives. Julian, the memories of most people are like winter days—very short."
"Perhaps. But there is some hidden thing in life whose memory is everlasting. All the philosophers say so, especially those who are inclined to deny the Deity. They put their faith in the chain of cause and effect. What we have done,—you and I, Valentine,—must have an effect of some sort."
"It will have a very bad effect upon you, I can see," said Valentine, smiling, "unless you pull yourself together. Come, this is nonsense. We have sat once too often, and the consequence followed, and is over: I went into a trance. I have fortunately come out of it, so the penalty which you so firmly believe in has been paid. The score is cleared, Julian."
"I suppose so."
"I have no doubt of it. Let us forget the whole matter, since to remember it seems likely to affect those devils that make the hell of the physical man—the nerves. Let us forget it. Where are you dining to-night?"
"Nowhere in particular. I have not thought about it," Julian said, rather listlessly.
"Dine with me then."
"Yes, Valentine."
Julian hesitated, then added:
"But not in Victoria Street, if you don't mind."
"At the Savoy then; or shall we say the Berkeley?"
"Very well,—the Berkeley."
"At eight o'clock. Good-bye till then. I must ask you to give the shelter of your roof to Rip till he returns to a more reasonable frame of mind about me."
When Valentine had gone Julian put on his coat, and walked down to the club, ostensibly to look at the evening papers, really because he had a desire to see Marr. His intention, if he did meet the latter, was to question him closely as to the consequences which might follow upon a sitting, or series of sittings, undertaken by two people for some reason unsuited to carry out such an enterprise together. That Marr would be in the club he felt no shadow of doubt. Apparently the club had for Marr all the attraction that induces the new member to haunt the smoking and reading rooms of his freshly acquired home during the first week or two of its possession. He was incessantly there, as Julian had had reason to know.
But to-day proved to be an exception. Julian explored the club from end to end without finding the object of his search. Finally he went to the hall-porter.
"Is Mr. Marr in the club to-day?"
"No, sir; he has not been in at all since yesterday afternoon."
"Oh, thanks."
Julian felt strongly, even absurdly, disappointed, and found himself wishing that he possessed Marr's private address. He would certainly have called upon him. However, he had no idea where Marr lived, so there was nothing to be done. He went back to his rooms, dressed for dinner, and was at the Berkeley by five minutes past eight. The restaurant was very crowded that night, but Valentine had secured a table in the window, and was waiting when Julian arrived. The table next to theirs was the only one unoccupied in the room.
The two friends sat down and began to eat rather silently in the midst of the uproar of conversation round them. Valentine seemed quite unconscious of the many glances directed towards him. He never succeeded in passing unnoticed anywhere, and although he had never done anything remarkable, was one of the best-known men in town merely by virtue of his unusual personality.
"There's the Victoria Street Saint," murmured a pretty girl to her companion. "What a fortune that man could make on the stage."
"Yes, or as a pianist," responded the man, rather enviously. "His looks would crowd St. James's Hall even if he couldn't play a note. I never can understand how Cresswell manages to have such a complexion in London. He must take precious good care of himself."
"Saints generally do. You see, we live for time, they for eternity. We only have to keep the wrinkles at bay for a few years, but they want to look nice on the Judgment Day."
She was a little actress, and at this point she laughed to indicate that she had said something smart. As her laugh was dutifully echoed by the man who was paying for the dinner, she felt deliriously clever for the rest of the evening.
Presently Julian said:
"I went to the club this afternoon."
"Did you?"
"Yes. I wanted to have a talk with that fellow Marr."
Valentine suddenly put down the glass of champagne which he was in the act of raising to his lips.
"But surely," he began, with some appearance of haste. Then he seemed to check himself, and finished calmly:
"You found him, I suppose?"
"No."
"I thought he was perpetually there, apparently on the lookout for you."
"Yes, but to-day he hadn't been in at all. Perhaps he has gone out of town."
"Ah, probably."
At this moment two men entered the restaurant and strolled towards the table next to that at which Valentine and Julian sat. One of them knew Julian and nodded as he passed. He was just on the point of sitting down and unfolding his napkin when a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he came over and said to Julian:
"You remember that dinner at Lady Crichton's, where we met the other night?"
"Yes."
"Startling bit of news to-night, wasn't it? Damned sudden!"
Julian looked puzzled.
"What—is Lady Crichton ill, then?"
"Lady Crichton! No. I meant about that poor fellow, Marr."
Julian swung round in his seat and regarded the man full in the face.
"Marr! Why, what is it? Has he had an accident?"
"Dead!" the other man said laconically, arranging the gardenia in his coat, and taking a comprehensive survey of the room.
"Dead!" Julian repeated, without expression. "Dead!"
"Yes. Well, bye-bye. Going on to the Empire!"
He turned to go, but Julian caught his arm.
"Wait a moment. When did he die?"
"Last night. In the dead of the night, or in the early morning."
"What of?"
"They don't know. There's going to be an inquest. The poor chap didn't die at home, but in a private hotel, in the Euston Road, the 'European.' He's lying there now. Funny sort of chap, but not bad in his way. I expect—"
Here the man bent down and murmured something into Julian's ear.
"Well, see you again presently. 'In the midst of life,' eh?"
He lounged away and began applying his intellect to the dissection of a sardine.
Julian turned round in his chair and again faced Valentine. But he did not go on eating the cutlet in aspic that lay upon his plate. He sat looking at Valentine, and at last said:
"How horribly sudden!"
"Yes," Valentine answered sympathetically. "He must have had a weak heart."
"I dare say. I suppose so. Valentine, I can't realize it."
"It must be difficult. A man whom you saw so recently, and I suppose apparently quite well."
"Quite. Absolutely."
Julian sat silent again and allowed the waiter to take away his plate with the untouched cutlet.
"I didn't like the man," he began at last. "But still I'm sorry, damned sorry, about this. I wanted to see him again. He was an awfully interesting fellow, Val; and, as I told you, might, I believe, in time have gained a sort of influence over me,—not like yours, of course, but he certainly had a power, a strength, about him, even a kind of fascination. He was not like other people. Ah—" and he exclaimed impatiently, "I wish you had met him."
"Why?"
"I scarcely know. But I should like you to have had the experience. And then, you are so intuitive about people, you might have read him. I could not. And he was a fellow worth reading, that I'm certain of. No, I won't have any mutton. I seem to have lost my appetite over this."
Valentine calmly continued his dinner, while Julian talked on about Marr rather excitedly. When they were having coffee Valentine said:
"What shall we do to-night? It is only a quarter past nine. Shall we go anywhere?"
"Oh no, I think not—wait—yes, we will."
Julian drank his coffee off at a gulp, in a way that would have made him the despair of an epicure.
"Where shall we go, then?"
Julian answered:
"To the Euston Road. To the 'European.'"
"The 'European'!"
"Yes, Valentine; I must see Marr once more, even dead. And I want you to see him. It was he who made the strangeness in our lives. But for him these curious events of the last days would not have happened. And isn't it peculiar that he must have died just about the time you were in your trance?"
"I do not see that. The two things were totally unconnected."
"Perhaps. I suppose so. But I must know how he died. I must see what he looks like dead. You will come with me?"
"If you wish it. But we may not be admitted."
"I will manage that somehow. Let us go."
Valentine got up. He showed neither definite reluctance nor excitement. They put on their coats in the vestibule and went out into the street. While they had been dining the weather, fine during the day, had changed, and rain was falling in sheets. They stood in the doorway while the hall-porter called a cab. Piccadilly on such a night as this looked perhaps more decisively dreary than a rain-soaked country lane, or storm-driven sand-dunes by the sea. For wet humanity, with wispy hair and swishing petticoats, draggled with desire for shelter, is a piteous vision as it passes by.
Valentine and Julian regarded it, turning up their coat collars and instinctively thrusting their hands deep into their pockets. Two soldiers passed, pursued by a weary and tattered woman, at whom they laughingly jeered as they adjusted the cloaks over their broad shoulders. They were hurrying back to barracks, and disregarded the woman's reiterated exclamation that she would go with them, having no home. A hansom went by with the glass down, a painted face staring through it upon the yellow mud that splashed round the horse's feet. Suddenly the horse slipped and came down. The glass splintered as the painted and now screaming face was dashed through it. A wet crowd of roughs and pavement vagabonds gathered and made hoarse remarks on the woman's dress as she was hauled out in her finery, bleeding and half fainting, her silk gown a prey to the mud, her half-naked shoulders a hostage to the wind. Two men in opera-hats, walked towards their club, discussing a divorce case, and telling funny stories through the rain. A very small, pale, and filthy boy stood with bare feet upon the kerbstone, and cried damp matches.
"How horrible London is to-night," Julian said as he and Valentine got into their cab.
"Yes. Why add to our necessary contemplation of its horrors? Why go on this mad errand?"
"I want you to see Marr," Julian replied, with a curious obstinacy. He pushed up the trap in the roof.
"Drive to the European Hotel, in the Euston Road," he said to the cabman.
"D' you know it?"
"Yes, sir," the cabman said. He was smiling on his perch as he cracked his whip and drove towards the Circus.
The glass had been let down and the two friends beheld a continuously blurred prospect of London framed in racing raindrops and intersected by the wooden framework of the movable shutter. It was at the same time fantastic and tumultuous. The glare of light at the Circus shone over the everlasting procession of converging omnibuses, the everlasting mob of prostitutes and of respectable citizens waiting to mount into the vehicles whose paint proclaimed their destination. Active walkers darted dexterously to and fro over the cobblestones, occasionally turning sharply to swear at a driver whose cab had bespattered their black conventionality with clinging dirt. The drivers were impassively insulting, as became men placed for the moment in a high station of life. At the door of the Criterion Restaurant an enormously fat and white bookmaker in a curly hat and diamonds muttered remarks into the ear of an unshaven music-hall singer. A gigantic "chucker-out" observed them with the dull gaze of sullen habit, and a beggar-boy whined to them in vain for alms, then fluttered into obscurity. Fixed with corner stones upon the wet pavement of the "island" lay in an unwinking row the contents bill of the evening papers, proclaiming in gigantic black or red letters the facts of suicide, slander, divorce, murder, railway accidents, fires, and war complications. Dreary men read them with dreary, unexcited eyes, then forked out halfpence to raucous youths whose arms were full of damp sheets of pink paper. A Guardsman kissed "good-bye" to his trembling sweetheart as he chivalrously assisted her into a Marylebone 'bus, and two shop-girls, going home from work, nudged each other and giggled hysterically. Four fat Frenchmen stood in the porch of the Monico violently gesticulating and talking volubly at the tops of their voices. Two English undergraduates pushed past them with a look of contempt, and went speechlessly into the café beyond. A lady from Paris, all red velvet and white ostrich-tips, smoothed her cheek with her kid glove meditatively, and glanced about in search of her fate of the dark and silent hours. And then—Valentine and Julian were in the comparative dimness of Shaftesbury Avenue—a huge red cross on a black background started out of the gloom above a playhouse. Julian shuddered at it visibly.
"You are quite unstrung to-night, Julian," Valentine said. "Let us turn the cab round and go home."
"No, no, my dear fellow; I am all right. It is only that I see things to-night much more clearly than usual. I suppose it is owing to something physical that every side of London seems to have sprung into prominence. Of course I go about every day in Piccadilly, St. James's Street, everywhere; but it is as if my eyes had been always shut, and now they are open. I can see London to-night. And that cross looked so devilishly ironical up there, as if it were silently laughing at the tumult in the rain. Don't you feel London to-night, too, Valentine?"
"I always feel it."
"Tragically or comically?"
"I don't know that I could say truly either. Calmly or contemptuously would rather be the word."
"You are always a philosopher. I can't be a philosopher when I see those hordes of women standing hour after hour in the rain, and those boys searching among them. I should be one of those boys probably but for you."
"If you were, I doubt whether I should feel horrified."
"Not morally horrified, I dare say, but intellectually disgusted. Eh?"
"I am not sure whether I shall permit my intellect quite so much license in the future as I have permitted it in the past," Valentine said thoughtfully.
His blue eyes were on Julian, but Julian was gazing out on Oxford Street, which they were crossing at that moment. Julian, who had apparently continued dwelling on the train of thoughts waked in him by the sight of the painted cross, ignored this remark and said:
"It is not my moral sense which shuddered just now, I believe, but my imagination. Sin is so full of prose, although many clever writers have represented it as splendidly decorated with poetry. Don't you think so, Val? And it is the prose of sin I realized so vividly just now."
"The wet flowers on the waiting hats, the cold raindrops on the painted faces, the damp boots trudging to find sin, the dark clouds pouring a benediction on it. I know what you mean. But the whole question is one of weather, I think. Vanity Fair on a hot, sweet summer night, with a huge golden moon over Westminster, soft airs and dry pavements, would make you see this city in a different light. And which of the lights is the true one?"
"I dare say neither."
"Why not both? The smartest coat has a lining, you know. I dare say there are velvet sins as well as plush sins, and the man who can find the velvet is the lucky fellow. Sins feel like plush to me, however, and I dislike plush. So I am not the lucky fellow."
"No, Valentine; you are wrong. I'm pretty sure all virtue is velvet and all vice is plush. So you stick to velvet."
"I don't know. Ask the next pretty dressmaker you meet. Bloomsbury is a genteel inferno on a wet night."
They traversed it smoothly on asphalt ways. All the time Valentine was watching Julian with a fixed and narrow scrutiny, which Julian failed to notice. The rows of dull houses seemed endless, and endlessly alike.
"I am sure all of them are full of solicitors," said Valentine.
Presently in many fanlights they saw the mystic legend, "Apartments." Then there were buildings that had an aged air and sported broken windows. Occasionally, on a background of red glass lit by a gas-jet from behind, sat the word "Hotel." A certain grimy degradation swam in the atmosphere of these streets. Their aspect was subtly different from the Bloomsbury thoroughfares, which look actively church-going, and are full of the shadows of an everlasting respectability which pays its water rates and sends occasional conscience-money to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. People looked furtive, and went in and out of the houses furtively. They crawled rather than pranced, and their bodies bore themselves with a depression that seemed indiscreet. Occasionally men with dripping umbrellas knocked at the doors under the red glass, and disappeared into narrow passages inhabited by small iron umbrella-stands. Night brooded here like a dyspeptic raven with moulting tail-feathers and ragged wings. But London is eloquent of surprises. The cab turned a corner, and instantly they were in a wide and rain-swept street, long and straight, and lined with reserved houses, that shrank back from the publicity of the passing traffic at the end of narrow alleys protected by iron gates. Over many of these gates appeared lit arches of glass on which names were inscribed: "Albion Hotel," "Valetta Hotel," "Imperial Hotel," "Cosmopolitan Hotel,"—great names for small houses. These houses had front doors with glass panels, and all the panels glowed dimly with gas.
The cab flashed by them, and Julian read the fleeting names, until his eyes were suddenly saluted with "European Hotel."
Violently the cabman drew up. The smoking horse was squeezed upon its haunches, and its feet slithered harshly along the stones. It tried to sit down, was hauled up by the reins, and stood trembling as the right wheel of the cab collided with the pavement edge, and the water in the gutter splashed up as if projected from a spray.
"Beg pardon, gents. I thought it was a bit further on," said the cabby, leering down cheerfully. "Nice night, sir, ain't it?"
He shook the reluctant drops of moisture from his waterproof-shrouded hat, and drove off.
Valentine opened the damp iron gate, and they walked up the paved alley to the door.
CHAPTER IV
THE EUSTON ROAD EPISODE
Opening the door, they found themselves in a squalid passage. A room on the left was fronted by a sort of counter, above which was a long window giving onto the passage, and as the shrill tinkle of a bell announced their entrance this window was pushed up, and the large red face and furtive observant eyes of a man stared upon them inquiringly.
"Do you require a room for the night?" he asked, in a husky voice, invaded by a strong French accent. "Because—"
"No," interrupted Julian.
The man nodded, and, strange to say, with apparent content.
"There is trouble in my house," he said. "I am unlucky; I come to England from my country to earn an honest living, and before two years, I have the police here last night."
"Yes," said Julian, "I know."
"What? You know it? Well, it is not my fault. The gentleman come last night with a lady, his wife, I suppose. How am I to know? He ask for a room. He look perfectly well. I give them the room. They go to bed. At four o'clock in the morning I hear a bell ring. I get up. I go on the landing to listen. I hear the bell again. I run to the chamber of the lady and gentleman. The lady is gone. The gentleman falls back on the bed as I come in and dies. Mon Dieu! It is—"
He suddenly paused in his excited narrative. Valentine had moved his position slightly and was now standing almost immediately under the gas-lamp that lit the glass door.
"You—you are relation of him?" he said. "You come to see him?"
"I have come to see him, certainly," said Valentine. "But I am no relation of his. This gentleman," and he pointed to Julian, "knew him well, and wished to look at him once more."
The landlord seemed puzzled. He glanced from Valentine to Julian, then back again to Valentine.
"But," he began, once more addressing himself to the latter, "you are like—there is something; when the poor gentleman fell on the bed and died he had your eyes. Yes, yes, you are relation of him."
"No," Valentine said; "you are mistaken."
"I should think so," exclaimed Julian. "Poor Marr's face was as utterly different from yours, Valentine, as darkness is different from light."
"No, no; it is not the eyes of the gentleman," the landlord continued, leaning forward through his window, and still violently scrutinizing Valentine,—"it is not the eyes. But there is something—the voice, the manner—yes, I say there is something, I cannot tell."
"You are dreaming, my friend," Valentine calmly interposed. "Now, Julian, what do you want to do?"
Julian came forward and leant his arm on the counter.
"I am the poor gentleman's great friend," he said. "You must let me see him."
The landlord held up his fat hands with a large gesticulation of refusal.
"I cannot, sir. To-morrow they remove him. They sit on the poor gentleman—"
"I know,—the inquest. All this is very hard upon you, an honest man trying to make an honest living."
Julian put some money into one of the agitated hands.
"My friend and I only wish to see him for a moment."
"Monsieur, I cannot. I—"
Julian insinuated another sovereign into his protesting fingers. They took it as an anemone takes a shrimp, and made a gesture of abdication.
"Well, if Monsieur is the friend of the poor gentleman, I have not the heart, I am tender-hearted, I am foolish—"
He disappeared muttering from the window, and in a moment appeared at a door on the left, disclosing himself now fully as a degraded, flaccid-looking, frouzy ruffian of a very low type, flashily dressed, and of a most unamiable expression. Taking a candlestick from a dirty marble-topped slab that projected from the passage-wall, he struck a match, lit the candle, and preceded them up the narrow flight of stairs, his boots creaking loudly at every step. On the landing at the top a smart maid-servant with a very pale face reconnoitered the party for a moment with furtive curiosity, then flitted away in the darkness to the upper regions of the house.
The landlord paused by a door numbered with a black number.
"He is in here," he whispered hoarsely. "Tomorrow they sit on him. After that he go from me. Mon Dieu! I am glad when he is gone. My custom he is spoilt. My house get a bad name, and like a dog they hang him. Mon Dieu!"
He opened the door stealthily, forming "St!" with his fat, coarse lips.
"I light the gas. It is all dark."
"No, no," Julian said, taking the candle from him, "I will do that. Go down."
He motioned him away, and entered the room, followed by Valentine, at whom the landlord again stared with a greedy consideration and curiosity, before turning to retreat softly down the narrow stairs.
They found themselves in a good-sized room, typically of London. It was full of the peculiar and unmistakable metropolitan smell, a stale odor of the streets that suggests smuts to the mind. Two windows, with a long dingy mirror set between them, looked out towards the Euston Road. Venetian blinds and thin white curtains looped with yellow ribbon shrouded them. On a slab that stuck out under the mirror was placed a bundle of curling-pins tied with white tape, a small brush and comb, and a bottle of cherry-blossom scent. Near the mirror stood a narrow sofa covered with red rep. Upon this lay a man's upturned top-hat, in the corner of which reposed a pair of reindeer gloves. A walking-stick with a gold top stood against the wall, in a corner by the marble mantlepiece. In the middle of the room lay a small open portmanteau, disclosing a disorder of shirts, handkerchiefs, and boots, a cheque-book, a bottle of brandy, and some brushes. By the fireplace there was a vulgar-looking arm-chair upholstered in red. The room was full of the faint sound of London voices and London traffic.
Julian went straight up to the gas chandelier and lit all three jets. His action was hurried and abrupt. Then he set the candle down beside the bundle of curling-pins, and turned sharply round to face the bed. The room was now a glare of light, and in this glare of light the broad bed with its white counterpane and sheets stood out harshly enough. The sheets were turned smoothly down under the blue chin of the dead man, who lay there upon his back, his face with fast-shut eyes dusky white, or rather grey, among the pillows. As Julian looked upon him he exclaimed:
"Good God, it isn't Marr! Valentine, it isn't Marr!"
"Not?"
"No. And yet—wait a moment—"
Julian came nearer to the bed and bent right down over the corpse. Then he drew away and looked at Valentine, who was at the other side of the bed.
"Oh, Valentine, this is strange," he whispered, and drawing a chair to the bedside, he sank down upon it. "This is strange. What is it death does to a man? Yes; this is Marr. I see now; but so different, so altered! The whole expression,—oh, it is almost incredible."
He stared again upon the face.
It was long in shape, thin and swarthy, very weary looking, the face of a man who had seen much, who had done very many, very various things. No face with shut eyes can look, perhaps, completely characteristic. Yet this face was full of a character that seemed curiously at war with the shape of the features and with the position of the closed eyes, which were very near together. Julian, in describing Marr to Valentine, had pronounced him Satanic, and this dead face was, in truth, somewhat Mephistophelean. An artist might well have painted it upon his canvas as a devil. But he must have reproduced merely the features and colouring, the blue, shaven cheeks, and hollow eye-sockets; for the expression of his devil he would have been obliged to seek another model. Marr, dead, looked serene, kind, gentle, satisfied, like a man who has shaken himself free from a heavy burden, and who stretches himself to realize the sudden and wonderful ease for which he has longed, and who smiles, thinking, "That ghastly thrall is over. I am a slave no longer. I am free." The dead face was wonderfully happy.
Julian seemed entirely fascinated by it. After his last smothered exclamation to Valentine, he sat, leaning one arm upon the head of the bed, gazing till he looked stern, as all utterly ardent observers look.
Valentine, too, was staring at the dead man.
There was a very long silence in the room. The rain leaped upon the tall windows on each side of the mirror and ran down them with an unceasing chilly vivacity. Lights from the street flickered through the blinds to join the glare of the gas. All the music of the town wandered round the house as a panther wanders round a bungalow by night. And the thin stream of people flowed by on the shining pavement beyond the iron railing of the narrow garden. They spoke, as they went, of all the minor things of life, details of home, details of petty sins, details of common loves and common hopes and fears, all stirring feebly under umbrellas. And close by these two friends, under three flaring gas-jets, watched the unwinking dead man, whose face seemed full of relief. Presently Julian, without looking up, said:
"Death has utterly changed him. He is no longer the same man. Formerly he looked all evil, and now it's just as if his body were thanking God because it had got rid of a soul it had hated. Yes, it's just like that. Valentine, I feel as if Marr had been rescued."
As he said the last words Julian looked up across the barrier of the bed at his friend. His lips opened as if to speak, but he said nothing; for he was under the spell of a wild hallucination. It seemed to him that there, under the hard glare of the gas-lamps, the soul of Marr spoke, stared from the pure, proud face of Valentine. That was like a possession of his friend. It was horrible, as if a devil chose for a moment to lurk and to do evil in the sanctuary of a church, to blaspheme at the very altar. Valentine did not speak. He was looking down on the dead serenity of Marr, vindictively. A busy intellect flashed in his clear blue eyes, meditating vigorously upon the dead man's escape from bondage, following him craftily to the very door of his freedom, to seize him surely, if it might be.
This is what Julian felt in his hallucination, that Valentine was pursuing Marr, uselessly, but with a deadly intention, a deadly hatred.
"Valentine!" Julian cried at last.
Valentine looked up.
And in an instant the spell was removed. Julian saw his friend and protector rightly again, calm, pure, delicately reserved. The death-chamber no longer contained a phantom. His eyes were no longer the purveyors of a terrible deception to his mind.
"Oh, Valentine, come here," Julian said.
Valentine came round by the end of the bed and stood beside him.
Julian examined him narrowly.
"Never stand opposite to me again, Valentine."
"Opposite to you! Why not?"
"Nothing, nothing. Or—everything. What is the matter with this room? and me? and you? And why is Marr so changed?"
"How is he changed? You know I have never seen his face before."
"You do not see it now. He has gone out of it. All that was Marr as I knew him has utterly gone. Death has driven it away and left something quite different. Let us go."
Julian got up. Valentine took up the candle from its place beside the curling-pins and lifted his hand to the gas-chandelier. He had turned out one of the burners, and was just going to turn out the two others when Julian checked him.
"No; leave them. Let the landlord put them out. Leave him in the light."
They went out of the room, treading softly. A little way up the staircase that led from the landing to the upper parts of the house a light flickered down to them, and they perceived the pale face of the housemaid diligently regarding them. Julian beckoned to her.
"You showed the gentleman—the gentleman who is dead—to his room last night?"
"Yes, sir. Oh, sir, I can't believe he's really gone so sudden like."
"Then you saw the lady with him?"
"Yes, of course. Oh—"
"Hush! What was she like?"
The housemaid's nose curled derisively.
"Oh, sir, quite the usual sort. Oh, a very common person. Not at all like the poor gentleman, sir."
"Young?"
"Not to say old, sir. No; I couldn't bring that against her. She wore a hat, sir, and feathers—well, more than ever growed on one ostrich, I'll be bound."
"Feathers!"
A vision of the lady of the feathers sprang up before Julian, wrapped in the wan light of the early dawn. He put several rapid questions to the housemaid. But she could only say again that Marr's companion had been a very common person, a very common sort of person indeed, and flashily dressed, not at all as she—the housemaid—would care to go out of a Sunday. Julian tipped her and left her amazed upon the dim landing. Then he and Valentine descended the stairs. The landlord was waiting in the passage in an attentive attitude against the wall. He seemed taken unawares by their appearance, but his eyes immediately sought Valentine's face, still apparently questioning it with avidity. Julian noticed this, and recollected that the man had insisted on a likeness existing between Marr and Valentine. Possibly that fact, although apparently unremembered, had remained lurking in his mind, and was accountable for his own curious deception. Or could it be that there really was some vague, fleeting resemblance between the dead man and the living which the landlord saw continuously, he only at moments? Looking again at Valentine he could not believe it. No; the landlord was deceived now, as he had been in the death-chamber above stairs.
"May we come into your room for a moment?" Julian asked the man. "I want to put to you a few questions."
"But certainly, sir, with pleasure."
He opened the side door and showed them into his sanctum beyond the glass window. It was a small, evil-looking room, crowded with fumes of stale tobacco. On the walls hung two or three French prints of more than doubtful decency. A table with a bottle and two or three glasses ranged on it occupied the middle of the floor. On a chair by the fire the Gil Bias was thrown in a crumpled attitude. One gas-burner flared, unshaded by any glass globe. Julian sat down on the Gil Bias. Valentine refused the landlord's offer of a chair, and stood looking rather contemptuously at the inartistic improprieties of the prints.
"Did you let in the gentleman who came last night?" asked Julian.
"But, sir, of course. I am always here. I mind my house. I see that only respect-"
"Exactly. I don't doubt that for a moment. What was the lady like,—the lady who accompanied him?"
"Oh, sir, very chic, very pretty."
"Didn't you hear her go out in the night?"
The landlord looked for a moment as if he were considering the advisableness of a little bluster. He stared hard at Julian and thought better of it.
"Not a sound, not a mouse. Till the bell rang I slept. Then she is gone!"
"Would you recognize her again?"
"But no. I hardly look at her, and I see so many."
"Yes, yes, no doubt. And the gentleman. When you went into his room?"
"Ah! He was half sitting up. I come in. He just look at me. He fall back.
He is dead. He say nothing. Then I—I run."
"That's all I wanted to know," Julian said. "Valentine, shall we go?"
"By all means."
The landlord seemed relieved at their decision, and eagerly let them out into the pouring rain. When they were in the dismal strip of garden Julian turned and looked up at the lit windows of the bedroom on the first story. Marr was lying there in the bright illumination at ease, relieved of his soul. But, as Julian looked, the two windows suddenly grew dark. Evidently the economical landlord had hastened up, observed the waste of the material he had to pay for, and abruptly stopped it. At the gate they called a cab.
"No; let us have the glass up," Julian said; "a drop of rain more or less doesn't matter. And I want some air."
"So do I," said Valentine. "The atmosphere of that house was abominable."
"Of course there can be no two opinions as to its character," Julian said.
"Of course not."
"What a dreary place to die in!"
"Yes. But does it matter where one dies? I think not. I attach immense importance to where one lives."
"It seems horrible to come to an end in such a place, to have had that wretched Frenchman as the only witness of one's death. Still, I suppose it is only foolish sentiment. Valentine, did you notice how happy Marr looked?"
"No."
"Didn't you? I thought you watched him almost as if you wondered as I did."
"How could I? I had never seen him before."
"It was curious the landlord seeing a likeness between you and him."
"Do you think so? The man naturally supposed one of us might be a relation, as we came to see Marr. I should not suppose there could be much resemblance."
"There is none. It's impossible. There can be none!"
They rattled on towards Piccadilly, back through the dismal thoroughfares, towards the asphalt ways of Bloomsbury. Presently Julian said:
"I wish I had seen Marr die."
"But why, Julian? Why this extraordinary interest in a man you knew so slightly and for so short a time?"
"It's because I can't get it out of my head that he had something to do with our sittings, more than we know."
"Impossible."
"I am almost certain the doctor thought so. I must tell him about Marr's death. Valentine, let us drive to Harley Street now."
Valentine did not reply at once, and Julian said:
"I will tell the cabman."
"Very well."
Julian gave the order.
"I wonder if he will be in," Julian said presently. "What is the time?"
He took out his watch and held it up sideways until the light of a gas-lamp flashed on it for a moment.
"Just eleven. So late? I am surprised."
"We were a good while at the 'European.'"
"Longer than I thought. Probably the doctor will have come in, even if he has been out dining. Ah, here we are!"
The cab drew up. Julian got out and rang the bell in the rain.
"Is Doctor Levillier at home?"
"No, sir. He is out dining. But I expect him every moment. Will you come in and wait?" said the man-servant, who knew Julian well.
"Thanks; I think I will. I rather want to see him. I will just ask Mr.
Cresswell. He's with me to-night."
Julian returned to the cab, in which Valentine was sitting.
"The doctor will probably be home in a few minutes. Let us go in and wait for him."
"Yes, you go in."
"But surely—"
"No, Julian," Valentine said, and suddenly there came into his voice a weariness, "I am rather tired to-night. I think I'll go home to bed."
"Oh," Julian said. He was obviously disappointed. He hesitated.
"Shall I come too, old chap? You're sure—you're certain that you are not feeling ill after last night?"
He leant with his foot on the step of the cab to look at Valentine more closely.
"No; I am all right. Only tired and sleepy, Julian. Well, will you come or stay?"
"I think I will stay. I want badly to have a talk with the doctor."
"All right. Good-night."
"Good-night!"
Valentine called his address to the cabman, and the man whipped up his horse. Just as the cab was turning round Valentine leaned out over the wooden door and cried to Julian, who was just going into the house:
"Give my best regards to the doctor, Julian."
The cab disappeared, splashing through the puddles.
Julian stood still on the doorstep.
"Who said that, Lawler?" he asked.
The servant looked at him in surprise.
"Mr. Valentine, sir."
"Mr. Valentine?"
"Yes, sir."
"Of course, of course. But his voice, didn't—didn't you notice-"
"It was Mr. Valentine's usual voice, sir," Lawler said, with increasing astonishment.
"I'm upset to-night," Julian muttered.
He went into the house and Lawler closed the street door.
CHAPTER V
THE HARLEY STREET EPISODE
Julian was a favourite in Harley Street, so Lawler did not hesitate to show him into the doctor's very private room,—a room dedicated to ease, and to the cultivation of a busy man's hobbies. No patient ever told the sad secrets of his body here. Here were no medical books, no appliances for the writing of prescriptions, no hints of the profession of the owner. Several pots of growing roses gravely shadowed forth the doctor's fondness for flowers. A grand piano mutely spoke of his love for music. Many of the books which lay about were novels; one, soberly dressed in a vellum binding, being Ouida's "Dog of Flanders." All the photographs which studded the silent chamber with a reflection of life were photographs of children, except one. That was Valentine's. The hearth, on which a fire flashed, was wide and had two mighty occupants, Rupert and Mab, the doctor's mastiffs, who took their evening ease, pillowing their huge heads upon each other's heaving bodies. The ticking clock on the mantelpiece was an imitation of the Devil Clock of Master Zacharius. There were no newspapers in the room. That fact alone made it original. A large cage of sleeping canaries was covered with a cloth. The room was long and rather narrow, the only door being at one end. On the walls hung many pictures, some of them gifts from the artists. Some foils lay on an ottoman in a far corner. The doctor fenced admirably, and believed in the exercise as a tonic to the muscles and a splendid drill-sergeant to the eyes.
As Julian came into the room, which was lit only by wax candles, he could not help comparing it with the room he had just left, in which the body of Marr lay. The atmosphere of a house is a strange thing, and almost as definite to the mind as is an appearance to the eye. A sensitive nature takes it in like a breath of fetid or of fresh air. The atmosphere of the European Hotel had been sinister and dreary, as of a building consecrated to hidden deeds, and inhabited mainly by wandering sinners. This home of a great doctor was open-hearted and receptive, frank and refined. The sleeping dogs, heaving gently in fawn-coloured beatitude, set upon it the best hall-mark. It was a house—judging at least by this room—for happy rest. Yet it was the abode of incessant work, as the great world knew well. This sanctum alone was the shrine of lotos-eating. The doctor sometimes laughingly boasted that he had never insulted it by even so much as writing a post-card within its four walls.
Julian stroked the dogs, who woke to wink upon him majestically, and sat down. Lawler quietly departed, and he was left alone. When he first entered the house he had been disappointed at the departure of Valentine. Now he felt rather glad to have the doctor to himself for a quiet half-hour. A conversation of two people is, under certain circumstances, more complete than a conversation of three, however delightful the third may chance to be. Julian placed Valentine before all the rest of the world. Nevertheless, to-night he was glad that Valentine had gone home to bed. It seems sometimes as if affection contributes to the making of a man self-conscious. Julian had a vague notion that the presence of his greatest friend to-night might render him self-conscious. He scarcely knew why. Then he looked at the mastiffs, and wondered at the extraordinary difference between men and the companion animals whom they love and who love them. What man, however natural, however independent and serene, could emulate the majestic and deliberate abandon of a big dog courted and caressed by a blazing fire and a soft rug? Man has not the dignity of soul to be so grandly natural. Yet his very pert self-consciousness, the fringed petticoats of affectation which he wears, give him the kennel, the collar, the muzzle, the whip, weapons of power to bring the dog to subjection. And Julian, as he watched Rupert and Mab wrapped in large lethargic dreams, found himself pitying them, as civilized man vaguely pities all other inhabitants of the round world. Poor old things! Sombre agitations were not theirs. They had nothing to aim at or to fight against. No devils and angels played at football with their souls. Their liaisons were clear, uncomplicated by the violent mental drum-taps that set the passions marching so often at a quickstep in the wrong direction. And Julian knelt down on the hearth-rug and laid his strong young hands on their broad heads. Slowly they opened their veiled eyes and blinked. One, Rupert, struck a strict tail feebly upon the carpet in token of acquiescence and gratified goodwill. Mab heaved herself over until she rested more completely upon her side, and allowed an enormous sigh to rumble through her monotonously. Julian enjoyed that sigh. It made him for the moment an optimist, as a happy child makes a dreary old man shivering on the edge of death an optimist. Dogs are blessed things. That was his thought. And just then the door at the end of the room opened quietly, and Doctor Levillier came in, with a cloak on and his crush-hat in his hand.
"I am glad to see you, Addison," he said.
The dogs shook themselves up onto their legs and laid their heads against his knees.
"Lawler, please bring my gruel."
"Yes, sir."
"Addison, will you have brandy or whisky?"
"Whisky, please, doctor."
Lawler took his master's cloak and hat, and the doctor came up to the fire.
"So Valentine has gone home to bed?" he said.
"Yes."
"He's all right, I hope?"
"Yes. Indeed, doctor, I thought him looking more fit than usual to-day, more alive than I have often seen him."
"I noticed that last night, when he revived from his trance. It struck me very forcibly, very forcibly indeed. But you—" and the doctor's eyes were on Julian's face—"look older than your age to-night, my boy."
He sat down and lit a cigar. The mastiffs coiled themselves at his feet
rapturously. They sighed, and he sighed too, quietly in satisfaction.
He loved the one hour before midnight, the hour of perfect rest for him.
Putting his feet on Rupert's back, he went on:
"Last night's events upset you seriously, I see, young and strong though you are. But the most muscular men are more often the prey of their nervous systems than most people are aware. Spend a few quiet days. Fence in the morning. Ride—out in the country, not in the Park. Get off your horse now and then, tie him up at a lych-gate and sit in a village church. Listen to the amateur organist practising 'Abide with me,' and the 'Old Hundredth,' on the Leiblich Gedacht and the Dulciana, with the bourdon on the pedals. There's nothing like that for making life seem a slow stepper instead of a racer. And take Valentine with you. I should like to sit with him in a church at twilight, when the rooks were going home, and the organ was droning. Ah, well, but I must not think of holidays."
"Doctor, I like your prescription. Yes; I am feeling a bit out of sorts to-night. Last night, you see—and then to-day."
"Surely, Addison, surely you haven't been sitting—but no, forgive me.
I've got your promise. Well, what is it?"
Julian replied quickly:
"That man I told you about, Marr, is dead."
Doctor Levillier looked decidedly startled. Julian's frequent allusions to Marr and evident strange interest in the man, had impressed him as it had impressed Valentine. However, he only said:
"Heart disease?"
"I don't know. There is going to be an inquest."
"When did he die?"
"Last night, or rather at four in the morning; just as Valentine came out of his trance, it must have been. Don't you remember the clock striking?"
"Certainly, I do. But why do you connect the two circumstances?"
"Doctor, how can you tell that I do?"
"By your expression, the tone of your voice."
"You are right. Somehow I can't help connecting them. I told Valentine so to-night. He has been with me to see Marr's body."
"You have just come from that deathbed now?"
"Yes."
Julian sketched rapidly the events of the European Hotel, but he left to the last the immense impression made upon him by the expression of the dead man.
"He looked so happy, so good, that at first I could not recognize him," he said. "His face, dead, was the most absolutely direct contradiction possible of his face, alive. He was not the same man."
"The man was gone, you see, Addison."