"Yes. But, then, what was it which remained to work this change in the body?"
"Death gives a strange calm. The relaxing of sinews, the droop of limbs and features, the absolute absence of motion, of breathing, work up an impression."
"But there was something more here,—more than peace. There was a—well, a strong happiness and a goodness. And Marr had always struck me as an atrociously bad lot. I think I told you."
The doctor sat musing. Lawler came in with the tray, on which was a small basin of gruel and soda-water bottles, a decanter of whisky, and a tall tumbler. Julian mixed himself a drink, and the doctor, still meditatively, took the basin of gruel onto his knees. As he sipped it, he looked a strange, little, serious ascetic, sitting there in the light from the wax candles, his shining boots planted gently on the broad back of the slumbering mastiff, his light eyes fixed on the fire. He did not speak again until he was half way through his gruel. Then he said:
"And you know absolutely nothing of Marr's past history?"
"No; nothing."
"I gather from all you have told me that it would be worthy of study. If I knew it I might understand the startling change from the aspect of evil to the aspect of good at death. I believe the man must have been far less evil than you thought him, for dead faces express something that was always latent, if not known, in the departed natures. Ignorantly, you possibly attributed to Marr a nature far more horrible than he ever really possessed."
But Julian answered:
"I feel absolutely convinced that at the time I knew him he was one of the greatest rips, one of the most merciless men in London. I never felt about any man as I did about him! And he impressed others in the same way."
"I wish I had seen him," Doctor Levillier said.
An idea, suggested by Julian's last remark, suddenly struck him.
"He conveyed a strong impression of evil, you say?"
"Yes."
"How? In what way, exactly?"
Julian hesitated.
"It's difficult to say," he answered. "Awfully difficult to put such a thing into words. He interested me. I felt that he had a great power of intellect, or of will, or something. But in every way he suggested a bad, a damnably bad, character. A woman said to me once about him that it was like an emanation."
"Ah!"
The doctor finished his gruel and put down the basin on the table beside him.
"By the way, where did Marr live? Anywhere in my direction? Would he, for instance, go home from Piccadilly, or the theatres, by Regent Street?"
"I don't know at all where he lived."
"Have you ever seen him with animals,—with dogs, for instance?"
"No."
"If he had been as evil as you suppose, any dog would have avoided him."
"Well, but dogs avoid perfection too."
"Hardly, Addison."
"But Rip and Valentine!"
The remark struck the doctor; that was obvious. He pushed his right foot slowly backwards and forwards on Rupert's back, rucking up the dog's loose skin in heavy folds.
"Yes," he said; "Rip is rather an inexplicable beggar. But do you mean to tell me he hasn't got over his horror of Valentine to-day?"
"This afternoon he was worse than ever. If Valentine had touched him,
I believe he would have gone half mad. I had to put him out of the room."
"H'm!"
"Isn't it unaccountable?"
"I must say that it is. Dogs are such faithful wretches. If Rupert and Mab were to turn against me like that I believe it would strike at my heart more fiercely than the deed of any man could."
He bent down and ran his hand over Rupert's heaving back.
"The cheap satirist," he said, "is forever comparing the fickleness of men with the faithfulness of animals, but I don't mean to do that. I have a great belief in some human natures, and there are many men whom I could, and would, implicitly trust."
"There is one, doctor, whom we both know."
"Cresswell. Yes. I could trust him through thick and thin. And yet his own dog flies at him."
Doctor Levillier returned to that fact, as if it puzzled him so utterly that he could not dismiss it from his mind.
"There must be some curious, subtle reason for that," he said; "yet with
all my intimate and affectionate knowledge of dogs I cannot divine it.
Watch Rip carefully when he is not with Cresswell. Look after his health.
Notice if he seems natural and happy. Does he eat as usual?"
"Rather. He did to-day."
"And he seems contented with you?"
"Quite."
"Well, all I can say is, that Rip doesn't seem to possess a dog nature.
He is uncanny."
"Uncanny," Julian said, seizing on the word. "But everything has become uncanny within the last few days. Upon my word, when I look back into the past of, say, a fortnight ago, I ask myself whether I am a fool, or dreaming, or whether my health is going to the deuce. London seems different. I look on things strangely. I fancy, I imagine—"
He broke off. Then he said:
"By Jove, doctor, if half the men I know at White's could see into my mind they would think me fitted for a lunatic asylum."
"It doesn't matter to you what half the men, or the whole of the men at White's think, so long as you keep a cool head and a good heart. But it is as you say. You and Valentine have run, as a train runs into the Black Country, into an unwholesome atmosphere. In a day or two probably your lungs, which have drawn it in, will expel it again."
He smiled rather whimsically. Then he said:
"You know, Addison, men talk of their strength, and are inclined to call women nervous creatures, but the nerves play tricks among male muscles. Yes, you want the foils, the bicycle, the droning organ, and the village church. I advise you to go out of town for a week. Forget Marr, a queer fish evidently, with possibly a power of mesmerism. And don't ask Valentine to go away with you."
The last remark surprised Julian.
"But why not?" he asked.
"Merely because he is intimately connected with the events that have turned you out of your usual, your right course. I see that your mind is moving in a rather narrow circle, which contains, besides yourself, two people only, Marr and Cresswell."
"Darkness and light. Yes, it's true. How rotten of me," Julian exclaimed, like a schoolboy. "I'm like a squirrel in a cage, going round and round. That's just it. Valentine and Marr are in that cursed circle of our sittings, and so I insanely connect them with one another. I actually began to think to-night that Marr died, poor fellow, because—well—"
"Yes."
"Oh, it's too ridiculous, that his death had something to do with our last sitting. Supposing, as you say, he had a hypnotic power of any kind. Could—could its exercise cause injury to his health?"
But the doctor ignored the question in his quiet and yet very complete and self-possessed manner.
"Marr and Cresswell never met," he said. "It is folly to connect them together. It is, as you said," and he laughed, "rotten of you. Go away to-morrow."
"I will, you autocratic doctor. What fee do I owe you?"
"Your friendship, my boy."
Dr. Levillier sat lower in his chair, and they smoked in silence, both of them revelling in the warm peace and the ease of this night-hour. Since he had come into the Harley Street house Julian had been much happier. His perturbation had gradually evaporated until now scarcely a vestige of it remained. The little doctor's talk, above all the sight of his calm, thoughtful face and the aspect of his calm, satisfied room, gave the coup de grâce to the uneasiness of a spurious and ill-omened excitement. When the power of wide medical knowledge is joined to the power of goodness and of umbrageous intellectuality, a doctor is, among all men, the man to lay the ghosts that human nature is perpetually at the pains to set walking in their shrouds to cause alarm. All Julian's ghosts were laid. He smoked on and grew to feel perfectly natural and comfortable. The dogs echoed and emphasized all the healing power of their small and elderly master. As they lay sleeping, a tangle of large limbs and supine strength, the fire shone over them till their fawn-coloured coats gleamed almost like satin touched with gold. The delightful sanctity of unmeasured confidence, unmeasured satisfaction, sang in their gentle and large-hearted snores, which rose and fell with the regularity of waves of the sea. Now and then one of them slowly stretched a leg or expanded the toes of a foot, as if intent on presenting a larger surface of sensation to the embrace of comfort and of affection. And they, so it seemed to Julian, kept the pleasant silence now come into existence between him and the doctor alive. That silence rested him immensely. In it the two cigars diminished steadily, steadily as the length of a man's life, but glowing to the very end. And the grey ashes dropped away of their own accord, and Julian's mind shed its grey ashes too and glowed serenely. The dogs expanded their warm bodies on the hearth, and his nature expanded in a vague, wide-stretching generosity of mute evening emotion.
"How comfortable this is, doctor," he murmured at last.
"Yes. It's a good hour," the doctor replied, letting the words go slowly from his lips. "I wish I could give to all the poor creatures in this city just one good hour."
They smoked their cigars out.
"I ought to go," Julian said lazily.
"No. Have one more. I know it is dangerous to prolong a pleasure. It loses its savour. But I think, Addison, to-night, you and I can get no harm from the experiment."
He handed Julian the cigar-box.
"We won't stir up the dogs for another half-hour," he added, looking at their happiness with a shining satisfaction. "Here are the matches. Light up."
Julian obeyed, and they began the delightful era of the second cigar, and sank a little deeper down, surely, into serenity and peace. Occasional coals dropping into the fender with a hot tick, tick, chirrupped a lullaby to the four happy companions. And the men learnt a fine silence from the fine silence of the dogs.
Half way through the second cigar Rupert shifted under his master's patent-leather boots and raised his huge head. His eyes blinked out of their sleep, then ceased to blink and became attentive. Then his ears, which had been lying down on each side of his head in the suavest attitude which such features of a dog can assume, lifted themselves up and pointed grimly forward as he listened to something. His flaccid legs contracted under him, and the muscles of his back quivered. Mab, less readily alert, quickly caught the infection of his attention, rolled over out of her sideways position and couched beside him. The movement of the dogs was not congenial to the doctor. Rupert's curious back, alert under his feet, communicated an immediate sense of disquiet to the very centre of his being. He said to Julian:
"The acuteness of animal senses has its drawbacks. These dogs must have heard some sound in the street that is entirely inaudible to us. Well, Rupert, what is it? Lie down again and go to sleep."
Stooping forward he put his hand on the dog's neck, and gave him a push, expecting him to yield readily, and tumble over onto the warm rug to sleep once more. But Rupert resisted his hand, and instead, got up, and stood at attention. Mab immediately followed his example.
"What are they after, doctor?" said Julian.
As he spoke a bell rang in the house.
"Nemesis for prolonging the pleasure," Levillier said. "A summons to a patient, no doubt."
As if in reply to the twitter of the bell, Rupert sprang forward and barked. He remained beside the door, waiting, while Mab barked too, nearer the fire. The bell sounded again, and the footstep of Lawler, who always sat up as late as his master, was heard on the stairs from the servants' part of the house. It passed them on its errand to the front door, but during its passage the excitement of the two dogs rapidly increased. They began to bark furiously and to bristle.
"I never saw them like this before," the doctor said, not without anxiety.
As he spoke Lawler opened the hall door. They heard the latch go and the faint voice of somebody in colloquy with him. For the dogs were now abruptly silent, but displayed the most curious savage intentness, showing their teeth, and standing each by the door as if sentinels on guard. The colloquy ceasing, steps again sounded in the hall, but more than Lawler's. Evidently the man was returning towards the room accompanied by somebody from the street. The doctor was keenly observing the mastiffs, and just as Lawler's hand struck upon the handle of the door to turn it, he suddenly called out sharply:
"Lawler, you are not to open the door!"
And as he called, the doctor ran forward between the two dogs and caught their collars in his two hands. They tugged and leaped to get away, but he held on. The surprised voice of the obedient Lawler was heard on the hither side of the door, saying:
"I beg your pardon, sir."
The doctor said hastily to Julian:
"These dogs will tear the person who has just come into the house to pieces if we don't take care. Catch on to Mab, Addison."
Julian obeyed, and the dog was like live iron with determination under his grasp.
"Some one is with you, Lawler," the doctor said. "Does he wish to see me?"
"If you please, sir, it is Mr. Cresswell, Mr. Valentine come back for Mr.
Addison."
Julian felt himself go suddenly pale.
CHAPTER VI
THE STRENGTH OF THE SPRING
Rather reluctantly, Julian acted on the advice of Doctor Levillier and went out of town for a week on the following day. He took his way to the sea, and tried to feel normal in a sailing-boat with a gnarled and corrugated old salt for his only companion. But his success was only partial, for while his body gave itself to the whisper of the ungoverned breezes, while his hands held the ropes, and his eyes watched the subtle proceedings of the weather, and his ears listened to the serial stories of the waves, and to the conversational peregrinations of his Ancient Mariner about the China Seas in bygone days, his mind was still in London, still busily concerned itself with the very things that should now undergo a sea change and vanish in ozone. Recent events oppressed him, to the occasional undoing of the old salt, well accustomed to the seasick reverence of his despairing clients on board the Star of the Sea. When the mind of a man has once fallen into the habit of prancing in a circle like a circus horse, it is difficult to drive it back into the public streets, to make it trot serenely forward in its ordinary ways. And Julian had with him a ring-master in the person of the ignorant Rip. Whenever his eyes fell on Rip, curled uneasily in the bottom of the swinging boat, he went at a tangent back to Harley Street, and the strange finale of his evening with the doctor.
It had been a curious tableau divided by a door. Levillier and he stood on one side tugging mightily at the intent mastiffs, which strained at their collars, dropping beads of foam from their grinning jaws, savages, instead of calm companions. On the other side, in the hall, Lawler and Valentine paused in amazement, and a colloquy shot to and fro through the wooden barrier. On hearing the name of Valentine mentioned by the butler, the doctor had cast an instant glance of unbounded amazement upon Julian. And Julian had returned it, feeling in his heart the dawning of an inexplicable trouble.
"Is anything the matter?" Valentine's voice had asked.
"No," said the doctor in reply. "But please go into the dining-room. We will come to you there. And Lawler—"
"Yes, sir."
"When you have shown Mr. Cresswell to the dining-room, be careful to shut the door, and to keep it shut till I come."
"Yes, sir."
The butler's well-trained voice had vibrated with surprise and Julian had found himself mechanically smiling as he noted this. Then the footsteps of servant and visitor had retreated. Presently a door was heard to shut. Lawler returned, and was passing discreetly by, to wonder, in his pantry, if his master had gone mad, when the doctor again called to him.
"Go downstairs, Lawler, and in a moment I shall bring the dogs to you."
"Yes, sir."
The butler's voice was now almost shrill with scarcely governable astonishment, and his footsteps seemed to tremble uneasily upon the stairs as he retired. Then the doctor went to a corner of the room and took down from a hook a whip with a heavy thong.
"I haven't had to use this since they were both puppies," he said, with a side glance at the dogs. "Now, Addison, keep hold of Mab and go in front of me down the servants' stairs. If the dogs once get out of hand we shall have trouble in the house to-night."
The door was opened, and then a veritable affray began. The animals seemed half mad. They tore at their collars, and struggled furiously to break loose, snarling and even snapping, their great heads turned in the direction of the dining-room. The doctor, firmest as well as kindest of men, recognized necessity, and used the whip unsparingly, lashing the animals through the door to the servants' quarters, and down the stairs. It was a violent procession to the lower regions. Julian could not get it out of his head. Entangled among the leaping dogs on the narrow stairway, he had a sense of whirling in the eddies of a stream, driven from this side to the other. His arms were nearly pulled out of their sockets. The shriek of the lash curling over and around the dogs, the dim vision of the doctor's compressed lips and eyes full of unaccustomed fire, the damp foam on his hands as he rocked from one wall to the other, amid a dull music of growls, and fierce, low barks, came back to him now as he trimmed the sails to catch the undecided winds, or felt the tiller leap under his hold. Each moment he had expected to be bitten, but somehow they all tumbled together unhurt into Lawler's pantry, where they found that factotum standing grim and wire-strung with anticipation. Beyond the pantry were the dogs' night quarters, and they were quickly driven into them and shut up. But they still bounded and beat against the door, and presently began to howl a vain chorale.
"Lord, Lord, sir! what's come to them?" Lawler exclaimed.
His fat face had become as white as a sheet, and the doctor was scarcely less pale as he leaned against the dresser, whip in hand, drawing panting breaths.
"I can't tell. They will be all right in a minute."
He pulled himself up.
"Go to bed now if you like, Lawler," he said, rather abruptly. "Come,
Addison."
They regained the hall, and made their way to Valentine. He was sitting by the dining-table in a watchful attitude, and sprang hastily up as they came in.
"My dear doctor," he said, "what a pandemonium! I nearly came to your assistance."
"It's very lucky you didn't, Cresswell," the doctor answered, almost grimly.
"Why?"
"Because if you had you might chance to be a dead man by this time."
Out on the sea, under the streaming clouds that fled before the wind, Julian recalled the strange terseness of that reply, and the perhaps stranger silence that followed it. For Valentine had made no comment, had asked for no explanation. He had simply dropped the subject, and the three men had remained together for a few minutes, constrained and ill at ease. Then the doctor had said:
"Let us go back now to my room."
Valentine and he assented, and got upon their feet to follow him, but when he opened the door there came up from the servants' quarters the half-strangled howling of the mastiffs. Involuntarily Dr. Levillier paused to listen, his hand behind his ear. Then he turned to the young men, and held out his right hand.
"Good-night," he said. "I must go down to them, or there will be a summons applied for against me in the morning by one of my neighbours."
And they let themselves out while he retreated once more down the stairs.
The drive home had been a silent one. Only when Julian was bidding
Valentine good-night had he found a tongue to say to his friend:
"The devil's in all this, Valentine."
And Valentine had merely nodded with a smile and driven off.
Now, in the sea solitude that was to be a medicine to his soul, Julian went round and round in his mental circus, treading ever the same saw dust under foot, hearing ever the same whip crack to send him forward. His isolation bent him upon himself, and the old salt's hoarse murmurings of the "Chiney" seas in no way drew him to a healthier outlook. Why Valentine returned for him that night he did not know. That might have been merely the prompting of a vagrant impulse. Julian cursed that impulse, on account of the circumstances to which it directly led; for there was a peculiar strain of enmity in them which had affected, and continued to affect, him most disagreeably. To behold the instinctive hostility of another towards a person whom one loves is offensively grotesque to the observer, and at moments Julian hated the doctor's mastiffs, and even hated the unconscious Rip, who lay, in a certain shivering discomfort and apprehension, seeking sleep with the determination of sorrow. There are things, feelings, and desires, which should surely be kicked out of men and dogs. Such a thing, beyond doubt, was a savage hatred of Valentine. What prompted it, and whence it came, were merely mysteries, which the dumbness of dogs must forever sustain. But what specially plunged Julian into concern was the latent fear that Dr. Levillier might echo the repulsion of his dogs and come to look upon Valentine with different eyes. Julian's fine jealousy for his friend sharpened his faculties of observation and of deduction, and he had observed the little doctor's dry reception of Valentine after the struggle on the stairs, and his eager dismissal of them both to the street door on the howling excuse that rose up from the basement. Such a mood might probably be transient, and only engendered by the fatigue of excitement, or even by the physical exhaustion attendant upon the preservation of Valentine from the rage of Rupert and Mab. Julian told himself that to dwell upon it, or to conceive of it as permanent, was neither sensible nor acute, considering his intimate knowledge of the doctor's nature, and of his firm friendship for Valentine. That he did continue most persistently to dwell upon it, and with a keen suspicion, must be due to the present desolation of his circumstances, and to the vain babble of the blue-coated Methuselah, whose intellect roamed incessantly through a marine past, peopled with love episodes of a somewhat Rabelaisian character.
At the end of five days Julian abruptly threw up the sponge and returned to London, abandoning the old salt to the tobacco-chewing, which was his only solace during the winter season, now fast drawing to a close. He went at once to see Valentine, who had a narrative to tell him concerning Marr.
"You have probably read all about Marr in the papers?" he asked, when he met Julian.
The question came at once with his hand-grasp.
"No," Julian said. "I shunted the papers, tried to give myself up entirely to the sea, as the doctor advised. What has there been?"
"Oh, a good deal. I may as well tell it to you, or no doubt Lady Crichton will. People exaggerate so much."
"Why—what is there to exaggerate about?"
"The inquest was held," Valentine answered. "And every effort was made to find the woman who came with Marr to the hotel and evaporated so mysteriously, but there was no one to identify her. The Frenchman had not noticed her features, and the housemaid, as you remember, was a fool, and could only say she was a common-looking person."
"Well," Julian said, rather eagerly, "but what was the cause of death?"
"That was entirely obscure. The body seemed healthy—at least the various organs were sound. There was no obvious reason for death, and the verdict was, simply, 'Died from failure of the heart's action.'"
"Vague, but comprehensive."
"Yes; I suppose we shall all die strictly from the same cause."
"And that is all?"
"Not quite. It appears that a description of the dead man got into the papers and that he was identified by his wife, who read the account in some remote part of the country, took the train to town, and found that Marr was, as she suspected, the man whom she had married, from whom she had separated, and whose real name was Wilson, the Wilson of a notorious newspaper case. Do you remember it?"
"What, an action against a husband for gross cruelty, for incredible, unspeakable inhumanity—some time ago?"
"Yes. The wife got a judicial separation."
"And that is the history of Marr?"
"That is, such of his history as is known," Valentine said in his calm voice.
While he had been speaking his blue eyes had always been fixed on
Julian's face. When Julian looked up they were withdrawn.
"I always had a feeling that Marr was secretly a wretch, a devil," Julian said now. "It seems I was right. What has become of the wife?"
"I suppose she has gone back to her country home. Probably she is happy. Her first mate chastised her with whips. To fulfil her destiny as a woman she ought now to seek another who is fond of scorpions."
"Women are strange," Julian said, voluptuously generalizing after the manner of young men.
Valentine leaned forward as if the sentence stirred some depth in his mind and roused him to a certain excitement.
"Julian," he exclaimed, "are you and I wasting our lives, do you think? Since you have been away I have thought again over our conversation before we had our first sitting. Do you remember it?"
"Yes, Valentine."
"You said then I had held you back from so much."
"Yes."
"And I have been asking myself whether I have not, perhaps, held you back, held myself back, from all that is worth having in life."
Julian looked troubled.
"From all that is not worth having, old boy," he said.
But he looked troubled. When Valentine spoke like this he felt as a man who stands at a garden gate and gazes out into the world, and is stirred with a thrill of anticipation and of desire to leap out from the green and shadowy close, where trees are and flowers, into the dust and heat where passion hides as in a nest, and unspoken things lie warm. Julian was vaguely afraid of himself. It is dangerous to lean on any one, however strong. Having met Valentine on the threshold of life, Julian had never learned to walk alone. He trusted another, instead of trusting himself. He had never forged his own sword. When Siegfried sang at his anvil he sang a song of all the greatness of life. Julian was notably strong as to his muscles. He had arms of iron, and the blood raced in his veins, but he had never forged his sword. Mistrust of himself was as a phantom that walked with him unless Valentine drove it away.
"I thought you had got over that absurd feeling, Val," he said. "I thought you were content with your soul."
"I think I have ceased to be content," said Valentine. "Perhaps I have stolen a fragment of your nature, Julian, in those dark nights in the tentroom. Since you have been away I have wondered. An extraordinary sensation of bodily strength, of enormous vigour, has come to me. And I want to test the sensation, to see if it is founded upon fact."
He was sitting in a low chair, and as he spoke he slowly stretched his limbs. It was as if all his body yawned, waking from sleep.
"But how?" Julian asked.
Already he looked rather interested than troubled. At Valentine's words he too became violently conscious of his own strength, and stirred by the wonder of youth dwelling in him.
"How? That is what I wish to find out by going into the world with different eyes. I have been living in the arts, Julian. But is that living at all?"
Julian got up and stood by the fire. Valentine excited him. He leaned one arm on the mantelpiece. His right hand kept closing and unclosing as he talked.
"Such a life is natural to you," he said. "And you have made me love it."
"I sometimes wonder," responded Valentine, "whether I have not trained my head to slay my heart. Men of intellect are often strangely inhuman. Besides, what you call my purity and my refinement are due perhaps to my cowardice. I am called the Saint of Victoria Street because I live in a sort of London cloister with you for my companion, and in the cloister I read or I give myself up to music, and I hang my walls with pictures, and I wonder at the sins of men, and I believe I am that deadly thing, a Pharisee."
"But you are perfectly tolerant."
"Am I? I often find myself sneering at the follies of others, at what I call their coarsenesses, their wallowing in the mire."
"It is wallowing."
"And which is most human, the man who drives in a carriage, or the man who walks sturdily along the road, and gets the mud on his boots, and lets the rain fall on him and the wind be his friend? I suspect it is a fine thing to be out unsheltered in a storm, Julian."
Julian's dark eyes were glowing. Valentine spoke with an unusual, almost with an electric warmth, and Julian was conscious of drawing very near to him tonight. Always in their friendship, hitherto, he had thought of Valentine as of one apart, walking at a distance from all men, even from him. And he had believed most honestly that this very detachment had drawn him to Valentine more than to any other human being. But to-night he began suddenly to feel that to be actually side by side with his friend would be a very glorious thing. He could never hope to walk perpetually upon the vestal heights. If Valentine did really come down towards the valley, what then? Just at first the idea had shocked him. Now he began almost to wish that it might be so, to feel that he was shaking hands with Valentine more brotherly than ever before.
"Extremes are wrong, desolate, abominable, I begin to think," Valentine went on. "Angel and devil, both should be scourged—the one to be purged of excessive good, the other of excessive evil, and between them, midway, is man, natural man. Julian, you are natural man, and you are more right than I, who, it seems, have been educating you by presenting to you for contemplation my own disease."
"Well, but is natural man worth much? That is the question! I don't know."
"He fights, and drinks, and loves, and, oftener than the renowned philosopher thinks, he knows how to die. And then he lives thoroughly, and that is probably what we were sent into the world to do."
"Can't we live thoroughly without, say, the fighting and the drinking,
Val?"
Valentine got up, too, as if excited, and stood by the fire by Julian's side.
"Battle calls forth heroism," he said, "which else would sleep."
"And drinking?"
"Leads to good fellowship."
This last remark was so preposterously unlike Valentine that Julian could not for a moment accept it as uttered seriously. His mood changed, and he burst out suddenly into a laugh.
"You have been taking me in all the time," he exclaimed, "and I actually was fool enough to think you serious."
"And to agree with what I was saying?"
Valentine still spoke quite gravely and earnestly, and Julian began to be puzzled.
"You know I can never help agreeing with you when you really mean anything," he began. "I have proved so often that you are always right in the end. So your real theory of life must be the true one: but your real theory, I know, is to reject what most people run after."
"No longer that, I fancy, Julian."
"But, then, what has changed you?"
Valentine met his eyes calmly.
"I don't know," he said. "Do you?"
"I? How should I?"
"Perhaps this change has been growing within me for a long while. It is difficult to say; but to-night my nature culminates. I am at a point, Julian."
"Then you have climbed to it. Don't you want to stay there?"
"No mere man can face the weather on a mountain peak forever, and life lies rather in the plains."
Valentine went over to the window and touched the blind. It shot up, leaving the naked window, through which the gas-lamps of Victoria Street stared in the night.
"I wish," he said, "that we, in England, had the flat roofs of the East."
He thrust up the glass, and the night air pushed in.
"Come here, Julian," he said.
Julian obeyed, wondering rather. Valentine leaned a little out on the sill and made Julian lean beside him. It was early in the night and the hum of London was yet loud, for the bees did not sleep, but were still busy in their monstrous hive. There was already a gentleness of spring among the discoloured houses. Spring will not be denied, even among men who dwell in flats. The cabs hurried past, and pedestrians went by in twos and threes or solitary; soldiers walking vaguely, seeking cheap pleasures, or more gaily with adoring maidens; tired business men; journeying towards Victoria Station; a desolate shop-girl, in dreary virtue defiant of mankind, but still unblessed; the Noah's ark figure of a policeman, tramping emptily, standing wearily by turns, to keep public order. Lights starred here and there the long line of mansions opposite.
"I often look out here at night," Valentine said, "generally to wonder why people live as they do. When I see the soldiers going by, for instance, I have often marvelled that they could find any pleasure in the servants, so often ugly, who hang on their arms, and languish persistently at them under cheap hats and dyed feathers. And I gaze at the policeman on his beat and pity him for the dead routine in which he stalks, seldom varied by the sordid capture of a starving cracksman, or the triumphant seizure of an unmuzzled dog. The boys selling evening papers seem to me imps of desolation, screaming through life aimlessly for halfpence; and the cabmen, creatures driving for ever to stations, yet never able to get into the wide world. And yet they are all living, Julian; that is the thing: all having their experiences, all in strong touch with humanity. The newspaper-boy has got his flower-girl to give him grimy kisses; and the cabman is proud of the shine on his harness; and the soldier glories in his military faculty of seduction, and in his quick capacity for getting drunk in the glittering gin-palace at the corner of the street; and the policeman hopes to take some one up, and to be praised by a magistrate; and in those houses opposite intrigues are going on, and jealousy is being born, and men and women are quarrelling over trifles and making it up again, and children—what matter if legitimate or illegitimate?—are cooing and crying, and boys are waking to the turmoil of manhood, and girls are dreaming of the things they dare not pretend to know. Why should I be like a bird hovering over it all? Why should not I—and you—be in it? If I can only cease to be as I have always been, I can recreate London for myself, and make it a live city, fearing neither its vices nor its tears. I have made you fear them, Julian. I have done you an injury. Let us be quiet, and feel the rustle of spring over the gas-lamps, and hear the pulsing of the hearts around us."
He put his arm through Julian's as they leaned out on the sill of the window, and to Julian his arm was like a line of living fire, compelling that which touched it to a speechless fever of excitement. Was this man Valentine? Julian's pulses throbbed and hammered as he looked upon the street, and he seemed to see all the passers-by with eyes from which scales had fallen. If to die should be nothing to the wise man, to live should be much. Underneath, two drunken men passed, embracing each other by the shoulders. They sang in, snatches and hiccoughed protestations of eternal friendship. Valentine watched their wavering course with no disgust. His blue eyes even seemed to praise them as they went.
"Those men are more human than I," he slowly said. "Why should I condemn them?"
And, as if under the influence of a spell, Julian found himself thinking of the wandering ruffians as fine fellows, full of warmth of heart and generous feeling. A boy and girl went by. Neither could have been more than sixteen years old. They paused by a lamp-post, and the girl openly kissed the boy. He sturdily endured the compliment, staring firmly at her pale cheeks and tired eyes. Then the girl walked away, and he stood alone till she was out of sight. Eventually he walked off slowly, singing a plantation song: "I want you, my honey; yes, I do!" Valentine and Julian had watched and listened, and now Valentine, moving round on the window-ledge till he faced Julian, said:
"That is it, Julian, put in the straightforward music-hall way. People are happy because they want things; yes, they do. It is a philosophy of life. That boy has a life because he wants that girl, and she wants him. And you, Julian, you want a thousand things—"
"Not since I have known you," Julian said.
He felt curiously excited and troubled. His arm was still linked in Valentine's. Slowly he withdrew it. Valentine shut down the window and they came back to the fire.
"You know," Valentine said, "that it is possible for two influences to work one upon the other, and for each to convert the other. I begin to think that your nature has triumphed over mine."
"What?" Julian said, in frank amazement. The Philistines could not have been more astounded when Samson pulled down the pillars.
"I have taught you, as you say, to die to the ordinary man's life,
Julian. But what if you have taught me to live to it?"
Julian did not answer for a moment. He was wondering whether Valentine could possibly be serious. But his face was serious, even eager. There was an unwonted stain of red on his smooth, usually pale cheeks. A certain wild boyishness had stolen over him, a reckless devil danced in his blue eyes. Julian caught the infection of his mood.
"And what's my lesson?" Julian said.
His voice sounded thick and harsh. There was a surge of blood through his brain and a prickly heat behind his eyeballs. Suddenly a notion took him that Valentine had never been so magnificent as now,—now when a new fierceness glittered in his expression, and a wild wave of humanity ran through him like a surging tide.
"What's my lesson, Valentine?"
"I will show you, this spring. But it is the lesson the spring teaches, the lesson of fulfilling your nature, of waking from your slumbers, of finding the air, of giving yourself to the rifling fingers of the sun, of yielding all your scent to others, and of taking all their scent to you. That's the lesson of your strength, Julian, and of all the strength of the spring. Lie out in the showers, and let the clouds cover you with shadows, and listen to the song of every bird, and—and—ah!" he suddenly broke off in a burst of laughter, "I am rhapsodizing. The spring has got into my veins even among these chimneypots of London. The spring is in me, and, who knows? your soul, Julian. For don't you feel wild blood in your veins sometimes?"
"Yes, yes."
"And humming passions that come to you and lift you from your feet?"
"You know I do."
"But I never knew before that they might lift you towards heaven. That's the thing. I have thought that the exercise of the passions dragged a man down; but why should it be so? I have talked of men wallowing in the mire. I must find out whether I have been lying when I said that. Julian, this spring, you and I will see the world, at any rate, with open eyes. We will watch the budding and blossoming of the souls around us, the flowers in the garden of life. We will not be indifferent or afraid. I have been a coward in my ice prison of refinement. I keep a perpetual season of winter round me. I know it. I know it to-night."
Julian did not speak. He was carried away by this outburst, which gained so much, and so strange, force by its issue from the lips and from the heart of Valentine. But he was carried away as a weak swimmer by a resistless torrent, and instinctively he seemed to be aware of danger and to be stretching out his arms for some rock or tree-branch to stay his present course. Perhaps Valentine noticed this, for his excitement suddenly faded, and his face resumed its usual expression of almost cold purity and refinement.
"I generally translate this sort of thing into music," he said.
At the last word Julian looked up instinctively to the wall on which the picture of "The Merciful Knight" usually hung. For Valentine's music was inseparably connected in his mind with that picture. His eyes fell on a gap.
"Val," he exclaimed, in astonishment, "what's become of—"
"Oh, 'The Merciful Knight'? It has gone to be cleaned."
"Why? It was all right, surely?"
"No. I found it wanted cleaning badly and I am having it reframed. It will be away for some time."
"You must miss it."
"Yes, very much."
The last words were spoken with cutting indifference.
CHAPTER VII
JULIAN VISITS THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS
From that night, and almost imperceptibly, the relations existing between Valentine and Julian slightly changed. It seemed to Julian as if a door previously shut in his friend's soul opened and as if he entered into this hitherto secret chamber. He found there an apparent strange humanity which, as he grew accustomed to it, warmed him. The curious refined saintliness of Valentine, almost chilly in its elevation, thawed gently as the days went by, but so gently that Julian scarcely knew it, could scarcely define the difference which nevertheless led him to alter his conduct almost unconsciously. One great sameness, perhaps, gave him a sensation of safety and of continuity. Valentine's face still kept its almost unearthly expression of intellectuality and of purity. When Julian looked at him no passions flamed in his blue eyes, no lust ever crawled in the lines about his mouth. His smooth cheeks never flushed with beaconing desire, nor was his white forehead pencilled with the shadowy writing that is a pale warning to the libertine. And yet his speech about the spring that night, as they leaned out over Victoria Street, had evidently not been a mere reckless rhapsody. It had held a meaning and was remembered. In Valentine there seemed to be flowering a number of faint-hued wants, such wants as had never flowered from his nature before. The fig-tree that had seemed so exquisitely barren began to put forth leaves, and when the warm showers sang to it, it sang in tremulous reply.
And the spring grew in London.
Never before had Julian been so conscious of the growth of the year as now. The spring stirred inside him, as if he were indeed the Mother Earth. Tumults of nature shook him. With the bursting of the crocus, the pointing of its spear of gold to the sun, a life gathered itself together within him, a life that held, too, a golden shaft within its colour-stained cup. And the bland scent of the innumerable troops of hyacinths in Hyde Park was a language to him as he strolled in the sun towards the Row. Scents speak to the young of the future as they speak to the old of the past; to the one with an indefinite excitement, to the other with a vague regret. And especially when he was in the company of Valentine did Julian become intensely alive to the march of the earth towards summer, and feel that he was in step with it, dragooned by the same music. He began to learn, so he believed, what Valentine had called the lesson of his strength, and of all the strength of the spring. His wild blood leaped in his veins, and the world was walking with him to a large prospect, as yet fancifully tricked out in mists and crowned with clouds.
The spring brought to Valentine an abounding health such as he had never known before, a physical glory which, without actually changing him, gave to him a certain novelty of aspect which Julian felt without actually seeing. One day, when they were out riding together in the Park, he said:
"How extraordinarily strong you look to-day, Val."
Valentine spurred his horse into a short gallop.
"I feel robust," he said. "I think it is my mind working on my body. I have attained to a more healthy outlook on things, to a saner conception of life. For years you have been learning from me, Julian. Now I think the positions are reversed. I am learning from you."
Julian pressed his knees against his horse's sides with an iron grip, feeling the spirited animal's spirited life between them. They were now on a level with the Serpentine and riding parallel to it. A few vigorous and determined bathers swam gaily in the pale warmth of the morning sun. Two boys raced along the grassy bank to dry themselves, whooping with exultation, and leaping as they ran. A man in a broad boat, ready to save life, exchanged loud jokes with the swimmers. On a seat two filthy loafers watched the scene with vacant eyes. They had slept in the Park all night, and their ragged clothes were drenched with dew.
"I could race with those boys," Valentine said. "But not so long ago I was like the men on the bench. I only cared to look on at the bathing of others. Now I could swim myself."
He sent his horse along at a tremendous pace for a moment, then drew him in, and turned towards Julian.
"We are learning the lesson of the spring," he said.
As he spoke a light from some hidden place shot for an instant into his eyes and faded again. Julian laughed gaily. The ride spurred his spirits. He was conscious of the recklessness created in a man by exercise.
"I could believe that you were actually growing, Val," he said, "growing before my eyes. Only you're much too old."
"Yes; I am too old for that," Valentine said.
A sudden weariness ran in the words, a sudden sound of age.
"The truth is," he added, but with more life, "my nature is expanding inside my body, and you feel it and fancy you can see the envelope echo the words of the letter it holds. You are clever enough to be fanciful. Gently, Raindrop, gently!"
He quieted the mare as they turned into the road. Just as they were passing under the arch into the open space at Hyde Park corner a woman shot across in front of them. They nearly rode over her, and she uttered a little yell as she awkwardly gained the pavement. Her head was crowned with a perfect pyramid of ostrich feathers, and as she turned to bestow upon the riders the contemptuous glance of a cockney pedestrian, who demands possession of all London as a sacred right, Julian suddenly pulled up his horse.
"Hulloh!" he said to the woman.
"What is it?" asked Valentine, who was in front.
"Wait a second, Val. I want a word with this lady."
"Rather compromising," Valentine said, laughing, as his eyes took in with a swift glance the woman's situation in the economy of the town.
The woman now slowly advanced to the railing, apparently flattered at being thus hailed from horseback. Her kinsmen doubtless always walked.
"Don't you remember me?" Julian said.
She was in fact the lady of the feathers, with whom he had foregathered at the coffee-stall in Piccadilly. The lady leaned her plush arms upon the rail and surveyed him with her tinted eyes.
"Can't say as I do, my dear," she remarked. "What name?"
"Never mind that. But tell me, have you ever had a cup of coffee and a bun in Piccadilly early in the morning?"
The mention of the bun struck home to the lady, swept the quivering chords of her memory into a tune. She pushed her face nearer to Julian and stared at him hard.
"So it is," she said. "So it is."
For a moment she seemed inclined to retreat. Then she stood her ground.
Her nerves, perhaps, had grown stronger.
"I should like to know you," Julian said.
The lady was obviously gratified. She tossed her head and giggled.
"Where do you live?" Julian continued.
The lady dived into the back part of her skirt, and, after a long and passionate pursuit, ran a small purse to earth. Opening it with deliberation, she extracted a good-sized card, and handed it up to Julian.
"There you are, dearie," she said.
On the card was printed, "Cuckoo Bright, 400 Marylebone Road."
"I will come at five this afternoon and take you out to tea," said
Julian.
"Right you are, Bertie," the lady cried, in a voice thrilling with pride and exultation.
Julian rode off, and she watched him go, preening herself against the rail like some gaudy bird. She looked up at a policeman and laughed knowingly.
"Well, copper," she said; "how's that, eh?"
The policeman was equal to the occasion.
"Not out," he answered, with a stiff and semi-official smile. "Move along."
And Cuckoo Bright moved as one who walked on air.
Julian had joined Valentine, who had observed the colloquy from afar, controlling with some difficulty the impatience of his mare, excited by her gallop.
"You know that lady?" he asked, still laughing, with perhaps a touch of contempt.
"Very platonically. We met at a coffee-stall in Piccadilly as I was going home after your trance. She was with me when I saw that strange flame."
"When you imagined you saw it."
"If you prefer it, Val. I am going to see her this afternoon."
"My dear fellow—why?"
"I'll tell you," Julian answered gravely. "I believe she is the woman who went to the 'European' with Marr, who must have been with Marr when he was taken ill, and who fled. I have a reason for thinking so."
"What is it?"
"I'll tell you later, when I have talked to her."
"Surely you don't suspect the poor creature of foul play?"
"Not I. It's sheer curiosity that takes me to her."
"Oh."
They rode on a step or two. Then Valentine said:
"Are you going to take her out? She's—well, she is a trifle unmistakable, Julian."
"Yes, I know. You are right. She's not for afternoon wear, poor soul.
What damned scoundrels men are."
Valentine did not join in the sentiment thus forcibly expressed.
Between four and five that afternoon Julian hailed a cab and drove to Marylebone Road. The houses in it seemed endless, and dreary alike, but at length the cab drew up at number 400, tall, gaunt and haggard, like the rest. Julian rang the bell, and immediately a shrill dog barked with a piping fury within the house. Then the door was opened by an old woman, whose arid face was cabalistic, and who looked as if she spent her existence in expecting a raid from the police.
"Is Miss Cuckoo Bright at home?"
"Miss Bright! I'll see."
The old dame turned tail, and slithered, flat-footed, to a room opening from the dirty passage. She vanished and Julian heard two gentle voices muttering. The old woman returned.
"This way, sir!" she said, in a voice that perpetually struggled to get the whip-hand of an obvious bronchitis.
A moment more and Julian stood in the acute presence of the lady of the feathers. At first he scarcely recognized her, for she had discarded her crown of glory and now faced him in the strange frivolity of her hatless touzled hair. She stood by the square table covered with a green cloth, that occupied the centre of the small room, which communicated by folding doors with an inner chamber. A pastile was burning drowsily in a corner, and the shrill dog piped seditiously from its station on a black horsehair-covered sofa, over which a woolwork rug was thrown in easy abandon. Julian extended his hand.
"How d'you do?" he said.
"Pretty bobbish, my dear," was the reply; but the voice was much less pert than he remembered it, and looking at his hostess, Julian perceived that she was considerably younger than he had imagined, and that she was actually—amazing luxury!—a little shy. She had a box of safety-matches in her hand, and she now struck one, and applied it to a gas-burner. The day was dark.
"Pleased to see you," she added, with an attempt at a hearty and untutored air. "Jessie, shut up."
Jessie, the dog, of the toy species, and arched into the shape of a note of interrogation, obeyed, lay down and trembled into sleep. The gaslight revealed the details of the sordid room, a satin box of sweetmeats on the table, a penny bunch of sweet violets in a specimen-glass, one or two yellow-backed novels, and a few photographs ranged upon the imitation marble mantelpiece. There was one arm-chair, whose torn lining indecently revealed the interior stuffing, and there were three other chairs with wooden backs. The lady of the feathers did not dwell in marble halls, unless, perhaps, imaginatively.
"You've got cosey quarters," Julian said, amiably lying.
"Yes, they're not bad, but they do cost money. Sit down, won't you!"
The lady shoved the one arm-chair forward, and after a polite skirmish, Julian was forced to take it. He sat down, disguising from his companion his sudden knowledge that the springs were broken. She, on her part, laid hold of Jessie, dumped the little creature into her lap, and assumed an air of abrupt gentility, pursing her painted lips, and shooting sidelong glances of inquiry at the furniture. Julian could not at once explain his errand. He felt that caution was imperative. Besides, the lady doubtless expected to be entertained at Verrey's or possibly even at Charbonnel's. But Julian had resolved to throw himself upon the lady's hospitality.
"It's an awful day," he said.
The lady assented, adding that she had not been out.
"We are very cosey here," Julian continued, gazing at the small fire that was sputtering in the grate.
The lady looked gratified. She felt that the meagre abode which she must name home had received the hallmark of a "toff's" approval.
"Now I am going to ask you something," Julian said. "Will you let me have tea with you to-day, and—and—come out with me some evening to the Empire or somewhere, instead?"
The lady nodded her fringed head.
"Certainly, my dear," she responded. "Proud to give you tea, I'm sure."
Suddenly she bounced up, scattering Jessie over the floor. She promenaded to the door, opened it and yelled:
"Mrs. Brigg! Mrs. Brigg!"
The expostulating feet of the old person ascended wearily from the lower depths of the house.
"Lord! Lord! Whatever is it now?" she wheezed.
"Please bring up tea for me and this gentleman."
The lady assumed the voice of a sucking dove.
"Tea! Why, I thought you'd be out to—"
The lady shot into the passage and shut the door behind her. After a moment she put her head in and said to Julian:
"I'll be back in a minute. She's in a rare tantrum. I must go down and help her. Pardon."
And she vanished like a flash.
Julian sat feeling rather guilty. To distract himself he got up and looked at the photographs on the mantelpiece. Most of them were of men, but there were two or three girls in tights, and there was one of a stout and venerable woman, evidently highly respectable, seated in an arm-chair, with staring bead-like eyes, but a sweet and gentle mouth. Her hair was arranged in glossy bands. Her hands held a large book, probably a Bible. Julian looked at her and wondered a little how she chanced to be in this galère. Then he started and almost exclaimed aloud. For there, at the end of the mantelpiece, was a cabinet photograph of Marr. He was right then in his suspicion. The lady of the feathers was also the lady at the "European."
"Sorry to keep you waiting," said a voice behind him.
There was a clatter of crockery. His hostess entered bearing a tray, which held a teapot, cups, a large loaf of bread, and some butter, and a milk-jug and sugar-basin. She plumped it down on the table.
"Mrs. Brigg wouldn't make toast," she explained. "And I didn't like to keep you."
"Let's make some ourselves," said Julian, with a happy inspiration.
He felt that to perform a common and a cosey act must draw them together, and awaken in the lady's breast a happy and progressive confidence. She was evidently surprised at the suggestion.
"Well, I never!" she ejaculated. "You are a queer one. You are taking a rise out of me now!"
"Not at all. I like making toast. Give me a fork. I'll do it, and you sit there and direct me."
She laughed and produced the fork from a mean cupboard which did duty as a sideboard.
"Here you are, then. 'Cut it pretty thick. It ain't so high class, but it eats better. That's it. Sit on this stool, dear."
She kicked an ancient leather one to the hearth, and Julian, tucking his long-tailed frock coat under him, squatted down and thrust forward the bread to the bars of the grate. The lady opened the lid of the teapot and examined the brew with an anxious eye.
"It's drawin' beautiful," she declared. "Well, I'm d—" she caught herself up short. "Well this is bally funny," she said. "Turn it, dearie."
Julian obeyed, and they began to talk. For the ice was broken now, and the lady was quite at her ease, and simple and human in her hospitalities.
"This is better than the bun," Julian said.
"I believe you, dear. And yet that bun did me a deal of good that mornin'."
Her voice became suddenly reflective.
"A deal of good."
"Are you often out at such a time?"
"Not I. But that night I'd—well, I didn't feel like bein' indoors.
There's things—well, there, it don't matter. That toast's done, dearie.
Bring it here, and let me butter it."
Julian brought it, and cut another slice from the loaf. He toasted while the lady buttered, a fine division of labour which drew them close together. Jessie, meanwhile, attracted by these pleasant preparations, hovered about, wriggling in pathetic anxiety to share the good things of life.
"Anything wrong that night?" Julian said, carelessly.
The lady buttered, like an angry machine.
"Oh no, dearie," she said. "Make haste, or the tea'll be as black as coal. Jessie, you're a pig! I do spoil her."
Julian called the little dog to him. She came voraciously, her minute and rat-like body tense with greed.
"She's a pretty dog," he said.
"Yes," the lady rejoined proudly. "She's a show dog. She was give to me, and I wouldn't part with her for nuts, no, nor for diamonds neither. Would I, Jessie? Ah, well, dogs stick to you when men don't."
She was trying to be arch, but her voice was really quivering to tears, and in that sentence rang all the tragedy of her poor life. Julian looked across at her as she sat by the tray, buttering now almost mechanically. She was naturally a pretty girl, but was growing rapidly haggard, and was badly made up, rouged in wrong places consumptively, powdered everywhere disastrously. Her eyes were pathetic, but above them the hair was dreadfully dyed, and frizzed into a desolate turmoil. She had a thin young figure and anxious hands. As he looked Julian felt a profound pity and a curious manly friendship for her. She had that saddest aspect of a human being about whom it doesn't matter. Only it matters about every living creature so much.
The lady caught his eye, and extended her lips in a forced smile.
"You never know your luck!" she cried. "So it don't do to be down on it.
Come on, dearie. Now then for the tea."
She poured it out, and Julian drew up to the table. Already he felt oddly at home in this poor room, with this poor life, into which he longed to bring a little hope, a little safety. Jessie sprang to his knees, and thence, naughtily, to the table, snuffling towards the plate of toast. The lady drew it away and approached it to her nose by turns, playfully.
"She is a funny one," she said. "Is your tea right, dearie?"
"Perfect," said Julian. "Is my toast right?"
"Right as ninepence, and righter."
She munched.
"I like you," she said. "You're a gentleman."
She spoke naturally, without coquetry. It was a fine experience for her to be treated with that thing some women never know—respect. She warmed under it and glistened.
"We must be friends," Julian said.
"Pals. Yes. Have some more sugar?"
She jumped two lumps into his cup, and laughed quite gaily when the tea spouted over into the saucer. And they chatted on, and fed Jessie into joy and peace. Gradually Julian drew the conversation round to the photographs. The lady was expansive. She gave short histories of some of the men, summing them up with considerable shrewdness, kodaking their characters with both humour and sarcasm. Julian and she progressed along the mantelpiece together. Presently they arrived at the old lady with the Bible.
"And this?" Julian said.
The lady's fund of spirits was suddenly exhausted.
"Oh, that," she said, and a sort of strange, suppressed blush struggled up under the rouge on her face. "Well, that's mother."
"I like her face."
"Yes. She thinks I'm dead."
The lady turned away abruptly.
"I'll just carry the tray down to Mrs. Brigg," she said, and she clattered out with it, and down the stairs.
Julian heard her loudly humming a music-hall song as she went, the requiem of her dead life with the old woman who held the Bible on her knees. When she returned, her mouth was hard and her eyes were shining ominously. Julian was still standing by the mantelpiece. As she came in he pointed to the photograph of Marr.
"And this?" he asked. "Who's this?"
The lady burst into a shrill laugh of mingled fear and cunning.
"That's the old gentleman!"
"What do you mean?"
"What I say,—the old gentleman, Nick, the devil, if you like it."
"Now you are trying to take a rise out of me."
"Not I, dear," she said. "That's the devil, sure enough."