Chapter 28

THE LADY VISITS DOCTOR LEVILLIER

The Russian Grand Duke, whose malady was mainly composed of two ingredients, unlimited wealth and almost unlimited power, was slow in recovering, and slower still in making up his mind to part with the little nerve-doctor whom he had summoned from England. And so London was beginning to fall into its misty autumn mood before Doctor Levillier was once more established in Harley Street. He had heard occasionally from both Valentine and Julian during his long absence, but their letters had not communicated much, and once or twice when he, in replying to them, had put one or two friendly questions as to their doings, those questions had remained unanswered. The doctor had been particularly reluctant to leave England at the time when the Grand Duke's summons reached him, as his interest and curiosity about Valentine had just been keenly and thoroughly roused. But fate fought for the moment against his curiosity. It remained entirely ungratified. He had not once seen Valentine since the afternoon in Victoria Street, when the lamentation of that thoroughfare's saint had struck consternation into the hearts of musical sinners. Nor had the doctor met any one who could give him news of the two youths over whose welfare his soul had learned to watch. Now, when he returned to London, he found that both Valentine and Julian were abroad. Only Rip, left in charge of Julian's servant, greeted him with joy; Rip, whose conduct had given the first strong impulse to his wonder and doubt about Valentine.

Doctor Levillier took up the threads of his long-forsaken practice, and gave himself to his work while autumn closed round London. One day he heard casually from a patient that Valentine and Julian had returned to town. He wondered that they had not let him know: the omission seemed curious and unfriendly.

During the day on which the news reached him he was, as usual, busily engaged from morning till evening in the reception of patients. His reputation was very great, and men and women thronged his consulting-rooms. Although his rule was that nobody could ever gain admission to him without an appointment, it was a rule made to be broken. He never had the heart to turn any one from his door in distress, and so it frequently happened that his working-day was prolonged by the admission of people who unexpectedly intruded themselves upon him. Great ladies, more especially, often came to him on the spur of the moment, prompted to seek his solace by sudden attacks of the nerves. A lover had used them ill, perhaps, or a husband had turned upon them and had rent a long dressmaker's bill into fragments, without paying it first. Or the _ennui_ of an exquisite life of unbridled pleasure had suddenly sprung upon them like a grisly spectre, torn their hearts, shaken them into tears. Or--and this happened often--a fantastic recognition of the obvious fact that even butterflies must die, had abruptly started into their minds, obtruding a skeleton head above the billowing _chiffons_, rattling its bones until the dismal sound outvied the _frou-frou_ of silk, the burr of great waving fans, the click of high heels from Paris. Then, in terror, they drove to Doctor Levillier's door and begged to see him, if only for a moment.

There was no doctor in London so universally sought by the sane lunatics of society as Dr. Levillier. He was no mad-doctor. He had no private asylum. He had never definitely aimed at becoming a famous specialist in lunacy. But the pretty lunatics came to him, nevertheless; the lunatics who live at afternoon parties, till the grave yawns at their feet, and they must go down the strange ways of another world, teacup in hand, scandal still fluttering upon their ashy lip; the lunatics who live for themselves, until their eyes are hollow as tombs and their mouths fall in from selfishness, and their cheeks are a greenish white from satiety, and lust's gratified flame beacons on their drawn cheeks and along their crawling wrinkles; the lunatics who seek to be what they can never be, the beauties of this world, the great Queens of the Sun, whose gaze shall glorify, whose smile shall crown and bless, whose touch shall call hearts to agony and to worship, whose word shall take a man from his plough and send him out to win renown, or snatch a leader from his ambition and set him creeping in the dust, like a white mouse prisoned by a scarlet silken thread; the lunatics who dandle religions like dolls, and play with faiths as a boy plays with marbles, until the moment comes when the game is over, and the player is faced by the terror of a great lesson; the lunatics who stare away their days behind prancing horses in the Park, who worship in the sacred groves of bonnets, who burn incense to rouged and powdered fashions, who turn literature into a "movement," and art into a cult, and humanity into a bogey, and love into an adulterous sensation; the lunatics who think that to "live" is only another word for to sin, that innocence is a prison and vice liberty; the lunatics who fill their boudoirs with false gods, and cry everlastingly, "Baal, hear us!" till the fire comes down from heaven, which is no painted ceiling presided over by a plaster god. These came to Doctor Levillier day by day, overtaken by sad moments, by sudden, dreary crises of the soul, that set them impotently wailing, like Job among the potsherds. Many of them did not "curse God," only because they did not believe in Him.

It is not the fashion in London to believe in God just now.

Dr. Levillier had always, since he was a youth, walking hospitals and searching the terror of life for all its secrets, felt a deep care, a deep solicitude, for each duet, body and soul, that walked the world. He had never set them apart, never lost sight of one in turning his gaze upon the other. This fact, no doubt, accounted partially for the fact that many looked upon him as the greatest nerve-doctor in London. For the nervous system is surely a network lacing the body to the soul, and _vice versa_. Every _liaison_ has its connecting links, the links that have brought it into being. One lust stretches forth a hook and finds an eye in another, and there is union. So with faiths, with longings, with fine aspirations, with sordid grovellings. There is ever the hook seeking the appropriate eye. The body has a hook, the soul an eye. They meet at birth and part only at death.

Dr. Levillier was constantly, and ignorantly, entreated to adjust the one comfortably in the other. It is a delicate business, this adjustment, sometimes an impossible business. Half of the Harley Street patients came saying, "Make me well." What they really meant was, "Make me happy." Yet the most of them would have resented a valuable mixed prescription, advice for the hook, and advice for the eye. Such prescriptions had to be very deftly, sometimes very furtively, made up. Often the doctor felt an intense exhaustion steal over him towards the close of day. This tremendous and eternal procession passing onwards through his life, filing before him like a march-past of sick soldiers, saluting him with cries, and with questions, and with entreaties; this never-ceasing progress fatigued him. There were moments when he longed to hide his face, to turn away, to shut his ears to the murmuring voices, and his eyes to the pale, expressive faces, to put his great profession from him, as one puts a beggar into the night. But these were only moments, and they passed quickly. And the little doctor was always bitterly ashamed of them, as a brave man is ashamed of a secret tug of cowardice at his heart. For it seemed to him the greatest thing in all the world to help to make the unhappy rightly happier.

And this was, and had always been, his tireless endeavour. Upon this day one of these hated moments of mental and physical exhaustion had come upon him, and he struggled hard against his enemy. The procession of patients had been long, and more than once in the tiny interval between the exit of one and the entry of another, Dr. Levillier had peeped at his watch. His last appointment was at a quarter to five, then he would be free, and he said to himself that he would take a cab and drive down to Victoria Street. Valentine was often at home about six. The doctor put aside the little devil of pride that whispered, "You have been badly treated," and resolved to make the advance to this friend, who seemed to have forgotten him. In times of fatigue and depression he had often sought Valentine in order to be solaced by his music. But this solace was at an end, unless, indeed, the strange burden of musical impotence had been lifted from Valentine, and his talent had been restored to him.

The last patient came to the doctor's door punctually and was punctually dismissed as the clock chimed the quarter of an hour after five. The last prescription was written. The doctor drew in a deep breath of relief. He touched the bell and his servant appeared.

"There is no one waiting?" he asked.

"No, sir."

"I have made no other appointment for to-day, and I am going out almost immediately. If any patients should call casually tell them I cannot possibly see them to-day. Ask them to make an appointment. But I cannot see any one to-day under any circumstances."

"Yes, sir."

Dr. Levillier took his way upstairs, made a careful toilet, selected from his absurd array of boots a pair perfectly polished, put them on, took his hat and gloves, sighed once again heavily, almost as a dog sighs preparatory to its sleep, and turned to go downstairs. He forgot for the moment that he was prepared to watch Valentine. Perhaps, indeed, his long period of absence had dulled in his memory the recollection of any apparent change in his friend. For at this moment of fatigue he only recalled Valentine's expression of purity and high-souled health, and the atmosphere of lofty serenity in which he seemed habitually to dwell. The doctor wanted relief. How Valentine's presence would refresh him after this dreary array of patients, after the continuous murmurs of their plaintive voices! As he opened his bedroom door he perceived his man-servant mounting the stairs.

"Lawler, I can't see any one," he said, more hastily than usual. "I told you so distinctly. I am going out immediately."

The man paused. He had been with the doctor for many years, and both adored and understood him. The doctor looked at him.

"It is a patient, I suppose?" he asked.

"Well, sir, I can't exactly say."

"A lady?"

"Yes, sir. At least, sir--well, no, sir."

"What do you mean?"

"A female, sir."

"What does she want?"

"To see you, sir. I can't get her to go. I asked her to, sir; then I told her to."

"Well?"

"She only gave me this and said she'd come to see you, and if you were in she'd wait."

He handed a card to his master. The doctor took it and read:

"Cuckoo Bright, 400 Marylebone Road."

The words conveyed nothing to his mind, for neither Julian nor Valentine had ever talked to him of the lady of the feathers.

"Cuckoo Bright," he said. "An odd name! And an odd person, I suppose, Lawler?"

Lawler pursed his lips rather primly.

"Very odd, sir. Not at all a usual sort of patient, sir."

"H'm. Go and ask her if she comes as a patient or on private business."

The man retreated and returned.

"The--lady says she's ill and must see you, sir, if only for a moment."

This was Cuckoo's ruse to get into the house, and was based upon Julian's long-ago remark that the doctor could never resist helping any one who was in trouble. Standing on the doorstep, she had histrionically simulated faintness for the special benefit of Lawler, who regarded her with deep suspicion.

"I suppose I must see her," the doctor said with a sigh. "Show her in, Lawler."

Lawler departed, disapprovingly, to do so, and after a moment the doctor followed him. He walked into his consulting-room, where he found the lady of the feathers standing by the writing table. The autumn day was growing dark, and the street was full of deepening mist. Cuckoo was but a fantastic shadow in the room. Her dress rustled with an uneasy sound as the doctor came in. His first act was to turn on the electric light. In a flash the rustling shadow was converted into substance. Cuckoo and the doctor stood face to face, and Cuckoo's tired eyes fastened with a hungry, almost a wolfish, scrutiny upon this stranger. She wanted so much of him. The look was so full of intense meaning that, coming in a flash with the electric flash, it startled the doctor. Yet he had seen something like it before in the eyes of those who suspected that they carried death within them, and came to ask him if it were true. He was surprised, too, by her appearance. The women of the streets did not come to him, although if they had been able to read the writing in his heart many of them would surely have come. He shook hands with Cuckoo, told her to sit down, and sat down himself opposite to her.

"What is the matter? Please tell me your symptoms," he said gently.

"Eh?" was the reply, spoken in a thin and high voice.

"What has been troubling you?"

Cuckoo, who was wholly unaccustomed to answer a doctor's questions, started violently. She fancied from his words that he had divined the lie she had told when she said that she was ill, and knew that she came for a mental reason. Instinctively she connected the word "trouble" with the heart, in a way that was oddly and pathetically girlish. Acting upon this impulse she exclaimed:

"Then you know as I ain't ill?"

Doctor Levillier was still more surprised. Not understanding what was in her mind, he entirely failed to keep pace with its agility.

"Why do you come to me, then?" he asked.

"Oh," she returned, with a quickly gathering hesitation, "I thought as perhaps you knew."

"I! But we have never met before."

The doctor bent his eyes on her searchingly. For a moment he began to wonder whether his visitor was quite right in her head. Cuckoo shuffled under his gaze. The very kindliness of his face and gentleness of his voice made her feel hot and abashed. A prickly sensation ran over her body as she cleared her throat and said, monosyllabically:

"No."

The doctor waited.

"What is it?" he said at length. "Tell me why you have called. If you are not ill, what is it you want of me?"

"You'll laugh, p'r'aps."

"Laugh? Is it something funny, then?"

"Funny! Not it!"

The sound of her voice seemed to give her some courage, for she went on with more hardy resolution:

"Look here, you can see what I am--oh yes, you can--and you wonder what I'm doin' here. Well, if I tell you, will you promise as you won't laugh at me?"

This was Cuckoo's way of delicately sounding the doctor's depths. She thought it decidedly subtle.

"Yes, I'll promise that," the doctor said.

He looked at her faded young face and felt no inclination to laugh.

"Well, then," Cuckoo said, more excitedly, "you know Ju--Mr. Addison, don't you?"

The doctor began to see a ray of light.

"Certainly I do," he said.

"And Mr. Cresswell?"

"He is one of my most intimate friends."

The words were spoken with an unconscious warmth that chilled Cuckoo. For surely the man who spoke thus of the man she hated, must be her enemy. She faltered visibly, and a despairing expression crept into her eyes.

"I don't know as it's any use my sayin' it," she began as if half to herself.

The doctor saw that she was much troubled and the kindness of his nature was roused.

"Don't be afraid of me," he said. "You have come here to tell me something, tell it frankly. I am a friend of both the people you mention."

"You can't be that," she suddenly cried. "Nobody can't be that!"

"Why not?"

"You ought to know."

She said it fiercely. All her self-consciousness was suddenly gone, swept away by the flood of thought and of remembrance that was surging through her mind.

"Why can't you see what he is," she exclaimed, "any more than he can, than Julian--Mr. Addison, I mean? Any one'd think you was all mad, they would."

Doctor Levillier was glad he had admitted the lady of the feathers to his presence. Interest sprang up in him, alive and searching.

"Tell me what you mean," he said. "Are you talking about Mr. Cresswell?"

"Yes, I am; and I say of all the beasts in London he's the greatest."

Cuckoo did not choose her words carefully. She was highly excited and she wanted to be impressive. It seemed to her that to use strong language was the only way to be impressive. So she used it. The doctor's face grew graver.

"Surely you hardly know what you're saying," he said very quietly.

But his thoughts flew to that summer night when his mastiffs howled against Valentine, and he felt as if a mystery were deepening round him as the autumn mist of evening deepened in the street outside.

"I do," she reiterated. "I do. But nobody won't see it. And it's no use what I see. How can it be?"

The words were almost a wail.

"Tell me what you see."

Cuckoo looked into the doctor's sincere eyes, and a sudden rush of hope came to her.

"That's what I want to. But if you like him you'll only be angry."

"No, I shall not."

"Well, then. I see as he's ruinin' his friend."

"Ruining Mr. Addison?"

"Yes."

It struck the doctor as very strange that such a girl as Cuckoo obviously was should cry out in such a passionate way against the ruin of any young man. Was it not her fate to ruin others as she herself had been ruined? He wondered what her connection with the two youths was, and perhaps his face showed something of his wonder, for Cuckoo added, after a long glance at him:

"It's true; yes, it is," as if she read his doubts.

"How do you come to know it?" the doctor said, not at all unkindly, but as if anxious to elucidate matters.

"Why, I tell you I can see it plain. Besides," and here she dropped her voice, "Valentine, as he calls himself--though he ain't--as good as told me. He did tell me, only I couldn't understand. He knew I couldn't--d'you see? That's why he told me. Oh, if he'd only tell you!"

Fragments of Valentine's exposition of his deeds and of his strange gospel were floating through Cuckoo's mind as fragments of broken wood float by on a stream, fragments of broken wood that were part of a puzzle, that should be rescued by some strong hand from the stream, and fitted together into a perfect whole.

"Valentine! You say he told you that he was ruining Julian?"

Unconsciously the doctor used the Christian names. His doing so set Cuckoo more at her ease.

"Yes. Not like that. But he told me. He ain't what you think, nor what Julian thinks. He's somebody else, and you can't tell it. He's laughing at you all."

Thus the gospel came forth from the painted lips of Cuckoo, crude and garbled, yet true gospel. The doctor was completely puzzled. All he gathered from this announcement was that Valentine seemed in some way to have been confiding in this girl of the streets. Such a fact was sufficiently astounding. That they should ever have been associated together in any way was almost incredible to any one who knew Valentine. Yet it was quite obvious that they did know each other, and in no ordinary manner.

"Do you know Mr. Cresswell well?" the doctor said.

He saw that he could only make the tangle clear by being to some extent judicial. Humanity merely excited Cuckoo to something that was violently involved, passionate, and almost hysterical.

"Well enough."

"And Mr. Addison?"

Cuckoo flushed slowly.

"Yes, I know him--quite well."

An almost similar answer, but given with such a change of manner as would be possible only in a woman. It told the doctor much of the truth and gave him the first page of a true reading of Cuckoo's character. But he went on with apparently unconscious quietude:

"And you came here to tell me, who know and like them both, that the one is ruining the other. What made you come to me?"

"Why, somethin' Julian said once. He thinks a lot of you. I was afraid to come, but I--I thought I would. It's seein' them--at least Julian--since they got back made me come."

"I haven't seen them yet," the doctor said, and there was an interrogation in the accent with which he spoke. Something in Cuckoo's intense manner roused both wonder and alarm in him. She evidently spoke driven by tremendous impulse. What vision had given that impulse life?

"Ah!" she said, and fell suddenly into a dense silence, touching her left cheek mechanically with her hand, which was covered by a long, black silk glove. She alternately pressed the fingers of it against the cheek bone and withdrew them, as one who marks the progress of a tune, hummed or played on some instrument. Her eyes were staring downwards upon the carpet. The doctor watched her, and the wonder and fear grew in him.

"Have you nothing more to tell me?" he said at last.

"Eh?"

She put down her hand slowly and turned her eyes on him.

"What do you wish me to do?" he said, "I do not know yet what may--" he checked himself and substituted, "I must go and see my friends."

"Yes, go."

She nodded her head slowly, and then she shivered as she sat in the chair.

"Go, and do somethin'," she said. "I would--I want to--but I can't. It's true, I suppose, what he said. I'm nearly done with, I'm spoilt. I say, you're a doctor, aren't you? You know things? Tell me then, do, what's the good of goin' on being able to feel--I mean to feel just like anybody, anybody as hasn't gone down, you know--if you can't do anythin' the same as they can, get round anybody to make 'em go right? I could send him right, I could, as well as any girl, if feelin' 'd only do it. But feelin' ain't a bit of good. It's looks, I suppose. Everythin' 's looks."

"No, not everything," the doctor said.

Cuckoo's speech both interested and touched him. Its confused wistfulness came straight from the heart. And then it recalled to the doctor a conversation he had had with Valentine, when they talked over the extraordinary influence that the mere appearance--will working through features--of one man or woman can have over another. The doctor could only at present rather dimly apprehend the feeling entertained for Julian by Cuckoo. But as he glanced at her, he understood very well the pathos of the contest raging at present between her heart and the painted shell which held it.

"Nobody who feels goodness is utterly bereft of the power of bringing good to another," he said. "For we can seldom really feel what we can never really be."

Light shone through the shadows of the tired face at the words.

"He said different from that," she exclaimed.

"He--who?"

"Him as you call Valentine. That's why he told me all about it, because he knew as I shouldn't understand, and because he thinks I can't do nothin' for any one. But I say, you do somethin' for Julian, will you, will you?"

There was a passion of pleading in her voice. She had lost her fear of him, and, stretching out her hand, touched the sleeve of his coat.

"I don't understand it all," the doctor said. "I don't like to accept what you say about Mr. Cresswell, even in thought. But I will go and see him, and Julian. The dogs," he added in a low and secret voice to himself. "There is something terribly strange in all this."

He fell into a silence of consideration that lasted longer than he knew. The lady of the feathers began to fidget in it uneasily. She felt that her mission was perhaps accomplished and that she ought to go. She looked across at the doctor, pulled her silk gloves up on her thin arms, and kicked one foot against the other. He did not seem to notice. She glanced towards the window. The fog was pressing its face against the glass like a dreary and terrible person looking upon them with haggard eyes. It was time, she supposed, for her to drift out into the arms that belonged to that dreary and terrible face. She got up.

"I'll go now," she said.

The doctor did not hear.

"I'll go now, please," she repeated.

This time he heard and got up. He looked at her and said, "I have your address. I will see you again."

If misery chanced to stand once in his path, he seldom lost sight of it till he had at least tried to bring a smile to its lips, a ray of hope to its eyes. But in the instance of Cuckoo he had other reasons, or might have other reasons, for seeing her in the future.

"You are sure you have nothing more to say to me?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"No, I don't think," she murmured.

"Then good-bye."

He held out his hand. She put hers in it, with an action that was oddly ladylike for Cuckoo. Then she went out, rather awkwardly, in a reaction, to the hall, the doctor following. He opened the door for her, and the mist crawled instantly in.

"It's a gloomy night," he said. "Very autumnal."

"Yes, ain't it? I do hate the nights."

She spoke the words with an accent that was venemous.

"C-r-r!" she said.

And with that ejaculation, half an uttered shiver, half a muttered curse, she gave herself to the fog, and was gone.

Doctor Levillier stood for a moment looking into the vague and dreamy darkness. Then he put on his coat and hat, caught up a cab whistle, and with a breath, sent a shrill and piercing note into the night. Long and mournfully it sounded. And only the moist silence answered like that paradox--a voice that is dumb. Again and again the cry went forth, and at last there was an answering rattle. Two bright eyes advanced in the fog very slowly, looking for the sound, it seemed, as for a thing visible. The doctor got into the cab, and set forth in the fog to visit Valentine.