Part 68 (1/2)
And with that e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, half an uttered s.h.i.+ver, 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.
CHAPTER II
THE VOICE IN THE EMPTY ROOM
When the doctor arrived at the Victoria Street flat Valentine's man answered his ring. Wade had been with Valentine for many years and was always famous for his great devotion to, and admiration of, his master.
Wade was also especially partial--as he would have expressed himself--to Doctor Levillier, and when he saw who the visitor was, his face relaxed into contentment that strongly suggested a smile.
”Back at last Wade, you see,” the doctor said, cheerfully. ”Is Mr.
Cresswell in?”
”No, sir. But I expect him every minute to dress for dinner. He's dining out, and it's near seven now. Will you come in and wait?”
”Yes.”
The doctor entered and walked into the drawing-room, preceded by Wade, who turned on the light.
”Why! what have you been doing to the room?” the doctor said, looking round in some surprise. ”Dear me. It's very much altered.”
In truth, the change in it was marked. The grand piano had vanished, and in its place stood an enormous cabinet made of wood, stained black, and covered with grotesque gold figures, whose unnatural faces were twisted into the expressions of all the vices. Some of these faces smiled, others scowled, others protruded forked tongues like snakes and seemed to hiss along the blackness of the background. The shapes of the figures were voluptuous and yet suggested, rather than fully revealed, deformity, as if the minds of these monsters sought to reveal their distortion by the very lines of their curved and wanton limbs. Upon the top of this cabinet stood a gigantic rose-coloured jar filled with orchids, the Messalinas of the hothouse, whose mauve corruption and spotted faces leered down to greet the gold goblins beneath. It was easy to imagine them whispering to each other soft histories of unknown sins, and jeering at the corrupt respectabilities of London, as they cl.u.s.tered together and leaned above the ruddy ramparts of the china, wild flowers as no hedgerow violet, or pale smirking primrose, is ever wild in the farthest wood.
Glancing from this cabinet, and those that stood upon it, the doctor was aware of a deep and dusty note of red in the room, sounding from carpet and walls, tingling drowsily in the window curtains and in the cus.h.i.+ons that lay upon the couches. This was not the crude and cheerful sealing-wax red with which the festive Philistine loves to dye the whiteness of his dining-room walls, cooling its chubby absurdity with panels of that old oak, which is forever new. It was a dim and deep colour, such as a dust-filmed ruby might emit if illuminated by a soft light. And Valentine had shrouded it so adroitly that though it pervaded the entire room, it always seemed distant and remote, a background, vast perhaps, but clouded and shadowed by nearer things. These nearer things were many, for Valentine's original asceticism, which had displayed itself essentially in the slight bareness of his princ.i.p.al sitting-room had apparently been swept away by a tumultuous greed for ornaments. The room was crowded with furniture, chairs, and sofas of the most peculiar shapes, divans and tables, bookstands and settees. One couch was made of wood, carved and painted into the semblance of a woman, between whose outstretched arms was placed the pillow to receive the head of one resting there. Another lay on the bent backs of two grinning Indian boys, whose crouching limbs seemed twined into a knot. Upon the tables and cabinets stood a thousand ornaments, many of them silver toys, sweetmeat-boxes, tiny ivory figures and wriggling atrocities from the East. But what struck the doctor most in the transformation of the room was the panorama presented upon its walls. The pictures that he remembered so well were all gone. The cla.s.sical figures, the landscapes full of atmosphere and of delicacy had vanished. And from their places leered down jockeys and street-women painted by Jan Van Beers and Degas, Chaplin and Gustav Courbet, while above the mantelpiece, where once had hung ”The Merciful Knight,” a Cocotte by Leibl smoked a pipe into the room. It seemed incredible that Valentine could be at rest in such a livid chamber, and not even the vague communications of Cuckoo woke in the doctor such a definite and alive sensation of discomfort as this vision of outward change that must surely betoken an inward transformation of the most vivid and unusual kind. And everywhere, as a deep and monotonous bell ringing relentlessly through a symphony of discordant and crying pa.s.sions, there sounded that sinister note of deep and dusty red. Despite his own complete health of mind, and the frantic disquisitions of the morbid Nordau, the little doctor felt as if he heard the colour, as if it spoke from beneath his very feet, as if it sang under his fingers when he laid them on the brocade of a couch, as if the room palpitated with a heavy music which murmured drowsily in his ears a monotonous song of dull and weary change. No silence had ever before spoken to him so powerfully. He was greatly affected, and did not scruple to show his discomfort to Wade, who waited respectfully by the door.
”What an alteration!” he said again, but in a lower and more withdrawn voice. ”I cannot recognize the room I once knew--and loved!”
”Mr. Valentine has been doing it up, sir.”
”But why, Wade; why?”
”I don't know, sir; a fancy, I suppose, sir.”
”An evil one,” the doctor murmured to himself.
He glanced at Wade. It struck him that the man's mind might possibly march with Cuckoo's in detection of his master's transformation, if transformation there were. Wade returned the doctor's glance with calm, good breeding.
”Mr. Valentine is well, I hope, Wade?” he said.
”Very well, sir, I believe.”
”And Mr. Addison?”
”I couldn't quite say, sir, as to that.”