Part 86 (1/2)

”Scarcely any human being, if indeed any, is completely hateful. How then can a human being, whose mind is ill and out of control, be hateful?”

said the doctor, gently.

She felt herself rebuked, and a quick thought of herself, of what she was, rebuked her too.

”I'll try not,” she murmured, but with no inward conviction of success.

They were on the heath now, and the smoke of London hung in the wintry air beyond and below them. The sun was already beginning to wear the aspect of a traveller on the point of departure for a journey. His once golden face was sinister with that blood-red hue which it so often a.s.sumes on winter afternoons, and which seems to set it in a place more than usually remote, more than usually distant from our world, and in a clime that is sad and strange. Winds danced over the heath like young witches. The horses, whipped by the more intense cold, pulled hard against the bit, and made the coachman's arms ache. The doctor looked away for a moment at the vapours that began to clothe the afternoon in the hollows and depressions of the landscape, and at the sun, whose gathering change of aspect smote on his imagination as something akin to the change that falls over the faces of men towards that hour when the sun of their glory makes ready for its setting. Still keeping his glance on that sad red sun in its nest of radiating vapours, he said, in a withdrawn voice:

”We must hate nothing except the hatefulness of sin in ourselves and in others.”

Cuckoo listened as to the voice of some one on a throne, and tears that she could not fully understand rose in her eyes.

But now the doctor turned from the sun to the lady of the feathers, and there was a bright light in his quiet eyes.

”You and I must fight with all our forces,” he said. ”Have you ever thought about this thing will which Cresswell wors.h.i.+ps insanely? Have you ever felt it in you, Miss Bright?”

”I don't know as I have,” Cuckoo said, secretly wondering if it were that strange and fleeting power which had come to her of late, which had made her for a moment fearless of Valentine as she defied him in the loneliness of her room, which had stirred her even to a faith in herself when she spoke with the doctor under the stars upon her doorstep.

”I think you have. I think you will. It must be there, for Julian feels it in you. He--he calls it a flame.”

”Eh? A flame?”

”Yes. He sees it in your eyes, and it holds him near you.”

So the doctor spoke, partly out of his conviction, partly because he had definitely resolved to put away from him all the things that fought against his reason and that his imagination perhaps loved too much.

Such things, he thought, floated like clouds across the clearness of his vision, and drowned the light of his power to do good. So his fancies that had fastened on the mystery of the dead Marr and the living Valentine, connecting them together, and weaving a veil of magic about their strange connection, were banished. He would not hold more commerce with them, nor would he accept the fancies of others as realities. Thus, in his mind, Julian's legend of the flame in this girl's eyes, despite the doctor's own vision of flames, became merely a story of the truth of human will and an acknowledgment of its power.

”Is that why he looks at me so?” Cuckoo asked, in a manner unusually meditative. ”But then he, Valentine, did the same! Why, could that be what scared him that night--what he struck at?”

”He too may feel that you have a power for good, to fight against his power for evil. Yes, he does feel it. Make him feel it more. Rely on yourself. Trust that there's something great within you, something placed there for you to use. Never mind what your life has been. Never mind your own weakness. You are the home, the temple, of this power of will. Julian feels it, and it draws him to you, but it is as nothing yet compared with the power of Cresswell. You have to make it more powerful, so that you may win Julian back from this danger.”

”Eh? How?”

”Rest on it; trust in it; teach it to act. Show Julian more and more that you have it. Can't you think of a way of showing that you have this power?”

”Not I. No,” Cuckoo murmured.

The doctor lowered his voice still more. Quite at a venture he drew a bow, and with his first arrow smote the lady of the feathers to the heart.

”Has Julian ever asked you to do anything?” he said.

Suddenly Cuckoo's face was scarlet.

”Why? How d' you know?” she stammered.

”Anything for him that was not evil?” the doctor pursued, following out an abstract theory, not as Cuckoo fancied, dealing with known facts. ”I know nothing. I only ask you to try and remember, to search your mind.”

There was no need for the lady of the feathers to do that.

”Yes, he did once,” she said, looking still confused and furtive.