Part 88 (1/2)

Valentine hesitated.

”What have you thought of saying?” he asked.

”Oh, I don't know. First one thing, then another. Good-bye among the number. That's what you wish me to say, Val, isn't it?”

He spoke in a listless voice, monotonous in inflection and lifeless in timbre. The dominion of Valentine over him since the supper at the Savoy had increased, consolidating itself into an undoubted tyranny, which Julian accepted, carelessly, thoughtlessly, a prey to the internal degradation of his mind. Once he had only been n.o.bly susceptible, a fine power. Now he was drearily weak, an ungracious disability. But with his weakness came, as is usual, a certain la.s.situde which even resembled despair, an indifference peculiar to the slave, how opposed to the indifference peculiar to the autocrat. Valentine recognized in the voice the badge of serfdom, even more than in the question, and he smiled with a cold triumph. He had intended telling Julian now, once for all, to break with the lady of the feathers, of whom even yet he stood in vague fear. But the question, the voice of Julian, gave him pause, slid into his soul a new and bizarre desire, child of the strange intoxication of power which was beginning to grip him, and which the doctor had remarked.

If Julian broke with Cuckoo, repulsed her forever into the long street that was her pent and degraded world, would not the sharp salt of Valentine's triumph be taken from him? Would not the wheels of his Juggernaut car fail to do their office in his sight--there was the point!--upon a precious victim? The lady of the feathers thus deliberately abandoned by Julian would suffer perhaps almost to the limit of her capability of pain, but Valentine would have lost sight of her in the dark, and though he would have conquered that spectral opposition which she had whimsically offered to him--he laughed to himself now, thinking of his fear of it--he would not see that greatest vision, the flight of his enemy. These thoughts flashed through his mind, moving him to an answer that astonished Julian.

”Good-bye!” he said. ”Why should I wish that?”

”You said the other day at the Savoy that she hated you; that you and she must have a battle unless I chose between you.”

”I was laughing.”

The lifelessness left Julian's voice as he exclaimed:

”Valentine! But you were--”

”Sober, and you were not. Can you deny it?”

Julian was silent.

”I so little meant that nonsense,” Valentine continued, ”that I have conceived a plan. To-morrow is the last night of the old year. The doctor asked us to spend it with him. We refused. Providence directed that refusal, for now we are at liberty to celebrate the proper occasion for burying hatchets by burying our particular hatchet. The lady of the feathers, your friend, my enemy, shall see the new year in here, in this tentroom, where long ago we--you and I--with how ill success, sought to exchange our souls.”

Julian looked utterly astonished at this proposition.

”Cuckoo wouldn't come here,” he began.

”So you said once before. But she came then, and she will come now.”

”And then the doctor! If he gets to hear of it! We said we were dining out.”

Valentine's hard smile grew yet harder, and his eyes sparkled eagerly.

”I'll arrange that,” he said. ”The doctor shall come here too.”

It seemed indeed as if he meant that his triumph should culminate on this final night of the year, his year. He laughed Julian's astonishment at this vagary aside, sat down and wrote the two notes of invitation, and then went out with Julian, saying:

”Julian, come out with me. You remember what I said about the greedy man?

Come; Fate shall present you with another course, one more step towards your _cafe noir_ and--happiness. _Voila!_”

Valentine was right in his supposition that both the lady of the feathers and the doctor would accept his invitation, but he did not understand the precise motive which prompted their acceptance. Nor did he much care to understand it. Cuckoo, Doctor Levillier! After all, what were they to him now? Spectators of his triumph. Interesting, therefore, to a certain extent, as an unpaying audience may be interesting to an actor.

Interesting, inasmuch as they could contribute to swell the bladder of his vanity, and follow in procession behind his chariot wheels. But he no longer cared to divine the shades of their emotions, or to busy himself in fathoming their exact mental att.i.tudes in relation to himself. So he thought, touched perhaps with a certain delirium, though not with the delirium of insanity attributed to him by Doctor Levillier.

The doctor had intended celebrating the last night of the year in Harley Street with Cuckoo and the two young men. The refusal of the latter put an end to the opening of his plan of campaign in this strange battle, and he was greatly astonished when he received Valentine's invitation.

Still, he had no hesitation in accepting it.

”So,” he said to himself, as he read the note, ”we join issue within the very wall of the enemy. Poor, deluded, twisted Valentine! that I should have to call him, to think of him as an enemy! We begin the fight within the shadow of our opponent's tent.”