Cuckoo was pathetically incomprehensible to most people, because
she was pathetically twisted in mind. But her heart grew straight and
surely towards heaven.
The sale of Jessie had brought in enough money to keep Mrs. Brigg quiet
for a little while, but not enough to satisfy her claim against Cuckoo,
or to give Cuckoo food. It went as an instalment towards the rent. Now
the landlady began to clamour again, and Cuckoo was literally starving.
One night her despair reached a point of cruelty which drove her out into
the street, not for the old reason, not at all for that. Cuckoo was
sheathed in armour from head to foot against sin and its wages. Her
obstinacy seemed to her the only thing that really lived in her miserable
body, her miserable soul. It was surely obstinacy which pulsed in her
heart, which shone in her hollow eyes, tingled in her tired limbs,
flushed her thin cheeks with blood, gave her mind a thought, her will the
impetus to mark time in this desolation. Cuckoo was like a hollow shell
containing the everlasting murmur, "I'll starve--for him." Whether her
starvation was useless or not did not concern her at this moment. She no
longer even saw those ghosts. She seemed blind and deaf and dull in a
fashion, yet driven by an active despair.
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