Victoria was no longer a dreamer; she was a woman of action. The natural sequence of her thoughts brought her up at once against the means to the triumphant end. Three hundred and fifty pounds, say six hundred if she realised everything, would not yield enough to feed a superannuated governess. She would need quite eight or ten thousand pounds before she could call herself free and live her dreams.
'I'll earn it,' she said aloud, 'yes, sure enough.'
A little Aberdeen terrier came bounding up to her, licked her hand and ran away after his master. A friendly omen. Six hundred pounds was a large sum in a way. She could aspire to a partnership in some business now. A vision arose before her; Victoria Ferris, milliner. The vision grew; Victoria Ferris and Co., Limited, wholesalers; then Ferris' Stores, for clothes and boots and cheese and phonographs, with a branch of Cook's agency, a Keith Prowse ticket office; Ferris' Stores as an octopus, with its body in Knightsbridge and a tentacle hovering over every draper from Richmond to Highgate.
Yes, that was all very well, but what if Victoria Ferris failed? 'No good,' she thought, 'I can't afford to take risks.' Of course the idea of seeking employment was absurd. No more ten hours a day for eight bob a week for her. Besides, no continuous references and a game leg . . . The situations crowded into and out of Victoria's brain like dissolving views. She could see herself in the little house, with another man, with other men, young men, old men; and every one of them was rocked in the lap of Delilah, who laughingly shore off their golden locks.
'By Jove,' she said aloud, bringing her gloved fist down on her knee, 'I'll do it.'
Of course the old life could not begin again just now. She did not know a man in London who was worth capturing. She must go down into the market, stand against the wall as a courtesan of Alexandria and nail a wreath of roses against the highest bid. The vision she saw was now no longer the octopus. She saw a street with its pavements wet and slithering, flares, barrows laden with greens; she could smell frying fish, rotting vegetables, burning naptha; a hand opened the door of a bar and, in the glare, she could see two women with vivid hair, tired eyes, smiling mouths, each one patiently waiting before alittle table and an empty glass. Then she saw once more the courtesan of Alexandria, dim in the night, not lit up by the sun of sweet Egypt, but clad in mercerised cotton and rabbit's fur, standing, watching like a shadow against a shop door in Regent Street.
No, she had not come to that. She belonged to the upper stratum of the profession, and, knowing it, could not sink. Consciousness was the thing. She was not going into this fight soft-handed or softhearted. She knew. There was high adventure in store for her yet. If she must fish it should be for trout not chub. Like a wise woman, she would not love lightly, but where money is. There should be no waiting, no hesitating. That very night she would sup at the Hotel Vesuvius . . . all in black . . . like an ivory Madonna set in ebony . . . with a tea rose in her hair as a foil to her shoulders . . . and sweeping jade earrings which would swim like butterflies in the heavy hair. Ah, it would be high adventure when Demetrious knelt at the feet of Aphrodite with jewels in his sunburnt palm, when Croesus bargained away for a smile a half of his Lydian wealth.
She got up, a glow in her veins as if the lust of battle was upon her. Quickly she walked out of the park to conquer the town. A few yards beyond the gates newspaper placards shouted the sensation of the day; placards pink, brown, green, all telling the tale of murder, advertising for a penny the transitory joy of the fact. Victoria smiled and walked on. She let herself into the house. It was on the stroke of one. She sat down at the table, pressing the bell down with her foot.
'Hurry up, Mary,' she said, 'I'm as hungry as a hunter.'
A voice floated through the window like an echo: 'Irish murder; latest details.'
'Shut the window, Mary,' she said sharply.
TheHotel Vesuvius is a singular place. It stands on the north side of Piccadilly, and for the general its stuccoed front and severe sash windows breathe an air of early Victorian respectability. Probably it was once a ducal mansion, for it has all the necessary ugliness, solidity and size; now it is the most remarkable instance of what can be done by a proprietor who remembers that an address in Piccadilly exempts him from the rules which govern Bloomsbury. One enters it through a small hall all alight with white and gold paint. Right and left are the saloon bar and the buffet; this enables the customer to select either without altering the character of his accommodation, while assuming superiority for a judicious choice. A broad straight staircase leads up to the big supper room on the first floor. Above are a score of private dining-rooms.
Victoria jumped out of the cab and walked up the steps, handing the liveried commissionaire two shillings to pay the cabman. This was an inspiration calculated to set her down at once with the staff as one who knew the ropes. In the white and gold hall she halted for a moment, puzzled and rather nervous. She had never set foot in the Vesuvius; she had never heard it mentioned without a smile or a wink. Now, a little flushed and her heart beating, she realised that she did not know her way about.
Victoria need have had no fears. Before she had time to take in the scene, a tall man with a perfectlygroomed head and a well fitting evening dress bowed low before her.
'Madame wishes no doubt to deposit her wrap,' he said in gentle tones. His teeth flashed white for a moment.
'Yes,' said Victoria, . . . 'Yes, where is the cloak room?'
'This way, madame. If madame will permit me. . . .' He pointed towards the end of the hall and preceded her steps. An elderly woman behind the counter received Victoria's wrap and handed her a brass token without looking at her. While she pulled up her gloves she looked round curiously. The cloak room was small; behind the counter the walls were covered by a mahogany rack with some hundred pigeon-holes. The fiercer light of an unshaded chandelier beat down upon the centre of the room. Victoria was conscious of an extraordinary atmosphere, a blend of many scents, tobacco smoke, leather; most of the pigeon-holes were bursting with coloured wraps, many of them vivid blue or red; here and there long veils, soiled white gloves hung out of them; a purple ostrich feather hung from an immense black hat over a white and silver Cingalese shawl. Victoria turned sharply. The man was inspecting her coolly with an air of intentness that showed approval.
'Where does madame wish to go?' he asked as they entered the hall. 'In the buffet perhaps?'
He opened the door. Victoria saw for a second a long counter laden with bottles, at which stood a group of men, some in evening dress, some in tweed suits; she saw a few women among them, all with smiles upon their faces. Behind the counter she had time to see the barmaid, a beautiful girl with dark eyes and vivid yellow hair.
'No, not there,' she said quickly. It reminded her of the terrible little bar of which Farwell had givenher a glimpse. 'You are the manager, I believe . . . I want to go up into the supper room.'
'Certainly, madame; will madame come this way?'
The manager preceded her up to the first floor. On the landing, two men in tweeds suddenly stopped talking as she passed. A porter flung the glazed door open. A short man in evening dress looked at her, then at the manager. After a second's hesitation the two men in tweeds followed her in.
The manager put his hands in his pockets, walked up to the other man and nodded towards the door.
'Pas mal, hein?'
'Epatante,' said the short man. 'Du chic. Et une peau!'
The manager smiled and turned to go downstairs. 'Surveillez moi ça Anatole,' he said.
Victoria, meanwhile, had stopped for a moment on the threshold, a little dazed by the scene. Though it was only half-past ten, the eighty tables of the Vesuvius were almost every one occupied; the crowd looked at first like a patchwork quilt. The room was all white and gold like the hall; a soft radiance fell from the lights hidden in the cornice; two heavy chandeliers with faintly pink electric bulbs and a few pink shaded lights on the table diffused a roseate glow over the scene. Victoria felt like an intruder, and her discomfiture was heightened by the gripping hot perfume. But already a waiter was by her side; she let him be her pilot. In a few seconds she found herself sitting at a small table alone, near the middle of the room. The waiter reappeared almost at once carrying on a tray a liqueur glass containing some colourless fluid. She had ordered nothing, but his adroitness relieved her. Clearly the expert had divined her inexperience and had resolved to smooth her way.
She lifted the glass to her lips and sipped at it. It was good stuff, rather strong. The burn on her palate seemed to brace her; she looked round the room. It was a peculiar scene; for the Vesuvius is a luxurious place, and a provincial might well be excused for thinking it was the Carlton or the Savoy; indeed there was something more outwardly opulent about it. It suggested a place where men not only spent what they had but spent more. But for a few men in frock-coats and tweeds it would have been almost undistinguishable from the recognised resorts of fashion. Victoria took stock of her surroundings; of the shining plate and glass, the heavy red carpet, the red and gold curtains, drawn but fluttering at the open windows. The guests, however, interested her more. At half the tables sat a woman and a man, at others a woman alone before a little glass. What struck her above all was the beauty of the women, the wealth they carried on their bodies. Hardly one of them seemed over thirty; most of them had golden or vivid red hair, though a few tables off Victoria could see a tall woman of colour with black hair stiffened by wax and pierced with massive ivory combs. They mostly wore low-necked dresses, many of them white or faintly tinted with blue or pink. She could see a dark Italian-looking girl in scarlet from whose ears long coral earrings drooped to her slim cream-coloured shoulders. There was an enormously stout woman with puffy pink cheeks, strapped slightly into a white silk costume, looking like a rose at the height of its bloom. There were others too! short dark women with tight hair; minxish French faces and little shrewd dark eyes; florid Dutch and Belgian women with massive busts and splendid shoulders, dazzlingly white; English girls too, most of them slim with long arms and rosy elbows and faintly outlined collar bones. Many of these had the aristocratic nonchalance of 'art' photographs.Opposite Victoria, under the other chandelier, a splendid creature, white as a lily, with flashing green eyes, copper coloured hair, had thrown herself back in her armchair and was laughing at a man's joke. Her head was bent back, and as she laughed her splendid bust rose and fell and her throat filled out. An elderly man with a close clipped grey moustache, immaculate in his well-cut dress clothes, leaned towards her with a smile on his brown face.
Victoria turned her eyes away from the man, (a soldier, of course), and looked at the others. They, too, were a mixed collection. There were a good many youths, all clean shaven and mostly well-groomed; these talked loudly to their partners and seemed to fill the latter with merriment; now and then they stared at other women with the boldness of the shy. There were elderly men too; a few in frock coats in spite of the heat, some very stout and red, some bald and others half concealing their scalps under cunning hair arrangements. The elderly men sat mostly with two women, some with three, and lay back smiling like courted pachas. By far the greater number of the guests, however, were anything between thirty and forty; and seemed to cover every type from the smart young captain with the tanned face, bold blue eyes and a bristly moustache, to ponderous men in tweeds or blue reefer jackets who looked about them with a mixture of nervousness and bovine stolidity.
From every corner came a steady stream of loud talk; continually little shrieks of laughter pierced the din and then were smothered by the rattling of the plates. The waiters flitted ghostly through the room with incredible speed, balancing high their silver trays. Then Victoria became conscious that most of the women round her were looking at her; for a moment she felt her personality shrivel up undertheir gaze. They were analysing her, speculating as to the potentialities of a new rival, stripping off her clothes too and her jewels. It was horrible, because their look was more incisive than the merely brutal glance by which a man takes stock of a woman's charms.
She pulled herself together however, and forced herself to return the stares. 'After all,' she thought, 'this is the baptism of fire.' She felt strengthened, too, as she observed her rivals more closely. Beautiful as most of them seemed at first sight, many of them showed signs of wear. With joyful cruelty Victoria noted here and there faint wrinkles near their eyes, relaxed mouths, cheekbones on which rosacia had already set its mark. She could not see more than half a dozen whose beauty equalled hers; she threw her head up and drew back her shoulders. In the full light of the chandelier she looked down at the firm white shapeliness of her arms.
'Well, how goes it?'
Victoria started and looked up from her contemplation. A man had sat down at her table. He seemed about thirty, fairish, with a rather ragged moustache. He wore a black morning coat and a grey tie. His hands and wrists were well kept and emerged from pale blue cuffs. There was a not unkindly smile upon his face. His tip tilted nose gave him a cheerful, rather impertinent expression.
'Oh, I'm all right,' said Victoria vaguely. Then with an affectation of ease. 'Hot, isn't it?'
'Ra-ther,' said the man. 'Had your supper?'
'No,' said Victoria, 'I don't want any.'
'Now, come, really that's too bad of you. Thought we were going to have a nice little family party and you're off your feed.'
'I'm sorry,' said Victoria smiling. 'I had dinner only two hours ago.' This man was not very attractive; there was something forced in his ease.
'Well, have a drink with me,' he said.
'What's yours?' asked Victoria. That was an inspiration. The plunge braced her like a cold bath. The man laughed.
'Pop, of course. Unless you prefer a Pernot. You know "absinthe makes the . . ."' He stopped and laughed again. Victoria did likewise without understanding him. She saw that the other women laughed when men did.
They filled their glasses. Victoria liked champagne. She watched the little bubbles rise, and drank the glass down. It was soft and warm. How strong she felt suddenly. The conversation did not flag. The man was leaning towards her across the table, talking quickly. He punctuated every joke with a high laugh.
'Oh, I say, give us a chance,' floated from the next table. Victoria looked. It was one of the English girls. She was propped up on one elbow on the table; her legs were crossed showing a long slim limb and slender ankle in a white open work stocking. A man in evening dress with a foreign looking dark face was caressing her bare arm.
'Penny for your thoughts,' said Victoria's man.
'Wasn't thinking,' she said. 'I was looking.'
'Looking? are you new here?'
'Yes, it's the first time I've come.'
'By Jove! Itmustbe an eye-opener.' He laughed.
'It is rather. It doesn't seem half bad.'
'You're right there. I'm an old stager.' A slightly complacent expression came over his face. He filled up the glasses. 'You don't spoil the collection, you know,' he added. 'You're a bit of all right.' He looked at her approvingly.
'Am I?' She looked at him demurely. Then, plunging once more, 'I hope you'll still think so by and by.' The man's eyes dwelled for a moment on her face and neck, his breath became audiblesuddenly. She felt his foot softly stroke hers. He drew his napkin across his lips.
'Well,' he said with an assumption of ease, 'shall we go?'
'I don't mind,' said Victoria getting up.
It was with a beating heart that Victoria climbed into the cab. As soon as he got in the man put his arm round her waist and drew her to him. She resisted gently but gave way as his arm grew more insistent.
'Coy little puss.' His face was very near her upturned eyes. She felt it come nearer. Then, suddenly, he kissed her on the lips. She wanted to struggle; she was a little frightened. The lights of Piccadilly filled her with shame. They spoke very little. The man held her close to him. As the cab rattled through Portland Place, he seized her once more. She fought down the repulsion with which his breath inspired: it was scented with strong cigars and champagne. Victoriously she coiled one arm round his neck and kissed him on the mouth. In her disgust there was a blend of triumph; not even her own feelings could resist her will.
As she waited on the doorstep while he paid the cabman a great fear came upon her. She did not know this man. Who was he? Perhaps a thief. She suddenly remembered that women of her kind were sometimes murdered for the sake of their jewellery. As the man turned to come up the steps she pulled herself together. 'After all,' she thought, 'it's only professional risk.'
They stood for a moment in the hall of the silent house. She felt awkward. The man looked at her and mistook her hesitation.
'It's all right,' he faltered. He looked about him, then, quickly whipping out a sovereign purse, he drew out two sovereigns with a click and laid them on the hall table.
'You see,' he said '. . . a girl like you. . . . three more to-morrow morning. . . . I'm square you know.'
Victoria smiled and, after a second's hesitation, picked up the money.
'So'm I,' she said. Then she switched on the light and pointed upstairs.
Victoria'snew career did not develop on unkindly lines. Every night she went to the Vesuvius, where she soon had her appointed place full under one of the big chandeliers. She secured this spot without difficulty, for most of her rivals were too wise to affront the glare; as soon as she realised this she rather revelled in her sense of power, for she now lived in a world where the only form of power was beauty. She felt sure of her beauty now she had compared it minutely with the charms of the preferred women. She was finer, she had more breed. Almost every one of those women showed a trace of coarseness: a square jaw, not moulded in big bone like hers but swathed in heavy flesh; a thick ankle or wrist; spatulate fingertips; red ears. Her pride was in the courage with which she welcomed the flow of the light on her neck and shoulders; round her chandelier the tables formed practically into circles, the nearest being occupied by the very young and venturesome, a few by the oldest who desperately clung to their illusion of immortal youth; then came the undecided, those who are between ages, who wear thick veils and sit with their backs to the light; the outer fringe was made up of those who remembered. Their smiles were hard and fixed.
She was fortunate enough too. She never had to sit long in front of the little glass which she discovered to be kummel; the waiter always brought it unasked. Sometimes they would chat for a moment,for Victoria was assimilating the lazy familiarity of her surroundings. He talked about the weather, the latest tips for Goodwood, the misfortune of Camille de Valenciennes who had gone off to Carlsbad with a barber who said he was a Russian prince and had left her there stranded.
Her experiences piled up, and, after a few weeks she found she had exhausted most of the types who frequented the Vesuvius. Most of them were of the gawky kind, being very young men out for the night and desperately anxious to get off on the quiet by three o'clock in the morning; of the gawky kind too were the Manchester merchants paying a brief visit to town on business and who wanted a peep into the inferno; these were easily dealt with and, if properly primed with champagne, exceedingly generous. Now and then Victoria was confronted with a racier type which tended to become rather brutal. It was recruited largely from obviously married men whose desires, dammed and sterilised by monotonous relations, seemed suddenly to burst their bonds.
In a few weeks her resources developed exceedingly. She learned the scientific look that awakes a man's interest: a droop of the eyelid followed by a slow raising of it, a dilation of the pupil, then again a demure droop and the suspicion of a smile. She learned to prime herself from the papers with the proper conversation; racing, the latest divorce news, ragging scandals, marriages of the peerage into the chorus. She learned to laugh at chestnuts and to memorise such stories as sounded fresh; a few judicious matinées put her up to date as to the latest musical comedies. On the whole it was an easy life enough. Six hours in the twenty-four seemed sufficient to afford her a good livelihood, and she did not doubt that by degrees she would make herself a connection which might be turned to greater advantage;as it was she had two faithful admirers whom she could count on once a week.
The life itself often struck her as horrible, foul; still she was getting inured to the inane and could listen to it with a tolerant smile; sometimes she looked dispassionately into men's fevered eyes with a little wonder and an immense satisfaction in her power and the value of her beauty. Sometimes a thrill of hatred went through her and she loathed those whose toy she was; then she felt tempted to drink, to drugs, to anything that would deaden the nausea; but she would rally: the first night, when she had drunk deep of champagne after the kummel, had given her a racking headache and suggested that beauty does not thrive on mixed drinks.
Another painful moment had been the third day after her new departure. It seemed to force realisation upon her. Tacitly the early cup of tea had been stopped. Mary now never came to the door, but breakfast was laid for two in the dining-room at half past nine; the hot course stood on a chafing dish over a tiny flame; the teapot was stocked and a kettle boiled on its own stand. Neither of the servants ever appeared. On the third day, however, as Victoria lay in her boudoir, reading, preparatory to ringing the cook to give her orders for the day, there was a knock at the door.
'Come in,' said Victoria a little nervously. She was still in the mood of feeling awkward before her servants.
Mary came in. For a moment she tugged at her belt. There was a slight flush on her sallow face.
'Well Mary?' asked Victoria, still nervous.
'If you please, mum, may I speak to you? I've been talking to cook, mum, and—'
'And?'
'Oh, mum, I hope you won't think it's becausewe're giving ourselves airs but it isn't the same as it was here before, mum—'
'Well?'
'Well, mum, we think we'd rather go mum. There's my young man, mum, and—and—'
'And he doesn't like your being associated with a woman of my kind? Very right and proper.'
'Oh, mum, I don't mean that. You've always been kind to me. Cook too, she says she feels it very much, mum. When the major was alive, mum, it was different. It didn't seem to matter then, mum, but now—'
Mary stopped. For a moment the eyes behind the glasses looked as if they were going to cry.
'Don't trouble to explain, Mary,' said her mistress with some asperity. 'I understand. You and cook can't afford to jeopardise your characters. From the dizzy heights of trained domesticity, experts in your own line, you are justified in looking down upon an unskilled labourer. I have no doubt that you have considered the social problem in all its aspects, that you fully realise the possibilities of a woman wage-earner and her future. By all means go where your moral sense calls you: I shall give you an excellent character and demand none in exchange. There! I don't want to hurt your feelings, Mary, I spoke hastily,' she added as the maid's features contracted, 'you only do this to please your young man; that is woman's profession, and I of all people must approve of what you do. If you don't mind, both of you, you will leave on Saturday. You shall have your full month and a month's board allowance. Now send up cook, I want to order lunch.'
She could almost have wept as she lay with her face in the cushion. Her servants had delivered an ultimatum from womankind, and lack of supplies compelled her to pick up the guage of battle. Mary and cook were links between her and all those womenwho shelter behind one man only, and from that vantage ground hurl stones at their sisters beyond the gates. The significance of it was not that their services were lost to her, but that she must now be content to associate with another class. Soon, however, her will was again supreme. 'After all,' she thought, 'I have done with Society. I'm a pirate; Society 'll be keen enough when I've won.'
Within three days she had readjusted her household. She had decided to make matters easy by engaging two German girls. Laura, the cook, said at once that it was all one to her who came to the house and who didn't, so long as they left her alone in the kitchen, and provided she might bring her large tabby cat. Augusta the maid, a long lanky girl with strong peasant hands and carroty hair, declared herself willing to oblige theherrschaftin any way; she thereupon demanded an increase on the wages scheduled for her at the registry office. She also confided to her new mistress that she had akerlin Germany, and that she would do anything to earn her dowry.
Thus the establishment settled down again. Laura cooked excellently. Augusta never flinched when bringing in the tea tray. Her big blue Saxon eyes seemed to allow everything to pass through them leaving her mind unsoiled, so armoured was her heart by the thought of that dowry. As for Snoo and Poo: they chased the tabby cat all over the house most of the day, which very soon improved their figures.
Thus the even tenour of Victoria's life continued. She was quite a popular favourite. As soon as she sat down under the chandelier half-a-dozen men were looking at her. Sometimes men followed her into the Vesuvius; but these she seldom encouraged, for her instinct told her that so beautiful a woman as she was should set a high price on herself, and high prices were not to be found in Piccadilly. Among herfaithful was a bachelor of forty, whom she only knew as Charlie. This, by the way, was a characteristic of her acquaintances. She never discovered their names; some in fact were so guarded that they had apparently discarded their watches before coming out, so as to conceal even their initials. None ever showed a pocketbook. Charlie was dark and burned by the sun of the tropics; there was something bluff and good-natured about him, great strength too. He had sharp grey eyes and a dark moustache. He spoke extraordinarily fast, talked loosely of places he had been to: China, Mozambique, South America. Victoria rather liked him; he was totally dull, inclined to be coarse; but as he invariably drank far too much before and when he came to the Vesuvius, he made no demands on her patience, slept like a log and went early, leaving handsome recognition behind him.
There was Jim too, a precise top-hatted city clerk who had forced himself on her one Saturday afternoon as she crossed Piccadilly Circus. He seemed such a pattern of rectitude, was so perfectly trim and brushed that she allowed herself to be inveigled into a cab and driven to a small flat in Bayswater. He was too prudent to visit anybody else's rooms, he said; he had his flat on a weekly tenancy. Jim kept rather a hold on her. He was neither rich nor generous; in fact Victoria's social sense often stabbed her for what she considered undercutting, but Jim used to hover about the Vesuvius five minutes before closing time, and once or twice when Victoria had had no luck he succeeded like the vulture on the stricken field.
Most of the others were dream figures; she lost count of them. After a month she could not remember a face. She even forgot a big fellow whom she had called Black Beauty, who came down from somewhere in Devonshire for a monthly bust; he wasso much offended that she had the mortification of seeing him captured by one of the outer circle who sit beyond the lights.
In the middle of August the streets she called London were deserted. Steamy air, dust laden, floated over the pavements. The Vesuvius was half empty, and she had to cut down her standards. Just as she was contemplating moving to Folkestone for a month, however, she received a letter from solicitors in the Strand, Bastable, Bastable & Sons, informing her that 're Major Cairns deceased,' they were realising the estate on behalf of the administrators, and that they would be obliged if she would say when it would be convenient for her to convey the furniture of Elm Tree Place into their hands. This perturbed Victoria seriously. The furniture had a value, and besides it was the plant of a flourishing business.
'Pity he died suddenly,' she thought, 'he'd have done something for me. He was a good sort, poor old Tom.'
She dressed herself as becomingly and quietly as she could, and, after looking up the law of intestacy in Whitaker, concluded that Marmaduke Cairns's old sisters must be the heirs. Then she sallied forth to beard the solicitor in his den. The den was a magnificent suite of offices just off the Strand. She was ushered into a waiting-room partitioned off from the general office by glass. It was all very frowsy and hot. There was nothing to read except theTimesand she was uncomfortably conscious of three clerks and an office boy who frequently turned round and looked through the partition. At last she was ushered in. The solicitor was a dry-looking man of forty or so; his parchment face, deeply wrinkled right and left, his keen blue eyes and high forehead impressed her as dangerous. He motioned her to an armchair on the other side of his desk.
'Well, Mrs Ferris,' he said, 'to what do I owe the honour of this visit?' He sat back in his armchair and bit his penholder. A smile elongated his thin lips. This was his undoing, for he looked less formidable and Victoria decided on a line of action. She had come disturbed, now she was on her mettle.
'Mr Bastable,' she said, plunging at once into the subject, 'you ask me to surrender my furniture. I'm not going to.'
'Oh?' The solicitor raised his eyebrows. 'But, my dear madame, surely you must see . . .'
'I do. But I'm not going to.'
'Well,' he said, 'I hardly see . . . My duty will compel me to take steps . . .'
'Of course,' said Victoria smiling, 'but if you refuse to let me alone I shall go out of this office, have the furniture moved to-day and put up at auction to-morrow.'
A smile came over the solicitor's face. By Jove, she was a fine woman, and she had some spirit.
'Besides,' she added, 'all this would cause me a great deal of annoyance. Major Cairns's affairs are still very interesting to the public. I shall be compelled, if you make me sell, to write a serial, sayMy Life with an Irish Martyrfor a Sunday paper.'
Mr Bastable laughed frankly.
'You want to be nasty, I see. But you know, we can stop your sale by an application to a judge in chambers this afternoon. And as for your serial, well, Major Cairns is dead, he won't mind.'
'No, but his aunts will. Their name is Cairns. As regards the sale, perhaps you and the other lawyers can stop it. Very well, either you promise or I go home and . . . perhaps there'll be a fire to-night and perhaps there won't. I'm fully insured.'
'By Jove!' Bastable looked at her critically. Cairns had been a lucky man. 'Well, Mrs Ferris,' he added, 'we're not used to troublesome customers like you.I don't suppose the furniture is valuable, is it?'
'Oh, a couple of hundred,' said Victoria dishonestly.
'M'm. Do you absolutely want me to pledge myself?'
'Absolutely.'
'Well, Mrs Ferris, I can honestly promise you that you won't hear anything more about it. I . . . I don't think it would pay us.'
Victoria laughed. A great joy of triumph was upon her. She liked Bastable rather, now she had brought him to heel.
'All right,' she said, 'it's a bargain.' Then she saw that his mouth was smiling still and his eyes fixed on her face.
'There's no quarrel between us, is there?'
'No, of course not. All in the way of business, you know.'
He bent across the table; she heard him breathe in her perfume.
'Then,' she said slowly, getting up and pulling on her gloves, 'I'm not doing anything to-night. You know my address. Seven o'clock. You may take me out to dinner.'
Withina few days of her victory over Mr Bastable, Victoria found herself in an introspective mood. The solicitor was the origin of it, though unimportant in himself as the grain of sand which falls into a machine, and for a fraction of a second causes a wheel to rasp before the grain is crunched up. She reflected, as she looked out over her garden, that she was getting very hard. She had brought this man to his knees by threats; she had vulgarly bullied him by holding exposure over his head; she had behaved like a tragedy queen. Finally, with sardonic intention, she had turned the contest to good account by entangling him while he was still under the influence of her personality.
All this was not what disturbed her; for after all she had only lied to Bastable, bullied him, threatened him, bluffed as to her intentions: she had been perfectly businesslike. Thoughtfully she opened the little door at the end of the hall and stepped out on the outer landing where the garden steps ended. Snoo and Poo, asleep in a heap in the August blaze, raised heavy eyelids, and, yawning and stretching, followed her down the steps.
This was a joyful little garden. The greater part of it was a lawn, close cut, but disfigured in many places by Snoo and Poo's digging. Flower beds ran along both sides and the top of the lawn, while the bottom was occupied by the pergola, now covered with massive red blooms; an acacia tree, and anelder tree, both leafy but refusing to flower, shaded the bottom of the garden, which was effectively cut off by a hedge of golden privet. It was a tidy garden, but it showed no traces of originality. Victoria had ordered it to be potted with geraniums, carnations, pinks, marguerites; and was quite content to observe that somebody had put in sweet peas, clematis and larkspur. Hers was not the temperament which expresses itself in a garden; there was no sense of peace in her idea of the beautiful. If she liked the garden to look pretty at all, it was doubtless owing to her heredity.
Victoria picked up a couple of stones and threw them towards the end of the garden. Snoo and Poo rushed into the privet, snuffling excitedly, while their mistress drew down a heavy rose-laden branch from the pergola and breathed the blossoms. Yes, she was hard, and it was beginning to make her nervous. In the early days she had sedulously cultivated the spirit which was making a new woman out of the quiet, refined, rather shy girl she had been. There had been a time when she would have shuddered at the idea of a quarrel with a cabman about an overcharge; now, if it were possible, she felt coldly certain that she would cheat him of his rightful fare. This process she likened to the tempering of steel, and called a development of the mental muscles. She rather revelled in this development in the earlier days, because it gave her a sense of power; she benefited by it too, for she found that by cultivating this hardness she could extort more money by stooping to wheedle, by accepting snubs, by flattery and lies too. The consciousness of this power redeemed the exercise of it; she often felt herself lifted above this atmosphere of deceit by looking coldly at the deed she was about to do, recognising its nature and doing it with her eyes open.
A realization of another kind, however, was uponVictoria that rich August day. In a sense she was doing well. Her capital had not been touched; in fact it had probably increased, and this in spite of town being empty. She had not yet found the man who would make her fortune; but she had no doubt that he would appear if she continued on her even road, selecting without passion, judging values and possibilities. For the moment she brushed aside the question of success; it was assured. But, after success, what then? Say she had four or five hundred a year at thirty and retired into the country or went to America. What use would she be to herself or to anybody if she had learned exclusively to bide her time and to strike for her own advantage? Life was a contest for the poor and for the rich alike; but the first had to fight to win and to use any means, fair or foul, while the latter could accept knightly rules, be magnanimous when victorious, graceful when defeated.
'Yes,' said Victoria, 'I must keep myself in trim. It's all very well to win and I've got to be as hard as nails to men, but . . .'
She stopped abruptly. The problem had solved itself. 'Hard as nails to men,' did not include women, for 'men' seldom means mankind when the talk is of rights. She did not know what her mission might be. Perhaps, after she had succeeded, she would travel all over Europe, perhaps settle on the English downs where the west winds blow, perhaps even be the pioneer of a great sex revolt; but whatever she did, if her triumph was not to be sterile, she would need sympathy, the capacity to love. Thus she amended her articles of war: 'Woman shall be spared, and I shall remember that, as a member of a sex fighting another sex, I must understand and love my sister warrior.'
It was in pursuance of her new policy that, on her way to the Vesuvius, Victoria dawdled for a momentat the entrance of Swallow Street, under its portico. A few yards beyond her stood a woman whom she knew by sight as having established practically a proprietary right to her beat. She was a dark girl, good-looking enough, well set up in her close fitting white linen blouse, drawn tight to set off her swelling bust. In the dim light Victoria could see that her face was rather worn, and that the ravages of time had been clumsily repaired. The girl looked at her curiously at first; then angrily, evidently disliking the appearance of what might be a dangerous rival in her own preserves. Victoria walked up and down on the pavement. The girl watched her every footstep. Once she made as if to speak to her. It was ghostly, for passers-by in Regent Street came to and fro beyond the portico like arabesques. A passing policeman gave the girl a meaning look. She tossed her head and walked away down Regent Street, while Victoria nervously continued down Swallow Street to Piccadilly.
These two women were to meet, however. About a week later, Victoria, happening to pass by at the same hour, saw the girl and stopped under the arch. In another second the girl was by her side.
'What are you following me about for?' she snarled. 'If you're a grote it's no go. You won't teach the copper anything he doesn't know.'
'Oh, I'm not following you,' said Victoria. 'Only I saw you about and thought I'd like to talk to you.'
The girl shot a dark glance at her.
'What's your game?' she asked. 'You're not one of those blasted sisters. Too toffish. Seen you come out of the Vez', besides.'
'I'm in the profession,' said Victoria coolly. 'But that doesn't mean I've got to be against the others.'
'Doesn't it!' The girl's eyes glowed. 'You don't know your job. Of course you've got to be againstthe others. We were born like that. Or got like that. What's it matter?'
'Matter? oh, a lot,' said Victoria. 'We want friends, all of us.'
'Friends. Oh, Lord! The likes of you and me don't have friends. Women, they won't know us . . . too good. Except our sort. We can't talk; we got nothing to talk of, except money and the boys. And the boys, what's the good of them? There's the sort you pick up and all you've got to do's to get what you can out of them. Haven't fallen in love with one, have you?' The girl's voice broke a little, then she went on. 'Then, there's the other sort, like my Hugo, p'raps you've heard of him?'
'No,' she said, 'I haven't. What is he like?'
'Bless you, he's a beauty.' The girl smiled; her face was full of pride.
'Does he treat you well?'
'So so. Sometimes.' The shadow had returned. 'Not like my first. Oh, it's hard you know, beginning. He left me with a baby after three months. I was in service in Pembridge Gardens—such a swell house! I had to keep baby. It died then, jolly good thing too! Couldn't go back to service. Everybody knew.'
The girl burst into tears and Victoria putting an arm round her drew her against her breast.
'Everybody knew, everybody knew!' wailed the girl.
Victoria had the vision of a thousand spectral eyes, all full of knowledge, gazing at the housemaid caught by them sinning. The girl rested her head against Victoria's shoulder for a moment, holding one of her hands. Suddenly she raised her head again and cleared her throat.
'There,' she said, 'let me go. Hugo's waiting for me at the Carcassonne. Never mind me. We've all got to live, he-he!'
She turned into Regent Street and another 'he-he' floated back. Victoria felt a heavy weight at her heart; poor girl, weak, the sport of one man, deceived, then a pirate made to disgorge her gains by another man; handsome, subtle, playing upon her affections and her fears. What did it matter? Was she not in the same position, but freer because conscious; poor slave soul. But the time had come for Victoria to make for the Vesuvius. 'It must be getting late,' she thought, putting up her hand to her little gold watch-brooch.
It was gone. She had it on when she left, but it could not have dropped out, for the lace showed two long rips; it had just been torn out. Victoria stood frozen for a moment. So this was the result of a first attempt at love. She recovered, however. She was not going to generalise from one woman. 'Besides,' she thought bitterly, 'the girl's theories are the same as mine. She merely has no reservations or hesitations. The bolder pirate, she is perhaps the better brain.'
Then she walked down Swallow Street into Piccadilly, and at once a young man in loud checks was at her side. She looked up into his face, her smile full of covert promise as they went into the Vesuvius together. Victoria was now at home in the market place, and could exchange a quip with the frequenters. Languidly she dropped her cloak into the hands of the porter and preceded the young man into the supper-room. As they sat at the little table before the liqueur, her eyes saw the garish room through a film. How deadening it all was, and how lethal the draughts sold here. An immense weariness was upon her, an immense disgust, as she smiled full-toothed on the young man in checks. He was a cheerful rattle, suggested the man who has got beyond the retail trade without reaching the professions, a house agent's clerk perhaps.
'Oh, yes, I'm a merry devil, ha! ha!' He winkeda pleasant grey eye. Victoria noticed that his clothes were too new, his boots too new, his manners too a recent acquisition.
'Don't worry. That's how you keep young, ha! ha! Besides, don't have much time to mope in my trade!'
'What's that?' asked Victoria vacuously. Men generally lied as to their occupation, but she had noticed that when their imagination was stimulated their temper improved.
'Inspector of bun-punchers, ha! ha!'
'Bun-punchers?'
'Yes, bun-punchers. South Eastern Railway, you know. Got to have them dated now. New Act of Parliament, ha! ha!'
Victoria laughed, for his cockney joviality was infectious. Then again the room faded and rematerialised as his voice rose and fell.
'The wife don't know I'm out on the tiles, ha! ha! She's in Streatham, looking after the smalls. . . . Oh, no, none of your common or garden brass fenders. . . .'
Victoria pulled herself together. This was what she could not bear. Brutality, the obscene even, were preferable to this dreary trickling of the inane masquerading as wit. Yet she smiled at him.
'You're saucy,' she said. 'You're my fancy to-night.'
A shadow passed over the man's face. Then again he was rattling along.
'Talk of inventions? What'd you think of mine: indiarubber books to read in your bath? ha! ha! . . .'
But these are only the moths that flutter round the lamp, too far off to burn their wings. They love to breathe perfume, to touch soft hands, gaze at bright eyes and golden hair; then they flutter away, and the hand that would stay their flight cannot rob them even of a few specks of golden dust. In a few minutesVictoria sat philosophically before her empty glass while Fascination Fledgeby was by the side of a rival, being 'an awful dog,' for the benefit of his fellow clerks on the morrow. She was in the mood when it did not matter whether she was unlucky or not. There were quite two women present for every man this hot August night. At the next table sat a woman known as 'Duckie,' fair, very fat and rosy; she was the vision bursting from a white dress which Victoria had seen the first night. On the first night she had embodied for Victoria—so large, so fat, so coarsely animal was she—the very essence of her trade; now she knew her better she found that Duckie was a good sort, careless, generous, perfectly incapable of doing anybody an ill turn. She wasbonne filleeven, so unmercenary as sometimes to accede good humouredly to the pleadings of an impecunious youth. Her one failing was a fondness for 'a wet.' She was drinking her third whisky and soda; if she was invited to supper she would add to that at least half a bottle of champagne, follow that up by a couple of liqueurs and a peg just before going to bed. She carried her liquor well; she merely grew a little vague.
'Hot,' remarked Duckie.
'Rather,' said Victoria. 'I'm going soon, can't stick it.'
'Good for you. I've got to stay. Always harder for grandmas like me when the fifth form boy's at the seaside.' Duckie laughed, without cynicism though; she had the reasoning powers of a cow.
Victoria laughed too. A foreign-looking girl in scarlet bent over from the next table, her long coral earrings sliding down over her collar-bones.
'Tight again,' said the girl.
'As a drum, Lissa, old girl!' said Duckie good temperedly.
'Nothing to what you'll be by and by,' added Lissa with the air of a comforter.
'Nothing like, old dear! Have one with me, Lissa? No? No offence. You, Zoé, have atord boyaux?'
'No thanks.' Zoé was a good-looking short girl; her French nationality written in every line of her round face, plump figure, and hands. Her hair was pulled away from the fat nape of her neck. She looked competent and wide awake. A housewife gone astray. Lissa, dark and Italian looking in her red dress and coral earrings, was more languid than the others. She was really a Greek, and all the grace of the East was in every movement of her slim figure. In a moment the four women had clustered together, forgetting strife.
Lissa had had a 'Bank of Engraving' note palmed off on her by a pseudo-South American planter, and was rightly indignant. They were still talking of Camille de Valenciennes and of her misfortunes with the barber. Boys, the latest tip for Gatwick, 'what I said to him,' the furriers' sales, boys again . . . Victoria listened to the conversation. It still seemed like another world and yet her world. Here they were, she and the other atoms, hostile every one, and a blind centripetal force was kneading them together into a class. Yet any class was better than the isolation in which she lived. Why not go further, hear more?
'I say, you girls,' she said suddenly, 'you've never been to my place. Come and . . . no, not dine, it won't work . . . come and lunch with me next week.'
Duckie smiled heavily.
'I don' min',' she said thickly.
Zoé looked suspicious for a moment.
'Can I bring Fritz?' asked Lissa.
'No, we can't have Fritz,' said Victoria smiling. 'Ladies only.'
'I'm on,' said Zoé suddenly. 'I was afraid youwere going to have a lot of swells in. Hate those shows. Never do you any good and you get so crumpled.'
'You might let me bring Fritz,' said Lissa querulously.
'No men,' said Victoria firmly. 'Wednesday at one o'clock. All square?'
'Thatawright,' remarked Duckie. 'Shut it Lissa. Fritzawright. Tellm its biz . . . bizness.'
With some difficulty they hoisted Duckie into a cab and sent her off to Bloomsbury. As it drove off she popped her head out.
'Carriage paid,' she spluttered, 'or C. O. D.?'
Zoé and Lissa walked away to the circus. On her little hall table, as Victoria went into her house, she found a note scrawled in pencil on some of her own notepaper. It was from Betty. It said that Farwell had been stricken down by a sudden illness and was sinking fast. His address followed.
Ina bed sitting-room at the top of an old house off the Waterloo Road three women were watching by the bedside of a man. One was dressed in rusty black; she was pale faced, crowned with light hair; the other, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, was middle-aged and very stout; her breast rolled like a billow in her half buttoned bodice. The third was beautiful, all in black, her sumptuous neck and shoulders bare. None of them moved for a moment. Then the beautiful woman threw back her cloak and her long jade earrings tinkled. The face on the pillow turned and opened its eyes.
'Victoria,' said a faint voice.
'Yes . . . are you better?' Victoria bent over the bed. The face was copper coloured; every bone seemed to start out. She could hardly recognise Farwell's rough hewn features.
'Not yet . . . soon,' said Farwell. He closed his eyes once more.
'What is it, Betty?' whispered Victoria.
'I don't know . . . hemorrhage they say.'
'It's all up mum,' whispered the landlady in Victoria's ear. 'Been ill two days only. Doctor said he wouldn't come again.'
Victoria bent over the bed once more. She could feel the eyes of the landlady probing her personality.
'Can't you do something?' she asked savagely.
'Nothing.' Farwell opened his eyes again and faintly smiled. 'And what's the good, Victoria?'
Victoria threw herself on her knees by the side of the bed. 'Oh, you musn't!' she whispered. 'You . . . the world can't spare you!'
'Oh, yes . . . it can . . . you know . . . the world is like men . . . it spends everything on luxuries . . . it can't afford necessaries.'
Victoria smiled and felt as if she were going to choke. The last paradox.
'Are you in pain?' she asked.
'No, not just now. . . . I shall be, soon. Let me speak while I can.' His voice grew firmer suddenly.
'I have asked you to come so that you may be the last thing I see; you, the fairest. I love you.'
Not one of the three women moved.
'I have not spoken before, because when I could speak we were slaves. Now you are free and I a slave. It is too late, so it is time for me to speak. For I cannot influence you.'
Farwell shut his eyes. But soon his voice rose again.
'You must never influence anybody. That is my legacy to you. You cannot teach men to stand by giving them a staff. Let the halt and the lame alone. The strong will win. You must be free. There is nothing worth while. . . .' A shiver passed over him, his voice became muffled.
'No, nothing at all . . . freedom only. . . .'
He spoke quicker. The words could not be distinguished. Now and then he groaned.
'Wait,' whispered Betty, 'it will be over in a minute.' For two minutes they waited.
Victoria's eyes fastened on a basin by the bedside, full of reddish water. Then Farwell's face grew lighter in tone. His voice came faint as the sound of a spinet.
'There will be better times. But before then fighting . . . the coming to the top of the leaders . . . gold will be taken from the rich . . . given to thevile . . . pictures burnt . . . chaos . . . woman rise as a tyrant . . . there will be fighting . . . the coming to the top. . ..' His voice thinned down to nothing as his wandering mind repeated his prediction. Then he spoke again.
'You are a rebel . . . you will lead . . . you have understood . . . only by understanding are you saved. I asked you to come here to tell you to go on . . . earn your freedom . . . at the expense of others.'
'Why at the expense of others?' asked Betty, leaning over the bed. Farwell was hypnotising her. His eyes wandered to her face.
'Too late . . .' he said, 'you do not see . . . you are a slave . . . a woman has only one weapon . . . otherwise, a slave . . . ask . . . ask Victoria.' He closed his eyes but went on speaking.
'There is not freedom for everybody . . . capitalism means freedom for a few . . . you must have freedom, like food . . . food for the soul . . . you must capture the right to respect . . . a woman may not toil . . . make money . . .'
Then again. 'I am going into the blackness . . . before Death . . . the Judge . . . Death will judge me. . . .'
''E's thinking of his Maker, poor genelman,' said the landlady hoarsely.
Victoria and Betty looked at one another. Agnostic or indifferent in their cooler moments, the superstition of their ancestors worked in their blood, powerfully assisted by the spectacle of this being passing step by step into an unknown. There must be life there, feeling, loving. There must be Something.
The voice stopped. Betty had seized Victoria's arm and now clutched it violently. Victoria could feel through her own body the shudders that shook the girl's frame. Then Farwell's voice rose again, louder and louder, like the upward flicker of a dying candle.
'Yes, freedom's my message, the right to live. This world into which we are evolved by a selfish act of joy, into which we are dragged unwilling with pain for our usher, it is a world which has no justification save the freedom to enjoy it as we may. I have lived a stoic, but it is a hedonist I die. Unshepherded I go into a perhaps. But I regret nothing . . . all the certainties of the past are not worth the possible of the future. Behind me others tread the road that leads up the hill.'
He paused for breath. Then again his voice arose as a cry, proclaiming his creed.
'On the top of the hill. There I see the unknown land, running with milk and honey. I see a new people; beautiful young, beautiful old. Its fathers have ground the faces of the helots; they have fought and lusted, they have suffered contumely and stripes. Now they know the Law, the Law that all may keep because they are beyond the Law. They do not desire, for they have, they do not weigh, for they know. They have not feared, they have dared; they have spared no man, nor themselves. Ah! now they have opened the Golden Gates. . . .'
The man's voice broke, he coughed, a thin stream of blood trickled from the side of his mouth. Victoria felt a film come over her eyes. She leant over him to staunch the flow. They saw one another then. Farwell's voice went down to a whisper.
'Victoria . . . victorious . . . my love . . . never more. . . .'
She looked into his glazing eyes.
'Beyond . . .' he whispered; then his head fell to one side and his jaw dropped.
Betty turned away. She was crying. The landlady wiped her hands on her apron. Victoria hesitatingly took hold of Farwell's wrist. He was dead. She looked at him stupidly for a moment, then drewher cloak round her shivering shoulders. The landlady too was crying now.
'Oh, mum, sich a nice genelman,' she moaned. 'But 'e did go on so!'
Victoria smiled pitifully. What an epitaph for a sunset! She drove away with Betty and, as the horse trotted through the deserted streets, hugged the girl in her arms. Betty was shuddering violently, and nestled close up to her. They did not speak. Everything seemed to have become loose in Victoria's mind and to be floating on a black sea. The pillar of her individualism was down. Her codes were in the melting pot; a man, the finest she had known, had confessed his love in his extremity, and before she could respond passed into the shadow. But Farwell had left her as a legacy the love of freedom for which he died, for which she was going to live.
When they arrived at Elm Tree Place, Victoria forced Betty to drink some brandy, to tell her how Farwell had sent her a message, asking her to send him Victoria, how she had waited for her.
'Oh, it was awful,' whispered Betty, 'the maid said you'd be late . . . she said I mustn't wait because you might not . . .'
'Not come home alone?' said Victoria in a frozen voice.
'Oh, I can't bear it, I can't bear it.' Betty flung herself into her friend's arms, wildly weeping.
Victoria soothed her, made her undress. As Betty grew more collected she let drop a few words.
'Oh, so then you too are happy?' said Victoria smiling faintly.
'You love?' A burning blush rose over Betty's face.
That night, as in the old Finsbury days, they lay in one another's arms and Victoria grappled with her sorrow. Gentle, almost motherly, she watched over this young life; blushing, full of promise, preparing already to replace the dead.
Thedeath of Farwell seemed to leave Victoria struggling and gasping for breath, like a shipwrecked mariner who tries to secure his footing on shifting sand while waves knock him down every time he rises to his knees. Though she hardly ever saw him and though she had no precise idea that he cared for her more than does the scientist for the bacteria he observes, he had been her tower of strength. He was there, like the institutions which make up civilisation, the British Constitution, the Bank and the Established Church. Now he was gone and she saw that the temple of life was empty. He was the last link. Cairns's death had turned her out among the howling wolves; now Farwell seemed to have carried away with him her theory of life. Above all, she now knew nobody; save Betty, who counted as a charming child. It was then she began to taste more cruelly the isolation of her class.
In the early days, when she paced up and down fiercely in the room at Portsea Place, she had already realised that she was alone, but then she was not an outcast; the doors of society were, if not open, at any rate not locked against her. Then the busy hum of the Rosebud and the P.R.R., the back-breaking work, the hustle, the facile friendships with City beaus—all this had drawn a veil over her solitude. Now she was really alone because none knew and none would know her. Her beauty, her fine clothes, contributed to clear round her a circle as if she werea leper. At times she would talk to a woman in a park, but before a few sentences had passed her lips the woman would take in every detail of her, her clean gloves, her neat shoes, her lace handkerchief, her costly veil; then the woman's face would grow rigid, and with a curt 'good morning' she would rise from her seat and go.
Victoria found herself thrust back, like the trapper in the hands of Red Indians; like him she ran in a circle, clubbed back towards the centre every time she tried to escape. She was of her class, and none but her class would associate with her. Women such as herself gladly talked to her, but their ideas sickened her, for life had taught them nothing but the ethics of the sex-trade. Their followers too—barbers, billiard markers, shady bookmakers, unemployed potmen; who sometimes dared to foist themselves on her—filled her with yet greater fear and disgust, for they were the only class of man alternative to those on whose bounty she lived. Thus she withdrew herself away from all; sometimes a craving for society would throw her into equivocal converse with Augusta, whose one idea was the dowry she must take back to Germany. Then, tiring of her, she would snatch up Snoo and Poo and pace round and round her tiny lawn like a squirrel in its wheel.
A chance meeting with Molly emphasised her isolation, like the flash of lightning which leaves the night darker. She was standing on the steps of the Sandringham Tea House in Bond Street, looking into the side window of the photographer who runs a print shop on the ground floor. Some sprawling Boucher beauties in delicate gold frames fascinated her. She delighted in the semi-crude, semi-sophisticated atmosphere, the rotundity of the well-fed bodies, their ribald rosy flesh. As she was wondering whether they would not do for the stairs the door opened suddenly and a plump little woman almost rushedinto her arms. The little woman apologised, giving her a quick look. Then the two looked at one another again.
'Victoria!' cried Molly, for it was she, with her wide open blue eyes, small nose, fair frizzy hair.
A thrill of joy and fear ran through Victoria. She felt her personality criddle up like a scorched moth, then expand like a flower under gentle dew. She was found out; the terrible female instinct was going to detect her, then to proclaim her guilt. However, bravely enough, she braced herself up and held out her hand.
'Oh, Vic, why haven't you written to me for, let me see, three years, isn't it?'
'I've been away, abroad,' said Victoria slowly. She seemed to float in another world. Molly was talking vigorously; Victoria's brain, feverishly active, was making up the story which would have to be told when Molly's cheerful egotism had had its way.
'Don't let's stay here on the doorstep,' she interrupted, 'let's go upstairs and have tea. You haven't had tea yet?'
'I should love to,' said Molly, squeezing her arm. 'Then you can tell me about yourself.'
Seated at a little table Molly finished her simple story. She had married an army chaplain, but he had given up his work in India and was now rector of Pontyberis in Wales. They had two children. Molly was up in town merely to break the journey, as she was going down to stay with her aunt in Kent. Oh, yes, she was very happy, her husband was very well.
'They're talking of making him Dean of Ffwr,' she added with unction. 'But that's enough about me. How have you been getting on, Vic? I needn't ask how you are; one only has to look at you.' Molly's eyes roved over her friend's beautiful young face, her clothes which she appraised with the skill of those poor who are learned in the fashions.
'I? Oh, I'm very well,' said Victoria hysterically.
'Yes, but how have you been getting on? Weren't you talking about having to work when you came over?'
'Yes, but I've been lucky . . . a week after I got here an aunt of my mother's died of whom I never even heard before. They told me at Dick's lawyers a month later, and you wouldn't believe it, there was no will and I came in for . . . well something quite comfortable.'
Molly put out her hand and stroked Victoria's.
'I'm so glad,' she said. . . . 'Oh, you don't know how hard it is to have to work for your living. I see something of it in Wales. Oh, if you only knew. . . .'
Victoria pressed her lips together, as if about to cry or laugh.
'But what did you do then? You only wrote once. You didn't tell me?'
'No, I only heard a month after, you know. Oh, I had a lot to do. I travelled a lot. I've been in America a good deal. In fact my home is in . . . Alabama.' She plunged for Alabama, feeling sure that New York was unsafe.
'Oh, how nice,' said Molly ingenuously. 'You might have sent me picture postcards, you know.'
Skilfully enough Victoria explained that she had lost Molly's address. Her friend blissfully accepted all she said, but a few other women less ingenuous than the clergyman's wife were casting sharp glances at her. When they parted, Victoria audaciously giving her address as 'care of Mrs Ferris, Elm Tree Place,' she threw herself back on the cushions of the cab and told herself that she could not again go through with the ordeal of facing her own class. She almost hungered for the morrow, when she was to entertain the class she had adopted.