'Butty,' otherwise Mr Burton, the chairman of 'Rosebud, Ltd.,' continued to glare theatrically. He wore a blue suit of a crude tint, a check black and white waistcoat, a soft fronted brown shirt and, set in a shilling poplin tie, a large black pearl. Under a grey bowler set far back on his head his forehead sloped away to his wispy greying hair. His nose was large and veined, his cheeks pendulous and touched with rosacia; his hanging underlip revealedyellow teeth. The heavy dullness of his face was somewhat relieved by his little blue eyes, piercing and sparkling like those of a snake. His face was that of a man who is looking for faults to correct.
Mr Burton strode through the shop to the counter where Cora and Gladys at once assumed an air of rectitude while he examined the cash register. Then, without a word, he returned towards the doorway, sweeping Lottie's tables with a discontented glance, and came to a stop before one of Bella's tables.
'What's this? what the devil do you mean by this?' thundered Butty, pointing to a soiled plate and cup.
'Oh, sir, I'm sorry, I . . .' gasped Bella, 'I . . .'
'Now look here, my girl,' hissed Butty, savagely, 'don't you give me any of your lip. If I ever find anything on a table of yours thirty seconds after a customer's gone, it's the sack. Take it from me.'
He walked to the steps and descended into the smoking-room. Cora and Gladys went into fits of silent mirth, pointing at poor Bella. Lottie, unconcerned as ever, vainly tried to extract interest from the shop copy of 'What's On.'
'Victoria,' came Butty's voice from below. 'Where's Mr Stein? Come down.'
'He's washing, sir,' said Victoria, bending over the banisters.
'Oh, washing is he? first time I've caught him at it,' came the answer with vicious jocularity. 'Here's a nice state of things; come down.'
Victoria went down the steps.
'Now then, why aren't these salt cellars put away? It's your job before you come up.'
'If you please, sir, it's settling day,' said Victoria quietly, 'we open this room again at six.'
'Oh, yes, s'pose you're right. I don't blame you. Never have to,' said Butty grudgingly, then ingratiatingly.
'No, sir,' said Victoria.
'No, you're not like the others,' said Butty negligently coming closer to her.
Victoria smiled respectfully, but edged a little away. Butty eyed her narrowly, his lips smiling and a little moist. Then his hand suddenly shot out and seized her by the arm, high up, just under the short sleeve.
'You're a nice girl,' he said, looking into her eyes.
Victoria said nothing, but tried to free herself. She tried harder as she felt on her forearm the moist warmth of the ball of Butty's thumb softly caressing it.
'Let me go, sir,' she whispered, 'they can see you through the banisters.'
'Never you mind, Vic,' said Butty drawing her towards him.
Victoria slipped from his grasp, ran to the stairs, but remembered to climb them in a natural and leisurely manner.
'Cool, very cool,' said Butty, approvingly, 'fine girl, fine girl.' He passed his tongue over his lips, which had suddenly gone dry.
When Victoria returned to her seat Lottie had not moved; Bella sat deep in her own despair, but, behind the counter, Cora and Gladys were fixing two stern pairs of eyes upon the favourite.
'Yes, sir, yes sir; I've got your order,' cried Victoria to a middle aged man, whose face reddened with every minute of waiting. 'Steak, sir? Yes, sir, that'll be eight minutes. And sautées, yes sir. Gladys, send Dicky up to four. What was yours, sir? Wing twopence extra. No bread? Oh, sorry, sir, thought you said Worcester.'
Victoria dashed away to the counter. This was the busy hour. In her brain a hurtle of food stuffs and condiments automatically sorted itself out.
'Now then, hurry up with that chop,' she snapped, thrusting her head almost through the kitchen window.
''Oo are you,' growled the cook over her shoulder. 'Empress of Germany? I don't think.'
'Oh, shut it, Maria, hand it over; now then Cora, where you pushing to?' Victoria edged Cora back from the window, seized the chop and rushed back to her tables.
The bustle increased; it was close on one o'clock, an hour when the slaves drop their oars, and for a while leave the thwarts of many groans. The Rosebud had nearly filled up. Almost every table was occupied by young men, most of them reading a paper propped up against a cruet, some a Temple Classic, its pages kept open by the weight of the plate edge. A steady hum of talk came from those who did not read, and, mingled with the clatter of knives and forks, produced that atmosphere of mongrel sound that floats into the ears like a restless wave.
Victoria stepped briskly between the tables, collecting orders, deftly making out bill after bill, smoothing tempers ruffled here and there by a wrongful attribution of food.
'Yes sir, cutlets. No veg? Cauli? Yes sir.'
She almost ran up and down as half-past one struck and the young men asked for coffees, small coffees, small blacks, china teas. From time to time she could breathe and linger for some seconds by a youth who audaciously played with the pencil and foil suspended from her waist. Or she exchanged a pleasantry.
'Now then, Nevy, none of your larks.' Victoria turned round sharply and caught a hand engaged in forcing a piece of sugar into her belt.
Nevy, otherwise Neville Brown, laughed and held her hand the space of a second. 'I love my love with a V . . .' he began, looking up at her, his blue eyes shining.
'Chuck it or I'll tell your mother,' said Victoria, smiling too. She withdrew her hand and turned away.
'Oh, I say, Vic, don't go, wait a bit,' cried Neville, 'I want, now what did I want?'
'Sure I don't know,' said Victoria, 'you never said what you wanted. Want me to make up your mind for you?'
'Do, Vic, let our minds be one,' said Neville.
Victoria looked at him approvingly. Neville Brown deserved the nickname of 'Beauty,' which had clung to him since he left school. Brown wavy hair, features so clean cut as to appear almost effeminate, a broad pointed jaw, all combined to make him the schoolgirl's dream. Set off by his fair and slightly sunburnt face, his blue eyes sparkled with mischief.
'Well, then, special and cream. Sixpence and serve you right.'
She laughed and stepped briskly away to the counter.
'You're in luck, Beauty,' said his neighbour with a sardonic air.
'Oh, it's no go, James,' replied Brown, 'straight as they make them.'
'Don't say she's not. But if I weren't a married man, I'd go for her baldheaded.'
'Guess you would, Jimmy,' said Beauty, laughing, 'but you'd be wasting your time. You wouldn't get anything out of her.'
'Don't you be too sure,' said Jimmy meaningly. He passed his hand reflectively over his shaven lips.
'Well, well,' said Brown, 'p'raps I'm not an Apollo like you, Jimmy.'
Jimmy smiled complacently. He was a tall slim youth, well groomed about the head, doggy about the collar and tie, neatly dressed in Scotch tweed. His steady grey eyes and firm mouth, a little set and rigid, the impeccability of all about him, had stamped business upon his face as upon his clothes.
'Oh, I can't queer your pitch, Beauty,' he said a little grimly. 'I know you, you low dog.'
Beauty laughed at the epithet. 'You've got no poetry about you, you North Country chaps, when a girl's as lovely as Victoria—'
'As lovely as Victoria,' he repeated a little louder as Victoria laid the cup of coffee before him.
'I know all about that,' said Victoria coolly, 'you don't come it over me like that, Nevy.'
'Cruel, cruel girl,' sighed Neville. 'Ah, if you only knew what I feel——'
Victoria put her hand on the tablecloth and, for a moment, looked down into Neville's blue eyes.
'You oughtn't to be allowed out,' she pronounced, 'you aren't safe.'
Jimmy got up as if he had been sitting on a suddenly released spring.
'Spoon away both of you,' he said smoothly, 'I'm going over to Parsons' to buy a racquet. Coming, Beauty? No, thought as much. Ta-ta, Vic. Excuse me. Steak and kidney pie is tenpence, not a shilling. Cheer oh! Beauty.'
'He's a rum one,' said Victoria, reflectively, as Jimmy passed the cash desk.
'Jimmy? oh, he's all right,' said Neville, 'but look here Vic, I want to speak to you. Let's go on the bust to-night. Dinner at the New Gaiety and the theatre. What d'you think?'
Victoria looked at him for a second.
'You are a cure, Nevy,' she said.
'Then that's a bargain?' said Brown, eagerly snapping up her non-refusal. 'Meet me at Strand Tube Station half-past seven. You're off to-night, I know.'
'Oh you know, do you,' said Victoria smiling. 'Been pumping Bella I suppose, like the rest. She's a green one, that girl.'
Neville looked up at her appealingly. 'Never mind how I know,' he said, 'say you'll come, we'll have a ripping time.'
'Well, p'raps I will and p'raps I won't,' said Victoria. 'Your bill, Sir? Yessir.'
Victoria went to the next table. While she wrote she exchanged chaff with the customers. One had not raised his eyes from his book; one stood waiting for his bill; the other two, creatures about to be men, raised languid eyes from their coffee cups. One negligently puffed a jet of tobacco smoke upwards towards Victoria.
'Rotten,' she said briefly, 'I see you didn't buy those up West.'
'That's whatyouthink, Vic,' said the youth, 'fact is I got them in the Burlington. Have one?'
'No thanks. Don't want to be run in.'
'Have a match then.' The young man held up atwo inch vesta. 'What price that, eh? pinched 'em from the Troc' last night.'
'You are a toff, Bertie,' said Victoria with unction. 'I'll have it as a keepsake.' She took it and stuck it in her belt.
Bertie leaned over to his neighbour. 'It's a mash,' he said confidently.
'Take her to Kew,' said his friend, 'next stop Brighton.'
'Can't run to it, old cock,' said the youth. 'However we shall see.'
'Vic, Vic,' whispered Neville. But Victoria had passed him quickly and was answering Mr Stein.
'Vat you mean by it,' he growled, 'making de gentleman vait for his ticket, gn?'
'Beg your pardon, Mr Stein, I did nothing of the kind. The gentleman was makingmewait while he talked to his friend.'
Victoria could now lie coolly and well. Stein looked at her savagely and slowly walked away along the gangway between the tables, glowering from right to left, looking managerially for possible complaints.
Victoria turned back from the counter. There, behind the coffee urn where Cora presided, stood Burton, in his blue suit, tiny beads of perspiration appearing on his forehead. His little blue eyes fixed themselves upon her like drills seeking in her being the line of least resistance where he could deliver his attack. She almost fled, as if she had seen a snake, every facet of her memory causing the touch of his hot warm hand to materialise.
'Vic,' said Neville's voice softly as she passed, 'is it yes?'
She looked down at the handsome face.
'Yes, Beauty Boy,' she whispered, and walked away.
'Sillyass,' remarked Victoria angrily. She threw Edward's letter on the table. Unconsciously she spoke the 'Rosebud' language, for contact had had its effect upon her; she no longer awoke with a start to the fact that she was speaking an alien tongue, a tongue she would once have despised.
Edward had expressed his interest in her welfare in a letter of four pages covered with his thin writing, every letter of which was legible and sloped at the proper angle. He 'considered it exceedingly undesirable for her to adopt a profession such as that of waitress.' It was comforting to know that 'he was relieved to see that she had the common decency to change her name, and he trusted. . . .' Here Victoria had stopped.
'I can't bear it,' she said. 'I can't, can't, can't. Twopenny little schoolmaster lecturing me, me who've got to earn every penny I get by fighting for it in the dirt, so to say.' Every one of Edward's features came up before her eyes, his straggling fair hair, his bloodless face, his fumbling ineffective hands. This pedagogue who had stepped from scholardom to teacherdom dared to blame or eulogise the steps she took to earn her living, to be free to live or die as she chose. It was preposterous. What did he know of life?
Victoria seized a pen and feverishly scribbled on a crumpled sheet of paper.
'My dear Edward,—What I do's my business. I'vegot to live and I can't choose. And you can be sure that so long as I can keep myself I shan't come to you for help or advice. Perhaps you don't know what freedom is, never having had any. But I do and I'm going to keep it even if it costs me the approval of you people who sit at home comfortably and judge people like me who want to be strong and free. But what's the good of talking about freedom to you.—Your affectionate sister,Victoria'.
'My dear Edward,—What I do's my business. I'vegot to live and I can't choose. And you can be sure that so long as I can keep myself I shan't come to you for help or advice. Perhaps you don't know what freedom is, never having had any. But I do and I'm going to keep it even if it costs me the approval of you people who sit at home comfortably and judge people like me who want to be strong and free. But what's the good of talking about freedom to you.—
Your affectionate sister,
Victoria'.
She addressed the envelope and ran out hatless to post it at the pillar box in Edgware Road. As she crossed the road homewards a horse bus rumbled by. It carried an enormous advertisement of the new musical comedyThe Teapot Girl. 'A fine comedy indeed,' she thought, suddenly a little weary.
As she entered her room, where a small oil lamp diffused a sphere of graduated light, she was seized as by the throat by the oppression of the silent summer night. The wind had fallen; not even a whirl of dust stirred in the air. Alone and far away a piano organ in a square droned and clanked Italian melody. She thought of Edward and of her letter. Perhaps she had been too sharp. Once upon a time she would not have written like that: she was getting common.
Victoria sat down on a little chair, her hands clasped together in her lap, her eyes looking out at the blank wall opposite. This, nine o'clock, was the fatal hour when the ghosts of her dead past paced like caged beasts up and down in her small room, and the wraith of the day's work rattled its chains. There had been earlier times when, in the first flush of independence, she had sat down to gloat over what was almost success, her liberty, her living earned by her own efforts. The rosiness of freedom then wrapped around the dinge with wreaths of fancy, wreaths that curled incessantly into harmonious shapes. ButVictoria had soon plumbed the depths of speculation and found that the fire of imagination needs shadowy fuel for its shadowy combustion. Day by day her brain had become less lissome. Then, instead of thinking for the joy of thought, she had read some fourpenny-halfpenny novel, a paper even, picked up in the Tube. Her mind was waking up, visualising, realising, and in its troublous surgings made for something to cling to to steady itself. But months rolled on and on, inharmonious in their sameness, unrelieved by anything from the monotony of work and sleep. Certain facts meant certain things and recurred eternally with their unchanging meaning; the knock that awoke her, a knock so individual and habitual that her sleepy brain was conscious on Sundays that she need not respond; the smell of food which began to assail her faintly as she entered the 'Rosebud,' then grew to pungency and reek at midday, blended with tobacco, then slowly ebbed almost into nothingness: the dying day that was grateful to her eyes when she left to go home, when things looked kindly round her.
When Victoria realised all of a sudden her loneliness in her island in Star Street, something like the fear of the hunted had driven her out into the streets. She was afraid to be alone, for not even books could save her from her thoughts, those hounds in full cry. In such moods she had walked the streets quickly, looking at nothing, maintaining her pace over hills. Now and then she had suddenly landed on a slum, caught sight of, all beery and bloody, through the chink of a black lane. But she shunned the flares, the wet pavement, the orange peel that squelched beneath her boots, afraid of the sight of too vigorous life. Unconsciously she had sought the drug of weariness, and the cunning bred of her dipsomania told her that the living were poor companions for her soul. And, when at times a man had followed her,his eye arrested by the lines of her face lit up by a gas lamp, he had soon tired of her quick walk and turned away towards weaker vessels.
But even weariness, when abused, loses its power as a sedative. The body, at once hardened and satiated, demands more every day as it craves for increasing doses of morphia, for more food, more drink, more kisses, more, ever more. Thus Victoria had reached her last stage when, sitting alone in her room, she once more faced the emptiness where the ghosts of her dead past paced like caged beasts and the wraith of the day's work rattled its chains.
From this, now a state of mental instead of physical exhaustion, she was seldom roused; and it needed an Edward come to judgment to stir her sleepy brain into quick passion. Again and again the events of the day would chase round and round maddeningly with every one of their little details sharp as crystals. Victoria could almost mechanically repeat some conversations, all trifling, similar, confined to half a dozen topics; she could feel, too, but casually as an odalisque, the hot wave of desire which surrounded her all day, evidenced by eyes that glittered, fastened on her hands as she served, on her face, the curve of her neck, her breast, her hips; eyes that devoured and divested her of her meretricious livery. And, worse perhaps than that big primitive surge which left her cold but unangered, the futility of others who bandied with her the daily threadbare joke, who wearied her mind with questions as to food, compelled her to sympathise with the vagaries of the weather or were arch, flirtatious and dragged out of her tired mind the necessary response. Even Butty and the moist warmth of him, even Stein with his flaccid surly face, were better in their grossness than these vapid youths, thoughtless, incapable of thought, incapable of imagining thought, who set her downas an inferior, as a toy for games that were not even those of men.
'Beauty' had been a disappointment. She had met him two or three times since their first evening out. That night Neville, who was a young man of the world, had pressed his suit so delicately, preserving in so cat-like a manner his lines of retreat, that she had not been able to snub him when inclined to. He had a small private income and knew how to make the best of his good looks by means of gentle manners and smart clothes. In the insurance office where he was one of those clerks who have lately evolved from the junior stage, he was nothing in particular and earned ten pounds a month. He had furnished two rooms on the Chelsea edge of Kensington, belonged to an inexpensive club in St James's, had been twice to Brussels and once to Paris; he smoked Turkish cigarettes, deeming Virginia common; he subscribed to a library in connection with Mudie's, and knew enough of the middle classes to exaggerate his impression of them into the smart set. Perhaps he tried a little too much to be a gentleman.
Neville Brown was strongly attracted to Victoria. He had vainly tried to draw her out, and scented the lie in her carefully concocted story. He knew enough to feel that she was at heart one of those women he met 'in society,' perhaps a little better. Thus she puzzled him extremely, for she was not even facile; he could hold her hand; she had not refused him kisses, but he was afraid to secure his grip on her as a man carrying a butterfly stirs not a finger for fear it should escape.
Victoria turned all this over lazily. Her instinct told her what manner of man was Neville, for he hardly concealed his desires. Indeed their relations had something of the charm of a masqued ball. She saw well enough that Neville was not likely to remain content with kisses, and viewed the inevitable battlewith mixed feelings. She liked him; indeed, in certain moods and when his blue eyes were at their bluest, he attracted her magnetically. The reminiscent scent of Turkish tobacco on her lips always drew her back towards him; and yet she was of her class, shy of love, of all that is illicit because unacknowledged. She knew very well that Neville would hardly ask her to marry him and that she would refuse if he did; she knew less well what she would do if he asked her to love him. When she analysed their relation she always found that all lay on the lap of the gods.
In the loneliness of night her thoughts would fasten on him more intently. He was youth and warmth and friendliness, words for the silent, a hand to touch; better still he was a figment of Love itself, with all its tenderness and crudity, its heat, all the quivers of its body; he was soft scented as the mysterious giver of passionate gifts. So, when Victoria lay down to try and sleep she rocked in the trough of the waves of doubt. She could not tell into what hands she would give, if she gave, her freedom, her independence of thought and deed, all that security which is dear to the sheltered class from which she came. So, far into the night she would struggle for sight, tossing from right to left and left to right, thrusting away and then recalling the brown face, the blue eyes and their promise.
Thedays rolled on, and on every one, as their scroll revealed itself, Victoria inscribed doings which never varied. The routine grew heavier as she found that the events of a Monday were so similar to those of another Monday that after a month she could not locate happenings. She no longer read newspapers. There was nothing in them for her; not even the mock tragedy of the death of an heir presumptive or the truer grimness of a shipwreck could rouse in her an emotion. She did not care for adventure: not because she thought that adventure was beneath her notice, but because it could not affect her. A revolution could have happened, but she would have served boiled cod and coffees to the groundlings, wings of chicken to the luxurious, without a thought for the upheaval, provided it did not flutter the pink curtains beyond which hummed the world.
At times, for the holiday season was not over and work was rather slack, Victoria had time to sit on her 'attendant' chair and to think awhile. Reading nothing and seeing no one save Beauty and Mrs Smith, she was thinking once more and thinking dangerously much. Often she would watch Lottie, negligently serving, returning the ball of futility with a carelessness that was almost grace, or Cora talking smart slang in young lady-like tones.
'To what end?' thought Victoria. 'What are we doing here, wasting our lives, I suppose, to feed these boys. For what's the good of feeding them so thatthey may scrawl figures in books and catch trains and perhaps one day, unless they've got too old, marry some dull girl and have more children than they can keep? We girls, we're wasted too.' So strongly did she feel this that, one day, she prospected the unexplored ground of Cora's mind.
'What are you worrying about?' remarked Cora, after Victoria had tried to inflame her with noble discontent. 'I don't say it's all honey, this job of ours, but you can have a good time pretty well every night, can't you, let alone Sundays?'
'But I don't want a good time,' said Victoria, suddenly inspired. 'I want to feel I'm alive, do something.'
'Do what?' said Cora.
'Live, see things, travel.'
'Oh, we don't get a chance, of course,' said Cora. 'I'll tell you how it is, Vic, you want too much. If you want anything in life you've got to want nothing, then whatever you get good seems jolly good.'
'You're a pessimist, Cora,' said Victoria smiling.
'Meaning I see the sad side? Don't you believe it. Every cloud has a silver lining, you know.'
'And every silver lining has a cloud,' said Victoria, sadly.
'Now, Vic,' answered Cora crossly, 'don't you go on like that. You'll only mope and mope. And what's the good of that, I'd like to know.'
'Oh, I don't know,' said Victoria, 'I like thinking of things. Sometimes I wish I could make an end of it. Don't you?'
'Lord, no,' said Cora, 'I make the best of it. You take my tip and don't think too much.'
Victoria bent down in her chair, her chin upon her open palm. Cora slapped her on the back.
'Cheer up,' she said, 'we'll soon be dead.'
Victoria had also attempted Gladys, but had discovered without surprise that her association withCora had equalised their minds as well as the copper of their hair. Lottie never said much when attacked on a general subject, while Bella never said anything at all. Since the day when Victoria had attempted to draw her out on the fateful question 'What's the good of anything?' Bella Prodgitt had looked upon Victoria as a dangerous revolutionary. At times she would follow the firebrand round the shop with frightened and admiring eyes. For her Victoria was something like the brilliant relation of whom the family is proud without daring to acknowledge him.
It fell to Gertie's lot to enlighten Victoria further on the current outlook of life. It came about in this way. One Saturday afternoon Victoria and Bella were alone on duty upstairs, for the serving of lunch is then at a low ebb; the City makes a desperate effort to reach the edge of the world to lunch peacefully and cheaply in its homes and lodgings. Lottie and Gertie were taking the smoking room below.
It was nearly three o'clock. At one of the larger tables sat two men, both almost through with their lunch. The elder of the two, a stout, cheery-looking man, pushed away his cup, slipped two pennies under the saucer and, taking up his bill, which Victoria had made out when she gave him his coffee, went up to the cash desk. The other man, a pale-faced youth in a blue suit, sat before his half emptied cup. His hand passed nervously round his chin as he surveyed the room; his was rather the face of a ferret, with a long upper lip, watery blue eyes, and a weak chin. His forehead sloped a little and was decorated with many pimples.
Victoria passed him quickly, caught up the stout man, entered the cash desk and took his bill. He turned in the doorway.
'Well, Vic,' he said, 'when are we going to be married?'
'29th of February, if it's not a leap year,' she laughed.
'Too bad, too bad,' said the stout man, looking back from the open door out of which he had already passed, 'you're the third girl who's said that to me in a fortnight.'
'Serve you right,' said Victoria, looking into the mirror opposite, 'you're as bad as Henry the . . . .'
The door closed. Victoria did not finish her sentence. Her eyes were glued to the mirror. In it she could only see a young man with a thin face, decorated with many pimples, hurriedly gulping down the remains of his cup of coffee. But a second before then she had seen something which made her fetch a quick breath. The young man had looked round, marked that her head was turned away; he had thrown a quick glance to the right and the left, to the counter which Bella had left for a moment to go into the kitchen; then his hand had shot out and, with a quick movement, he had seized the stout man's pennies and slipped them under his own saucer.
The young man got up. Victoria came up to him and made out his bill. He took it without a word and paid it at the desk, Victoria taking his money.
'Well, he didn't steal it, did he?' said Gertie, when Victoria told her of the incident.
'No, not exactly. Unless he stole it from the first man.'
''Ow could he steal it if he didn't take it?' snapped Gertie.
'Well, he made believe to tip me when he didn't, and he made believe that the first man was mean when it was he who was,' said Victoria. 'So he stole it from the first man to give it me.'
'Lord, I don't see what yer after,' said Gertie. 'You ain't lost nothing. And the first fellow he ain't lost nothing either. He'dlefthis money.'
Victoria struggled for a few sentences. The little Cockney brain could not take in her view. Gertie could only see that Victoria had had twopence from somebody instead of from somebody else, so what was her trouble?
'Tell yer wot,' said Gertie summing up the case, 'seems ter me the fellow knew wot he was after. Dodgy sort of thing to do. Oughter 'ave thought of the looking-glass though.'
Victoria turned away from Gertie's crafty little smile. There was something in the girl that she could not understand; nor could Gertie understand her scruple. Gertie helped her a little though to solve the problem of waste; this girl could hardly be wasted, thought Victoria, for of what use could she be? She had neither the fine physique that enables a woman to bear big stupid sons, nor the intelligence which breeds a cleverer generation; she was sunk in the worship of easy pleasure, and ever bade the fleeting joy to tarry yet awhile.
'She isn't alive at all,' said Victoria to Lottie. 'She merely grows older.'
'Well, so do we,' replied Lottie in matter of fact tones.
Victoria was compelled to admit the truth of this, but she did not see her point clearly enough to state it. Lottie, besides, did nothing to draw her out. In some ways she was Victoria's oasis in the desert, for she was simple and gentle, but her status lymphaticus was permanent. She did not even dream.
Victoria's psychological enquiries did not tend to make her popular. The verdict of the 'Rosebud' was that she was a 'rum one,' perhaps a 'deep one.' The staff were confirmed in their suspicions that she was a 'deep one' by the obvious attentions that Mr Burton paid her. They were not prudish, except Bella, who objected to 'goings on'; to be distinguishedby Butty was rather disgusting, but it was flattering too.
'He could have anybody he liked, the dirty old tyke,' remarked Cora. 'Of course I'm not taking any,' she added in response to a black look from Bella Prodgitt.
Victoria was not 'taking any' either, but she every day found greater difficulty in repelling him. Burton would stand behind the counter near the kitchen door during the lunch hour, and whenever Victoria had to come up to it, he would draw closer, so close that she could see over the whites of his little eyes a fine web of blood vessels. Every time she came and went her skirts brushed against his legs; on her neck sometimes she felt the rush of his bitter scented breath.
One afternoon, in the change room, as she was dressing alone to leave at four, the door opened. She had taken off her blouse and turned with a little cry. Burton had come in suddenly. He walked straight up to her, his eyes not fixed on hers but on her bare arms. A faintness came over her. She hardly had the strength to repel him, as without a word he threw one arm round her waist, seizing her above the elbow with his other hand. As he tried to draw her towards him she saw a few inches from her face, just the man's mouth, red and wet, like the sucker of a leech, the lips parted over the yellow teeth.
'Let me go!' she hissed, throwing her head back.
Burton ground her against him, craning his neck to touch her lips with his.
'Don't be silly,' he whispered, 'I love you. You be my little girl.'
'Let me go.' Victoria shook him savagely.
'None of that.' Burton's eyes were glittering. The corners had pulled upwards with rage.
'Let me go, I say.'
Burton did not answer. For a minute they wrestled. Victoria thrust him back against the wall. She almost turned sick as his hand, slipping round her, flattened itself on her bare shoulder. In that moment of weakness Burton won, and, bending her over, kissed her on the mouth. She struggled, but Burton had gripped her behind the neck. Three times he kissed her on the lips. A convulsion of disgust and she lay motionless in his embrace. There was a step on the stairs. A few seconds later Burton had slipped out by the side door.
'What's up?' said Gladys suspiciously.
Victoria had sunk upon a chair, breathless, dishevelled, her face in her hands.
'Nothing . . . I . . . I feel sick,' she faltered. Then she savagely wiped her mouth with her feather boa.
Victoria was getting a grip of things. The brute, the currish brute. The words rang in her head like a chorus. For days, the memory of the affray did not leave her. She guarded, too, against any recurrence of the scene.
Her hatred for Burton seemed to increase the fascination of Neville. She did not think of them together, but it always seemed to happen that, immediately after thrusting away the toad-like picture of the chairman, she thought of the blue-eyed boy. Yet her relations with Neville were ill-fated. Some days after the foul incident in the change room, Neville took her for one of his little 'busts.' As it was one of her late nights he called for her at a quarter past nine. They walked towards the west and, on the stroke of ten, Neville escorted her into one of the enormous restaurants that the Refreshment Rendezvous, known to London as the Ah-Ah, runs as anonymously as it may.
Victoria was amused. The R. R. was the owner of a palace, built, if not for the classes, certainly notfor the masses. Its facing was of tortured Portland stone, where Greek columns, Italian, Louis XIV and Tudor mouldings blended with rich Byzantine gildings and pre-Raphaelite frescoes. Inside too, it was all plush, mainly red; gold again; palms, fountains, with goldfish and tin ducks. The restaurant was quite a fair imitation of the Carlton, but a table d'hôte supper was provided for eighteen pence, including finger bowls in which floated a rose petal.
Neville and Victoria sat at a small table made for two. She surrendered her feet to the clasp of his. Around her were about two hundred couples and a hundred family parties. Most of the young men were elaborately casual; they wore blue or tweed suits, a few, frock coats marred by double collars; they had a tendency to loll and to puff the insolent tobacco smoke of virginias towards the distant roof. Their young ladies talked a great deal and looked about. There was much wriggling of chairs, much giggling, much pulling up of long gloves over bare arms. In a corner, all alone, a young man in well-fitting evening clothes was consuming in melancholy some chocolate and a sandwich.
Neville plied Victoria with the major part of a half bottle of claret.
'Burgundy's the thing,' he said. 'More body in it.'
'Yes, it is good, isn't it? I mustn't have any more, though.'
'Oh, you're all right,' said Neville indulgently. 'Let's have some coffee and a liqueur.'
'No, no liqueur for me.'
'Well, coffee then. Here, waiter.'
Neville struggled for some minutes. He utterly failed to gain the ear of the waiters.
'Let's go, Beauty,' said Victoria. 'I don't want any coffee. No, really, I'd rather not. I can't sleep if I take it.'
The couple walked up Regent Street, then along Piccadilly. Neville held Victoria's arm. He had slipped his fingers under the long glove. She did not withdraw her arm. His touch tickled her senses to quiescence if not to satisfaction. They turned into the Park. Just behind the statue of Achilles they stepped upon the grass and at once Neville threw his arm round Victoria. It was a little chilly; mist was rising from the grass. The trees stood blackly out of it, as if sawn off a few feet from the ground. Neville stopped. A little smile was on his lips.
'Beauty boy,' said Victoria.
He drew her towards him and kissed her. He kissed her on the forehead, then on the cheek, for he was a sybarite, in matters of love something of an artist, just behind the ear, then passionately on the lips. Victoria closed her eyes and threw one arm round his neck. She felt exhilarated, as if gently warmed. They walked further westwards, and with every step the fog thickened.
'Let's stop, Beauty,' said Victoria, after they had rather suddenly walked up to a thicket. 'We'll get lost in the wilderness.'
'And wilderness were paradise enow,' murmured Neville in her ear.
Victoria did not know the hackneyed line. It sounded beautiful to her. She laughed nervously and let Neville draw her down by his side on the grass.
'Oh, let me go, Beauty,' she whispered. 'Suppose someone should come.'
Neville did not answer. He had clasped her to him. His lips were more insistent on hers. She felt his hand on her breast.
'Oh, no, no, Beauty, don't, please don't,' she said weakly.
For some minutes she lay passive in his grasp. He had undone the back of her blouse. His hand,cold and dry, had slipped along her shoulder, seeking warmth.
Slowly his clasp grew harder; he used his weight. Victoria bent under it. Something like faintness came over her.
'Victoria, Victoria, my darling.' The voice seemed far away. She was giving way more and more. Not a blade of grass shuddered under its shroud of mist. From the road came the roar of a motorbus, like a muffled drum. Then she felt the damp of the grass on her back through the opening of her blouse.
A second later she was sitting up. She had thrust Neville away with a savage push under the chin. He seized her once more. She fought him, seeing nothing to struggle with but a silent dark shadow.
'No, Beauty, no, you mustn't,' she panted.
They were standing then, both of them.
'Vic, darling, why not?' pleaded Neville gently, still holding her hand.
'I don't know. Oh, no, really I can't, Beauty.'
She did not know it, but generations of clean living were fighting behind her, driving back and crushing out the forces of nature. She did not know that, like most women, she was not a free being but the great-granddaughter of a woman whose forbears had taught her that illegal surrender is evil.
'I'm sorry, Beauty, . . . it's my fault,' she said.
'Oh, don't mention it,' said Neville icily, dropping her hand. 'You're playing with me, that's all.'
'I'm not,' said Victoria, tears of excitement in her eyes. 'Oh, Beauty, don't you understand. We women, we can't do what we like. It's so hard. We're poor, and life is so dull and we wish we were dead. And then a man comes like you and the only thing he can offer, we mustn't take it.'
'But why, why?' asked Beauty.
'I don't know,' said Victoria. 'We mustn't. Atany rate I mustn't. My freedom is all I've got and I can't give it up to you like that. I like you, you know that, don't you, Beauty?'
Neville did not answer.
'I do, Beauty. But I can't, don't you see. If I were a rich woman it would be different. I'd owe nobody anything. But I'm poor; it'd pull me down and . . . when a woman's down, men either kick or kiss her.'
Neville shrugged his shoulders.
'Let's go,' he said.
Silently, side by side, they walked out of the park.
Octoberwas dying, its russet tints slowly merging into grey. Thin mists, laden with fine specks of soot, had penetrated into the 'Rosebud.' Victoria, in her black business dress, under which she now had to wear a vest which rather killed the tip-drawing power of her openwork blouse, was setting her tables, quickly crossing red cloths over white, polishing the glasses, arranging knives and forks in artistic if inconvenient positions. It was ten o'clock, but business had not begun, neither Mr Stein nor Butty having arrived.
'Cold, ain't it?' remarked Gertie.
'Might be colder,' said Bella Prodgitt.
Victoria came towards them, carrying a trayful of cruets.
''Ow's Beauty?' asked Gertie.
Victoria passed by without a word. This romance had not added to the popularity of the chairman's favourite. Cora and Gladys were busy dusting the counter and polishing the urns. Lottie, in front of a wall glass, was putting the finishing touches to the set of her cap. The door opened to let in Mr Stein, strapped tight in his frock coat, his top hat set far back on his bullet head. He glared for a moment at the staff in general, then without a word took a letter addressed to him from a rack bearing several addressed to customers, and passed into the cash desk. The girls resumed their polishing more busily. Quickly the night wrappings fell from thechandeliers; the rosebud baskets were teased into shape; the tables, loaded swiftly with their sets, grew more becoming. Victoria, passing from table to table set on each a small vase full of chrysanthemums.
'I say, Gladys, look at Stein,' whispered Cora to her neighbour. Gladys straightened herself from under the counter and followed the direction of Cora's finger.
'Lord,' she said, 'what's up?'
Bella's attention was attracted. She too was interested in her bovine way. Mr Stein's attitude was certainly unusual. He held a sheet of paper in one hand, his other hand clutching at his cheek so hard as to make one of his eyes protrude. Both his eyes were fixed on the sheet of paper, incredulous and horror-stricken.
'I say, Vic, what's the matter with the little swine?' suddenly said Lottie, who had at length noticed him.
Victoria looked. Stein had not moved. For some seconds all the girls gazed spellbound at the frozen figure in the cashbox. The silence of tragedy was on them, a silence which arrests gesture and causes hearts to beat.
'Lord, I can't stick this,' whispered Cora, 'there's something wrong.' Quickly diving under the counter flap she ran towards the pay box where Stein still sat unmoving, as if petrified. The little group of girls watched her. Bella's stertorous breathing was plainly heard.
Cora opened the glass door and seized Stein by the arm.
'What's the matter, Mr Stein?' she said excitedly, 'are you feeling queer?'
Stein started like a somnambulist suddenly awakened and looked at her stupidly, then at the motionless girls in the shop.
'Nein, nein, lassen sie doch,' he muttered.
'Mr Stein, Mr Stein,' half-screamed Cora.
'Oh, get out, I'm all right, but the game's up. He's gone. The game's up I tell up. The game's up.'
Cora looked at him round-eyed. Mr Stein's idioms frightened her almost more than his German.
Stein was babbling, speaking louder and louder.
'Gone away, Burton. Bankrupt and got all the cash. . . . See? You get the sack. Starve. So do I and my vife. . . . Ach, ach, ach, ach. Mein Gott, Mein Gott, was solls. . . .'
Gertie watched from the counter with a heightened colour. Lottie and Victoria, side by side, had not moved. A curious chill had seized Victoria, stiffening her wrists and knees. Stein was talking quicker and quicker, with a voice that was not his.
'Ach, the damned scoundrel . . . the schweinehund . . . he knew the business was going to the dogs, ach, schweinehund, schweinehund. . . .' He paused. Less savage his thoughts turned to his losses. 'Two hundred shares he sold me. . . . I paid a premium . . . they vas to go to four . . . ach, ach, ach. . . . I'm in the cart.'
Gertie sniggered gently. The idiom had swamped the tragedy. Stein looked round at the sound. His face had gone leaden; his greasy plastered hair was all awry.
'Vat you laughing at, gn?' he asked savagely, suddenly resuming his managerial tone.
'Take it we're bust, ain't we?' said Gertie, stepping forward jauntily.
Stein lifted, then dropped one hand.
'Yes,' he said, 'bust.'
'Thank you for a week's wages, Mr Stein,' said Gertie, 'and I'll push off, if yer don't mind.'
Stein laughed harshly. With a theatrical movement he seized the cash drawer by the handle, drew it out and flung it on the floor. It was empty.
'Oh, that's 'ow it is,' said Gertie. 'You're a finegentleman, I don't think. Bloomin' lot of skunks. What price that, mate?' she screamed addressing Bella, who still sat in her chair, her cheeks rising and falling like the sides of a cuttlefish. ''Ere's a fine go. Fellers comes along and tikes in poor girls like me and you and steals the bread outer their mouths. I'll 'ave yer run in, yer bloody foreigner.' She waved her fist in the man's face. 'For two pins,' she screamed, 'I'd smash yer fice, I'd. . . .'
'Chuck it, Gertie,' said Lottie, suddenly taking her by the arm, 'don't you see he's got nothing to do with it?'
'Oh, indeed, Miss Mealymouth,' sneered Gertie, 'what I want is my money . . . .'
'Leave him alone, Gertie,' said Victoria, 'you can't kick a man when he's down.'
Gertie looked as if she were about to explode. Then the problem became too big for her. In her little Cockney brain the question was insolubly revolving: 'Can you kick a man when he's down. . .? Can you kick. . .?'
Mr Stein passed his hand over his forehead. He was pulling himself together.
'Close de door, Cora,' he commanded. 'Now then, the company's bankrupt, there's nothing in the cashbox. You get the push. . . . I get the push.' His voice broke slightly. His face twitched. 'You can go. Get another job.' He looked at Gertie.
'Put down your address. I give it to the police. You get something for wages.' He slowly turned away and sat down on a chair, his eyes fixed on the wall.
There was a repressed hubbub of talking. Then Gertie made the first move and went up to the change room. She came back a minute or two later in her long coat and large hat, carrying a parcel which none noticed as being rather large for a comb. It contained the company's cap and apron which, thought she, she might as well save from the wreck.
Gertie shook hands with Cora. 'See yer ter-night,' she said airily, 'same old place; 'bye Miss Prodgitt, 'ope "Force" 'll lift you out of this.' She shook hands with Victoria, a trifle coldly, kissed Lottie, threw one last malevolent look at Stein's back. The door closed behind her. She had passed out of the backwater into the main stream.
Lottie, a little self consciously, pulled down the pink blinds, in token of mourning. The 'Rosebud' hung broken on its stalk. Then, silently, she went up into the change room, followed by Cora; a pace behind came Victoria, all heavy with gloom. They dressed silently. Cora, without a word, kissed them both, collected her small possessions into a reticule, then shook hands with both and kissed them again. The door closed behind her. When Lottie and Victoria went down into the shop, Cora also had passed into the main stream. Gladys had gone with her.
The two girls hesitated for a moment as to whether they should speak to Stein. It was almost dark, for the October light was too weak to filter through the thick pink blinds. Lottie went up to the dark figure.
'Cheer up,' she said kindly, 'it's a long lane that has no turning.'
Stein looked up uncomprehendingly, then sank his head into his hands.
As Lottie and Victoria turned once more, the front door open behind them, all they saw was Bella Prodgitt, lymphatic as ever, motionless on her chair, like a watcher over the figure of the man silently mourning his last hopes.
As they passed into the street the fresh air quickened by the coming cold of winter, stung their blood to action. The autumn sunlight, pale like the faded gold of hair that age has silvered, threw faint shadows on the dry white pavements where little whirlwinds of dust chased and figured like swallows on the wing.
Lottie and Victoria walked quickly down the city streets. It was half-past eleven, a time when, the rush of the morning over, comparative emptiness awaits the coming of the midday crowds; every minute they were stopped by the blocks of drays and carriages which come in greater numbers in the road as men grow fewer on the pavements. The unaccustomed liberty of the hour did not strike them; for depression, a sense of impotence before fatality, was upon them. Indeed, they did not pause until they reached on the Embankment the spot where the two beautiful youths prepare to fasten on one another their grip of bronze. They sat down upon a seat and for a while remained silent.
'What are you going to do? Lottie?' asked Victoria.
'Look out for another job, of course,' said Lottie.
'In the same line?' said Victoria.
'I'll try that first,' replied Lottie, 'but you know I'm not particular. There's all sorts of shops. Nice soft little jobs at photographers, and manicuring showrooms, I don't mind.'
Victoria, with the leaden weight of former days pressing on her, envied Lottie's calm optimism. She seemed so capable. But so far as she herself was concerned, she did not feel sure that the 'other job' would so easily be found. Indeed the memory of her desperate hunt for work wrapped itself round her, cold as a shroud.
'But what if you can't get one,' she faltered.
'Oh, that'll be all right,' said Lottie, airily. 'I can live with my married sister for a bit, but I'll find a job somehow. That doesn't worry me. What are you thinking of?'
'I don't know,' said Victoria slowly, 'I must look out I suppose.'
'Hard up?' asked Lottie.
'No, not exactly,' said Victoria. 'I'm not rolling in wealth, you know, but I can manage.'
'Well, don't you go and get stranded or anything,' said Lottie. 'It doesn't do to be proud. It's not much I can do, but anyhow you let me know if—' She paused. Victoria put her hand on hers.
'You're a bit of all right, Lottie,' she said softly, her feelings forming naturally into the language of her adopted class. For a few minutes the girls sat hand in hand.
'Well, I'd better be going,' said Lottie. 'I'm going to my married sister at Highgate first. Time enough to look about this afternoon.'
The two girls exchanged addresses. Victoria watched her friend's slim figure grow smaller and slimmer under her crown of pale hair, then almost fade away, merge into men and women and suddenly vanish at a turn, swallowed up. With a little shiver she got up and walked away quickly towards the west. She was lonely suddenly, horribly so. One by one, all the links of her worldly chain had snapped. Burton, the sensual brute, was gone; Stein was perhaps sitting still numb and silent in the darkened shop; Gertie, flippant and sharp, had sailed forth on life's ocean, there to be tossed like a cork and like a cork to swim; now Lottie was gone, cool and confident, to dangers underrated and unknown. She stood alone.
As she reached Westminster Bridge a strange sense of familiarity overwhelmed her. A well-known figure was there and it was horribly symbolical. It was the old vagrant of bygone days, sitting propped up against the parapet, clad in his filthy rags. From his short clay pipe, at long intervals, he puffed wreaths of smoke into the blue air.
Therusset of October had turned into the bleak darkness of December. The threat of winter was in the air; it hissed and sizzled in the bare branches as they bent in the cold wind, shaking quivering drops of water broadcast as if sowing the seeds of pain. Victoria stopped for a moment on the threshold of the house in Star Street, looked up and down the road. It was black and sodden with wet; the pavement was greasy and glistening, flecked with cabbage stalks and orange peel. Then she looked across at the small shop where, though it was Sunday, a tailor sat cross-legged almost on a level with the street, painfully collecting with weary eyes the avaricious light. His back was bowed with habit; that and his bandy legs told of his life and revealed his being. In the street, when he had time to walk there, boys mocked his shuffling gate, thus paying popular tribute to the marks of honest toil.
Victoria stepped down to the pavement. A dragging sensation made her look at her right boot. The sole was parting from the upper, stitch by stitch. With something that was hardly a sigh Victoria put her foot down again and slowly walked away. She turned into Edgware Road, followed it northwards for a while, then doubled sharply back into Praed Street where she lingered awhile before an old curiosity shop. She looked between two prints into the shop where, in the darkness, she could see nothing. Yet she looked at nothingness for quite a long while.Then, listlessly, she followed the street, turned back through a square and stopped before a tiny chapel almost at the end of Star Street. The deity that follows with passionless eyes the wanderer in mean streets knew from her course that this woman had no errand; without emotion the Being snipped a few minutes from her earthly span.
By the side of the chapel sat an aged woman smothered in rags so many and so thick that she was passing well clad. She was hunched up on a camp stool, all string and bits of firewood. A small stove carrying an iron tray told that her trade was selling roasted chestnuts; nothing moved in the group; the old woman's face was brown and cracked as her own chestnuts and there was less life in her than in the warm scent of the roasting fruits which gratefully filled Victoria's nostrils.
The eight weeks which now separated Victoria from the old days at the 'Rosebud' had driven deeper yet into her soul her unimportance. She was powerless before the world; indeed, when she thought of it at all, she no longer likened herself to a cork tossed in the storm, but to a pebble sunken and motionless in the bed of a flowing river.
Upon the day which followed her sudden uprooting Victoria had bent her back to the task of finding work. She had known once more the despairing search through the advertisement columns of theDaily Telegraph, the skilful winnowing of chaff from wheat, sudden and then baffled hopes. Her new professional sense had taken her to the shops where young women are wanted to enhance the attraction of coffee and cigarettes. But the bankruptcy of the 'Rosebud' was not an isolated case. The dishonesty of Burton was not its cause but its consequence; the ship was sinking under his feet when he deserted it after loading himself with such booty as he could carry. Victoria had discovered grimly that the firstresult of a commercial crisis is the submerging of those whose labours create a commercial boom. Within a week of the 'Rosebud' disaster the eleven City cafés of the 'Lethe, Ltd.' had closed their doors. Two small failures in the West End were followed by a greater crash. The 'People's Restaurants, Ltd.', eaten out by the thousand depots of the 'Refreshment Rendezvous, Ltd.,' had filed a voluntary petition for liquidation; the official liquidator had at once inaugurated a policy of 'retrenchment and sound business management,' and, as a beginning, closed two hundred shops in the City and West End. He proposed to exploit the suburbs, and, after a triumphant amalgamation with the victorious 'Refreshment Rendezvous,' to retire from law into peaceful directorships and there collect innumerable guineas.
Victoria had followed the convulsion with passionate interest. For a week the restaurant slump had been the fashion. The manager of every surviving café in London had given it as his deliberate opinion that trade would be all the better for it. The financial papers published grave warnings as to the dangers of the restaurant business, to which the Stock Exchange promptly responded by marking up the prices of the survivors' shares. The Socialist papers had eloquently pleaded for government assistance for the two thousand odd displaced girls; a Cabinet Minister had marred his parliamentary reputation by endeavouring to satisfy one wing of his party that the tearoom at South Kensington Museum was not a Socialistic venture and the other wing that it was an institution leading up to State ownership of the trade. A girl discharged from the 'Lethe' had earned five guineas by writing a thousand words in a hated but largely read daily paper. The interest had been kept up by the rescue of a P.R. girl who had jumped off Waterloo Bridge. Another P.R. girl, fired byexample, had been more successful in the Lea. This valuable advertisement enabled the Relief Fund to distribute five shillings a head to many young persons who had been waitresses at some time or another; there were rumours of a knighthood for its energetic promoter.
It was in the midst of this welter that Victoria had found herself cast, with her newly acquired experience a drug in the market, and all the world inclined to look upon her as a kind of adventuress. Her employer's failure was in a sense her failure, and she was handy to blame. For three weeks she had doggedly continued her search for work, applying first of all in the smart tea-rooms of the West, and every day she became more accustomed to being turned away. Her soul hardened to rebuffs as that of a beggar who learns to bear stoically the denial of alms. After vainly trying the best Victoria had tried the worst, but everywhere the story was the same. Every small restaurant keeper was drawing his horns in, feverishly casting up trial balances; some of them in their panic had damaged their credit by trying to arrange with their banks for overdrafts they would never need. The slump was such that they did not believe that the public would continue to eat and drink; they retrenched employees instead of trying to carve success out of other men's disasters.
Victoria, her teeth set, had faced the storm. She now explored districts and streets systematically, almost house by house. And when her spirit broke at the end of the week, as her perpetual walks, the buffeting of rain and wind soiled her clothing, broke breaches into her boots, chapped her hands as glove seams gave way, the only thing that could brace her up was the shrinkage of her hoard by a sovereign. She placed the coin on the mantlepiece after counting the remainder. Monday morning saw it reduced toeleven shillings and sixpence. When the crisis came she had taken in sail by exchanging into the second floor back, then fortunately vacant, thus saving three shillings in rent.
The sight of her melting capital was a horror which she faced only once a week, for at other times she thrust the thought away, but it intruded every time with greater insistence. Untrained still in economy she found it impossible to reduce her expenditure below a pound. After paying off the mortgage of eight and sixpence for her room and breakfast, she had to set aside three shillings for fares, for she dared not wade overmuch in the December mud. The manageress of a cafe lost in Marylebone had heard her kindly, but had looked at her boots plastered with mud, then at the dirty fringes of her petticoats and said, regretfully almost, that she would not do. That day had cost Victoria a pound almost wrenched out of the money drawer. But this wardrobe though an asset, was an incubus, and Victoria at times often hated it, for it cost so much in omnibus fares that she paid for it every day in food stolen from her body.
By the end of the seventh week Victoria had reduced her hoard to four pounds. She now applied for work like an automaton, often going twice to the same shop without realising it, at other times sitting for hours on a park seat until the drizzle oozed from her hair into her neck. At the end of the seventh week she had so lost consciousness of the world that she walked all through the Sunday gloom without food. Then, at eight o'clock, awakening suddenly to her need, she gorged herself with suet pudding at an eating house in the Edgware Road, came back to Star Street and fell into a heavy sleep.
About four she was aroused by horrible sickness which left her weak, every muscle relaxed and every nerve strained to breaking point. Shapes blacker than the night floated before her eyes; every passingmilk cart rattled savagely through her beating temples; twitchings at her ankles and wrists, and the hurried beat of her heart shook the whole of her body. She almost writhed on her bed, up and down, as if forcibly thrown or goaded.
As the December dawn struggled through her window, diffusing over the white wall the light of the condemned cell, she could bear it no more. She got up, washed horrible bitterness from her mouth, clots from her eyes. Then, swaying with weariness and all her pulses beating, she strayed into the street, unseeing, her boots unbuttoned, into the daily struggle.
As the blind man unguided, or the poor on the march, she went into the East, now palely glowing over the chimney pots. She did not feel her weariness. Her feet did not belong to her; she felt as if her whole body were one gigantic wound vaguely aching under the chloroform. She walked without intention, and as towards no goal. At Oxford Circus she stopped. Her eye had unconsciously been arrested by the posters which the newsvendor was deftly glueing down on the pavement. The crude colours of the posters, red, green, yellow, shocked her sluggish mind into action. One spoke of a great reverse in Nubia; another repeated the information and added a football cup draw. A third poster, blazing red, struck such a blow at Victoria that, for a wild moment, her heart seemed to stop. It merely bore the words:
P. R.REOPENS
Victoria read the two lines five or six times, first dully, then in a whirl of emotion. Her blood seemed to go hot and tingle; the twitchings of her wrists and ankles grew insistent. With her heart pounding with excitement she asked for the paper in a choked voice, refusing the halfpenny change. Backing astep or two she opened the paper. A sheet dropped into the mud.
The newsvendor, grizzled and sunburnt right into the wrinkles, picked up the sheet and looked at her wonderingly. From the other side a corpulent policeman watched her with faint interest, reading her like a book. He did not need to be told that Victoria was out of work; her face showed that hope had come into her life.
Victoria read every detail greedily. The enterprising liquidator had carried through the amalgamation of the People's Restaurants and the Refreshment Rendezvous, and created the People's Refreshment Rendezvous. He had done this so quietly and suddenly that the effect was a thunderbolt. He had forestalled the decision of the Court, so that agreements had been ready and signed on the Saturday evening, while leave had obscurely been granted on the Friday. Being master of the situation the liquidator was re-opening fifty-five of the two hundred closed shops. The paper announced his boast that 'by ten o'clock on Monday morning fifty-five P. R. R.'s would be flying the flag of the scone and cross buns.' The paper also hailed this pronouncement as Napoleonic.
Victoria feverishly read the list of the rescued depots. They were mainly in Oxford Street and Bloomsbury. Indeed, one of them was in Princes Street. A flood of clarity seemed to come over Victoria's brain. It was impossible for the P. R. or P. R. R. or whatever it had become, to have secured a staff on the Sunday. No doubt they proposed to engage it on the spot and to rush the organisation into working order so as to capture at the outset thesuccès de curiositéwhich every London daily was beating up in the breast of a million idle men and women. Clutching the paper in her hand she ran across Oxford Street almost under the wheels of amotor lorry. She turned into Princes Street, and hurled herself against the familiar door, clutching at the handle.
There was another girl leaning against the door. She was tall and slim. Her fair hair went to sandiness. Her black coat was dusty and stained. Her large blue eyes started from her colourless face, pale lipped, hollow under the cheekbones. Victoria recovered her breath and put her hair straight feverishly. A short dark girl joined the group, pressing her body close against them. Then two more. Then, one by one, half a dozen. Victoria discovered that her boots were undone, and bent down to do them up with a hairpin. As she struggled with numb fingers her rivals pressed upon her with silent hostility. As she straightened herself, the throng suddenly thrust her away from the door. Victoria recovered herself and drove against them gritting her teeth. The fair girl was ground against her; but Victoria, full of her pain and bread lust, thrust her elbow twice into the girl's breast. She felt something like the rage of battle upon her and its joy as the bone entered the soft flesh like a weapon.
'Now then, steady girls,' said the voice of the policeman, faint like a dream voice.
'Blime, ain't they a 'ot lot!' said another dream voice, a loafer's.
The crowd once more became orderly. Though quite a hundred girls had now collected hardly any spoke. In every face there was tenseness, though the front ranks showed most ferocity in their eyes and the late-comers most weariness.
'Where you shovin'?' asked a sulky voice.
There was a mutter that might have been a curse. Then silence once more; and the girls fiercely watched for their bread, looking right and left like suspicious dogs. A spruce young warehouseman slowly reviewed the girls and allowed his eyes to linger approvinglyon one or two. He winked approvingly at the fair girl but she did not respond. She stood flat against the door, every inch of her body spread so as to occupy as much space as she could.