Throughall these anxious times, Betty watched over Victoria with the devotion that is born of love. There was in the girl a reserve of maternal sweetness equalled only by the courage she showed every day. Slim and delicate as she seemed, there was in Betty's thin body a strength all nervous but enduring. She did not complain, though driven eleven or twelve hours a day by the eyes of the manageress; those eyes were sharp as a goad, but she went cheerfully.
In a sense Betty was happy. The work did not weigh too heavily upon her; there was so much humility in her that she did not resent the roughness of her companions. Nelly could snub her, trample at times on her like the cart horse she was; the manageress too could freeze her with a look, the kitchen staff disregard her humble requests for teas and procure for her the savage bullying of the customers, yet she remained placid enough.
'It's a hard life,' she once said to Victoria, 'but I suppose it's got to be.' This was her philosophy.
'But don't you want to get out of it?' cried Victoria the militant.
'I don't know,' said Betty. 'I might marry.'
'Marry,' sniffed Victoria. 'You seem to think marriage is the only way out for women.'
'Well, isn't it?' asked Betty. 'What else is there?'
And for the life of her Victoria could not find another occupation for an unskilled girl. Milliners,dressmakers, clerks, typists, were all frightfully underpaid and overworked; true there were women doctors, but who cared to employ them? And teachers, but they earned the wages of virtue: neglect. Besides it was too late; both Victoria and Betty were unskilled, condemned by their sex to low pay and hard work.
'It's frightful, frightful,' cried Victoria. 'The only use we are is to do the dirty work. Men don't char. Of course we may marry, if we can, to any of those gods if they'll share with us their thirty bob a week. Talk of slaves! They're better off than we.'
Betty looked upon all this as rather wild, as a consequence of Victoria's illness. Her view was that it didn't do to complain, and that the only thing to do was to make the best of it. But she loved Victoria, and it was almost a voluptous joy for her to help her friend to undress every night, to tempt her with little offerings of fruit and flowers. When they woke up, Betty would draw her friend into her arms and cover her face with gentle kisses.
But as Victoria grew worse, stiffer, and slower, responding ever more reluctantly to the demands made upon her all day at the P. R. R., Betty was conscious of horrible anxiety. Sometimes her imagination would conjure up a Victoria helpless, wasted, bedridden, and her heart seemed to stop. But her devotion was proof against egoism. Whatever happened, Victoria should not starve if she had to pay the rent and feed herself on nine shillings or so a week until she was well again and beautiful as she had been. Her anxiety increasing, she mustered up courage to interview Farwell, whom she hated jealously. He had ruined Victoria, she thought—made her wild, discontented, rebellious against the incurable. Yet he knew her, and at any rate she must talk about it to somebody. So she mustered up courage to ask him to meet at nine.
'Well?' said Farwell. He did not like Betty much. He included her among the poor creatures, the rubble.
'Oh, Mr Farwell, what's going to happen to Victoria,' cried Betty, with tears in her voice. Then she put her hand against the railings of Finsbury Circus. She had prepared a dignified little speech, and her suffering had burst from her. The indignity of it.
'Happen? The usual thing in these cases. She'll get worse; the veins will burst and she'll be crippled for life.'
Betty looked at him, her eyes blazing with rage.
'How dare you, how dare you?' she growled.
Farwell laughed.
'My dear young lady,' he said smoothly, 'it needs no doctor to tell you what is wanted. Victoria must stop work, lie up, be well fed, live in the country perhaps and her spirits must be raised. To this effect I would suggest a pretty house, flowers, books, some music, say a hundred-guinea grand piano, some pretty pictures. So that she may improve in health it is desirable that she should have servants. These may gain varicose veins by waiting on her, but that is by the way.'
Betty was weeping now. Tear after tear rolled down her cheeks.
'But all this costs money,' continued Farwell, 'and, as you are aware, bread is very dear and flesh and blood very cheap. Humanity finds the extraction of gold a toilsome process, whilst the production of children is a normal recreation which eclipses even the charms of alcohol. There, my child, you have the problem; and there is only one radical solution to it.'
Betty looked at him, intuitively guessing the horrible suggestion.
'The solution,' said Farwell, 'is to complain to the doctor of insomnia, get him to prescribe laudanumand sink your capital in the purchase of half a pint. One's last investment is generally one's best.'
'Oh, I can't bear it, I can't bear it,' wailed Betty. 'She's so beautiful, so clever.'
'Ah, yes,' said Farwell in his dreamy manner, 'but then you see when a woman doesn't marry. . . .' He broke off, his eyes fixed on the grey pavement. 'The time will come, Betty, when the earth will be not only our eternal bed, but the fairy land where joyful flowers will grow. Ah! it will be joyful, joyful, this crop of flowers born from seas of blood.'
'But, now, now, what can we do with her?' cried Betty.
'I have no other suggestion if she will not fight,' growled Farwell in his old manner. 'She must sink or swim. If she sinks she's to blame, I suppose. In a world of pirates and cut-throats she will have elected to be a saint, and the martyr's crown will be hers. If suicide is not to her taste, I would recommend her to resort to what is called criminal practices. Being ill, she has magnificent advantages if she wishes to start business as a begging-letter writer; burglary is not suitable for women, but there are splendid openings for confidence tricksters and shoplifting would be a fine profession if it were not overcrowded by the upper middle classes.'
Betty dabbed her eyes vigorously. Her mouth tightened. She looked despairingly at the desolate half circle of London Wall Buildings and Salisbury House. Then she gave Farwell her hand for a moment and hurriedly walked away. As she entered the attic the candle was still burning. Victoria was in bed and had forgotten it; she had already fallen into stertorous sleep.
Next morning Victoria got up and dressed silently. She did not seem any worse; and with this Betty was content, though she only got short answers to her questions. All that day Victoria seemed well enough.She walked springily; at times she exchanged a quick joke with a customer. She laughed even when a young man, carried away for a moment beyond the spirit of food which reigned supreme in the P.R.R., touched her hand and looked into her eyes.
As the afternoon wore Victoria felt creeping over her the desperate weariness of the hour.
At a quarter to six she made up her checks. There was a shortfall of one and a penny.
'How do you account for it?' asked the manageress.
'Sure I don't know, Miss,' said Victoria helplessly. 'I always give checks. Somebody must have slipped out without paying.'
'Possibly.' The manageress grew more tense faced than ever. Her bust expanded. 'I don't care. Of course you know the rule. You pay half and the desk pays half.'
'I couldn't help it, Miss,' said Victoria miserably. Sixpence halfpenny was a serious loss.
'No more could I. I think I can tell you how it happened, though,' said the manageress with a vague smile. 'I'm an old hand. A customer of yours had a tuck out for one and a penny. You gave him a check. Look at the foil and you'll see.'
'Yes, Miss, here it is,' said Victoria anxiously.
'Very well. Then he went upstairs on the Q.T. and had a cup of coffee. Follow!'
'Yes, Miss.'
'One of the girls gave him a twopenny check. Then he went out and handed in the twopenny check. He kept the other one in his pocket.'
'Oh, Miss. . . . it's stealing,' Victoria gasped.
'It is. But there it is, you see.'
'But it's not my fault, Miss; if you had a pay box at the top of the stairs, I don't say. . . .'
'Oh, we can't do that,' said the manageress icily, 'they would cost a lot to build and extra staff andwe must keep down expenses, you know. Competition is very keen in this trade.'
Victoria felt stunned. The incident was as full of revelations as Lizzie's practices at the desk. The girls cheated the customers, the customers the girls. And the P.R.R. sitting olympian on its pillar of cloud, exacted from all its dividends. The P.R.R. suddenly loomed up before Victoria's eyes as a big swollen monster in whose veins ran China tea. And from its nostrils poured forth torrents of coffee-scented steam. It grew and grew, and fed men and women, every now and then extending a talon and seizing a few young girls with sore legs, a rival café or two. Then it vanished. Victoria was looking at one of the large plated urns.
'All right,' she said sullenly, 'I'll pay.'
As it was her day off, at six o'clock Victoria went up to the change room, saying good-night to Betty, telling her she was going out to get some fresh air. She thought it would do her good, so rode on a bus to the Green Park. Round her, in Piccadilly, a tide of rich life seemed to rise redolent with scent, soft tobacco, moist furs, all those odours that herald and follow wealth. A savagery was upon her as she passed along the club windows, now full of young men telling tales that made their teeth shine in the night, of old men, red, pink, brown, healthy in colour and in security, reading, sleeping, eking out life.
The picture was familiar; for it was the picture she had so often seen when, as a girl, she came up to town from Lympton for a week to shop in Oxford Street and see, from the upper boxes, the three or four plays recommended byHearth and Home. Piccadilly had been her Mecca. It had represented mysterious delights, restaurants, little teashops, jewellers, makers of cunning cases for everything. She had never been well-off enough to shop there, but had gazed into its windows and bought the nearest imitations in OxfordStreet. Then the clubs had been, if not familiar, at any rate friendly. She had once with her mother called at the In and Out to ask for a general. He was dead now, and so was Piccadilly.
Victoria remembered without joy: a sign of total flatness, for the mind that does not glow at the thought of the glamorous past is dulled indeed. Piccadilly struck her now rather as a show and a poor one, a show of the inefficients basking, of the wretched shuffling by. And the savagery that was upon her waxed fat. Without ideals of ultimate brotherhood or love she could not help thinking, half amused, of the dismay that would come over London if a bomb were suddenly to raze to the ground one of these shrines of men.
The bus stopped in a block just opposite one of the clubs; and Victoria, from the off-side seat, could see across the road into one of the rooms. There were in it a dozen men of all ages, most of them standing in small groups, some already in evening-dress; some lolled on enormous padded chairs reading, and, against the mantlepiece where a fire burned brightly, a youth was telling an obviously successful story to a group of oldsters. Their ease, their conviviality and facile friendship stung Victoria; she felt an outcast. What had she now to do with these men? They would not know her. Their sphere was their father's sphere, by right of birth and wealth, not hers who had not the right of wealth. Besides, perhaps some were shareholders in the P.R.R. Painfully shambling down the steps, Victoria got off the bus and entered the Green Park. She sat down on a seat under a tree just bursting into bud.
For many minutes she looked at the young grass, at the windows where lights were appearing, at a man seated near by and puffing rich blue smoke from his cigar. A loafer lay face down on the grass, like a bundle. Her moods altered between rage, as shelooked at the two men, and misery as she realised that her lot was cast with the wretch grovelling on the cold earth.
She noticed that the man with the cigar was watching her, but hardly looked at him. He was fat, that was all she knew. Her eyes once more fastened on the loafer. He had not fought the world; would she? and how? Now and then he turned a little in his sleep, dreaming perhaps of feasts in Cockayne, perhaps of the skilly he had tasted in gaol, of love perhaps, bright-eyed, master of the gates. It was cold, for the snap of winter was in the spring air; in the pale western sky the roofs loomed black. Already the dull glow of London light rose like a halo over the town. Victoria did not seem to feel the wind; she was a little numb, her legs felt heavy as lead. A gust of wind carried into her face a few drops of rain.
The man with the cigar got up, slowly passed her; there was something familiar in his walk. He turned so as to see her face in the light of a gas-lamp. Then he took three quick steps towards her. Her heart was already throbbing; she felt and yet did not know.
'Victoria,' said the man in a faint, far away voice.
Victoria gasped, put her hand on her heart, swaying on the seat. The man sat down by her side and took her hand.
'Victoria,' he said again. There was in his voice a rich quality.
'Oh, Major Cairns, Major Cairns,' she burst out. And clasping his hand between hers, she laid her face upon it. He felt all her body throb; there were tears on his hands. A man of the world, he very gently lifted up her chin and raised her to a sitting posture.
'There,' he said softly, still retaining her hands, 'don't cry, dear, all is well. Don't speak. I have found you.'
With all the gentleness of a heavy man he softly stroked her hands.
Twodays later Victoria was floating in the curious ether of the unusual. It was Sunday night. She was before a little table at one of those concealed restaurants in Soho where blows fragrant the wind of France. She was sitting in a softly cushioned arm chair, grateful to arms and back, her feet propped up on a footstool. Before her lay the little table, with its rough cloth, imperfectly clean and shining dully with brittania ware. There were flowers in a small mug of Bruges pottery; there was little light save from candles discreetly veiled by pink shades. The bill of fare, rigid on its metal stem, bore the two shilling table d'hôte and the more pretentious à la carte. An immense feeling of restfulness, so complete as to be positive was upon her. She felt luxurious and at large, at one with the other couples who sat near by, smiling, with possessive hands.
On the other side of the table sat Major Cairns. He had not altered very much except that he was stouter. His grey eyes still shone kindly from his rather gross face. Victoria could not make up her mind whether she liked him or not. When she met him in the park he had seemed beautiful as an archangel; he had been gentle too as big men mostly are to women, but now she could feel him examining her critically, noting her points, speculating on the change in her, wondering whether her ravaged beauty was greater and her neck softer than when he last held her in his arms off the coast of Araby.
Victoria had compacted for a quiet place. She could not, she felt, face the Pall Mall or Jermyn Street restaurants, their lights, wealth of silver and glass, their soft carpets, their silent waiters. The Major had agreed, for he knew women well and was not over-anxious to expose to the eyes of the town Victoria's paltry clothes. Now he had her before him he began to regret that he had not risked it. For Victoria had gained as much as she had lost in looks. Her figure had shrunk, but her neck was still beautifully moulded, broad as a pillar; her colour had gone down almost to dead white; the superfluous flesh had wasted away and had left bare the splendid line of the strong chin and jaw. Her eyes, however, were the magnet that held Cairns fast. They were as grey as ever, but dilated and thrown into contrast with the pale skin by the purple zone which surrounded them. They stared before them with a novel boldness, a strange lucidity.
'Victoria,' whispered Cairns leaning forward, 'you are very beautiful.'
Victoria laughed and a faint flush rose into her cheeks. There was still something grateful in the admiration of this man, gross and limited as he might be, centred round his pleasures, sceptical of good and evil alike. Without a word she took up a spoon and began to eat her ice. Cairns watched every movement of her hand and wrist.
'Don't,' said Victoria after a pause. She dropped her spoon and put her hands under the table.
'Don't what?' said Cairns.
'Look at my hands. They're . . . Oh, they're not what they were. It makes me feel ashamed.'
'Nonsense,' said Cairns with a laugh. 'Your hands are still as fine as ever and, when we've had them manicured. . . .'
He stopped abruptly as if he had said too much.
'Manicured?' said Victoria warily, though the 'we'had given her a little shock. 'Oh, they're not worth manicuring now for the sort of work I've got to do.'
'Look here, Victoria,' said Cairns rather roughly. 'This can't go on. You're not made to be one of the drabs. You say your work is telling on you: well, you must give it up.'
'Oh, I can't do that,' said Victoria, 'I've got to earn my living and I'm no good for anything else.'
Cairns looked at her for a moment and meditatively sipped his port.
'Drink the port,' he commanded, 'it'll do you good.'
Victoria obeyed willingly enough. There was already in her blood the glow of Burgundy; but the port, mellow, exquisite, and curling round the tongue, coloured like burnt almonds, fragrant too, concealed a deeper joy. The smoke from Cairns' cigar, half hiding his face, floating in wreaths between them, entered her nostrils, aromatic, narcotic.
'What are you thinking of doing now?' she asked.
'I don't know quite,' said Cairns. 'You see I broke my good resolution. After my job at Perim, they offered me some surveying work near Ormuz; they call it surveying, but it's spying really or it would be if there were anything to spy. I took it and rather enjoyed it.'
'Did you have any adventures?' asked Victoria.
'Nothing to speak of except expeditions into the hinterland trying to get fresh meat. The East is overrated, I assure you. A butr landed off our station once, probably intending to turn us into able-bodied slaves. There were only seven of us to their thirty but we killed ten with two volleys and they made off, parting with their anchor in their hurry.'
Cairns looked at Victoria. The flush had not died from her cheeks. She was good to look upon.
'No,' he went on more slowly, 'I don't quite know what I shall do. I meant to retire anyhow, youknow, and the sudden death of my uncle, old Marmaduke Cairns, settled it. I never expected to get a look in, but there was hardly anybody else to leave anything to, except his sisters whom he hated like poison, so I'm the heir. I don't yet know what I'm worth quite, but the old man always seemed to do himself pretty well.'
'I'm glad,' said Victoria. She was not. The monstrous stupidity of a system which suddenly places a man in a position enabling him to live on the labour of a thousand was obvious to her.
'I'm rather at a loose end,' said Cairns musing, 'you see I've had enough knocking about. But it's rather dull here, you know. I'm not a marrying man either.'
Victoria was disturbed. She looked at Cairns and met his eyes. There was forming in them a question. As she looked at him the expression faded and he signed to the waiter to bring the coffee.
As they sipped it they spoke little but inspected one another narrowly. Victoria told herself that if Cairns offered her marriage she would accept him. She was not sure that ideal happiness would be hers if she did; his limitations were more apparent to her than they had been when she first knew him. Yet the alternative was the P.R.R. and all that must follow.
Cairns was turning over in his mind the question Victoria had surprised. Though he was by no means cautious or shy, being a bold and good liver, he felt that Victoria's present position made it difficult to be sentimental. So they talked of indifferent things. But when they left the restaurant and drove towards Finsbury Victoria came closer to him; and, unconsciously almost, Cairns took her hand, which she did not withdraw. He leant towards her. His hand grew more insistent on her arm. She was passive, though her heart beat and fear was upon her.
'Victoria,' said Cairns, his voice strained and metallic.
She turned her face towards him. There was in it complete acquiescence. He passed one arm round her waist and drew her towards him. She could feel his chest crush her as he bent her back. His lips fastened on her neck greedily.
'Victoria,' said Cairns again, 'I want you. Come away from all this labour and pain; let me make you happy.'
She looked at him, a question in her eyes.
'As free man and woman,' he stammered. Then more firmly:
'I'll make you happy. You'll want nothing. Perhaps you'll even learn to like me.'
Victoria said nothing for a minute. The proposal did not offend her; she was too broken, too stupefied for her inherent prejudices to assert themselves. Morals, belief, reputation, what figments all these things. What was this freedom of hers that she should set so high a price on it? And here was comfort, wealth, peace—oh, peace. Yet she hesitated to plunge into the cold stream; she stood shivering on the edge.
'Let me think,' she said.
Cairns pressed her closer to him. A little of the flame that warmed his body passed into hers.
'Don't hurry me. Please. I don't know what to say. . . .'
He bent over with hungry lips.
'Yes, you may kiss me.'
Submissive, if frightened and repelled, yet with a heart where hope fluttered, she surrendered him her lips.
'I don'tapprove and I don't disapprove,' snarled Farwell. 'I'm not my sister's keeper. I don't pretend to think it noble of you to live with a man you don't care for, but I don't say you're wrong to do it.'
'But really,' said Victoria, 'if you don't think it right to do a thing, you must think it wrong.'
'Not at all. I am neutral, or rather my reason supports what my principles reject. Thus my principles may seem unreasonable and my reasoning devoid of principle, but I cannot help that.'
Victoria thought for a moment. She was about to take a great step and she longed for approval.
'Mr Farwell,' she said deliberately, 'I've come to the conclusion that you are right. We are crabs in a bucket and those at the bottom are no nobler than those on the top, for they would gladly be on the top. I'm going on the top.'
'Sophist,' said Farwell smiling.
'I don't know what that means,' Victoria went on; 'I suppose you think that I'm trying to cheat myself as to what is right. Possibly, but I don't profess to know what is right.'
'Oh, no more do I,' interrupted Farwell, 'please don't set me up as a judge. I haven't got any ethical standards for you. I don't believe there are any; the ethics of the Renaissance are not those of the twentieth century, nor are those of London the same as those of Constantinople. Time and space workmoral revolutions; and, even on stereotyped lines, nobody can say present ethics are the best. From a conventional point of view the hundred and fifty years that separate us from Fielding mark an improvement, but I have still to learn that the morals of to-day compare favourably with those of Sparta. You must decide that for yourself.'
'I am doing so,' said Victoria quietly, 'but I don't think you quite understand a woman's position and I want you to. I find a world where the harder a woman works, the worse she is paid, where her mind is despised and her body courted. Oh, I know, you haven't done that, but you don't employ women. Nobody but you has ever cared a scrap about such brains as I may have; the subs courted me in my husband's regiment. . . .' She stopped abruptly, having spoken too freely.
'Go on,' said Farwell tactfully.
'And in London what have I found? Nothing but men bent on one pursuit. They have followed me in the streets and tubes, tried to sit by me in the parks. They have tried to touch me—yes me! the dependent who could not resent it, when I served them with their food. Their talk is the inane, under which they cloak desire. Their words are covert appeals. I hear round me the everlasting cry: yield, yield, for that is all we want from young women.'
'True,' said Farwell, 'I have never denied this.'
'And yet,' answered Victoria angrily, 'you almost blame me. I tell you that I have never seen the world as I do now. Men have no use for us save as mistresses, whether legal or not. Perhaps they will have us as breeders or housekeepers, but the mistress is the root of it all. And if they can gain us without pledges, without risks, by promises, by force or by deceit, they will.'
Farwell said nothing. His eyes were full of sorrow.
'My husband drank himself to death,' pursuedVictoria in low tones. 'The proprietor of the Rosebud tried to force me to become his toy . . . perhaps he would have thrown me on the streets if he had had time to pursue me longer and if I refused myself still . . . because he was my employer and all is fair in what they call love . . . The customers bought every day for twopence the right to stare through my openwork blouse, to touch my hand, to brush my knees with theirs. One, who seemed above them, tried to break my body into obedience by force . . . Here, at the P.R.R. I am a toy still, though more of a servant . . . Soon I shall be a cripple and good neither for servant nor mistress, what will you do with me?'
Farwell made a despairing gesture with his hand.
'I tell you,' said Victoria with ferocious intensity. 'You're right, life's a fight and I'm going to win, for my eyes are clear. I have done with sentiment and sympathy. A man may command respect as a wage earner; a woman commands nothing but what she can cheat out of men's senses. She must be rich, she must be economically independent. Then men will crawl where they hectored, worship that which they burned. And if I must be dependent to become independent, that is a stage I am ready for.'
'What are you going to do?' asked Farwell.
'I'm going to live with this man,' said Victoria in a frozen voice. 'I neither love nor hate him. I am going to exploit him, to extort from him as much of the joy of life as I can, but above all I am going to draw from him, from others too if I can, as much wealth as I can. I will store it, hive it bee-like, and when my treasure is great enough I will consume it. And the world will stand by and shout: hallelujah, a rich woman cometh into her kingdom.'
Farwell remained silent for a minute.
'You are right,' he said, 'if you must choose, then be strong and carve your way into freedom. I have not done this, and the world has sucked me dry.You can still be free, so do not shrink from the means. You are a woman, your body is your fortune, your only fortune, so transmute it into gold. You will succeed, you will be rich; and the swine, instead of trampling on you, will herd round the trough where you scatter pearls.'
He stopped for a moment, slowly puffing at his pipe.
'Women's profession,' he muttered. 'The time will come . . . but to-day. . . .'
Victoria looked at him, a faint figure in the night. He was the spectral prophet, a David in fear of Goliath.
'Yes,' she said, 'woman's profession.'
Together they walked away. Farwell was almost soliloquising. 'If she is brave, life is easier for a woman than a man. She can play on him; but her head must be cool, her heart silent. Hear this, Victoria. Remember yours is a trade and needs your application. To win this fight you must be well equipped. Let your touch be soft as velvet, your grip as hard as steel. Shrink from nothing, rise to treachery, let the worldly nadir be your zenith.'
He stopped before a public house and opened the door of the bar a little.
'Look in here,' he said.
Victoria looked. There were five men, half hidden in smoke; among them sat one woman clad in vivid colours, her face painted, her hands dirty and covered with rings. Her yellow hair made a vivid patch against the brown wall. A yard away, alone at a small table, sat another woman, covered too with cheap finery, with weary eyes and a smiling mouth, her figure abandoned on a sofa, lost to the scene, her look fixed on the side door through which men slink in.
'Remember,' said Farwell, 'give no quarter in the struggle, for you will get none.'
Victoria shuddered. But the fury was upon her.
'Don't be afraid,' she hissed, 'I'll spare nobody. They've already given me a taste of the whip. I know, I understand; those girls don't. I see the goal before me and therefore I will reach it.'
Farwell looked at her again, his eyes full of melancholy.
'Go then, Victoria,' he said, 'and work out your fate.'
Victoriaturned uneasily on the sofa and stretched her arms. She yawned, then sat up abruptly. Sudermann'sKatzenstegfell to the ground off her lap. She was in a tiny back room, so overcrowded by the sofa and easy-chair that she could almost touch a small rosewood bureau opposite. She looked round the room lazily, then relapsed on the sofa, hugging a cushion. She snuggled her face into it, voluptuously breathing in its compactness laden with scent and tobacco smoke. Then, looking up, she reflected that she was very comfortable.
Victoria's boudoir was the back extension of the dining-room. Shut off by the folding doors, it contained within its tiny space the comfort which is only found in small rooms. It was papered red with a flowered pattern, which she thought ugly, but which had just been imported from France and was quite the thing. The sofa and easy-chair were covered with obtrusively new red and white chintz; a little pile of cushions had fallen on the indeterminate Persian pattern of the carpet. Long coffee-coloured curtains, banded with chintz, shut out part of the high window, through which a little of the garden and the bare branches of a tree could be seen. Victoria took all this in for the hundredth time. She had been sleeping for an hour; she felt smooth, stroked; she could have hugged all these pretty things, the little brass fender, the books, the Delft inkpot on the little bureau. Everything in the roomwas already intimate. Her eyes dwelt on the clean chintzes, on the half blinds surmounted by insertion, the brass ashtrays, the massive silver cigarette box.
Victoria stood up, the movement changing the direction of her contemplative mood. The Gothic rosewood clock told her it was a little after three. She went to the cigarette box and lit a cigarette. While slowly inhaling the smoke, she rang the bell. On her right forefinger there was a faint yellow tinge of nicotine which had reached the nail.
'I shall have to be manicured again,' she soliloquised. 'What a nuisance. Better have it done to-day while I get my hair done too.'
'Yes, mum.' A neat dark maid stood at the door. Victoria did not answer for a second. The girl's black dress was perfectly brushed, her cap, collar, cuffs, apron, immaculate white.
'I'm going out now, Mary,' said Victoria. 'You'd better get my brown velvet out.'
'Yes, mum,' said the maid. 'Will you be back for dinner, mum?'
'No, I'm dining with the Major. Oh, don't get the velvet out. It's muddy out, isn't it?'
'Yes, mum. It's been raining in the morning, mum.'
'Ah, well, perhaps I'd better wear the grey coat and skirt. And my furs and toque.'
'The beaver, mum?'
'No, of course not, the white fox. And, oh, Mary, I've lost my little bag somewhere. And tell Charlotte to send me up a cup of tea at half-past three.'
Mary left the room silently. She seldom asked questions, and never expressed pleasure, displeasure or surprise.
Victoria walked up to her bedroom; the staircase was papered with a pretty blue and white pattern over a dado of white lincrusta. A few French engravings stood out in their old gold frames. Victoria stoppedat the first landing to look at her favourite, after Lancret; it represented lovers surprised in a barn by an irate husband.
The bedroom occupied the entire first floor. On taking possession of the little house she had realised that, as she would have no callers, a drawing-room would be absurd, so had suppressed the folding doors and made the two rooms into one large one. In the front, between the two windows, stood her dressing-table, now covered with small bottles, some in cut glass and full of scent, others more workmanlike, marked vaseline, glycerine, skin food, bay rum. Scattered about them on the lace toilet cover, were boxes of powder, white, sepia, bluish, puffs, little sticks of cosmetics, some silver-backed brushes, some squat and short-bristled, others with long handles, with long soft bristles, one studded with short wires, another with whalebone, some clothes brushes too, buttonhooks, silver trays, a handglass with a massive silver handle. Right and left, two little electric lamps and above the swinging mirror, a shaded bulb shedding a candid glow.
One wall was blotted out by two inlaid mahogany wardrobes; through the open doors of one could be seen a pile of frilled linen, lace petticoats, chemises threaded with coloured ribbons. On the large arm-chair, covered with blue and white chintz, was a crumpled heap of white linen, a pair ofcafé au laitsilk stockings. A light mahogany chair or two stood about the room. Each had a blue and white cushion. A large wash-stand stood near the mantlepiece, laden with blue and white ware. The walls were covered with blue silky paper, dotted here and there with some colour prints. These were mostly English; their nude beauties sprawled and languished slyly among bushes, listening to the pipes of Pan.
Victoria went into the back of the room, and, unhooking her cream silk dressing jacket, threw it onthe bed. This was a vast low edifice of glittering brown wood, covered now by a blue and white silk bedspread with edges smothered in lace; from the head of the bed peeped out the tips of two lace pillows. By the side of the bed, on the little night table, stood two or three books, a reading lamp and a small silver basket full of sweets. An ivory bell-pull hung by the side of a swinging switch just between the pillows.
Victoria walked past the bed and looked at herself in the high looking-glass set into the wall which rose from the floor to well above her head. The mirror threw back a pleasing reflection. It showed her a woman of twenty-six, neither short nor tall, dressed in a white petticoat and mauve silk corsets. The corsets fitted well into the figure which was round and inclined to be full. Her arms and neck, framed with white frillings, were uniformly cream coloured, shadowed a little darker at the elbows, near the rounded shoulders and under the jaw; all her skin had a glow, half vigorous, half delicate. But the woman's face interested Victoria more. Her hair was piled high and black over a broad low white forehead; the cream of the skin turned faintly into colour at the cheeks, into crimson at the lips; her eyes were large, steel grey, long lashed and thrown into relief by a faintly mauve aura. There was strength in the jaw, square, hard, fine cut; there was strength too in the steadiness of the eyes, in the slightly compressed red lips.
'Yes,' said Victoria to the picture, 'you mean business.' She reflected that she was fatter than she had ever been. Two months of rest had worked a revolution in her. The sudden change from toil to idleness had caused a reaction. There was something almost matronly about the soft curves of her breast. But the change was to the good. She was less interesting than the day when the Major sat face to face with her in Soho, his pulse beating quickerand quicker as her ravished beauty stimulated him by its novelty; but she was a finer animal. Indeed she realised to the full that she had never been so beautiful, that she had never been beautiful before, as men understand beauty.
The past two months had been busy as well as idle, busy that is as an idle woman's time. She had felt weary now and then, like those unfortunates who are bound to the wheel of pleasure and are compelled to 'do too much.' Major Cairns had launched out into his first experiment in pseudo-married life with an almost boyish zest. It was he who had practically compelled her to take the little house in Elm Tree Place.
'Think of it, Vic,' he had said, 'your own little den. With no prying neighbours. And your own little garden. And dogs.'
He had waxed quite sentimental over it and Victoria, full of the gratitude that makes a woman cling to the fireman when he has rescued her, had helped him to build a home for the idyll. Within a feverish month he had produced the house as it stood. He had hardly allowed Victoria any choice in the matter, for he would not let her do anything. He practically compelled her to keep to her suite at the hotel, so that she might get well. He struggled alone with the decoration, plumbing, furniture and linoleum, linen and garden. Now and then he would ring up to know whether she preferred salmon pink tofraise écraséecushions, or he would come up to the hotel rent in twain by conflicting rugs. At last he had pronounced the house ready, and, after supplying it with Mary and Charlotte, had triumphantly installed his new queen in her palace.
Victoria's first revelation was one of immense joy; unquestioning, and for one moment quite disinterested. It was not until a few hours had elapsed that she regained mastery over herself. She wentfrom room to room punching cushions, pressing her hands over the polished wood, at times feeling voluptuously on hands and knees the pile of the carpets. She almost loved Cairns at the moment. It was quite honestly that she drew him down by her side on the red and white sofa and softly kissed his cheek and drove his ragged moustache into rebellion. It was quite willingly too that she felt his grasp tighten on her and that she yielded to him. Her lips did not abhor his kisses.
Some hours later she became herself again. Cairns was good to her, but good as the grazier is to the heifer from whom he hopes to breed; she was his creature, and must be well housed, well fed, well clothed, so that his eyes might feast on her, scented so that his desire for her might be whipped into action. In her moments of cold horror in the past she had realised herself as a commodity, as a beast of burden; now she realised herself as a beast of pleasure. The only thing to remember then was to coin into gold her condescension.
Victoria looked at herself again in the glass. Yes, it was condescension. As a free woman, that is, a woman of means, she would never have surrendered to Cairns the tips of her fingers. Off the coast of Araby she had yielded to him a little, so badly did she need human sympathy, a little warmth in the cold of the lonely night. When he appeared again as the rescuer she had flung herself into his arms with an appalling fetterless joy. She had plunged her life into his as into Nirvana.
Now her head was cooler. Indeed it had been cool for a month. She saw Cairns as an average man, neither good nor evil, a son of his father and the seed thereof, bound by a strict code of honour and a lax code of morals. She saw him as a dull man with the superficial polish that even the roughest pebble acquires in the stream of life. He had foundher at low water mark, stranded and gasping on the sands; he had picked her up and imprisoned her in this vivarium to which he alone had access, where he could enjoy his capture to the full.
'And the capture's business is to get as much out of the captor as possible, so as to buy its freedom back.' This was Victoria's new philosophy. She had dexterously induced Cairns to give her a thousand a year. She knew perfectly well that she could live on seven hundred, perhaps on six. Besides, she played on his pride. Cairns was after all only a big middle-aged boy; it made him swell to accompany Victoria to Sloane Street to buy a hat, to the Leicester Gallery to see the latest one-man show. She was a credit to a fellow. Thus she found no difficulty in making him buy her sables, gold purses, Whistler etchings. They would come in handy, she reflected, 'when the big bust-up came.' For Victoria was not rocking herself in the transitory, but from the very first making ready for the storm which follows on the longest stretch of fair weather.
'Yes,' said Victoria again to the mirror, 'you mean business.' The door opened and almost noiselessly closed. Mary brought in a tray covered with a clean set of silver-backed brushes, and piled up the other ready to take away. She put a water can on the washstand and parsimoniously measured into it some attar of roses. Victoria stepped out into the middle of the room and stood there braced and stiff as the maid unlaced and then tightened her stays.
'What will you wear this evening, mum?' asked Mary, as Victoria sat down in the low dressing chair opposite the swinging glass.
'This evening,' mused Victoria. 'Let me see, there's thegris perle.'
'No, mum, I've sent it to the cleaner's,' said Mary. Her fingers were deftly removing the sham curls from Victoria's back hair.
'You've worn it four times, mum,' she added reproachfully.
'Oh, have I? I don't think. . . . oh, that's all right, Mary.'
Victoria reflected that she would never have a well-trained maid if she finished sentences such as this. Four times! Well, she must give the Major his money's worth.
'You might wear your red Directoire, mum,' suggested Mary in the unemotional tones of one who is paid not to hear slips.
'I might. Yes. Perhaps it's a little loud for the Carlton.'
'Yes, mum,' said Mary without committing herself.
'After all, I don't think it is so loud.'
'No, mum,' said Mary in even tones. She deftly rolled her mistress' plaits round the crown.
Victoria felt vaguely annoyed. The woman's words were anonymous.
'But whatdoyou think, Mary,' she asked.
'Oh, I think you're quite right, mum,' said Mary.
Victoria watched her face in the glass. Not a wave of opinion rippled over it.
Victoria got up. She stretched out her arms for Mary to slip the skirt over her head. The maid closed the lace blouse, quickly clipped the fasteners together, then closed the placket hole completely. Without a word she fetched the light grey coat, slipped it on Victoria's shoulders. She found the grey skin bag, while Victoria put on her white fox toque. She then encased Victoria's head in a grey silk veil and sprayed her with scent. Victoria looked at herself in the glass. She was very lovely, she thought.
'Anything else, mum,' said Mary's quiet voice.
'No, Mary, nothing else.'
'Thank you, mum.'
As Victoria turned, she found the maid had disappeared,but her watchful presence was by the front door to open it for her. Victoria saw her from the stairs, a short erect figure, with a pale face framed in dark hair. She stood with one hand on the latch, the other holding a cab whistle; her eyes were fixed upon the ground. As Victoria passed out she looked at Mary. The girl's eyes were averted still, her face without a question. Upon her left hand she wore a thin gold ring with a single red stone. The ring fastened on Victoria's imagination as she stepped into a hansom which was loafing near the door. It was not the custom, she knew, for a maid to wear a ring; and this alone was enough to amaze her. Was it possible that Mary's armour was not perfect in every point of servility? No doubt she had just put it on as it was her evening out and she would be leaving the house in another half hour. And then? Would another and a stronger hand take hers, hold it, twine its fingers among her fingers. Victoria wondered, for the vision of love and Mary were incongruous ideas. It was almost inconceivable that with her cap and apron she doffed the mantle of her reserve; she surely could not vibrate; her heart could not beat in unison with another. Yet, there was the ring, the promise of passion. Victoria nursed for a moment the vision of the two spectral figures, walking in a dusky park, arms round waists, then of shapes blended on a seat, faces hidden, lip to lip.
Victoria threw herself back in the cab. What did it all matter after all? Mary was the beast of burden which she had captured by piracy. She had been her equal once when abiding by the law; she had shared her toil and her slender meed of thanks. Now she was a buccaneer, outside the social code, and as such earned the right to command. So much did Victoria dominate that she thought she would refrain from the exercise of a bourgeois prerogative: the girl should wear her ring, even though custom forbade it, loadherself with trinkets if she chose, for as a worker and a respecter of social laws surely she might well be treated as the sacrificial ox.
The horse trotted down Baker Street, then through Wigmore Street. Daylight was already waning; here and there houses were breaking into light between the shops, some of which had remembered it was Christmas eve and decked themselves out in holly. At the corner near the Bechstein Hall the cab came to a stop behind the long line of carriages waiting for the end of a concert. Victoria had time to see the old crossing sweeper, with a smile on his face and mistletoe in his battered billy-cock. The festivities would no doubt yield him his annual kind word from the world. She passed the carriages, all empty still. The cushions were rich, she could see. Here and there she could see a fur coat or a book on the seat; in one of them sat an elderly maid, watching the carriage clock under the electric light, meanwhile nursing a chocolate pom who growled as Victoria passed.
'Slaves all of them,' thought Victoria. 'A slave the good elderly maid, thankful for the crumbs that fall from the pom's table. Slaves too, the fat coachman, the slim footman despite their handsome English faces, lit up by a gas lamp. The raw material of fashion.'
The cab turned into the greater blaze of Oxford Circus, past the Princes Street P.R.R. There was a great show of Christmas cakes there. From the cab Victoria, craning out, could see a young and pretty girl behind the counter busily packing frosted biscuits. Victoria felt warmed by the sight; she was not malicious, but the contrast told her of her emancipation from the thrall of eight bob a week. Through Regent Street, all congested with traffic, little figures laden with parcels darting like frightened ants under the horse's nose, then into the immensity of Whitehall, the cab stopped at the Stores in Victoria Street.
Victoria had but recently joined. A store ticket and a telephone are the next best thing to respectability and the same thing as regards comfort. They go far to establish one's social position. Victoria struggled through the wedged crowd. Here and there boys and girls with flushed faces, who enjoyed being squashed. She could see crowds of jolly women picking from the counters things useful and things pretty; upon signal discoveries loudly proclaimed followed continual exclamations that they would not do. Family parties, excited and talkative, left her unmoved. That world, that of the rich and the free, would ultimately be hers; her past, that of the worn men and women ministering behind the counter to the whims of her future world, was dead.
She only had to buy a few Christmas presents. There was one for Betty, one for Cairns, and two for the servants. In the clothing department she selected a pretty blue merino dressing-gown and a long purple sweater for Betty. The measurements were much the same as hers, if a little slighter; besides such garments need not fit. She went downstairs and disposed of the Major by means of a small gold cigarette case with a leather cover. No doubt he had a dozen, but what could she give a man?
The Stores buzzed round her like a parliament of bees. Now and then people shouldered past her, a woman trod on her foot and neglected to apologise; parcels too, inconveniently carried, struck her as she passed. She felt the joy of the lost; for none looked at her, save now and then a man drowned in the sea of women. The atmosphere was stuffy, however, and time was precious as she had put off buying presents until so late. Followed by a porter with her parcels she left the Stores, experiencing the pleasure of credit on an overdrawn deposit order account. The man piled the goods in a cab, and in a few minutes she had transferred Betty's presents to a carrier's office,with instructions to send them off at eight o'clock by a messenger who was to wait at the door until the addressee returned. This was not unnecessary foresight, for Betty would not be back until nine. With the Major's cigarette case in her white muff, Victoria then drove to Bond Street, there to snatch a cup of tea. On the way she stopped the cab to buy a lace blouse for Mary and an umbrella for Charlotte, having forgotten them in her hurry. She decided to have tea at Miss Fortesque's, for Miss Fortesque's is one of those tearooms where ladies serve ladies, and the newest fashions come. It is the right place to be seen in at five o'clock. At the door a small boy in an Eton jacket and collar solemnly salutes with a shiny topper. Inside, the English character of the room is emphasized. There are no bamboo tables, no skimpy French chairs or Japanese umbrellas; everything is severely plain and impeccably clean. The wood shines, the table linen is hard and glossy, the glass is hand cut and heavy, the plate quite plain and obviously dear. On the white distempered walls are colour prints after Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough. All conspires with the thick carpet to promote silence, even the china and glass, which seem no more to dare to rattle than if they were used in a men's club.
Victoria settled down in a large chintz-covered arm chair and ordered tea from a good-looking girl in a dark grey blouse and dress. Visibly a hockey skirt had not long ago been more natural to her. As she returned Victoria observed the slim straight lines of her undeveloped figure. She was half graceful, half gawky, like most young English girls.
'It's been very cold to-day, hasn't it?' said the girl as she set down bread and butter, then cake and jam sandwiches.
'Very,' Victoria looked at her narrowly. 'I suppose it doesn't matter much in here, though.'
'Oh, no, we don't notice it.' The girl lookedweary for a second. Then she smiled at Victoria and walked away to a corner where she stood listlessly.
'Slave, slave.' The words rang through Victoria's head. 'You talk to me when you're sick of the sight of me. You talk of things you don't care about. You smile if you feel your face shows you are tired, in the hope I'll tip you silver instead of copper.'
Victoria looked round the room. It was fairly full, and as Fortesquean as it was British. The Fortesque tradition is less fluid than the constitution of the Empire. Its tables shout 'we are old wood'; its cups say 'we are real porcelain'; and its customers look at one another and say 'who the devil are you?' Nobody thinks of having tea there unless they have between one and three thousand a year. It is too quiet for ten thousand a year or for three pounds a week; it caters for ladies and gentlemen and freezes out everybody else, regardless of turnover. Thus its congregation (for its afternoon rite is almost hieratical) invariably includes a retired colonel, a dowager with a daughter about to come out, several squiresses who came to Miss Fortesque's as little girls and are handing on the torch to their own. There is a sprinkling of women who have been shopping in Bond Street, buying things good but not showy. As the customers, or rather clients, lapse with a sigh into the comfortable armchairs they look round with the covert elegance that says, 'And who the devil are you?'
Victoria was in her element. She had had tea at Miss Fortesque's some dozen years before when up for the week from Lympton; thus she felt she had the freedom of the house. She sipped her tea and dropped crumbs with unconcern. She looked at the dowager without curiosity. The dowager speculated as to the maker of her coat and skirt. Victoria's eyes fixed again on the girl who was passing her with a laden tray. The effort was bringing out thebeautiful lines of the slender arms, drooping shoulders, round bust. Her fair hair clustered low over the creamy nape.
'Slave, slave,' thought Victoria again. 'What are you doing, you fool? Roughening your hands, losing flesh, growing old. And there's nothing for a girl to do but serve on, serve, always serve. Until you get too old. And then, scrapped. Or you marry . . . anything that comes along. Good luck to you, paragon, on your eight bob a week.'
Victoria went downstairs and got into the cab which had been waiting for her with the servants' presents. It was no longer cold, but foggy and warm. She undid her white fox stole, dropping on the seat her crocodile skin bag, whence escaped a swollen purse of gold mesh.
Upstairs the girl cleared away. Under the butter-smeared plate which slipped through her fingers she found half-a-crown. Her heart bounded with joy.
'Tom, you know how I hatetournedos,' said Victoria petulantly.
'Sorry, old girl.' Cairns turned and motioned to the waiter. While he was exchanging murmurs with the man Victoria observed him. Cairns was not bad looking, redder and stouter than ever. He was turning into the 'jolly old Major' type, short, broad, strangled in cross barred cravats and tight frock-coats. In evening dress, his face and hands emerging from his shirt and collar, he looked like an enormous dish of strawberries and cream.
'I've ordered quails for you? Will that do, Miss Dainty?'
'Yes, that's better.'
She smiled at him and he smiled back.
'By jove, Vic,' he whispered, 'you look fine. Nothing like pink shades for the complexion.'
'I think you're very rude,' said Victoria smiling.
'Honest,' said Cairns. 'And why not? No harm in looking your best is there? Now my light's yellow. Brings me down from tomato to carrot.'
'Fishing again. No good, Tommy old chap.'
'Never mind me,' said Cairns with a laugh. He paused and looked intently at Victoria, then cautiously round him. They were almost in the middle of the restaurant, but it was still only half full. Cairns had fixed dinner for seven, though they were only due for a music hall; he hated to hurry over his coffee. Thus they were in a little island of pink lightsurrounded by penumbra. Softly attuned, Mimi's song before the gates of Paris floated in from the balcony.
'Vic,' said Cairns gravely, 'you're lovely. I've never seen you like this before.'
'Do you like my gown?' she asked coquettishly.
'Your gown!' Cairns said 'Your gown's like a stalk, Vic, and you're a big white flower bursting from it . . . a big white flower, pink flecked, scented. . . .'
'Sh . . . Tom, don't talk like that in here.' Victoria slid her foot forward, slipped off her shoe and gently put her foot on the Major's instep. His eyes blinked quickly twice. He reached out for his glass and gulped down the champagne.
The waiter returned, velvet footed. Every one of his gestures consecrated the quails resting on the flowered white plates, surrounded by a succulent lake of aromatic sauce.
They ate silently. There was already between them the good understanding which makes speech unnecessary. Victoria looked about her from time to time. The couples interested her, for they were nearly all couples. Most of them comprised a man between thirty and forty, and a woman some years his junior. Their behaviour was severely decorous, in fact a little languid. From a table near by a woman's voice floated lazily,
'I rather like this pub, Robbie.'
Indeed the acceptance of the pubbishness of the place was characteristic of its frequenters. Most of the men looked vaguely weary; some keenly interested bent over the silver laden tables, their eyes fixed on their women's arms. Here and there a foreigner with coal black hair, a soft shirt front and a fancy white waistcoat, spiced with originality the sedateness of English gaiety. An American woman was giving herself away by a semitone, buther gown was exquisite and itsdécolletagechallenged gravitation.
Cairns' attitude was exasperatingly that of Gallio, save as concerned Victoria. His eyes did not leave her. She knew perfectly well that he was inspecting her, watching the rise and fall on her white breast of his Christmas gift, a diamond cross. They both refused the mousse and Victoria mischievously leant forward, her hands crossed under her chin, her arms so near Cairns' face that he could see on them the fine black shading of the down.
'Well, Tom?' she asked. 'Quite happy?'
'No,' growled Cairns, 'you know what I want.'
'Patience and shuffle the cards,' said Victoria, 'and be thankful I'm here at all. But I musn't rot you Tommy dear, after a present like that.'
She slipped her fingers under the diamond cross. Cairns watched the picture made by the rosy manicured finger nails, the sparkling stones, the white skin.
'A pity it doesn't match my rings,' she remarked.
Cairns looked at her hand.
'Oh, no more it does. I thought you had a half hoop. Never mind, dear. Give me that sapphire ring.'
'What do you want it for?' asked Victoria with a conscious smile.
'That's my business.'
She slipped it off. He took it, pressing her fingers.
'I think you ought to have a half hoop,' he said conclusively.
Victoria leant back in her chair. Her smile was triumphant. Truly, men are hard masters but docile slaves.
'You'll spoil me, Tom,' she said weakly. 'I don't want you to think that I'm fishing for things. I'm quite happy, you know. I'd rather you didn't give me another ring.'
'Nonsense,' said Cairns, 'I wouldn't give it you if I didn't like to see it on your hand.'
'I don't believe you,' she said smoothly, but the phrase rang true.
Some minutes later, as they passed down the stairs into the palm room, she was conscious of the eyes that followed her. Those of the men were mostly a little dilated; the women seemed more cynically interested, as suits those who appraise not bodies but garments. Major Cairns, walking a step behind her, was still looking well, with his close cut hair and moustache, stiff white linen and erect bearing. Victoria realised herself as a queen in a worthy kingdom. But the kingdom was not the one she wished to hold with all the force of her beauty. That beauty was transitory, or at least its subtler quality was. As Victoria lay in the brougham with Cairns's arm holding her close to him, she still remembered that the fading of her beauty might synchronise with the growth of her wealth. A memory from some book on political economy flashed through her mind: beauty was a wasting asset.
Cairns kissed her on the lips. An atmosphere of champagne, coffee, tobacco, enveloped her as her breath mixed with his. She coiled one arm round his neck and returned his kisses.
'Vic, Vic,' he murmured, 'can't you love me a little?'
She put her hand behind his neck and once more kissed his lips. He must be lulled, but not into security.
Victoria had never realised her strength and her freedom so well as that night, as she leant back in her box. Her face and breast, the Major's shirt front, were the only spots of light which emerged from the darkness of the box as if pictured by a German impressionist; down below, under the mist, the damned souls revelled in the cheap seats; they swayed, a black mass speckled with hundreds of white collars, dotted with points of fire in the bowls of pipes. By the side of the men, girls in whiteblouses or crude colours, shrouded in the mist of tobacco smoke. Now and then a ring coiled up from a cigar in the stalls, swirled in the air for a moment and then broke.
Just behind the footlights blazing over the blackness, a little fat man, with preposterous breeches, a coat of many colours, a yellow wisp of hair clashing with his vinous nose, sang of the Bank and his manifold accounts. A faint salvo of applause ushered him out, then swelled into a tempest as the next number went up.
'Tommy Bung, you're in luck,' said the Major, taking off Victoria's wrap.
She craned forward to see. A woman with masses of fair hair, bowered in blue velvet, took a long look at her from the stage box through an opera glass.
The curtain went up. There was a roar of applause. Tommy Bung was ready for the audience and had already fallen into a tub of whitewash. The sorry object extricated itself. His red nose shone, star like. He rolled ferocious eyes at a girl. The crowd rocked with joy. Without a word the great Tommy Bang began to dance. At once the hall followed the splendid metre. Up and down, up and down, twisting, curvetting, Tommy Bung held his audience spellbound with rhythm. They swayed sharply with the alternations.
Victoria watched the Major. His hands were beating time. Tommy Bung brought his effort to a conclusion by beating the floor, the soles of his feet, the scenery, and punctuated the final thwack with a well timed leap on the prompter's box.
Victoria was losing touch with things. Waves of heat seemed to overwhelm her; little figures of jugglers, gymnasts, performing dogs, passed before her eyes like arabesques. Then again raucous voices. The crowd was applauding hysterically. It wasNumber Fourteen, whose great name she was fated never to know. Unsteadily poised on legs wide apart, Number Fourteen sang. Uncontrollable glee radiated from him—
Now kids is orl rightWhen yer ain't got none;Yer can sit at 'omeAn' eat 'cher dam bun.I've just 'ad some twins;Nurse says don't be coy,For they're just the pictureOf the lodger's boy.Tinka, Tinka, Tinka; Tinka, Tinka, Tink'It 'im in the eye and made the lodger blink.Tinga, Tinga, Tinga; Tinga, Tinga, TegNever larfed so much since farver broke 'is leg.
A roar of applause encouraged him. Victoria saw Cairns carried away, clapping, laughing. In the bar below she could hear continuously the thud of the levers belching beer. Number Fourteen was still singing, his smile wide-slit through his face—
Now me paw-in-law'E's a rum ole bloke;Got a 'and as lightAs a ton o' coke.Came 'ome late one nightAn' what oh did 'e see?Saw me ma-in-lawOn the lodger's knee.Tinka, Tinka, Tinka; Tinka, Tinka, Tink'It 'im in the eye an' made the lodger blink.Tinga, Tinga, Tinga; Tinga, Tinga, Teg,Never larfed so much since farver broke 'is leg.
Enthusiasm was rising high. Number Fourteen braced himself for his great effort on the effects of beer. Then, gracious and master of the crowd, he beat time with his hands while the chorus sounded from a thousand throats. Victoria happened to lookat Cairns. His head was beating time and, from his lips issued gleefully:
Tinka, Tinka, Tinka; Tinka, Tinka, Tink'It 'im in the eye—
Victoria scrutinised him narrowly. Cairns was a phenomenon.
'Never larfed so much since farver broke 'is leg,' roared Cairns. 'I say, Vic, he reallyisgood.' He noticed her puzzled expression. 'I say, Vic, what's up? Don't you like him?'
Victoria did not answer for a second.
'Oh, yes, I—he's very funny—you see I've never been in a music hall before.'
'Oh, is that it?' Cairns's brow cleared. 'It's a little coarse, but so natural.'
'Is that the same thing?' asked Victoria.
'S'pose it is. With some of us anyhow. But what's the next?'
Cairns had already relapsed into the programme. He hated the abstract; a public school, Sandhurst and the army had armoured him magnificently against intrusive thought. They watched the next turn silently. A couple of cross-talk comedians, one a shocking creature in pegtop trousers, a shock yellow head and a battered opera hat, the other young, handsome and smart as a superior barber's assistant, gibbered incomprehensibly of songs they couldn't sing and lies they could tell.