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A BED OF ROSES . . BY
W. L. GEORGE
AUTHOR OF 'ENGINES OF SOCIAL
PROGRESS,' . . 'FRANCE IN THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY,' &c.
It's not work that any woman would do for pleasure,
goodness knows; though to hear the pious people talk
you would suppose it was a bed of roses. Mrs Warren's
Profession . By G. Bernard Shaw.
AUTHORISED EDITION
BRENTANO'S . NEW YORK
MCMXI
THIRD EDITION
PART I
CHAPTER I
'WE go.' The lascar meditatively pressed his face, brown and begrimed
with coal dust, streaked here and there with sweat, against the rope
which formed the rough bulwark. His dark eyes were fixed on the shore
near by, between which and the ship's side the water quivered quicker
and quicker in little ripples, each ripple carrying an iridescent film
of grey ooze. Without joy or sadness he was bidding goodbye to Bombay,
his city. Those goodbyes are often farewells for lascars who must face
the Bay and the Channel. But the stoker did not care.
His companion lay by his side, lazily propped up on his elbow, not
deigning even to take a last look at the market place, seething still
with its crowded reds and blues and golds. 'Dekko!' cried the first
stoker pointing to the wharf where a white man in a dirty smock had just
cast off the last rope, which came away swishing through the air.
His companion did not raise his eyes. Slowly he tilted up his pannikin
and let the water flow in a thin stream into his mouth, keeping the
metal away from his lips. Then, careless of the land of Akbar, he let
himself sink on the deck and composed himself to sleep. India was no
concern of his.
A few yards away a woman watched them absently from the upper deck. She
was conscious of them, conscious too of the slow insistent buzzing of a
gadfly. Her eyes slowly shifted to the shore, passed over the market
place, stopped at the Fort. There, in the open space, a troop was
drilling, white and speckless, alertly wheeling at the word of command.
Her eyes were still fixed on the group as the ship imperceptibly receded
from the shore, throbbing steadily as the boilers got up steam. A
half-naked brown boy was racing along the wharf to gain a start and beat
the vessel before she reached the military crane.
The woman turned away. She was neither tall nor short: she did not
attract attention overmuch but she was one of those who retain such
attention as they draw. She was clad entirely in black; her face seemed
to start forward intensified. Her features were regular; her mouth
small. Her skin, darkened by the shadow of a broad brimmed hat, blushed
still darker at the cheeks. The attraction was all in the eyes, large
and grey, suggestive of energy without emotion. Her chin was square,
perhaps too thick in the jaw.
She turned once more and leant against the bulwark. A yard away another
woman was also standing, her eyes fixed on the shore, on a figure who
waited motionless on the fast receding wharf. As the steamer kept on her
course the woman craned forward, saw once more and then lost sight of
the lonely figure. She was small, fair, a little insignificant, and
dressed all in white drill.
The steamer had by now attained half speed. The shore was streaming by.
The second woman turned her back on the bulwark, looked about aimlessly,
then, perceiving her neighbour, impulsively went up to her and stood
close beside her.
The two women did not speak, but remained watching the shoals fly past.
Far away a train in Kolaba puffed up sharp bursts of smoke into the blue
air. There was nothing to draw the attention of the beholder in that
interminable shore, low-lying and muddy, splashed here and there with
ragged trees. It was a desert almost, save for a village built between
two swamps. Here and then smoke arose, brown and peaty from a bonfire.
In the evening light the sun's declining rays lit up with radiance the
red speck of a heavy shawl on the tiny figure of a brown girl.
Little by little, as the ship entered the fairway, the shore receded
almost into nothingness. The two women still watched, while India merged
into shadow. It was the second hour and, as the ship slowly turned
towards the west, the women watched the great cocoanut trees turn into
black specks upon Marla point. Then, slowly, the shore sank into the
dark sea until it was gone and nothing was left of India save the
vaguely paler night that tells of land and the even fainter white spears
of the distant light.
For a moment they stood still, side by side. Then the fair woman
suddenly put her hand on her companion's arm. 'I'm cold,' she said,
'let's go below.'
The dark girl looked at her sympathetically. 'Yes,' she said, 'let's,
who'd have thought we wanted to see more of the beastly country than we
could help. . . . I say, what's the matter, Molly?'
Molly was still looking towards the light; one of her feet tapped the
deck nervously; she fumbled for her handkerchief. 'Nothing, nothing,'
she said indistinctly, 'come and unpack.' She turned away from her
companion and quickly walked towards the gangway.
The dark girl looked once more into the distance where even the
searchlight had waned. 'Vic!' cried the fair girl querulously, half way
up the deck. 'All right, I'm coming,' replied the woman in black. She
looked again at the pale horizon into which India had faded, at the deck
before her where a little black cluster of people had formed to look
their last upon the light. Then she turned and followed her companion.
The cabin was on the lower deck, small, stuffy in the extreme. Its two
grave-like bunks, its drop table, even its exiguous armchair promised
no comfort. On the worn carpet the pattern had almost vanished; alone
the official numerals on the edge stared forth. For half an hour the two
women unpacked in silence; Molly knelt by the side of her trunk delving
into it, dragging out garments which she tried to find room for on the
scanty pegs. Her companion merely raised the lid of her trunk to ease
the pressure on her clothes, and placed a small dressing-case on the
drop table. Once she would have spoken but, at that moment, a faint sob
came from Molly's kneeling form. She went up to her, put her arm about
her neck and kissed her cheek. She undressed wearily, climbed into the
upper berth. Soon Molly did likewise, after turning down the light. For
a while she sighed and turned uneasily; then she became quieter, her
breathing more measured, and she slept.
Victoria Fulton lay in her berth, her eyes wide open, glued to the roof
a foot or so above her face. It was very like a coffin, she thought,
perhaps a suitable enough habitation for her, but at present, not in the
least tempting. A salutary capacity for optimism was enabling her to
review the past three years and to speculate about the future. Not that
either was very rosy, especially the future.
The steady throb of the screw pulsated through the stuffy cabin, and
blended with the silence broken only by Molly's regular breathing in the
lower berth. Victoria could not help remembering other nights passed
also in a stuffy little cabin, where the screw was throbbing as
steadily, and when the silence was broken by breathing as regular, but a
little heavier. Three years only, and she was going home. But now she
was leaving behind her the high hopes she had brought with her.
She was no exception to the common rule, and memories, whether bitter or
sweet, had always bridged for her the gulf between wakefulness and
sleep. And what could be more natural than to recall those nights, three
years ago, when every beat of that steady screw was bringing her nearer
to the country where her young husband was, according to his mood, going
to win the V.C., trace the treasure stolen from a Begum, or become
military member on the Viceroy's Council? Poor old Dicky, she thought,
perhaps it was as well he did not live to see himself a major, old and
embittered, with all those hopes behind him.
There were no tears in her eyes when she thought of Fulton. The good old
days, the officers' ball at Lympton when she danced with him half the
night, the rutty lane where they met to sit on a bank of damp moss
smelling of earth and crushed leaves, and the crumbling little church
where she became Fulton's wife, all that was far away. How dulled it all
was too by those three years during which, in the hot moist air of the
plains, she had seen him degenerate, his skin lose it's freshness, his
eyelids pucker and gather pouches, his tongue grow ever more bitter as
he attempted to still with whisky the drunkard's chronic thirst. She
could not even shudder at the thought of all it had meant for her, at
the horror of seeing him become every day more stupefied, at the savage
outbursts of the later days, at the last scenes, crude and physically
foul. Three years had taught her brain dullness to such scenes as those.
The tragedy of Fulton was a common enough thing. Heat, idleness,
temporary affluence, all those things that do not let a man see that
life is blessed only by the works that enable him to forget it, had
played havoc with him. He had followed up his initial error of coming
into the world at all by marrying a woman who neither cajoled or coerced
him. With the best of intentions she had bored him to extinction. His
interest in things became slender; he drank himself to death, and not
even the ghost of his self lived to grieve by his bedside.
In spite of everything it had not been a bad life in its way. Victoria
had been the belle, in spite of Mrs Major Dartle and her peroxidised
tresses. And there had been polo (Dicky always would have three ponies
and refused three hundred guineas for Tagrag), and regimental dances and
gymkhanas and what not. Under the sleepy sun these three years had
passed, not like a flash of lightning, but slowly, dreamily, in the
unending routine of marches, inspections, migrations to and from the
hills. The end had come quickly. One day they carried Dick Fulton all
the way from the mess and laid him under his own verandah. The fourth
day he died of cirrhosis of the liver. Even Mrs Major Dartle who
formally called and lit up the darkened room with the meretricious glow
of her curls hinted that it was a happy release. The station in general
had no doubt as to the person for whom release had come.
As Victoria lay in the coffin-like berth she vainly tried to analyse her
feeling for Fulton. The three years had drawn over her past something
like a veil behind which she could see the dim shapes of her impressions
dancing like ghostly marionettes. She knew that she had loved him with
the discreet passion of an Englishwoman. He had burst in upon her
ravished soul like the materialised dream of a schoolgirl; he had been
adorably careless, adorably rakish. For a whole year all his foibles had
been charms in so far as they made the god more human, nearer to her.
Then, one night, he had returned home so drunk as to fall prostrate on
the tiles of the verandah and sleep there until next morning. She had
not dared to call the ayah or the butler and, as she could not rouse or
lift him, she had left him lying there under some rugs and mosquito
netting.
During the rest of that revolutionary night she had not slept, nor had
she found the relief of tears that is given most women. Hot waves of
indignation flowed over her. She wanted to get up, to stamp with rage,
to kick the disgraceful thing on the tiles. She held herself down,
however, or perhaps the tradition of the English counties whispered to
her that anything was preferable to scandal, that crises must be
noiseless. When dawn came and she at last managed to arouse Fulton by
flooding his head with the contents of the water jug, the hot fit was
gone. She felt cold, too aloof, too far away from him to hate him, too
petrified to reproach him.
Fulton took no notice of the incident. He was still young and vigorous
enough to shake off within a few hours the effects of the drink. Besides
he seldom mentioned things that affected their relations; in the keep of
his heart he hid the resentment of a culprit against the one who has
caught him in the act. He confined his conversation to daily happenings;
in moments of expansion he talked of the future. They did not, however,
draw nearer one another; thus the evolution of their marriage tended
inevitably to draw them apart. Victoria was no longer angry, but she was
frightened because she had been frightened and she hated the source of
her fear. Fulton, thick skinned as he was, felt their estrangement
keenly. He grew to hate his wife; it almost made him wish to hurt her
again. So he absented himself more often, drank more, then died. His
wife was free. So this was freedom. Freedom, a word to conjure with,
thought Victoria, when one is enslaved and meaning very little when one
is free. She was able to do what she liked and wished to do nothing. Of
course things would smooth themselves out: they always did, even though
the smoothing process might be lengthy. They must do so, but how? There
were friends of course, and Ted, and thirty pounds of Consols unless
they'd gone down again, as safe investments are wont to do. She would
have to do some work. Rather funny, but how jolly to draw your first
month's or week's salary; everybody said it was a proud moment. Of
course it would have to be earned, but that did not matter: everybody
had to earn what they got, she supposed, and they ought to enjoy doing
it. Old Flynn, the D.C., used to say that work was a remunerative
occupation you didn't like, but then he had been twenty years in India.
Molly turned uneasily in her bunk and settled down again. Victoria's
train of thought was broken and she could not detach her attention from
the very gentle snore that came from the lower berth, a snore gentle but
so insidious that it seemed to dominate the steady beat of the screw.
Through the porthole, over which now there raced some flecks of spray,
she could see nothing but the blackness of the sky, a blackness which at
times turned to grey whenever the still inkier sea appeared. The cabin
seemed black and empty, lit up faintly by a white skirt flung on a
chair. Slowly Victoria sank into sleep, conscious of a half dream of
England where so many unknowable things must happen.