'Mr Wren, ma'am.'
Victoria turned quickly to Carlotta. The girl's face was obtrusively
demure. Some years at Curran's had not dulled in her the interest that
any woman subtly feels in the meeting of the sexes.
'Ask him to come in here, Carlotta,' said Victoria. 'We shan't be
disturbed, shall we?'
'Oh no! ma'am,' said Carlotta, with increasing demureness. 'There is
nobody, nobody. I will show the young gentleman in.'
Victoria walked to the looking-glass which shyly peeped out from the
back of the monumental sideboard. She re-arranged her hair and hurriedly
flicked some dust from the corners of her eyes. All this for Edward, but
she had not seen him for three years. As she turned round she was
confronted by her brother who had gently stolen into the dining-room.
Edward's every movement was unobtrusive. He put one arm round her and
kissed her cheek.
'How are you, Victoria?' he said, looking her in the eyes.
'Oh, I'm alright, Ted. I'm so glad to see you.' She was genuinely glad;
it was so good to have belongings once again.
'Did you have a good passage?' asked Edward.
'Pretty good until we got to Ushant and then it did blow. I was glad to
get home.'
'I'm very glad to see you,' said Edward, 'very glad.' His eyes fixed on
the sideboard as if he were mesmerised by the cruets. Victoria looked
at him critically. Three years had not made on him the smallest
impression. He was at twenty-eight what he had been at twenty-five or
for the matter of that at eighteen. He was a tall slim figure with
narrow pointed shoulders and a slightly bowed back. His face was pale
without being unhealthy. There was nothing in his countenance to arouse
any particular interest, for he had those average features that commit
no man either to coarseness or to intellectuality. He showed no trace of
the massiveness of his sister's chin; his mouth too was looser and hung
a little open. Alone his eyes, richly grey, recalled his relationship.
Straggly fair hair fell across the left side of his forehead. He peered
through silver rimmed spectacles as he nervously worried his watch chain
with both hands. Every movement exposed the sharpness of his knees
through his worn trousers.
'Ted,' said Victoria, breaking in upon the silence, 'it was kind of you
to come up at once.'
'Of course I'd come up at once. I couldn't leave you here alone. It must
be a big change after the sunshine.'
'Yes,' said Victoria slowly, 'it is a big change. Not only the sunshine.
Other things, you know.'
Edward's hands played still more nervously with his watch chain. He had
not heard much of the manner of Fulton's death. Victoria's serious face
encouraged him to believe that she might harrow him with details, weep
even. He feared any expression of feeling, not because he was hard but
because it was so difficult to know what to say. He was neither hard nor
soft; he was a schoolmaster and could deal readily enough with the pangs
of Andromeda but what should he say to a live woman, his sister too?
'I understand--I--you see, it's quite awful about Dick--' he stopped,
lost, groping for the proper sentiment.
'Ted,' said Victoria, 'don't condole with me. I don't want to be
unkind--if you knew everything--But there, I'd rather not tell you; poor
Dicky 's dead and I suppose it's wrong, but I can't be sorry.'
Edward looked at her with some disapproval. The marriage had not been a
success, he knew that much, but she ought not to speak like that. He
felt he ought to reprove her, but the difficulty of finding words
stopped him.
'Have you made any plans?' he asked in his embarrassment, thus
blundering into the subject he had intended to lead up to with infinite
tact.
'Plans?' said Victoria. 'Well, not exactly. Of course I shall have to
work; I thought you might help me perhaps.'
Edward looked at her again uneasily. She had sat down in an armchair by
the side of the fire with her back to the light. In the penumbra her
eyes came out like dark pools. A curl rippled over one of her ears. She
looked so self-possessed that his embarrassment increased.
'Will you have to work?' he asked. The idea of his sister working filled
him with vague annoyance.
'I don't quite see how I can help it,' said Victoria smiling. 'You see,
I've got nothing, absolutely nothing. When I've spent the thirty pounds
or so I've got, I must either earn my own living or go into the
workhouse.' She spoke lightly, but she was conscious of a peculiar
sinking.
'I thought you might come back with me,' said Edward, '. . . and stay
with me a little . . . and look round.'
'Ted, it's awfully kind of you, but I'm not going to let you saddle
yourself with me. I can't be your housekeeper; oh! it would never do.
And don't you think I am more likely to get something to do here than
down in Bedfordshire?'
'I do want you to come back with me,' said Edward hesitatingly. 'I don't
think you ought to be alone here. And perhaps I could find you something
in a family at Cray or thereabouts. I could ask the vicar.'
Victoria shuddered. It had never struck her that employment might be
difficult to find or uncongenial when one found it. The words 'vicar'
and 'Cray' suggested something like domestic service without its rights,
gentility without its privileges.
'Ted,' she said gravely, 'you're awfully good to me, but I'd rather stay
here. I'm sure I could find something to do.' Edward's thoughts
naturally came back to his own profession.
'I'll ask the Head,' he said with the first flash of animation he had
shown since he entered the room. To ask the Head was to go to the source
of all knowledge. 'Perhaps he knows a school. Of course your French is
pretty good, isn't it?'
'Ted, Ted, you do forget things,' said Victoria, laughing. 'Don't you
remember the mater insisting on my taking German because so few girls
did? Why, it was the only original thing she ever did in her life, poor
dear!'
'But nobody wants German, for girls that is,' replied Edward miserably.
'Very well then,' said Victoria, 'I won't teach; that's all. I must do
something else.'
Edward walked up and down nervously, pushing back his thin fair hair
with one hand, and with the other nervously tugging at his watch chain.
'Don't worry yourself, Ted,' said Victoria. 'Something will turn up.
Besides there's no hurry. Why, I can live two or three months on my
money, can't I?'
'I suppose you can,' said Edward gloomily, 'but what will you do
afterwards?'
'Earn some more,' said Victoria. 'Now Ted, you haven't seen me for three
years. Don't let us worry. Think things over when you get back to Cray
and write to me. You won't go back until to-morrow, will you?'
'I'm sorry,' said Edward, 'but I didn't think you'd be back this week. I
shall be in charge to-morrow. Why don't you come down?'
'Ted, Ted, how can you suggest that I should spend my poor little
fortune in railway fares! Well, if you can't stay, you can't. But I'll
tell you what you can do. I can't go on paying two and a half guineas a
week here; I must get some rooms. You lived here when you taught at that
school in the city, didn't you? Well then, you must know all about it:
we'll go house-hunting.'
Edward looked at her dubiously. He disliked the idea of Victoria in
rooms almost as much as Victoria at Curran's. It offended some vague
notions of propriety. However her suggestion would give him time to
think. Perhaps she was right.
'Of course, I'll be glad to help,' he said, 'I don't know much about it;
I used to live in Gower Street.' A faint flush of reminiscent excitement
rose to his cheeks. Gower Street, by the side of Cray and Lympton, had
been almost adventurous.
'Very well then,' said Victoria, 'we shall go to Gower Street first.
Just wait till I put on my hat.'
She ran upstairs, not exactly light of heart, but pleased with the idea
of house-hunting. There's romance in all seeking, even if the treasure
is to be found in a Bloomsbury lodging-house.
The ride on the top of the motor bus was exhilarating. The pale sun of
November was lighting up the streets with the almost mystic whiteness of
the footlights. Edward said nothing, for his memories of London were
stale and he did not feel secure enough to point out the Church of the
Deaf and Dumb, nor had he ever known his London well enough to be able
to pronounce judgment on the shops. Besides, Victoria was too much
absorbed in gazing at London rolling and swirling beneath her, belching
out its crowds of workers and pleasure seekers from every tube and main
street. At every shop the omnibus seemed surrounded by a swarm of angry
bees. Victoria watched them struggle with spirit still unspoiled,
wondering at the determination on the faces of the men, at the
bitterness painted on the sharp features of the women as they savagely
thrust one another aside and, dishevelled and dusty, successively
conquered their seats. All this, the constant surge of horse and
mechanical conveyances, the shrill cries of the newsboys flashing pink
papers like _chulos_ at an angry bull, the roar of the town, made
Victoria understand the city. Something like fear of this strong
restless people crept into her as she began to have a dim perception
that she too would have to fight. She was young, however, and the
feeling was not unpleasant. Her nerves tingled a little as she thought
of the struggle to come and the inevitable victory at the end.
Victoria's spirits had not subsided even when she entered Gower Street.
Its immensity, its interminable length frightened her a little. The
contrast between it, so quiet, dignified and dull, and the inferno she
had just left behind her impressed her with a sense of security. Its
houses, however, seemed so high and dirty that she wondered, looking at
its thousand windows, whether human beings could be cooped up thus and
yet retain their humanity.
Here Edward was a little more in his element. With a degree of animation
he pointed to the staid beauty of Bedford Square. He demanded admiration
like a native guiding a stranger in his own town. Victoria watched him
curiously. He was a good fellow but it was odd to hear him raise his
voice and to see him point with his stick. He had always been quiet, so
she had not expected him to show as much interest as he did in his old
surroundings.
'I suppose you had a good time when you were here?' she said.
'Nothing special. I was too busy at the school,' he replied. 'But, of
course, you know, one does things in London. It's not very lively at
Cray.'
'Wouldn't you like to leave Cray,' she said, 'and come back?'
Edward paused nervously. London frightened him a little and the idea of
leaving Cray suddenly thrust upon him froze him to the bone. It was not
Cray he loved, but Cray meant a life passing gently away by the side of
a few beloved books. Though he had never realised that hedgerows flower
in the spring and that trees redden to gold and copper in the autumn,
the country had taken upon him so great a hold that even the thought of
leaving it was pain.
'Oh! no,' he said hurriedly. 'I couldn't leave Cray. I couldn't live
here, it's too noisy. There are my old rooms, there, the house with the
torch extinguishers.'
Victoria looked at him again. What curious tricks does nature play and
how strangely she pleases to distort her own work! Then she looked at
the house with the extinguishers. Clearly it would be impossible, but
for those aristocratic remains, to distinguish it from among half a
dozen of its fellows. It was a house, that was all. It was faced in
dirty brick, parted at every floor by stone work. A portico, rising over
six stone steps, protected a door painted brown and bearing a brass
knocker. It had windows, an area, bells. It was impossible to find in it
an individual detail to remember.
But Edward was talking almost excitedly for him. 'See there,' he said,
'those are my old rooms,' pointing indefinitely at the frontage. 'They
were quite decent, you know. Wonder whether they're let. You could have
them.' He looked almost sentimentally at the home of the Wrens.
'Why not ring and ask?' said Victoria, whose resourcefulness equalled
that of Mr Dick.
Edward took another loving look at the familiar window, strode up the
steps, followed by Victoria.
There were several bells. 'Curious,' he said, 'she must have let it out
in floors; Wakefield and Grindlay, don't know them. Seymour? It's Mrs
Brumfit's house: Oh! here it is.' He pressed a bell marked 'House.'
Victoria heard with a curious sensation of unexpectedness the sudden
shrill sound of the electric bell.
After an interminable interval, during which Edward's hands nervously
played, the door opened. A young girl stood on the threshold. She wore a
red cloth blouse, a black skirt, and an unspeakably dirty apron half
loose round her waist. Her hair was tightly done up in curlers in
expectation of Sunday.
'Mrs Brumfit,' said Edward, 'is she in?'
''oo?' said the girl.
'Mrs Brumfit, the landlady,' said Edward.
'Don't know 'er, try next 'ouse.' The girl tried to shut the door.
'You don't understand,' cried Edward, stopping the door with his hand.
'I used to live here.'
'Well, wot do yer want?' replied the girl. 'Can't 'elp that, can I?
There ain't no Mrs Brumfit 'ere. Only them there.' She pointed at the
bells. 'Nobody but them and mother. She's the 'ousekeeper. If yer mean
the old woman as was 'ere when they turned the 'ouse into flats, she's
dead.'
Edward stepped back. The girl shut the door with a slam. He stood as if
petrified. Victoria looked at him with amusement in her eyes, listening
to the echoes of the girl's voice singing more and more faintly some
catchy tune as she descended into the basement.
'Dead,' said Edward, 'can it be possible--?' He looked like a plant torn
up by the roots. He had jumped on the old ground and it had given way.
'My dear Ted,' said Victoria gently, 'things change, you see.' Slowly
they went down the steps of the house. Victoria did not speak, for a
strange mixture of pity and disdain was in her. She quite understood
that a tie had been severed and that the death of his old landlady meant
for Edward that the past which he had vaguely loved had died with her.
He was one of those amorphous creatures whose life is so interwoven with
that of their fellows that any death throws it into disarray. She let
him brood over his lost memories until they reached Bedford Square.
'But Ted,' she broke in, 'where am I to go?'
Edward looked at her as if dazed. Clearly he had not foreseen that Mrs
Brumfit was not an institution.
'Go?' he said, 'I don't know.'
'Don't you know any other lodgings?' asked Victoria. 'Gower Street seems
full of them.'
'Oh! no,' said Edward quickly, 'we don't know what sort of places they
are. You couldn't go there.'
'But where am I to go then?' Victoria persisted. Edward was silent. 'It
seems to me,' his sister went on, 'that I shall have to risk it. After
all, they won't murder me and they can't rob me of much.'
'Please don't talk like that,' said Edward stiffly. He did not like this
association of ideas.
'Well I must find some lodgings,' said Victoria, a little irritably. 'In
that case I may as well look round near Curran's. I don't like this
street much.'
In default of an alternative, Edward looked sulky. Victoria felt
remorseful; she knew that Gower Street must have become for her brother
the traveller's Mecca and that he was vaguely afraid of the West End.
'Never mind, dear,' she went on more gently, 'don't worry about lodgings
any more. Do you know what you're going to do? you're going to take me
to tea in some nice place and then I'll go with you to St Pancras;
that's the station you said you were going back by, isn't it? and you'll
put me in a bus and I'll go home. Now, come along, it's past five and
I'm dying for some tea.'
As Victoria stood, an hour later, just outside the station in which
expires the spirit of Constantine the Great, she could not help feeling
relieved. As she stood there, so self-possessed, seeing so clearly the
busy world, she wondered why she had been given a broken reed to lean
upon. Where had her brother left his virility? Had it been sapped by
years of self-restraint? Had the formidable code of pretence, the daily
affectation of dignity, the perpetual giving of good examples, reduced
him to this shred of humanity, so timid, so resourceless? As she sped
home in the tube into which she had been directed by a policeman, she
vainly turned over the problem.
Fortunately Victoria was young. As she laid her head on the pillow,
conscious of the coming of Sunday, when nothing could be done, visions
of things she could do obsessed her. There were lodgings to find, nice,
clean, cheap lodgings, with a dear old landlady and trees outside the
window, in a pretty old-fashioned house, very very quiet and quite near
all the tubes. She nursed the ideal for a time. Then she thought of
careers. She would read all the advertisements and pick out the nicest
work. Perhaps she could be a housekeeper. Or a secretary. On reflection,
a secretary would be better. It might be so interesting. Fancy being
secretary to a member of Parliament. Or to a famous author.
She too might write.
Her dreams were pleasant.