EVERY day now Victoria's brain grew clearer and her body weaker. A
sullen spirit of revolt blended with horrible depression was upon her,
but she was getting thinner, paler; dark rings were forming round her
eyes. She knew pain now; perpetual weariness, twitchings in the ankles,
stabs just above the knee. In horrible listlessness she dragged her
weary feet over the tiled floor, responding to commands like the old cab
horse which can hardly feel the whip. In this mood, growing churlish,
she repulsed Betty, avoided Farwell and tried to seclude herself. She no
longer walked Holborn or the Strand where life went by, but sought the
mean and silent streets, where none could see her shamble or where none
would care.
One night, when she had left at six, she painfully crawled home and up
into the attic. At half-past nine the door opened and Betty came in; the
room was in darkness, but something oppressed her; she went to the
mantlepiece to look for the matches, her fingers trembling. For an
eternity she seemed to fumble, the oppression growing; she felt that
Victoria was in the room, and could only hope that she was asleep. With
a great effort of her will she lit the candle before turning round. Then
she gave a short sharp scream.
Victoria was lying across the bed dressed in her bodice and petticoat.
She had tucked this up to her knees and taken off her stockings; her
legs hung dead white over the edge. At her feet was the tin bath full
of water. Betty ran to the bed, choking almost, and clasped her friend
round the neck. It was some seconds before she thought of wetting her
face. After some minutes Victoria returned to consciousness and opened
her eyes; she groaned slightly as Betty lifted up her legs and
straightened her on the bed.
It was then that Betty noticed the singular appearance of Victoria's
legs. They were covered with a network of veins, some narrow and pale
blue in colour, others darker, protruding and swollen; on the left calf
one of the veins stood out like a rope. The unaccustomed sight filled
her with the horror bred of a mysterious disease. She was delicate, but
had never been seriously ill; this sight filled her with physical
repulsion. For her the ugliness of it meant foulness. For a moment she
almost hated Victoria, but the sight of the tin bath full of water cut
her to the heart; it told her that Victoria, maddened by mysterious
pain, had tried to assuage it by bathing her legs in the cold water.
Little by little Victoria came round; she smiled at Betty.
'Did I faint, Betty dear?' she asked.
'Yes, dear. Are you better now?'
'Yes, I'm better; it doesn't hurt now.'
Betty could not repress a question.
'Vic,' she said, 'what is it?'
'I don't know,' said Victoria fearfully, then more cheerfully,
'I'm tired I suppose. I shall be all right to-morrow.'
Then Betty refused to let her talk any more, and soon Victoria slept by
her side the sleep of exhaustion.
The next morning Victoria insisted upon going to the P. R. R. in spite
of Betty suggesting a doctor.
'Can't risk losing my job,' she said laughing. 'Besides it doesn't hurt
at all now. Look.'
Victoria lifted up her nightshirt. Her calves were again perfectly white
and smooth; the thin network of veins had sunk in again and showed blue
under the skin. Alone one vein on the left leg seemed dark and angry.
Victoria felt so well, however, that she agreed to meet Farwell at a
quarter-past nine. This was their second expedition, and the idea of it
was a stimulant. He went with her up to Finsbury Pavement and stopped at
a small Italian restaurant.
'Come in here and have some coffee,' he said, 'they have waiters here;
that'll be a change.'
Victoria followed him in. They sat at a marble topped table, flooded
with light by incandescent gas. In the glare the waiters seemed blacker,
smaller and more stunted than by the light of day. Their faces were
pallid, with a touch of green: their hair and moustaches were almost
blue black. Their energy was that of automata. Victoria looked at them,
melting with pity.
'There's a life for you,' said Farwell interpreting her look. 'Sixteen
hours' work a day in an atmosphere of stale food. For meals, plate
scourings. For sleep and time to get to it, eight hours. For living, the
rest of the day.'
'It's awful, awful,' said Victoria. 'They might as well be dead.'
'They will be soon,' said Farwell, 'but what does that matter? There are
plenty of waiters. In the shadow of the olive groves to-night in far off
Calabria, at the base of the vine-clad hills, couples are walking hand
in hand, with passion flashing in their eyes. Brown peasant boys are
clasping to their breast young girls with dark hair, white teeth, red
lips, hearts that beat and quiver with ecstasy. They tell a tale of love
and hope. So we shall not be short of waiters.'
'Why do you sneer at everything, Mr Farwell?' said Victoria. 'Can't you
see anything in life to make it worth while?'
'No, I cannot say I do. The pursuit of a living debars me from the
enjoyments that make living worth while. But never mind me: I am over
without having bloomed. I brought you here to talk of you, not of me.'
'Of me, Mr Farwell?' asked Victoria. 'What do you want to know?'
Farwell leant over the table, toyed with the sugar and helped himself to
a piece. Then without looking at her:
'What's the matter with you, Victoria?' he asked.
'Matter with me? What do you mean?' said Victoria, too disturbed to
notice the use of her Christian name.
The man scrutinised her carefully. 'You're ill,' he said. 'Don't
protest. You're thin; there are purple pockets under your eyes; your
underlip is twisted with pain, and you limp.'
Victoria felt a spasm of anger. There was still in her the ghost of
vanity. But she looked at Farwell before answering; there was gentleness
in his eyes.
'Well,' she said slowly, 'if you must know, perhaps there is something
wrong. Pains.'
'Where?' he asked.
'In the legs,' she said after a pause.
'Ah, swellings?'
Victoria bridled a little. This man was laying bare something, tearing
at a secret.
'Are you a doctor, Mr Farwell?' she asked coldly.
'That's all right,' he said roughly, 'it doesn't need much learning to
know what's the matter with a girl who stands for eleven hours a day.
Are the veins of your legs swollen?'
'Yes,' said Victoria with an effort. She was frightened; she forgot to
resent this wrenching at the privacy of her body.
'Ah; when do they hurt?'
'At night. They're all right in the morning.'
'You've got varicose veins, Victoria. You must give up your job.'
'I can't,' whispered the girl hoarsely. 'I've got nothing else.'
'Exactly. Either you go on and are a cripple for life or you stop and
starve. Yours is a disease of occupation, purely a natural consequence
of your work. Perfectly normal, perfectly. It is undesirable to
encourage laziness; there are girls starving to-day for lack of work,
but it would never do to reduce your hours to eight. It would interfere
with the P. R. R. dividends.'
Victoria looked at him without feeling.
'What am I to do?' she asked at length.
'Go to a hospital,' said Farwell. 'These institutions are run by the
wealthy who pay two guineas a year ransom for a thousand pounds of
profits and get in the bargain a fine sense of civic duty done. No doubt
the directors of the P.R.R. contribute most generously.'
'I can't give up my job,' said Victoria dully.
'Perhaps they'll give you a stocking,' said Farwell, 'or sell it you,
letting you pay in instalments so that you be not pauperised. This is
called training in responsibility, also self-help.'
Victoria got up. She could bear it no longer. Farwell saw her home and
made her promise to apply for leave to see the doctor. As the door
closed behind her he stood still for some minutes on the doorstep,
filling his pipe.
'Well, well,' he said at length, 'the Government might think of that
lethal chamber--but no, that would never do, it would deplete the labour
market and hamper the commercial development of the Empire.'
He walked away, a crackling little laugh floating behind him. The faint
light of a lamp fell on his bowed head and shoulders, making him look
like a Titan born a dwarf.
Two days later Victoria went to the Carew. She had never before set
foot in a hospital. Such intercourse as she had had with doctors was
figured by discreet interviews in dark studies filled with unspeakably
ugly and reassuringly solid furniture. Those doctors had patted her
hand, said she needed a little change or may be a tonic. At the Carew,
fed as it is by the misery of two square miles of North East London, the
revelation of pain was dazzling, apocalyptic. The sight of the benches
crowded with women and children--some pale as corpses, others flushed
with fever, some with faces bandaged or disfigured by sores--almost made
her sick. They were packed in serried rows; the children almost all
cried persistently, except here and there a baby, who looked with
frightful fixity at the glazed roof. From all this chattering crowd of
the condemned rose a stench of iodoform, perspiration, unwashed bodies,
the acrid smell of poverty.
The little red-haired Scotch doctor dismissed Victoria's case in less
than one minute.
'Varicose veins. Always wear a stocking. Here's your form. Settle terms
at the truss office. Don't stand on your feet. Oh, what's your
occupation?'
'Waitress at the P.R.R., Sir.'
'Ah, hum. You must give it up.'
'I can't, Sir.'
'It's your risk. Come again in a month.'
Victoria pulled up her stockings. Walking in a dream she went to the
truss office where a man measured her calves. She felt numb and
indifferent as to the exposure of her body. The man looked enquiringly
at the left calf.
'V.H. for the left,' he called over his shoulder to the clerk.
At twelve o'clock she was in the P.R.R., revived by the familiar
atmosphere. She even rallied one of the old chess players on a stroke of
ill-luck. Towards four o'clock her ankles began to twitch.