THROUGH all 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 laudanum and 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 and we 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
cafe 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 by _Hearth 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 Oxford Street. 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 she looked 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.