CHAPTER XXVI

'I DON'T approve 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 work moral 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,' pursued Victoria 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.'

PART II

CHAPTER I

VICTORIA turned uneasily on the sofa and stretched her arms. She yawned,

then sat up abruptly. Sudermann's _Katzensteg_ fell 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 room was

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 stopped

at 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 of _cafe au lait_ silk 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 on the 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 quicker and 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 to _fraise ecrasee_ cushions,

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 went from 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 found her 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 the _gris 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 what _do_ you 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, load herself 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 looked weary 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 the beautiful 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.

CHAPTER II

'TOM, you know how I hate _tournedos_,' 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

light surrounded 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, but her gown was exquisite and its _decolletage_

challenged 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 white blouses 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 was Number 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 right

When yer ain't got none;

Yer can sit at 'ome

An' eat 'cher dam bun.

I've just 'ad some twins;

Nurse says don't be coy,

For they're just the picture

Of 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, Teg

Never 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 light

As a ton o' coke.

Came 'ome late one night

An' what oh did 'e see?

Saw me ma-in-law

On 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 look at 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 really _is_ good.' 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.

The splendid irresponsibility of the music hall was wasted on Victoria.

She had the mind of a schoolmistress grafted on a social sense. She saw

nothing before her but the gross riot of the drunken. She saw no humour

in that cockney cruelty, capable though it be of absurd generosity. She

resented too Cairns's boyish pleasure in it all; he revelled, she felt,

as a buffalo wallows in a mud bath. He was gross, stupid, dull. It was

degrading to be his instrument of pleasure. But, after all, what did it

matter? He was the narrow way which would lead her to the august.

Though Cairns was not thin-skinned he perceived a little of this.

Without a word he watched the cross-talk comedians, then the 'Dandy Girl

of Cornucopia,' a rainbow of stiff frills with a voice like a fretsaw.

As the lights went down for the bioscope, the idea of reconciliation

that springs from fat cheery hearts overwhelmed him. He put his hand out

and closed it over hers. With a tremendous effort she repressed her

repulsion, and in so doing won her victory. In the darkness Cairns threw

his arms round her. He drew her towards him, moved, the least bit

hysterical. As if fearful of losing her he crushed her against his shirt

front.

Victoria did not resist him. Her eyes fixed on the blackness of the roof

she submitted to the growing brutality of his kisses on her neck, her

shoulders, her cheeks. Pressed close against him she did not withdraw

her knees from the grasp of his.

'Kiss me,' whispered Cairns imperiously.

She cast down her eyes; she could hardly see his face in the darkness,

nothing but the glitter of his eyeballs. Then, unhurried and purposeful,

she pressed her lips to his. The lights went up again. Many of the crowd

were stirring; Victoria stretched out her arms in a gesture of

weariness.

'Let's go home, Vic,' said Cairns, 'you're tired.'

'Oh, no, I'm not tired,' she said. 'I don't mind staying.'

'Well, you're bored.'

'No, not at all, it's quite interesting,' said Victoria judicially.

'Come along, Vic,' said Cairns sharply. He got up.

She looked up at him. His face was redder, more swollen than it had been

half-an-hour before. His eyes followed every movement of her arms and

shoulders. With a faint smile of understanding and the patience of those

who play lone hands, she got up and let him put on her wrap. As she put

it on she made him feel against his fingers the sweep of her arm; she

rested for a moment her shoulder against his.

In the cab they did not exchange a word. Victoria's eyes were fixed on

the leaden sky; she was this man's prey. But, after all, one man's prey

or another? The prey of those who demand bitter toil from the charwoman,

the female miner, the P.R.R. girl; or of those who want kisses, soft

flesh, pungent scents, what did it all amount to? And, in Oxford Street,

a sky sign in the shape of a horse-shoe advertising whisky suddenly

reminded her of the half hoop, a step towards that capital which meant

freedom. No, she was not the prey--at least not in the sense of the bait

which finally captures the salmon.

Cairns had not spoken a word. Victoria looked at him furtively. His

hands were clenched before him; in his eyes shone an indomitable

purpose. He was going to the feast and he would foot the bill. On

arriving at Elm Tree Place he walked at once into his dressing room,

while Victoria went into her bedroom. She knew his mood well and knew

too that he would not be long. She did not fancy overmuch the scene she

could conjure up. In another minute or two he would come in with the

culture of a thousand years ground down, smothered beneath the lava-like

flow of animalism. He would come with his hands shaking, ready to be

cruel in the exaction of his rights. She hovered between repulsion and

an anxiety which was almost anticipation; Cairns was the known and the

unknown at once. But whatever his demands they should be met and

satisfied, for business is business and its justification is profits. So

Victoria braced herself and, with feverish activity, twisted up her

hair, sprayed herself with scent, jumped into bed and turned out the

light.

As she did so the door opened. She was conscious for a fraction of a

second of the bright quadrilateral of the open door where Cairns stood

framed, a broad black silhouette.

CHAPTER III

'YES, I'm a lucky beggar,' soliloquised Cairns. He gave a tug to the

leads at which two Pekingese spaniels were straining. 'Come along, you

little brutes,' he growled. The spaniels, intent upon a piece of soiled

brown paper in the gutter, refused to move.

'Obstinate, sir,' said a policeman respectfully.

'Devilish. Simply devilish. Fine day, isn't it?'

'Blowing up for rain, sir.'

'Maybe. Come along, Snoo; that'll do.'

Cairns dragged the dogs up the road. Snoo and Poo, husband and wife, had

suddenly fascinated him in Villiers Street that morning. He was on his

way to offer them at Victoria's shrine. Instinctively he liked the smart

dog, as he liked the smart woman and the American novel. Snoo and Poo,

tiny, fat, curly, khaki-coloured, with their flat Kalmuck faces,

unwillingly trundled behind him. They would, thought Cairns, be in

keeping with the establishment. A pleasant establishment. A nice little

house, in its quiet street where nothing ever seemed to pass, except

every hour or so a cab. It was better than a home, for it offered all

that a home offers, soft carpets, discreet servants, nice little lunches

among flowers and well-cleaned plate, and beyond, something that no home

contains. It was adventurous. Cairns had knocked about the world a good

deal and had collected sensations as finer natures collect thoughts. The

women of the past met and caressed on steam-boats, in hotels at Cairo,

Singapore and Cape Town, the tea gardens of Kobe and the stranger

mysteries of Zanzibar, all this had left him weary and sighing for

something like the English home. Indeed he grew more sentimental as he

thought of Dover cliffs every time his tailor called the measurement of

his girth. An extra quarter of an inch invariably coincided with a

sentimental pang. Cairns, however, would not yet have been capable of

settling down in a hunting county with a well-connected wife, a costly

farming experiment and the shilling weeklies. A transition was required;

he had no gift of introspection, but his relations with Victoria were

expressions of this mood. Thus he was happy.

He never entered the little house in Elm Tree Place without a thrill of

pleasure. Under the placid mask of its respectability and all that went

with it, clean white steps, half curtains, bulbs in the window boxes,

there flowed for him a swift hot stream. And in that stream flourished a

beautiful white lily whose petals opened and smiled at will.

'I wonder whether I'm in love with her?' This was a frequent subject for

Cairns's meditations. Victoria was so much more for him than any other

woman had been that he always hesitated to answer. She charmed him

sensually, but other women had done likewise; she was beautiful, but he

could conceive of greater beauty. Her intellect he did not consider, for

he was almost unaware of it. For him she was clever, in the sense that

women are clever in men's eyes when they can give a smart answer,

understand Bradshaw and order a possible combination at a restaurant.

What impressed him was Victoria's coolness, the balance of her unhurried

mind. Now and then he caught her reading curious books, such as

_Smiles's Self-Help_, _Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to his Son_ and

_Thus Spake Zara . . . Something_, by a man with a funny name; but this

was all part of her character and of its novelty. He did not worry to

scratch the surface of this brain; virgin soils did not interest him in

the mental sense. Sometimes, when he enounced a political opinion or

generalised on the problems of the day as stated in the morning paper,

he would find, a little uneasily, her eyes fixed on him with a strangely

interested look. But her eyelids would at once be lowered and her lips

would part, showing a little redder and moister, causing his heart to

beat quicker, and he would forget his perplexity as he took her hand and

stroked her arm with gentle insistence.

Cairns dragged Snoo and Poo up the steps of the little house still

grumbling, panting and protesting that, as drawing-room dogs, they

objected to exercise in any form. He had a latchkey, but always

refrained from using it. He liked to ring the bell, to feel like a

guest. It would have been commonplace to enter _his_ hall and hang up

_his_ hat on _his_ peg. That would have been home and home only. To ask

whether Mrs Ferris was in was more adventurous, for she might be out.

And if she expected him, then it was an assignation; adventure again.

The unimposing Mary let him in. For a fraction of a second she looked at

the Major, then at the floor.

'Mrs Ferris in?'

'Yes, sir, Mrs Ferris is in the boudoir.' Mary's voice fell on the last

necessary word like a dropgate. She had been asked a question and

answered it. That was the end of it. Cairns was the master of her

mistress. What respect she owed was paid.

Cairns deposited his hat and coat in Mary's hands. Then, lifting Snoo

under one arm and Poo under the other, both grumbling vigorously and

kicking with their hind legs, he walked to the boudoir and pushed it

open with his shoulder. Victoria was sitting at the little bureau

writing a letter. Cairns watched her for two seconds, rejoicing in the

firm white moulding of her neck, in the dark tendrils of hair clustering

low, dwindling into the central line of down which tells of breeding and

health. Then Victoria turned round sharply.

'Oh,' she said, with a little gasp. 'Oh, Tom, the ducks!'

Cairns laughed and, walking up to her, dropped Snoo on her lap and Poo,

snuffling ferociously, on the floor. Victoria buried her hands in Snoo's

thick coat; the dog gurgled joyfully and rolled over on its side.

Victoria laughed, muzzling Snoo with her hand.

Cairns watched the picture for, a moment. He was absurdly reminded of a

girl in Java who nursed a black marmoset against her yellow breast. And

as Victoria looked up at him, her chin now resting on Snoo's brown head,

a soft wave of scent rose towards him. He knelt down, throwing his arms

round her and the dog, gathering them both into his embrace. As his lips

met hers and clung to them, her perfume and the ranker scent of the dog

filled his nostrils, burning aphrodisiac into his brain.

Victoria freed herself gently and rose to her feet, still nursing Snoo,

and laughingly pushed him into Cairns's face.

'Kiss him,' she said, 'no favours here.'

Cairns obeyed, then picked up Poo and sat down on the couch.

'This is sweet of you, Tom,' said Victoria. 'They _are_ lovebirds.'

'I'm glad you like them; this is Poo I'm holding, yours is Snoo.'

'Odd names,' said Victoria.

'Chinese according to the dealer,' said Cairns, 'but I don't pretend to

know what they mean.'

'Never mind,' said Victoria, 'they're lovebirds, and so are you, Tom.'

Cairns looked at her silently, at her full erect figure and smiling

eyes. He was a lucky beggar, a damned lucky beggar.

'And what is this bribe for?' she asked.

'Oh, nothing. Knew you'd like them, beastly tempers and as game as mice.

Women's dogs, you know.'

'Generalising again, Tom. Besides I hate mice.'

Cairns drew her down by his side on the couch. Everything in this woman

interested and stimulated him. She was always fresh, always young. The

touch of her hand, the smell of her hair, the feel of her skirts winding

round his ankles, all that was magic; every little act of hers was a

taking of possession. Every time he mirrored his face in her eyes and

saw the eyelids slowly veil and unveil them, something like love crept

into his soul. But every passionate embrace left him weak and almost

repelled. She was his property; he had paid for her; and, insistent

thought, what would she have done if he had not been rich?

Half an hour passed away. Victoria lay passive in his arms. Snoo and

Poo, piled in a heap, were snuffling drowsily. There was a ring at the

front door, then a slam. They could hear voices. They started up.

'Who the deuce . . . .?' said Cairns.

Then they heard someone in the dining-room beyond the door. There was a

knock at the door of the boudoir.

'Come in,' said Victoria.

Mary entered. Her placid eyes passed over the Major's tie which had

burst out of his waistcoat, Victoria's tumbled hair.

'Mr Wren, mum,' she said.

Victoria staggered. Her hands knotted themselves together convulsively.

'Good God,' she whispered.

'Who is it? What does he want? What name did you say?' asked Cairns.

Victoria's excitement was infecting him.

Victoria did not answer. Mary stood before them, her eyes downcast

before the drama. She was waiting for orders.

'Can't you speak?' growled Cairns. 'Who is it?'

Victoria found her voice at last.

'My brother,' she said hoarsely.

Cairns did not say a word. He walked once up and once down the room,

stopped before the mirror to settle his tie. Then turned to Mary.

'Tell the gentleman Mrs Ferris can't see him!'

Mary turned to go. There was a sound of footsteps in the dining-room.

The button of the door turned twice as if somebody was trying to open

it. The door was locked but Cairns almost leaped towards it. Victoria

stopped him.

'No,' she said, 'let me have it out. Tell Mr Wren I'm coming, Mary.'

Mary turned away. The incident was fading from her mind as a stone fades

away as it falls into an abyss. Victoria clung to Cairns and whispered

in his ear.

'Tom, go away, go away. Come back in an hour. I beg you.'

'No, old girl, I'm going to see you through,' said Cairns doggedly.

'No, no, don't.' There was fear in her voice. 'I must have it out. Go

away, for my sake, Tom.'

She pushed him gently into the hall, forced him to pick up his hat and

stick and closed the door behind him. She braced herself for the effort;

for a second the staircase shivered before her eyes like a road in the

heat.

'Now for it,' she said, 'I'm in for a row.'

A pleasant little tingle was in her veins. She opened the dining-room

door. It was not very light. There was a slight singing in her ears.

She saw nothing before her except a man's legs clad in worn grey

trousers where the knees jutted forward sharply. With an effort she

raised her eyes and looked Edward in the face.

He was pale and thin as ever. A ragged wisp of yellow hair hung over the

left side of his forehead. He peered at her through his silver-mounted

glasses. His hands were twisting at his watch chain, quickly, nervously,

like a mouse in a wheel. As she looked at his weak mouth his

insignificance was revealed to her. Was this, this creature with the

vague idealistic face, the high shoulders, something to be afraid of?

Pooh!

'Well, Edward?' she said, involuntarily aggressive.

Wren did not answer. His hands suddenly stopped revolving.

'Well, Edward?' she repeated. 'So you've found me?'

'Yes,' he said at length. 'I . . . . Yes, I've found you.' The movement

of his hands began again.

'Well?'

'I know. I've found out. . . . I went to Finsbury.'

'Oh? I suppose you mean you tracked me from my old rooms. I suppose

Betty told you I . . . my new occupation.'

Wren jumped.

'Damn,' he growled. 'Damn you.'

Victoria smiled. Edward swearing. It was too funny. What an awful thing

it was to have a sense of humour.

'You seem to know all about it,' she said smoothly. 'But what do you

want?'

'How dare you,' growled Edward. 'A woman like you. . . . .'

A hard look came into Victoria's eyes.

'That will do Edward, I know my own business.'

'Yes, a dirty business.' A hot flush spread over the man's thin cheeks.

'You little cur.' Victoria smiled; she could feel her lips baring her

eye teeth. 'Fool.'

Edward stared at her. Passion was stifling his words.

'It's a lot you know about life, schoolmaster,' she sneered. 'Who are

you to preach at me? Is it your business if I choose to sell my body

instead of selling my labour?'

'You're disgraced.' His voice went down to a hoarse whisper.

'Disgraced.'

Victoria felt a wave of heat pass over her body.

'Disgraced, you fool? Will anybody ever teach you what disgrace is?

There's no such thing as disgrace for a woman. All women are disgraced

when they're born. We're parasites, toys. That's all we are. You've got

two kinds of uses for us, lords and masters! One kind is honourable

labour, as you say, namely the work undertaken by what you call the

lower classes; the other's a share in the nuptial couch, whether illegal

or legal. Yes, your holy matrimony is only another name for my

profession.'

'You've no right to say that,' cried Edward. 'You're trying to drag down

marriage to your level. When a woman marries she gives herself because

she loves; then her sacrifice is sublime.' He stopped for a second.

Idealism, sentimentalism, other names for ignorance of life, clashed in

his self-conscious brain without producing light. 'Oh, Victoria,' he

said, 'you don't know how awful it is for me to find you like this, my

little sister . . . of course you can't love him . . . if you'd married

him it would have been different.'

'Ah, Edward, so that's your philosophy. You say that though I don't love

him, if I'd married him it would have been different. So you won't let

me surrender to a man unless I can trick him or goad him into binding

himself to me for life. If I don't love him I may marry him and make

his life a hell and I shall be a good woman; but I mustn't live with him

illegally so that he may stick to me only so long as he cares for me.'

'I didn't say that,' stammered Edward. 'Of course, it's wrong to marry a

man you don't care for . . . but marriage is different, it sanctifies.'

'Sanctifies! Nothing sanctifies anything. Our deeds are holy or unholy

in themselves. Oh, understand me well, I claim no ethical revelation; I

don't care whether my deeds are holy or not. I judge nothing, not even

myself. All I say is that your holy bond is a farce; if women were

free--that is, trained, able and allowed to earn fair wages for fair

labour--then marriage might be holy. But marriage for a woman is a

monetary contract. It means that she is kept, clothed, amused; she is

petted like a favourite dog, indulged like a spoiled child. In exchange

she gives her body.'

'No, no.'

'Yes, yes. And the difference between a married woman and me is her

superior craft, her ability to secure a grip upon a man. You respect her

because she is permanent, as you respect a vested interest.'

The flush rose again in Edward's cheeks. As he lost ground he fortified

his obstinacy.

'You've sold yourself,' he said quickly, 'gone down into the gutter

. . . . Oh!'

'The gutter.' Victoria was so full of contempt that it almost hurt her.

'Of course I'm in the gutter. I always was in the gutter. I was in the

gutter when I married and my husband boarded and lodged me to be his

favourite. I was in the gutter when I had to kow-tow to underbred

people; to be a companion is to prostitute friendship. You don't mind

that, do you? I was in the gutter in the tea shops, when I decoyed men

into coming to the place because they could touch me, breathe me. I'm in

the gutter now, but I'm in the right one. I've found the one that's

going to make me free.'

Edward was shaken by her passion.

'You'll never be free,' he faltered, 'you're an outcast.'

'An outcast from what?' sneered Victoria. 'From society? What has

society done for me? It's kicked me, it's bled me. It's made me work ten

hours a day for eight bob a week. It'd have sucked me dry and offered me

the workhouse, or the Thames at the end. It made me almost a cripple.'

Edward stared.

'Yes,' said Victoria savagely. 'That makes you squirm, sentimentalist.

Look at that!'

She put her foot on a chair, tucked up her skirt, tore down the

stocking. Purplish still, the veins stood out on the firm white flesh.

Edward clenched both his hands and looked away. A look of pain was in

his eyes.

'Yes, look at that,' raged Victoria. 'That's what your society's done

for me. It's chucked me into the water to teach me to swim, and it's

gloated over every choke. It's fine talking about chivalry, isn't it,

when you see what honest labour's done for me, isn't it? It's fine

talking about purity when you see the price your society pays me for

being what I am, isn't it? Look at me. Look at my lace, look at my

diamonds, look at my house . . . and think of the other side: eight bob

a week, ten hours work a day, a room with no fire, and a bed with no

sheets. But I know your society now, and as I can't kill it I'll cheat

it. I've served it and it's got two years of my life; but I'm going to

get enough out of it to make it crawl.'

She strode towards Edward.

'So don't you come preaching to me,' she hissed.

Edward's head bent down. Slowly he walked towards the door.

'Yes,' she said, 'go. I've no use for you. I'm out for stronger meat.'

He opened the door, then, without looking up,

'Good-bye,' he said.

The door closed behind him. Victoria looked about her for some seconds,

then sat down in the carving chair, her arms outstretched on the table.

Her teeth were clenched now, her jaw set; with indomitable purpose she

looked out into the darkening room where she saw the battle and victory

of life.

CHAPTER IV

VICTORIA had never loved adventure for its own sake. The change from

drudgery to leisure was grateful as was all it brought in the shape of

pretty clothes, jewels and savoury dishes; but she realised every day

better that, taking it as a profession, her career was no great success.

It afforded her a fair livelihood, but the wasting asset of her beauty

could not be replaced; thus it behoved her to amortize its value at a

rapid rate. She felt much better in health; her varicose veins had gone

down a good deal, but she still preserved a dark mystery about them;

after six months of intimate association, Cairns did not yet know why he

had never seen Victoria without her stockings. Being man of the world

enough to know that discretion is happiness, he had never pressed the

point; a younger or more sensitive man would have torn away the veil, so

as to achieve total intimacy at the risk of wrecking it. He was not of

these, and vaguely Victoria did not thank him for a sentiment half

discreet, half indifferent; such an attitude for a lover suggested

disregard for essentials. As she grew stronger and healthier her brain

worked more clearly, and she began to realise that even ten years of

association with this man would yield no more than a pittance. And it

would be difficult to hold him for ten years.

Victoria certainly went ably to work to preserve for Cairns the feeling

of novelty and adventure. It was practically in deference to her

suggestions that he retained his chambers; he soon realised her wisdom

and entered into the spirit of their life. He still understood very well

the pleasure of being her guest. Victoria found no decline in his

desire; perhaps it was less fiery, but it was as coarse and as constant.

Certainly she was woman for him rather than merely a woman; moreover she

was a habit. Victoria saw this clearly enough and resolved to make the

most of it.

In accordance with her principles she kept her expenses down. She would

not even allow herself the luxury of a maid; she found it cheaper to pay

Mary higher wages. When Cairns was not expected her lunch was of the

simplest, and Charlotte discovered with amazement that her rakish

mistress could check a grocer's book. Victoria was not even above

cheating the Water Board by omitting to register her garden tap. All

these, however, were petty economies; they would result in a saving of

perhaps three hundred a year, a beggarly sum when pitted against the

uncertainties of her profession.

She realised all this within three or four months of her new departure,

and promptly decided that Cairns must be made to yield a higher revenue.

She felt that she could not very well tell him that a thousand a year

was not enough; on the face of it it was ample. It was necessary

therefore to launch out a little. The first step was to increase her

visible supply of clothes, and this was easily done by buying the cheap

and effective instead of the expensive and good. Cairns knew enough

about women's clothes to detect this now and then, but the changes

bewildered him a little and he had some difficulty in seeing the

difference between the latest thing and the cheapest. Whenever she was

with him she affected the manners of a spendthrift; she would call cabs

to carry her a hundred yards, give a beggar a shilling, or throw a pair

of gloves out of the window because they had been worn once.

Cairns smiled tolerantly. She might as well have her fling, he thought,

and a lack of discipline was as charming in a mistress as it was

deplorable in a wife. He was therefore not surprised when, one morning,

he found Victoria apparently nervous and worried. She owned that she was

short of cash. In fact the manager of her bank had written to point out

that her account was overdrawn.

'Dear me,' said Cairns with mock gravity, 'you've been going it, old

girl! What's all this? "Self," "Self," why all these cheques are to

"Self." You'll go broke.'

'I suppose I shall,' said Victoria wearily. 'I don't know how I do it,

Tom. I'm no good at accounts. And I hate asking you for more money . . .

but what am I to do?'

She crossed her hands over her knees and looked up at him with a pretty

expression of appeal. Cairns laughed.

'Don't worry,' he said, curling a lock of her hair round a fat

forefinger. 'I'll see you through.'

Victoria received that afternoon a cheque for two hundred and fifty

pounds which she paid into her account. She did not, however, inform

Cairns that the proceeds of the "Self" cheques had been paid into a

separate account which she had opened with another bank. By this means,

she was always able to exhibit a gloomy pass book whenever it was

required.

Having discovered that Cairns was squeezable Victoria felt more hopeful

as to the future. She was his only luxury and made the most of his

liking for jewellery and furs. She even hit upon the more ingenious

experiment of interesting Barbezan Soeurs in her little speculations.

The device was not novel: for a consideration of ten per cent these

bustling dressmakers were ready to provide fictitious bills and even

solicitor's letters couched in frigidly menacing terms. Cairns laughed

and paid solidly. He had apparently far more money than he needed.

Victoria was almost an economy; without her he would have lost a fortune

at bridge, kept a yacht perhaps and certainly a motor. As it was he was

quite content with his poky chambers in St James', a couple of clubs

which he never thought of entering, the house in Elm Tree Place and a

stock of good cigars.

Cairns was happy, and Victoria labouring lightly for large profits, was

contented too. Theirs were lazy lives, for Cairns was a man who could

loaf. He loafed so successfully that he did not even think of

interfering with Victoria's reading. She now read steadily and

voraciously; she eschewed novels, fearing the influence of sentiment.

'It will be time for sentiment by and by,' she sometimes told herself.

Meanwhile she armoured her heart and sharpened her wits. The earlier

political opinions which had formed in her mind under the pressure of

toil remained unchanged but did not develop. She recognised herself as a

parasite and almost gloried in it. She evolved as a system of philosophy

that one's conduct in life is a matter of alternatives. Nothing was good

and nothing was evil; things were better than others or worse and there

was an end of her morality. Victoria had no patience with theories. One

day, much to Cairns surprise, she violently flung Ingersoll's essays

into the fender.

'Steady on,' said Cairns, 'steady on, old girl.'

'Such rot,' she snarled.

'Hear, hear,' said Cairns, picking up the book and looking at its title.

'Serve you right for reading that sort of stuff. I can't make you out,

Vic.'

Victoria looked at him with a faint smile, but refused to assign a cause

for her anger. In fact she had suddenly been irritated by Ingersoll's

definition of morality. 'Perceived obligation,' she thought. 'And I

don't perceive any obligation!' She consoled herself suddenly with the

thought that her amorality was a characteristic of the superman.

The superman preoccupied her now and then. He was a good subject for

speculation because imponderable and inexistent. The nearest approach

she could think of was a cross between an efficient colonial governor

and a latter-day prophet. She believed quite sincerely that the day must

come when children of the light must be born, capable of ruling and of

keeping the law. She saw very well too that their production did not lie

with an effete aristocracy any more than with a dirty and drunken

democracy; probably they would be neo-plutocrats, men full of ambition,

lusting for power and yet imbued with a spirit of icy justice. Her

earliest tendency had been towards an idealistic socialism. Burning with

her own wrongs and touched by the angelic wing of sympathy, she had seen

in the communisation of wealth the only means of curbing the evils it

had hitherto wrought. Further observation showed her however that an

idealism of this kind would not lead the world speedily into a peaceful

haven. She saw too well that covetousness was still lurking snakelike in

the bosom of man, ready to rear its ugly head and strike at any hand.

Thus she was not surprised to see the chaos which reigned among

socialists, their intriguing, their jealousies, their unending

dissensions, their apostacies. This did not throw her back into the

stereotyped philosophy of individualism; for she could not help seeing

that the system of modern life was absurd, stupidly wasteful above all

of time, labour and wealth. To apply Nietzscheism to socialism was,

however, beyond her; to reconcile the two doctrines which apparently

conflict and really only overlap was a task too difficult for a brain

which had lain fallow for twenty-five years. But she dimly felt that

Nietzscheism did not mean a glorified imperialism, but a worship of

intellectual efficiency and the stringent morality of _noblesse oblige_.

Where Victoria began to part issue with her own thoughts was when she

considered the position of women. Their outlook was one of unrelieved

gloom; and it one day came upon her as a revelation that Nietzsche and

Schopenhauer, following in a degree on Rousseau, had forgotten women in

the scheme of life. There might be supermen but there would be no

superwomen: if the supermen were true to their type they would have to

crush and to dominate the women. As the latter fared so hard at the

hands of the pigmies of to-day, what would they do if they could not

develop in time to resist the sons of Anak? Victoria saw that the world

was entering upon a sex war. Hitherto a shameful state of peace had left

women in the hands of men, turning over the other cheek to the smiter.

The sex war, however, held forth no hopes to her; in the dim future, sex

equality might perhaps prevail; but she saw nothing to indicate that

women had sown the seeds of their victory. She had no wish to enrol

herself in the ranks of those who were waging an almost hopeless battle,

armed with untrained intellects and unathletic bodies. She could not get

away from the fact that the best woman athletes cannot compete with

ordinary men, that even women with high intellectual qualifications had

not ousted from commanding positions men of inferior ability.

All this, she thought, was unjust; but why hope for a change? There was

nothing to show that men grew much better as a sex; then why pin faith

to the coming of better times? Women were parasites, working only under

constraint, badly and at uncongenial tasks; their right to live was

based on their capacity to please. This brought her to her own

situation. The future lay before her in the shape of two roads. One was

the road which led to the struggle for life; ending, she felt it too

well, in a crawl to death on crippled limbs. The other was the road

along which grew roses, roses which she could pluck and sell to men; at

the end of that was the heaven of independence. It had golden gates; it

was guarded by an angel in white garments with a palm leaf in his hands

and beyond lay the pleasant places where she had a right of way. And as

she looked again the heaven with the golden gates turned into a bank

with a commissionaire at the door.

Her choice being made, she did not regret it. For the time being her

life was pleasant enough, and if it could be made a little more

profitable it would soon be well worth living, and her freedom would be

earned. Meanwhile she took pleasure in small things. The little house

was almost a show place, so delicate and refined were its inner and

outer details. Victoria saw to it that frequently changed flowers

decorated the beds in the front garden; Japanese trees, dwarfed and

gnarled, stood right and left of the steps, scowling like tiny Titans;

all the blinds in the house were a mass of insertion. These blinds were

a feature for her; they implied secrecy. Behind the half blinds were

thick curtains of decorated muslin; behind these again, heavy curtains

which could be drawn at will. They were the impenetrable veil which

closed off from the world and its brutalities this oasis of forbidden

joys.

In the house also she was ever elaborating, sybaritising her life. She

had a branch telephone fixed at the head of her bed; the first time that

Cairns used it to tell his man to bring up his morning coat she had the

peculiar sensation that her bed was in touch with the world. She could

call up anybody, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Governor of the Bank

of England or the headquarters of the Salvation Army. Her bed was the

centre of the world. She fitted the doors of her bedroom and her boudoir

with curious little locks which acted on the pressure of a finger for

her mind was turned on delicacies and the sharp click of a bolt, the

grating of a key savoured of the definite, therefore of the coarse. A

twist of the knob between two fingers and the world was silently shut

out.

Now too that she was beautiful once more she revelled in mirrors. The

existing ones in her bedroom and in the boudoir were not enough; they

were public, unintimate. She had a high mirror fixed in the bathroom, so

that she could see herself in her freshness, covered with pearly beads

like a naiad. She rejoiced in her beauty, in her renewed strength; she

often stood for many minutes in the dim steamy light of the room,

analysing her body, its grace and youth, with a growing consciousness of

latent power. Then, suddenly, the faint violet streaks of the varicose

veins would intrude upon the rite and she would wrap herself up

jealously in her bath robe so that not even the mirror should be a

confidant of the past.

CHAPTER V

WEEK after week passed on, and now monotony drew her stifling cloak over

Victoria. Cairns was still in a state of beatitude which made him an

unexciting companion; satisfied in his egoism, it never came into his

mind that Victoria could tire of her life. He spent many afternoons in

the back garden under a rose-covered pergola. By his side was a little

table with a syphon, a decanter of whisky, and a box of cigars; he read

desultorily, sometimes the latest motor novel, at other times the

improving memoirs of eighteenth century noblewomen. Now and then he

would look approvingly at Victoria in plain white drill, delightfully

mischievous under a sun-bonnet, and relapse into his book. Once he

quoted 'A flask of wine, a book of verse. . . .' and Victoria went into

sudden fits of laughter when she remembered Neville Brown. The single

hackneyed line seemed to link malekind together.

Cairns was already talking of going away. June was oppressively hot and

he was hankering after some quiet place where he might do some

sea-fishing and get some golf. He was becoming dangerously fat; and

Victoria, foreseeing a long and very cheap holiday, favoured the idea in

every way. They could go up to Scotland later too; but Cairns rather

hesitated about this, for he neither cared to show off Victoria before

the people he knew on the moors, nor to leave her for a fortnight. He

was paying the penalty of Capua. His plans were set back, however, by

serious trouble which had taken place on his Irish estate, his though

still in the hands of Marmaduke Cairns's executors. There had been

nightriding, cattle driving, some boycotting. The situation grew so

tense that the executors advised Cairns to sell the estate to the

tenants but the latter declined the terms; matters came to a deadlock

and it was quite on the cards that an application might be made under

the Irish Land Act. It was clear that in this case the terms would be

bad, and Cairns was called to Limerick by telegram as a last chance. He

left Victoria, grumbling and cursing Ireland and all things Irish.

Left to herself, Victoria felt rather at a loose end. The cheerful if

uninteresting personality of Major Cairns had a way of filling the

house. He had an expansive mind; it was almost chubby. For two days she

rather enjoyed her freedom. The summer was gorgeous; St John's Wood was

bursting everywhere into flower; the trees were growing opaque in the

parks. At every street corner little whirlwinds of dry grit swayed in

the hot air. One afternoon Victoria indulged in the luxury of a hired

private carriage, and flaunted it with the best in the long line on the

south side of the Park. Wedged for a quarter of an hour in the mass she

felt a glow come over her. The horses all round her shone like polished

wood, the carriage panels were lustrous, the harness was glittering, the

brass burnished; all the world seemed to radiate warmth and light. Gaily

enough, because not jaded by repetition, she caused the carriage to do

the Ring, twice. She felt for a moment that she was free, that she could

vie with those women whose lazy detachment she stirred for a moment into

curiosity by her deep eyes, dark piled hair and the audacity of her

diaphanous _crepe de chine_.

Cairns was still in Ireland, struggling conscientiously to pile up

unearned increment; and Victoria, thoroughly aimless, suddenly bethought

herself of Farwell. She had been remiss in what was almost a duty.

Surely she ought to report progress to the man who had helped to open

her eyes to the realities of life. She had misapplied his teaching

perhaps, or rather remoulded it, but still it was his teaching. Or

rather it was what a woman should know, as opposed to what Thomas

Farwell preached; if men were to practise that, then she should revise

her philosophy.

At ten minutes to one she entered the Moorgate Street P.R.R. with a

little thrill. Everything breathed familiarity; it was like coming home,

but better, for it is sweeter to revisit the place where one has

suffered, when one has emerged, than to brood with gentle sorrow on the

spot, where there once was joy. She knew every landmark, the

tobacconist, the picture shop, still full of 'Mother's Helps' and of

'artistic' studies in the nude; there was the red-coated bootblack too,

as dirty and as keenly solicitous as ever. The P.R.R. itself did not

chill her. In the crude June sunlight its nickel shone gaily enough.

Everything was as before; the cakes had been moulded in the old moulds,

and here was the old bill of fare, unchanged no doubt; even the

marble-topped tables and the half cleaned cruets looked kindly upon her;

but the tesselated red and blue floor aroused the hateful memory of

another Victoria on her hands and knees, an old sack round her waist,

painfully swaying from right to left, swabbing the tiles. Little

rivulets of water and dirt flowed slowly across the spectre's hand.

As she went down the steps into the smoking-room she crossed with the

manageress, still buxom and erect; but she passed unnoticed, for this

was the busy hour when the chief tried to be simultaneously on three

floors. The room was not so full as it had once been. She sat down at a

little table and watched the familiar scene for some minutes. She told

the girl she would wait a minute, for she did not want to miss Farwell.

The world had gone round, but apparently the P.R.R. was the axis. There

in the corner were the chess players; to-day they only ran four boards,

but at one of them a fierce discussion was going on as to a variation of

the queen's pawn opening. On the other side of the room were the young

domino players, laughing and smoking cigarettes. The fat and yellow

Levantine was missing. Victoria regretted him, for the apocalyptic

figure was an essential part of the ugly past. But there was 'old dry

toast' all alone at his little table. He had not changed; his white hair

still framed thickly his beautiful old brown face. There he sat, still

silent and desolate, waiting for the end. Victoria felt a pang of

sorrow. She was not quite hardened yet and she realised it angrily.

There must be no sympathy and no quarter in her game of life. It was too

late or too soon for that. Victoria let her eyes stray round the room.

There were the young men and boys or some of the same breed, in their

dark suits, brilliant ties, talking noisily, chaffing one another,

gulping down their small teas and toasted scones. A conversation between

two older men was wafted in to her ears.

'Awful. Have you tried annelicide?'

At that moment a short broad figure walked smartly down the steps. It

was Thomas Farwell, a thin red book under his arm. He went straight

through to the old table, propped his book against the cruet and began

to read. Victoria surveyed him critically. He was thinner than ever; his

hair was more plentifully sprinkled with grey but had receded no

further. He was quite near her, so she could see his unbrushed collar

and his frayed cuffs. After a moment the girl came and stood before him;

it was Nelly, big and raw-boned as ever, handsome still like the fine

beast of burden she was. She wore no apron now in proud token of her

new position as head waitress. Now the voices by her side were talking

holidays.

'No, Ramsgit's good enough for me. Broadstairs and all these little

places, they're so tony--'

Maud passed quickly before Victoria. The poor little girl was as white

as ever; her flaccid cheeks danced up and down as she ran. The other

voice was relating at length how its owner had taken his good lady to

Deal. Nelly had left Farwell, walking more slowly than the other girls,

as befitted her station. Victoria felt herself pluck up a little

courage, crossed the room followed by many admiring glances, and quickly

sat down at Farwell's table. He looked up quickly. The book dropped

suddenly from the cruet.

'Victoria,' he gasped.

'Yes,' she said smiling.

'Well . . .' His eyes ran over her close fitting tussore dress, her

white kid gloves.

'Is that all you've got to say to me?' she asked. 'Won't you shake

hands?'

Farwell put out his hand and held hers for a second. He was smiling now,

with just a touch of wistfulness in his eyes.

'I'm very glad to see you,' he said at length.

'So am I,' said Victoria. 'I hope you don't mind my coming here, but I

only thought of it this morning.'

'Mind,' snapped Farwell. 'People who understand everything never mind

anything.'

Victoria smiled again. The bumptious aphorism was a sign that Farwell

was still himself. For a minute or so they looked at one another.

Victoria wondered at this man; so powerful intellectually and

physically; and yet content to live in his ideals on a pittance, to do

dull work, to be a subordinate. Truly a caged lion. Farwell, on the

other hand, was looking in vain for some physical ravishes to justify

Victoria's profession, for some gross development at least. He looked in

vain. Instead of the pale dark girl with large grey eyes whom he had

known, he now saw a healthy and beautiful woman with a clear white skin,

thick hair, red lips.

'Well,' he said with a laugh, 'can I invite you to lunch with me?'

'You may,' she said. 'I'll have a small coffee and . . . a sunny side

up.'

Farwell laughed and signed to Nelly. After a minute he attracted her

attention and gave the order without Nelly taking any interest in

Farwell's guest. It might be rather extraordinary, but her supervisory

duties were all-absorbent. When she returned, however, she stole a

curious look at Victoria while placing before her the poached egg on

toast. She looked at her again, and her eyes dilated.

'Law,' she said. 'Vic!'

'Yes, Nelly, how are you?' Victoria put out her gloved hand. Nelly took

it wonderingly.

'I'm all right,' she answered slowly. 'Just been made head waitress,'

she added with some unction. Her eyes were roving over Victoria's

clothes, valuing them like an expert.

'Congratulations,' said Victoria. 'Glad you're getting on.'

'I see _you're_ getting on,' said Nelly, with a touch of sarcasm.

'So, so, things aren't too bad.' Victoria looked up. The women's eyes

crossed like rapiers; Nelly's were full of suspicion. The conversation

stopped then, for Nelly was already in request in half a dozen quarters.

'She knows,' said Victoria smoothly.

'Of course,' said Farwell. 'Trust a woman to know the worst about

another and to show it up. Every little helps in a contest such as

life.'

Farwell then questioned her as to her situation, but she refused him all

details.

'No,' she said, 'not here. There's Nelly watching us, and Maud has just

been told. Betty's been shifted, I know, and I suppose Mary and Jennie

are gone, but there's the manageress and some of the girls upstairs.

I've nearly done. Let me return the invitation. Dine with me

to-night. . .' She was going to say 'at home,' but changed her mind to

the prudent course. . . . 'at, well, anywhere you like. Whereabouts do

you live, Mr Farwell?'

'I live in the Waterloo Road,' said Farwell, 'an artery named after the

playing fields of Eton.'

'I don't know it well,' said Victoria, 'but I seem to remember an

Italian place near Waterloo Station. Suppose you meet me at the south

end of Waterloo Bridge at seven?'

'It will do admirably,' said the man. 'I suppose you want to go now?

Well, you've put out my habits, but I'll come too.'

They went out; the last Victoria saw of the P.R.R. was the face of the

cook through the hole in the partition, red, sweating, wrinkled by the

heat and hurry of the day. They parted in the churchyard. Victoria

watched him walk away with his firm swing, his head erect.

'A man,' she thought, 'too clever to succeed.'

Being now again at a loose end and still feeling fairly hungry, she

drove down to Frascati's to lunch. She was a healthy young animal, and

scanty fare was now a novelty. At three o'clock she decided to look up

Betty at her depot in Holborn; and by great good luck found that Betty

was free at half past five, as the Holborn depot for unknown reasons

kept shorter hours than Moorgate Street. She whiled away the intervening

time easily enough by shop-gazing and writing a long letter to Cairns on

the hospitable paper of the Grand Hotel. At half-past five she picked

up Betty at the door of the P. R. R.

'Thank you again so very, very much for the sweater and the dressing

gown,' said Betty as she slipped her arm through that of her friend.

'Don't be silly, Betty, I like giving you things.' Victoria smiled and

pressed the girl's arm. 'You're not looking well, Betty.'

'Oh, I'm all right,' said Betty wearily.

Victoria looked at her again. Under the pretty waved sandy hair Betty's

forehead looked waxen; her cheeks were too red. Her arm felt thinner

than ever. What was one to do? Betty was a weakling and must go to the

wall. But there was a sweetness in her which no one could resist.

'Look here, Betty,' said Victoria, 'I've got very little time; I've got

to meet Mr Farwell at Waterloo Bridge at seven. It's beautifully fine,

let's drive down to Embankment Gardens and talk.'

Betty's face clouded for a moment at the mention of Farwell's name. She

hated him with the ferocity of the weak; he had ruined her friend. But

it was good to have her back. The cab drove down Chancery Lane at a

spanking rate, then across the Strand and through a lane. The

unaccustomed pleasure and the rush of air brought all her face into pink

unison with her cheeks.

The two women sat side by side for a moment. This was the second time

they had met since Victoria had entered her new life. There had been a

few letters, the last to thank Victoria for her Christmas present, but

Betty did not say much in them. Her tradition of virtue had erected a

barrier between them.

'Well, Betty,' said Victoria suddenly, 'do you still think me very bad?'

'Oh, Vic, how can you? I never, never said that.'

'No, you thought it,' answered Victoria a little cruelly. 'But never

mind, perhaps you're right.'

'I never said so, never thought so,' persisted Betty. 'You can't go

wrong, Vic, you're . . . you're different.'

'Perhaps I am,' said Victoria. 'Perhaps there are different laws for

different people. At any rate I've made my choice and must abide by it.'

'And are you happy, Vic?' Anxiety was in the girl's face.

'Happy? Oh, happy enough. He's a good sort.'

'I'm so glad. And . . . Vic . . . do you think he'll marry you?'

'Marry me?' said Victoria laughing. 'You little goose, of course not.

Why should he marry me now he's got me?'

This was a new idea for Betty.

'But doesn't he love you very, very much?' she asked, her blue eyes

growing rounder and rounder.

'I suppose he does in a way,' said Victoria. 'But it doesn't matter.

He's very kind to me but he won't marry me; and, honestly, I wouldn't

marry him.'

Betty looked at her amazed and a little shocked.

'But, dear,' she faltered, 'think of what it would mean; you . . . he

and you, you see . . . you're living like that . . . if he married

you. . . .'

'Yes, I see,' said Victoria with a slight sneer, 'you mean that I should

be an honest woman and all that? My dear child, you don't understand.

Whether he marries me or not it's all the same. So long as a woman is

economically dependent on a man she's a slave, a plaything. Legally or

illegally joined it's exactly the same thing; the legal bond has its

advantages and its disadvantages and there's an end of the matter.'

Betty looked away over the Thames; she did not understand. The

tradition was too strong. Time went quickly. Betty had no tale to

unfold; the months had passed leaving her doing the same work for the

same wage, living in the same room. Before her was the horizon on which

were outlined two ships; 'ten hours a day' and 'eight bob a week.' And

the skyline?

As they parted, Victoria made Betty promise to come and see her. Then

they kissed twice, gently and silently, and Victoria watched her

friend's slim figure fade out of sight as she walked away. She had the

same impression as when she parted with Lottie, who had gone so bravely

into the dark. A wave of melancholy was upon her. Poor girls, they were

without hope; she at least was viewing life with her eyes open. She

would wrench something out of it yet. She shook herself; it was a

quarter to seven.

An hour later she was sitting opposite Farwell. They were getting to the

end of dinner. Conversation had flagged while they disposed of the

earlier courses. Now they were at the ice and coffee stage. The waiters

grew less attentive; indeed there was nobody to observe them save the

olive-skinned boy with the mournful eyes who looked at the harbour of

Palermo through the Waterloo Road door. Farwell lit the cigar which

Victoria forced upon him, and leant back, puffing contentedly.

'Well,' he said at length, 'how do you like the life?'

'It is better than the old one,' she said.

'Oh, so you've come to that. You have given up the absolutes.'

'Yes, I've given them up. A woman like me has to.'

'Yes, I suppose you've got to,' pondered Farwell. 'But apart from that,

is it a success? Are you attaining your end? That's the only thing that

matters, you know.'

'I am, in a sense; I'm saving money. You see, he's generous.'

'Excellent, excellent,' sneered Farwell. 'I like to see you making out

of what the bourgeois call vice that which will enable you to command

bourgeois respect. By-and-by I suppose you'll have made a fortune.'

'Well, no; a competency perhaps, with luck.'

'With luck, as you say. Do you know, Victoria, this luck business is

grand! My firm goes in for mines: they went prospecting in America

twenty years ago and they happened to strike copper. That was good.

Other men struck granite only. That was bad. But my boss is a City

Sheriff now. Frightfully rich. There used to be four of them, but one

died of copper poisoning, and another was found shot in a gulch. Nobody

knows how it happened, but the other two got the mines.'

Victoria smiled. She liked this piratical tit bit.

'Yes,' she said, 'luck's the thing. And merit . . . well I suppose the

surviving partners had merit.'

'Anyhow, I wish you luck,' said Farwell. 'But tell me more. Do you find

you've paid too high a price for what you've got?'

'Too high a price?'

'Yes. Do you have any of that remorse we read about; would you like to

be what you were? Unattached, you know . . . eligible for Young Women's

Christian Associations?'

'Oh, no,' Victoria laughed. 'I can't pay too high a price for what I

think I'll get. I don't mean these jewels or these clothes, that's only

my professional uniform. When I've served my time I shall get that for

which no woman can pay too much: I shall be economically independent,

free.'

'Free.' Farwell looked towards the ceiling through a cloudlet of smoke.

'Yes, you're right. With the world as it is it's the only way. To be

independent you must acquire the right to be dependent on the world's

labour, to be a drone . . . and the biggest drone is queen of the hive.

Yet I wish it had been otherwise with you.' He looked at her

regretfully.

Victoria toyed with a dessert knife.

'Why?' she asked.

'Oh, you had possibilities . . . but after all, we all have. And most of

them turn out to be impossibilities. At any rate, you're not disgusted

with your life, with any detail?'

'No, I don't think so. I don't say I'll go on any longer than I need,

but it's bearable. But even if it were repulsive in every way I'd go on

if I saw freedom ahead. If I fight at all I fight to a finish.'

'You're strong,' said Farwell looking at her. 'I wish I had your

strength. You've got that force which makes explorers, founders of new

faiths, prophets, company promoters.' He sighed.

'Let's go,' he added, 'we can talk in the warm night.'

For an hour they talked, agreeing always in the end. Farwell was cruelly

conscious of two wasted lives: his, because his principles and his

capacity for thought had no counterweight in a capacity for action;

Victoria's, because of her splendid gifts ignobly wasted and misused by

a world which had asked her for the least of them.

Victoria felt a peculiar pleasure in this man's society. He was elderly,

ugly, ill-clad; sometimes he was boorish, but a halo of thought

surrounded him, and the least of his words seemed precious. All this

devirilised him, deprived him of physical attractiveness. She could not

imagine herself receiving and returning his caresses. They parted on

Waterloo Bridge.

'Good-bye,' said Farwell, 'you're on the right track. The time hasn't

come for us to keep the law, for we don't know what the law is. All we

have is the edict of the powerful, the prejudice of the fool; the last

especially, for these goaled souls have their traditions, and their

convictions are prisons all.'

Victoria pressed his hand and turned away. She did not look back. If she

had she would have seen Farwell looking into the Thames, his face lit up

by a gas lamp, curiously speculative in expression. His emotions were

not warring, but the chaos in his brain was such that he was fighting

the logical case for and against an attempt to find enlightenment on the

other slope of the valley.

CHAPTER VI

VICTORIA stretched herself lazily in bed. Her eyes took in a picture of

Cairns on the mantelpiece framed between a bottle of eau-de-cologne and

the carriage clock; then, little by little, she analysed details, small

objects, powderpuffs, a Chelsea candlestick, an open letter, the wall

paper. She closed her eyes again and buried her face in the pillow. The

lace edge tickled her ear pleasantly. She snuggled like a stroked cat.

Then she awoke again, for Mary had just placed her early cup of tea on

the night table. The tray seemed to come down with a crash, a spoon fell

on the carpet. Victoria felt daylight rolling back sleep from her brain

while Mary pulled up the blinds. As light flooded the room and her

senses became keener she heard the blinds clash.

'You're very noisy, Mary,' she said, lifting herself on one elbow.

The girl came back to the bed her hands folded together.

'I'm sorry, mum . . . I . . . I've . . .'

'Yes? what's the matter?'

Mary did not answer, but Victoria could see she was disturbed. Her cap

was disarranged; it inclined perhaps five degrees from the vertical.

There was a faint flush on her cheeks.

'What's the matter,' said Victoria sharply. 'Is there anything wrong?'

'No, mum. . . . Yes mum. . . . They say in the paper . . . . There's

been trouble in Ireland, mum. . . .'

'In Ireland?' Victoria sat bolt upright. Her heart gave a great bang and

then began to go with a whirr.

'At Rossbantry, mum . . . last night . . . he's shot. . . .'

'Shot? Who? can't you speak?'

'The Major, mum.'