CHAPTER XX
A fortnight later Victoria had returned to the City. Most of the old P.R's had reopened, after passing under the yoke. A coat of paint had transformed them into P.R.R's. In fact their extinction was complete; nothing was left of them but the P. and the chairmanship of the amalgamated company, for their chairman was an earl and part of the goodwill. The P.R. had apparently been bought up at a fair rate. Its shares having fallen to sixpence, most of the shareholders had lost large sums; whereas the directors and their friends, displaying the acumen that is sometimes found among directors, had quietly bought the shares up by the thousand and by putting them into the new company had realised large profits. As the failure had happened during the old year and most of the shops had been reopened in the new, it was quite clear that the catering trade was expanding. It was a startling instance of commercial progress.
Within a week the P.R.R. decided to start once more in the City. Victoria, by her own request, was transferred to Moorgate Street. She did not like the neighbourhood of Oxford Circus; it was unfamiliar without being stimulating. She objected too to serving women. If she must serve at all she preferred serving men. She did not worship men; indeed the impression they had left on her was rather unpleasant. The subalterns at the mess were dull, Mr Parker a stick, Bobby was Bobby, Burton a cur, Stein a lout, Beauty, well perhaps Beauty was a little better and Cairns worthy of a kind thought; but all the others, boys and half men with their futile talk, their slang cribbed from the music halls, their affectations, their loud ties, were nothing but the ballast on which the world has founded its permanent way. Yet a mysterious sex instinct made Victoria prefer even them to the young ladies who frequented Princes Street. It is better to be made love to insolently than to be ordered about.
The Moorgate P.R.R. was one of the curious crosses between the ice cream shop and the chop house where thirty bob a week snatches a sixpenny lunch. It was full of magnificent indifference. You could bang your twopence for a small coffee, or luxuriate in steak and kidney pie, boiled (i. e. potatoes), stewed prunes and cream, and be served with the difference of interest that the recording angel may make between No. 1,000,000 and 1,000,001. You were seldom looked at, and, if looked at, forgotten. It was as blatant as the 'Rosebud' had been discreet. Painted pale blue, it flaunted a plate glass window full of cakes, packets of tea, pounds of chocolate, jars of sweets; some imitation chops garnished with imitation parsley, and a chafing dish full of stage eggs and bacon held out the promise of strong meats. Enormous urns, polished like silver, could be seen from the outside emitting clouds of steam; under the chafing dish too came up vaporous jets.
Inside, the P.R.R. recalled the wilderness and the animation of a bank. To the blue and red tesselated floor were fastened many marble-topped tables squeezed so close together that when a customer rose to leave he created an eddy among his disturbed fellows. The floor was swamped with chairs which, during the lunch hour, dismally grated on the tiled floor. It was clean; for, after every burst of feeding, the appointed scavenger swept the fallen crusts, fragments of pudding, cigarette ends and banana skins into a large bin. This bin was periodically emptied and the contents sent to the East End, whether to be destroyed or to be used for philanthropic purposes is not known.
The girls were trained to quick service here. Victoria found no difficulty in acquiring the P.R.R. swing, for she had not to memorise the variety of dishes which the more fastidious Rosebudders demanded. Her mental load seldom went beyond small teas, a coffee or two, half a veal and ham pie, sandwiches and porridge. There was no considering the bill of fare. It stood on every table, immutable as a constitution and as dull. At the P.R.R., a man absorbed a maximum of stodgy food, paid his minimum of cash and vanished into an office to pour out the resultant energy for thirty bob a week. As there were no tips Victoria soon learned that courtesy was wasted, so wasted none.
The P.R.R. did not treat its girls badly – in this sense, that it treated them no worse than its rivals did theirs; it practised commercial morality. Victoria received eight shillings a week, to which good Samaritans added an average of fourteen pence, dropped anonymously into the unobtrusive box near the cash desk. At the 'Rosebud' tips averaged fourteen shillings a week, but then they were given publicly.
Besides her wages she was given all her meals, on a scale suited to girls who waited on Mr Thirty Bob a Week. Her breakfast was tea, bread and margarine; her dinner, cold pudding or pie, according to the unpopularity of the dishes among the customers, washed down once more with tea and sometimes followed by stewed fruit if the quantity that remained made it clear that some would be left over. The day ended with supper, tea, bread and cheese – a variety of Cheddar which the company bought by the ton on account of its peculiar capacity for swelling and producing a very tolerable substitute for repletion.
As Victoria was now paid less than half her former wages she was expected to work longer hours. The P. R. R. demanded faithful service from half-past eight in the morning to nine in the evening, except on one day when freedom was earned at six. Victoria was driven to generalise a little about this; it struck her as peculiar that an increase of work should synchronise with a decrease of pay, but the early steps in any education always fill the pupil with wonderment.
Yet she did not repine, for she remembered too well the black days of the old year when the wolf slunk round the house, coming every day nearer to her door. She had beaten him off and there still was joy in the thought of that victory. Her frame of mind was quiescent, tempered still with a feeling of relief. This she shared with her companions, for every one of them had known such straits as hers and worse. They had come back to the P. R. R. filled with exceeding joy; craving bread they had been given buns.
The Moorgate P. R. R. was a big depot. It boasted, in addition to the ground floor, two smoking rooms, one on the first floor and one underground, as well as a ladies' dining-room on the second floor. It had a staff of twenty waitresses, six of whom were stationed in the underground smoking-room; Victoria was one of these. A virile manageress dominated them and drove with splendid efficiency a concealed kitchen team of four who sweated in the midst of steam in an underground stokehole.
Victoria's companions were all old P. R's except Betty. They all had anything between two and five years' service behind them. Nelly, a big raw boned country girl, was still assertive and loud; she had good looks of the kind that last up to thirty, made up of fine coarse healthy flesh lines, tending to redden at the nostrils and at the ears; her hands were shapely still, though reddened and thickened by swabbing floors and tables. Maud was a poor little thing, small boned with a flaccid covering of white flesh, inclined to quiver a little when she felt unhappy; her eyes were undecidedly green, her hair carroty in the extreme. She had a trick of drawing down the corners of her mouth which made her look pathetic. Amy and Jenny were both short and darkish, inclined to be thin, always a little tired, always willing, always in a state neither happy nor unhappy. Both had nearly five years' experience and could look forward to another fifteen or so. They had no assertiveness, so could not aspire to a managerial position, such as might eventually fall to the share of Nelly.
Betty was an exception. She had not acquired the P. R. R. manner and probably never would. The daughter of a small draper at Horley, she had lived through a happy childhood, played in the fields, been to a little private school. Her father had strained every nerve to face on the one hand the competition of the London stores extending octopus-like into the far suburbs, on the other that of the pedlars. Caught between the aristocracy and the democracy of commerce he had slowly been ground down. When Betty was seventeen he collapsed through worry and overwork. His wife attempted to carry on the business after his death, bravely facing the enemy, discharging assistants, keeping the books, impressing Betty to dress the window, then to clean the shop. But the pressure had become too great, and on the day when the mortgagees foreclosed she died. Nothing was left for Betty except the clothes she stood in. Some poor relatives in London induced her to join the 'Lethe.' That was three years ago and now she was twenty.
Betty was the tall slim girl into whose breast Victoria had thrust her elbow when they were fighting for bread among the crowd which surged round the door of the Princes Street depot. She was pretty, perhaps a little too delicately so. Her sandy hair and wide open china blue eyes made one think of a doll; but the impression disappeared when one looked at her long limbs, her slightly sunken cheeks. She had a sweet disposition, so gentle that, though she was a favourite, her fellows despised her a little and were inclined to call her 'poor Betty.' She was nearly always tired; when she was well she was full of simple and honest merriment. She would laugh then if a motor bus skidded or if she saw a Highlander in a kilt. She had just been shifted to the Moorgate Street P.R.R. From the first the two girls had made friends and Victoria was deeply glad to meet her again. The depth of that gladness is only known to those who have lived alone in a hostile world.
'Betty,' said Victoria the first morning, 'there's something I want to say. I've had it on my mind. Do you remember the first time we met outside the old P.R. in Princes Street?'
'Don't I?' said Betty. 'We had a rough time, didn't we?'
'We had. And, Betty, perhaps you remember.. I hit you in the chest. I've thought of it so often.. and you don't know how sorry I am when I think of it.'
'Oh, I didn't mind,' said Betty, a blush rising to her forehead, 'I understand. I was about starving, you know, I thought you were the same.'
'No, not starving exactly,' said Victoria, 'mad rather, terrified, like a sheep which the dog's driving. But I beg your pardon, Betty, I oughtn't to have done it.'
Betty put her hand gently on her companion's.
'I understand, Vic,' she said, 'it's all over now; we're friends, aren't we?'
Victoria returned the pressure. That day established a tender link between these two. Sometimes, in the slack of three o'clock, they would sit side by side for a moment, their shoulders touching. When they met between the tables, running, their foreheads beaded with sweat, they exchanged a smile.
The customers at the P.R.R. were so many that Victoria could hardly retain an impression of them. A few were curious though, in the sense that they were typical. One corner of the room was occupied during the lunch hour by a small group of chess players; five of the six boards were regularly captured by them. They sat there in couples, their eyes glued to the board, allowing the grease to cake slowly on their food; from time to time one would swallow a mouthful, sometimes dropping morsels on the table. These he would brush away dreamily, his thoughts far away, two or three moves ahead. Round each table sat a little group of spectators who now and then shifted their plates and cups from table to table and watched the games. At times, when a game ended, a table was involved in a fierce discussion: gambits, Morphy's classical games, were thrown about. On the other side of the room the young domino-players noisily played matador, fives and threes, or plain matching, would look round and mutter a gibe at the enthusiasts.
Others were more personal. One, a repulsive individual, Greek or Levantine, patronised one of Betty's tables every day. He was fat, yellow and loud; over his invariably dirty hands drooped invariably dirty cuffs; on one finger he wore a large diamond ring.
'It makes me sick sometimes,' said Betty to Victoria, 'you know he eats with both hands and drops his food; he snuffles too, as he eats, like a pig.'
Another was an old man with a beautiful thin brown face and white hair. He sat at a very small table, so small that he was usually alone. Every day he ordered dry toast, a glass of milk and some stewed fruit. He never read or smoked, nor did he raise his eyes from the table. An ancient bookkeeper perhaps, he lived on some principle.
Most of the P. R. R. types were scheduled however. They were mainly young men or boys between fifteen and twenty. All were clad in blue or dark suits, wore flannel shirts, dickeys and no cuffs. They would congregate in noisy groups, talk with furious energy, and smoke Virginia cigarettes with an air of daredevilry. Now and then one of these would be sitting alone, reading unexpected papers such as the Times, borrowed from the office. Spasmodically, too, one would be seen improving his mind. Victoria, within six months, noticed three starts on the part of one of the boys; French, book-keeping and electrical engineering.
Many were older than these. There were little groups of young men rather rakishly but shabbily dressed; often they wore a flower in their buttonhole. The old men were more pathetic; their faces were expressionless; they came to eat, not to feast.
Victoria and Betty had many conversations about the customers. Every day Victoria felt her faculty of wonder increase; she was vaguely conscious already that men had a tendency to revert to types, but she did not realise the influence the conditions of their lives had upon them.
'It's curious,' she once said to Betty, as they left the depot together, 'they're so much alike.'
'I suppose they are,' said Betty. 'I wonder why?'
'I'm not sure,' said Victoria, 'but it seems to me somehow that they must be born different but that they become alike because they do the same kind of work.'
'It's rather awful, isn't it,' said Betty.
'Awful? Well, I suppose it is. Think of it, Betty. There's old Dry Toast, for instance. I'm sure he's been doing whatever he does do for thirty or forty years.'
'And'll go on doing it till he dies,' murmured Betty.
'Or goes into the workhouse,' added Victoria. A sudden and horrible lucidity had come over her. 'Yes, Betty, that's what it means. The boys are going to be like the old man; we see them every day becoming like him. First they're in the twenties and are smart and read the sporting news; then they seem to get fat and don't shave every day, because they feel it's getting late and it doesn't matter what they look like; their hair grows grey, they take up chess or German, or something equally ridiculous. They don't get a chance. They're born and as soon as they can kick they're thrust in an office to do the same thing every day. Nobody cares; all their employers want them to do is to be punctual and do what they're paid thirty bob a week for. Soon they don't try; they die, and the employers fill the billet.'
'How do you know all this, Vic?' said Betty, eyeing her fearfully. 'It seems so true.'
'Oh, I just felt it suddenly, besides.' Victoria hesitated.
'But is it right that they should get thirty bob a week all their lives while their employers are getting thousands?' asked Betty, full of excitement.
'I don't know,' said Victoria slowly. Betty's voice had broken the charm. She could no longer see the vision.
CHAPTER XXI
The days passed away horribly long. Victoria was now an automaton; she no longer felt much of sorrow or of joy. Her home life had been reduced to a minimum, for she could no longer afford the luxury of 'chambers in the West End' as Betty put it. She had moved to Finsbury; where she had found a large attic for three shillings a week, in a house which had fallen from the state of mansion for a City merchant to that of tenement dwelling. For the first time since she returned to London she had furnished her own room. She had bought out the former tenant for one pound. For this sum she had entered into possession of an iron bedstead with a straw mattress, a thick horse cloth, an iron washstand supplied with a blue basin and a white mug, an old armchair and red curtains. She had no sheets, which meant discomfort but saved washing. A chair had cost her two shillings; she needed no cupboard as there was one in the wall; in lieu of a chest of drawers she had her trunk; her few books were stacked on a shelf made out of the side of a packing case and erected by herself. She got water from the landing every morning except when the taps were frozen. There was no fireplace in the attic, but in the present state of Victoria's income this did not matter much.
Every morning she rose at seven, washed, dressed. As time went on she ceased to dust and sweep every morning. First she postponed the work to the evening, then to the week end. On Sundays she breakfasted off a stale loaf bought among the roar of Farrington Street the previous evening. A little later she introduced a spirit lamp for tea; it was a revolution, even though she could never muster enough energy to bring in milk.
After the first flush of possession, the horrible gloom of winter had engulfed her. Sometimes she sat and froze in the attic, and, in despair, went to bed after vainly trying to read Shakespeare by the light of a candle: he did not interest her much. At other times the roaring streets, the flares in the brown fog, the trams hurtling through the air, their headlights blazing, had frightened her back to her home. On Sundays, after luxuriating in bed until ten, she usually went to meet Betty who lived in a club in Soho. Together they would walk in the parks, or the squares, wherever grass grew. At one o'clock Betty would introduce her as a guest at her club and feast her for eightpence on roast beef and pudding, tea, and bread and butter. Then they would start out once more towards the fields, sometimes towards Hampstead Heath, or if it rained seek refuge in a museum or a picture gallery. When they parted in the evening, Victoria kissed her affectionately. Betty would then hold the elder woman in her arms, hungrily almost, and softly kiss her again.
The only thing that parted these two at all was the mystery which Betty guessed at. She knew that Victoria was not like the other girls; she felt that there was behind her friend's present condition a past of another kind, but when she tried to question Victoria, she found that her friend froze up. And as she loved her this was a daily grief; she looked at Victoria with a question in her eyes. But Victoria would not yield to the temptation of confiding in her; she had adopted a new class and was not going back on it.
Besides Betty there was no one in her life. None of the other girls were able to meet her on congenial ground; Beauty had not got her address; and, though she had his, she was too afraid of complicating her life to write to him. She had sent her address to Edward as a matter of form, but he had not written; apparently her desire for freedom had convinced him that his sister was mad. None of the men at the P.R.R. had made any decided advances to her. She could still catch every day a glitter in the eye of some youth, but her maturity discouraged the boys, and the older men were mostly too deeply sunk in their feeding and smoking to attempt gallantry. Besides: Victoria was no longer the cream-coloured flower of olden days; she was thinner; her hands too were becoming coarse owing to her having to swab tables and floors; much standing and the fetid air of the smoking-room were making her sallow.
Soon after Victoria entered into possession of her 'station' she knew most of her customers, knew them, that is, as much as continual rushes from table to counter, from floor to floor, permits. The casuals, mostly young, left no impression; lacking money but craving variety these youths would patronise every day a different P.R.R., for they hoped to find in a novel arrangement of the counter, a new waitress, larger or smaller quarters, the element of variety which the bill of fare relentlessly denied them. The older men were more faithful if no more grateful. One of them was a short thin man, looking about forty, who for some hidden reason had aroused Victoria's faded interest. His appearance was somewhat peculiar. His shortness, combined with his thinness and breadth, was enough to attract attention. Standing hardly any more than five foot five, he had disproportionately broad shoulders, and yet they were so thin that the bones showed bowed at the back. Better fed, he would have been a bulky man. His hair was dark, streaked with grey; and, as it was getting very thin and beginning to recede, he gave the impression of having a very high forehead. His eyes were grey, set rather deep under thick eyebrows drawn close together into a permanent frown. Under his rather coarse and irregular nose his mouth showed closely compressed, almost lipless; a curious muscular distortion had tortured into it a faint sneer. His hands were broad, a little coarse and very hairy.
Victoria could not say why she was interested in this man. He had no outward graces, dressed poorly and obviously brushed his coat but seldom; his linen, too, was not often quite clean. Immediately on sitting down at his usual table he would open a book, prop it up against the sugar bowl, and begin to read. His books did not tell Victoria much; in two months she noted a few books she did not know, News from Nowhere, Fabian Essays, The Odyssey, and a book with a long title the biggest printed word of which was Niestze or Niesche. Victoria could never remember this word, even though her customer read the book every day for over a month. The Odyssey she had heard of, but that did not tell her anything.
She had found out his name accidentally. One day he had brought down three books and had put two under his seat while he read the third. Soon after he had left, reading still while he went up the stairs. Victoria found the books under the chair. One was a Life of William Morris, the other the Vindication of the Rights of Women. On the flyleaf of each was written in bold letter. 'Thomas Farwell.'
Victoria could not resist glancing at the books during her half hour for lunch. The Life of William Morris she did not attempt, remembering her experiences at school with 'Lives' of any kind: they were all dull. Marie Wollstonecraft's book seemed more interesting, but she seemed to have to wade through so much that she had never heard of and to have to face a style so crabbed and congested that she hardly understood it. Yet, something in the book interested her, and it was regretfully that she handed the volumes back to Farwell when he called for them at half-past six. He thanked her in half a dozen words and left.
Farwell continued regular in his attendance. He came in on the stroke of one, left at half-past one exactly, lighting his pipe as he got up. He never spoke to anyone; when Victoria stood before his table he looked at her for a moment, gave his order and cast his eyes down to his book.
It was about three weeks after the incident of the books that he spoke to Victoria. As he took up the bill of fare he said suddenly:
'Did you read the Vindication?'
'I did glance through it,' said Victoria, feeling, she did not know why, acutely uncomfortable.
'Ah? interesting, isn't it? Pity it's so badly written. What do you think of it?'
'Well, I hardly know,' said Victoria reflectively; 'I didn't have time to read much; what I read seemed true.'
'You think that a recommendation, eh?' said Farwell, his lips parting slightly. 'I'd have thought you saw enough truth about life here to like lies.'
'No,' said Victoria, 'I don't care for lies. The nastier a thing is, the better everybody should know it; then one day people will be ashamed.'
'Oh, an optimist!' sniggered Farwell. 'Bless you, my child. Give me fillets of plaice, small white and cut.'
For several days after this Farwell took no notice of Victoria. He gave his order and opened his book as before. Victoria made no advances. She had talked him over with Betty, who had advised her to await events.
'You never know,' she had remarked, as a clinching argument.
A day or two later Victoria was startled by Farwell's arrival at half-past six. This had never happened before. The smoking-room was almost empty, as it was too late for teas and a little too early for suppers. Farwell sat down at his usual table and ordered a small tea. As Victoria returned with the cup he took out a book from under two others and held it out.
'Look here,' he said a little nervously. 'I don't know whether you're busy after hours, but perhaps you might like to read this.' The wrinkles in his forehead expanded and dilated a little.
'Oh, thank you so much. I would like to read it,' said Victoria with the ring of earnestness in her voice. She took the book; it was a battered copy of No. 5 John Street.
'No. 5? What a queer title,' she said.
'Queer? not at all,' said Farwell. 'It only seems queer to you because it is natural and you're not used to that. You're a number in the P.R.R. aren't you? Just like the house you live in. And you're just number so and so; so am I. When we die fate shoves up the next number and it all begins over again.'
'That doesn't sound very cheerful, does it?' said Victoria.
'It isn't cheerful. It's merely a fact.'
'I suppose it is,' said Victoria. 'Nobody is ever missed.'
Farwell looked at her critically. The platitude worried him a little; it was unexpected.
'Yes, exactly,' he stammered. 'Anyhow, you read it and let me know what you think of it.' Thereupon he took up another book and began to read.
When he had gone Victoria showed her prize to Betty.
'You're getting on,' said Betty with a smile. 'You'll be Mrs Farwell one of these days, I suppose.'
'Don't be ridiculous, Betty,' snapped Victoria, 'why, I'd have to wash him.'
'You might as well wash a husband as a dish,' said Betty smoothly. 'Anyhow, the other girls are talking.'
'Let them talk,' said Victoria rather savagely, 'so long as they don't talk to me.'
Betty took her hand gently.
'Sorry, Vic dear,' she said. 'You're not angry with me, are you?'
'No, of course not, you silly,' said Victoria laughing. 'There run away, or that old gent at the end'll take a fit.'
Farwell did not engage her in conversation for a few days, nor did she make any advances to him. She read through No. 5 John Street within three evenings; it held her with a horrible fascination. Her first plunge into realistic literature left her shocked as by a cold bath. In the early days, at Lympton, she had subsisted mainly on Charlotte Young and Rhoda Broughton. In India, the mess having a subscription at Mudie's, she had had good opportunities of reading; but, for no particular reason, except perhaps that she was newly married and busy with regimental nothings, she had ceased to read anything beyond the Sketch and the Sporting and Dramatic. Thus she had never heard of the 'common people' except as persons born to minister to the needs of the rich. She had never felt any interest in them, for they spoke a language that was not hers. No. 5 John Street, coming to her a long time after the old happy days, when she herself was struggling in the mire, was a horrible revelation; it showed her herself, and herself not as 'Tilda towering over fate but as Nancy withering in the indiarubber works for the benefit of the Ridler system.
She read feverishly by the light of a candle. At times she was repelled by the vulgarity of Low Covey, by the grossness which seemed to revel in poverty and dirt. But when she cast her eyes round her own bare walls, looked at her sheetless bed, a shiver ran over her.
'These are my people,' she said aloud. The candle, clamouring for the snuffers, guttered, sank low, nearly went out.
Shivering again before the omen, she trimmed the wick. She returned the book to Farwell by slipping it on the table next day. He took it without a word but returned at half past six as before.
'Well?' he asked with a faint smile.
'Thank you so much,' said Victoria. 'It's wonderful.'
'Wonderful indeed? Most commonplace, don't you think?'
'Oh, no,' said Victoria. 'It's extraordinary, it's like.. like light.'
Farwell's eyes suddenly glittered.
'Ah,' he said dreamily, 'light! light in this, the outer darkness.'
Victoria looked at him, a question in her eyes.
'If only we could all see,' he went on. 'Then, as by a touch of a magician's wand, flowers would crowd out the thistles, the thistles that the asses eat and thank their God for. It is in our hands to make this the Happy Valley and we make it the Valley of the Shadow of Death.'
He paused for a moment. Victoria felt her pulse quicken.
'Yes,' she said, 'I think I understand. It's because we don't understand that we suffer. We're not cruel, are we? we're stupid.'
'Stupid?' A ferocious intonation had come into Farwell's voice. 'I should say so! Forty million men, women and children sweat their lives out day by day so that four million may live idly and become too heavy even to think. I could forgive them if they thought, but the world contains only two types: Lazarus with poor man's gout and Dives with fatty degeneration of the brain.'
Victoria felt nervous. Passion shook the man's hands as he clutched the marble top of the table.
'Mr Farwell,' she faltered, 'I don't want to be stupid. I want to understand things. I want to know why we slave twelve hours a day when others do nothing and, oh, can it be altered?'
Farwell had started at the mention of his name. His passion had suddenly fallen.
'Altered? oh, yes,' he stammered, 'that's if the race lasts long enough. 'Sometimes I think, as I see men struggling to get on top of one another, like crabs in a bucket.. Like crabs in a bucket,' he repeated dreamily, visualising the simile. 'But I cannot draw men from stones,' he said smiling; 'it is not yet time for Deucalion. I'll bring you another book to-morrow.'