Loe raamatut: «A Bed of Roses», lehekülg 19

CHAPTER VIII

Victoria's new career did not develop on unkindly lines. Every night she went to the Vesuvius, where she soon had her appointed place full under one of the big chandeliers. She secured this spot without difficulty, for most of her rivals were too wise to affront the glare; as soon as she realised this she rather revelled in her sense of power, for she now lived in a world where the only form of power was beauty. She felt sure of her beauty now she had compared it minutely with the charms of the preferred women. She was finer, she had more breed. Almost every one of those women showed a trace of coarseness: a square jaw, not moulded in big bone like hers but swathed in heavy flesh; a thick ankle or wrist; spatulate fingertips; red ears. Her pride was in the courage with which she welcomed the flow of the light on her neck and shoulders; round her chandelier the tables formed practically into circles, the nearest being occupied by the very young and venturesome, a few by the oldest who desperately clung to their illusion of immortal youth; then came the undecided, those who are between ages, who wear thick veils and sit with their backs to the light; the outer fringe was made up of those who remembered. Their smiles were hard and fixed.

She was fortunate enough too. She never had to sit long in front of the little glass which she discovered to be kummel; the waiter always brought it unasked. Sometimes they would chat for a moment, for Victoria was assimilating the lazy familiarity of her surroundings. He talked about the weather, the latest tips for Goodwood, the misfortune of Camille de Valenciennes who had gone off to Carlsbad with a barber who said he was a Russian prince and had left her there stranded.

Her experiences piled up, and, after a few weeks she found she had exhausted most of the types who frequented the Vesuvius. Most of them were of the gawky kind, being very young men out for the night and desperately anxious to get off on the quiet by three o'clock in the morning; of the gawky kind too were the Manchester merchants paying a brief visit to town on business and who wanted a peep into the inferno; these were easily dealt with and, if properly primed with champagne, exceedingly generous. Now and then Victoria was confronted with a racier type which tended to become rather brutal. It was recruited largely from obviously married men whose desires, dammed and sterilised by monotonous relations, seemed suddenly to burst their bonds.

In a few weeks her resources developed exceedingly. She learned the scientific look that awakes a man's interest: a droop of the eyelid followed by a slow raising of it, a dilation of the pupil, then again a demure droop and the suspicion of a smile. She learned to prime herself from the papers with the proper conversation; racing, the latest divorce news, ragging scandals, marriages of the peerage into the chorus. She learned to laugh at chestnuts and to memorise such stories as sounded fresh; a few judicious matinées put her up to date as to the latest musical comedies. On the whole it was an easy life enough. Six hours in the twenty-four seemed sufficient to afford her a good livelihood, and she did not doubt that by degrees she would make herself a connection which might be turned to greater advantage; as it was she had two faithful admirers whom she could count on once a week.

The life itself often struck her as horrible, foul; still she was getting inured to the inane and could listen to it with a tolerant smile; sometimes she looked dispassionately into men's fevered eyes with a little wonder and an immense satisfaction in her power and the value of her beauty. Sometimes a thrill of hatred went through her and she loathed those whose toy she was; then she felt tempted to drink, to drugs, to anything that would deaden the nausea; but she would rally: the first night, when she had drunk deep of champagne after the kummel, had given her a racking headache and suggested that beauty does not thrive on mixed drinks.

Another painful moment had been the third day after her new departure. It seemed to force realisation upon her. Tacitly the early cup of tea had been stopped. Mary now never came to the door, but breakfast was laid for two in the dining-room at half past nine; the hot course stood on a chafing dish over a tiny flame; the teapot was stocked and a kettle boiled on its own stand. Neither of the servants ever appeared. On the third day, however, as Victoria lay in her boudoir, reading, preparatory to ringing the cook to give her orders for the day, there was a knock at the door.

'Come in,' said Victoria a little nervously. She was still in the mood of feeling awkward before her servants.

Mary came in. For a moment she tugged at her belt. There was a slight flush on her sallow face.

'Well Mary?' asked Victoria, still nervous.

'If you please, mum, may I speak to you? I've been talking to cook, mum, and – '

'And?'

'Oh, mum, I hope you won't think it's because we're giving ourselves airs but it isn't the same as it was here before, mum – '

'Well?'

'Well, mum, we think we'd rather go mum. There's my young man, mum, and – and – '

'And he doesn't like your being associated with a woman of my kind? Very right and proper.'

'Oh, mum, I don't mean that. You've always been kind to me. Cook too, she says she feels it very much, mum. When the major was alive, mum, it was different. It didn't seem to matter then, mum, but now – '

Mary stopped. For a moment the eyes behind the glasses looked as if they were going to cry.

'Don't trouble to explain, Mary,' said her mistress with some asperity. 'I understand. You and cook can't afford to jeopardise your characters. From the dizzy heights of trained domesticity, experts in your own line, you are justified in looking down upon an unskilled labourer. I have no doubt that you have considered the social problem in all its aspects, that you fully realise the possibilities of a woman wage-earner and her future. By all means go where your moral sense calls you: I shall give you an excellent character and demand none in exchange. There! I don't want to hurt your feelings, Mary, I spoke hastily,' she added as the maid's features contracted, 'you only do this to please your young man; that is woman's profession, and I of all people must approve of what you do. If you don't mind, both of you, you will leave on Saturday. You shall have your full month and a month's board allowance. Now send up cook, I want to order lunch.'

She could almost have wept as she lay with her face in the cushion. Her servants had delivered an ultimatum from womankind, and lack of supplies compelled her to pick up the guage of battle. Mary and cook were links between her and all those women who shelter behind one man only, and from that vantage ground hurl stones at their sisters beyond the gates. The significance of it was not that their services were lost to her, but that she must now be content to associate with another class. Soon, however, her will was again supreme. 'After all,' she thought, 'I have done with Society. I'm a pirate; Society 'll be keen enough when I've won.'

Within three days she had readjusted her household. She had decided to make matters easy by engaging two German girls. Laura, the cook, said at once that it was all one to her who came to the house and who didn't, so long as they left her alone in the kitchen, and provided she might bring her large tabby cat. Augusta the maid, a long lanky girl with strong peasant hands and carroty hair, declared herself willing to oblige the herrschaft in any way; she thereupon demanded an increase on the wages scheduled for her at the registry office. She also confided to her new mistress that she had a kerl in Germany, and that she would do anything to earn her dowry.

Thus the establishment settled down again. Laura cooked excellently. Augusta never flinched when bringing in the tea tray. Her big blue Saxon eyes seemed to allow everything to pass through them leaving her mind unsoiled, so armoured was her heart by the thought of that dowry. As for Snoo and Poo: they chased the tabby cat all over the house most of the day, which very soon improved their figures.

Thus the even tenour of Victoria's life continued. She was quite a popular favourite. As soon as she sat down under the chandelier half-a-dozen men were looking at her. Sometimes men followed her into the Vesuvius; but these she seldom encouraged, for her instinct told her that so beautiful a woman as she was should set a high price on herself, and high prices were not to be found in Piccadilly. Among her faithful was a bachelor of forty, whom she only knew as Charlie. This, by the way, was a characteristic of her acquaintances. She never discovered their names; some in fact were so guarded that they had apparently discarded their watches before coming out, so as to conceal even their initials. None ever showed a pocketbook. Charlie was dark and burned by the sun of the tropics; there was something bluff and good-natured about him, great strength too. He had sharp grey eyes and a dark moustache. He spoke extraordinarily fast, talked loosely of places he had been to: China, Mozambique, South America. Victoria rather liked him; he was totally dull, inclined to be coarse; but as he invariably drank far too much before and when he came to the Vesuvius, he made no demands on her patience, slept like a log and went early, leaving handsome recognition behind him.

There was Jim too, a precise top-hatted city clerk who had forced himself on her one Saturday afternoon as she crossed Piccadilly Circus. He seemed such a pattern of rectitude, was so perfectly trim and brushed that she allowed herself to be inveigled into a cab and driven to a small flat in Bayswater. He was too prudent to visit anybody else's rooms, he said; he had his flat on a weekly tenancy. Jim kept rather a hold on her. He was neither rich nor generous; in fact Victoria's social sense often stabbed her for what she considered undercutting, but Jim used to hover about the Vesuvius five minutes before closing time, and once or twice when Victoria had had no luck he succeeded like the vulture on the stricken field.

Most of the others were dream figures; she lost count of them. After a month she could not remember a face. She even forgot a big fellow whom she had called Black Beauty, who came down from somewhere in Devonshire for a monthly bust; he was so much offended that she had the mortification of seeing him captured by one of the outer circle who sit beyond the lights.

In the middle of August the streets she called London were deserted. Steamy air, dust laden, floated over the pavements. The Vesuvius was half empty, and she had to cut down her standards. Just as she was contemplating moving to Folkestone for a month, however, she received a letter from solicitors in the Strand, Bastable, Bastable & Sons, informing her that 're Major Cairns deceased,' they were realising the estate on behalf of the administrators, and that they would be obliged if she would say when it would be convenient for her to convey the furniture of Elm Tree Place into their hands. This perturbed Victoria seriously. The furniture had a value, and besides it was the plant of a flourishing business.

'Pity he died suddenly,' she thought, 'he'd have done something for me. He was a good sort, poor old Tom.'

She dressed herself as becomingly and quietly as she could, and, after looking up the law of intestacy in Whitaker, concluded that Marmaduke Cairns's old sisters must be the heirs. Then she sallied forth to beard the solicitor in his den. The den was a magnificent suite of offices just off the Strand. She was ushered into a waiting-room partitioned off from the general office by glass. It was all very frowsy and hot. There was nothing to read except the Times and she was uncomfortably conscious of three clerks and an office boy who frequently turned round and looked through the partition. At last she was ushered in. The solicitor was a dry-looking man of forty or so; his parchment face, deeply wrinkled right and left, his keen blue eyes and high forehead impressed her as dangerous. He motioned her to an armchair on the other side of his desk.

'Well, Mrs Ferris,' he said, 'to what do I owe the honour of this visit?' He sat back in his armchair and bit his penholder. A smile elongated his thin lips. This was his undoing, for he looked less formidable and Victoria decided on a line of action. She had come disturbed, now she was on her mettle.

'Mr Bastable,' she said, plunging at once into the subject, 'you ask me to surrender my furniture. I'm not going to.'

'Oh?' The solicitor raised his eyebrows. 'But, my dear madame, surely you must see.'

'I do. But I'm not going to.'

'Well,' he said, 'I hardly see.. My duty will compel me to take steps.'

'Of course,' said Victoria smiling, 'but if you refuse to let me alone I shall go out of this office, have the furniture moved to-day and put up at auction to-morrow.'

A smile came over the solicitor's face. By Jove, she was a fine woman, and she had some spirit.

'Besides,' she added, 'all this would cause me a great deal of annoyance. Major Cairns's affairs are still very interesting to the public. I shall be compelled, if you make me sell, to write a serial, say My Life with an Irish Martyr for a Sunday paper.'

Mr Bastable laughed frankly.

'You want to be nasty, I see. But you know, we can stop your sale by an application to a judge in chambers this afternoon. And as for your serial, well, Major Cairns is dead, he won't mind.'

'No, but his aunts will. Their name is Cairns. As regards the sale, perhaps you and the other lawyers can stop it. Very well, either you promise or I go home and.. perhaps there'll be a fire to-night and perhaps there won't. I'm fully insured.'

'By Jove!' Bastable looked at her critically. Cairns had been a lucky man. 'Well, Mrs Ferris,' he added, 'we're not used to troublesome customers like you. I don't suppose the furniture is valuable, is it?'

'Oh, a couple of hundred,' said Victoria dishonestly.

'M'm. Do you absolutely want me to pledge myself?'

'Absolutely.'

'Well, Mrs Ferris, I can honestly promise you that you won't hear anything more about it. I.. I don't think it would pay us.'

Victoria laughed. A great joy of triumph was upon her. She liked Bastable rather, now she had brought him to heel.

'All right,' she said, 'it's a bargain.' Then she saw that his mouth was smiling still and his eyes fixed on her face.

'There's no quarrel between us, is there?'

'No, of course not. All in the way of business, you know.'

He bent across the table; she heard him breathe in her perfume.

'Then,' she said slowly, getting up and pulling on her gloves, 'I'm not doing anything to-night. You know my address. Seven o'clock. You may take me out to dinner.'

CHAPTER IX

Within a few days of her victory over Mr Bastable, Victoria found herself in an introspective mood. The solicitor was the origin of it, though unimportant in himself as the grain of sand which falls into a machine, and for a fraction of a second causes a wheel to rasp before the grain is crunched up. She reflected, as she looked out over her garden, that she was getting very hard. She had brought this man to his knees by threats; she had vulgarly bullied him by holding exposure over his head; she had behaved like a tragedy queen. Finally, with sardonic intention, she had turned the contest to good account by entangling him while he was still under the influence of her personality.

All this was not what disturbed her; for after all she had only lied to Bastable, bullied him, threatened him, bluffed as to her intentions: she had been perfectly businesslike. Thoughtfully she opened the little door at the end of the hall and stepped out on the outer landing where the garden steps ended. Snoo and Poo, asleep in a heap in the August blaze, raised heavy eyelids, and, yawning and stretching, followed her down the steps.

This was a joyful little garden. The greater part of it was a lawn, close cut, but disfigured in many places by Snoo and Poo's digging. Flower beds ran along both sides and the top of the lawn, while the bottom was occupied by the pergola, now covered with massive red blooms; an acacia tree, and an elder tree, both leafy but refusing to flower, shaded the bottom of the garden, which was effectively cut off by a hedge of golden privet. It was a tidy garden, but it showed no traces of originality. Victoria had ordered it to be potted with geraniums, carnations, pinks, marguerites; and was quite content to observe that somebody had put in sweet peas, clematis and larkspur. Hers was not the temperament which expresses itself in a garden; there was no sense of peace in her idea of the beautiful. If she liked the garden to look pretty at all, it was doubtless owing to her heredity.

Victoria picked up a couple of stones and threw them towards the end of the garden. Snoo and Poo rushed into the privet, snuffling excitedly, while their mistress drew down a heavy rose-laden branch from the pergola and breathed the blossoms. Yes, she was hard, and it was beginning to make her nervous. In the early days she had sedulously cultivated the spirit which was making a new woman out of the quiet, refined, rather shy girl she had been. There had been a time when she would have shuddered at the idea of a quarrel with a cabman about an overcharge; now, if it were possible, she felt coldly certain that she would cheat him of his rightful fare. This process she likened to the tempering of steel, and called a development of the mental muscles. She rather revelled in this development in the earlier days, because it gave her a sense of power; she benefited by it too, for she found that by cultivating this hardness she could extort more money by stooping to wheedle, by accepting snubs, by flattery and lies too. The consciousness of this power redeemed the exercise of it; she often felt herself lifted above this atmosphere of deceit by looking coldly at the deed she was about to do, recognising its nature and doing it with her eyes open.

A realization of another kind, however, was upon Victoria that rich August day. In a sense she was doing well. Her capital had not been touched; in fact it had probably increased, and this in spite of town being empty. She had not yet found the man who would make her fortune; but she had no doubt that he would appear if she continued on her even road, selecting without passion, judging values and possibilities. For the moment she brushed aside the question of success; it was assured. But, after success, what then? Say she had four or five hundred a year at thirty and retired into the country or went to America. What use would she be to herself or to anybody if she had learned exclusively to bide her time and to strike for her own advantage? Life was a contest for the poor and for the rich alike; but the first had to fight to win and to use any means, fair or foul, while the latter could accept knightly rules, be magnanimous when victorious, graceful when defeated.

'Yes,' said Victoria, 'I must keep myself in trim. It's all very well to win and I've got to be as hard as nails to men, but.'

She stopped abruptly. The problem had solved itself. 'Hard as nails to men,' did not include women, for 'men' seldom means mankind when the talk is of rights. She did not know what her mission might be. Perhaps, after she had succeeded, she would travel all over Europe, perhaps settle on the English downs where the west winds blow, perhaps even be the pioneer of a great sex revolt; but whatever she did, if her triumph was not to be sterile, she would need sympathy, the capacity to love. Thus she amended her articles of war: 'Woman shall be spared, and I shall remember that, as a member of a sex fighting another sex, I must understand and love my sister warrior.'

It was in pursuance of her new policy that, on her way to the Vesuvius, Victoria dawdled for a moment at the entrance of Swallow Street, under its portico. A few yards beyond her stood a woman whom she knew by sight as having established practically a proprietary right to her beat. She was a dark girl, good-looking enough, well set up in her close fitting white linen blouse, drawn tight to set off her swelling bust. In the dim light Victoria could see that her face was rather worn, and that the ravages of time had been clumsily repaired. The girl looked at her curiously at first; then angrily, evidently disliking the appearance of what might be a dangerous rival in her own preserves. Victoria walked up and down on the pavement. The girl watched her every footstep. Once she made as if to speak to her. It was ghostly, for passers-by in Regent Street came to and fro beyond the portico like arabesques. A passing policeman gave the girl a meaning look. She tossed her head and walked away down Regent Street, while Victoria nervously continued down Swallow Street to Piccadilly.

These two women were to meet, however. About a week later, Victoria, happening to pass by at the same hour, saw the girl and stopped under the arch. In another second the girl was by her side.

'What are you following me about for?' she snarled. 'If you're a grote it's no go. You won't teach the copper anything he doesn't know.'

'Oh, I'm not following you,' said Victoria. 'Only I saw you about and thought I'd like to talk to you.'

The girl shot a dark glance at her.

'What's your game?' she asked. 'You're not one of those blasted sisters. Too toffish. Seen you come out of the Vez', besides.'

'I'm in the profession,' said Victoria coolly. 'But that doesn't mean I've got to be against the others.'

'Doesn't it!' The girl's eyes glowed. 'You don't know your job. Of course you've got to be against the others. We were born like that. Or got like that. What's it matter?'

'Matter? oh, a lot,' said Victoria. 'We want friends, all of us.'

'Friends. Oh, Lord! The likes of you and me don't have friends. Women, they won't know us.. too good. Except our sort. We can't talk; we got nothing to talk of, except money and the boys. And the boys, what's the good of them? There's the sort you pick up and all you've got to do's to get what you can out of them. Haven't fallen in love with one, have you?' The girl's voice broke a little, then she went on. 'Then, there's the other sort, like my Hugo, p'raps you've heard of him?'

'No,' she said, 'I haven't. What is he like?'

'Bless you, he's a beauty.' The girl smiled; her face was full of pride.

'Does he treat you well?'

'So so. Sometimes.' The shadow had returned. 'Not like my first. Oh, it's hard you know, beginning. He left me with a baby after three months. I was in service in Pembridge Gardens – such a swell house! I had to keep baby. It died then, jolly good thing too! Couldn't go back to service. Everybody knew.'

The girl burst into tears and Victoria putting an arm round her drew her against her breast.

'Everybody knew, everybody knew!' wailed the girl.

Victoria had the vision of a thousand spectral eyes, all full of knowledge, gazing at the housemaid caught by them sinning. The girl rested her head against Victoria's shoulder for a moment, holding one of her hands. Suddenly she raised her head again and cleared her throat.

'There,' she said, 'let me go. Hugo's waiting for me at the Carcassonne. Never mind me. We've all got to live, he-he!'

She turned into Regent Street and another 'he-he' floated back. Victoria felt a heavy weight at her heart; poor girl, weak, the sport of one man, deceived, then a pirate made to disgorge her gains by another man; handsome, subtle, playing upon her affections and her fears. What did it matter? Was she not in the same position, but freer because conscious; poor slave soul. But the time had come for Victoria to make for the Vesuvius. 'It must be getting late,' she thought, putting up her hand to her little gold watch-brooch.

It was gone. She had it on when she left, but it could not have dropped out, for the lace showed two long rips; it had just been torn out. Victoria stood frozen for a moment. So this was the result of a first attempt at love. She recovered, however. She was not going to generalise from one woman. 'Besides,' she thought bitterly, 'the girl's theories are the same as mine. She merely has no reservations or hesitations. The bolder pirate, she is perhaps the better brain.'

Then she walked down Swallow Street into Piccadilly, and at once a young man in loud checks was at her side. She looked up into his face, her smile full of covert promise as they went into the Vesuvius together. Victoria was now at home in the market place, and could exchange a quip with the frequenters. Languidly she dropped her cloak into the hands of the porter and preceded the young man into the supper-room. As they sat at the little table before the liqueur, her eyes saw the garish room through a film. How deadening it all was, and how lethal the draughts sold here. An immense weariness was upon her, an immense disgust, as she smiled full-toothed on the young man in checks. He was a cheerful rattle, suggested the man who has got beyond the retail trade without reaching the professions, a house agent's clerk perhaps.

'Oh, yes, I'm a merry devil, ha! ha!' He winked a pleasant grey eye. Victoria noticed that his clothes were too new, his boots too new, his manners too a recent acquisition.

'Don't worry. That's how you keep young, ha! ha! Besides, don't have much time to mope in my trade!'

'What's that?' asked Victoria vacuously. Men generally lied as to their occupation, but she had noticed that when their imagination was stimulated their temper improved.

'Inspector of bun-punchers, ha! ha!'

'Bun-punchers?'

'Yes, bun-punchers. South Eastern Railway, you know. Got to have them dated now. New Act of Parliament, ha! ha!'

Victoria laughed, for his cockney joviality was infectious. Then again the room faded and rematerialised as his voice rose and fell.

'The wife don't know I'm out on the tiles, ha! ha! She's in Streatham, looking after the smalls… Oh, no, none of your common or garden brass fenders..'

Victoria pulled herself together. This was what she could not bear. Brutality, the obscene even, were preferable to this dreary trickling of the inane masquerading as wit. Yet she smiled at him.

'You're saucy,' she said. 'You're my fancy to-night.'

A shadow passed over the man's face. Then again he was rattling along.

'Talk of inventions? What'd you think of mine: indiarubber books to read in your bath? ha! ha!.'

But these are only the moths that flutter round the lamp, too far off to burn their wings. They love to breathe perfume, to touch soft hands, gaze at bright eyes and golden hair; then they flutter away, and the hand that would stay their flight cannot rob them even of a few specks of golden dust. In a few minutes Victoria sat philosophically before her empty glass while Fascination Fledgeby was by the side of a rival, being 'an awful dog,' for the benefit of his fellow clerks on the morrow. She was in the mood when it did not matter whether she was unlucky or not. There were quite two women present for every man this hot August night. At the next table sat a woman known as 'Duckie,' fair, very fat and rosy; she was the vision bursting from a white dress which Victoria had seen the first night. On the first night she had embodied for Victoria – so large, so fat, so coarsely animal was she – the very essence of her trade; now she knew her better she found that Duckie was a good sort, careless, generous, perfectly incapable of doing anybody an ill turn. She was bonne fille even, so unmercenary as sometimes to accede good humouredly to the pleadings of an impecunious youth. Her one failing was a fondness for 'a wet.' She was drinking her third whisky and soda; if she was invited to supper she would add to that at least half a bottle of champagne, follow that up by a couple of liqueurs and a peg just before going to bed. She carried her liquor well; she merely grew a little vague.

'Hot,' remarked Duckie.

'Rather,' said Victoria. 'I'm going soon, can't stick it.'

'Good for you. I've got to stay. Always harder for grandmas like me when the fifth form boy's at the seaside.' Duckie laughed, without cynicism though; she had the reasoning powers of a cow.

Victoria laughed too. A foreign-looking girl in scarlet bent over from the next table, her long coral earrings sliding down over her collar-bones.

'Tight again,' said the girl.

'As a drum, Lissa, old girl!' said Duckie good temperedly.

'Nothing to what you'll be by and by,' added Lissa with the air of a comforter.

'Nothing like, old dear! Have one with me, Lissa? No? No offence. You, Zoé, have a tord boyaux?'

'No thanks.' Zoé was a good-looking short girl; her French nationality written in every line of her round face, plump figure, and hands. Her hair was pulled away from the fat nape of her neck. She looked competent and wide awake. A housewife gone astray. Lissa, dark and Italian looking in her red dress and coral earrings, was more languid than the others. She was really a Greek, and all the grace of the East was in every movement of her slim figure. In a moment the four women had clustered together, forgetting strife.

Lissa had had a 'Bank of Engraving' note palmed off on her by a pseudo-South American planter, and was rightly indignant. They were still talking of Camille de Valenciennes and of her misfortunes with the barber. Boys, the latest tip for Gatwick, 'what I said to him,' the furriers' sales, boys again.. Victoria listened to the conversation. It still seemed like another world and yet her world. Here they were, she and the other atoms, hostile every one, and a blind centripetal force was kneading them together into a class. Yet any class was better than the isolation in which she lived. Why not go further, hear more?

'I say, you girls,' she said suddenly, 'you've never been to my place. Come and.. no, not dine, it won't work.. come and lunch with me next week.'