CHAPTER XII

Victoria had forgotten her latchkey. Miss Briggs opened the door for her. Her sallow face brightened up.

'There's a gentleman waiting, mum,' she said, 'and 'ere's a telegram.' Came jest five minutes after you left. I've put him in the front room what's empty, mum. Thought you'd rather see him there. Been 'ere 'arf an 'our, mum.'

Victoria did not attempt to disentangle the hours of arrival of the gentleman and the telegram; she tore open the brown envelope excitedly. It only heralded the coming of Edward who was doubtless the gentleman.

'Thanks, Miss Briggs,' she said, 'it's my brother.'

'Yes, mum, nice young gentleman. He's all right; been reading the New Age, mum, this 'arf hour, what belongs to the lady on the third.'

Victoria smiled and went into the dining-room, where none dine in lodging houses save ghosts. Edward was standing near the mantlepiece immersed in the paper.

'Why, Ted, this is nice of you,' cried Victoria going up to him and taking his hand.

'I had to come up to town suddenly,' said Edward, 'to get books for the Head. I'm going back this afternoon but I thought I'd look you up. Did you get the telegram.'

'Just got it now,' said Victoria, showing it, 'so you might have saved the sixpence.'

'I'm sorry,' said Edward. 'I didn't know until this morning.'

'It doesn't matter. I'm so glad to see you.'

There was an awkward pause. Edward brushed away the hair from his forehead. His hands flew back to his watch-chain. Victoria had briefly written to him to tell him why she left the Holts. Fearful of all that touches women, he was acutely conscious that he blamed her and yet knew her to be blameless.

'It's a beautiful day,' he said suddenly.

'Isn't it?' agreed Victoria, looking at him with surprise. There was another pause.

'What are you doing just now, Vic?' Edward breathed more freely, having taken the plunge.

'I've just got some work,' said Victoria. 'I begin on Wednesday.'

'Oh, indeed?' said Edward with increasing interest. 'Have you got a post as companion?'

'Well, not exactly,' said Victoria. She realised that her story was not very easy to tell a man like Edward. He looked at her sharply. His face flushed. His brow puckered. With both hands he grasped his watch-chain.

'I hope, Victoria,' he said severely, 'that you are not adopting an occupation unworthy of a lady. I mean I know you couldn't,' he added, his severity melting into nervousness.

'I suppose nothing's unworthy,' said Victoria; 'the fact is, Ted, I'm afraid you won't like it much, but I'm going on the stage.'

Edward started and flushed like an angry boy. 'On the . . . the stage?' he gasped.

'Yes,' said Victoria quietly. 'I've got an engagement for six months to play at Vichy and other places in France. I only get six pounds a month but they pay all the expenses. I'll have quite thirty pounds clear when I come back. What do you think of that?'

'It's . . . it's awful,' cried Edward, losing all self-consciousness. 'How can you do such a thing, Vic? If it were in London, it would be different. You simply can't do it.'

'Can't?' asked Victoria, raising her eyebrows. 'Why?'

'It's not done. No really Vic, you can't do it.' Edward was evidently disturbed. Fancy a sister of his . . . It was preposterous.

'I'm sorry, Ted,' said Victoria, 'but I'm going on Wednesday. I've signed the agreement.'

Edward looked at her almost horror-struck. His spectacles had slid down to the sharp tip of his nose.

'You are doing very wrong, Victoria,' he said, resuming his pedagogic gravity. 'You could have done nothing that I should have disapproved of as much. You should have looked out for something else.'

'Looked out for something else?' said Victoria with the suspicion of a sneer. 'Look here, Ted. I know you mean well, but I know what I'm doing; I haven't been in London for six months without finding out that life is hard on women like me. I'm no good because I'm too good for a poor job and not suitable for a superior one. So I've just got to do what I can.'

'Why didn't you try for a post as companion?' asked Edward with a half snarl.

'Try indeed! Anybody can see you haven't had to try, Ted. I've tried everything I could think of, agencies, societies, papers, everything. I can't get a post. I must do something. I've got to take what I can get. I know it now; we women are just raw material. The world uses as much of us as it needs and throws the rest on the scrap heap. Do you think I don't keep my eyes open? Do you think I don't see that when you want somebody to do double work at half rates you get a woman? And she thanks God and struggles for the work that's too dirty or too hard for a man to touch.'

Victoria paced up and down the small room, carried away by her vehemence. Edward said nothing. He was much upset and did not know what to say; he had never seen Victoria like this and he was constitutionally afraid of vigour.

'I'm sorry, Ted,' said Victoria stopping suddenly. She laid her hand on his sleeve. 'There, don't sulk with me. Let's go out to lunch and I'll go and choose your books with you after. Is it a bargain?'

'I don't want to discuss the matter again,' replied Edward with as much composure as he could muster. 'Yes, let's go out to lunch.'

The rest of the day passed without another word on the subject of Victoria's downfall. She saw Edward off at St Pancras. After he had said good-bye to her, he suddenly leaned out of the window of the railway carriage as if to speak, then changed his mind and sank back on the seat. Victoria smiled at her victory.

Next morning she broke the news to Miss Briggs. The landlady seemed amazed as well as concerned.

'You seem rather taken aback,' said Victoria.

'Well, mum, you see it's a funny thing the stage; young ladies all seems to think it's easy to get on. And then they don't get on. And there you are.'

'Well I am on,' said Victoria, 'so I shall have to leave on Wednesday.'

'Sorry to lose you, mum,' said Miss Briggs, ''ope yer'll 'ave a success. In course, as you 'aven't given me notice, mum, it'll 'ave to be a week's money more.'

'Oh, come Miss Briggs, this is too bad,' cried Victoria, 'why, you've got a whole floor vacant! What would it have mattered if I had given you notice?'

'Might have let it, mum. Besides it's the law,' said Miss Briggs, placing her arms akimbo, ready for the fray.

'Very well then,' said Victoria coldly, 'don't let's say anything more about it.'

Miss Briggs looked at her critically. 'No offence meant, mum,' she said timidly, 'it's a 'ard life, lodgers.'

'Indeed?' said Victoria without any show of interest.

'You wouldn't believe it, mum, all I've got to put up with. There's Hetty now . . .'

'Yes, yes, Miss Briggs,' said Victoria impatiently, 'you've told me about Hetty.'

'To be sure, mum,' replied Miss Briggs, humbly. 'It ain't easy to make ends meet. What with the rent and them Borough Council rates. There ain't no end to it, mum. I lives in the basement, mum, and that means gas all the afternoon, mum.'

Victoria looked at her again. This was a curious outlook. The poor troglodyte had translated the glory of the sun into cubic feet of gas.

'Yes, I suppose it is hard,' she said reflectively.

'To be sure, mum,' mused Miss Briggs. 'Sometimes you can't let at all. I've watched through the area railings, mum, many a long day in August, wondering if the legs I can see was coming 'ere. They don't mostly, mum.'

'Then why do you go on?' asked Victoria hardening suddenly.

'What am I to do, mum? I just gets my board and lodging out of it, mum. Keeps one respectable; always been respectable, mum. That ain't so easy in London, mum. Ah, when I was a young girl, might have been different, mum; you should have seen me 'air. Curls like anything, mum, when I puts it in papers. 'Ad a bit of a figure too, mum.'

'Deary me!'

Victoria looked with sympathy at the hard thin face, the ragged hair. Yes, she was respectable enough, poor Miss Briggs! Women have a hard life. No wonder they too are hard. You cannot afford to be earthenware among the brass pots.

'What will you do when you can't run the house any more?' she asked more gently.

'Do, mum? I dunno.'

Yet another philosophy.

'Miss Briggs,' came a man's voice from the stairs.

'Coming, sir,' yelled Miss Briggs in the penetrating tone that calling from cellar to attic teaches.

'Where are my boots?' said the voice on the stairs.

'I'll get 'em for you, sir,' cried Miss Briggs shuffling to the door on her worn slippers.

Life is a hard thing, thought Victoria again. Another woman for the scrap heap. Fourteen hours work a day, nightmares of unlet rooms, boots to black and coals to carry, dirt, loneliness, harsh words and at the end 'I dunno.' Is that to be my fate? she wondered.

However her blood soon raced again; she was an actress, she was going abroad, she was going to see the world, to enslave it, to have adventures, live. It was good. All that day Victoria trod on air. She no longer felt her loneliness. The sun was out and aglow, bringing in its premature exuberance joyful moisture to her temples. She, with the world, was young. In a fit of extravagance she lunched at a half crown table d'hôte in Oxford Street, where pink shades softly diffuse the light on shining glass and silver. The coffee was almost regal, so strong, so full of sap. The light of triumph was in her eyes, making men turn back, sometimes follow and look into her face, half appealing, half insolent. But Victoria was unconscious of them, for the world was at her feet. She was the axis of the earth. It was in such a frame of mind that, the next day, she climbed the steps of Soho Place, careless of the view into the underground kitchen, of the two dogs who under the archway fought, growling, fouling the air with the scents of their hides, over a piece of offal. She ran up the stairs lightly. The door was still ajar.

Two men were sitting in the anteroom, both smoking briar pipes. The taller of the two got up.

'Yes?' he said interrogatively.

'I . . . you . . . is Mr Carrel here?' asked Victoria nervously.

'No Miss,' said the man calmly, 'he's just gone to Marlborough Street.'

'Oh,' said Victoria, still nervous, 'will he be long?'

'I should say so, miss,' replied the man, 'perhaps twelve months, perhaps more.'

Victoria gasped. 'I don't understand,' she said, but her heart began to beat.

'Don't s'pose you would, miss,' said the short man, getting up. 'Fact is, miss, we're the police and we've had to take him; just about time we did, too. Leaving for France to-night with a batch of girls. S'pose you're one of them?'

'I was going to-night,' said Victoria faintly.

'May I have your name?' asked the tall man politely, taking out a pocket book.

'Fulton,' she faltered. 'Victoria Fulton.'

'M'yes, that's it. 'Gladys Oxford,'' said the tall man turning back a page. 'Well Miss, you can thank your stars you're out of it.'

'But what has he done?' asked Victoria with an effort.

'Lord, Miss, you're from the country, I can see,' said the short man amiably. 'I thought everybody knew that little game. Take you over to Vichy, you know. Make you dance and sing. Provide costumes.' He winked at his companion.

'Costumes,' said Victoria, 'what do you mean?'

'Costumes don't mean much, Miss, over there,' said the tall man. 'Fact is you'd have to wear what they like and sing what they like when you pass the plate round among the customers.'

Something seemed to freeze in Victoria.

'He said it was a theatre of varieties,' she gasped.

'Quite true,' said the tall man with returning cynicism. 'A theatre right enough, but you'd have supplied the variety to the customers.'

Victoria clenched her hands on the handle of her parasol. Then she turned to fly.

The short man stopped her and demanded her address, informing her that she was to attend at Marlborough Street next day at eleven thirty.

'Case mayn't be called before twelve,' he added. 'Sorry to trouble you, Miss. You won't hear any more about it unless it's a case for the Sessions.'

Victoria ran down the steps, through the alley and into Charing Cross Road as if something was tracking her, tracking her down. So this was the end of the dream. She had stretched her hand out to the roses, and the gods, less merciful to her than to Tantalus, had filled her palm with thorns. It was horrible, horrible. She had imagination, and a memory of old prints after Rowlandson which her father had treasured came back to her with almost nauseating force. She pictured the French café chantant like the Cave of Harmony; rough boards on trestles, laden with tankards of foaming beer, muddy lights, a foulness of tobacco smoke, a raised stage with an enormous woman singing on it, her eye frightfully dilated by belladonna, her massive arms and legs gleaming behind the dirty footlights and everywhere around men smoking, with noses like snouts, bodies like swines, hairy hands—hands, ye gods!

She walked quickly away from the place of revelation. She hurried through the five o'clock inferno of Trafalgar Square, careless of the traffic, escaping death ten times. She hurried down the spaces of Whitehall, and only slackened her pace at Westminster Bridge. There she stopped for a moment; the sun was setting and gilded and empurpled the foreshores. The horror of the past half hour seemed to fade away as she watched the roses and mauves bloom and blend, the deep shadows of the embankments rise and fall. Near by, a vagrant, every inch of him clothed in rags, the dirt of his face mimicking their colour, smoked a short clay pipe, puffing at long intervals small wreaths of smoke into the blue air. And as Victoria watched them form, rise and vanish into nothingness, the sun kiss gently but pitilessly the old vagrant hunched up against the parapet, the horror seemed to melt away. The peace of the evening was expelling it, but another dread visitor was heralded in. Victoria felt like lead in her heart, the return of uncertainty. Once more she was an outcast. No work. Once more she must ask herself what to do and find no answer.

The river glittered and rose and fell, as if inviting her. Victoria shuddered. It was not yet time for that. She turned back and, with downcast eyes, made for St James's Park. There she sat for a moment watching a pelican flop on his island, the waterfowl race and dive. The problem of life was upon her now and where was the solution? Must I tread the mill once more? thought Victoria. The vision of agencies again, of secretaries courteous or rude, of waits and hopes and despairs, all rushed at her and convinced her of the uselessness of it all. She was alone, always alone, because she wanted to be free, to be happy, to live. Perhaps she had been wrong after all to resist the call of the river. She shuddered once more. A couple passed her with hands interlocked, eyes gazing into eyes. No, life must hold forth to her something to make it worth while. She was cold. She got up and, with nervous determination, walked quickly towards the gate.

The first thing to be done was to get quit of all the horrors of the day, to cut away the wreckage. She dared not stay at Castle Street. She would be tracked. She would have to give evidence. She couldn't do it. She couldn't. Victoria having regained her coolness was in no wise uncertain as to her course of action. The first thing to do was for her to lose herself in London, and that so deep that none could drag her out and force her to tell her story. She must change her lodgings then. Nothing could be easier, as she had already given Miss Briggs notice. In fact the best thing to do would be to keep up the fiction of her departure for France.