CHAPTER XIII

Victoria entered her room. It was in the condition that speaks of departure. Her trunks were packed and corded, all save a small suitcase which still gaped, showing spaces among the sundries that the skilled packer collects in the same bundle. Every drawer was open; the bed was unmade; the room was littered with newspapers and nondescript articles discarded at the last moment. Victoria rang her bell and quickly finished packing the suitcase with soap, washing gloves, powder-puffs and such like. As she turned the key Miss Briggs opened the door.

'Oh, Miss Briggs,' said Victoria quietly, 'I find that I must go down by an earlier train; I must be at Charing Cross in an hour; I'm going now.'

'Yes, mum,' said Miss Briggs without interest. 'Shall I tell the greengrocer to come now, mum?'

'Yes please, Miss Briggs; here are the seven shillings.'

Miss Briggs accepted the money without a word. It had formed the basis of a hot argument between her and her tenant; she considered herself entitled to one week's rent in lieu of notice but Victoria's new born sense of business had urged the fact that she had had two days notice; this had saved her three shillings. Miss Briggs laboured under a sense of injury, so she did not see Victoria to the door.

This was well, for Victoria was able to pay the greengrocer and to get rid of him in an artistic manner by sending him to post an empty envelope addressed to an imaginary person, while she directed the cabman to Paddington; this saved her awkward questions and would leave Miss Briggs under the impression that she had gone to Charing Cross.

At Paddington station she left her luggage in the cloak-room and went out to find lodgings. Her quest was short, for she had ceased to be particular, so that within an hour she was installed in an imposing ground floor front in the most respectable house in Star Street. The district was not so refined as Portsea Place, but the house seemed clean and the quarters were certainly cheaper; eleven and six covered both them and the usual breakfast.

Victoria surveyed the room in a friendly manner; there was nothing attractive or repulsive in it; it was clean; the furniture was almost exactly similar to that which graced her lodgings in Portsea Place and in Castle Street. The landlady seemed a friendly body, and had already saved Victoria a drain on her small store by sending her son, an out-of-work furrier's hand, to fetch the luggage in a handcart. Remembering that she was a fugitive from justice she gave her name as Miss Ferris.

Victoria returned from a hurried tea, unpacked with content the trunk that should have followed her to France. She was almost exhilarated by the feeling of safety which enveloped her like comforting warmth. The day was blithe in unison. She felt quite safe, every movement of her flight having been so skilfully calculated; she was revelling therefore in her escape from danger, the deepest and truest of all joys.

The next morning, however, found her in the familiar mood of wondering what was to become of her. After an extremely inferior breakfast which brought down upon the already awed Mrs Smith well deserved reproaches, Victoria investigated the Telegraph columns with the usual negative results and, in the resultant acid frame of mind, went through her accounts and discovered that her possessions amounted to twelve pounds, eight shillings and four pence. This was a terrible blow; the outfit for the interview with Carrel and the trip to France had dug an enormous hole in Victoria's resources.

'I must hurry up and find something,' said Victoria to herself. 'Twelve pounds eight and fourpence—say twelve weeks—and then?'

The next morning reconciled her a little to her fate. True, the paper yielded no help, but a lengthy account of Carrel's preliminary examination occupied three quarters of a column in the police court report. It was apparently a complicated case, for Carrel had been remanded and bail refused. The report did not yield her much information. Apparently Carrel was indicted for other counts than the exporting of the dancing girls to Vichy, for nine women had appeared. Victoria had quite a thrill of horror when she read the line in which the well schooled reporter dismissed the evidence of Miss 'S,' by saying that Miss 'S——' here gave an account of her experience in the green room of the Folichon-Palace in 1902.' The baldness of the statement was appalling in its suggestiveness. She had been called, apparently, but no comment was made on her non-appearance.

'That's all over,' said Victoria with decision, throwing the newspaper down. She rose from the armchair, shook herself and opened the window to let out the smell of breakfast. Then she put on her hat and gloves and decided to have a walk to cheer herself up. Mindful that she was in a sense a fugitive, she avoided the Marble Arch and made for the Park through the desolate respectability of Lancaster Gate.

She made for the South East, unconsciously guided by the hieratic shot tower of Westminster. It was early; the freshness of May still bejewelled with dew drops the crisp new grass; the gravel, stained dark by moisture, hardly crunched under her feet, but gave like springy turf. Forgetting her depleted exchequer Victoria stepped briskly as if on business bent, looking at nothing but absorbing as through her skin the kisses of the western wind. At Hyde Park Corner she turned into St James's Park, and, passing the barracks, received with an old familiar thrill a covert smile from the handsome sentry. After all she was young, and it was good somehow to be once more smiled at by a soldier. Soldiers, soldiers—stupid perhaps, but could one help liking them? Victoria let her thoughts run back to Dicky—poor old wasted Dicky—and the Colonel and his liver, and Bobby, who would never be anything but Bobby, and Major Cairns too. Victoria felt a tiny pang as she thought of the Major. He was hardly young or handsome but strong, reassuring. She suddenly felt his lips on her neck again as she gazed rapidly at the dark lift on the horizon of the coast of Araby. He was a good fellow, the Major. She would like to meet him again.

She had reached Westminster Bridge. Her thoughts fell away from the comfortable presence of Major Cairns. Hunched up against the parapet sat the old vagrant she had seen there before, motionless, his rags lifting in the breeze, puffs of smoke coming at long intervals from his short clay pipe. Victoria shuddered; it seemed as if her life were bound to a wheel which brought her back inexorably to the same spot until the time came for her to lose there energy and life itself. She turned quickly towards the Embankment, and, as she rounded the curve, caught a glimpse of the old vagrant. The symbol of time had not moved.

Another twenty minutes of quick walking had brought her to the City. She was no longer fearful of it; indeed she almost enjoyed its surge and roar. Log that she was, tossed on a stormy sea, she could not help feeling the joy of life in its buffeting. Not even the dullness and eternal length of Queen Victoria Street, which seems in the City, like Gower Street, indefinite and interminable, robbed her of the curious exultation which she felt whenever she entered the precincts. Here at least was life and doing; ugly doing perhaps, but things worthy of the name of action. At Mansion House she stopped for a moment to look at the turmoil: drays, motorbuses, cabs, cycles, entangled and threatening everywhere the little running black mites of humanity.

As Victoria passed the Bank and walked up Princes Street she felt hungry, for it was nearly one o'clock. She turned up a lane and stopped before a small shop which arrested her attention by its name above the door. It was called 'The Rosebud Café,' every letter of its name being made up of tiny roses; all the woodwork was painted white; the door was glazed and faced with pink curtains; pink half blinds lined the two small windows, nothing appearing through them except, right and left, two tall palms. 'The Rosebud' had a freshness and newness that pleased her; and, as it boldly announced luncheons and teas, she pushed the white door open and entered. The room was larger than the outside gave reason to think, for it was all in depth. It was pretty in a style suggesting a combination of Watteau, Dresden China, and the top of a biscuit tin. All the woodwork was white, relieved here and there by pink drapery and cunningly selected water colours of more or less the same tint. From the roof, at close intervals, hung little baskets of paper roses. The back part of the room was glazed over, which showed that it lay below the well of a tall building. Symmetrically ranged were little tables, some large enough for four persons, mostly however meant for two, but Victoria noticed that they were all untenanted; in fact the room was empty, save for a woman who on her hands and knees was loudly washing the upper steps of a staircase leading into a cellar, and for a tall girl who stood on a ladder at the far end of the room critically surveying a picture she had just put up.

Victoria hesitated for a moment. The girl on the ladder looked round and jumped down. She was dressed in severe black out of which her long white face, mantling pink at the cheeks, emerged like a flower; indeed Victoria wondered whether she had been selected as an attendant because she was in harmony with the colour scheme of the shop. The girl was quite charming out of sheer insignificance; her fair hair untidily crowned her with a halo marred by flying wisps. Her little pink mouth, perpetually open and pouting querulous over three white upper teeth, showed annoyance at being disturbed.

'We aren't open,' she said with much decision. It was clearly quite bad enough to have to look forward to work on the morrow without anticipating the evil.

'Oh,' said Victoria, 'I'm sorry, I didn't know.'

'We open on Monday,' said the fair girl. 'Sharp.'

'Yes?' answered Victoria vaguely interested as one is in things newly born. 'This is a pretty place, isn't it?'

A flicker of animation. The fair girl's blue eyes opened wider. 'Rather,' she said. 'I did the water colours,' she explained with pride.

'How clever of you!' exclaimed Victoria. 'I couldn't draw to save my life.'

'Coloured them up, I mean,' the girl apologised grudgingly. 'It was a long job, I can tell you.'

Victoria smiled. 'Well,' she said, 'I must come back on Monday and see it finished if I'm in the City.'

'Oh, aren't you in the City?' asked the girl. 'West End?'

'No, not exactly West End,' said Victoria. 'I'm not doing anything just now.'

The fair girl gave her a glance of faint suspicion.

'Oh, aye, I see,' she said slowly, thoughtfully considering the rather full lines of Victoria's figure.

Victoria had not the slightest idea of what she saw. 'I'm looking out for a berth,' she remarked casually.

'Oh, are you?' said the girl with renewed animation. 'What's your line?'

'Anything,' said Victoria. She looked round the pink and white shop. A feeling of weariness had suddenly come over her. The woman at the top of the steps had backed away a little, and was rhythmically swishing a wet rag on the linoleum. Under her untidy hair her neck gleamed red and fleshy, touched here and there with beads of perspiration. Victoria took her in as unconsciously as she would an ox patiently straining at the yoke. To and fro the woman's body rocked, like a machine wound up to work until its parts drop out worn and useless.

'Ever done any waiting?' The voice of the girl almost made Victoria jump. She saw herself being critically inspected.

'No, never,' she faltered. 'That's to say, I would, if I got a billet.'

'Mm,' said the girl, eyeing her over. 'Mm.'

Victoria's heart beat unreasonably. 'Do you know where I can get a job?' she asked.

'Well,' said the girl very deliberately, 'the fact of the matter is, that we're short here. We had a letter this morning. One of our girls left home yesterday. Says she can't come. They don't know where she is.'

'Yes,' said Victoria, too excited to speculate as to the implied tragedy.

'If you like, you can see the manager,' said the girl. 'He's down there.' She pointed to the cellar.

'Thank you so much,' said Victoria, 'it's awfully kind of you.' The fair girl walked to the banisters. 'Mr Stein,' she cried shrilly into the darkness.

There was a rumble, a sound like the upsetting of a chair, footsteps on the stairs. A head appeared on a level with the floor.

'Vat is it?' growled a voice.

'New girl; wants to be taken on.'

'Vell, take her on,' growled the voice. 'You are ze 'ead vaitress, gn, you are responsible.'

Victoria had just time to see the head, perfectly round, short-haired, white faced, cloven by a turned up black moustache, when it vanished once more. The Germanic 'gn' at the end of the first sentence puzzled her.

'Sulky beast,' murmured the girl. 'Anyhow, that's settled. You know the wages, don't you? Eight bob a week and your lunch and tea.'

'Eight . . .' gasped Victoria. 'But I can't live on that.'

'My, you are a green 'un,' smiled the girl. 'With a face like that you'll make twenty-five bob in tips by the time we've been on for a month.' She looked again at Victoria not unkindly.

'Tips,' said Victoria reflectively. Awful. But after all, what did it matter.

'All right,' she said, 'put me down.'

The girl took her name and address. 'Half-past eight sharp on Monday,' she said. ''cos it's opening day. Usual time half-past nine, off at four two days a week. Other days seven. Nine o'clock mid and end.'

Victoria stared a little. This was a business woman.

'Sorry,' said the girl, 'must leave you. Got a lot more to do to-day. My name's Laura. It'll have to be Lottie though. Nothing like Lottie to make fellows remember you.'

'Remember you?' asked Victoria puzzled.

'Lord, yes, how you going to make your station if they don't remember you?' said Lottie snappishly. 'You'll learn right enough. You let 'em call you Vic. Tell 'em to. You'll be all right. And get yourself a black business dress. We supply pink caps and aprons; charge you sixpence a week for washing. You get a black openwork blouse, mind you, with short sleeves. Nothing like it to make your station.'

'What's a station?' asked Victoria, more bewildered than ever.

'My, you are a green 'un! A station's your tables. Five you get. We'll cut 'em down when they begin to come in. What you've got to do is to pal up with the fellows; then they'll stick to you, see? Regulars is what you want. The sort that give no trouble 'cos you know their orders right off and leave their twopence like clockwork, see? But never you mind: you'll learn.' Thereupon Lottie tactfully pushed Victoria towards the door.

Victoria stepped past the cleaner, who was now washing the entrance. Nothing could be seen of her save her back heaving a little in a filthy blue bodice and her hands, large, red, ribbed with flowing rivulets of black dirt and water. As her left hand swung to and fro, Victoria saw upon the middle finger the golden strangle of a wedding ring deep in the red cavity of the swollen flesh.