CHAPTER XIX

The endowment of Betty was soon completed. Advised by the bank manager to whom she confided something of the young couple's improvident tendencies, Victoria vested the money in a trust administered by an insurance company. The deed was so drafted that it could not be charged; the capital could not be touched, excepting the case of male offspring who, after their mother's death, would divide it on their respective twenty-fifth birthdays; as she distrusted her own sex and perhaps still more the stock from which the girls might spring, she bound their proportion in perpetuity; failing offspring she provided that, following on his wife's decease, Mr Edward Smith should receive one fifth of the capital, four fifths reverting to herself.

Victoria revelled somewhat in the technicalities of the deed; every clause she framed was a pleasure in itself; she turned the 'hereinbefores' and the 'predecease as aforesaids' round in her mouth as if they were luscious sweets. The pleasure of it was not that of Lady Bountiful showering blessings and feeling the holy glow of charity penetrate her being. Victoria's satisfaction was more vixenish; she, the outlaw, the outcast, had wrested from Society enough money to indulge in the luxury of promoting a marriage, converting the illegal into the legal, creating respectability. The gains that Society term infamous were being turned towards the support of that Society; still more, failing her infamous help, Betty and Edward Smith would not have achieved their coming together with the approval of the Law, their spiritual regeneration and a house at Shepherd's Bush.

She was now the mistress of a fortune of over ten thousand pounds, a good half of which was due to her final stratagem. The time had now come for her to retire to the house in the country when she could resume her own name, piece together for the sake of the county her career since she left India for Alabama, and read the local agricultural rag. Her plans were postponed, however, owing to Holt's state of health, which compelled her, out of sheer humanity, to take him to a sunnier clime. She dismissed Algiers as being too far; she asked Holt where he would like to go to, but he merely replied 'East Coast,' which in December struck her as being absurd. Finally she decided to take him to Folkestone, as it was very near and he would doubtless like to sit with the dogs on the Leas.

Folkestone was bright and sunny. The sting in the glowing air brought fresh colour to Victoria's cheeks, a deeper brilliancy to her grey eyes; she felt well; her back was straighter; when a lock of dark hair strayed into her mouth driven by the high wind it tasted salt on her lips. Sometimes she could have leaped, shouted, for life was rushing in upon her like a tide. Most days, however, she was quiet, for Holt was not affected by the sea. His listlessness was now such that he hardly spoke. He would walk by her side vacuously, looking at his surroundings as if he did not see them. At times he stopped, concentrated with an effort and bought a bun from a hawker to break up for the dogs.

Victoria noticed that he was slipping, with ununderstanding fear. The phenomenon was beyond her. Though the guests at the hotel surrounded her with an atmosphere of admiration, Holt's condition began to occupy all her thoughts. He was thin now to the point of showing bone under his coat, pale and hectic, generally listless, sometimes wild-eyed. He never read, played no games, talked to nobody. Indeed nothing remained of him save the half physical, half emotional power of his passion. Victoria called in a doctor, but found him vague and shy; beyond cutting down Holt's cigarettes he prescribed nothing.

Victoria resigned herself to the role of a nurse. At the beginning of January she noticed that Holt was using a stick to walk. The sight filled her with dread. She watched him on the Leas, walking slowly, resting the weight of his body on the staff, stopping now and then to look at the sea, or worse, at a blank wall. A terrible impression of weakness emanated from him. He was going down the hill. One morning in the middle of January, Holt did not get up. When questioned he hardly answered. She dressed feverishly without his moving, and went out to find the doctor herself, for she was unconsciously afraid of the servants' eyes. When she returned with the doctor Holt had not moved; his head was thrown back, his mouth a little open, his face more waxen than usual.

'Oh, oh. . . .' Victoria nearly screamed, when Holt opened his eyes. The doctor threw back the bedclothes and examined his patient. As Victoria watched him inspecting Holt's mouth, the inside of his eyelids, then his finger nails, a terror came upon her at these strange rites. She went to the window and looked out over the sea; it was choppy, grey and foamy like a river in spate. She strove to concentrate on her freedom, but she could feel the figure on the bed.

'Got any sal volatile?' said the doctor's voice.

'No, shall I. . . .?'

'No, no time for that, he's fainting; get me some salts, ammonia, anything.'

Victoria watched him forcing Holt to breathe the ammonia she used to clean ribbons. Holt opened his eyes, coughed, struggled; tears ran down his face as he inhaled the acrid fumes. Still he did not speak. The doctor pulled him out of bed, crossed his legs, and then struck him sharply across the shin, just under the knee, with the side of his hand. Holt's leg hardly moved. The doctor hesitated for a moment, then pushed him back into the bed.

'I . . . Mrs. . . .?'

'Holt.'

'Well, Mrs Holt, I'm afraid your husband is in a serious condition. Of course I don't say that with careful feeding, tonics, we can't get him round, but it'll be a long business, and . . . and . . . you see . . . How long have you been married?'

'Over a year,' said Victoria with an effort.

'Ah. Well Mrs Holt, it will be part of the cure that you leave him for six months.'

Victoria gasped. Why? Why? Could it be . . .? The thought appalled her. Dimly she could hear the doctor talking.

'His mother . . . if he has one . . . to-day . . . phosphate of . . .'

Then the doctor was gone. A telegram had somehow been sent to Rawsley Cement Works. Then the long day, food produced on the initiative of the hotel servants, the room growing darker, night.

It was ten o'clock, and two women stood face to face by the bed. One was Victoria, beautiful like a marble statue, with raven black hair, pale lips. The other a short stout figure with tight hair, a black bonnet, a red face stained with tears.

'You've killed him,' said the harsh voice.

Victoria looked up at Mrs Holt.

'No, no.'

'My boy, my poor boy!' Mrs Holt was on her knees by the side of the motionless figure.

Victoria began to weep, silently at first, then noisily. Mrs Holt started at the sound, then jumped to her feet with a cry of rage.

'Stop that crying,' she commanded. 'How dare you? How dare you?'

Victoria went on crying, the sobs choking her.

'A murderess,' Mrs Holt went on. 'You took my boy away; you corrupted him, ruined him, killed him. You're a vile thing; nobody should touch you, you. . . .'

Victoria pulled herself together.

'It's not my fault,' she stumbled. 'I didn't know.'

'Didn't know,' sneered Mrs Holt, 'as if a woman of your class didn't know.'

'That's enough,' snarled Victoria. 'I've had enough. Understand? I didn't want your son. He wanted me. That's all over. He bought me, and now you think the price too heavy. I've been heaven to him who only knew misery. He's not to be pitied, unless it be because his mistress hands him over to his mother.'

'How dare you?' cried Mrs Holt again, a break in her voice as she pitied her outraged motherhood.

'It's you who've killed him; you, the family, Rawsley, Bethlehem, your moral laws, your religion. It's you who starved him, ground him down until he lost all sense of measure, desired nothing but love and life.'

'You killed him, though,' said the mother.

'Perhaps. I didn't want to. I was . . . fond of him. But how can I help it? And supposing I did? What of it? Yes, what of it? Who was your son but a man?'

'My son?'

'Your son. A distinction, not a title. Your son bears part of the responsibility of making me what I am. He came last but he might have come first, and I tell you that the worker of the eleventh hour is guilty equally with the worker of the first. Your son was nothing and I nothing but pawns in the game, little figures which the Society you're so proud of shifts and breaks. He bought my womanhood; he contributed to my degradation. What else but degradation did you offer me?'

Mrs Holt was weeping now.

'I am a woman, and the world has no use for me. Your Society taught me nothing. Or rather it taught me to dance, to speak a foreign language badly, to make myself an ornament, a pleasure to man. Then it threw me down from my pedestal, knowing nothing, without a profession, a trade, a friend, or a penny. And then your Society waved before my eyes the lily-white banner of purity, while it fed me and treated me like a dog. When I gave it what it wanted, for there's only one thing it wants from a woman whom nothing has been taught but that which every woman knows, then it covered me with gifts. A curse on your Society. A Society of men, crushing, grinding down women, sweating their labour, starving their brains, urging them on to the surrender of what makes a woman worth while. Ah . . . ah. . . .'

Breath failed her. Mrs Holt was weeping silently in her hands in utter abandonment.

'I'm going,' said Victoria hoarsely. She picked up a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes.

As she opened the door the figure moved on the bed, opened its eyes. Their last lingering look was for the woman at the door.