Victoria threw herself back in the cab. What did it all matter after all? Mary was the beast of burden which she had captured by piracy. She had been her equal once when abiding by the law; she had shared her toil and her slender meed of thanks. Now she was a buccaneer, outside the social code, and as such earned the right to command. So much did Victoria dominate that she thought she would refrain from the exercise of a bourgeois prerogative: the girl should wear her ring, even though custom forbade it, load herself with trinkets if she chose, for as a worker and a respecter of social laws surely she might well be treated as the sacrificial ox.
The horse trotted down Baker Street, then through Wigmore Street. Daylight was already waning; here and there houses were breaking into light between the shops, some of which had remembered it was Christmas eve and decked themselves out in holly. At the corner near the Bechstein Hall the cab came to a stop behind the long line of carriages waiting for the end of a concert. Victoria had time to see the old crossing sweeper, with a smile on his face and mistletoe in his battered billy-cock. The festivities would no doubt yield him his annual kind word from the world. She passed the carriages, all empty still. The cushions were rich, she could see. Here and there she could see a fur coat or a book on the seat; in one of them sat an elderly maid, watching the carriage clock under the electric light, meanwhile nursing a chocolate pom who growled as Victoria passed.
'Slaves all of them,' thought Victoria. 'A slave the good elderly maid, thankful for the crumbs that fall from the pom's table. Slaves too, the fat coachman, the slim footman despite their handsome English faces, lit up by a gas lamp. The raw material of fashion.'
The cab turned into the greater blaze of Oxford Circus, past the Princes Street P.R.R. There was a great show of Christmas cakes there. From the cab Victoria, craning out, could see a young and pretty girl behind the counter busily packing frosted biscuits. Victoria felt warmed by the sight; she was not malicious, but the contrast told her of her emancipation from the thrall of eight bob a week. Through Regent Street, all congested with traffic, little figures laden with parcels darting like frightened ants under the horse's nose, then into the immensity of Whitehall, the cab stopped at the Stores in Victoria Street.
Victoria had but recently joined. A store ticket and a telephone are the next best thing to respectability and the same thing as regards comfort. They go far to establish one's social position. Victoria struggled through the wedged crowd. Here and there boys and girls with flushed faces, who enjoyed being squashed. She could see crowds of jolly women picking from the counters things useful and things pretty; upon signal discoveries loudly proclaimed followed continual exclamations that they would not do. Family parties, excited and talkative, left her unmoved. That world, that of the rich and the free, would ultimately be hers; her past, that of the worn men and women ministering behind the counter to the whims of her future world, was dead.
She only had to buy a few Christmas presents. There was one for Betty, one for Cairns, and two for the servants. In the clothing department she selected a pretty blue merino dressing-gown and a long purple sweater for Betty. The measurements were much the same as hers, if a little slighter; besides such garments need not fit. She went downstairs and disposed of the Major by means of a small gold cigarette case with a leather cover. No doubt he had a dozen, but what could she give a man?
The Stores buzzed round her like a parliament of bees. Now and then people shouldered past her, a woman trod on her foot and neglected to apologise; parcels too, inconveniently carried, struck her as she passed. She felt the joy of the lost; for none looked at her, save now and then a man drowned in the sea of women. The atmosphere was stuffy, however, and time was precious as she had put off buying presents until so late. Followed by a porter with her parcels she left the Stores, experiencing the pleasure of credit on an overdrawn deposit order account. The man piled the goods in a cab, and in a few minutes she had transferred Betty's presents to a carrier's office, with instructions to send them off at eight o'clock by a messenger who was to wait at the door until the addressee returned. This was not unnecessary foresight, for Betty would not be back until nine. With the Major's cigarette case in her white muff, Victoria then drove to Bond Street, there to snatch a cup of tea. On the way she stopped the cab to buy a lace blouse for Mary and an umbrella for Charlotte, having forgotten them in her hurry. She decided to have tea at Miss Fortesque's, for Miss Fortesque's is one of those tearooms where ladies serve ladies, and the newest fashions come. It is the right place to be seen in at five o'clock. At the door a small boy in an Eton jacket and collar solemnly salutes with a shiny topper. Inside, the English character of the room is emphasized. There are no bamboo tables, no skimpy French chairs or Japanese umbrellas; everything is severely plain and impeccably clean. The wood shines, the table linen is hard and glossy, the glass is hand cut and heavy, the plate quite plain and obviously dear. On the white distempered walls are colour prints after Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough. All conspires with the thick carpet to promote silence, even the china and glass, which seem no more to dare to rattle than if they were used in a men's club.
Victoria settled down in a large chintz-covered arm chair and ordered tea from a good-looking girl in a dark grey blouse and dress. Visibly a hockey skirt had not long ago been more natural to her. As she returned Victoria observed the slim straight lines of her undeveloped figure. She was half graceful, half gawky, like most young English girls.
'It's been very cold to-day, hasn't it?' said the girl as she set down bread and butter, then cake and jam sandwiches.
'Very,' Victoria looked at her narrowly. 'I suppose it doesn't matter much in here, though.'
'Oh, no, we don't notice it.' The girl looked weary for a second. Then she smiled at Victoria and walked away to a corner where she stood listlessly.
'Slave, slave.' The words rang through Victoria's head. 'You talk to me when you're sick of the sight of me. You talk of things you don't care about. You smile if you feel your face shows you are tired, in the hope I'll tip you silver instead of copper.'
Victoria looked round the room. It was fairly full, and as Fortesquean as it was British. The Fortesque tradition is less fluid than the constitution of the Empire. Its tables shout 'we are old wood'; its cups say 'we are real porcelain'; and its customers look at one another and say 'who the devil are you?' Nobody thinks of having tea there unless they have between one and three thousand a year. It is too quiet for ten thousand a year or for three pounds a week; it caters for ladies and gentlemen and freezes out everybody else, regardless of turnover. Thus its congregation (for its afternoon rite is almost hieratical) invariably includes a retired colonel, a dowager with a daughter about to come out, several squiresses who came to Miss Fortesque's as little girls and are handing on the torch to their own. There is a sprinkling of women who have been shopping in Bond Street, buying things good but not showy. As the customers, or rather clients, lapse with a sigh into the comfortable armchairs they look round with the covert elegance that says, 'And who the devil are you?'
Victoria was in her element. She had had tea at Miss Fortesque's some dozen years before when up for the week from Lympton; thus she felt she had the freedom of the house. She sipped her tea and dropped crumbs with unconcern. She looked at the dowager without curiosity. The dowager speculated as to the maker of her coat and skirt. Victoria's eyes fixed again on the girl who was passing her with a laden tray. The effort was bringing out the beautiful lines of the slender arms, drooping shoulders, round bust. Her fair hair clustered low over the creamy nape.
'Slave, slave,' thought Victoria again. 'What are you doing, you fool? Roughening your hands, losing flesh, growing old. And there's nothing for a girl to do but serve on, serve, always serve. Until you get too old. And then, scrapped. Or you marry.. anything that comes along. Good luck to you, paragon, on your eight bob a week.'
Victoria went downstairs and got into the cab which had been waiting for her with the servants' presents. It was no longer cold, but foggy and warm. She undid her white fox stole, dropping on the seat her crocodile skin bag, whence escaped a swollen purse of gold mesh.
Upstairs the girl cleared away. Under the butter-smeared plate which slipped through her fingers she found half-a-crown. Her heart bounded with joy.
CHAPTER II
'Tom, you know how I hate tournedos,' said Victoria petulantly.
'Sorry, old girl.' Cairns turned and motioned to the waiter. While he was exchanging murmurs with the man Victoria observed him. Cairns was not bad looking, redder and stouter than ever. He was turning into the 'jolly old Major' type, short, broad, strangled in cross barred cravats and tight frock-coats. In evening dress, his face and hands emerging from his shirt and collar, he looked like an enormous dish of strawberries and cream.
'I've ordered quails for you? Will that do, Miss Dainty?'
'Yes, that's better.'
She smiled at him and he smiled back.
'By jove, Vic,' he whispered, 'you look fine. Nothing like pink shades for the complexion.'
'I think you're very rude,' said Victoria smiling.
'Honest,' said Cairns. 'And why not? No harm in looking your best is there? Now my light's yellow. Brings me down from tomato to carrot.'
'Fishing again. No good, Tommy old chap.'
'Never mind me,' said Cairns with a laugh. He paused and looked intently at Victoria, then cautiously round him. They were almost in the middle of the restaurant, but it was still only half full. Cairns had fixed dinner for seven, though they were only due for a music hall; he hated to hurry over his coffee. Thus they were in a little island of pink light surrounded by penumbra. Softly attuned, Mimi's song before the gates of Paris floated in from the balcony.
'Vic,' said Cairns gravely, 'you're lovely. I've never seen you like this before.'
'Do you like my gown?' she asked coquettishly.
'Your gown!' Cairns said 'Your gown's like a stalk, Vic, and you're a big white flower bursting from it.. a big white flower, pink flecked, scented..'
'Sh.. Tom, don't talk like that in here.' Victoria slid her foot forward, slipped off her shoe and gently put her foot on the Major's instep. His eyes blinked quickly twice. He reached out for his glass and gulped down the champagne.
The waiter returned, velvet footed. Every one of his gestures consecrated the quails resting on the flowered white plates, surrounded by a succulent lake of aromatic sauce.
They ate silently. There was already between them the good understanding which makes speech unnecessary. Victoria looked about her from time to time. The couples interested her, for they were nearly all couples. Most of them comprised a man between thirty and forty, and a woman some years his junior. Their behaviour was severely decorous, in fact a little languid. From a table near by a woman's voice floated lazily,
'I rather like this pub, Robbie.'
Indeed the acceptance of the pubbishness of the place was characteristic of its frequenters. Most of the men looked vaguely weary; some keenly interested bent over the silver laden tables, their eyes fixed on their women's arms. Here and there a foreigner with coal black hair, a soft shirt front and a fancy white waistcoat, spiced with originality the sedateness of English gaiety. An American woman was giving herself away by a semitone, but her gown was exquisite and its décolletage challenged gravitation.
Cairns' attitude was exasperatingly that of Gallio, save as concerned Victoria. His eyes did not leave her. She knew perfectly well that he was inspecting her, watching the rise and fall on her white breast of his Christmas gift, a diamond cross. They both refused the mousse and Victoria mischievously leant forward, her hands crossed under her chin, her arms so near Cairns' face that he could see on them the fine black shading of the down.
'Well, Tom?' she asked. 'Quite happy?'
'No,' growled Cairns, 'you know what I want.'
'Patience and shuffle the cards,' said Victoria, 'and be thankful I'm here at all. But I musn't rot you Tommy dear, after a present like that.'
She slipped her fingers under the diamond cross. Cairns watched the picture made by the rosy manicured finger nails, the sparkling stones, the white skin.
'A pity it doesn't match my rings,' she remarked.
Cairns looked at her hand.
'Oh, no more it does. I thought you had a half hoop. Never mind, dear. Give me that sapphire ring.'
'What do you want it for?' asked Victoria with a conscious smile.
'That's my business.'
She slipped it off. He took it, pressing her fingers.
'I think you ought to have a half hoop,' he said conclusively.
Victoria leant back in her chair. Her smile was triumphant. Truly, men are hard masters but docile slaves.
'You'll spoil me, Tom,' she said weakly. 'I don't want you to think that I'm fishing for things. I'm quite happy, you know. I'd rather you didn't give me another ring.'
'Nonsense,' said Cairns, 'I wouldn't give it you if I didn't like to see it on your hand.'
'I don't believe you,' she said smoothly, but the phrase rang true.
Some minutes later, as they passed down the stairs into the palm room, she was conscious of the eyes that followed her. Those of the men were mostly a little dilated; the women seemed more cynically interested, as suits those who appraise not bodies but garments. Major Cairns, walking a step behind her, was still looking well, with his close cut hair and moustache, stiff white linen and erect bearing. Victoria realised herself as a queen in a worthy kingdom. But the kingdom was not the one she wished to hold with all the force of her beauty. That beauty was transitory, or at least its subtler quality was. As Victoria lay in the brougham with Cairns's arm holding her close to him, she still remembered that the fading of her beauty might synchronise with the growth of her wealth. A memory from some book on political economy flashed through her mind: beauty was a wasting asset.
Cairns kissed her on the lips. An atmosphere of champagne, coffee, tobacco, enveloped her as her breath mixed with his. She coiled one arm round his neck and returned his kisses.
'Vic, Vic,' he murmured, 'can't you love me a little?'
She put her hand behind his neck and once more kissed his lips. He must be lulled, but not into security.
Victoria had never realised her strength and her freedom so well as that night, as she leant back in her box. Her face and breast, the Major's shirt front, were the only spots of light which emerged from the darkness of the box as if pictured by a German impressionist; down below, under the mist, the damned souls revelled in the cheap seats; they swayed, a black mass speckled with hundreds of white collars, dotted with points of fire in the bowls of pipes. By the side of the men, girls in white blouses or crude colours, shrouded in the mist of tobacco smoke. Now and then a ring coiled up from a cigar in the stalls, swirled in the air for a moment and then broke.
Just behind the footlights blazing over the blackness, a little fat man, with preposterous breeches, a coat of many colours, a yellow wisp of hair clashing with his vinous nose, sang of the Bank and his manifold accounts. A faint salvo of applause ushered him out, then swelled into a tempest as the next number went up.
'Tommy Bung, you're in luck,' said the Major, taking off Victoria's wrap.
She craned forward to see. A woman with masses of fair hair, bowered in blue velvet, took a long look at her from the stage box through an opera glass.
The curtain went up. There was a roar of applause. Tommy Bung was ready for the audience and had already fallen into a tub of whitewash. The sorry object extricated itself. His red nose shone, star like. He rolled ferocious eyes at a girl. The crowd rocked with joy. Without a word the great Tommy Bang began to dance. At once the hall followed the splendid metre. Up and down, up and down, twisting, curvetting, Tommy Bung held his audience spellbound with rhythm. They swayed sharply with the alternations.
Victoria watched the Major. His hands were beating time. Tommy Bung brought his effort to a conclusion by beating the floor, the soles of his feet, the scenery, and punctuated the final thwack with a well timed leap on the prompter's box.
Victoria was losing touch with things. Waves of heat seemed to overwhelm her; little figures of jugglers, gymnasts, performing dogs, passed before her eyes like arabesques. Then again raucous voices. The crowd was applauding hysterically. It was Number Fourteen, whose great name she was fated never to know. Unsteadily poised on legs wide apart, Number Fourteen sang. Uncontrollable glee radiated from him —
Now kids is orl right
When yer ain't got none;
Yer can sit at 'ome
An' eat 'cher dam bun.
I've just 'ad some twins;
Nurse says don't be coy,
For they're just the picture
Of the lodger's boy.
Tinka, Tinka, Tinka; Tinka, Tinka, Tink
'It 'im in the eye and made the lodger blink.
Tinga, Tinga, Tinga; Tinga, Tinga, Teg
Never larfed so much since farver broke 'is leg.
A roar of applause encouraged him. Victoria saw Cairns carried away, clapping, laughing. In the bar below she could hear continuously the thud of the levers belching beer. Number Fourteen was still singing, his smile wide-slit through his face —
Now me paw-in-law
'E's a rum ole bloke;
Got a 'and as light
As a ton o' coke.
Came 'ome late one night
An' what oh did 'e see?
Saw me ma-in-law
On the lodger's knee.
Tinka, Tinka, Tinka; Tinka, Tinka, Tink
'It 'im in the eye an' made the lodger blink.
Tinga, Tinga, Tinga; Tinga, Tinga, Teg,
Never larfed so much since farver broke 'is leg.
Enthusiasm was rising high. Number Fourteen braced himself for his great effort on the effects of beer. Then, gracious and master of the crowd, he beat time with his hands while the chorus sounded from a thousand throats. Victoria happened to look at Cairns. His head was beating time and, from his lips issued gleefully:
Tinka, Tinka, Tinka; Tinka, Tinka, Tink
'It 'im in the eye —
Victoria scrutinised him narrowly. Cairns was a phenomenon.
'Never larfed so much since farver broke 'is leg,' roared Cairns. 'I say, Vic, he really is good.' He noticed her puzzled expression. 'I say, Vic, what's up? Don't you like him?'
Victoria did not answer for a second.
'Oh, yes, I – he's very funny – you see I've never been in a music hall before.'
'Oh, is that it?' Cairns's brow cleared. 'It's a little coarse, but so natural.'
'Is that the same thing?' asked Victoria.
'S'pose it is. With some of us anyhow. But what's the next?'
Cairns had already relapsed into the programme. He hated the abstract; a public school, Sandhurst and the army had armoured him magnificently against intrusive thought. They watched the next turn silently. A couple of cross-talk comedians, one a shocking creature in pegtop trousers, a shock yellow head and a battered opera hat, the other young, handsome and smart as a superior barber's assistant, gibbered incomprehensibly of songs they couldn't sing and lies they could tell.
The splendid irresponsibility of the music hall was wasted on Victoria. She had the mind of a schoolmistress grafted on a social sense. She saw nothing before her but the gross riot of the drunken. She saw no humour in that cockney cruelty, capable though it be of absurd generosity. She resented too Cairns's boyish pleasure in it all; he revelled, she felt, as a buffalo wallows in a mud bath. He was gross, stupid, dull. It was degrading to be his instrument of pleasure. But, after all, what did it matter? He was the narrow way which would lead her to the august.
Though Cairns was not thin-skinned he perceived a little of this. Without a word he watched the cross-talk comedians, then the 'Dandy Girl of Cornucopia,' a rainbow of stiff frills with a voice like a fretsaw. As the lights went down for the bioscope, the idea of reconciliation that springs from fat cheery hearts overwhelmed him. He put his hand out and closed it over hers. With a tremendous effort she repressed her repulsion, and in so doing won her victory. In the darkness Cairns threw his arms round her. He drew her towards him, moved, the least bit hysterical. As if fearful of losing her he crushed her against his shirt front.
Victoria did not resist him. Her eyes fixed on the blackness of the roof she submitted to the growing brutality of his kisses on her neck, her shoulders, her cheeks. Pressed close against him she did not withdraw her knees from the grasp of his.
'Kiss me,' whispered Cairns imperiously.
She cast down her eyes; she could hardly see his face in the darkness, nothing but the glitter of his eyeballs. Then, unhurried and purposeful, she pressed her lips to his. The lights went up again. Many of the crowd were stirring; Victoria stretched out her arms in a gesture of weariness.
'Let's go home, Vic,' said Cairns, 'you're tired.'
'Oh, no, I'm not tired,' she said. 'I don't mind staying.'
'Well, you're bored.'
'No, not at all, it's quite interesting,' said Victoria judicially.
'Come along, Vic,' said Cairns sharply. He got up.
She looked up at him. His face was redder, more swollen than it had been half-an-hour before. His eyes followed every movement of her arms and shoulders. With a faint smile of understanding and the patience of those who play lone hands, she got up and let him put on her wrap. As she put it on she made him feel against his fingers the sweep of her arm; she rested for a moment her shoulder against his.
In the cab they did not exchange a word. Victoria's eyes were fixed on the leaden sky; she was this man's prey. But, after all, one man's prey or another? The prey of those who demand bitter toil from the charwoman, the female miner, the P.R.R. girl; or of those who want kisses, soft flesh, pungent scents, what did it all amount to? And, in Oxford Street, a sky sign in the shape of a horse-shoe advertising whisky suddenly reminded her of the half hoop, a step towards that capital which meant freedom. No, she was not the prey – at least not in the sense of the bait which finally captures the salmon.
Cairns had not spoken a word. Victoria looked at him furtively. His hands were clenched before him; in his eyes shone an indomitable purpose. He was going to the feast and he would foot the bill. On arriving at Elm Tree Place he walked at once into his dressing room, while Victoria went into her bedroom. She knew his mood well and knew too that he would not be long. She did not fancy overmuch the scene she could conjure up. In another minute or two he would come in with the culture of a thousand years ground down, smothered beneath the lava-like flow of animalism. He would come with his hands shaking, ready to be cruel in the exaction of his rights. She hovered between repulsion and an anxiety which was almost anticipation; Cairns was the known and the unknown at once. But whatever his demands they should be met and satisfied, for business is business and its justification is profits. So Victoria braced herself and, with feverish activity, twisted up her hair, sprayed herself with scent, jumped into bed and turned out the light.
As she did so the door opened. She was conscious for a fraction of a second of the bright quadrilateral of the open door where Cairns stood framed, a broad black silhouette.