"Oh, Vic, how can you? I never, never said that."
"No, you thought it," answered Victoria a little cruelly. "But never mind, perhaps you"re right."
"I never said so, never thought so," persisted Betty. "You can"t go wrong, Vic, you"re . . . you"re different."
"Perhaps I am," said Victoria. "Perhaps there are different laws for different people. At any rate I"ve made my choice and must abide by it."
"And are you happy, Vic?" Anxiety was in the girl"s face.
"Happy? Oh, happy enough. He"s a good sort."
"I"m so glad. And . . . Vic . . . do you think he"ll marry you?"
"Marry me?" said Victoria laughing. "You little goose, of course not.
Why should he marry me now he"s got me?"
This was a new idea for Betty.
"But doesn"t he love you very, very much?" she asked, her blue eyes growing rounder and rounder.
"I suppose he does in a way," said Victoria. "But it doesn"t matter.
He"s very kind to me but he won"t marry me; and, honestly, I wouldn"t marry him."
Betty looked at her amazed and a little shocked.
"But, dear," she faltered, "think of what it would mean; you . . . he and you, you see . . . you"re living like that . . . if he married you. . . ."
"Yes, I see," said Victoria with a slight sneer, "you mean that I should be an honest woman and all that? My dear child, you don"t understand.
Whether he marries me or not it"s all the same. So long as a woman is economically dependent on a man she"s a slave, a plaything. Legally or illegally joined it"s exactly the same thing; the legal bond has its advantages and its disadvantages and there"s an end of the matter."
Betty looked away over the Thames; she did not understand. The tradition was too strong. Time went quickly. Betty had no tale to unfold; the months had pa.s.sed leaving her doing the same work for the same wage, living in the same room. Before her was the horizon on which were outlined two ships; "ten hours a day" and "eight bob a week." And the skyline?
As they parted, Victoria made Betty promise to come and see her. Then they kissed twice, gently and silently, and Victoria watched her friend"s slim figure fade out of sight as she walked away. She had the same impression as when she parted with Lottie, who had gone so bravely into the dark. A wave of melancholy was upon her. Poor girls, they were without hope; she at least was viewing life with her eyes open. She would wrench something out of it yet. She shook herself; it was a quarter to seven.
An hour later she was sitting opposite Farwell. They were getting to the end of dinner. Conversation had flagged while they disposed of the earlier courses. Now they were at the ice and coffee stage. The waiters grew less attentive; indeed there was n.o.body to observe them save the olive-skinned boy with the mournful eyes who looked at the harbour of Palermo through the Waterloo Road door. Farwell lit the cigar which Victoria forced upon him, and leant back, puffing contentedly.
"Well," he said at length, "how do you like the life?"
"It is better than the old one," she said.
"Oh, so you"ve come to that. You have given up the absolutes."
"Yes, I"ve given them up. A woman like me has to."
"Yes, I suppose you"ve got to," pondered Farwell. "But apart from that, is it a success? Are you attaining your end? That"s the only thing that matters, you know."
"I am, in a sense; I"m saving money. You see, he"s generous."
"Excellent, excellent," sneered Farwell. "I like to see you making out of what the bourgeois call vice that which will enable you to command bourgeois respect. By-and-by I suppose you"ll have made a fortune."
"Well, no; a competency perhaps, with luck."
"With luck, as you say. Do you know, Victoria, this luck business is grand! My firm goes in for mines: they went prospecting in America twenty years ago and they happened to strike copper. That was good.
Other men struck granite only. That was bad. But my boss is a City Sheriff now. Frightfully rich. There used to be four of them, but one died of copper poisoning, and another was found shot in a gulch. n.o.body knows how it happened, but the other two got the mines."
Victoria smiled. She liked this piratical t.i.t bit.
"Yes," she said, "luck"s the thing. And merit . . . well I suppose the surviving partners had merit."
"Anyhow, I wish you luck," said Farwell. "But tell me more. Do you find you"ve paid too high a price for what you"ve got?"
"Too high a price?"
"Yes. Do you have any of that remorse we read about; would you like to be what you were? Unattached, you know . . . eligible for Young Women"s Christian a.s.sociations?"
"Oh, no," Victoria laughed. "I can"t pay too high a price for what I think I"ll get. I don"t mean these jewels or these clothes, that"s only my professional uniform. When I"ve served my time I shall get that for which no woman can pay too much: I shall be economically independent, free."
"Free." Farwell looked towards the ceiling through a cloudlet of smoke.
"Yes, you"re right. With the world as it is it"s the only way. To be independent you must acquire the right to be dependent on the world"s labour, to be a drone . . . and the biggest drone is queen of the hive.
Yet I wish it had been otherwise with you." He looked at her regretfully.
Victoria toyed with a dessert knife.
"Why?" she asked.
"Oh, you had possibilities . . . but after all, we all have. And most of them turn out to be impossibilities. At any rate, you"re not disgusted with your life, with any detail?"
"No, I don"t think so. I don"t say I"ll go on any longer than I need, but it"s bearable. But even if it were repulsive in every way I"d go on if I saw freedom ahead. If I fight at all I fight to a finish."
"You"re strong," said Farwell looking at her. "I wish I had your strength. You"ve got that force which makes explorers, founders of new faiths, prophets, company promoters." He sighed.
"Let"s go," he added, "we can talk in the warm night."
For an hour they talked, agreeing always in the end. Farwell was cruelly conscious of two wasted lives: his, because his principles and his capacity for thought had no counterweight in a capacity for action; Victoria"s, because of her splendid gifts ign.o.bly wasted and misused by a world which had asked her for the least of them.
Victoria felt a peculiar pleasure in this man"s society. He was elderly, ugly, ill-clad; sometimes he was boorish, but a halo of thought surrounded him, and the least of his words seemed precious. All this devirilised him, deprived him of physical attractiveness. She could not imagine herself receiving and returning his caresses. They parted on Waterloo Bridge.
"Good-bye," said Farwell, "you"re on the right track. The time hasn"t come for us to keep the law, for we don"t know what the law is. All we have is the edict of the powerful, the prejudice of the fool; the last especially, for these goaled souls have their traditions, and their convictions are prisons all."
Victoria pressed his hand and turned away. She did not look back. If she had she would have seen Farwell looking into the Thames, his face lit up by a gas lamp, curiously speculative in expression. His emotions were not warring, but the chaos in his brain was such that he was fighting the logical case for and against an attempt to find enlightenment on the other slope of the valley.
CHAPTER VI
VICTORIA stretched herself lazily in bed. Her eyes took in a picture of Cairns on the mantelpiece framed between a bottle of eau-de-cologne and the carriage clock; then, little by little, she a.n.a.lysed details, small objects, powderpuffs, a Chelsea candlestick, an open letter, the wall paper. She closed her eyes again and buried her face in the pillow. The lace edge tickled her ear pleasantly. She snuggled like a stroked cat.