Then she walked down Swallow Street into Piccadilly, and at once a young man in loud checks was at her side. She looked up into his face, her smile full of covert promise as they went into the Vesuvius together.
Victoria was now at home in the market place, and could exchange a quip with the frequenters. Languidly she dropped her cloak into the hands of the porter and preceded the young man into the supper-room. As they sat at the little table before the liqueur, her eyes saw the garish room through a film. How deadening it all was, and how lethal the draughts sold here. An immense weariness was upon her, an immense disgust, as she smiled full-toothed on the young man in checks. He was a cheerful rattle, suggested the man who has got beyond the retail trade without reaching the professions, a house agent"s clerk perhaps.
"Oh, yes, I"m a merry devil, ha! ha!" He winked a pleasant grey eye.
Victoria noticed that his clothes were too new, his boots too new, his manners too a recent acquisition.
"Don"t worry. That"s how you keep young, ha! ha! Besides, don"t have much time to mope in my trade!"
"What"s that?" asked Victoria vacuously. Men generally lied as to their occupation, but she had noticed that when their imagination was stimulated their temper improved.
"Inspector of bun-punchers, ha! ha!"
"Bun-punchers?"
"Yes, bun-punchers. South Eastern Railway, you know. Got to have them dated now. New Act of Parliament, ha! ha!"
Victoria laughed, for his c.o.c.kney joviality was infectious. Then again the room faded and rematerialised as his voice rose and fell.
"The wife don"t know I"m out on the tiles, ha! ha! She"s in Streatham, looking after the smalls. . . . Oh, no, none of your common or garden bra.s.s fenders. . . ."
Victoria pulled herself together. This was what she could not bear.
Brutality, the obscene even, were preferable to this dreary trickling of the inane masquerading as wit. Yet she smiled at him.
"You"re saucy," she said. "You"re my fancy to-night."
A shadow pa.s.sed over the man"s face. Then again he was rattling along.
"Talk of inventions? What"d you think of mine: indiarubber books to read in your bath? ha! ha! . . ."
But these are only the moths that flutter round the lamp, too far off to burn their wings. They love to breathe perfume, to touch soft hands, gaze at bright eyes and golden hair; then they flutter away, and the hand that would stay their flight cannot rob them even of a few specks of golden dust. In a few minutes Victoria sat philosophically before her empty gla.s.s while Fascination Fledgeby was by the side of a rival, being "an awful dog," for the benefit of his fellow clerks on the morrow. She was in the mood when it did not matter whether she was unlucky or not. There were quite two women present for every man this hot August night. At the next table sat a woman known as "Duckie," fair, very fat and rosy; she was the vision bursting from a white dress which Victoria had seen the first night. On the first night she had embodied for Victoria--so large, so fat, so coa.r.s.ely animal was she--the very essence of her trade; now she knew her better she found that Duckie was a good sort, careless, generous, perfectly incapable of doing anybody an ill turn. She was _bonne fille_ even, so unmercenary as sometimes to accede good humouredly to the pleadings of an impecunious youth. Her one failing was a fondness for "a wet." She was drinking her third whisky and soda; if she was invited to supper she would add to that at least half a bottle of champagne, follow that up by a couple of liqueurs and a peg just before going to bed. She carried her liquor well; she merely grew a little vague.
"Hot," remarked Duckie.
"Rather," said Victoria. "I"m going soon, can"t stick it."
"Good for you. I"ve got to stay. Always harder for grandmas like me when the fifth form boy"s at the seaside." Duckie laughed, without cynicism though; she had the reasoning powers of a cow.
Victoria laughed too. A foreign-looking girl in scarlet bent over from the next table, her long coral earrings sliding down over her collar-bones.
"Tight again," said the girl.
"As a drum, Lissa, old girl!" said Duckie good temperedly.
"Nothing to what you"ll be by and by," added Lissa with the air of a comforter.
"Nothing like, old dear! Have one with me, Lissa? No? No offence. You, Zoe, have a _tord boyaux_?"
"No thanks." Zoe was a good-looking short girl; her French nationality written in every line of her round face, plump figure, and hands. Her hair was pulled away from the fat nape of her neck. She looked competent and wide awake. A housewife gone astray. Lissa, dark and Italian looking in her red dress and coral earrings, was more languid than the others.
She was really a Greek, and all the grace of the East was in every movement of her slim figure. In a moment the four women had cl.u.s.tered together, forgetting strife.
Lissa had had a "Bank of Engraving" note palmed off on her by a pseudo-South American planter, and was rightly indignant. They were still talking of Camille de Valenciennes and of her misfortunes with the barber. Boys, the latest tip for Gatwick, "what I said to him," the furriers" sales, boys again . . . Victoria listened to the conversation.
It still seemed like another world and yet her world. Here they were, she and the other atoms, hostile every one, and a blind centripetal force was kneading them together into a cla.s.s. Yet any cla.s.s was better than the isolation in which she lived. Why not go further, hear more?
"I say, you girls," she said suddenly, "you"ve never been to my place.
Come and . . . no, not dine, it won"t work . . . come and lunch with me next week."
Duckie smiled heavily.
"I don" min"," she said thickly.
Zoe looked suspicious for a moment.
"Can I bring Fritz?" asked Lissa.
"No, we can"t have Fritz," said Victoria smiling. "Ladies only."
"I"m on," said Zoe suddenly. "I was afraid you were going to have a lot of swells in. Hate those shows. Never do you any good and you get so crumpled."
"You might let me bring Fritz," said Lissa querulously.
"No men," said Victoria firmly. "Wednesday at one o"clock. All square?"
"Thatawright," remarked Duckie. "Shut it Lissa. Fritzawright. Tellm its biz . . . bizness."
With some difficulty they hoisted Duckie into a cab and sent her off to Bloomsbury. As it drove off she popped her head out.
"Carriage paid," she spluttered, "or C. O. D.?"
Zoe and Lissa walked away to the circus. On her little hall table, as Victoria went into her house, she found a note scrawled in pencil on some of her own notepaper. It was from Betty. It said that Farwell had been stricken down by a sudden illness and was sinking fast. His address followed.
CHAPTER X
IN a bed sitting-room at the top of an old house off the Waterloo Road three women were watching by the bedside of a man. One was dressed in rusty black; she was pale faced, crowned with light hair; the other, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, was middle-aged and very stout; her breast rolled like a billow in her half b.u.t.toned bodice. The third was beautiful, all in black, her sumptuous neck and shoulders bare. None of them moved for a moment. Then the beautiful woman threw back her cloak and her long jade earrings tinkled. The face on the pillow turned and opened its eyes.
"Victoria," said a faint voice.
"Yes . . . are you better?" Victoria bent over the bed. The face was copper coloured; every bone seemed to start out. She could hardly recognise Farwell"s rough hewn features.
"Not yet . . . soon," said Farwell. He closed his eyes once more.
"What is it, Betty?" whispered Victoria.
"I don"t know . . . hemorrhage they say."
"It"s all up mum," whispered the landlady in Victoria"s ear. "Been ill two days only. Doctor said he wouldn"t come again."