Holt thought for a moment.
"Yes, I suppose we do keep them down. But they"re different. You see, men are men and--"
"I know the rest. But never mind, Jack dear, you"re not like the others.
You"ll never be a conqueror."
Then she muzzled him with her hand, and, kissing its scented palm, he thought no more of the stern game in which they were the shuttlec.o.c.ks.
The spring was touching Europe with its wings; and here already the summer was bursting the seed pods, the sap breaking impatiently through the branches. All the wet warmth of the brief African blooming ran riot in thickening leaf. The objective of Jack"s life, influenced as he was by the air, was Victoria and the ever more consuming love he bore her; the minutes only counted when he was by her side, watching her every movement, inhaling, touching her. All his energies seem to have been driven into this narrow channel. He was ready to move or to remain as Victoria might direct; he spoke little, he basked. Thus he agreed to extending their stay for a month; he agreed to shorten it by a fortnight when Victoria, suddenly realising that her life force was wasting away in this enervating atmosphere, decided to go home.
Victoria"s progress to London was like the march of a conqueror. She stopped in Paris to renew her clothes. There Jack knew hours of waiting in the hired victoria while his queen was trying on frocks. He showed such a childish joy in it all that she indulged her fancy, her every whim; dresses, wraps, lace veils, furs, hats ma.s.sive with ostrich feathers, aigrettes, delicate kid boots, gilt shoes, ama.s.sed in their suite. Jack egged her on; he rioted too. Often he would stop the victoria and rush into a shop if he saw something he liked in the window, and in a few minutes return with it, excitedly demanding praise.
He did not seem to understand or care for money, to have any wants except cigarettes. He followed, and in his beautiful dog-like eyes devotion daily grew.
They entered London on a bustling April day. A biting east wind carried rain drops and sunshine. As it stung her face and whipped her blood, Victoria found the old fierce soul reincarnating itself in her. She opened her mouth to take in the cold English air, to bend herself for the finishing of her task.
CHAPTER XVII
IT was in London that the real battle began. In Algiers the scented winds made hideous and unnatural all thoughts of gain. On arriving in London Victoria ascertained with a thrill of pleasure that her bank had received a thousand pounds since October. After disposing of a few small debts and renewing some trifles in the house, she found herself a capitalist: she had about fifteen hundred pounds of her own. The money was lying at the bank and it only struck her then that the time had come to invest it. Her interview with the manager of her branch was a delightful experience; she was almost bursting with importance, and his courteous appreciation of his increasingly wealthy client was something more than balm. It was a foretaste of the power of money. She had known poor men respected, but not poor women; now the bank manager was giving her respectful attention because she had fifteen hundred pounds.
"You might buy some industrials," he said.
"Industrials? What are they?"
"Oh, all sorts of things. Cotton mills, iron works, trading companies, anything."
"Cement works?" she asked with a spark of devilry.
"Yes, cement works too," said the manager without moving a muscle.
"But do you call them safe?" she asked, returning to business.
"Oh, fairly. Of course there are bad years and good. But the debentures are mostly all right and some of the prefs."
Victoria thought for a moment. Reminiscences of political economy told her that there were booms and slumps.
"Has trade been good lately?" she asked suddenly.
"No, not for the last two years or so. It"s picking up though. . . ."
"Ah, then we"re in for a cycle of good trade. I think I"ll have some industrials. You might pick me out the best."
The manager seemed a little surprised at this knowledge of commercial crises but said nothing more, and made out a list of securities averaging six per cent net.
"And please buy me a hundred P. R. R. shares," added Victoria.
She could have laughed at the manager"s stony face because he did not see the humour of this. He merely said that he would forward the orders to a stockbroker.
Victoria felt that she had put her hand to the plough. She was scoring so heavily that she never now wished to turn back. Holt was every day growing more dreamy, more absorbed in his thoughts. He never seemed to quicken into action except when his companion touched him. He grew more silent too; the hobbledehoy was gone. He was at his worst when he had received a letter bearing the Rawsley postmark. Victoria knew of these, for Holt"s need of her grew greater every day; he was now living at Elm Tree Place. He hardly left the house. He got up late and pa.s.sed the morning in the boudoir, smoking cigarettes, desultorily reading and nursing the Pekingese which he now liked better. But on the days when he got letters from Rawsley, letters so bulky that they were sometimes insufficiently stamped, he would go out early and only return at night.
Then, however, he returned as if he had been running, full of some nameless fear; he would strain Victoria to him and hold her very close, burying his face below the bedclothes as if he were afraid. On one of those days Victoria accidentally saw him come out of a small dissenting chapel near by. He did not see her, for he was walking away like a man possessed; she said nothing of this but understood him better, having an inkling that the fight against the Rawsley tradition was still going on.
She did not, however, allow herself to be moved by his struggle. It behoved her to hold him, for he was her last chance and the world looked rosy round her. As the spring turned into summer he became more utterly hers.
"You distil poison for me," he said one day as they sat by the rose hung pergola.
"No, Jack, don"t say that, it"s the elixir of life."
"The elixir of life. Perhaps, but poison too. To make me live is to make me die, Victoria; we are both sickening for death and to hasten the current of life is to hasten our doom."
"Live quickly," she whispered, bending towards him, "did you live at all a year ago?"
"No, no." His arms were round her and his lips insistent on hers. He frightened her a little, though. She would have to take him away. She had already confided this new trouble to Betty when the latter came to see her in April, but Betty, beyond suggesting cricket, had been too full of her own affairs. Apparently these were not going very well.
Anderson & Dromo"s had not granted the rise, and the marriage had been postponed. Meanwhile she was still at the P. R. R., and very, very happy. Betty too, her baby, her other baby, frightened Victoria a little. She was so rosy, so pretty now, and there was something defiant and excited about her that might presage disease. But Betty had not come near her for the last two months.
About the middle of June she took Jack away to Broadstairs. He was willing to go or stay, just as she liked. He seemed so neutral that Victoria experimented upon him by presenting him with a sheaf of unpaid bills. He looked at them languidly and said he supposed they must be paid, asked her to add them up and wrote a cheque for the full amount.
Apparently he had forgotten all about the allowance, or did not care.
Broadstairs seemed to do him good. Except at the week end the Hotel Sylvester was almost empty. The sea breeze blew stiffly from the north or the east. His colour increased and once more he began to talk.
Victoria encouraged him to take long walks alone along the front. She had some occupation, for two little girls who were there in charge of a Swiss governess had adopted the lovely lady as their aunt. A new sweetness had come into her life, shrill voices, the clinging of little hands. Sometimes these four would walk together, and Holt would run with the children, tumbling in the sand in sheer merriment.
"You seem all right again, Jack," said Victoria on the tenth morning.
"Right! Rather, by jove, it"s good to live, Vicky."
"You were a bit off colour, you know."
"I suppose I was. But now, I feel nothing can hold me. I wrote a rondeau this morning on the pier. Want to see it?"
"Of course, silly boy. Aren"t you going to be the next great poet?"
She read the rondeau, scrawled in pencil on the back of a bill. It was delicate, a little colourless.
"Lovely," she said, "of course you"ll send it to the _Westminster_."
"Perhaps . . . hulloa, there are the kiddies." He ran off down the steps from the front. A minute after Victoria saw him helping the elder girl to bury her little sister in the sand.
Victoria felt much rea.s.sured. He was normal again, the half wistful, half irresponsible boy she had once known. He slept well, laughed, and his crying need for her seemed to have abated. At the end of the fortnight Victoria was debating whether she should take him home. She was in the hotel garden talking to the smaller girl, telling her a wonderful story about the fairy who lived in the telephone and said ping-pong when the line was engaged. The little girl sat upon her knee; when she laughed Victoria"s heart bounded. The elder girl came through the gate leading a good-looking young woman in white by the hand.
"Oh, mummie, here"s auntie," cried the child, dragging her mother up to Victoria. The two women looked at one another.
"They tell me you have been very kind . . ." said the woman. Then she stopped abruptly.
"Of course, mummie, she"s not _really_ our auntie," said the child confidentially.
Victoria put the small girl down. The mother looked at her again. She seemed so nice and refined . . . yet her husband said that the initials on the trunks were different . . . one had to be careful.