A Bed of Roses Part 12

'Looked out for something else?' said Victoria with the suspicion of a sneer. 'Look here, Ted. I know you mean well, but I know what I'm doing; I haven't been in London for six months without finding out that life is hard on women like me. I'm no good because I'm too good for a poor job and not suitable for a superior one. So I've just got to do what I can.'

'Why didn't you try for a post as companion?' asked Edward with a half snarl.

'Try indeed! Anybody can see you haven't had to try, Ted. I've tried everything I could think of, agencies, societies, papers, everything. I can't get a post. I must do something. I've got to take what I can get.

I know it now; we women are just raw material. The world uses as much of us as it needs and throws the rest on the sc.r.a.p heap. Do you think I don't keep my eyes open? Do you think I don't see that when you want somebody to do double work at half rates you get a woman? And she thanks G.o.d and struggles for the work that's too dirty or too hard for a man to touch.'

Victoria paced up and down the small room, carried away by her vehemence. Edward said nothing. He was much upset and did not know what to say; he had never seen Victoria like this and he was const.i.tutionally afraid of vigour.

'I'm sorry, Ted,' said Victoria stopping suddenly. She laid her hand on his sleeve. 'There, don't sulk with me. Let's go out to lunch and I'll go and choose your books with you after. Is it a bargain?'

'I don't want to discuss the matter again,' replied Edward with as much composure as he could muster. 'Yes, let's go out to lunch.'

The rest of the day pa.s.sed without another word on the subject of Victoria's downfall. She saw Edward off at St Pancras. After he had said good-bye to her, he suddenly leaned out of the window of the railway carriage as if to speak, then changed his mind and sank back on the seat. Victoria smiled at her victory.

Next morning she broke the news to Miss Briggs. The landlady seemed amazed as well as concerned.

'You seem rather taken aback,' said Victoria.

'Well, mum, you see it's a funny thing the stage; young ladies all seems to think it's easy to get on. And then they don't get on. And there you are.'

'Well I _am_ on,' said Victoria, 'so I shall have to leave on Wednesday.'

'Sorry to lose you, mum,' said Miss Briggs, ''ope yer'll 'ave a success.

In course, as you 'aven't given me notice, mum, it'll 'ave to be a week's money more.'

'Oh, come Miss Briggs, this is too bad,' cried Victoria, 'why, you've got a whole floor vacant! What would it have mattered if I had given you notice?'

'Might have let it, mum. Besides it's the law,' said Miss Briggs, placing her arms akimbo, ready for the fray.

'Very well then,' said Victoria coldly, 'don't let's say anything more about it.'

Miss Briggs looked at her critically. 'No offence meant, mum,' she said timidly, 'it's a 'ard life, lodgers.'

'Indeed?' said Victoria without any show of interest.

'You wouldn't believe it, mum, all I've got to put up with. There's Hetty now . . .'

'Yes, yes, Miss Briggs,' said Victoria impatiently, 'you've told me about Hetty.'

'To be sure, mum,' replied Miss Briggs, humbly. 'It ain't easy to make ends meet. What with the rent and them Borough Council rates. There ain't no end to it, mum. I lives in the bas.e.m.e.nt, mum, and that means gas all the afternoon, mum.'

Victoria looked at her again. This was a curious outlook. The poor troglodyte had translated the glory of the sun into cubic feet of gas.

'Yes, I suppose it is hard,' she said reflectively.

'To be sure, mum,' mused Miss Briggs. 'Sometimes you can't let at all.

I've watched through the area railings, mum, many a long day in August, wondering if the legs I can see was coming 'ere. They don't mostly, mum.'

'Then why do you go on?' asked Victoria hardening suddenly.

'What am I to do, mum? I just gets my board and lodging out of it, mum.

Keeps one respectable; always been respectable, mum. That ain't so easy in London, mum. Ah, when I was a young girl, might have been different, mum; you should have seen me 'air. Curls like anything, mum, when I puts it in papers. 'Ad a bit of a figure too, mum.'

'Deary me!'

Victoria looked with sympathy at the hard thin face, the ragged hair.

Yes, she was respectable enough, poor Miss Briggs! Women have a hard life. No wonder they too are hard. You cannot afford to be earthenware among the bra.s.s pots.

'What will you do when you can't run the house any more?' she asked more gently.

'Do, mum? I dunno.'

Yet another philosophy.

'Miss Briggs,' came a man's voice from the stairs.

'Coming, sir,' yelled Miss Briggs in the penetrating tone that calling from cellar to attic teaches.

'Where are my boots?' said the voice on the stairs.

'I'll get 'em for you, sir,' cried Miss Briggs shuffling to the door on her worn slippers.

Life is a hard thing, thought Victoria again. Another woman for the sc.r.a.p heap. Fourteen hours work a day, nightmares of unlet rooms, boots to black and coals to carry, dirt, loneliness, harsh words and at the end 'I dunno.' Is that to be my fate? she wondered.

However her blood soon raced again; she was an actress, she was going abroad, she was going to see the world, to enslave it, to have adventures, live. It was good. All that day Victoria trod on air. She no longer felt her loneliness. The sun was out and aglow, bringing in its premature exuberance joyful moisture to her temples. She, with the world, was young. In a fit of extravagance she lunched at a half crown table d'hote in Oxford Street, where pink shades softly diffuse the light on shining gla.s.s and silver. The coffee was almost regal, so strong, so full of sap. The light of triumph was in her eyes, making men turn back, sometimes follow and look into her face, half appealing, half insolent. But Victoria was unconscious of them, for the world was at her feet. She was the axis of the earth. It was in such a frame of mind that, the next day, she climbed the steps of Soho Place, careless of the view into the underground kitchen, of the two dogs who under the archway fought, growling, fouling the air with the scents of their hides, over a piece of offal. She ran up the stairs lightly. The door was still ajar.

Two men were sitting in the anteroom, both smoking briar pipes. The taller of the two got up.

'Yes?' he said interrogatively.

'I . . . you . . . is Mr Carrel here?' asked Victoria nervously.

'No Miss,' said the man calmly, 'he's just gone to Marlborough Street.'

'Oh,' said Victoria, still nervous, 'will he be long?'

'I should say so, miss,' replied the man, 'perhaps twelve months, perhaps more.'

Victoria gasped. 'I don't understand,' she said, but her heart began to beat.

'Don't s'pose you would, miss,' said the short man, getting up. 'Fact is, miss, we're the police and we've had to take him; just about time we did, too. Leaving for France to-night with a batch of girls. S'pose you're one of them?'

'I was going to-night,' said Victoria faintly.

'May I have your name?' asked the tall man politely, taking out a pocket book.

'Fulton,' she faltered. 'Victoria Fulton.'

'M'yes, that's it. 'Gladys Oxford,'' said the tall man turning back a page. 'Well Miss, you can thank your stars you're out of it.'