A Bed of Roses Part 28

Slim and delicate as she seemed, there was in Betty's thin body a strength all nervous but enduring. She did not complain, though driven eleven or twelve hours a day by the eyes of the manageress; those eyes were sharp as a goad, but she went cheerfully.

In a sense Betty was happy. The work did not weigh too heavily upon her; there was so much humility in her that she did not resent the roughness of her companions. Nelly could snub her, trample at times on her like the cart horse she was; the manageress too could freeze her with a look, the kitchen staff disregard her humble requests for teas and procure for her the savage bullying of the customers, yet she remained placid enough.

'It's a hard life,' she once said to Victoria, 'but I suppose it's got to be.' This was her philosophy.

'But don't you want to get out of it?' cried Victoria the militant.

'I don't know,' said Betty. 'I might marry.'

'Marry,' sniffed Victoria. 'You seem to think marriage is the only way out for women.'

'Well, isn't it?' asked Betty. 'What else is there?'

And for the life of her Victoria could not find another occupation for an unskilled girl. Milliners, dressmakers, clerks, typists, were all frightfully underpaid and overworked; true there were women doctors, but who cared to employ them? And teachers, but they earned the wages of virtue: neglect. Besides it was too late; both Victoria and Betty were unskilled, condemned by their s.e.x to low pay and hard work.

'It's frightful, frightful,' cried Victoria. 'The only use we are is to do the dirty work. Men don't char. Of course we may marry, if we can, to any of those G.o.ds if they'll share with us their thirty bob a week. Talk of slaves! They're better off than we.'

Betty looked upon all this as rather wild, as a consequence of Victoria's illness. Her view was that it didn't do to complain, and that the only thing to do was to make the best of it. But she loved Victoria, and it was almost a voluptous joy for her to help her friend to undress every night, to tempt her with little offerings of fruit and flowers.

When they woke up, Betty would draw her friend into her arms and cover her face with gentle kisses.

But as Victoria grew worse, stiffer, and slower, responding ever more reluctantly to the demands made upon her all day at the P. R. R., Betty was conscious of horrible anxiety. Sometimes her imagination would conjure up a Victoria helpless, wasted, bedridden, and her heart seemed to stop. But her devotion was proof against egoism. Whatever happened, Victoria should not starve if she had to pay the rent and feed herself on nine shillings or so a week until she was well again and beautiful as she had been. Her anxiety increasing, she mustered up courage to interview Farwell, whom she hated jealously. He had ruined Victoria, she thought--made her wild, discontented, rebellious against the incurable.

Yet he knew her, and at any rate she must talk about it to somebody. So she mustered up courage to ask him to meet at nine.

'Well?' said Farwell. He did not like Betty much. He included her among the poor creatures, the rubble.

'Oh, Mr Farwell, what's going to happen to Victoria,' cried Betty, with tears in her voice. Then she put her hand against the railings of Finsbury Circus. She had prepared a dignified little speech, and her suffering had burst from her. The indignity of it.

'Happen? The usual thing in these cases. She'll get worse; the veins will burst and she'll be crippled for life.'

Betty looked at him, her eyes blazing with rage.

'How dare you, how dare you?' she growled.

Farwell laughed.

'My dear young lady,' he said smoothly, 'it needs no doctor to tell you what is wanted. Victoria must stop work, lie up, be well fed, live in the country perhaps and her spirits must be raised. To this effect I would suggest a pretty house, flowers, books, some music, say a hundred-guinea grand piano, some pretty pictures. So that she may improve in health it is desirable that she should have servants. These may gain varicose veins by waiting on her, but that is by the way.'

Betty was weeping now. Tear after tear rolled down her cheeks.

'But all this costs money,' continued Farwell, 'and, as you are aware, bread is very dear and flesh and blood very cheap. Humanity finds the extraction of gold a toilsome process, whilst the production of children is a normal recreation which eclipses even the charms of alcohol. There, my child, you have the problem; and there is only one radical solution to it.'

Betty looked at him, intuitively guessing the horrible suggestion.

'The solution,' said Farwell, 'is to complain to the doctor of insomnia, get him to prescribe laudanum and sink your capital in the purchase of half a pint. One's last investment is generally one's best.'

'Oh, I can't bear it, I can't bear it,' wailed Betty. 'She's so beautiful, so clever.'

'Ah, yes,' said Farwell in his dreamy manner, 'but then you see when a woman doesn't marry. . . .' He broke off, his eyes fixed on the grey pavement. 'The time will come, Betty, when the earth will be not only our eternal bed, but the fairy land where joyful flowers will grow. Ah!

it will be joyful, joyful, this crop of flowers born from seas of blood.'

'But, now, now, what can we do with her?' cried Betty.

'I have no other suggestion if she will not fight,' growled Farwell in his old manner. 'She must sink or swim. If she sinks she's to blame, I suppose. In a world of pirates and cut-throats she will have elected to be a saint, and the martyr's crown will be hers. If suicide is not to her taste, I would recommend her to resort to what is called criminal practices. Being ill, she has magnificent advantages if she wishes to start business as a begging-letter writer; burglary is not suitable for women, but there are splendid openings for confidence tricksters and shoplifting would be a fine profession if it were not overcrowded by the upper middle cla.s.ses.'

Betty dabbed her eyes vigorously. Her mouth tightened. She looked despairingly at the desolate half circle of London Wall Buildings and Salisbury House. Then she gave Farwell her hand for a moment and hurriedly walked away. As she entered the attic the candle was still burning. Victoria was in bed and had forgotten it; she had already fallen into stertorous sleep.

Next morning Victoria got up and dressed silently. She did not seem any worse; and with this Betty was content, though she only got short answers to her questions. All that day Victoria seemed well enough. She walked springily; at times she exchanged a quick joke with a customer.

She laughed even when a young man, carried away for a moment beyond the spirit of food which reigned supreme in the P.R.R., touched her hand and looked into her eyes.

As the afternoon wore Victoria felt creeping over her the desperate weariness of the hour.

At a quarter to six she made up her checks. There was a shortfall of one and a penny.

'How do you account for it?' asked the manageress.

'Sure I don't know, Miss,' said Victoria helplessly. 'I always give checks. Somebody must have slipped out without paying.'

'Possibly.' The manageress grew more tense faced than ever. Her bust expanded. 'I don't care. Of course you know the rule. You pay half and the desk pays half.'

'I couldn't help it, Miss,' said Victoria miserably. Sixpence halfpenny was a serious loss.

'No more could I. I think I can tell you how it happened, though,' said the manageress with a vague smile. 'I'm an old hand. A customer of yours had a tuck out for one and a penny. You gave him a check. Look at the foil and you'll see.'

'Yes, Miss, here it is,' said Victoria anxiously.

'Very well. Then he went upstairs on the Q.T. and had a cup of coffee.

Follow!'

'Yes, Miss.'

'One of the girls gave him a twopenny check. Then he went out and handed in the twopenny check. He kept the other one in his pocket.'

'Oh, Miss. . . . it's stealing,' Victoria gasped.

'It is. But there it is, you see.'

'But it's not my fault, Miss; if you had a pay box at the top of the stairs, I don't say. . . .'

'Oh, we can't do that,' said the manageress icily, 'they would cost a lot to build and extra staff and we must keep down expenses, you know.

Compet.i.tion is very keen in this trade.'

Victoria felt stunned. The incident was as full of revelations as Lizzie's practices at the desk. The girls cheated the customers, the customers the girls. And the P.R.R. sitting olympian on its pillar of cloud, exacted from all its dividends. The P.R.R. suddenly loomed up before Victoria's eyes as a big swollen monster in whose veins ran China tea. And from its nostrils poured forth torrents of coffee-scented steam. It grew and grew, and fed men and women, every now and then extending a talon and seizing a few young girls with sore legs, a rival cafe or two. Then it vanished. Victoria was looking at one of the large plated urns.

'All right,' she said sullenly, 'I'll pay.'

As it was her day off, at six o'clock Victoria went up to the change room, saying good-night to Betty, telling her she was going out to get some fresh air. She thought it would do her good, so rode on a bus to the Green Park. Round her, in Piccadilly, a tide of rich life seemed to rise redolent with scent, soft tobacco, moist furs, all those odours that herald and follow wealth. A savagery was upon her as she pa.s.sed along the club windows, now full of young men telling tales that made their teeth shine in the night, of old men, red, pink, brown, healthy in colour and in security, reading, sleeping, eking out life.

The picture was familiar; for it was the picture she had so often seen when, as a girl, she came up to town from Lympton for a week to shop in Oxford Street and see, from the upper boxes, the three or four plays recommended by _Hearth and Home_. Piccadilly had been her Mecca. It had represented mysterious delights, restaurants, little teashops, jewellers, makers of cunning cases for everything. She had never been well-off enough to shop there, but had gazed into its windows and bought the nearest imitations in Oxford Street. Then the clubs had been, if not familiar, at any rate friendly. She had once with her mother called at the In and Out to ask for a general. He was dead now, and so was Piccadilly.