A Bed of Roses Part 30

She looked at him, a question in her eyes.

'As free man and woman,' he stammered. Then more firmly:

'I'll make you happy. You'll want nothing. Perhaps you'll even learn to like me.'

Victoria said nothing for a minute. The proposal did not offend her; she was too broken, too stupefied for her inherent prejudices to a.s.sert themselves. Morals, belief, reputation, what figments all these things.

What was this freedom of hers that she should set so high a price on it?

And here was comfort, wealth, peace--oh, peace. Yet she hesitated to plunge into the cold stream; she stood shivering on the edge.

'Let me think,' she said.

Cairns pressed her closer to him. A little of the flame that warmed his body pa.s.sed into hers.

'Don't hurry me. Please. I don't know what to say. . . .'

He bent over with hungry lips.

'Yes, you may kiss me.'

Submissive, if frightened and repelled, yet with a heart where hope fluttered, she surrendered him her lips.

CHAPTER XXVI

'I DON'T approve and I don't disapprove,' snarled Farwell. 'I'm not my sister's keeper. I don't pretend to think it n.o.ble of you to live with a man you don't care for, but I don't say you're wrong to do it.'

'But really,' said Victoria, 'if you don't think it right to do a thing, you must think it wrong.'

'Not at all. I am neutral, or rather my reason supports what my principles reject. Thus my principles may seem unreasonable and my reasoning devoid of principle, but I cannot help that.'

Victoria thought for a moment. She was about to take a great step and she longed for approval.

'Mr Farwell,' she said deliberately, 'I've come to the conclusion that you are right. We are crabs in a bucket and those at the bottom are no n.o.bler than those on the top, for they would gladly be on the top. I'm going on the top.'

'Sophist,' said Farwell smiling.

'I don't know what that means,' Victoria went on; 'I suppose you think that I'm trying to cheat myself as to what is right. Possibly, but I don't profess to know what is right.'

'Oh, no more do I,' interrupted Farwell, 'please don't set me up as a judge. I haven't got any ethical standards for you. I don't believe there are any; the ethics of the Renaissance are not those of the twentieth century, nor are those of London the same as those of Constantinople. Time and s.p.a.ce work moral revolutions; and, even on stereotyped lines, n.o.body can say present ethics are the best. From a conventional point of view the hundred and fifty years that separate us from Fielding mark an improvement, but I have still to learn that the morals of to-day compare favourably with those of Sparta. You must decide that for yourself.'

'I am doing so,' said Victoria quietly, 'but I don't think you quite understand a woman's position and I want you to. I find a world where the harder a woman works, the worse she is paid, where her mind is despised and her body courted. Oh, I know, you haven't done that, but you don't employ women. n.o.body but you has ever cared a sc.r.a.p about such brains as I may have; the subs courted me in my husband's regiment. . . .'

She stopped abruptly, having spoken too freely.

'Go on,' said Farwell tactfully.

'And in London what have I found? Nothing but men bent on one pursuit.

They have followed me in the streets and tubes, tried to sit by me in the parks. They have tried to touch me--yes me! the dependent who could not resent it, when I served them with their food. Their talk is the inane, under which they cloak desire. Their words are covert appeals. I hear round me the everlasting cry: yield, yield, for that is all we want from young women.'

'True,' said Farwell, 'I have never denied this.'

'And yet,' answered Victoria angrily, 'you almost blame me. I tell you that I have never seen the world as I do now. Men have no use for us save as mistresses, whether legal or not. Perhaps they will have us as breeders or housekeepers, but the mistress is the root of it all. And if they can gain us without pledges, without risks, by promises, by force or by deceit, they will.'

Farwell said nothing. His eyes were full of sorrow.

'My husband drank himself to death,' pursued Victoria in low tones.

'The proprietor of the Rosebud tried to force me to become his toy . . .

perhaps he would have thrown me on the streets if he had had time to pursue me longer and if I refused myself still . . . because he was my employer and all is fair in what they call love . . . The customers bought every day for twopence the right to stare through my openwork blouse, to touch my hand, to brush my knees with theirs. One, who seemed above them, tried to break my body into obedience by force . . . Here, at the P.R.R. I am a toy still, though more of a servant . . . Soon I shall be a cripple and good neither for servant nor mistress, what will you do with me?'

Farwell made a despairing gesture with his hand.

'I tell you,' said Victoria with ferocious intensity. 'You're right, life's a fight and I'm going to win, for my eyes are clear. I have done with sentiment and sympathy. A man may command respect as a wage earner; a woman commands nothing but what she can cheat out of men's senses. She must be rich, she must be economically independent. Then men will crawl where they hectored, worship that which they burned. And if I must be dependent to become independent, that is a stage I am ready for.'

'What are you going to do?' asked Farwell.

'I'm going to live with this man,' said Victoria in a frozen voice. 'I neither love nor hate him. I am going to exploit him, to extort from him as much of the joy of life as I can, but above all I am going to draw from him, from others too if I can, as much wealth as I can. I will store it, hive it bee-like, and when my treasure is great enough I will consume it. And the world will stand by and shout: hallelujah, a rich woman cometh into her kingdom.'

Farwell remained silent for a minute.

'You are right,' he said, 'if you must choose, then be strong and carve your way into freedom. I have not done this, and the world has sucked me dry. You can still be free, so do not shrink from the means. You are a woman, your body is your fortune, your only fortune, so trans.m.u.te it into gold. You will succeed, you will be rich; and the swine, instead of trampling on you, will herd round the trough where you scatter pearls.'

He stopped for a moment, slowly puffing at his pipe.

'Women's profession,' he muttered. 'The time will come . . .

but to-day. . . .'

Victoria looked at him, a faint figure in the night. He was the spectral prophet, a David in fear of Goliath.

'Yes,' she said, 'woman's profession.'

Together they walked away. Farwell was almost soliloquising. 'If she is brave, life is easier for a woman than a man. She can play on him; but her head must be cool, her heart silent. Hear this, Victoria. Remember yours is a trade and needs your application. To win this fight you must be well equipped. Let your touch be soft as velvet, your grip as hard as steel. Shrink from nothing, rise to treachery, let the worldly nadir be your zenith.'

He stopped before a public house and opened the door of the bar a little.

'Look in here,' he said.

Victoria looked. There were five men, half hidden in smoke; among them sat one woman clad in vivid colours, her face painted, her hands dirty and covered with rings. Her yellow hair made a vivid patch against the brown wall. A yard away, alone at a small table, sat another woman, covered too with cheap finery, with weary eyes and a smiling mouth, her figure abandoned on a sofa, lost to the scene, her look fixed on the side door through which men slink in.

'Remember,' said Farwell, 'give no quarter in the struggle, for you will get none.'

Victoria shuddered. But the fury was upon her.

'Don't be afraid,' she hissed, 'I'll spare n.o.body. They've already given me a taste of the whip. I know, I understand; those girls don't. I see the goal before me and therefore I will reach it.'

Farwell looked at her again, his eyes full of melancholy.

'Go then, Victoria,' he said, 'and work out your fate.'