A Bed of Roses Part 4

'But Ted,' she broke in, 'where am I to go?'

Edward looked at her as if dazed. Clearly he had not foreseen that Mrs Brumfit was not an inst.i.tution.

'Go?' he said, 'I don't know.'

'Don't you know any other lodgings?' asked Victoria. 'Gower Street seems full of them.'

'Oh! no,' said Edward quickly, 'we don't know what sort of places they are. You couldn't go there.'

'But where am I to go then?' Victoria persisted. Edward was silent. 'It seems to me,' his sister went on, 'that I shall have to risk it. After all, they won't murder me and they can't rob me of much.'

'Please don't talk like that,' said Edward stiffly. He did not like this a.s.sociation of ideas.

'Well I must find some lodgings,' said Victoria, a little irritably. 'In that case I may as well look round near Curran's. I don't like this street much.'

In default of an alternative, Edward looked sulky. Victoria felt remorseful; she knew that Gower Street must have become for her brother the traveller's Mecca and that he was vaguely afraid of the West End.

'Never mind, dear,' she went on more gently, 'don't worry about lodgings any more. Do you know what you're going to do? you're going to take me to tea in some nice place and then I'll go with you to St Pancras; that's the station you said you were going back by, isn't it? and you'll put me in a bus and I'll go home. Now, come along, it's past five and I'm dying for some tea.'

As Victoria stood, an hour later, just outside the station in which expires the spirit of Constantine the Great, she could not help feeling relieved. As she stood there, so self-possessed, seeing so clearly the busy world, she wondered why she had been given a broken reed to lean upon. Where had her brother left his virility? Had it been sapped by years of self-restraint? Had the formidable code of pretence, the daily affectation of dignity, the perpetual giving of good examples, reduced him to this shred of humanity, so timid, so resourceless? As she sped home in the tube into which she had been directed by a policeman, she vainly turned over the problem.

Fortunately Victoria was young. As she laid her head on the pillow, conscious of the coming of Sunday, when nothing could be done, visions of things she could do obsessed her. There were lodgings to find, nice, clean, cheap lodgings, with a dear old landlady and trees outside the window, in a pretty old-fashioned house, very very quiet and quite near all the tubes. She nursed the ideal for a time. Then she thought of careers. She would read all the advertis.e.m.e.nts and pick out the nicest work. Perhaps she could be a housekeeper. Or a secretary. On reflection, a secretary would be better. It might be so interesting. Fancy being secretary to a member of Parliament. Or to a famous author.

She too might write.

Her dreams were pleasant.

CHAPTER VI

A WEEK had elapsed and Victoria was beginning to feel the strain. She looked out from the window into the little street where fine rain fell gently as if it had decided to do so for ever. It was deserted, save by a cat who shivered and crouched under the archway of the mews. Sometimes a horse stirred. Through the open window the hot alcaline smell of the animals filtered slowly.

Victoria had found her lodgings. They were not quite the ideal, but she had not seen the ideal and this little den in Portsea Place was not without its charms. Her room, for the 'rooms' had turned from the plural into the singular, was comfortable enough. It occupied the front of the second floor in a small house. It had two windows, from which, by craning out a little, the trees of Connaught Square could be seen standing out like black skeletons against a white house. Opposite was the archway of the mews out of which came most of the traffic of the street. Under it too was the mart where the landladies who have invaded the little street exchange notes on their lodgers and boast of their ailments.

Victoria inspected her domain. She had a very big bed, a little inclined to creak; she had a table on a pedestal split so cunningly at the base that she was always table-conscious when she sat by it; she had a mahogany wash-stand, also on the triangular pedestal loved by the pre-Morrisites, enriched by a white marble top and splasher. A large armchair, smooth and rather treacherous, a small mahogany chest of drawers, every drawer of which took a minute to pull out, some chairs of no importance, completed her furniture. The carpet had been of all colours and was now of none. The tablecloth was blue serge and would have been serviceable if it had not contracted the habit of sliding off the mahogany table whenever it was touched. Ugly as it was in every detail, Victoria could not help thinking the room comfortable; its light paper saved it and it was not over-loaded with pictures. It had escaped with one text and the 'Sailor's Homecoming.' Besides it was restrained in colour and solid: it was comfortable like roast beef and boiled potatoes.

Victoria looked at all these things, at her few scattered books, the picture of d.i.c.k and of a group of school friends, at some of her boots piled in a corner. Then she listened and heard nothing. Once more she was struck by the emptiness, the darkness around her. She was alone. She had been alone a whole week, hardly knowing what to do. The excitement of choosing lodgings over, she had found time hang heavy on her hands.

She had interminably walked in London, gazed at shop windows, read hundreds of imbecile picture postcards on bookstalls, gone continually to many places in omnibuses. She had stumbled upon South Kensington and wandered in its catacombs of stone and brick. She had discovered Hampstead, lost herself horribly near Albany Street; she had even unexpectedly landed in the City where rushing mobs had hustled and battered her.

Faithful to her resolve she had sedulously read the morning papers and applied for several posts as housekeeper without receiving any answers.

She had realised that answering advertis.e.m.e.nts must be an art and had become quite conscious that employment was not so easy to find as she thought. n.o.body seemed to want secretaries, except the limited companies, about which she was not quite clear. As these mostly required the investment of a hundred pounds or more she had not followed them up.

She paced up and down in her room. The afternoon was wearing. Soon the man downstairs would come back and slam the door. A little later the young lady in the City would gently enter the room behind hers and, after washing in an un.o.btrusive manner, would discreetly leave for an hour. Meanwhile nothing broke the silence, except the postman's knock coming nearer and nearer along Portsea Place. It fell unheeded even on her own front door, for Victoria's ears were already attuned to the sound. It meant nothing.

She walked up and down nervously. She looked at herself in the gla.s.s.

She was pretty she thought, with her creamy skin and thick hair; her eyes too were good; what a pity her chin was so thick. That's why d.i.c.ky used to call her 'Towzer.' Poor old d.i.c.ky!

Shuffling footsteps rose up the stairs. Then a knock. At Victoria's invitation, a woman entered. It was Mrs Bell, the landlady.

'Why, ma'am, you're sitting in the dark! Let me light the lamp,' cried Mrs Bell, producing a large wooden box from a capacious front pocket.

She lit the lamp and a yellow glow filled the room, except the corners which remained in darkness.

'Here's a letter for you, ma'am,' said Mrs Bell holding it out. As Victoria took it, Mrs Bell beamed on her approvingly. She liked her new lodger. She had already informed the gathering under the archway that she was a real lady. She had a leaning for real ladies, having been a parlourmaid previous to marrying a butler and eking out his income by letting rooms.

'Thank you, Mrs Bell,' said Victoria, 'it was kind of you to come up.'

'Oh! ma'am, no trouble I can a.s.sure you,' said Mrs Bell, with a mixture of respect and patronage. She wanted to be kind to her lodger, but she found a difficulty in being kind to so real a lady.

Victoria saw the letter was from Edward and opened it hurriedly. Mrs Bell hesitated, looking with her black dress, clean face and grey hair, the picture of the respectable maid. Then she turned and struggled out on her worn shoes, the one blot on her neatness. Victoria read the letter, bending perilously over the lamp which smoked like a funnel. The letter was quite short; it ran:

'My dear Victoria,--I am sorry I could not write before now, but I wanted to have some news to give you. I am glad to say that I have been able to interest the vicar on your behalf. He informs me that if you will call at once on Lady Rockham, 7a Queen's Gate, South Kensington, S.W., she may be in a position to find you a post in a family of standing. He tells me she is most capable and kind. He is writing to her. I shall come to London and see you soon.--Yours affectionately,

EDWARD.'

Victoria fingered the letter lovingly. Perhaps she was going to have a chance after all. It was good to have something to do. Indeed it seemed almost too good to be true; she had vaguely resigned herself to unemployment. Of course something would ultimately turn up, but the what and when and how thereof were dangerously dim. She hardly cared to face these ideas; indeed she dismissed them when they occurred to her with a mixture of depression and optimism. Now, however, she was buoyant again.

The family of standing would probably pay well and demand little. It would mean the theatres, the shops, flowers, the latest novels, no end of nice things. A little work too, of course, driving in the Park with a dear dowager with the most lovely white hair.

She ate an excellent and comparatively expensive dinner in an Oxford Street restaurant and went to bed early for the express purpose of making plans until she fell asleep. She was still buoyant in the morning. Connaught Square looked its best and even South Kensington's stony face melted into smiles when it caught sight of her. Lady Rockham's was a mighty house, the very house for a family of standing.

Victoria walked up the four steep steps of the house where something of her fate was to be decided. She hesitated for an instant and then, being healthily inclined to take plunges, pulled the bell with a little more vigour than was in her heart. It echoed tremendously. The quietude of Queen's Gate stretching apparently for miles towards the south, increased the terrifying noise. Victoria's antic.i.p.ations were half pleasureable, half fearsome; she felt on the brink of an adventure and recalled the tremor with which she had entered the New Gaiety for the first time. Measured steps came nearer and nearer from the inside of the house; a shape silhouetted itself vaguely on the stained gla.s.s of the door.

She mustered sufficient coolness to tell the butler that she wished to see Lady Rockham, who was probably expecting her. As the large and solid man preceded her along an interminable hall, she felt rather than saw the thick Persian rug stretching along the crude mosaic of the floor, the red paper on the walls almost entirely hidden by exceedingly large and new pictures. Over her head a ponderous iron chandelier carrying many electric lamps blotted out most of the staircase.

For some minutes she waited in the dining-room into which she had been shown; for the butler was not at all certain, from a look at the visitor's mourning, that she was quite ent.i.tled to the boudoir.

Victoria's square chin and steady eyes saved her, however, from having to accommodate her spine to the exceeding perpendicularity of the high-backed chairs in the hall. The dining-room, ridiculous thought, reminded her of Curran's. In every particular it seemed the same. There was the large table with the thick cloth of indefinite design and colour. The sideboard too was there, larger and richer perhaps, of Spanish mahogany not an inch of which was left bare of garlands of flowers or archangelic faces. It carried Curran's looking-gla.s.s; Curran's cruets were replaced by a number of cups which proclaimed that Charles Rockham had once won the Junior Sculls, and more recently, the spring handicap of the Kidderwick Golf Club. The walls were red as in the hall and profusely decorated with large pictures representing various generations having tea in old English gardens, decorously garbed Roman ladies basking by the side of marble basins, and such like subjects. Twelve chairs, all high backed and heavily groined, were ranged round the walls, with the exception of a large carving chair, standing at the head of the table, awaiting one who was clearly the head of a household. Victoria was looking pensively at the large black marble clock representing the temple in which the Lares and Penates of South Kensington usually dwell, when the door opened and a vigorous rustle entered the room.

'I am very glad to see you, Mrs Fulton,' remarked the owner of the rustle. 'I have just received a letter from Mr Meaker, the vicar of Cray. A most excellent man. I am sure we can do something for you.

Something quite nice.'

Victoria looked at Lady Rockham with shyness and surprise. Never had she seen anything so majestic. Lady Rockham had but lately attained her ladyhood by marrying a knight bachelor whose name was a household word in the wood-paving world. She felt at peace with the universe. Her large silk clad person was redolent with content. She did not vulgarly beam.

She merely was. On her capacious bosom large brooches rose and fell rhythmically. Her face was round and smooth as her voice. Her eyes were almost severely healthy.

'I am sure it is very kind of you,' said Victoria. 'I don't know anybody in London, you see.'

'That will not matter; that will not matter at all,' said Lady Rockham.

'Some people prefer those whose connections live in the country, yes, absolutely prefer them. Why, friends come to me every day, and they are clamouring for country girls, absolutely clamouring. I do hope you are not too particular. For things are difficult in London. So very difficult.'

'Yes, I know,' murmured Victoria, thinking of her unanswered applications. 'But I'm not particular at all. If you can find me anything to do, Lady Rockham, I should be so grateful.'

'Of course, of course. Now let me see. A young friend of mine has just started a poultry farm in Dorset. She is doing very well. Oh! very well.

Of course you want a little capital. But such a very nice occupation for a young woman. The capital is often the difficulty. Perhaps you would not be prepared to invest much?'

'No, I'm afraid I couldn't,' faltered Victoria, wondering at what figure capital began.

'No, no, quite right,' purred Lady Rockham, 'I can see you are quite sensible. It is a little risky too. Yet my young friend is doing well, very well, indeed. Her sister is in Johannesburg. She went out as a governess and now she is married to a mine manager. There are so few girls in the country. Oh! he is quite a nice man, a little rough, I should say, but quite suitable.'