A Bed of Roses Part 44

Victoria bent over the bed once more. She could feel the eyes of the landlady probing her personality.

'Can't you do something?' she asked savagely.

'Nothing.' Farwell opened his eyes again and faintly smiled. 'And what's the good, Victoria?'

Victoria threw herself on her knees by the side of the bed. 'Oh, you musn't!' she whispered. 'You . . . the world can't spare you!'

'Oh, yes . . . it can . . . you know . . . the world is like men . . .

it spends everything on luxuries . . . it can't afford necessaries.'

Victoria smiled and felt as if she were going to choke. The last paradox.

'Are you in pain?' she asked.

'No, not just now. . . . I shall be, soon. Let me speak while I can.'

His voice grew firmer suddenly.

'I have asked you to come so that you may be the last thing I see; you, the fairest. I love you.'

Not one of the three women moved.

'I have not spoken before, because when I could speak we were slaves.

Now you are free and I a slave. It is too late, so it is time for me to speak. For I cannot influence you.'

Farwell shut his eyes. But soon his voice rose again.

'You must never influence anybody. That is my legacy to you. You cannot teach men to stand by giving them a staff. Let the halt and the lame alone. The strong will win. You must be free. There is nothing worth while. . . .' A shiver pa.s.sed over him, his voice became m.u.f.fled.

'No, nothing at all . . . freedom only. . . .'

He spoke quicker. The words could not be distinguished. Now and then he groaned.

'Wait,' whispered Betty, 'it will be over in a minute.' For two minutes they waited.

Victoria's eyes fastened on a basin by the bedside, full of reddish water. Then Farwell's face grew lighter in tone. His voice came faint as the sound of a spinet.

'There will be better times. But before then fighting . . . the coming to the top of the leaders . . . gold will be taken from the rich . . .

given to the vile . . . pictures burnt . . . chaos . . . woman rise as a tyrant . . . there will be fighting . . . the coming to the top. . ..'

His voice thinned down to nothing as his wandering mind repeated his prediction. Then he spoke again.

'You are a rebel . . . you will lead . . . you have understood . . .

only by understanding are you saved. I asked you to come here to tell you to go on . . . earn your freedom . . . at the expense of others.'

'Why at the expense of others?' asked Betty, leaning over the bed.

Farwell was hypnotising her. His eyes wandered to her face.

'Too late . . .' he said, 'you do not see . . . you are a slave . . . a woman has only one weapon . . . otherwise, a slave . . . ask . . . ask Victoria.' He closed his eyes but went on speaking.

'There is not freedom for everybody . . . capitalism means freedom for a few . . . you must have freedom, like food . . . food for the soul . . .

you must capture the right to respect . . . a woman may not toil . . .

make money . . .'

Then again. 'I am going into the blackness . . . before Death . . . the Judge . . . Death will judge me. . . .'

''E's thinking of his Maker, poor genelman,' said the landlady hoa.r.s.ely.

Victoria and Betty looked at one another. Agnostic or indifferent in their cooler moments, the superst.i.tion of their ancestors worked in their blood, powerfully a.s.sisted by the spectacle of this being pa.s.sing step by step into an unknown. There must be life there, feeling, loving.

There must be Something.

The voice stopped. Betty had seized Victoria's arm and now clutched it violently. Victoria could feel through her own body the shudders that shook the girl's frame. Then Farwell's voice rose again, louder and louder, like the upward flicker of a dying candle.

'Yes, freedom's my message, the right to live. This world into which we are evolved by a selfish act of joy, into which we are dragged unwilling with pain for our usher, it is a world which has no justification save the freedom to enjoy it as we may. I have lived a stoic, but it is a hedonist I die. Unshepherded I go into a perhaps. But I regret nothing . . . all the certainties of the past are not worth the possible of the future. Behind me others tread the road that leads up the hill.'

He paused for breath. Then again his voice arose as a cry, proclaiming his creed.

'On the top of the hill. There I see the unknown land, running with milk and honey. I see a new people; beautiful young, beautiful old. Its fathers have ground the faces of the helots; they have fought and l.u.s.ted, they have suffered contumely and stripes. Now they know the Law, the Law that all may keep because they are beyond the Law. They do not desire, for they have, they do not weigh, for they know. They have not feared, they have dared; they have spared no man, nor themselves. Ah!

now they have opened the Golden Gates. . . .'

The man's voice broke, he coughed, a thin stream of blood trickled from the side of his mouth. Victoria felt a film come over her eyes. She leant over him to staunch the flow. They saw one another then. Farwell's voice went down to a whisper.

'Victoria . . . victorious . . . my love . . . never more. . . .'

She looked into his glazing eyes.

'Beyond . . .' he whispered; then his head fell to one side and his jaw dropped.

Betty turned away. She was crying. The landlady wiped her hands on her ap.r.o.n. Victoria hesitatingly took hold of Farwell's wrist. He was dead.

She looked at him stupidly for a moment, then drew her cloak round her shivering shoulders. The landlady too was crying now.

'Oh, mum, sich a nice genelman,' she moaned. 'But 'e did go on so!'

Victoria smiled pitifully. What an epitaph for a sunset! She drove away with Betty and, as the horse trotted through the deserted streets, hugged the girl in her arms. Betty was shuddering violently, and nestled close up to her. They did not speak. Everything seemed to have become loose in Victoria's mind and to be floating on a black sea. The pillar of her individualism was down. Her codes were in the melting pot; a man, the finest she had known, had confessed his love in his extremity, and before she could respond pa.s.sed into the shadow. But Farwell had left her as a legacy the love of freedom for which he died, for which she was going to live.

When they arrived at Elm Tree Place, Victoria forced Betty to drink some brandy, to tell her how Farwell had sent her a message, asking her to send him Victoria, how she had waited for her.

'Oh, it was awful,' whispered Betty, 'the maid said you'd be late . . .

she said I mustn't wait because you might not . . .'

'Not come home alone?' said Victoria in a frozen voice.

'Oh, I can't bear it, I can't bear it.' Betty flung herself into her friend's arms, wildly weeping.

Victoria soothed her, made her undress. As Betty grew more collected she let drop a few words.

'Oh, so then you too are happy?' said Victoria smiling faintly.

'You love?' A burning blush rose over Betty's face.