A Bed of Roses

Duckie went on, and as she spoke her bluntness caused Victoria to visualise scene after scene, one more horrible than another: a tall dingy house in Bloomsbury with unlit staircases leading up to black landings suggestive of robbery and murder; bedrooms with blinded windows, reeking with patchouli, with carpets soiled by a myriad ignoble stains. The house Duckie pictured was like a warren in every corner of which soft-handed, rosy-lipped harpies sucked men's life-blood; there was drinking in it, and a piano played light airs; below in the ground floor, through the half open door, she could see two or three foreigners, unshaven, dirty-cuffed, playing cards in silence like hunters in ambush. She shuddered.

'Yes, but Fritz isn't so bad,' broke in Lissa. She had all this time been wrangling with Zoé.

'No good,' snapped Zoé, 'he's a.. a bouche inutile.' Her pursed-up lips tightened. Fritz was swept away to limbo by her practical French philosophy.

'I like him because he is not useful' said Lissa dreamily. Zoé shrugged her shoulders. Poor fool, this Lissa.

'Who is this Fritz you're always talking about?' asked Victoria.

'He's a.. you know what they call them,' said Duckie brutally.

'You're a liar,' screamed Lissa jumping up. 'He's.. oh, Vic, you do not understand. He's the man I care for; he is so handsome, so clever, so gentle.'

'Very gentle,' sneered Zoé, 'why did you not take off your long gloves last week, hein? Perhaps you had blue marks?'

Lissa looked about to cry. Victoria put her hand on her arm.

'Never mind them,' she said, 'tell me.'

'Oh, Vic, you are so good.' Lissa's face twitched, then she smiled like a child bribed with a sweet. 'They do not know; they are hard. It is true, Fritz does not work, but if we were married he would work and I would do nothing. What does it matter?' They all smiled at the theory, but Lissa went on with heightened colour.

'Oh, it is so good to forget all the others; they are so ugly, so stupid. It is infernal. And then, Fritz, the man that I love for himself.'

'And who loves you for.' began Zoé.

'Shut up, Zoé,' said Duckie, her kindly heart expanding before this idealism, 'leave the kid alone. Not in my line of course. You take my tip, all of you, you go on your own. Don't you get let in with a landlady and don't you get let in with a man. It's them you've got to let in.'

'That's what I say,' remarked Zoé. 'We are successful because we take care. One must be economical. For instance, every month I can..' She stopped and looked round suspiciously; with economy goes distrust, and Zoé was very French. 'Well, I can manage,' she concluded vaguely.

'And you need not talk, Duckie,' said Lissa savagely. 'You drink two quid's worth every week.'

'Well, s'pose I do,' grumbled the cherub. 'Think I do it for pleasure? Tell you what, if I hadn't got squiffy at the beginning I'd have gone off me bloomin' chump. I was in Buenos Ayres, went off with a waiter to get married. He was in a restaurant, Highgate way, where I was in service. I found out all about it when I got there. O Lor! Why, we jolly well had to drink, what with those Argentines who're half monkeys and the good of the house! Oh, Lor!' She smiled. 'Those were high old times,' she said inconsequently, overwhelmed by the glamour of the past. There was silence.

'I see,' said Victoria suddenly. 'I've never seen it before. If you want to get on, you've got to run on business lines. No ties, no men to bleed you. Save your money. Don't drink; save your looks. Why, those are good rules for a bank cashier! If you trip, down you go in the mud and nobody'll pick you up. So you've got to walk warily, not look at anybody, play fair and play hard. Then you can get some cash together and then you're free.'

There was silence. Victoria had faced the problem too squarely for two of her guests. Lissa looked dreamily towards the garden, wondering where Fritz was, whether she was wise in loving; Duckie, conscious of her heavy legs and incipient dropsy, blushed, then paled. Alone, Zoé, stiff and energetic like the determined business woman she was, wore on her lips the enigmatic smile born of a nice little sum in French three per cents.

'I must be going,' said Duckie hoarsely. She levered herself off the sofa. Then, almost silently, the party broke up.

CHAPTER XIII

Life pursued its even tenour; and Victoria, watching it go by, was reminded of the endless belt of a machine. The world machine went on grinding, and every breath she took was grist thrown for ever into the intolerable mill. It was October again, and already the trees in the garden were shedding fitful rains of glowing leaves. Alone the elder tree stood almost unchanged, a symbol of the everlasting. Now and then Victoria walked round the little lawn with Snoo and Poo, who were too shivery to chase the fat spiders. Often she stayed there for an hour, one hand against a tree trunk, looking at nothing, bathed in the mauve light of the dying year. Already the scents of decay, of wetness, filled the little garden and struck cold when the sun went down.

Every day now Victoria felt her isolation more cruelly. Solitude was no longer negative; it had materialised and had become a solid inimical presence. When the sun shone and she could walk the milky way of the streets, alone but feeling with every sense the joy of living time, there was not much to fear from solitude; there were things to look at, to touch, to smell. Now solitude no longer lurked round corners; at times a gust of wind carried its icy breath into her bones.

She was suffering, too, a little. She felt heavy in the legs, and a vein in her left calf hurt a little in the evening if she had walked or stood much. Soon, though it did not increase, the pain became her daily companion, for even when absent it haunted her. She would await a twinge for a whole day, ready and fearful, bracing herself up against a shock which often found her unprepared. At all times too the obsession seemed to follow her now. Perhaps she was walking through Regent's Park, buoyant and feeling capable of lifting a mountain, but the thought would rush upon her, perhaps it was going to hurt. She would lie awake too, oblivious of the heavy breathing by her side, rested, all her senses asleep, and then though she felt no pain the fear of it would come upon her and she would wrestle with the thought that the blow was about to fall.

Sometimes she would go out into the streets, seeking variety even in a wrangle between her Pekingese and some other dog. This meant that she must separate them, apologise to the owner, exchange perhaps a few words. Once she achieved a conversation with an old lady, a kindly soul, the mistress of a poodle. They walked together along the Canal, and the futile conversation fell like balm on Victoria's ears. The freshness of a voice ignorant of double meanings was soft as dew. They were to meet again, but the old lady was a near neighbour and she must have heard something of Victoria's reputation, for when they met again opposite Lord's, the old lady crossed over and the poodle followed her haughtily, leaving Snoo and Poo disconsolate and wondering on the edge of the pavement.

One morning Augusta came into the boudoir about twelve, carrying a visiting card on a little tray.

'Miss Emma Welkin,' read Victoria. 'League of the Rights of Women. What does she want, Augusta?'

'She says she wants to see Mrs Ferris, Mum.'

'League of the Rights of Women? Why, she must be a suffragist.'

'Yes, Mum. She wear a straw hat, Mum,' explained Augusta with a slight sniff.

'And a tweed coat and skirt, I suppose,' said Victoria smiling.

'Oh, yes, Mum. Shall I say go away?'

'M'm. No, tell her to come in.'

While Augusta was away Victoria settled herself in the cushions. Perhaps it might be interesting. The visitor was shown in.

'How do you do?' said Victoria holding out her hand. 'Please sit down. Excuse my getting up, I'm not very well.'

Miss Welkin looked about her, mildly surprised. It was a pretty room, but somehow she felt uncomfortable. Victoria was looking at her. A capable type of femininity this; curious, though, in its thick man-like clothes, its strong boots. She was not bad looking, thirty perhaps, very erect and rather flat. Her face was fresh, clean, innocent of powder; her eyes were steady behind glasses; her hair was mostly invisible, being tightly pulled back. There were firm lines about her mouth. A fighting animal.

'I hope you'll excuse this intrusion,' said the suffragist, 'but I got your name from the directory and I have come to.. to ascertain your views about the all-important question of the vote.' There was a queer stiltedness about the little speech. Miss Welkin was addressing the meeting.

'Oh? I'm very much interested,' said Victoria. 'Of course I don't know anything about it except what I read in the papers.'

The grey eyes glittered. Evangelic fervour radiated from them. 'That's what we want,' said the suffragist. 'It's just the people who are ready to be our friends who haven't heard our side and who get biassed. Mrs Ferris, I'm sure you'll come in with us and join the Marylebone branch?'

'But how can I?' asked Victoria. 'You see I know nothing about it all.'

'Let me give you these pamphlets,' said the suffragist. Victoria obediently took a leaflet on the marriage law, a pamphlet on 'The Rights of Women,' a few more papers too, some of which slipped to the floor.

'Thank you,' she said, 'but first of all tell me, why do you want the vote?'

The suffragist looked at her for a second. This might be a keen recruit when she was converted. Then a flood of words burst from her.

'Oh, how can any woman ask, when she sees the misery, the subjection in which we live. We say that we want the vote because it is the only means we have to attain economic freedom.. we say to man: "Put your weapon in our hands and we will show you what we can do." We want to have a voice in the affairs of the country. We want to say how the taxes we pay shall be spent, how our children shall be educated, whether our sons shall go to war. We say it's wrong that we should be disfranchised because we are women.. it is illogical.. we must have it.'

The suffragist stopped for a second to regain breath.

'I see,' said Victoria, 'but how is the vote going to help?'

'Help,' echoed Miss Welkin. 'It will help because it will enable women to have a voice in national affairs.'

'You must think me awfully stupid,' said Victoria sweetly, 'but what use will it be to us if we do get a voice in national affairs?'

Miss Welkin ignored the interruption.

'It is wrong that we should not have a vote if we are reasonable beings; we can be teachers, doctors, chemists, factory inspectors, business managers, writers; we can sit on local authorities, and we can't cast a vote for a member of Parliament. It's preposterous, it's.'

'Yes, I understand, but what will the vote do for us? Will it raise wages?'

'It must raise wages. Men's wages have risen a lot since they got the vote.'

'Do you think that's because they got the vote?'

'Yes. Well, partly. At any rate there are things above wages,' said the suffragist excitedly. 'And you know, we know that the vote is wanted especially because it is an education; by inducing women to take an interest in politics we will broaden their minds, teach them to combine and then automatically their wages will rise.'

'Oh, yes.' Victoria was rather struck by the argument. 'Then,' she said, 'you admit men are superior to women?'

'Well, yes, at any rate at present,' said the suffragist rather sulkily. 'But you must remember that men have had nearly eighty years training in political affairs. That's why we want the vote; to wake women up. Oh, you have no idea what it will mean when we get it. We shall have fresh minds bearing on political problems, we shall have more adequate protection for women and children, compulsory feeding, endowment of mothers, more education, shorter hours, more sanitary inspection. We shall not be enslaved by parties; a nobler influence, the influence of pure women will breathe an atmosphere of virtue into this terrible world.'

The woman's eyes were rapt now, her hands tightly clenched, her lips parted, her cheeks a little flushed. But Victoria's face had hardened suddenly.

'Miss Welkin,' she said quietly, 'has anything struck you about this house, about me?'

The suffragist looked at her uneasily.

'You ought to know whom you are talking to,' Victoria went on, 'I am a.. I am a what you would probably call.. well, not respectable.'

A dull red flush spread over Miss Welkin's face, from the line of her tightly pulled hair to her stiff white collar; even her ears went red. She looked away into a corner.

'You see,' said Victoria, 'it's a shock, isn't it? I ought not to have let you in. It wasn't quite fair, was it?'

'Oh, it isn't that, Mrs Ferris,' burst out the suffragist, 'I'm not thinking of myself..'

'Excuse me, you must. You can't help it. If you could construct a scale with the maximum of egotism at one end, and the maximum of altruism at the other and divide it, say into one hundred degrees, you would not, I think, place your noblest thinkers more than a degree or two beyond the egotistic zero. Now you, a pure girl, have been entrapped into the house of a woman of no reputation, whom you would not have in your drawing-room. Now, would you?'

Miss Welkin was silent for a moment; the flush was dying away as she gazed round eyed at this beautiful woman lying in her piled cushions, talking like a mathematician.

'I haven't come here to ask you into my drawing-room,' she answered. 'I have come to ask you to throw in your labour, your time, your money, with ours in the service of our cause.' She held her head higher as the thought rose in her like wine. 'Our cause,' she continued, 'is not the cause of rich women or poor women, of good women or bad; it's the cause of woman. Thus, it doesn't matter who she is, so long as there is a woman who stands aloof from us there is still work to do.'

Victoria looked at her interestedly. Her eyes were shining, her lips parted in ecstasy.

'Oh, I know what you think,' the suffragist went on; 'as you say, you think I despise you because you.. you..' The flush returned slightly… 'But I know that yours is not a happy life and we are bringing the light.'

'The light!' echoed Victoria bitterly. 'You have no idea, I see, of how many people there are who are bringing the light to women like me. There are various religious organisations who wish to rescue us and to house us comfortably under the patronage of the police, to keep us nicely and feed us on what is suitable for the fallen; they expect us to sew ten hours a day for these privileges, but that is by the way. There are also many kindly souls who offer little jobs as charwomen to those of us who are too worn out to pursue our calling; we are offered emigration as servants in exchange for the power of commanding a household; we are offered poverty for luxury, service for domination, slavery to women instead of slavery to men. How tempting it is! And now here is the light in another form: the right to drop a bit of paper into a box every four years or so and settle thereby whether the Home Secretary who administers the law of my trade shall live in fear of buff prejudice or blue.'

The suffragist said nothing for a second. She felt shaken by Victoria's bitterness.

'Women will have no party,' she said lamely, 'they will vote as women.'

'Oh? I have heard somewhere that the danger of giving women the vote is that they will vote solid "as women," as you say and swamp the men. Is that so?'

'No, I'm afraid not,' said the suffragist unguardedly, 'of course women will split up into political parties.'

'Indeed? Then where is this woman vote which is going to remould the world? It is swamped in the ordinary parties.'

The suffragist was in a dilemma.

'You forget,' she answered, wriggling on the horns, 'that women can always be aroused for a noble cause..'

'Am I a noble cause?' asked Victoria, smiling. 'So far as I can see women, even the highest of them, despise us because we do illegally what they do legally, hate us because we attract, envy us because we shine. I have often thought that if Christ had said, "Let her who hath never sinned." the woman would have been stoned. What do you think?'

The suffragist hesitated, cleared her throat.

'That will all go when we have the vote, women will be a force, a nobler force; they will realise.. they will sympathise more.. then they will cast their vote for women.'

Victoria shook her head.

'Miss Welkin,' she said, 'you are an idealist. Now, will you ask me to your next meeting if you are satisfied as to my views, announce me for what I am and introduce me to your committee?'

'I don't see.. I don't think,' stammered the suffragist, 'you see some of our committee..'

Victoria laughed.

'You see. Never mind. I assure you I wouldn't go. But, tell me, supposing women get the vote, most of my class will be disfranchised on the present registration law. What will you women do for us?'

The suffragist thought for a minute.

'We shall raise the condition of women,' she said. 'We shall give them a new status, increase the respect of men for them, increase their respect for themselves; besides, it will raise wages and that will help. We shall.. we shall have better means of reform too.'

'What means?'

'When women have more sympathy.'

'Votes don't mean sympathy.'

'Well, intelligence then. Oh, Mrs Ferris, it's not that that matters; we're going to the root of it. We're going to make women equal to men, give them the same opportunities, the same rights..'

'Yes, but will the vote increase their muscles? will it make them more logical, fitter to earn their living?'

'Of course it will,' said Miss Welkin acidly.

'Then how do you explain that several millions of men earn less than thirty shillings a week, and that at times hundreds of thousands are unemployed?'

'The vote does not mean everything,' said the suffragist reluctantly. 'It will merely ensure that we rise like the men when we are fit.'

'Well, Miss Welkin, I won't press that, but now, tell me, if women got the vote to-morrow, what would it do for my class?'

'It would raise..'

'No, no, we can't wait to be raised. We've got to live, and if you "raise" us we lose our means of livelihood. How are you going to get to the root cause and lift us, not the next generation, at once out of the lower depths?'

The suffragist's face contracted.

'Everything takes time,' she faltered. 'Just as I couldn't promise a charwoman that her hours would go down and her wages go up next day, I can't say that.. of course your case is more difficult than any other, because.. because..'

'Because,' said Victoria coldly, 'I represent a social necessity. So long as your economic system is such that there is not work for the asking for every human being – work, mark you, fitted to strength and ability – so long on the other hand as there is such uncertainty as prevents men from marrying, so long as there is a leisured class who draw luxury from the labour of other men; so long will my class endure as it endured in Athens, in Rome, in Alexandria, as it does now from St John's Wood to Pekin.'

There was a pause. Then Miss Welkin got up awkwardly. Victoria followed suit.

'There,' she said, 'you don't mind my being frank, do you? May I subscribe this sovereign to the funds of the branch? I do believe you are right, you know, even though I'm not sure the millennium is coming.'

Miss Welkin looked doubtfully at the coin in her palm.

'Don't refuse it,' said Victoria, smiling, 'after all, you know, in politics there is no tainted money.'

CHAPTER XIV

Victoria lay back in bed, gazing at the blue silk wall. It was ten o'clock, but still dark; not a sound disturbed dominical peace, except the rain dripping from the trees, falling finally like the strokes of time. Her eyes dwelt for a moment on the colour prints where the nude beauties languished. She felt desperately tired, though she had not left the house for thirty-six hours; her weariness was as much a consequence as a cause of her consciousness of defeat. October was wearing; and soon the cruel winter would come and fix its fangs into the sole remaining joy of her life, the spectacle of life itself. She was desperately tired, full of hatred and disgust. If the face of a man rose before her she thrust it back savagely into limbo; her legs hurt. The time had come when she must realise her failure. She was not, as once in the P. R. R., in the last stage of exhaustion, hunted, tortured; she was rather the wounded bird crawling away to die in a thicket than the brute at bay.

As she lay, she realised that her failure had two aspects. It was together a monetary and a physical failure. The last three months had in themselves been easy. Her working hours did not begin before seven o'clock in the evening; and it was open to her, being young and beautiful, to put them off for two or three hours more; she was always free by twelve o'clock in the morning at the very latest, and then the day was hers to rest, to read and think. But she was still too much of a novice to escape the excitement inherent in the chase, the strain of making conversation, of facing the inane; nor was she able without a mental effort to bring herself to the response of the simulator. As she sat in the Vesuvius or stared into the showcase of a Regent Street jeweller, a faint smile upon her face, her brain was awake, her faculties at high pressure. Her eyes roved right and left and every nerve seemed to dance with expectation or disappointment. When she got up now, she found her body heavy, her legs sore and all her being dull like a worn stone. A little more, she felt, and the degradation of her body would spread to her sweet lucidity of mind; she would no longer see ultimate ends but would be engulfed in the present, become a bird of prey seeking hungrily pleasure or excitement.

Besides, and this seemed more serious still, she was not doing well. It seemed more serious because this could not be fought as could be intellectual brutalisation. An examination of her pass books showed that she was a little better off than at the time of Cairns's death. She was worth, all debts paid, about three hundred and ninety pounds. Her net savings were therefore at the rate of about a hundred and fifty a year; but she had been wonderfully lucky, and nothing said that age, illness or such misadventures as she classed under professional risk, might not nullify her efforts in a week. There was wear and tear of clothes too: the trousseau presented her by Cairns had been good throughout but some of the linen was beginning to show signs of wear; boots and shoes wanted renewing; there were winter garments to buy and new furs.

'I shall have stone martin,' she reflected. Then her mind ran complacently for a while on a picture of herself in stone martin; a pity she couldn't run to sables. She brought herself back with a jerk to her consideration of ways and means. The situation was really not brilliant. Of course she was extravagant in a way. Eighty-five pounds rent; thirty pounds in rates and taxes, without counting income tax which might be anything, for she dared not protest; two servants – all that was too much. It was quite impossible to run the house under five hundred a year, and clothes must run into an extra hundred.

'I could give it up,' she thought. But the idea disappeared at once. A flat would be cheaper, but it meant unending difficulties; it was not for nothing that Zoé, Lissa and Duckie envied her. And the rose-covered pergola! Besides it would mean saving a hundred a year or so; and, from her point of view, even two hundred and fifty a year was not worth saving. She was nearly twenty-eight, and could count on no more than between eight and twelve years of great attractiveness. This meant that, with the best of luck, she could not hope to amass much more than three thousand pounds. And then? Weston-super-Mare and thirty years in a boarding-house?

She was still full of hesitation and doubt as she greeted Betty at lunch. This was a great Sunday treat for the gentle P. R. R. girl. When she had taken off her coat and hat, she used to settle in an arm-chair with an intimate feeling of peace and protection. This particular day Betty did not settle down as usual, though the cushions looked soft and tempting and a clear fire burned in the grate. Victoria watched her for a moment. How exquisite and delicate this girl looked; tall, very slim and rounded. Betty had placed one hand on the mantelpiece, a small long hand rather coarsened at the finger tips, one foot on the fender. It was a little foot, arched and neat in the cheap boot. She had bought new boots for the occasion; the middle of the raised sole was still white. Her face was a little flushed, her eyes darkened by the glow.