A Bed of Roses Part 39

Then she awoke again, for Mary had just placed her early cup of tea on the night table. The tray seemed to come down with a crash, a spoon fell on the carpet. Victoria felt daylight rolling back sleep from her brain while Mary pulled up the blinds. As light flooded the room and her senses became keener she heard the blinds clash.

'You're very noisy, Mary,' she said, lifting herself on one elbow.

The girl came back to the bed her hands folded together.

'I'm sorry, mum . . . I . . . I've . . .'

'Yes? what's the matter?'

Mary did not answer, but Victoria could see she was disturbed. Her cap was disarranged; it inclined perhaps five degrees from the vertical.

There was a faint flush on her cheeks.

'What's the matter,' said Victoria sharply. 'Is there anything wrong?'

'No, mum. . . . Yes mum. . . . They say in the paper . . . . There's been trouble in Ireland, mum. . . .'

'In Ireland?' Victoria sat bolt upright. Her heart gave a great bang and then began to go with a whirr.

'At Rossbantry, mum . . . last night . . . he's shot. . . .'

'Shot? Who? can't you speak?'

'The Major, mum.'

Mary unfolded her hands suddenly and drew them up and down her ap.r.o.n as if trying to dry them. Victoria sat as if frozen, looking at her wide-eyed. Then she relapsed on the pillow. Everything swam for a second, then she felt Mary raising her head.

'Go away,' whispered Victoria. 'Leave me for a minute. I'm all right.'

Mary hesitated for a moment, then obeyed, softly closing the door.

Victoria lay staring at the ceiling. Cairns was dead, shot. Awful. A week ago his heavy frame was outlined under these very blankets. She shuddered. But why, how? It wasn't true, it couldn't be true. She sat up as if impelled by a spring, and rang the bell violently. The broken rope fell on her face in a coil. With both hands she seized her chin as if to stop a scream.

'The paper! get me the paper!' she gasped as Mary came in. The girl hesitated. Victoria's face frightened her. Victoria looked at her straight, and she ran out of the room. In another minute she had laid the open paper before her mistress.

Victoria clutched at it with both hands. It was true. True. It was true.

The headlines were all she could see. She tried to read the text, but the letters danced. She returned to the headlines.

SHOCKING OUTRAGE IN IRELAND

LANDLORD SHOT

In the next column:--

M. C. C.'s HARD TASK

Her heart's action was less violent now. She understood; every second increased her lucidity. Shot. Cairns was shot. Oh, she knew, he had carried strife with him and some tenant had had his revenge. She took up the paper and could read it now. Cairns had refused to make terms, and on the morning of his death had served notices of eviction on eighteen cottagers. The same night he was sitting at a window of his bailiff's house. Then two shots from the other side of the road, another from lower down. Cairns was wounded twice, in the lung and throat, and died within twenty minutes. A man was under arrest.

Victoria put down the paper. Her mind was quite clear again. Poor old Tom! She felt sorry but above all disturbed; every nerve in her body seemed raw. Poor old Tom, a good fellow! He had been kind to her; and now, there he was. Dead when he was thinking of coming back to her. He would never see her again, the little house and things he loved. Yes, he had been kind; he had saved her from that awful life . . . . Victoria's thoughts turned into another channel. What was going to become of her.

'Old girl,' she said aloud, 'you're in the cart.'

She realised that she was again adrift, alone, face to face with the terrible world. Cairns was gone; there was n.o.body to protect her against the buffeting waves. A milkman's cart rattled by; she could hear the distant rumble of the Underground, a s.n.a.t.c.h carried by the wind from a German band. Well, the time had come; it had to come. She could not have held Cairns for ever; and now she had to prove her mettle, to show whether she had learned enough of the world, whether she had grit. The thought struck cold at her, but an intimate counsellor in her brain was already awake and crying out:

'Yes, yes, go on! you can do it yet.'

Victoria threw down the paper and jumped out of bed. She dressed feverishly in the clothes and linen she had thrown in a heap on a chair the night before, twisting her hair up into a rough coil. Just before leaving the room she remembered she had not even washed her hands. She did so hurriedly; then, seeing the cold cup of tea, drank it off at a gulp; her throat felt parched.

She pushed back the untasted dish on the breakfast table. Her head between her hands, she tried to think. At intervals she poured out cups of tea and drank them off quickly.

Snoo and Poo, after vainly trying to induce her to play with them, lay in a heap in an armchair snuffling as they slept.

The better she realised her position the greater grew her fears. Once more she was the cork tossed in the storm; and yet, rudderless, she must navigate into the harbour of liberty. If Cairns had lived and she had seen her power over him wane, she would have taken steps; she did not know what steps, but felt she surely would have done something. But Cairns was dead; in twenty minutes she had pa.s.sed from comparative security into the region where thorns are many and roses few.

Poor old Tom! She felt a tiny pang; surely this concern with herself when his body still lay unburied was selfish, ugly. But, pooh! why make any bones about it? As Cairns had said himself, he liked to see her beautiful, happy, well clad. His gifts to her were gifts to himself: she was merely his vicar.

Victoria drank some more cold tea. Good or bad, Cairns belonged to the past and the past has no virtues. None, at any rate, for those whose present is a wind-swept table-land. Men must come and go, drink to the full of the cup and pay richly for every sip, so that she might be free, hold it no longer to their lips. There was no time to waste, for already she was some hours older; some of those hours which might have been trans.m.u.ted into gold, that saving gold. She must take steps.

The 'steps to be taken,' a comforting sentence, were not easy to evolve.

But another comforting catch ward, 'reviewing the situation,' saved her from perplexity. She went into the little boudoir and took out her two pa.s.s books. The balance seemed agreeably fat, but she did not allow herself to be deluded; she checked off the debit side with the foils of her cheque book and found that two of the cheques had not been presented. These she deducted, but the result was not unsatisfactory; she had exactly three hundred pounds in one bank and a few s.h.i.+llings over fifty pounds in the other. Three hundred and fifty pounds. Not so bad. She had done pretty well in these nine months. Of course that banker's order of Cairns would be stopped. She could hardly expect the executors to allow it to stand. Thus her capital was three hundred and fifty pounds. And there was jewellery too, worth a couple of hundred pounds, perhaps, and lace, and furs. The jewellery might come in handy; it could be 'gopherised.' The furniture wasn't bad either.

Of course she must go on with the house. It was no great responsibility, being held on a yearly agreement. Victoria then looked through her accounts; they did not amount to much, for Barbezan Soeurs, though willing to a.s.sist in extracting money by means of bogus invoices, made it a rule to demand cash for genuine purchases. Twenty pounds would cover all the small accounts. The rent was all right, as it would not be due until the end of September. The rates were all right too, being payable every half year; they could be ignored until the blue notice came, just before Christmas.

Victoria felt considerably strengthened by this investigation. At a pinch she could live a year on the present footing, during which something must turn up. She tried to consider for a moment the various things that might turn up. None occurred to her. She settled the difficulty by going upstairs again to dress. When she rang for Mary to do her hair, the girl was surprised to find her mistress perfectly cool.

Without a word, however, Mary restored her hair to order. It was a beautiful and elegant woman, perhaps a trifle pale and open mouthed, who, some minutes later, set out to walk to Regent's Park.

Victoria sat back in her chair. Peace was upon her soul. Perhaps she had just pa.s.sed through a crisis, perhaps she was entering upon one, but what did it matter? The warmth of July was in the clear air, the ca.n.a.l slowly carried past her its film of dust. No sound broke through the morning save the cries of little boys fis.h.i.+ng for invisible fishes, and, occasionally, a raucous roar from some prisoner in the Zoo. Now that she had received the blow and was recovering she was conscious of a curious feeling of lightness; she felt freer than the day before. Then she was a man's property, tied to him by the bond of interest; now she was able to do what she chose, know whom she chose, so long as that money lasted.

Ah, it would be good one day when she had enough money to be able to look the future in the face and flaunt in its forbidding countenance the fact that she was free, for ever free.

Victoria was no longer a dreamer; she was a woman of action. The natural sequence of her thoughts brought her up at once against the means to the triumphant end. Three hundred and fifty pounds, say six hundred if she realised everything, would not yield enough to feed a superannuated governess. She would need quite eight or ten thousand pounds before she could call herself free and live her dreams.

'I'll earn it,' she said aloud, 'yes, sure enough.'

A little Aberdeen terrier came bounding up to her, licked her hand and ran away after his master. A friendly omen. Six hundred pounds was a large sum in a way. She could aspire to a partners.h.i.+p in some business now. A vision arose before her; Victoria Ferris, milliner. The vision grew; Victoria Ferris and Co., Limited, wholesalers; then Ferris'

Stores, for clothes and boots and cheese and phonographs, with a branch of Cook's agency, a Keith Prowse ticket office; Ferris' Stores as an octopus, with its body in Knightsbridge and a tentacle hovering over every draper from Richmond to Highgate.

Yes, that was all very well, but what if Victoria Ferris failed? 'No good,' she thought, 'I can't afford to take risks.' Of course the idea of seeking employment was absurd. No more ten hours a day for eight bob a week for her. Besides, no continuous references and a game leg . . .

The situations crowded into and out of Victoria's brain like dissolving views. She could see herself in the little house, with another man, with other men, young men, old men; and every one of them was rocked in the lap of Delilah, who laughingly sh.o.r.e off their golden locks.

'By Jove,' she said aloud, bringing her gloved fist down on her knee, 'I'll do it.'

Of course the old life could not begin again just now. She did not know a man in London who was worth capturing. She must go down into the market, stand against the wall as a courtesan of Alexandria and nail a wreath of roses against the highest bid. The vision she saw was now no longer the octopus. She saw a street with its pavements wet and slithering, flares, barrows laden with greens; she could smell frying fish, rotting vegetables, burning naptha; a hand opened the door of a bar and, in the glare, she could see two women with vivid hair, tired eyes, smiling mouths, each one patiently waiting before a little table and an empty gla.s.s. Then she saw once more the courtesan of Alexandria, dim in the night, not lit up by the sun of sweet Egypt, but clad in mercerised cotton and rabbit's fur, standing, watching like a shadow against a shop door in Regent Street.

No, she had not come to that. She belonged to the upper stratum of the profession, and, knowing it, could not sink. Consciousness was the thing. She was not going into this fight soft-handed or softhearted. She knew. There was high adventure in store for her yet. If she must fish it should be for trout not chub. Like a wise woman, she would not love lightly, but where money is. There should be no waiting, no hesitating.

That very night she would sup at the Hotel Vesuvius . . . all in black . . . like an ivory Madonna set in ebony . . . with a tea rose in her hair as a foil to her shoulders . . . and sweeping jade earrings which would swim like b.u.t.terflies in the heavy hair. Ah, it would be high adventure when Demetrious knelt at the feet of Aphrodite with jewels in his sunburnt palm, when Croesus bargained away for a smile a half of his Lydian wealth.

She got up, a glow in her veins as if the l.u.s.t of battle was upon her.

Quickly she walked out of the park to conquer the town. A few yards beyond the gates newspaper placards shouted the sensation of the day; placards pink, brown, green, all telling the tale of murder, advertising for a penny the transitory joy of the fact. Victoria smiled and walked on. She let herself into the house. It was on the stroke of one. She sat down at the table, pressing the bell down with her foot.