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.
'Well, Betty,' said her hostess suddenly, 'when's the wedding?'
'Oh, Vic, I didn't say . . . how can you . . .' Her face had blushed a tell-tale red.
'You didn't say,' laughed Victoria, 'of course you didn't say, shy bird! But surely you don't think I don't know. You've met somebody in the City and you're frightfully in love with him. Now, honest, is there anybody?'