Читать книгу A Bed of Roses - Walter Lionel George - Страница 8

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'Mr. Wren, ma'am.'

Victoria turned quickly to Carlotta. The girl's face was obtrusively demure. Some years at Curran's had not dulled in her the interest that any woman subtly feels in the meeting of the sexes.

'Ask him to come in here, Carlotta,' said Victoria. 'We shan't be disturbed, shall we?'

'Oh no! ma'am,' said Carlotta, with increasing demureness. 'There is nobody, nobody. I will show the young gentleman in.'

Victoria walked to the looking-glass which shyly peeped out from the back of the monumental sideboard. She re-arranged her hair and hurriedly flicked some dust from the corners of her eyes. All this for Edward, but she had not seen him for three years. As she turned round she was confronted by her brother who had gently stolen into the dining-room. Edward's every movement was unobtrusive. He put one arm round her and kissed her cheek.

'How are you, Victoria?' he said, looking her in the eyes.

'Oh, I'm alright, Ted. I'm so glad to see you.' She was genuinely glad; it was so good to have belongings once again.

'Did you have a good passage?' asked Edward.

'Pretty good until we got to Ushant and then it did blow. I was glad to get home.'

'I'm very glad to see you,' said Edward, 'very glad.' His eyes fixed on the sideboard as if he were mesmerised by the cruets. Victoria looked at him critically. Three years had not made on him the smallest impression. He was at twenty-eight what he had been at twenty-five or for the matter of that at eighteen. He was a tall slim figure with narrow pointed shoulders and a slightly bowed back. His face was pale without being unhealthy. There was nothing in his countenance to arouse any particular interest, for he had those average features that commit no man either to coarseness or to intellectuality. He showed no trace of the massiveness of his sister's chin; his mouth too was looser and hung a little open. Alone his eyes, richly grey, recalled his relationship. Straggly fair hair fell across the left side of his forehead. He peered through silver rimmed spectacles as he nervously worried his watch chain with both hands. Every movement exposed the sharpness of his knees through his worn trousers.

'Ted,' said Victoria, breaking in upon the silence, 'it was kind of you to come up at once.'

'Of course I'd come up at once. I couldn't leave you here alone. It must be a big change after the sunshine.'

'Yes,' said Victoria slowly, 'it is a big change. Not only the sunshine. Other things, you know.'

Edward's hands played still more nervously with his watch chain. He had not heard much of the manner of Fulton's death. Victoria's serious face encouraged him to believe that she might harrow him with details, weep even. He feared any expression of feeling, not because he was hard but because it was so difficult to know what to say. He was neither hard nor soft; he was a schoolmaster and could deal readily enough with the pangs of Andromeda but what should he say to a live woman, his sister too?

'I understand—I—you see, it's quite awful about Dick—' he stopped, lost, groping for the proper sentiment.

'Ted,' said Victoria, 'don't condole with me. I don't want to be unkind—if you knew everything—But there, I'd rather not tell you; poor Dicky 's dead and I suppose it's wrong, but I can't be sorry.'

Edward looked at her with some disapproval. The marriage had not been a success, he knew that much, but she ought not to speak like that. He felt he ought to reprove her, but the difficulty of finding words stopped him.

'Have you made any plans?' he asked in his embarrassment, thus blundering into the subject he had intended to lead up to with infinite tact.

'Plans?' said Victoria. 'Well, not exactly. Of course I shall have to work; I thought you might help me perhaps.'

Edward looked at her again uneasily. She had sat down in an armchair by the side of the fire with her back to the light. In the penumbra her eyes came out like dark pools. A curl rippled over one of her ears. She looked so self-possessed that his embarrassment increased.

'Will you have to work?' he asked. The idea of his sister working filled him with vague annoyance.

'I don't quite see how I can help it,' said Victoria smiling. 'You see, I've got nothing, absolutely nothing. When I've spent the thirty pounds or so I've got, I must either earn my own living or go into the workhouse.' She spoke lightly, but she was conscious of a peculiar sinking.

'I thought you might come back with me,' said Edward, ' … and stay with me a little … and look round.'

'Ted, it's awfully kind of you, but I'm not going to let you saddle yourself with me. I can't be your housekeeper; oh! it would never do. And don't you think I am more likely to get something to do here than down in Bedfordshire?'

'I do want you to come back with me,' said Edward hesitatingly. 'I don't think you ought to be alone here. And perhaps I could find you something in a family at Cray or thereabouts. I could ask the vicar.'

Victoria shuddered. It had never struck her that employment might be difficult to find or uncongenial when one found it. The words 'vicar' and 'Cray' suggested something like domestic service without its rights, gentility without its privileges.

'Ted,' she said gravely, 'you're awfully good to me, but I'd rather stay here. I'm sure I could find something to do.' Edward's thoughts naturally came back to his own profession.

'I'll ask the Head,' he said with the first flash of animation he had shown since he entered the room. To ask the Head was to go to the source of all knowledge. 'Perhaps he knows a school. Of course your French is pretty good, isn't it?'

'Ted, Ted, you do forget things,' said Victoria, laughing. 'Don't you remember the mater insisting on my taking German because so few girls did? Why, it was the only original thing she ever did in her life, poor dear!'

'But nobody wants German, for girls that is,' replied Edward miserably.

'Very well then,' said Victoria, 'I won't teach; that's all. I must do something else.'

Edward walked up and down nervously, pushing back his thin fair hair with one hand, and with the other nervously tugging at his watch chain.

'Don't worry yourself, Ted,' said Victoria. 'Something will turn up. Besides there's no hurry. Why, I can live two or three months on my money, can't I?'

'I suppose you can,' said Edward gloomily, 'but what will you do afterwards?'

'Earn some more,' said Victoria. 'Now Ted, you haven't seen me for three years. Don't let us worry. Think things over when you get back to Cray and write to me. You won't go back until to-morrow, will you?'

'I'm sorry,' said Edward, 'but I didn't think you'd be back this week. I shall be in charge to-morrow. Why don't you come down?'

'Ted, Ted, how can you suggest that I should spend my poor little fortune in railway fares! Well, if you can't stay, you can't. But I'll tell you what you can do. I can't go on paying two and a half guineas a week here; I must get some rooms. You lived here when you taught at that school in the city, didn't you? Well then, you must know all about it: we'll go house-hunting.'

Edward looked at her dubiously. He disliked the idea of Victoria in rooms almost as much as Victoria at Curran's. It offended some vague notions of propriety. However her suggestion would give him time to think. Perhaps she was right.

'Of course, I'll be glad to help,' he said, 'I don't know much about it; I used to live in Gower Street.' A faint flush of reminiscent excitement rose to his cheeks. Gower Street, by the side of Cray and Lympton, had been almost adventurous.

'Very well then,' said Victoria, 'we shall go to Gower Street first. Just wait till I put on my hat.'

She ran upstairs, not exactly light of heart, but pleased with the idea of house-hunting. There's romance in all seeking, even if the treasure is to be found in a Bloomsbury lodging-house.

The ride on the top of the motor bus was exhilarating. The pale sun of November was lighting up the streets with the almost mystic whiteness of the footlights. Edward said nothing, for his memories of London were stale and he did not feel secure enough to point out the Church of the Deaf and Dumb, nor had he ever known his London well enough to be able to pronounce judgment on the shops. Besides, Victoria was too much absorbed in gazing at London rolling and swirling beneath her, belching out its crowds of workers and pleasure seekers from every tube and main street. At every shop the omnibus seemed surrounded by a swarm of angry bees. Victoria watched them struggle with spirit still unspoiled, wondering at the determination on the faces of the men, at the bitterness painted on the sharp features of the women as they savagely thrust one another aside and, dishevelled and dusty, successively conquered their seats. All this, the constant surge of horse and mechanical conveyances, the shrill cries of the newsboys flashing pink papers like chulos at an angry bull, the roar of the town, made Victoria understand the city. Something like fear of this strong restless people crept into her as she began to have a dim perception that she too would have to fight. She was young, however, and the feeling was not unpleasant. Her nerves tingled a little as she thought of the struggle to come and the inevitable victory at the end.

Victoria's spirits had not subsided even when she entered Gower Street. Its immensity, its interminable length frightened her a little. The contrast between it, so quiet, dignified and dull, and the inferno she had just left behind her impressed her with a sense of security. Its houses, however, seemed so high and dirty that she wondered, looking at its thousand windows, whether human beings could be cooped up thus and yet retain their humanity.

Here Edward was a little more in his element. With a degree of animation he pointed to the staid beauty of Bedford Square. He demanded admiration like a native guiding a stranger in his own town. Victoria watched him curiously. He was a good fellow but it was odd to hear him raise his voice and to see him point with his stick. He had always been quiet, so she had not expected him to show as much interest as he did in his old surroundings.

'I suppose you had a good time when you were here?' she said.

'Nothing special. I was too busy at the school,' he replied. 'But, of course, you know, one does things in London. It's not very lively at Cray.'

'Wouldn't you like to leave Cray,' she said, 'and come back?'

Edward paused nervously. London frightened him a little and the idea of leaving Cray suddenly thrust upon him froze him to the bone. It was not Cray he loved, but Cray meant a life passing gently away by the side of a few beloved books. Though he had never realised that hedgerows flower in the spring and that trees redden to gold and copper in the autumn, the country had taken upon him so great a hold that even the thought of leaving it was pain.

'Oh! no,' he said hurriedly. 'I couldn't leave Cray. I couldn't live here, it's too noisy. There are my old rooms, there, the house with the torch extinguishers.'

Victoria looked at him again. What curious tricks does nature play and how strangely she pleases to distort her own work! Then she looked at the house with the extinguishers. Clearly it would be impossible, but for those aristocratic remains, to distinguish it from among half a dozen of its fellows. It was a house, that was all. It was faced in dirty brick, parted at every floor by stone work. A portico, rising over six stone steps, protected a door painted brown and bearing a brass knocker. It had windows, an area, bells. It was impossible to find in it an individual detail to remember.

But Edward was talking almost excitedly for him. 'See there,' he said, 'those are my old rooms,' pointing indefinitely at the frontage. 'They were quite decent, you know. Wonder whether they're let. You could have them.' He looked almost sentimentally at the home of the Wrens.

'Why not ring and ask?' said Victoria, whose resourcefulness equalled that of Mr. Dick.

Edward took another loving look at the familiar window, strode up the steps, followed by Victoria.

There were several bells. 'Curious,' he said, 'she must have let it out in floors; Wakefield and Grindlay, don't know them. Seymour? It's Mrs. Brumfit's house: Oh! here it is.' He pressed a bell marked 'House.' Victoria heard with a curious sensation of unexpectedness the sudden shrill sound of the electric bell.

After an interminable interval, during which Edward's hands nervously played, the door opened. A young girl stood on the threshold. She wore a red cloth blouse, a black skirt, and an unspeakably dirty apron half loose round her waist. Her hair was tightly done up in curlers in expectation of Sunday.

'Mrs. Brumfit,' said Edward, 'is she in?'

''oo?' said the girl.

'Mrs. Brumfit, the landlady,' said Edward.

'Don't know 'er, try next 'ouse.' The girl tried to shut the door.

'You don't understand,' cried Edward, stopping the door with his hand. 'I used to live here.'

'Well, wot do yer want?' replied the girl. 'Can't 'elp that, can I? There ain't no Mrs. Brumfit 'ere. Only them there.' She pointed at the bells. 'Nobody but them and mother. She's the 'ousekeeper. If yer mean the old woman as was 'ere when they turned the 'ouse into flats, she's dead.'

Edward stepped back. The girl shut the door with a slam. He stood as if petrified. Victoria looked at him with amusement in her eyes, listening to the echoes of the girl's voice singing more and more faintly some catchy tune as she descended into the basement.

'Dead,' said Edward, 'can it be possible—?' He looked like a plant torn up by the roots. He had jumped on the old ground and it had given way.

'My dear Ted,' said Victoria gently, 'things change, you see.' Slowly they went down the steps of the house. Victoria did not speak, for a strange mixture of pity and disdain was in her. She quite understood that a tie had been severed and that the death of his old landlady meant for Edward that the past which he had vaguely loved had died with her. He was one of those amorphous creatures whose life is so interwoven with that of their fellows that any death throws it into disarray. She let him brood over his lost memories until they reached Bedford Square.

'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 institution.

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

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