A Bed of Roses. Walter Lionel George
body was a little bent; his face was all pinks and whites set off by the blackness of his straight hair. He well deserved his school nickname of Kathleen Mavourneen. His long thin hands, which would have been aristocratic but for the slight thickness of the joints, branded him a poet. He was not happy in the cement business.
Jack stepped up to the window. 'Sorry,' he said, as humbly as possible. Victoria did not move.
'Won't never do it again,' he said, pouting like a scolded child.
'It's no good,' answered Victoria, 'I'm not going to make it up.'
'I shall go and drown myself in the Regent Canal,' said Jack dolefully.
'I'd rather you went for a walk along the banks,' said Victoria.
'I will if you'll come too,' answered Jack.
'No, I'm not going out. I've got a headache. Look here, I'll forgive you on condition that you go out now and if you'll do that perhaps you can come with your mother and me to the Zoo this afternoon.'
'All right then,' grumbled the culprit, 'you're rather hard on me. Always knew you didn't like me. Sorry.'
Victoria looked out again. A minute later Jack came out of the house and, pausing before the window, signed to her to lift up the sash.
'What do you want now?' asked Victoria, thrusting her head out.
'It's a bargain about the Zoo, isn't it?'
'Yes, of course it is, silly boy. I've got several children's tickets.'
Jack made a wry face, but walked away with a queer little feeling of exultation. 'Silly boy.' She had called him 'silly boy.' Victoria watched him go with some perplexity. The young man was rather a problem. Not only did his pretty face and gentle ways appeal to her in themselves, but he had told her something of his thoughts and they did not run on cement. His father had thrust him into his business as men of his type naturally force their sons into their own avocation whatever it be. Victoria knew that he was not happy and was sorry for him; how could she help feeling sorry for this lonely youth who had once printed a rondeau in the Westminster Gazette.
Jack had taken to her at once. All that was delicate and feminine in him called out to her square chin and steady eyes. Often she had seen him look hungrily at her strong hands where bone and muscle plainly showed. But, in his wistful way, Jack had begun to embarrass her. He was making love to her in a sense, sometimes sportively, sometimes plaintively, and he was difficult to resist.
Victoria saw quite well that trouble must ensue. She would not allow the boy to fall in love with her when all she could offer was an almost motherly affection. Besides, they could not marry; it would be absurd. She was puzzled as to what to do. Everything tended to complicate the situation for her. She had once been to the theatre with Jack and remembered with anxiety how his arm had rested against hers in the cab and how, when he leaned over towards her to speak, she had felt him slowly inhaling the scents of her hair.
She had promised herself that Jack should be snubbed. And now he played pranks on her. It must end in their being caught in an ambiguous attitude and then she would be blamed. She might tell Mrs. Holt, but then what would be her position in the household? Jack would sulk and Mrs. Holt would watch them suspiciously until the situation became intolerable and she had to leave. Leave! no, no, she couldn't do that. With sudden vividness Victoria pictured the search for work, the silence of Portsea Place, the Rialto-like archway, Mrs. Bell, and the cold, the loneliness. Events must take their course.
Like the rasp of a corncrake she heard the wheels of the barouche on the gravel. Mrs. Holt had returned from the discourse on the personal devil.
CHAPTER VIII
'Thomas,' said Mrs. Holt with some hesitation.
'Yes,' said Mr. Holt. 'What is it?'
'Oh! nothing,' said Mrs. Holt. 'Just a queer idea. Nothing worth talking about.'
'Well, come again when it is worth talking about,' growled Mr. Holt, relapsing into his newspaper.
'Of course there's nothing in it,' remarked Mrs. Holt pertinaciously.
'Nothing in what?' her husband burst forth. 'What do you mean, Maria? Have you got anything to say or not? If you have, let's have it out.'
'I was only going to say that Jack … of course I don't think that Victoria sees it, but you understand he's a very young man, but I don't blame her, he's such a funny boy,' said Mrs. Holt lucidly.
'Good heavens, Maria,' cried her husband, 'do you want me to smash something?'
'How you do go on,' remarked Maria placidly. 'What I meant to say is that don't you think Jack's rather too attentive to Victoria?'
Mr. Holt dropped his paper suddenly. 'Attentive?' he growled, 'haven't noticed it.'
'Oh! you men never notice things,' replied Mrs. Holt with conscious superiority. 'Don't say I didn't warn you, that's all.'
'Now look here, Maria,' said Mr. Holt, his blue eyes darkening visibly, 'I don't want any more of this tittle tattle. You can keep it for the next P.S.A. I can tell you that if the young cub is "attentive" to Mrs. Fulton, well, so much the better: it'll teach him something worth knowing if he finds out that there's somebody else in the world who's worth doing something for beyond his precious self.'
'Very well, very well,' purred Mrs. Holt. 'If you take it like that, I don't mind, Thomas. Don't say I didn't warn you if anything happens. That's all.'
Mr. Holt got up from the leather chair and left the room. There were moments when his wife roused in him the fury that filled him when once, in his young days, he had dropped steel bolts into the cement grinders to gratify a grudge against an employer. The temper that had made him rejoice over the sharp cracks speaking of smashed axles was in him still. He had got above the social stratum where husbands beat their wives, but innuendoes and semi-secrets goaded him almost to paroxysm.
Mrs. Holt heard the door slam and coolly took up her work. She was engaged in the congenial task of disfiguring a piece of Morris chintz. She had decided that the little bag given her by an æsthetic friend was too flat and she was busily employed in embroidering the 'eyebright' pattern, with coloured wool in the most approved early Victorian manner. 'At any rate,' she thought, 'Thomas has got the idea in his head.'
Mrs. Holt had not arrived at her determination to awaken her husband's suspicions without much thought. She had begun to realise that 'something was wrong' one Sunday afternoon at the Zoo. She had taken Jack and Victoria in the barouche, putting down to a fit of filial affection the readiness of Jack to join them. She had availed herself of the opportunity to drive round the Circle; so as to show off her adored son to the Bramleys, who were there in their electric, to the Wilsons, who were worth quite fifty thousand a year, to the Wellensteins too, who seemed to do so wonderfully well on the Stock Exchange. Jack had taken it very nicely indeed.
All the afternoon Jack had remained with them; he had bought animal food, found a fellow to take them into the pavilion, and even driven home with them. It was when he helped his charges into the carriage that Mrs. Holt had noticed something. He first handed his mother in and then Victoria. Mrs. Holt had seen him put his hand under Victoria's forearm, which was quite ordinary, but she had also seen him hold her in so doing by the joint of her short sleeve and long glove where a strip of white skin showed and slip two fingers under the glove. This was not so ordinary and Mrs. Holt began to think.
When a Rawsley dame begins to think of things such as these, her conscience invariably demands of her that she should know more. Mrs. Holt therefore said nothing, but kept a watchful eye on the couple. She could urge nothing against Victoria. Her companion remained the cheerful and competent friend of the early days; she was no more amiable to Jack than to his father: she talked no more to him than to the rest of the household; she did not even look at him much.