Kitabı oku: «A Bed of Roses», sayfa 23

CHAPTER XVII

It was in London that the real battle began. In Algiers the scented winds made hideous and unnatural all thoughts of gain. On arriving in London Victoria ascertained with a thrill of pleasure that her bank had received a thousand pounds since October. After disposing of a few small debts and renewing some trifles in the house, she found herself a capitalist: she had about fifteen hundred pounds of her own. The money was lying at the bank and it only struck her then that the time had come to invest it. Her interview with the manager of her branch was a delightful experience; she was almost bursting with importance, and his courteous appreciation of his increasingly wealthy client was something more than balm. It was a foretaste of the power of money. She had known poor men respected, but not poor women; now the bank manager was giving her respectful attention because she had fifteen hundred pounds.

'You might buy some industrials,' he said.

'Industrials? What are they?'

'Oh, all sorts of things. Cotton mills, iron works, trading companies, anything.'

'Cement works?' she asked with a spark of devilry.

'Yes, cement works too,' said the manager without moving a muscle.

'But do you call them safe?' she asked, returning to business.

'Oh, fairly. Of course there are bad years and good. But the debentures are mostly all right and some of the prefs.'

Victoria thought for a moment. Reminiscences of political economy told her that there were booms and slumps.

'Has trade been good lately?' she asked suddenly.

'No, not for the last two years or so. It's picking up though..'

'Ah, then we're in for a cycle of good trade. I think I'll have some industrials. You might pick me out the best.'

The manager seemed a little surprised at this knowledge of commercial crises but said nothing more, and made out a list of securities averaging six per cent net.

'And please buy me a hundred P. R. R. shares,' added Victoria.

She could have laughed at the manager's stony face because he did not see the humour of this. He merely said that he would forward the orders to a stockbroker.

Victoria felt that she had put her hand to the plough. She was scoring so heavily that she never now wished to turn back. Holt was every day growing more dreamy, more absorbed in his thoughts. He never seemed to quicken into action except when his companion touched him. He grew more silent too; the hobbledehoy was gone. He was at his worst when he had received a letter bearing the Rawsley postmark. Victoria knew of these, for Holt's need of her grew greater every day; he was now living at Elm Tree Place. He hardly left the house. He got up late and passed the morning in the boudoir, smoking cigarettes, desultorily reading and nursing the Pekingese which he now liked better. But on the days when he got letters from Rawsley, letters so bulky that they were sometimes insufficiently stamped, he would go out early and only return at night. Then, however, he returned as if he had been running, full of some nameless fear; he would strain Victoria to him and hold her very close, burying his face below the bedclothes as if he were afraid. On one of those days Victoria accidentally saw him come out of a small dissenting chapel near by. He did not see her, for he was walking away like a man possessed; she said nothing of this but understood him better, having an inkling that the fight against the Rawsley tradition was still going on.

She did not, however, allow herself to be moved by his struggle. It behoved her to hold him, for he was her last chance and the world looked rosy round her. As the spring turned into summer he became more utterly hers.

'You distil poison for me,' he said one day as they sat by the rose hung pergola.

'No, Jack, don't say that, it's the elixir of life.'

'The elixir of life. Perhaps, but poison too. To make me live is to make me die, Victoria; we are both sickening for death and to hasten the current of life is to hasten our doom.'

'Live quickly,' she whispered, bending towards him, 'did you live at all a year ago?'

'No, no.' His arms were round her and his lips insistent on hers. He frightened her a little, though. She would have to take him away. She had already confided this new trouble to Betty when the latter came to see her in April, but Betty, beyond suggesting cricket, had been too full of her own affairs. Apparently these were not going very well. Anderson & Dromo's had not granted the rise, and the marriage had been postponed. Meanwhile she was still at the P. R. R., and very, very happy. Betty too, her baby, her other baby, frightened Victoria a little. She was so rosy, so pretty now, and there was something defiant and excited about her that might presage disease. But Betty had not come near her for the last two months.

About the middle of June she took Jack away to Broadstairs. He was willing to go or stay, just as she liked. He seemed so neutral that Victoria experimented upon him by presenting him with a sheaf of unpaid bills. He looked at them languidly and said he supposed they must be paid, asked her to add them up and wrote a cheque for the full amount. Apparently he had forgotten all about the allowance, or did not care.

Broadstairs seemed to do him good. Except at the week end the Hotel Sylvester was almost empty. The sea breeze blew stiffly from the north or the east. His colour increased and once more he began to talk. Victoria encouraged him to take long walks alone along the front. She had some occupation, for two little girls who were there in charge of a Swiss governess had adopted the lovely lady as their aunt. A new sweetness had come into her life, shrill voices, the clinging of little hands. Sometimes these four would walk together, and Holt would run with the children, tumbling in the sand in sheer merriment.

'You seem all right again, Jack,' said Victoria on the tenth morning.

'Right! Rather, by jove, it's good to live, Vicky.'

'You were a bit off colour, you know.'

'I suppose I was. But now, I feel nothing can hold me. I wrote a rondeau this morning on the pier. Want to see it?'

'Of course, silly boy. Aren't you going to be the next great poet?'

She read the rondeau, scrawled in pencil on the back of a bill. It was delicate, a little colourless.

'Lovely,' she said, 'of course you'll send it to the Westminster.'

'Perhaps.. hulloa, there are the kiddies.' He ran off down the steps from the front. A minute after Victoria saw him helping the elder girl to bury her little sister in the sand.

Victoria felt much reassured. He was normal again, the half wistful, half irresponsible boy she had once known. He slept well, laughed, and his crying need for her seemed to have abated. At the end of the fortnight Victoria was debating whether she should take him home. She was in the hotel garden talking to the smaller girl, telling her a wonderful story about the fairy who lived in the telephone and said ping-pong when the line was engaged. The little girl sat upon her knee; when she laughed Victoria's heart bounded. The elder girl came through the gate leading a good-looking young woman in white by the hand.

'Oh, mummie, here's auntie,' cried the child, dragging her mother up to Victoria. The two women looked at one another.

'They tell me you have been very kind.' said the woman. Then she stopped abruptly.

'Of course, mummie, she's not really our auntie,' said the child confidentially.

Victoria put the small girl down. The mother looked at her again. She seemed so nice and refined.. yet her husband said that the initials on the trunks were different.. one had to be careful.

'Come here, Celia,' she said sharply. 'Thank you,' she added to Victoria. Then taking her little girls by the hand she took them away.

Jack willingly left Broadstairs that afternoon when Victoria explained that she was tired and that something had made her low-spirited.

'Right oh,' he said. 'Let's go back to town. I want to see Amershams and find out how those sonnets have sold.'

He then left her to wire to Augusta.

Their life in town resumed its former course, interrupted only by a month in North Devon. Jack's cure was complete; he was sunburnt, fatter; the joy of life shone in his blue eyes. Sometimes Victoria found herself growing younger by contagion, sloughing the horrible miry coat of the past. If her heart had not been atrophied she would have loved the boy whom she always treated with motherly gentleness. His need of her was so crying, so total, that he lost all his self-consciousness. He would sit unblushing by her side in the bow of a fishing smack, holding her hand and looking raptly into her grey eyes; he was indifferent to the red brown fisherman with the Spanish eyes and curly black hair who smiled as the turtle doves clustered. His need of her was as mental as it was physical; his body was whipped by the salt air to seek in her arms oblivion, but his mind had become equally dependent. She was his need.

Thus when they came back to town the riot continued; and Victoria, breasting the London tide, dragged him unresisting in her rear. She hated excitement in every form, excitement that is of the puerile kind. Restaurant dining, horse shows, flower shows, the Academy, tea in Bond Street, even the theatre and its most inane successes, were for her a weariness to the flesh.

'I've had enough,' she said to Jack one day. 'I'm sick of it all. I've got congestion of the appreciative sense. One day I shall chuck it all up, go and live in the country, have big dogs and a saddle horse, dress in tweeds and read the local agricultural rag.'

'Give up smoking, go to church, and play tennis with the curate, the doctor and the squire's flapper,' added Holt. 'But Vicky, why not go now?'

'No, oh, no, I can't do that.' She was frightened by her own suggestion. 'I must drain the cup of pleasure so as to be sure that it's all pain; then I'll retire and drain the cup of resignation.. unless, as I sometimes think, it's empty.'

Jack had said nothing to this. Her wildness surprised and shocked him. She was so savage and yet so sweet.

Victoria realised that she must hold fast to the town, for there alone could she succeed. In the peace of the country she would not have the opportunities she had now. Jack was in her hands. She never hesitated to ask for money, and Jack responded without a word. Her account grew by leaps and bounds. The cashier began to ask whether she wanted to see the manager when she called at the bank. She could see, some way off but clearly, the beacons on the coast of hope.

All through Jack's moods she had suffered from the defection of Betty. On her return from Broadstairs she had written to her to come to Elm Tree Place, but had received no answer. This happened again in September; and fear took hold of her, for Betty had, ivy-like, twined herself very closely round Victoria's heart of oak. She went to Finsbury; but Betty had gone, leaving no address. She went to the P.R.R. also. The place had become ghostly, for the familiar faces had gone. The manageress was nowhere to be seen; nor was Nelly, probably by now a manageress herself. Betty was not there, and the girl who wonderingly served the beautiful lady with a tea-cake said that no girl of that name was employed at the depot. Then Victoria saw herself sitting in the churchyard of her past, between the two dear ghosts of Farwell and Betty. The customers had changed, or their faces had receded so that she knew them no more: they still played matador and fives and threes, chess too. Alone the chains remained which the ghosts had rattled. Silently she went away, turning over that leaf of her life for ever. Farwell was dead, and Betty gone – married probably – and in Shepherd's Bush, not daring to allow Victoria's foot to sully the threshold of 'First Words of Love.'

Her conviction that Betty was false had a kind of tonic effect upon her. She was alone and herself again; she realised that the lonely being is the strong being. Now, at last, she could include the last woman she had known in the category of those who threw stories. And her determination to be free grew apace.

She invented a reason every day to extract money from Holt. He, blindly desirous, careless of money, acceded to every fresh demand. Now it was a faked bill from Barbezan Soeurs for two hundred pounds, now the rent in arrear, a blue rates notice, an offhand request for a fiver to pay the servants, the vet's bill or the price of a cab. Holt drew and overdrew. If a suspicion ever entered his mind that he was being exploited, he dismissed it at once, telling himself that Victoria was rather extravagant. For a time letters from Rawsley synchronised with her fresh demands, but repetition had dulled their effects: now Holt postponed reading them; after a time she saw him throw one into the fire unread. Little by little they grew rarer. Then they ceased. Holt was eaten up by his passion, and Victoria's star rose high.

All conspired to favour her fortune. Perhaps her acumen had helped her too, for she had seen correctly the coming boom. Trade rose by leaps and bounds; every day new shops seemed to open; the stalks of the Central London Railway could be seen belching clouds of smoke as they ground out electric power; the letter-box at Elm Tree Place was clogged with circulars denoting by the fury of their competition that trade was flying as on a great wind. Other signs too were not wanting: the main streets of London were blocked by lorries groaning under machinery, vegetables, stone; immense queues formed at the railway stations waiting for the excursion trains; above all, rose the sound of gold as it hissed and sizzled as if molten on the pavements, flowing into the pockets of merchants, bankers and shareholders. All the women at the Vesuvius indulged in new clothes.

Victoria's investments were seized by the current. She had not entirely followed the bank manager's advice. Seeing, feeling the movement, she had realised most of her debentures and turned them into shares. One of her ventures collapsed, but the remainder appreciated to an extraordinary extent. At last, in the waning days of the year her middle-class prudence reasserted itself. She knew enough of political economy to be ready for the crash, she realised. One cold morning in November she counted up her spoils. She had nearly five thousand pounds.

Meanwhile, while her blood was aglow, Holt sank further into the dullness of his senses. A mania was upon him. Waking, his thought was Victoria; and the cry for her rose everlasting from his racked body. She was all, she was everywhere; and the desire for her, for her beauty, her red lips, soaked into him like a philtre, narcotic and then fiery but ever present, intimate and exacting. He was her thing, her toy, the paltry instrument which responded to her every touch. He rejoiced in his subjection; he swam in his passion like a pilgrim in the Ganges to find brief oblivion; but again the thirst was on him, ravaging, ever demanding more. More, more, ever more, in the watches of the night, when ice seizes the world to throttle it – among all, in turmoil and in peace – he tossed upon the passionate sea; with one thought, one hope.

CHAPTER XVIII

'I'm glad we're going away, Jack,' said Victoria leaning back in the cab and looking at him critically. 'You look as if you wanted a change.'

'Perhaps I do,' said Jack.

Victoria looked at him again. He had not smiled as he spoke to her, which was unusual. He seemed thinner and more delicate than ever, with his pale face and pink cheekbones. His black hair shone as if moist; and his eyes were bigger than they had ever been, blue like silent pools and surrounded by a mauve zone. His mouth hung a little open. Yet, in spite of his weariness, he held her wrist in both his hands, and she could feel his fingers searching for the opening in her glove.

'You are becoming a responsibility,' she said smiling. 'I shall have to be a mother to you.'

A faint smile came over his lips.

'A mother? After all, why not? Phedra..' His eyes fixed on the grey morning sky as he followed his thought.

The horse was trotting sharply. The winter air seemed to rush into their bodies. Jack, well wrapped up as he was in a fur coat, shrank back against the warm roundness of her shoulder. In an excess of gentleness she put her free hand in his.

'Dear boy,' she said softly bending over him.

But there was no tenderness in Jack's blue eyes, rather lambent fire. At once his grasp on her hand tightened and his lips mutely formed into a request. Casting a glance right and left she kissed him quickly on the mouth.

Up on the roof their bags jolted and bumped one another; milk carts were rattling their empty cans as they returned from their round; far away a drum and fife band played an acid air. They were going to Ventnor in pursuit of the blanketed sun; and Victoria rejoiced, as they passed through Piccadilly Circus where moisture settled black on the fountain, to think that for three days she would see the sun radiate, not loom as a red guinea. They passed over Waterloo Bridge at a foot pace; the enormous morning traffic was struggling in the neck of the bottle. The pressure was increased because the road was up between it and Waterloo Station. On her left, over the parapet, Victoria could see the immense desert of the Thames swathed in thin mist, whence emerged in places masts and where massive barges loomed passive like derelicts. She wondered for a moment whether her familiar symbol, the old vagrant, still sat crouching against the parapet at Westminster, watching rare puffs of smoke curling from his pipe into the cold air. The cab emerged from the crush, and to avoid it the cabman turned into the little black streets which line the wharf on the east side of the bridge, then doubled back towards Waterloo through Cornwall Road. There they met again the stream of drays and carts; the horse went at a foot pace, and Victoria gazed at the black rows of houses with the fear of a lost one. So uniformly ugly these apartment houses, with their dirty curtains, their unspeakable flowerpots in the parlour windows. Here and there cards announcing that they did pinking within; further, the board of a sweep; then a good corner house, the doctor's probably, with four steps and a brass knocker and a tall slim girl on her hands and knees washing the steps.

The cab came to an abrupt stop. Some distance ahead a horse was down on the slippery road; shouts came from the crowd around it. Victoria idly watched the girl, swinging the wet rag from right to left. Poor thing. Everything in her seemed to cry out against the torture of womanhood. She was a picture of dumb resignation as she knelt with her back to the road. Victoria could see her long thin arms, her hands red and rigid with cold, her broken-down shoes with the punctured soles emerging from the ragged black petticoat.

There was a little surge in the crowd. The girl got up, and with an air of infinite weariness stretched her arms. Then she picked up the pail and bucket and turned towards the street. For the space of a second the two women looked into one another's faces. Then Victoria gave a muffled cry and jumped out of the cab. She seized with both hands the girl's bare arms.

'Betty! Betty!' she faltered.

A burning blush covered the girl's face and her features twitched. She made as if to turn away from the detaining hands.

'Vicky, what are you doing.. what does this mean?' came Jack's voice from the cab.

'Wait a minute, Jack. Betty, my poor little Betty. Why are you here? Why haven't you written to me?'

'Leave me alone,' said Betty hoarsely.

'I won't leave you alone. Betty, tell me, what's this? Are you married?'

A look of pain came over the girl's face, but she said nothing.

'Look here, Betty, we can't talk here. Leave the bucket, come with me. I'll see it's all right.'

'Oh, I can't do that. Oh, let me alone; it's too late.'

'I don't understand you. It's never too late. Now just get into the cab and come with me.'

'I can't. I must give notice.' She looked about to weep.

'Come along.' Victoria increased the pressure on the girl's arms. Jack stood up in the cab. He seemed as frightened as he was surprised.

'I say, Vicky.' he began.

'Sit down, Jack, she's coming with us. You don't mind if we don't go to Ventnor?'

Jack's eyes opened in astonishment but he made no reply. Victoria pulled Betty sharply down the steps.

'Oh, let me get my things,' she said weakly.

'No. They'd stop you. There, get in. Drive back to Elm Tree Place, cabman.'

Half an hour later, lying at full length on the boudoir sofa, Betty was slowly sipping some hot cocoa. There was a smile on her tear-stained face. Victoria was analysing with horror the ravages that sorrow had wrought on her. She was pretty still, with her china blue eyes and her hair like pale filigree gold; but the bones seemed to start from her red wrists, so thin had she become. Even the smile of exhausted content on her lips did not redeem her emaciated cheeks.

'Betty, my poor Betty,' said Victoria, taking her hand. 'What have they done to you?'

The girl looked up at the ceiling as if in a dream.

'Tell me all about it,' her friend went on, 'what has happened to you since April?'

'Oh, lots of things, lots of things. I've had a hard time.'

'Yes, I see. But what happened actually? Why did you leave the P.R.R.?'

'I had to. You see, Edward.' The flush returned.

'Yes?'

'Oh, Vic, I've been a bad girl and I'm so, so unhappy.' Betty seized her friend's hand to raise herself and buried her face on her breast. There Victoria let her sob, gently stroking the golden hair. She understood already, but Betty must not be questioned yet. Little by little, Betty's weeping grew less violent and confidence burst from her pent up soul.

'He didn't get a rise at Christmas, so he said we'd have to wait.. I couldn't bear it.. it wasn't his fault. I couldn't let him come down in the world, a gentleman.. he had only thirty shillings a week.'

'Yes, yes, poor little girl.'

'We never meant to do wrong.. when baby was coming he said he'd marry me.. I couldn't drag him down.. I ran away.'

'Betty, Betty, why didn't you write to me?'

The girl looked at her. She was beautiful in her reminiscence of sacrifice.

'I was ashamed.. I didn't dare.. I only wanted to go where they didn't know what I was… I was mad. The baby came too early and it died almost at once.'

'My poor little girl.' Victoria softly stroked the rough back of her hand.

'Oh, I wasn't sorry.. it was a little girl.. they don't want any more in the world. Besides I didn't care for anything; I'd lost him.. and my job. I couldn't go back. My landlady wrote me a character to go to Cornwall Road.'

'And there I found you.'

'I wonder what we are going to do for you,' she went on. 'Where is Edward now?'

'Oh, I couldn't go back; I'm ashamed..'

'Nonsense, you haven't done anything wrong. He shall marry you.'

'He would have,' said Betty a little coldly, 'he's square.'

'Yes, I know. He didn't beg you very hard, did he? However, never mind. I'm not going to let you go until I've made you happy. Now I'll tuck you up with a rug, and you're going to sleep before the fire.'

Betty lay limp and unresisting in the ministering hands. The unwonted sensations of comfort, warmth and peace soothed her to sleepiness. Besides, she felt as if she had wept every tear in her racked body. Soon her features relaxed, and she sank into profound, almost deathlike slumber.

Victoria meanwhile told her story to Jack, who sat in the dining room reading a novel and smoking cigarettes. He came out of his coma as Victoria unfolded the tale of Betty's upbringing, her struggle to live, then love the meteor flashing through her horizon. His cheeks flushed and his mouth quivered as Victoria painted for him the picture of the girl half distraught, bearing the burden of her shame, unable to reason or to forsee, to think of anything except the saving of a gentleman from life on thirty bob a week.

'Something ought to be done,' he said at length, closing his book with novel vivacity.

'Yes, but what?'

'I don't know.' His eyes questioned the wall; they grew vaguer and vaguer as his excitement decreased, as a ship in docks sinks further and further on her side while the water ebbs away.

'You think of something,' he said at length, picking up his book again. 'I don't care what it costs.'

Victoria left him and went for a walk through the misty streets seeking a solution. There were not many. She could not keep Betty with her, for she was pure though betrayed; contact with the irregular would degrade her because habit would induce her to condone that which she morally condemned. It would spoil her and would ultimately throw her into a life for which she was not fitted because gentle and unspoiled.

'No,' mused Victoria as she walked, 'like most women, she cannot rule: a man must rule her. She is a reed, not an oak. All must come from man, both good and evil. What man has done man must undo.'

By the time she returned to Elm Tree Place she had made up her mind. There was no hope for Betty except in marriage. She must have her own fireside; and, from what she had said, her lover was no villain. He was weak, probably; and, while he strove to determine his line of conduct, events had slipped beyond his control. Perhaps, though, it was not fair to deliver Betty into his hands bound and defenceless, bearing the burden of their common imprudence. She was not fit to be free, but she should not be a slave. It might be well to be the slave of the strong, but not of the weak.

Therefore Victoria arrived at a definite solution. She would see the young man; and, if it was not altogether out of the question, he should marry Betty. They should have the little house at Shepherd's Bush, and Betty should be made a free woman with a fortune of five hundred pounds in her own right, enough to place her for ever beyond sheer want. It only struck Victoria later that she need not, out of quixotic generosity, deplete her own store, for Holt would gladly give whatever sum she named.

'Now, Betty,' she said as the girl drained the glass of claret which accompanied the piece of fowl, that composed her lunch, 'tell me your young man's name and Anderson & Dromo's address. I'm going to see him.'

'Oh, no, no, don't do that.' The look of fear returned to the blue eyes.

'No use, Betty, I've decided you're going to be happy. I shall see him to-day at six, bring him here to-morrow at half past two, as it happens to be Saturday. You will be married about the thirtieth of this month.'

'Oh, Vic, don't make me think of it. I can't do it.. it's no good now. Perhaps he's forgotten me, and it's better for him.'

'I don't think he's forgotten you,' said Victoria. 'He'll marry you this month, and you'll eat your Christmas dinner at Shepherd's Bush. Don't be shy, dear – you're not going empty handed; you're going to have a dowry of five hundred pounds.'

'Vic! I can't take it; it isn't right.. you need all you've got.. you're so good, but I don't want him to marry me if.. if..'

'Oh, don't worry, I shan't tell him about the money until he says yes. Now, no thanks; you're my baby, besides it's going to be a present from Mr Holt. Silence,' she repeated as Betty opened her mouth, 'or rather give me his name and address and not another word.'

'Edward Smith, Salisbury House, but..'

'Enough. Now, dear, don't get up.'

The events of that Friday and Saturday formed in later days one of the sunbathed memories in Victoria's dreary life. It was all so gentle, so full of sweetness and irresolute generosity. She remembered everything, the wait in the little dark room into which she was ushered by an amazed commissionaire who professed himself willing to break regulations for her sake and hand Mr Smith a note, the banging of her heart as she realised her responsibility and resolved to break her word if necessary and to buy a husband for Betty rather than lose him, then the quick interview, the light upon the young man's face.

'Where is she,' he asked excitedly. 'Oh, why did she run away? You can't think what I've been going through.'

'You should have married her,' said Victoria coldly, though she was moved by his sincerity. He was handsome, this young man, with his bronzed face, dark eyes, regular features and long dark hair.

'Oh, I would have at once if I'd known. But I couldn't make up my mind; only thirty bob a week..'

'Yes, I know,' said Victoria softly, 'I used to be at the P. R. R.'

'You?' The young man looked at her incredulously.

'Yes, but never mind me. It's Betty I've come for. The baby is dead. I found her cleaning the steps of a house near Waterloo.'

'My God,' said the young man in low tones. He clenched his hands together; one of his paper cuff protectors fell to the floor.

'Will you marry her now?'

'Yes.. at once.'

'Good. She's had a hard time, Mr Smith, and I don't say it's entirely your fault. Now it's all going to be put square. I'm going to see she has some money of her own, five hundred pounds. That will help won't it?'

'Oh, it's too good to be true. Why are you doing all this for us? You're..'

'Please, please, no thanks. I'm Betty's friend. Let that be enough. Will you come and see her to-morrow at my house? Here's my card.'

On the last day of November these two were married at a registry office in the presence of Victoria and the registrar's clerk. A new joy had settled upon Betty, whose shy prettiness was turning into beauty. Victoria's heart was heavy as she looked at the couple, both so young and rapt, setting out upon the sea with a cargo of glowing dreams. It was heavy still as the cab drove off carrying them away for a brief week-end, which was all Anderson and Dromo would allow. She tasted a new delight in this making of happiness.

Holt had not attended the ceremony, for he felt too weak. His interest in the affair had been dim, for he looked upon it as one of Victoria's whims. He was ceasing to judge as he ceased to appreciate, so much was his physical weakness gaining upon him; all his faculty of action was concentrated in the desire which gnawed at his very being. Victoria reminded him of his promise, and, finding his cheque book for him, laid it on the table.