Chapter 3 #3
“I’ll come to get you on the way,” he said, and she disappeared down to her cabin then.
Victoria was wearing another serious black dress when he came at one o’clock, and her hair was pulled back in a bun with coils of braids around it.
She was doing her own hair without Bridget.
She looked severe but elegant, and ten years older than she had when he met her barely a month earlier on the Titanic.
Her eyes were still bright, but her demeanor was suddenly more adult.
She couldn’t be frivolous or mischievous without a protector to give her respectability.
She had to be respectable on her own. She felt as though she had grown up overnight.
There was nothing lighthearted about her circumstances, as she herself was well aware.
She wondered if it would always be this way now.
She felt as though she had lost not only her father, but her youth.
It was hard to imagine that life would ever be fun again.
She wasn’t sorry she had never married. On the contrary, it made the years she had spent with her father after she was presented to society all the more precious.
They both ordered the lobster on the menu, and she declined the wine he offered her.
She often drank wine at dinner with her father, and he had taught her a great deal about fine French wines, which they both enjoyed, but she didn’t want to shock Bert.
It didn’t feel appropriate to drink at lunch alone with him.
She was grateful to get out of her cabin and to take a look around.
The dining room was very handsome, and the food was excellent.
“Tell me about your business,” Victoria said, as she ate the lobster. It was the sort of thing she would have said to her father, and Bert looked surprised.
“I can’t imagine it would interest you,” he said.
He wasn’t used to a woman asking him a question like that.
Business was a subject he avoided socially, according to all the rules of polite society.
He knew better than that, although he had been brought up in a less lofty level of society than she had.
“I find business fascinating,” she said, and he smiled.
“My father and I often talked about industries I knew nothing about and he would explain them to me. I’m not very good with ladylike subjects, like the pianoforte, or watercolors, or my garden.
I kill anything that grows in a day,” she said, and he laughed.
“You are a very startling young woman, Lady Victoria,” he said, not answering her request.
“Please don’t call me that,” she said. “We haven’t known each other long, but we know each other better than that now. We’ve been through a tragedy together, and that makes a difference,” she said seriously. “It speeds things up. So we’re friends.”
“Yes, I suppose it does. So what would you like to know about my business?” he said, as he would have to a daughter or a friend.
“Do you have many employees?” she asked, and he could see that she was sincerely interested, and hungry for knowledge about a subject unknown to her.
“Somewhere between three and four thousand, closer to four. I have three very large mills, for cotton, a sideline of silk, and another mill in Yorkshire for wool.”
“Do you run it all yourself?”
“No, I make the big decisions that affect the quality of the work we do, who we sell to, who we buy from, pricing to stay competitive in the industry. There is a head of each mill, and under him there are several foremen, and each foreman is responsible for a set number of men.”
“Do you employ women?” Victoria looked fascinated by what Bert was telling her, and the light had come back in her eyes, as it had been when he first met her. That light had grown very dim in the past two weeks, since her father’s death.
“I don’t employ women in the mills, only in my office.”
“Why not?” she asked, as she finished the lobster and they were served salad and cheese. Bert thought about her question. “I don’t know, tradition, I suppose. The men would be rough to work with.”
“Is the work dangerous?”
“Not really.”
“Could women do it?”
“Technically, yes, but the men would never let them.”
“Would you ever change that?” She was curious about him and what he did, and what his philosophies were.
“There’s no reason to right now. One day, maybe it will change, but I think that’s a long way off.
There are a lot of things that women could do that they’re not allowed to now.
One day, the world will evolve, but not yet.
” He was being honest with her, and she nodded. He seemed like an honest person to her.
“Do you like what you do?” she asked him, and he thought about it before he answered.
“Yes, I do. I’m proud of making high-quality goods, a truly fine product.
I love running a business, dealing in international trade.
I like the finesse of negotiation. Sometimes it can get rough, having several thousand men work for me whose goals don’t always mirror mine, and I like harnessing that energy for a successful end result for all concerned. ”
“It sounds like diplomacy as well as business,” she said, as they picked sumptuous desserts from a cart.
She picked a strawberry tart with a dollop of whipped cream, and he chose something elaborate that was entirely chocolate.
They were both deeply engrossed in the conversation and he thoroughly enjoyed it.
Her questions were pertinent, open-minded, and modern.
“Business is diplomacy at times. We occasionally have strikes at our mills. We try to do everything possible to avoid them and keep our workers satisfied, but that’s not always possible.
And there are unions involved.” Victoria sensed easily that he was a leader of men, and that he did it well, and responsibly.
She admired him and was fascinated by what he had said to her over lunch.
It had been enjoyable talking to him, on an interesting subject.
“If you could do whatever you want, what would you do?” he asked her, intrigued to hear her answer. She thought about it for a moment.
“What I wish I could have done was go to university, to Oxford like my father. But that’s not possible.
I’d like to have an interesting, meaningful activity that changes the world in some way.
But I don’t know what that is yet. Women are relegated to being decorative.
We’re taught to do as we’re told, that men always know better, and that’s not always true.
Some men are smarter, and some women are smarter, but everyone will listen to a man, and no one wants to listen to a woman.
That’s never seemed right to me. It’s not fair.
” She sounded na?ve but he knew it was true.
“You’re right, it’s not fair. You could write a book. People hear women’s voices through literature,” he said, and she nodded.
“I don’t know what I’d write about, or what I’d want to say.
I’m more interested in mechanical things, and science.
I don’t read a lot of novels.” He found her to be a fascinating young woman.
She had the mind of a man and the heart of a woman.
It was an interesting combination. She was clearly very intelligent, she just hadn’t found her direction yet, and there were so few avenues open to her in the real world.
He could see now why her father had been concerned about her, and why he had allowed her to stay at home with him and never pushed her to marry.
She would have been wasted on most men, married to some mindless aristocrat, having a baby every year, with nothing to feed her active mind.
They took a walk around the deck after lunch, and agreed that the meal had been excellent, and he walked her back to her cabin, then sat on the deck for a long time afterward, thinking about her.
He was conscious of his promise to her father to look after her, but there was no way to fulfill his last urgent request, to marry her.
Bert had dinner alone in the dining room, and reflected on their conversation over lunch. He thought about her all that night. He had a lot to consider, and he wondered if her father was right, if she should marry, or if she would be happier on her own. He couldn’t decide which would be true.