Realistic or Modern Victorian London

[Syrrus]

"So you wanted me to take advantage of you when you were over your head in alcohol?" Victor asked but did so with a sly attitude and a wry smile. "I could take you on this very rocks and leave you to the wolves too, if you would prefer?" It was a simple task to sound rude and not at all prudish in the great lands of America. Jack however did not seem to care much for it and decided to put his shirt on and stop playing his music for the time being.


"Perhaps we should get goin' yeah?" Jack asked as he got up on his feet. "The two of you can discuss this when I got a girl on my arm, aye?" Jack did not mind the idea of marriage as much as Victor did, Victor seemed to believe it to be the end of the world.


"Come now Margaret, lets say I married you, out of the love of my heart. I kneeled down, asked for your hand and married you before the end of the summer, we then ended up with one child before the nest semester, living in my small apartment in London, in that mess and with my mountains of bottles, and glasses of drugs and what not. You think that possible?"

 

[GreyZone]

Margaret rolled her eyes and stood back up at his crass words. "If you took me on the rocks and left me for the wolves, than you, my good Sir, would slowly starve to death. Do not make fun of me, Mr. Edwards. Believe me, if I could rid myself of you, I would do it in a heartbeat. You are well aware that I have been nothing but in love with you for years, and now you taunt me for it. I think I will just start cooking for Jack."


She turned around and walked back to her horse, swinging up onto the animal. "I am ready to leave if you are finished with ridiculing me. There has never been one time that you have asked me for something and I have denied you it, Mr. Edwards. I do not take kindly to your taunting of my feelings when I so often indulge yours."

 

[Syrrus]

Victor sighed, for his conversation with Margaret tended to end up in the same place each time. He pulled himself up from the ground and put his Violin back into the saddlebag hanging from his horse. Jack stood up also and said nothing to interrupt the two because he had grown so used to their arguments that he simply had learned to blur them out. "Perhaps we out not go there, let's just continue, shall we?" said Victor who jumped up on the horse's back and started to move forward in a calm fashion.


Jack followed close behind, making sure he had all his provision with him, especially his harmonica. "It has little to do with what I would like to do to you, Margaret. Simply listen when I tell you that being involved with the likes of me will only bring you pain." Explained Victor, even if he had a feeling that he had already brought her pain. He simply figured that it could get far worse would he give her what she wanted.

 

[GreyZone]

Margaret rode the horse in stony silence for a good few minutes before responding, her jaw firmly set. She had only inherited three things from her father: her red hair, her temper, and her stubbornness. She didn't know how many times she had to make a fool out of herself in front of Victor for him to understand.


"I know myself better than you know me, Mr. Edwards," she finally said in a flat voice. "It was one thing when I was a naive child, but now I am not. You are neither my guardian nor any figure of authority toward me at this point, and it is not your decision to worry about my pain that I might inflict upon myself."

 

[Syrrus]

"And I know myself quite well too, thank you; I cannot live with the idea of guilt that may or may nor bloom from the pain I strike upon you. I have not had a drop of alcohol since we got to the new world and I intend to keep it that way until I return to my normal estate of London." Vicotor said and that was that. He shrugged his shoulders, rolled them and gave his attention to the surroundings instead of the current conversation. He was lazy, yes, but a romantic and would do anything to keep his vision flowing.


Jack said nothing, he merely kept an eye out for bandits or wild life. Spotting some critters scurry below the hooves of his horse he could not help but smirk, slightly. The world sure was different from his life as a chimney sweep.

 

[GreyZone]

"Have you ever stumbled upon the fact that you won't hurt me?" She asked, her voice filled with faux amazement. "Oh, how flattering. You couldn't possibly be without me sober. I should have known, Mr. Edwards."


Her jaw remained set as they rode, trying to keep from blowing up at him because she knew it would only make it more tense and horrible. And on top of that, she couldn't exactly escape him out here if things got too heated. "It is one thing if you just don't want me, Mr. Edwards. But I would prefer you just said that. It is an entirely different aspect to avoid me simply because you're worried to scar me or whatever you're thinking."

 

[Syrrus]

"Perhaps I should word it like this." Victor said, pondering for a moment on what and how to say before once again opening his mouth, ignoring the fact that Jack had started to look awfully uncomfortable. "It is not as much as I do not want you which is bothering me. I could not care less if I hurt you, though it is the guilt which I will bare afterwards that stops me from going through with any barbaric and animalistic thoughts which may or may not be circling within my skull. You blame me for never listening, or ignoring your questions and words yet you manage to make it sound as if you are either completely misunderstanding me or ignoring me as well."


Victor turned his head to face her, yet did so for a very short moment before continuing to look at the road before them.

 

[GreyZone]

"I have simply no idea why you would feel guilty," she responded, her head held high. "I am unwed. I have no attachment to any other man and my father is on a different continent, so it is not as if he is a hinderence. I am asking you for it, and I feel as if I do nothing but hint to the point where it's pitiful."


She paused, recollecting her thoughts and her breath. "So I have absolutely no idea why you should feel so guilty, and why you assume that having relations will hurt me."

 

[Syrrus]

"Nothing else will come from it though. I do not wish to marry anyone, for I enjoy the idea of being a free soul who can go and do what I want without trouble or the need to ask someone or explain what I might be doing." Said Victor, his eyes still locked forward and his expression turning more and more frustrated by the minute, something that Jack noticed to his slight amusement. He had to look away, or be dragged into the argument between the two.


"I can share a bed with you for one night, that would probably but a few of my own feelings to rest. Though would you truly be able to stand that nothing would happen the day after? That I would return to breakfast as the same man I am today."

 

[GreyZone]

Margaret nodded stiffly as he spoke. "I have spent too many years with you to pretend that that confuses me, Mr. Edwards," she told him after collecting her thoughts for a moment. There was a large lump in her throat that she couldn't seem to get rid of, and it didn't help that their argument had an audience. "And it is not as if I expect marriage from you. I only wish I were able to set myself free from this so I may move on. Maybe this would be better for the both of us."


But as she mulled it over, she began to grow more and more terrified. Should she just hurl her virginity at him, wrapped in a pretty package? He made it quite clear to her that there was no hope for a marriage between them, and she wasn't sure if she should just invalidate her wedding bed. But she also felt as if she had to. "I will do it if you are willing."

 

[Syrrus]

"This is a very strange conversation." Victor added, frowning slightly as the sun climbed higher and higher over the sky, brining more and more heat down upon them. He could see the earth evaporate, and the steam rising upwards. It was a beautiful sight, though it made it all so much more dramatic. The air felt heavy and it was getting harder to breath.


Jack pulled out a flask of water which he took a swing of himself before gesturing over to Margaret that perhaps she would want some herself.


"I suspect you mean 'move on' from me and not from this whole venture, seeing how you agreed to join me on a journey which I had warned you could take many, and many years." continued Victor, stroking black curls of hair out of his rather suntanned Victorian face.

 

[GreyZone]

"It may be strange, but it is necessary," she replied with an eye roll. Of course he was attempting to avoid anything that he is not completely comfortable with discussing. She wasn't surprised at all. How did he manage to keep her so infatuated when he irked her so? "If you don't want to, that is fine. But if you're just solely preoccupied on hurting me, I would highly suggest that you remove the stick from your ass and get on with it."


"I don't plan to move on from the trip," she told him, but only after a beat. "However, I do need to settle down if I want to have any sort of chance of finding a husband and successfully having children. I'm almost out of my teenage years and time is of the essence. I could have married three years ago."

 

[Syrrus]

"You do not need to marry, all women do not - neither does all men." said Victor, calmly as he placed his usually round sunglasses over his green eyes, to hide himself from the beaming and horribly hot sun. He could not say that he enjoyed the beating weather much, however Jack seemed rather indifferent though he had never been one for whining.


"We should be in San Francisco before tea time, with some luck." Continued the nobleman, as he took a peek at his pocketwatch.

 

[GreyZone]

Margaret raised her eyebrows at that. This conversation was going nowhere, that much was obvious. "But I wish to marry, Mr. Edwards. I cannot gallivant across the Wild West for the rest of my days no matter how I like to pretend that I may. You do not have to get married, but I would like to."


She had already spent three years serving him. She hoped he surely understood that it could not last forever. If he would do her the service of finally just getting on with that, maybe she could actually move on.

 

[Syrrus]

"Ah, very well then. That riddle if now sold. You will not marry me however, so perhaps you should attempt to socialize with someone who would share your ideal of romantic interactions." Mister Edward said, sternly. It was not that he did not like Margaret, in fact he loved the girl greatly. She was an intelligent, capable and very annoying young woman who knew exactly how to get on his precious and already unstable nerves.


Jack peered between the two, not quite certain if he was going to intervene, attempt a new line of conversation or simply stay quiet. The chimney sweep was not one for being silent, he enjoyed to converse and discuss as much as the next, yet he always felt speaking to both Margaret and Victor to be a difficult task indeed.

 

[GreyZone]

Margaret nodded stiffly. "Perhaps I should, Mr. Edwards. It really is the greatest misfortune of my time that I have absolutely no wish to do so."


She looked over at the chimney sweep and offered him a weary smile. "I am truly sorry that you're getting the worse end of this conversation here, Jack. You will have to forgive me. This is an age-old argument with our companion and I over here."


--


That night, Margaret inched her way over to Victor in the dark. Her thick braid swung over one shoulder, her eyes dancing in the remainders of the coals that smoldered in their campfire from dinner. Barely audibly, she whispered to him, "I want you to make love to me."

 

[Syrrus]

Victor, who always spent the majority of the night reading and writing poems - seeing how he was not allowed to play music that late at night - had finally fallen asleep with a novel over his face and one arm behind his neck. The sound of light footstep woke him out of pure paranoia and he lift the book casually to peer at Margaret with his green eyes. Her words might have been the sweetest of whispers but they still managed to hang in the air like a sore note and his eyes widened a little for a brief moment. Sitting up, leaning on his arms he looked around almost as if making sure she was indeed talking to him. "Out here?" He asked, his voice nothing but a low humming. "Is that not a big unhygienic." It surprised even Victor that the first thought that would ring in his head was the one of sand in places unmentionable, yet they managed to crawl through any other sane thought in his head.


Victor looked around again, spotting Jack sitting in the far distance with his own fireplace, leaning against his rifle, keeping a look out towards the other direction, way over yonder.

 

[GreyZone]

Her eyes had been so full of hope, practically sparkling in what was left of the light from the campfire. But she visibly deflated when all he could think about was hygiene when she proposed it. Of course. She should have known that he would think of it logically and like it was some distasteful act, a chore he would have to do only to appease her so she wouldn't leave. She should have known that much.


Margaret was tired. She was tired of being a virgin, of telling people that she was almost done with her teen years and wasn't even close to having a husband. It made her look disrespectful, like she wasn't worthy or had a fault. Even if no one in the Americas thought it, she was filled with paranoia.


"Do you even want to, Mr. Edwards?" She asked in a hushed, vulnerable voice. Deep in her heart, she was terrified of his rejection. She spent all of her time running around, pretending as if she was completely content in herself. She prided herself in being different from other girls she had grown up with, who ran from sex like the cowards they were. She should just shrug and walk away if Victor didn't want her. And yet, just the thought was almost enough to make her eyes tear up. And she despised herself because of it.

 

[Syrrus]

"Margaret." Victor looked sternly at her. It was obvious that the two answers he could give her would be affecting the girl greatly. Yet he didn't know how to formulate the response. "Listen to me." He sat up and dusted his already dirty coat off. "Of course I'd want to, don't be stupid. What sane man would not?" He shook his head and glared through the darkness. "But I am going to firmly stand my ground. The outcome would come with pain, embedded in pleasure."


He made sure that the book which had been laying neatly over his face was tucked back into his bag, comfortably and safe from the harsh weather and the dirty ground. He rubbed his forehead with pointer and thumb, trying his hardest to come to a conclusion which perhaps could make the young girl understand.


"I love you dearly Margaret. For the love of science, if I did indeed do what you wish upon me I would be trapped in a corner. I love you, heaven knows, but I cannot settle down with you, I cannot keep you for myself because the both of us are looking for different lives. You are not mine to take and I am not yours. Heartache is one thing when accidently touched upon, but to wander straight into it with the knowledge of it being there is foolish."

 

[GreyZone]

Margaret was ancient by her own standards, but was still very young and horribly mature. She craved that validation from him, that she was worth something after all. That the fact that she was an immigrant, a poor bartender's daughter, and that she was a woman did not stand in her way. She needed that from him, and this was the first hint of it she had received.


But of course, she was not even close to satisfied with it.


"I'm tired of being so careful and mindful and heedful of the future," she murmured as she took his face in her hands before pressing a long kiss to his lips. Against him, she murmured, "Don't you ever get tired? Of being so responsible and thought out? Don't think, Mr. Edwards. For once, don't think."

 

[Syrrus]

"Do you know the man you have feelings for?" He gave her a lingering smirk. "I am a horrible drug addict with alcohol problems and a failing liver. I live in dust with papers up to my knees - If I ever think it is only for an artistically purpose." He waved a hand dismissively. "But the pain of the emotional heart is far worse than the pain of a body. I cannot stand it anymore. I am almost twenty years older than you, granted being a man gave me a bit more options, alas I have experience endless heartache and has decided to avoid it, from there on out."


Victor placed a hand fleetingly upon her cheek. "I am sorry Margaret. You may blame me, hit me and hate me for my decision. It will be far easier than what would come after one night of passion."

 

[GreyZone]

"But you are telling me of all these reasons you have," she murmured, brushing her lips against his again. "You are thinking whether you like to admit it or not, Mr. Edwards."


Again, he was making this much too complicated. "Please, Victor. Just give me this tonight and I will never bother you again unless you call for it. But I want this. Please do not deny me this simply because you are afraid of the outcome.


"Do not worry about me; I am not afraid of pain and heartache for I have had plenty. And I am sure you will not unravel yourself at the hand of one night with me." She lowered her eyebrows, looking toward the ground. "We do so much talking and nothing ever comes of it."

 

[Syrrus]

"Are you not listening?!" He was getting angry now, she was getting so much closer to him than he wished. Her lips brushing against his own and brining deluded thoughts into his frail mind. He crawled backwards until he got stuck between her and the rock he had used as cover from the desert winds. "I can listen to you and stop worrying about you, as you so wish. But what about me?! How am I suppose to be able to heal myself from the endless heartache tonight would bring?! There would be no way, except for the bottles and my other... merits." He rubbed his eyes with pointer and thumb.


"I have taken you out to see the world, I have been teaching you the art of reading and writing, I am sending your family - in your sister's name - as much money I am able, each and every week like a good employer would. I can give you my knowledge, I can give you my words and I can give you my coin but I cannot give you my heart, for it is rotten and dead since long - the pain is gone but the scars are still there. I do not wish the pain to come back."

 

[GreyZone]

"But it does not have to bring heartache, Victor," she pleaded with him, so much to the point that she forgot she always addressed him formally. "There is nothing that calls for heartache and pain involved in this!"


She sat back on her heels when he moved away from her, just watching him. "And I thank you so deeply for that, Mr. Edwards. You have opened doors for me that were cement walls earlier in my life. I owe you the world."


"I will not bring you more pain," she promised him. "I have not left you yet. I do not have the heart to! Please! I am not asking for much."

 

[Syrrus]

"Yes it is! I prefer to be alone, how hard is it for the world to understand this?! This has nothing to do with you leaving me. This is about me not being the man for you. I do not want the world you want, I hate children, I despise marriage and I cannot stand to have my life changed, for anyone. I enjoy life, like this." He had to put his foot down, for the young girl seemed not to understand what he was hinting at. He straightened his shirt and started to play with his cufflinks while his eyes darted from place to place.


"You want marriage Margaret, what man wishes to marry a woman who has given herself to another man? Do not give me anything, because I got nothing to give you in return, not something that you wish for anyhow. This is my life, traveling the world and hiding in my apartment, you wish for.. something I cannot even imagine."


Victor pointed towards Jack in the close distance. "He wants what you want, why won't you attempt your luck there, instead of this lost cause of a nobleman?"