diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:46:37 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:46:37 -0700 |
| commit | 74d0d84921d83139f41125f765e3477072e50133 (patch) | |
| tree | 1be72ff3bb5527b70b7ec707ecf4ea7f75e19a5e | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15380-8.txt | 13365 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15380-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 308546 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15380-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 315327 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15380-h/15380-h.htm | 14797 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15380.txt | 13365 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15380.zip | bin | 0 -> 308179 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
9 files changed, 41543 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/15380-8.txt b/15380-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c1f8e3d --- /dev/null +++ b/15380-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13365 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Warren's Daughter, by Sir Harry Johnston + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mrs. Warren's Daughter + A Story of the Woman's Movement + +Author: Sir Harry Johnston + +Release Date: March 16, 2005 [EBook #15380] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. WARREN'S DAUGHTER *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Kegg and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + + + + + + +MRS. WARREN'S DAUGHTER + +A Story of the Woman's Movement + +By + +SIR HARRY JOHNSTON + +New York +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY +1920 + + + TO + + MY JURY OF MATRONS: + + WINIFRED JOHNSTON ELLA HEPWORTH-DIXON + CATHERINE WELLS ANGELA MOND + BEATRICE SANDS MARGARET POWYS + ANNETTE HENDERSON FLORENCE FELLOWES + MARY LEVY RAY ROCKMAN-BRAHAM + FLORENCE TRAVERS MAUD PARRY + + + THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED, + IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT--IN THE MAIN--IT HAS + THEIR SYMPATHY AND APPROVAL. + + H. H. JOHNSTON + + POLING, + _March, 1920_ + + + + +PREFACE + + +The earlier part of Vivien Warren's life and that of her mother, +Catherine Warren, was told by Mr. George Bernard Shaw in his play, +"Mrs. Warren's Profession," published first in 1898. + +(_Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant_: 1. _Unpleasant_. Constable and +Co., 6th Edition.) + +I have his permission to continue the story from 1898 onwards. To +understand my sequel it is not necessary to have read the play which +so brilliantly placed the Warren problem before us. But as most +persons of average good education have found Mr. Shaw's comedies +necessary to their mental furnishing, their understanding of +contemporary life, it is probable that all who would be drawn to +this book are already acquainted with the story of Mrs. Warren, and +will be interested in learning what happened after that story was +laid down by Mr. Shaw in 1897. I would in addition placate hostile +or peevish reviewers by reminding them of the continuity of human +histories; of biographies, real--though a little disguised by the +sauce of fiction--and unreal--because entitled _Life and Letters, by +His Widow_. The best novel or life-story ever written does not +commence with its opening page. The real commencement goes back to +the Stone ages or at any rate to the antecedent circumstances which +led up to the crisis or the formation of the characters portrayed. +Mr. Pickwick had a father, a grandfather; a mother in a mob-cap; in +the eighteenth century. It is permissible to speculate on their +stories and dispositions. Neither does a novel or a biography end +with the final page of its convenient instalment. + +When you lay down the book which describes the pathetic failure of +Lord Randolph Churchill, you do so with curiosity as to what will +become of Winston. With a pre-knowledge of the Pickwick Club, one +may usefully employ the imagination in tracing out the possible +careers of Sam Weller's chubby little boys; grown into old men, and +themselves, perchance, leaving progeny that may have married into +the peerage from the Turf, or have entered the War Cabinet at the +beckoning of Mr. Lloyd George. + +I know of descendants of Madame de Brinvilliers in England who have +helped to found the Y.W.C.A.; and collateral offshoots from the +Charlotte Corday stock who are sternly opposed to the assassination +of statesmen-journalists. + +So, I have taken on myself the continuation of the story outlined +twenty-three years ago by Mr. Shaw in its late Victorian stage. _He_ +had a prior claim to do so; just as he might have shown us the +life--but not the letters, for she was illiterate--of Catherine +Warren's mother, the frier of fish and letter of lodgings on Tower +Hill in the 'forties and 'fifties of the last century; and of the +young Lieutenant Warren of the Tower garrison who lodged and +cohabited with her at intervals between 1850 and 1854, when he went +out to the Crimea and there died of frost-bite and neglected wounds. +Mr. Shaw has waived such claims, having, as Vivie's grandmother +would have said, "other fish to fry." But for this I should not have +ventured to take up the tale, as I hold an author while he lives has +a prescriptive right to his creations. I shall feel no bitterness in +Nirvana if, after my death, another continues the story of Vivie or +of her friends and collateral relations, under circumstances which I +shall not live to see. + +In justice to Mr. Shaw I should state that the present book is +entirely my own, and that though he has not renounced a polite +interest in Vivie he is in no way responsible for her career and +behaviour. He may even be annoyed at both. + + H. H. JOHNSTON. + + + + + CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR + I VIVIE AND NORIE + II HONORIA AND HER FRIENDS + III DAVID VAVASOUR WILLIAMS + IV PONTYSTRAD + V READING FOR THE BAR + VI THE ROSSITERS + VII HONORIA AGAIN + VIII THE BRITISH CHURCH + IX DAVID IS CALLED TO THE BAR + X THE SHILLITO CASE + XI DAVID GOES ABROAD + XII VIVIE RETURNS + XIII THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT + XIV MILITANCY + XV IMPRISONMENT + XVI BRUSSELS AND THE WAR: 1914 + XVII THE GERMANS IN BRUSSELS: 1915-1916 + XVIII THE BOMB IN PORTLAND PLACE + XIX BERTIE ADAMS + XX AFTER THE ARMISTICE + L'ENVOI + + + + +MRS. WARREN'S DAUGHTER + + + + +CHAPTER I + +VIVIE AND NORIE + + +The date when this story begins is a Saturday afternoon in June, +1900, about 3 p.m. The scene is the western room of a suite of +offices on the fifth floor of a house in Chancery Lane, the offices +of _Fraser and Warren_, Consultant Actuaries and Accountants. There +is a long window facing west, the central part of which is open, +affording a passage out on to a parapet. Through this window, and +still better from the parapet outside, may be seen the picturesque +spires and turrets of the Law Courts, a glimpse here and there of +the mellow, red-brick, white-windowed houses of New Square, the +tree-tops of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the hint beyond a steepled +and chimneyed horizon of the wooded heights of Highgate. All this +outlook is flooded with the brilliant sunshine of June, scarcely +dimmed by the city smoke and fumes. + +In the room itself there are on each of the tables vases of flowers +and a bunch of dark red roses on the top of the many pigeon-holed +bureau at which Vivien Warren is seated. The walls are mainly +covered with book-shelves well filled with consultative works on +many diverse subjects. There is another series of shelves crowded +with neat, green, tin boxes containing the papers of clients. A dark +green-and-purple portière partly conceals the entry into a washing +place which is further fitted with a gas stove for cooking and +cupboards for crockery and provisions. At the opposite end of the +room is a door which opens into a small bedroom. The fireplace in +the main room is fitted with the best and least smelly kind of gas +stove obtainable in 1900. + +There are two square tables covered with piles of documents neatly +tied with green tape and ranged round the central vase of flowers; a +heavy, squat earthenware vase not easily knocked over; and there is +a second bureau with pigeon-holes and a roll top, similar to the one +at which Vivien Warren is seated. This is for the senior partner, +Honoria Fraser. Between the bureaus there is plenty of space for +access to the long west window and consequently to the parapet which +can be used like a balcony. Two small arm-chairs in green leather on +either side of the fireplace, two office chairs at the tables and a +revolving chair at each bureau complete the furniture of the +partners' room of _Fraser and Warren_ as you would have seen it +twenty years ago. + +The rest of their offices consisted of a landing from which a lift +and a staircase descended, a waiting-room for clients, pleasantly +furnished, a room in which two female clerks worked, and off this a +small room tenanted by an office boy. You may also add in +imagination an excellent lavatory for the clerks, two telephones +(one in the partners' room), hidden safes, wall-maps; and you must +visualize everything as pleasing in colour--green, white, and +purple--flooded with light; clean, tidy, and admirably adapted for +business in the City. + +Vivien Warren, as already mentioned, was, as the curtain goes up, +seated at her bureau, reading a letter. The letter was headed "Camp +Hospital, Colesberg, Cape Colony, May 2, 1900"; and ran thus:-- + + DEAREST VIVIE,-- + + Here I am still, but my leg is mending fast. The enteric was + the worse trouble. That is over and done with, though I am + the colour of a pig-skin saddle. My leg won't let me frisk + just yet, but otherwise I feel as strong as a horse. + + When I was bowled over three months ago and the enteric got + hold of me, on top of the bullet through my thigh, I lost my + self-control and asked the people here to cable to you to + come and nurse me. It was silly perhaps--the nursing here is + quite efficient--and if any one was to have come out on my + account it ought to have been the poor old mater, who wanted + to very much. But somehow I could only think of _you_. I + wanted you more than I'd ever done before. I hoped somehow + your heart might be touched and you might come out and nurse + me, and then out of pity marry me. Won't you do so? Owing to + my stiff leg I dare say I shall be invalided out of the Army + and get a small wound pension. And I've a project which will + make lots of money--up in Rhodesia--a tip I've had from a + man in the know. I'm going to take up some land near + Salisbury. Ripping country and climate and all that. It + would suit you down to the ground. You could put all that + Warren business behind you, forget it all, drop the name, + start a new career as Mrs. Frank Gardner, and find an + eternally devoted husband in the man that signs this letter. + + I've been out here long enough to be up to all the ropes, + and I'd already made a bit of money in Rhodesia before the + war broke out and I got a commission. At any rate I've + enough to start on as a married man, enough to give you a + decent outfit and your passage out here and have a honeymoon + before we start work on our future home. Darling Vivie! Do + think about it. You'd never regret it. I'm a very different + Frank to the silly ass you knew in the old Haslemere days. + Now here's a five pound note to cover the cost of a full + cable to say "yes," and when you'll be ready to start. When + I get your answer--somehow I feel it'll _be_ "yes"--I'll + send you a draft on a London bank to pay for a suitable + trousseau and your passage from London to Cape Town, and _of + course_ I'll come and meet you there, where we can be + married. I shan't sleep properly till I get your "yes." + + Your ever loving and always faithful + FRANK. + + P.S. There's a poor fellow here in the same ward dying--I + should say--of necrosis of the jaw--Vavasour Williams is his + name or a part of his name. His father was at Cambridge with + my old man, and--isn't it rum?--he was a pupil of + _Praddy's_!! He mucked his school and 'varsity career, + thought next he'd like to be an architect or a scene + painter. My dad recommended Praddy as a master. He worked in + the Praed studio, but got the chuck over some foolery. Then + as he couldn't face his poor old Governor, he enlisted in + the Bechuanaland Border police, came out to South Africa and + got let in for this show. The doctors and nurses give him + about a month and he doesn't know it. He can't talk much + owing to his jaw being tied up--usually he writes me + messages, all about going home and being a good boy, turning + over a new leaf, and so on. I suppose the last person you + ever see nowadays is the Revd. Sam Gardner? You know they + howked him out of Woodcote? He got "preferment" as he calls + it, and a cure of souls at Margate. Rather rough on the dear + old mater--bless her, _always_--She so liked the Hindhead + country. But if you run up against Praddy you might let him + know and he might get into touch with Vavasour Williams's + people--twig?--F.G. + +Vivie rose to her feet half-way through this letter and finished it +standing by the window. + +She was tall--say, five feet eight; about twenty-five years of age; +with a well-developed, athletic figure, set off by a smart, +tailor-made gown of grey cloth. Yet although she might be called a +handsome woman she would easily have passed for a good-looking young +man of twenty, had she been wearing male costume. + +Her brown-gold hair was disposed of with the least ostentation +possible and with no fluffiness. Her eyebrows were too well +furnished for femininity and nearly met when she frowned--a too +frequent practice, as was the belligerent look from her steely grey +eyes with their beautiful Irish setting of long dark lashes. She had +a straight nose and firm rounded chin, a rather determined look +about the mouth--lower lip too much drawn in as if from perpetual +self-repression. But all this severity disappeared when she smiled +and showed her faultless teeth. The complexion was clear though a +little tanned from deliberate exposure in athletics. Altogether a +woman that might have been described as "jolly good-looking," if it +had not been that whenever any man looked at her something hostile +and forbidding came into the countenance, and the eyebrows formed an +angry bar of hazel-brown above the dark-lashed eyes. But her "young +man" look won for her many a feminine friendship which she +impatiently repelled; for sentimentality disgusted her. + +The door of the partners' room opened and in walked Honoria Fraser. +She was probably three years older than Vivie and likewise a +well-favoured woman, a little more matronly in appearance, somewhat +after the style of a married actress who really loves her husband +and has preserved her own looks wonderfully, though no one would +take her for less than twenty-eight. + +At the sight of her, Vivie lost her frown and tossed the letter on +to the bureau. + +Honoria Fraser had been lunching with friends in Portland Place. + +_Honoria_: "What a swotter you are! I _thought_ I should find you +here. I suppose the staff departed punctually at One? I've come +back expressly from the Michael Rossiters to carry you off to +them--or rather to Kew. They're going to have tea with the +Thiselton-Dyers and then revel in azaleas and roses. I shall go out +and charter a hansom and we'll drive down ... it'll be some +compensation for your having worked extra hard whilst I've been +away.... + +"I met such a delightful man at the Rossiters'!" (slightly flushing) +"Don't look at me so reproachfully! There _are_ delightful men--a +few--in existence. This one has been wounded in South Africa and +he's so good-looking, though the back of his head is scarred and +he'll always walk with a limp.... Now then! Why do you look so +solemn? Put on your hat..." + +_Vivie_: "I look solemn because I'm just considering a proposal of +marriage--or rather, the fewest words in which I can refuse it. I +don't think I want to go to Kew at all ... much sooner we had tea +together, here, on the roof..." + +_Norie_: "I suppose it's Frank Gardner again, as I see his +handwriting on that envelope. Well I'm sorry about Kew--I should +have enjoyed it..." + +_Vivie_ (bitterly): "I expect it's that 'delightful man' that +attracts you." + +_Norie_: "Nonsense! I'm vowed to virginity, like you are ... I +really don't care if I never see Major Armstrong again ... though he +certainly _is_ rather a darling ... very good-looking ... and, d'you +know, he's almost a Pro-Boer, though the Boers ambushed him.... Says +this war's a beastly mistake.... + +"Well: I'll have tea here instead, if you like, and we can talk +business, which we haven't done for a fortnight. I must get out of +the way of paying visits in the country. They make one so +discontented with the City afterwards. I've had a feeling lately I +should like to have been a farmer.... Too much of the work of the +firm has been thrown on you.... But there's lots and lots I want to +talk over. I abandon Kew, willingly, and as to Major Armstrong.... +However he can always find my address if he cares to..." + +_Vivie_ (sits down in one of the arm chairs and Norie takes the +other): "Oh don't pity me. I love hard work and work which interests +me. And as to working for _you_, you know there's nothing I +wouldn't..." + +_Norie_: "Oh stow that!... You've been a full-fledged partner for a +year and ought to be getting callous or suspicious ... I _did_ take +some money out of the petty cash yesterday. I must remember to put +it down. I took quite a lot ... for theatre tickets ... and you may +be suspecting Bertie Adams ... we can't call this an Adamless Eden, +can we? I wonder why we keep an office boy and not an office girl? I +suppose such things will soon be coming into being. We've women +clerks and typewriteresses ... Adams, I notice, is growing, and he +has the trace of a moustache and is already devoted to you ... +dog-like..." + +_Vivie_: "He's still more devoted to cricket, fortunately; and as +soon as Rose and Lilian had gone he was off too.... Only, I fancy, +he discards Regent's Park now in favour of Hendon or Herne Hill..." + +_Norie_: "Now, about Frank Gardner..." + +_Vivie_: "Yes, that cablegram.... Let's frame it and send it off as +soon as we can; then get tea ready. Talking of tea: I was just +thinking before Frank's letter came how much good you'd done me--in +many other ways than setting me up in business." + +_Norie_: "Shut up!..." + +_Vivie_: "How, when we first worked together, I used to think it +necessary to imitate men by drinking an occasional whiskey and +soda--though I loathe spirits--and smoking a cigar--ugh!--And how +you drew me back to tea and a self-respecting womanliness--China +tea, of course, and cigarettes. Why _should_ we have wanted to be +like men?... much better to be the New Woman.... + +"As to Frank's cablegram..." (Goes to bureau, tries over several +drafts of message, consults Postal Guide as to cable rates _per_ +word, and reads aloud) ... "How's this? 'Captain Frank Gardner Camp +Hospital Colesberg Cape Colony. Sorry must say no Best wishes +recovery writing. Vivie.' That'll cost just Two pounds and out of +the balance I shall buy a good parcel of books to send him, and some +strawberries and cakes for our tea." (Therewith she puts on hat +carefully--for she is always very particular, in a young-gentlemanly +way, about her appearance--goes out to send off cablegram from +Chancery Lane post-office, buy strawberries and cakes from Fleet +Street shops, and so back to the office by four o'clock. Meantime +Norie is reading through some of the recent correspondence on the +file.) + +_Vivie_ (on her return): "Pouf! It _was_ hot in Fleet Street! I'm +sorry for poor Frankie, because he seems so to have set his heart on +marrying me. But I do hope he will take this answer as _final_." + +_Norie_: "I suppose you are not refusing him for the same old +reason--that vague suggestion that he might be your half-brother?" + +_Vivie_: "Oh _no_! Besides I pretty well know for a fact he isn't, +he simply couldn't be. I'm absolutely sure my father wasn't Sam +Gardner, any more than George Crofts was. I believe it was a young +Irish seminarist, some student for the priesthood whom my mother met +in Belgium the year before I was born. If I ever find out more I +will tell you. _You_ haven't seen 'Soapy Sam,' the Vicar of +Woodcote, or that beast, George Crofts; but if you _had_, you'd be +as sure as I am that neither of them was _my_ father--thank +goodness! As to Frank--yes--for a short time I _was_ fond of +him--till I learnt about my mother's 'profession.' It was rather a +silly sort of fondness. He was two years younger than I; I suppose +my feeling for him was half motherly ... I neither encouraged him +nor did I repel him. I think I was experimenting ... I rather wanted +to know what it felt like to be kissed by a man. Frank was a nice +creature, so far as a man can be. But all those horrid revelations +that broke up our summer stay at Haslemere four years ago--when I +ran away to you--gave me an utter disgust for marriage. And what a +life mine would have been if I had married him then; or after he +went out to South Africa! _Ghastly_! Want of money would have made +us hate one another and Frank would have been sure to become +patronizing. Because I was without a father in the legitimate way he +would have thought he was conferring a great honour on me by +marrying me, and would probably have expected me to drudge for him +while he idled his time away.... Oh, when I think what a life I have +led here, with you, full of interesting work and bright prospects, +free from money anxieties--dearest, dearest Norie--I can't thank you +enough. No, I'm not going to be sentimental--the New Woman is never +that. I'm going to get the tea ready; and after we've had tea on the +balcony we really must go into business matters. Your being away so +much the last fortnight, things have accumulated that I did not like +to decide for myself..." + +_Norie_ (speaking rather louder as Vivie is now busy in the +adjoining roomlet, boiling the kettle on the gas stove and preparing +the tea): "Yes. And I've got _lots_ to talk over with you. All sorts +of plans have come into my head. I don't know whether I have been +eating anything more than usually brain stimulating--everything has +a physical basis--but I have come back from this scattered holiday +full of new ideas." + +Presently they are seated on camp-stools sipping tea, eating +strawberries and cakes, under the striped sun-blind. + +_Norie_ continues: "Do you remember Beryl Clarges at Newnham?" + +_Vivie_: "Yes--the pretty girl--short, curly hair, brown eyes, +rather full lips, good at mathematics--hockey ... purposely shocked +you by her outspokenness--well?" + +_Norie_: "Well, she's had a baby ... a month ago ... awful rumpus +with her people ... Father's Dean Clarges ... Norwich or Ely, I +forget which ... They've put her in a Nursing Home in Seymour +Street. Mother wears a lace mantilla and cries softly. Beryl went +wrong, as they call it, with an architect." + +_Vivie_: "Pass your cup ... Don't take _all_ the strawberries +(_Norie_: "Sorry! Absence of mind--I've left you three fat ones") +Architect? Strange! I always thought all architects were like +Praddy--had no passions except for bricks and mortar and chiselled +stone and twirligig iron grilles ... perhaps just a thrill over a +nude statue. Why, till you told me this I'd as soon have trusted my +daughter--if I had one--with an architect as with a Colonel of +Engineers--You know! The kind that believes in the identity of the +Ten Lost Tribes with the British and is a True Protestant! Poor +Beryl! But how? what? when? why?" + +_Norie_: "I think it began at Cambridge--the acquaintance did ... +Later, it developed into a passion. He had already one wife in +Sussex somewhere and four children. He took a flat for her in +Town--a studio--because Berry had given up mathematics and was going +in for sculpture; and there, whenever he could get away from +Storrington or some such place and from his City office, he used to +visit Beryl. This had been going on for three years. But last +February she had to break it to her mother that she was six months +gone. The other wife knows all about it but refuses to divorce the +naughty architect, and at the same time has cut off supplies--What +_cowards_ men are and how _little_ women stand by women! And then +it's a poor deanery and Beryl has five younger brothers that have +got to be educated. Her sculpture was little more than commissions +executed for her architect's building and I expect that resource +will now disappear ... I half think I shall bring her in here, when +she is well again. She's got a very good head-piece and you know we +are expanding our business ... She'd make a good House Agent ... She +writes sometimes for _Country Life_..." + +_Vivie_: "Ye-es.... But you can't provide for many more of our +college-mates. Any more gone wrong?" + +_Norie_: "It depends how you qualify 'wrong.' I really don't see +that it is 'wronger' for a young woman to yield to 'storgé' and have +a baby out of wedlock than for a man to engender that baby. Society +doesn't damn the man, unless he is a Cabinet Minister or a Cleric; +but it does its best to ruin the woman ... unless she's an actress +or a singer. If a woman likes to go through all the misery of +pregnancy and the pangs of delivery on her own account and without +being legally tied up with a man, why can't she? Beryl, at any rate, +is quite unashamed, and says she shall have as many children as her +earnings support ... that it will be great fun choosing their +sires--more variety in their types.... Is _she_ the New Woman, I +wonder?" + +_Vivie_: "Well the whole thing bores me ... I suppose I am +embittered and disgusted. I'm sick of all this sexual nonsense.... +Yes, after all, I approve of the marriage tie: it takes away the +romance of love, and it's that romance which is usually so +time-wasting and so dangerous. It conceals often a host of horrors +... But I'm a sort of neuter. All I want in life is hard work ... a +cause to fight for.... Revenge ... revenge on Man. God! How I hate +men; how I despise them! We can do anything they can if we train and +educate. I have taken to your business because it is one of the +crafty paths we can follow to creep into Man's fastnesses of the +Law, the Stock-Market, the Banks and Actuarial work..." + +_Norie_: "My dear! You have quite a platform manner already. I +predict you will soon be addressing audiences of rebellious +women.... But I am more the Booker Washington of my sex. I want +women to work--even at quite humble things--before they insist on +equal rights with man. At any rate I want to help them to make an +honest livelihood without depending on some one man.... Business +seems to be good, eh? If the first half of this year is equalled by +the second, I should think there would be a profit to be divided of +quite a thousand pounds?" + +_Vivie_: "Quite. Of course we are regular pirates. None of the +actuarial or accountancy corporations will admit women, so we can't +pass exams and call ourselves chartered actuaries or incorporated +accountants. But if women clients choose to consult us there is no +law to prevent them, or to make our giving advice illegal. So we +advise and estimate and do accounts and calculate probabilities. +Then although we can't call ourselves Solicitors we can--or at any +rate we do--give legal advice. We can't figure on the Stock +Exchange, but we can advise clients about their investments and buy +and sell stock and real estate (By the bye I want you to give me +your opinion on the tithe question, the liability on that Kent fruit +farm). We are consulted on contracts ... I'm going to start a women +authors' branch, and perhaps a tourist agency. Some day we will have +a women's publishing business, we'll set up a women's printing +press, a paper mill.... Of course as you know I am working hard on +law ... not only to understand men's roguery in every direction, but +so that if necessary I can add pleading in the courts to some other +woman's solicitor work. That's going to be my first struggle with +Man: to claim admittance to the Bar.... If we can once breach that +rampart the Vote must inevitably follow. Oh _how_ we have been dumb +before our shearers! The rottenness of Man's law.... The perjury, +corruption, waste of time, special pleading that go on in our male +courts of _in_justice, the verdicts of male juries!" + +_Norie_: "Just so. But can't you find a little time to be social? +Why be so morose? For instance, why not come and be introduced to +Michael Rossiter? He's a dear--amazingly clever--a kind of +prophet--Your one confidant, Stead, thinks a lot of him." + +_Vivie_: "_Dear_ Norie--I can't. I swore two years ago I would drop +Society and run no risk of being found out as 'Mrs. Warren's +daughter.' That beast George Crofts revenged himself because I +wouldn't marry him by letting it be known here and there that I +_was_ the daughter of the 'notorious Mrs. Warren'; whereupon several +of the people I liked--you remember?--dropped me--the Burne-Joneses, +the Lacrevys. Or if it wasn't Crofts some other swine did. But for +the fact that it would upset our style as a firm I could change my +name: call myself something quite different.... + +"D'you know, I've sometimes thought I'd cut my hair short and dress +in men's clothes, and go out into the world as a man ... my voice is +almost a tenor--_Such_ a lark! I'd get admitted to the Bar. But the +nuisance about that would be the references. I'm an outlaw, you see, +through no fault of mine.... I couldn't give _you_ as a reference, +and I don't know any man who would be generous enough to take the +risk of participating in the fraud.... unless it were Praed--good +old Praddy. I'm sure it's been done now and again. They call Judge +FitzSimmons 'an old woman.' Well, d'you know, I believe he _is_ ... +a wise old woman." + +_Norie_: "Well: bide a wee, till our firm is doing a roaring +business: I can pretend then to take in a male partner, p'raps. +Rose and Lilian are very hard-working and we can't afford to lose +them yet. If you appeared one morning dressed as a young man they +might throw up their jobs and go elsewhere..." + +_Vivie_: "You may be quite sure I won't let _you_ down. Moreover I +haven't the money for any vagaries yet, though I have an instinct +that it is coming. You know those Charles Davis shares I bought at +5_s._ 3_d._? Well, they rose to 29_s._ whilst you were away; so I +sold out. We had three hundred, and that, less commissions, made +about £350 profit; the boldest coup we have had yet. And all because +I spotted that new find of emery powder in Tripoli, saw it in a +Consular Report.... + +"I want to be rich and therefore powerful, Norie! Then people will +forget fast enough about my shameful parentage." + +_Norie_: "How _is_ she? Do you ever hear from or of her now?" + +_Vivie_: "I haven't heard _from_ her for two years, since I left her +letters unanswered. But I hear _of_ her every now and again. No. Not +through Crofts. I suppose you know--if you take any interest in that +wretch--that since he married the American quakeress he took his +name off the _Warren Hotels Company_ and sold out much of his +interest. He is now living in great respectability, breeding race +horses. They even say he has given up whiskey. He has got a son and +has endowed six cots in a Children's hospital. No. I think it must +be _mother_ who has notices posted to me, probably through that +scoundrel, Bax Strangeways ... generally in the _London Argus_ and +the _Vie-de-Paris_--cracking up the Warren Hotels in Brussels, +Berlin, Buda-Pest and Roquebrune. _What_ a comedy!... + +"There's my Aunt Liz at Winchester--Mrs. Canon Burstall--won't know +me--I'm too compromising. But I'm sure her money-bags have been +filled at one time--perhaps are still--out of the profits on +mother's 'Hotels.'..." + +_Norie_: "I didn't remember your aunt was married ... or rather I +suppose I did, but thought she was a widow, real or _soi-disant_..." + +_Vivie_: "So she is, after four years of happy married life! My +'uncle' Canon Burstall--Oh what a screaming joke the whole thing +is!... I doubt if he was aware he had a niece.... Don't you remember +he was killed in the Alps last autumn?..." + +_Norie_: "I remember your going down to see your aunt after you +broke off relations with your mother in--in--1897...?" + +_Vivie_: "Yes. I wanted to see how the land lay and not judge any +one unfairly. Besides I--I--didn't like being dependent entirely on +you--at that time--for support: and Praed was in Italy. I knew that +Aunt Liz, like mother, was illegitimate--and guessed she had once +made her living in the higher walks of prostitution--she was a +stockbroker's mistress at one time--. But she had married and +settled down at Winchester ... She met her Canon--the Alpine +traveller ... in Switzerland. I felt if she took no money from +mother's 'houses,' I could perhaps make a home with her, or at any +rate have _some_ kith and kin to go to. She had no children.... +But--I must have told you all this years ago?--she almost pushed me +out of her house for fear I should stay till the Canon came in from +the afternoon service; denied everything; threatened me as though I +was a blackmailer; almost looked as if she could have killed me and +buried me in the garden of the Canonry.... + +"I've examined the business of the _Warren Hotels Ltd._ since then, +but it's a private company, and all its doings are so cleverly +concealed.... Aunt Liz doesn't figure amongst the shareholders any +more than Crofts does. That horrid Bax holds most of the shares now, +and mother the rest.... Yet Aunt Liz must be rich and she certainly +didn't get it from the Canon, who only left a net personality of +under £4,000.... I read his will at Somerset House.... She has had +her portrait in the _Queen_ because she gave a large subscription to +the underpinning of Winchester Cathedral and the restoration of +Wolvesey as a clergy house.... Mother must be very rich, I should +judge, from certain indications. I expect _she_ will retire from the +'Hotels,' some day, wipe out the past, and buy a new present with +her money.... She'll have _her_ portrait in the _Queen_ some day as +a Vice-President of the Girls' Friendly Society!... And yet she's +such a gambler and a rake that she _may_ get pinched over the White +Slave traffic.... I was on tenterhooks over that Lewissohn case the +other day, fearing every moment to see mother's name mixed up with +it, or else an allusion to her 'Hotels.' But I fancy she has been +wise enough--indeed I should guess that Aunt Liz had long ago warned +her to leave England alone as a recruiting ground and to collect her +chambermaids, waitresses, musicians, typists from the Continent +only--Austria, Alsace, Bohemia, Belgium, Italy, the Rhineland, +Paris, Russia, Poland. Knowing what we British people are, can't you +almost predict the _bias_ of Aunt Liz's mind? How she would solace +herself that her dividends were not derived from the prostitution of +English girls but only of 'foreigners'?..." + +_Norie_: "You seem to have studied the geography of the business +pretty thoroughly!..." + +_Vivie_ (bitterly): "Yes. I have talked it over with Stead from time +to time. I believe he has only spared mother and the Warren Hotels +out of consideration for me ... He wants me to change my surname and +give myself a chance..." + +_Norie_: "I see" (pausing). "Of course it is rather an idea, as you +refuse to disguise yourself by marriage. You'd change your name and +then listen with equanimity to fulminations against the Warren +Hotels. But there would be an awkwardness in the firm. We oughtn't +to change our title just as we are getting a good clientèle.... I +must think ... If only we could pretend you'd been left some +property--but that sort of lie is soon found out!--and had to change +your name to--to--to. Oh well, we could soon think of some name +beginning with a W--Walters, Waddilove--Waddilove is a delicious +name in cold weather, suggesting cotton-wool or a warm duvet--or +Wilson--or Wilberforce. But I'm afraid the staff--Rose Mullet and +Lily Steynes and the amorous Bertie Adams--would think it odd, put +two and two together, and guess right. Warren, after all, is such a +common name. And we've got so used to our three helpers, we could +hardly turn them off, and take on new people whom perhaps we +couldn't trust.... We must think it over.... + +"Now I must go back to Queen Anne's Mansions and sit a little while +with Mummy. Come and dine with us? There'll only be us three ... no +horrid man to fall in love with you.... You needn't put on a low +dress ... and we'll go to the dress circle at some play afterwards." + +_Vivie_: "But those papers on my desk? I must have your opinion for +or against..." + +_Norie_: "All right. It's half-past five. I'll give them half an +hour's study whilst you wash up the tea things and titivate. Then +we'll take a hansom to Quansions: the Underground is so grimy." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +HONORIA AND HER FRIENDS + + +The story of Honoria Fraser was something like this: partly +guesswork, I admit. Although I know her well I can only put her past +together by deductions based on a few admitted facts, one or two +letters and occasional unfinished sentences, interrupted by +people coming in. Is it not _always_ thus with our friends and +acquaintances? I long to know all about them from their birth +(including date and place of birth and parentage) onwards; what the +father's profession was and why on earth he married the mother +(after I saw the daguerreotype portrait), and how they became +possessed of so much money, and why she went back to live with _her_ +mother between the birth of her second child and the near advent of +her third. But in how very few cases do we know their whole story, +do we even care to know more than is sufficient for our purpose in +issuing or accepting invitations? There are the Dombeys--the Gorings +as they're now called, who live near us. I've seen the tombstone of +Lucilla Smith in Goring churchyard, but I don't know _for a fact_ +that Lord Goring was the father of Lucilla's son (who was killed in +the war). I guess he was, from this and that, from what Mrs. Legg +told me, and what I overheard at the Sterns'. If he wasn't, then he +has only himself to thank for the wrong assumption: I mean, from his +goings-on. + +Then again, the Clementses, who live at the Grange. I feel +instinctively they are _nice_ people, but I haven't the least idea +who _she_ was and how _he_ made his money, though from his acreage +and his motors I am entitled to assume he has a large income. She +seems to know a lot about Spain; but I don't feel encouraged to ask +her: "Was your father in the wine trade? Is _that_ why you know +Xeres so well?" Clements himself has in his study an enlarged +photograph of a handsome woman with a kind of mourning wreath round +the frame--beautifully carved. Is it the portrait of a former wife? +Or of a sister who committed suicide? Or was it merely bought in +Venice for the sake of the carving? Perhaps I shall know some +day--if it matters. In a moment of expansion during the Railway +Strike, Mrs. Clements will say: "_That_ was poor Walter's first. She +died of acute dyspepsia, poor thing, on their marriage tour, and was +buried at Venice. Don't ever allude to it because he feels it so +dreadfully." And my curiosity will have been rewarded for its long +and patient restraint. Clements' little finger on his left hand is +mutilated. I have never asked why--a lawn-mowing machine? Or a bite +from some passionate mistress in a buried past? I note silently that +he disapproves of palmistry-- + +But about Honoria Fraser, to whom I was introduced by Mr. George +Bernard Shaw twenty years ago: She was born in 1872, as _Who's Who_ +will tell you; also that she was the daughter and eldest child of a +famous physician (Sir Meldrum Fraser) who wrought some marvellous +cures in the 'sixties, 'seventies and 'eighties, chiefly by dieting +and psycho-therapy. (He got his knighthood in the first jubilee year +for reducing to reasonable proportions the figure of good-hearted, +thoroughly kindly, and much loved Princess Mary of Oxford.) +He--Honoria's father--was married to a beautiful woman, a relation +of Bessie Rayner Parkes, with inherited advanced views on the Rights +and Position of Woman. Lady Fraser was, indeed, an early type of +Suffragist and also wrote some poetry which was far from bad. They +had two children: Honoria, born, as I say, in 1872; and John (John +Stuart Mill Fraser was his full name--too great a burden to be +borne) four years later than Honoria, who was devoted to him, +idolized him, as did his mother and father. Honoria went to Bedford +College and Newnham; John to one of the two most famous of our +public schools (I need not be more precise), with Cambridge in view +afterwards. + +But in the case of John a tragedy occurred. He had risen to be head +of the school; statesmen with little affectation applauded him on +speech days. He had been brilliant as a batsman, was a champion +swimmer, and _facile princeps_ in the ineptitudes of the classics; +and showed a dazzling originality in other studies scarcely within +the school curriculum. Further he was growing out of boy gawkiness +into a handsome youth of an Apolline mould, when, on the morning of +his eighteenth birthday, he was found dead in his bed, with a bottle +of cyanide of potassium on the bed-table to explain why. + +All else was wrapt in mystery ... at any rate it was a mystery I +have no wish to lay bare. The death and the inquest verdict, +"Suicide while of unsound mind, due to overstudy," broke his +father's heart and his mother's: in the metaphorical meaning of +course, because the heart is an unemotional pump and it is the brain +and the nerve centres that suffer from our emotions. Sir Meldrum +Fraser died a year after his son. He left a fortune of eighty +thousand pounds. Half of this went at once to Honoria and the other +half to the life-use of Lady Fraser with a reversion to her +daughter. + +Honoria after her father's death left Cambridge and moved her mother +from Harley Street to Queen Anne's Mansions so that with her +shattered nerves and loss of interest in life she might have no +household worries, or at any rate nothing worse than remonstrating +with the still-room maids on the twice-boiled water brought in for +the making of tea; or with the culinary department over the +monotonous character of the savouries or the tepid ice creams which +dissolved so rapidly into fruit-juice when they were served after a +house-dinner.[1] Honoria herself, mistress of a clear two thousand +pounds a year, and more in prospect, carried out plans formed while +still at Newnham after her brother's death. She, like Vivien Warren, +her three-years-younger friend and college-mate, was a great +mathematician--a thing I never could be and a status I am incapable +of understanding; consequently one I view at first with the deepest +respect. I am quite astonished when I meet a male or female +mathematician and find they require food as I do, are less quick at +adding up bridge scores, lose rather than win at Goodwood, and write +down the "down" train instead of the "up" in their memorabilia. But +there it is. They have only to apply sines and co-sines, tangents +and logarithms to a stock exchange quotation for me to grovel before +their superior wisdom and consult them at every turn in life. + + [Footnote 1: This, of course, was twenty, years ago.--H.H.J.] + +Honoria had resolved to turn her great acquirements in Algebra and +the Higher Mathematics to practical purposes. Being the ignoramus +that I am--in this direction--I cannot say how it was to be done; +but both she and Vivie had grasped the possibilities which lay +before exceptionally well-educated women on the Stock Exchange, in +the Provision markets, in the Law, in Insurance calculations, and +generally in steering other and weaker women through the +difficulties and pitfalls of our age; when in nine cases out of +thirteen (Honoria worked out the ratio) women of large or moderate +means have only dishonest male proficients to guide them. + +Moreover Honoria's purpose was two-fold. She wished to help women in +their business affairs, but she also wanted to find careers for +women. She, like Vivien Warren, was a nascent suffragist--perhaps a +born suffragist, a reasoned one; because the ferment had been in her +mother, and her grandmother was a friend of Lydia Becker and a +cousin of Mrs. Belloc. John's death had been a horrible numbing +shock to Honoria, and she felt hardly in her right mind for three +months afterwards. Then on reflection it left some tarnish on her +family, even if the memory of the dear dead boy, the too brilliant +boy, softened from the poignancy of utter disappointment into a +tender sorrow and an infinite pity and forgiveness. + +But the tragedy turned her thoughts from marriage to some mission of +well-doing. She determined to devote that proportion of her +inheritance which would have been John's share to this end: the +liberation and redemption of women. + +She was no "anti-man," like Vivie. She liked men, if truth were +told, a tiny wee bit more than women. But she wished in the moods +that followed her brother's death in 1894 to be a mother by +adoption, a refuge for the fallen, the bewildered, the unstrung. She +helped young men back into the path of respectability and +wage-earning as well as young women. She was even, when opportunity +offered, a matchmaker. + +Being heiress eventually to £4,000 a year (a large income in pre-war +days) and of attractive appearance, she had no lack of suitors, even +though she thought modern dancing inane, and had little skill at +ball-games. I have indicated her appearance by some few phrases +already; but to enable you to visualize her more definitely I might +be more precise. She was a tall woman rather than large built, like +the young Juno when first wooed by Jove. Where she departed from the +Junonian type she turned towards Venus rather than Minerva; in spite +of being a mathematician. You meet with her sisters in physical +beauty among the Americans of Pennsylvania, where, to a stock mainly +Anglo-Saxon, is added a delicious strain of Gallic race; or you see +her again among the Cape Dutch women who have had French Huguenot +great grandparents. It is perhaps rather impertinent continuing +this analysis of her charm, seeing that she lives and flourishes +more than ever, twenty years after the opening of my story; not very +different in outward appearance at 48, as Lady Armstrong--for of +course, as you guess already, she married Major--afterwards Sir +Petworth--Armstrong--than she was at twenty-eight, the partner, +friend and helper of Vivien Warren. + +Being in comfortable circumstances, highly educated, handsome, +attractive, with a mezzo-soprano voice of rare beauty and great +skill as a piano-forte accompanyist, she had not only suitors who +took her rejection without bitterness, but hosts of friends. She +knew all the nice London people of her day: Lady Feenix, who in some +ways resembled her, Diana Dombey, who did not _quite_ approve of +her, being a little uncertain yet about welcoming the New Woman, all +the Ritchies, married and unmarried, Lady Brownlow, the Duchess of +Bedford (Adeline), the Michael Fosters, most of the Stracheys (she +liked the ones I liked), the Hubert Parrys, the Ripons (how she +admired Lady Ripon, as who did not!), Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, Miss +Lena Ashwell, the Bernard Shaws, the Wilfred Meynells, the H.G. +Wellses, the Sidney Webbs; and--leaving uninstanced a number of +other delightful, warm-blooded, pleasant-voiced, natural-mannered +people--the Rossiters. + +Or at least, Michael Rossiter. For although you could tolerate for +his sake Mrs. Rossiter, and even find her a source of quiet +amusement, you could hardly say you liked her--not in the way you +could say it of most of the men and women I have specified. Michael +Rossiter, who comes into this story, ought really if there were a +discriminating wide-awake, up-to-date Providence--which there is +not--to have met Honoria when she was twenty. (At nineteen such a +woman is still immature; and moreover until she was twenty, Honoria +had not mastered the Binomial Theorem.) Had he married her at that +period he would himself have been about twenty-seven which is quite +soon enough for a great man of science to marry and procreate +geniuses. But as a matter of fact, when he came down to Cambridge +in--? 1892--to deliver a course of Vacation lectures on embryology, +he was already two years married to Linda Bennet, an heiress, the +daughter and niece (her parents died when she was young and she +lived with an uncle and aunt) of very rich manufacturers at Leeds. + +So, though his eye, quick to discern beauty, and his brain tentacles +ready to detect intelligence combined with a lovely nature, soon +singled out Honoria Fraser, amongst a host of less attractive +girl-graduates, he had no more thought of falling in love with her +than with a princess of the blood-royal. He might, long since, +within a month of his marriage have found out his Linda to be a +pretty little simpleton with a brain incapable of taking in any more +than it had learnt at a Scarborough finishing school; but he was too +instinctive a gentleman to indulge in any flirtation, any deviation +whatever from mental or physical monogamy. For he remembered always +that it was his wife's money which had enabled him to pursue his +great researches without the heart-breaking delays, limitations and +insufficiencies involved in Government or Royal Society grants; and +that Linda had not only endowed him with all her worldly goods--all +but those he had insisted in putting into settlement--but that she +had given him all her heart and confidence as well. + +Still, he liked Honoria. She was eager to learn much else beyond the +hard-grained muses of the square and cube; she was the daughter of a +prosperous and boldly experimental physician, whose wife was a +champion of women's rights. So he pressed Honoria to come with her +mother and make the acquaintance of himself and Linda in Portland +Place. + +Why was Michael Rossiter wedded to Linda Bennet when he was no more +than twenty-five, and she just past her coming of age? Because fresh +from Edinburgh and Cambridge and with a reputation for unusual +intuition in Biology and Chemistry he had come to be Science master +at a great College in the North, and thus meeting Linda at the +Philosophical Institute of Leeds had caused her to fall in love with +him whilst he lectured on the Cainozoic fauna of Yorkshire. He was +himself a Northumbrian of borderland stock: something of the Dane +and Angle, the Pict and Briton with a dash of the Gypsy folk: a +blend which makes the Northumbrian people so much more productive of +manly beauty, intellectual vivacity, bold originality than the +slow-witted, bulky, crafty Saxons of Yorkshire or the under-sized, +rugged-featured Britons of Lancashire. + +Linda fell in love all in one evening with his fiery eyes, black +beard, the Northumbrian burr of his pronunciation, and the daring of +his utterances, though she could scarcely grasp one of his +hypotheses. Her uncle and aunt being narrowly pietistic she was +bored to death with the Old Testament, and Rossiter's scarcely +concealed contempt for the Mosaic story of creation captured her +intellect; while the physical attraction she felt was that which the +tall, handsome, resolute brunet has for the blue-eyed fluffy little +blonde. She openly made love to him over the tea and coffee served +at the "soirée" which followed the lecture. Her slow-witted guardian +had no objection to offer; and there were not wanting go-betweens to +urge on Rossiter with stories of her wealth and the expanding value +of her financial interests. He wanted to marry; he was touched by +her ill-concealed passion, found her pretty and appealingly +childlike. So, after a short wooing, he married her and her five +thousand pounds a year, and settled down in Park Crescent, Portland +Place, so as to be near the Zoo and Tudell's dissecting rooms, to +have the Royal Botanic gardens within three minutes' walk, and the +opportunity of turning a large studio in the rear of his house into +a well-equipped chemical and dissecting laboratory. One of his close +pursuits at that time was the analysis of the Thyroid gland and its +functions, its over or under development in British statesmen, +dramatic authors and East End immigrants. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +DAVID VAVASOUR WILLIAMS + + +It is in the spring of 1901. A fine warm evening, but at eight +o'clock the dusk is already on the verge of darkness as Honoria +emerges from the lift at her Chancery Lane Office (near the corner +of Carey Street), puts her latch-key into the door of the partners' +room, and finds herself confronting the silhouette of a young man +against the western glow of the big window. + +_Norie_ (inwardly rather frightened): "Hullo! Who are _you_ and what +are you doing here?" + +_Vivie_ (mimicking a considerate, cringing burglar): "Sorry to +startle you, lidy, but I don't mean no 'arm. I'll go quiet. Me +name's D.V. Williams..." + +_Norie_: "You absurd creature! But you shouldn't play such pranks on +these respectable premises. You gave me a _horrid_ start, and I +realized for the first time that I've got a heart. I really must sit +down and pant." + +_Vivie_: "I am sorry, dearest. I had not the slightest notion +you would be letting yourself into the office at this hour--8 +o'clock--and I was just returning from my crammers..." + +_Norie_: "I came for those Cranston papers. Mother is ill. I may +have to sit up with her after Violet Hunt goes, so I thought I would +come here, fetch the bundle of papers and plans, and go through them +in the silent watches of the night, _if_ mother sleeps. But do you +mean to say you have already started this masquerade?" + +_Vivie_: "I do. You see Christabel Pankhurst has been turned down +as a barrister. They won't let her qualify for the Bar, because +she's a woman, so they certainly won't let _me_ with my pedigree; +just as, merely because we are women, they won't let us become +Chartered Actuaries or Incorporated Accountants. After we had that +long talk last June I got a set of men's clothes together, a regular +man's outfit. The suit doesn't fit over well but I am rectifying +that by degrees. I went to a general outfitter in Cornhill and told +a cock-and-bull story--as it was an affair of ready cash they didn't +stop to question me about it. I said something about a sea-faring +brother, just my height, a trifle stouter in build--lost all his kit +at sea--been in hospital--now in convalescent home--how I wanted to +save him all the fatigue possible--wouldn't want more than +reach-me-downs at present, etc., etc. They rather flummoxed me at +first by offering a merchant service uniform, but somehow I got over +that, though this serge suit has rather a sea-faring cut. I got so +unnecessarily explanatory with the shopman that he began to pay me +compliments, said my brother must be a good-looking young chap if he +was at all like me. However, I got away with the things in a cab, +and told the cab to drive to St. Paul's station, and on the way +re-directed him here. + +"Last autumn I began practising at night-time after all our +familiars had left these premises. Purposely I did not tell you +because I feared your greater caution and instinctive respectability +might discourage me. Otherwise, nobody's spotted me, so far. I'd +intended breaking it to you any day now, because I've gone too far +to draw back, for weal or woe. But either we have been rushed with +business, or you've been anxious about Lady Fraser--How is she?" +(Norie interpolates "Very poorly.") "So truly sorry!--I was +generally just about to tell you when Rose or Lilian--tiresome +things!--would begin most assiduously passing in and out with +papers. Even now I mustn't keep you, with your mother so ill..." + +_Norie_ (looking at her wrist-watch): "Violet has very kindly +promised to stay with mother till ten.... I can give you an hour, +though I must take a few minutes off that for the firm's business as +I haven't been here much for three days..." (They talk business for +twenty minutes, during which Norie says: "It's really _rather_ odd, +how those clothes change you! I feel vaguely compromised with a +handsome young man bending over me, his cheek almost touching +mine!"--and Vivie retorts "Oh, _don't_ be an ass!") + +_Norie_: "So you really _are_ going to take the plunge?" + +_Vivie_: "I really _am_. As soon as it suits your convenience, Vivie +Warren will retire from your firm and go abroad. You must either +replace her by Beryl Clarges or allow Mr. Vavasour Williams" +(Honoria interpolates: "_Ridiculous_ name! How did you think of +it?") "to come and assist in the day-time or after office hours. You +can say to the winds that he is Vivie's first cousin, remarkably +like her in some respects.... Rose Mullet is engaged to be married +and is only--she told me yesterday with many blushes--staying on to +oblige us. Lilian Steynes said the other day that if we were making +any changes in the office, much as she liked her work here, her +mother having died she thought it was her duty to go and live with +her maternal aunt in the country. The aunt thinks she can get her a +post as a brewery clerk at Aylesbury, and she is longing to breed +Aylesbury ducks in her spare time.--There is Bertie Adams, it's +true. There's something so staunch about him and he is so useful +that he and Praed and Stead are the three exceptions I make in my +general hatred of mankind..." + +_Norie_: "He will be very much cut up at your going--or seeming to +go." + +_Vivie_: "Just so. I think I shall write him a farewell note, +saying it's only for a time: I mean, that I may return later +on--dormant partnership--nothing really changed, don't you know? But +that as Rose and Lilian are going, Mrs.--what does she call herself, +Claridge?"--(Norie interpolates: "Yes, that was her idea: she +doesn't want to blazon the name of Clarges as the symbol of Free +Love, 'cos of the dear old Dean; yet Claridge will not be too much +of a surrender and is sure to invoke respectability, because of the +Hotel")--"Mrs. Claridge, then, is coming in my stead--He's to help +her all he can--and my cousin, who is reading for the Bar, will also +look in when you are very busy. I shall, of course, see about +rooms in one of the Inns of Court--the Temple perhaps. I have +been stealthily watching Fig Tree Court. I _think_ I can get +chambers there--a man is turning out next month--got a Colonial +appointment--I've put my new name down at the lodge and I shall have +to rack my brains for references--you will do for one--or perhaps +not--however that I can work out later. Of course I won't take the +final plunge till I have secured the rooms. Meantime I will use my +bedroom here but promise you I will be awfully prudent..." + +_Norie_: "I couldn't possibly have Beryl 'living in,' with a child +hanging about the place; so I think if you _do_ go I shall turn your +bedroom into an apartment which Beryl and I can use for toilet +purposes but where we can range out on book-shelves a whole lot of +our books. Just now they are most inconveniently stored away in +boxes. It's rather tiresome about Beryl. I believe she's going to +have _another_ child. At any rate she says it may be four months +before she can come to work here regularly. I asked her about it the +other day, because if mother gets worse I may be hindered about +coming to the office, and I didn't want you to get overworked,--so I +said to Beryl.... That reminds me, she referred to the coming child +and added that its father was a policeman. Quite a nice creature in +his private life. Of course she's only kidding. I expect it's the +architect all the time. You know how she delighted in shocking us at +Newnham. I wish she hadn't this kink about her. P'raps I'm getting +old-fashioned already--You used to call me 'the Girondist.' But if +the New Woman _is_ to go on the loose and be unmoral like the +rabbits, won't the cause suffer from middle-class opposition?" + +_Vivie_: "Perhaps. But it may gain instead the sympathies of the +lower and the upper classes. Why do you bother about Beryl? I agree +with you in disliking all this sexuality..." + +_Norie_: "Does one _ever_ quite know why one likes people? There is +_something_ about Beryl that gets over me; and she _is_ a worker. +You know how she grappled with that Norfolk estate business?" + +_Vivie_: "Well, it's fortunate she and I have not met since Newnham +days. You must tip her the story that I am going away for a +time--abroad--and that a young--young, because I look a mere boy, +dressed up in men's clothes--a young cousin of mine, learned in the +law, is going to drop in occasionally and do some of the work..." + +_Norie_: "I'm afraid I'm rather weak-willed. I _ought_ to stop this +prank before it has gone too far, just as I ought to discourage +Beryl's babies. Your schemes sound so stagey. Off the stage +you never take people in with such flimsy stories and weak +disguises--you'll tie yourself up into knots and finally get sent to +prison.... However.... I can't help being rather tickled by your +idea. It's vilely unjust, men closing two-thirds of the respectable +careers to women, to bachelor women above all..." (A pause, and the +two women look out on a blue London dotted with lemon-coloured, +straw-coloured, mauve-tinted lights, with one cold white radiance +hanging over the invisible Piccadilly Circus)--"Well, go ahead! +Follow your star! I can be confident of one thing, you won't do +anything mean or disgraceful. Deceiving Man while his vile laws and +restrictions remain in force is no crime. Be prudent, so far as +compromising our poor little firm here is concerned, because if you +bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave we shall lose a +valuable source of income. Besides: any public scandal just now in +which I was mixed up might kill my mother. Want any money?" + +_Vivie_: "You generous darling! _Never, never_ shall I forget your +kindness and your trust in me. You have at any rate saved one soul +alive." (Honoria deprecates gratitude.) "No, I don't want +money--yet. You made me take and bank £700 last January over that +Rio de Palmas coup--heaps more than my share. Altogether I've got +about £1,000 on deposit at the C. and C. bank, the Temple Bar +branch. I've many gruesome faults, but I _am_ thrifty. I think I can +win through to the Bar on that. Of course, if afterwards briefs +don't come in--" + +_Norie_: "Well, there'll always be the partnership which will go on +unaltered. I shall pretend you are only away for a time and your +share shall be regularly paid in to your bank. Of course I shall +meet Mr. Vavasour Williams now and again and I can tell him things +and consult with him. If we think Beryl, after she is installed here +as head clerk--of course I shan't make her a partner for _years_ and +_years_--not at all if she remains flighty--if we think she is +unsuspicious, and Bertie Adams likewise, and the new clerks and the +housekeeper and her husband, there is no reason why you should not +come here fairly often and put in as much work as you can on our +business." + +_Vivie_: "Yes. Of course I must be careful of one predicament. I +have studied the regulations about being admitted to the English +Bar. They are very quaint and medieval or early Georgian. You +mayn't be a Chartered Accountant or Actuary--the Lord alone knows +why! I suppose some Lord Chancellor was done in the eye in +Elizabeth's reign by an actuary and laid down that law. Equally you +mayn't be a clergyman. As to that we needn't distress ourselves. +It's rather piteous about the prohibiting Accountants, because as +women we are not allowed to qualify in _any_ capacity as Accountants +or Actuaries; and work here is only permissible by our not +pretending to belong to any recognized body like the Institute of +Actuaries. So that in coming to work for you I must not seem to be +in any way doing the business of Accountants or Actuaries. Indeed it +might be awkward for my scheme if I was too openly associated with +Fraser and Warren. + +"I already think of myself as Williams--I shall pose of course as a +Welshman. My appearance _is_ rather Welsh, don't you think? It's the +Irish blood that makes me look Keltic--I'm sure my father was an +Irish student for the priesthood at Louvain, and certain scraps of +information I got out of mother make me believe that _her_ mother +was a pretty Welsh girl from Cardiff, brought over to London Town by +some ship's captain and stranded there, on Tower Hill. + +"However, I have still the whole scheme to work out and when I'm +ready to start on it--which will be very soon--I'll let you know. +Now, though I'd love to discuss all the other details, I mustn't +forget your mother will be wanting you--I wish _I_ had a mother to +tend--I wonder" (wistfully) "whether I was too hard on mine? + +"D'you mind posting these letters as you go out? I shall change back +to Vivie Warren in a dressing gown, give myself a light supper, and +then put in two hours studying Latin and Norman French. Good night, +dearest!" + +Two months after this conversation Vivie decided to pay a call on +an old friend of her mother's, Lewis Maitland Praed, if you want his +full name, a well-known architect, and one of the few male friends +of Catherine Warren who had not also been her lover. Why, he never +quite knew himself. When he first met her she was the boon +companion, the mistress--more or less, and unattached--of a young +barrister, a college friend of Praed's. Kate Warren at that time +called herself Kitty Vavasour; and on the strength of having done a +turn or two on the music halls considered herself an actress with a +right to a professional name. It was in this guise that the "Revd." +Samuel Gardner met her and had that six months' infatuation for her +which afterwards caused him so much disquietude; though it preceded +the taking of his ordination vows by quite a year, and his marriage +to his wife--much too good for him--in 1874. [The Revd. Sam, you may +remember, was the father of the scapegrace Frank who nearly captured +Vivie's young affections and had written from South Africa proposing +marriage at the opening of this story.] + +Kate Vavasour in 1872 was an exceedingly pretty girl of nineteen or +twenty; showily dressed, and quick with her tongue. She was +good-natured and jolly, and though Praed himself was the essence of +refinement there was something about her reckless mirth and joy in +life--the immense relief of having passed from the sordid life of a +barmaid to this quasi-ladyhood--that enlisted his sympathies. Though +she was always somebody else's mistress until she developed +her special talent as a manageress of high-class houses of +accommodation, "private hotels" on the Continent, chiefly frequented +by English and American _roués_--Praed kept an eye on her career, +and occasionally rendered her, with some cynicism, unobtrusive +friendly services in disentangling her affairs when complications +threatened. He was an art student in those days of the 'seventies, +possessed of about four hundred a year, beginning to go through the +aesthetic phase, and not decided whether he would emerge a painter +of pictures or an architect of grandiose or fantastic buildings. To +his studio Miss Kitty Vavasour or Miss Kate Warren would often come +and pose for the head and shoulders, or for some draped caryatid +wanted for an ambitious porch in an imaginary millionaire's house in +Kensington Palace Gardens. When in 1897, Vivie had learnt about her +mother's "profession," she had flung off violently from all her +mother's "friends," except "Praddy." She even continued to call him +by this nickname, long ago bestowed on him by her mother. At distant +intervals she would pay him a visit at his house and studio near +Hans Place; when Honoria's advice and assistance did not meet the +case of some grave perplexity. + +So one afternoon in June, 1901, she came to his little dwelling with +its large studio, and asked to have a long talk to him, whilst his +parlour-maid--he was still a bachelor--denied him to other callers. +They had tea together and Vivie plunged as quickly as possible into +her problem. + +"You know, Praddy dear, I want to be a Barrister. But as a female +they will never call me to the Bar. So I'm going to send Vivien +Warren off for a long absence abroad--the few who think about me +will probably conclude that money has carried the day and that I've +gone to help my mother in her business--and in her absence Mr. +Vavasour Williams will take up the running. David V. Williams--don't +interrupt me--will study for the Bar, eat through his terms--six +dinners a year, isn't it?--pass his examinations, and be called to +the English Bar in about three years from now. Didn't you once have +a pupil called Vavasour Williams?" + +_Praed_: "What, David, the Welsh boy? Yes. His name reminded me of +your mother in one of her stages. David Vavasour Williams. I took +him on in--let me see? I think it was in 1895 or early 1896. But how +did you hear about him?" + +_Vivie_: "Never mind, or never mind for the moment. Tell me some +more about him." + +_Praed_: "Well to sum him up briefly he was what school boys and +subalterns would call 'a rotter.' Not without an almost mordid +cleverness; but the Welsh strain in him which in the father turned +to emotional religion--the father was Vicar or Rector of +Pontystrad--came out in the boy in unhealthy fancies. He had almost +the talent of Aubrey Beardsley. But I didn't think he had a good +influence over my other pupils, so before I planned that Italian +journey--on which you refused to accompany me--I advised him to +leave my tuition--I wasn't modern enough, I said. I also advised him +to make up his mind whether he wanted to be a sane architect--he +despised questions of housemaids' closets and sanitation and lifts +and hot-water supply--or a scene painter. I think he might have had +a great career at Drury Lane over fairy palaces or millionaire +dwellings. But I turned him out of my studio, though I put the fact +less brutally before his father--said I should be absent a long +while in Italy and that I feared the boy was too undisciplined. +Afterwards I think he went into some South African police force..." + +_Vivie_: "He did, and died last year in a South African hospital. +Had he--er--er--many relations, I mean did he come of well-known +people?" + +_Praed_: "I fancy not. His father was just a dreamy old Welsh +clergyman always seeing visions and believing himself a descendant +of the Druids, Sam Gardner told me; and his mother had either died +long ago or had run away from her husband, I forget which. In a way, +I'm sorry David's dead. He had a sort of weird talent and wild good +looks. By the way, he wasn't altogether unlike _you_." + +_Vivie_: "Thank you for the double-edged compliment. However what +you say is very interesting. Well now, my idea is that David +Vavasour Williams did _not_ die in a military hospital; he recovered +and returned, firmly resolved to lead a new life.--Is his father +living by the bye? Did he believe his son was dead?" + +_Praed_: "Couldn't tell you, I'm sure. I never took any further +interest in him, and until you mentioned it--I don't know on whose +authority--I didn't know he was dead. On the whole a good riddance +for his people, I should say, especially if he died on the field of +honour. But what lunatic idea has entered your mind with regard to +this poor waster?" + +_Vivie_: "Why my idea, as I say, is that D.V.W. got cured of his +necrosis of the jaw--I suppose it is not invariably deadly?--came +home with a much improved morale, studied hard, and became a +barrister, thinking it morally a superior calling to architecture +and scene painting. In short, I shall be from this day forth +Vavasour Williams, law-student! Would it be safe, d'you think, in +that capacity to go down and see his old father?" + +_Praed_: "_Vivie_! I _did_ think you were a sober-minded young +woman who would steer clear of--of--crime: for this impersonation +would be a punishable offence..." + +_Vivie_: "_Crime_? _What_ nonsense! I should consider I was +justified in a Court of Equity if I burnt down or blew up the Law +Courts or one of the Inns or broke the windows of the Chartered +Institute of Actuaries or the Incorporated Law Society. All these +institutions and many others bar the way to honourable and lucrative +careers for educated women, and a male parliament gives us no +redress, and a male press laughs at us for our feeble attempts to +claim common rights with men. Instead of proceeding to such violence +I am merely resorting to a very harmless guile in getting round the +absurd restrictions imposed by the benchers of the Inns of Court, +namely that all who claim a call to the Bar should not be +_accountants_, _actuaries_, _clergymen_ or _women_. I am going to +give up the accountancy business--or rather, the law has never +allowed either Honoria or me to become chartered accountants, so +there is nothing to give up. To avoid any misapprehension she is +going to change the title on our note paper and brass plate to +'General Inquiry Agents.' That will be sufficiently non-committal. +Well then, as to sex disqualification, a few weeks hence I shall +become David Vavasour Williams, and I presume he was a male? You +don't have to pass a medical examination for the Bar, do you?" + +_Praed_: "Really, Vivie, you are _unnecessarily_ coarse..." + +_Vivie_: "I don't care if I am, poor outlaw that I am! Every avenue +to an honest and ambitious career seems closed to me, either because +I am a woman or--in women's careers--the few that there are--because +I am Kate Warren's daughter. _I_ am not to blame for my mother's +misdeeds, yet I am being punished for them. That beast of a friend +of yours--that filthy swine, George Crofts--set it about after I +refused to marry him that I was 'Mrs. Warren's Daughter,' and the +few nice people I knew from Cambridge days dropped me, all except +Honoria and her mother." + +_Praed_: "Well, _I_ haven't dropped you. _I'll_ always stick by +you" (observes that Vivie is trying to keep back her tears). +"Vivie--_darling_--what do you want me to do? Why not marry me and +spend half my income, take the shelter of my name--I'm an A.R.A. +now--You needn't do more than keep house for me.... I'm rather +a valetudinarian--dare say I shan't trouble you long--we +could have a jolly good time before I went off with a heart +attack--travel--study--write books together--" + +_Vivie_ (recovering herself): "Thanks, dear Praddy; you are a brick +and I really--in a way--have quite got to love you. Except an office +boy in Chancery Lane and W.T. Stead, I don't know any other decent +man. But I'm not going to marry any one. I'm going to become +Vavasour Williams--the name is rotten, but you must take what you +can get. Williams is a quiet young man who only desires to be left +alone to earn his living respectably at the Bar, and see there if he +cannot redress the balance in the favour of women. But there is +something you _could_ do for me, and it is for that I came to see +you to-day--by the bye, we have both let our tea grow cold, but _for +goodness' sake_ don't order any more on my account, or else your +parlour-maid will be coming in and out and will see that I've been +crying and you look flushed. What I wanted to ask was this--it's +really very simple--_If Mr. Vavasour Williams, aged twenty-four, +late in South Africa, once your pupil in architecture_ or scene +painting or whatever it was--_gives you as a reference to character, +you are to say the best you can of him_. And, by the bye, he will be +calling to see you very shortly and you could lend further +verisimilitude to your story by renewing acquaintance with him. You +will find him very much improved. In every way he will do you +credit. And what is more, if you don't repel him, he will come and +see you much oftener than his cousin--I'm not ashamed to adopt her +as a cousin--Vivie Warren could have done. Because Vivie, with her +deplorable parentage, had your good name to think of, and visited +you very seldom; whereas there could be raised _no_ objection from +your parlour-maid if Mr. D.V. Williams came rather often to chat +with you and ask your advice. Think it over, dear friend--Good-bye." + +Early in July, Norie and Vivie were standing at the open west +window in their partners' room at the office, trying to get a little +fresh air. The staff had just gone its several ways to the suburbs, +glad to have three hours of daylight before it for cricket and +tennis. Confident therefore of not being overheard, Vivie began: +"I've got those rooms in Fig Tree Court. I shall soon be ready to +move my things in. I'll leave some of poor Vivie Warren's effects +behind if you don't mind, in case she comes back some day. Do you +think you can rub along if I take my departure next week? I want to +give myself a fortnight's bicycle holiday in Wales--as D.V. +Williams--a kind of honeymoon with Fate, before I settle down as a +law student. After I come back I can devote much of the summer +recess to our affairs, either openly or after office hours. You +could then take a holiday, in August. You badly need one. What about +Beryl?" + +_Norie_: "Beryl is well over her accouchement and is confident of +being able to start work here on August 1.... It's a boy this time. +I haven't seen it, so I can't say whether it resembles a policeman +more than an architect. Besides babies up till the age of six months +only resemble macrocephalic idiots.... I shall be _wary_ with +Beryl--haven't committed myself--ourselves to any engagement beyond +six months. She's amazingly clever, but I should say quite +heartless. Two babies in three years, and both illegitimate--the +real Mrs. Architect very much upset, no doubt, Mr. Architect getting +wilder and wilder in his work through trying to maintain two +establishments--they say he left out all the sanitation in Sir Peter +Robinson's new house and let the builders rush up the walls without +damp courses--and it's killing her father, the Dean. It's not as +though she hid herself away, but she goes out so much! They are +talking of turning her out of her club because of the things she +says before the waitresses..." + +_Vivie_: "What things?" + +_Norie_: "Why, about its being very healthy to have babies when +you're between the ages of twenty and thirty; and how with this +twilight sleep business she doesn't mind how often; that it's fifty +times more interesting than breeding dogs and cats or guinea-pigs; +and she's surprised more single women don't take it up. I think she +must be détraquée.... I have a faint hope that by taking her in hand +and interesting her in our work--which _entre nous deux_--is turning +out to be very profitable--I may sober her and regularize her. No +doubt in 1950 most women will talk as she does to-day, but the +advance is too abrupt. It not only robs _her_ parents of all +happiness, but it upsets _my_ mother. She now wrings her hands over +her own past and fears that by working so strenuously for the +emancipation of women she has assisted to breach the dam--Can't you +imagine the way the old cats of both sexes go on at her?--the dam +which held up female virtue, and that Society now will be drowned in +a flood of Free Love..." + +_Vivie_: "Well! We'll give her a six months' trial here, and see if +our mix-up of advice in Law, Banking, Estate management, +Stock-and-share dealing, Divorce, Private Enquiries, probate, etc., +does not prove _much_ more interesting than an illicit connection +with a hare-brained architect.... If she proves impossible you'll +pack her off and Vivie shall return and D.V. Williams go abroad.... +Don't you think there is something that ought to win over Providence +in that happily chosen name? _D.V._ Williams? And my mother once +actually called herself 'Vavasour.' + +"Well, then, barring accidents and the unforeseen, it's agreed I go +on my holiday next Saturday, to return never no more--perhaps--?--" + +_Norie_ (with a sigh): "Yes!" + +_Vivie_: "How's your mother?" + +_Norie_: "Oh, as to her, I'm glad to say '_much_ better.' When I +can get away, after the new clerks and Beryl are installed and +everything is going smoothly, I shall take her to Switzerland, to a +deliciously quiet spot I know and nobody else knows up the +Göschenenthal. The Continent won't be so hot for travelling if we +don't start till the end of August..." + +_Vivie:_ "_Then_, dearest ... in case you don't come to the office +any more this week, I'll say good-bye--for--for some time..." + +(They grip hands, they hesitate, then kiss each other on the cheek, +a very rare gesture on either's part--and separate with tears in +their eyes.) + + +The following Monday morning, Bertie Adams, combining in his +adolescent person the functions of office boy, junior clerk, and +general factotum, entered the outer office of Fraser and Warren and +found this letter on his desk:-- + + Fraser and Warren Midland Insurance Chambers, + General Inquiry Agents 88-90, Chancery Lane, W.C. + July 12, 1901. + + DEAR BERTIE-- + + I want to prepare you for something. If you had been an + ordinary Office boy, I should not have bothered about you or + confided to you anything concerning the Firm. But you are by + now almost a clerk, and from the day I joined Miss Fraser in + this business, you have helped me more than you know--helped + me not only in my work, but to understand that there _can_ + be good, true, decent-minded, trustworthy ... you won't like + it if I say "boys" ... young men. + + I am going away for a considerable time, I cannot say how + long--probably abroad. But Miss Fraser thinks I can still + help in the work of her firm, so I remain a partner. A + cousin of mine, Mr. D.V. Williams, may come in occasionally + to help Miss Fraser. I shall ask him to keep an eye on you. + Miss Rose Mullet and Miss Steynes are likewise leaving the + service of the firm. I dare say you know Miss Mullet is + getting married and how Miss Steynes is going to live at + Aylesbury. Two other ladies are coming in their place, and + much of my own work will be undertaken by a Mrs. Claridge, + whom you will shortly see. + + It is rather sad this change in what has been such a happy + association of busy people, nobody treading on any one + else's toes; but there it is! "The old order changeth, + giving place to the new ... lest one good custom should + corrupt the world"--you will read in the Tennyson I gave you + last Christmas. Let's hope it won't be when I return: + "Change and Decay in all around I see" ... as the rather + dismal hymn has it. + + Sometimes change is a good thing. You serve a noble mistress + in Miss Fraser and I am sure you realize the importance of + her work. It may mean so much for women's careers in the + next generation. I shan't quite lose touch with you. I dare + say Miss Fraser, even if I am far away, will write to me + from time to time and give me news of the office and tell me + how you get on. Don't be ashamed of being ambitious: keep up + your studies. Why don't you--but perhaps you do?--join + evening classes at the Polytechnic?--or at this new London + School of Economics which is close at hand? Make up your + mind to be Lord Chancellor some day ... even if it only + carries you as far as the silk gown of a Q.C. I suppose I + ought now to write "K.C." A few years ago we all thought the + State would go to pieces when Victoria died. Yet you see we + are jogging along pretty well under King Edward. In the same + way, you will soon get so used to the new Head Clerk, Mrs. + Claridge, that you will wonder what on earth you saw to + admire in + + VIVIEN WARREN. + +This letter came like a cricket ball between the eyes to Bertie +Adams. His adored Miss Warren going away and no clear prospect of +her return--her farewell almost like the last words on a death-bed.... +He bowed his head over his folded arms on his office desk, and +gave way to gruff sobs and the brimming over of tear and nose glands +which is the grotesque accompaniment of human sorrow. + +He forgot for a while that he was a young man of nineteen with an +unmistakable moustache and the status of a cricket eleven captain. +He was quite the boy again and his feeling for Vivien Warren, which +earlier he had hardly dared to characterize, out of his intense +respect for her, became once more just filial affection. + +His good mother was a washerwoman-widow, in whom Honoria Fraser had +interested herself in her Harley Street girlhood. Bertie was the +eldest of six, and his father had been a coal porter who broke his +back tumbling down a cellar when a little "on." Bertie--he now +figured as Mr. Albert Adams in the cricket lists--was a well-grown +youth, rather blunt-featured, but with honest hazel eyes, +fresh-coloured, shock-haired. Vivie had once derided him for trying +to woo his frontal hair into a flattened curl with much pomade ... +he now only sleeked his curly hair with water. You might even have +called him "common." He was of the type that went out to the War +from 1914 to 1918, and won it, despite the many mistakes of our +flurried strategicians: the type that so long as it lasts unspoilt +will make England the predominant partner, and Great Britain the +predominant nation; the type out of which are made the bluejacket +and petty officer, the police sergeant, the engine driver, the +railway guard, solicitor's clerk, merchant service mate, engineer, +air-pilot, chauffeur, army non-commissioned officer, head gardener, +head game-keeper, farm-bailiff, head printer; the trustworthy +manservant, the commissionaire of a City Office; and which in other +avatars ran the British World on an average annual income of £150 +before the War. When women of a similar educated lower middle class +come into full equality with men in opportunity, they should marry +the Bertie Adamses of their acquaintance and not the stockbrokers, +butchers, drapers, bookies, professional cricketers or pugilists. +They would then become the mothers of the salvation-generation of +the British people which will found and rule Utopia. + +However, Bertie Adams was quite unconscious of all these +possibilities, and thought of himself modestly, rather cheaply. +Swallowing the fourth or fifth sob, he rose from his crouching over +the desk, wiped his face with a wet towel, smoothed his hair, put +straight his turn-over collar and smart tie, and went to his work +with glowing eyes and cheeks; resolved to show Miss Warren that she +had not thought too highly of him. + +Nevertheless, when Miss Mullet arrived and giggled over the details +of her trousseau and Lily Steynes discussed the advertisements of +Aylesbury ducks in the current _Exchange and Mart_, he was reserved +and rather sarcastic with them both. He intimated later that he had +long been aware of the coming displacements; but he said not a word +of Vivie's letter. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +PONTYSTRAD + + +On a morning in mid-July, 1901, Mr. D.V. Williams bicycled to +Paddington Station from New Square, Lincoln's Inn. The brown canvas +case fitted to the frame of his male bicycle contained a change of +clothes, a suit of paijamas, a safety razor, tooth-brush, hair-brush +and comb. He himself was wearing a well-cut dark grey suit--Norfolk +jacket, knickerbockers and thick stockings. + +Having had his bicycle labelled "Swansea," he entered a first-class +compartment of the South Wales express. Though not lavish on his +expenditure he was travelling first because he still felt a little +uneasy in the presence of men--mostly men of the rougher type. +Perhaps there was a second class in those days; there may be still. +But I have a distinct impression that Mr. Vavasour Williams, law +student, travelled "first" on this occasion: for this was how +he met a person of whom his friend, Honoria Fraser, had often +spoken--Michael Rossiter. + +He did not of course--till after they had passed Swindon--know the +name of his travelling companion. Five minutes before the train left +Paddington there entered his compartment of the corridor carriage a +tall man with a short, curly black beard and nice eyes--eyes like +agates in colour. There was a touch of grey about the temples, +otherwise the head hair, when he changed from a hard felt hat to a +soft travelling cap, showed as dark as the beard and moustache. His +frame was strong, muscular and loosely built, and he had clever, +nervous hands with fingers somewhat spatulate. His clothes did not +much suggest the tourist--they seemed more like a too well-worn town +morning suit of dark blue serge; as though he had left home in an +absent-minded mood intent on some hurriedly conceived plan. He cast +one or two quick glances at David; once, indeed, as they got out +into full daylight, away from tunnels and high walls, letting his +glance lengthen into a searching look. Then he busied himself with a +number of scientific periodicals he had brought to read in the +train. + +Impelled, he knew not why, to provoke conversation, David asked +(quite needlessly), "This _is_ the South Wales express, I mean the +Swansea train, is it not?" + +Blackbeard was struck with the unusualness of the voice--a very +pleasant one to come from the lips of a man--and replied: "It is; at +least I got in under that impression as I am intending to go to +Swansea; but in any case the ticket inspector is sure to come along +the corridor presently and we'll make sure then. We stop at Swindon, +I think, so if we've made a mistake we can rectify it there." + +Then after a pause he resumed: "I think you said you were going to +Swansea? Might I ask if you are bound on the same errand as I am? I +mean, are you one of Boyd Dawkins's party to examine the new cave on +the Gower coast?" + +_D.V.W._: "Oh no--I--I am going inland from Swansea to--to have a +bicycling tour. I'm going to a place on the river--I don't know how +to pronounce it--at least I've forgotten. The river's name is spelt +Llwchwr." + +_Blackbeard_: "You should change your mind and turn south--come and +see these extraordinary caves. Are you interested in palæontology?" +(David hesitates) "What careless people call 'prehistoric animals' +or 'prehistoric man.' They have been ridiculously misled by comic +artists in _Punch_ who imagine a few thousand years of Prehistory +would take us back to the Cretaceous period; really four or five +million years before Man came into existence, when this country and +most other lands swarmed with preposterous reptiles that had become +extinct long before the age of mammals. However, I don't suppose +this interests you. I only spoke because I thought you might be one +of Boyd Dawkins's pupils ... or one of mine." + +_David_: "On the contrary, I am very, very much interested in the +subject, but I am afraid it has lain rather outside my line of +studies so far--p'raps I will turn south when I have seen something +of the part of Glamorgan I am going to. I'm really Welsh in origin, +but I know Wales imperfectly because I left it when I was quite +young" ("This'll be good practice," Vivie's brain voice was saying +to herself) ... "I've returned recently from South Africa." + +_Blackbeard_: "What were you doing there?" + +_David_: "I--I--was in the army ... at least in a police force ... I +got wounded, had to go into hospital--necrosis of the jaw ... I came +home when I got well..." + +_Blackbeard_: _"Necrosis of the jaw!_ That was a bad thing. But you +seem to have got over it very well. I can't see any scar from where +I am..." + +_David_: "Oh no. It was only a _slight_ touch and I dare say I +exaggerate ... I've left the Army however and now I'm reading +Law..." + +Blackbeard thinks at this point that he has gone far enough in +cross-examination and returns to his periodicals and pamphlets. But +there's something he likes--a wistfulness--in the young man's face, +and he can't quite detach his mind to the presence of palæolithic +man in South Wales. At Swindon they both get out--there was still +lingering the practice of taking lunch there--have a hasty lunch +together and more talk, and share a bottle of claret. + +On returning to their compartment, Rossiter offers David a cigar but +the young man prefers smoking a cigarette. By this time they have +exchanged names. D.V.W. however is reticent about the South African +War--says it was all too horrible for words, and should never have +taken place and he can't bear to think about it and was knocked out +quite early in the day. Now all he asks is peace and quiet and the +opportunity of studying law in London so that he may become some day +a barrister. Rossiter says--after more talk, "Pity you're going in +for the Bar--we've too many lawyers already. You should take up +Science"--and as far as the Severn Tunnel discourses illuminatingly +on biology, mineralogy, astronomy, chemistry as David-Vivien had +never heard them treated previously. In the Severn Tunnel the noise +of the train silences both professor and listener, who willingly +takes up the position of pupil. Between Newport and Neath, David +thinks he has never met any one so interesting. It has been his +first real induction into the greatest of all books: the Book of the +Earth itself. Rossiter on his part feels indefinably attracted by +this young expatriated Welshman. David does not say much, but what +he does contribute to the conversation shows him a quick thinker and +a person of trained intelligence. Yet somehow the professor of +Biology in the University of London--and many other things +beside--F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.L.S., Gold Medallist of this and that +Academy and University abroad--does not "see" him as a soldier or a +non-commissioned officer in the British Army: law-student is a more +likely qualification. However as they near Swansea, Michael Rossiter +gives Mr. D.V. Williams his card (D.V.W. regrets he cannot +reciprocate but says he has hardly settled down yet to any address) +and--though as a rule he is taciturn in trains and cautious about +making acquaintances--expresses the hope he will call at 1, Park +Crescent some afternoon--"My wife and I are generally at home on +Thursdays"--when all are back in town for the autumn. They separate +at Swansea station. + + +David spends the night at Swansea, employing some of his time there +by enquiring at the Terminus Hotel as to the roads that lead up the +valley of the Llwchwr, what sort of a place is Pontystrad ("the +bridge by the meadow"), whether any one knows the clergyman of that +parish, Mr.... er ... Howel Vaughan Williams. The "boots" or one of +the "bootses," it appears, comes from the neighbourhood of +Pontystrad and knows the reverend gentleman by sight--a nice old +gentleman--has heard that he's aged much of late years since his son +ran away and disappeared out in Africa. His sight was getting bad, +Boots understood, and he could not see to do all the reading and +writing he was once so great at. + +After a rather wakeful night, during which D.V. Williams is more +disturbed by his thoughts and schemes than by the continual noises +of the trains passing into and out of Swansea, he rises early and +drafts a telegram:-- + + + Revd. Howel Williams, Vicarage, Pontystrad, Glamorgan. Hope + return home this evening. All is well. + + DAVID. + +Then pays his bill and tries to mount his bicycle the wrong way to +the great amusement of the Boots; then remembers the right way and +rides off, with the confidence of one long accustomed to bicycling, +through the crowded traffic of Swansea in the direction of Llwchwr. + +It was a very hot ride through a very lovely country, now largely +spoilt by mining and metallurgy, along a road that was constantly +climbing up steeply to descend abruptly. David of course could have +travelled by rail to the Pontyffynon station and thence have ridden +back three miles to Pontystrad. But he wished purposely to bicycle +the whole way from Swansea and take in with the eye the land of his +fathers. He was postponing as long as possible the test of meeting +his father, the father of the young n'eer-do-weel who had been lying +for months in a South African field hospital the year before. He +halted for a cup of tea at Llandeilotalybont ... Wales has many +place names like this ... and being there not many miles from +Pontystrad was able to glean more recent and more circumstantial +information about the man he proposed to greet as "father." + +At half-past six that evening, having perspired and dried, perspired +and dried, strained a tendon and acquired a headache, he halted +before the gate of the Vicarage garden at Pontystrad, having been +followed thither to his secret annoyance by quite a troop of village +boys of whom he had imprudently asked the way. As they talked Welsh +he could not tell what they were saying, but conjectured that his +telegram had arrived and that he was expected. + +Standing under the porch of the house was an old man with a long +white beard like a Druid in spectacles shading his eyes and +expectant... + +A bicycle might prove an incumbrance in the ensuing interview, so +David hastily propped his against a fuchsia hedge and hurried +forward to meet the old man, who extended hands to envelop him, not +trusting to his eyes. An old, rosy-cheeked woman in a sunbonnet came +up behind the old man, shrieked out "Master David!" and only waited +with twitching fingers for her own onslaught till the father had +first embraced his prodigal son. This was done at least three times, +accompanied with tears, blessings, prayers, the uplifting of poor +filmy eyes to a cloudless Heaven--"Diolch i Dduw!"--ejaculations as +to the wonder of it--"Rhyfeddol yw yn eiholl ffyrdd"--God's +Providence--His ways are past finding out! "Ni ellir olrain ei +Ragluniaeth!"--"My own dear boy! Fy machgen annwyli!" + +Then the old woman took her turn: "Master David! Eh, but you're +changed, mun!"--then a lot of Welsh exclamations, which until the +Welsh can agree to spell their tongue phonetically I shall not +insert--"Five years since you left us! Eh, and I never thought to +see you no more. Some said you wass dead, others that you wass taken +prisoner by the Wild Boars. But here you are, and welcome--indeed--" +Then Master David between the embraces was scanned, a little more +critically than by the purblind father, but with distinct approval. + +At last David stood apart in the stone-flagged hall of the Vicarage. +His abundant hair was rumpled, his face was stained by other +people's tears, his collar, tie, dress disordered, and his heart +touched. It was a rare experience in his twenty-four years of +life--he guessed that should be his age--to find himself really +taken on trust, really desired and loved. Honoria's friendship +was a pure and precious thing, but in its very purity carefully +restrained. Praddy's kindness, and the office boy's worship had both +been gratifying to Vivie's self-esteem, but both had to be kept at +bay. Somehow the love of a father and of an old nurse were of a +different category to these other contacts. + +All these thoughts passed through David's brain in thirty seconds. +He shook himself, straightened himself, smiled adequately, and tried +to live up to the situation. + +"Dear father! And dear ... Nannie! (A bold but successful +deduction). How sweet of you both--greeting me like this. I've come +home a very different David to the one that left you--what was it? +Five--six years ago?--to go to Mr. Praed's studio. I've learnt a lot +in the interval. But I'm so sick of the past, I don't want to talk +about it more than I can help, and I've been in very queer health +since I got ill--and--wounded--in--South Africa. My memory has gone +for many things--I'm afraid I've forgotten all my Welsh, Nannie, but +it'll soon come back, that is, if I may stay here a bit." +(Exclamations from father and nurse: "This is your _home_, +Davy-bach!") "I'm not going to stay too long this time because I've +got my living to earn in London.... + +"Did you never hear anything about me from ... South Africa ... or +the War Office--or--your old college chum, Mr. Gardner?" + +"I heard--my own dear boy--" said the Revd. Howel, again taking him +in his arms in a renewed spasm of affection. "I heard you were +wounded and very ill in the camp hospital at Colesberg. It was a +nursing sister, I think, who sent me the information. I wrote +several times to the War Office, my letters were acknowledged, that +was all. Then Sam Gardner wrote to me from Margate and said his son +had been in the same hospital with you. Later on I saw in a Bristol +paper that this hospital--Colesberg--had fallen into the hands of +the Boers and the Cape insurgents. Then I said to myself 'My poor +boy's been taken prisoner' and as time went on, 'My poor boy's dead, +or he would have written to me.'" + +Here the Revd. Howel stopped to wipe his eyes and blow his nose. +David touched through his armour of cynicism, said--Nannie retiring +to prepare the evening meal--"Father dear, though I don't want to +refer too often to the past, I behaved disgracefully some time ago +and the Colonies seemed my only chance of setting myself right. I +did manage to get away from the Boers, but I had not the courage to +present myself before you till I had done something to regain your +good opinion. I have got now good employment in London and I'm even +reading up Law. We will talk of that by and bye but I tell you +now--from my heart--I am a different David to the one you knew, and +you shall never regret taking me back." + +Both father and son were crying now, for emotion especially in Wales +is catching. But the father laughed through his tears; and +incoherently thanked God for the return of the prodigal--a fine +upstanding lad--whole and sound. "No taint about _you_, Davy, _I'll_ +be bound. Why your voice alone shows you've been a clean liver. It's +music in my ears, and if I could see as well as I can hear I'd wager +you're a handsome lad and have lost much of your foolishness. Davy, +lad" (lowering his voice) "you've no cause to be anxious about +Jenny. She--she--had a boy, but we got her married to a miner--I +made it right with him. She has another child now, but they're being +brought up together. We won't refer to it again. She lives twenty +miles from here, at Gower--and ... and ... there's an end of it.... + +"Now you won't run away back to London till you're obliged? Where's +your luggage? At Pontyffynon?" + +"No," said David, a little non-plussed at evidences of his dissolute +past and this unexpected fatherhood assumed on his account. "I +haven't more luggage than what is contained in my bicycle bag. But +don't let that concern you. I'll go over to Swansea one day or some +nearer town and buy what may be necessary, and I'll stay with you +all my holidays, tell you all my plans, and even after I go back to +London I'll always come down here when I can get away. For the +present I'm going simply to enjoy myself for the first time in my +life. The last four years we'll look on as a horrid dream. What a +paradise you live in." His eye ranged over the two-storeyed, +soundly-built stone house facing south, with mountains behind and +the western sun throwing shafts of warm yellow green over the lawn +and the flower beds; over clumps of elms in the middle, southern +distance, that might have been planted by the Romans (who loved this +part of Wales). Bees, butterflies and swallows were in the air; the +distant lowing of kine, the scent of the roses, the clatter in the +kitchen where Nannie aided by another female servant was preparing +supper, even the barking of a watch dog; aware that something +unusual was going on, completed the impression of the blissful +countryside. "What a paradise you live in! How _could_ I have left +it?" + +"Ay, dear lad; I doubt not it looks strange and new to you since +you've been in South Africa and London. But it'll soon seem homelike +enough. And now you'll like to see your room, and have a wash before +supper. Tom, the gardener, shall take in your bicycle and give it a +rub over. I've still got the old one here in the coach-house which +you left behind. Tom's new, since you left. He's not so clever with +the bees as your old friend Evan was, but he's a steadier lad. I +fear me Evan led you into some of your scrapes. The fault was partly +mine. I shouldn't have let you run wild so much, but I was so +wrapped up in my studies--Well, well!" + +David was careful to play his part sufficiently to say when shown +into his old bedroom, "Just the same, father; scarcely a bit +altered--but isn't the bed moved--to another place?" + +"You're right, my boy--Ah! your memory can't be as bad as you +pretend. Yes, we moved it there, Bridget and I, because the +Archdeacon came once to stay and complained of the draught from the +window." + +"The deuce he did!" said David. "Well, _I_ shan't complain of +anything." + +His father left him and he then proceeded to lay out the small +store of things he had brought in his bicycle bag, giving special +prominence to the shaving tackle. He had just finished a summary +toilet when there was a tap on the door, and, suppressing an +exclamation of impatience--for he dearly wanted time and solitude +for collected thought--he admitted Bridget. + +"Well, Nannie," he said, "come for a gossip?" + +"Yess. I can hardly bear to take my eyes off you, for you've +changed, you _have_ changed. And yet, I don't know? You don't look +much older than you wass when you went off to London to be an +architect. Your cheek--" (lifting her hand and stroking it, while +David tried hard not to wince) "Your cheek's as soft and smooth as +it was then, as any young girl's. Wherever you've been, the world +has not treated you very bad. No one would have dreamt you'd been +all the way to South Africa to them Wild Boars. But some men wear +wonderful well. I suppose your father giv' you a bit of a shock? +He's much older looking; and he wassn't suffering, to speak of, from +his sight when you went away. And now he can hardly see to read even +with his new spectol. Old Doctor Murgatroyd can't do nothing for +him--Advises him to go to see some Bristol or London eye-doctor. But +after you seemed to disappear in Africa he had no heart for trying +to get his sight back. He'd sit for hours doing nothing but think +and talk, all about old Welsh times, or Bible times. Of course he +knows hiss services by heart; hiss only job wass with the +Lessons.... But you see, he'd often only have me and the girl and +Tom in church. There's a new preacher up at Little Bethel that's +drawn all the village folk to hear him. But your father'll be a +different man now--you see, he'll be like a boy again. And if you +could stay long enough, you might take him to Bristol--or Clifton I +think it wass--to see if they could do anything about his eyes.... + +"The past's the past and we aren't going to say no more about it, +and now you've turned over a new leaf--somehow I _can't_ feel you're +the same person--don't go worrying yourself about that slut Jenny. +_She's_ all right. After your baby was born at her mother's, she +went into service at Llanelly and there she met a miner who's at +work on the new coal mine in Gower. He wasn't a bad sort of chap and +when he'd heard her story he said for a matter of twenty pound he'd +marry her and take over her baby. So your father paid the twenty +pounds, and if she'll only keep straight she'll be none the worse +for what's happened. I always said it wass my fault. It wass the +year I had to go away to my sister, and your father had to go to St. +David's, and after all, if it hadn't 'a-been you, it 'd 'a-been +young Evan. Why there's bin some girls in the village have had two +and even three babies before they settled down and got married. Now +we must dish up supper. I've given you lots and lots of pancakes and +the cream and honey you wass always so fond of--you bad boy--" She +ventured a kiss on the smooth cheek of her nursling and heavily +descended the stairs. + + +David had a very bad night, because to please his old nurse he had +eaten too many of her pancakes with cream and honey. In fact, he had +at last to tip-toe down through a sleeping house cautiously to let +himself out and relieve his feelings by pacing the verandah till the +nausea passed off. After that he lay long awake trying to size up +the situation. He got his thoughts at last into some such shape as +this:-- + +"It's clear I was a regular young rake before I was sent up to +London to be Praddy's pupil. Apparently I seduced the housemaid or +kitchenmaid--my father's establishment seems to consist of Nannie +who is housekeeper and cook, and a maid who does housework and +helps in the kitchen--and this unfortunate girl who fell a prey to +my solicitations--or more likely misled me--afterwards gave birth to +a child attributed either to my fatherhood or the gardener's. But +the matter has been hushed up by a payment of twenty pounds and the +girl is now married and respectable and ought to give no further +trouble. I suppose that was a climax of naughtiness on my part and +the main reason why I was sent away. The two people who matter most +have received me without doubt or question, but the one to be +wary about is the old nurse, whose very affection makes her +inconveniently inquisitive. _Mem._ get up and lock my door, or else +she may come in with hot water or something in the morning and take +me by surprise. + +"The original David is evidently dead and well out of the way. There +can be no harm in my taking his place, at any rate for a few years: +it may give the old man new life and genuine happiness, for I shall +play my part as a good son, and certainly shall cost him nothing. +I'll begin by taking him to an oculist and finding out what is wrong +with his eyes.... Probably only cataract. It may be possible to +effect a cure and he can then finish his book on the history of +Glamorganshire from earliest times. Must remember, by the bye, that +the Welsh change most of the old _m's_ into _f's_ and that this +country is called Forganwg, with the _w_ pronounced like _oo_, and +the _f_ like _v_. Must learn some Welsh. What a nuisance. But +nothing is worth doing if it isn't done well. If I can keep this +deception up this would be a jolly place to come to for occasional +holidays, and I simply couldn't have a better reference to +respectability, sex and station with the benchers of Lincoln's Inn +than 'my father,' the Revd. Howel Williams, Vicar of Pontystrad. +They'll probably want a second or a third reference. Can I rely on +Praddy? Is it possible I might work up my acquaintance with that +professor whom I met in the train? I'll see. Perhaps I could attend +classes of his if he lectures in London." + +Then the plotting David fell asleep at last and woke to hear the +loud tapping on his door at eight o'clock, of Bridget, rather +surprised to find the door locked, but entering (when he had garbed +himself in his Norfolk jacket and opened the door), with hot water +for shaving and a cup of tea. + +It was a hot July morning, and while he dressed, the southern breeze +came in through the open window scented by the roses and the lemon +verbena growing against the wall. His father was pacing up and down +the hall and the verandah restlessly awaiting him, fearing lest the +whole episode of the day before might not have been one of his +waking dreams. His failing sight made reading almost a torture and +writing more a matter of feeling than visual perception. Time +therefore hung wearisomely on his hands; Bridget was not a good +reader, besides being too busy a housekeeper to have time for it. +Had David really returned to him? Would he sometimes read aloud and +sometimes write his letters, or even the finish of his History? Too +good to be true! + +But there was David coming down the stairs, greeting him with tender +affection. "Read and write for you, father? Of course! But before I +go back to London--and unfortunately I _must_ go back early in +August--I'm going to take you to see an oculist--Bristol or Clifton +perhaps--and get your sight restored." + +After breakfast, however, the father decided he must take David +round the village, to see and be seen. David was not very anxious to +go, but as the Revd. Howel looked disappointed he gave in. + +It had to be got over some time or other. So they first visited the +church, a building in the form of a cross, with an imposing +battlemented tower. Here David asked to inspect the registers and +found therein (while the old gentleman silently prayed or sat in +mute thankfulness in a sunny corner)--the record of his father's +marriage to Mary Vavasour twenty-six years before (Mary was +twenty-three and the Revd. Howel forty at the time) and of his own +baptism two years afterwards. + +Then issuing from the church, father and son walked through the +village, the father pointing out the changes for better or worse +that had taken place in four years, and not noticing the vagueness +of his son's memories of either persons or features in the +landscape. The village, like most Welsh villages, was of +white-washed cottages, slate-roofed, but it was embowered with that +luxuriance of foliage and flowers which makes Glamorganshire--out of +sight of the coal-mining--seem an earthly paradise. Every now and +then the Revd. Howel would nudge his son and say: "That man who +spoke was old Goronwy, as big a scoundrel now as he was five years +ago," or he would introduce David to a villager of whom he thought +more favourably. If she were a young woman she generally smirked and +looked sideways; if a man he grunted out a Welsh greeting or only +gave a nod of surly recognition. Several professed fluent +recognition but some said in Welsh "he wasn't a bit like the Mr. +David _they_ had known." Whereupon the Revd. Howel laughed and said: +"Wait till you have been out to South Africa fighting for your king +and country and see if _that_ doesn't change _you_!" + +The visit to the Clifton oculist resulted in a great success. The +oculist after two or three days' preparation in a nursing home +performed the operation and advised David then to leave his father +for a few days (promising if any unfavourable symptoms supervened he +would telegraph) so that he might pass the time in sleep as much as +possible, and with no mental stimulation. During this interval David +transferred himself and his bicycle to Swansea, and thence visited +the Gower caves where he ran up against Rossiter once more and +spent delightful hours being inducted into palæontology by Rossiter +and his companions. Then back to--by contrast--boresome Clifton +(except for its Zoological Gardens). After another week his father +was well enough to be escorted home. In another fortnight he might +be able to use his eyes, and soon after that would be able to read +and write--in moderation. + +But David could not wait to see his intervention crowned with +complete success. He must keep faith with Honoria who would be +wanting a long holiday in Switzerland; and their joint business must +not suffer by his absence from London. There were, indeed, times +when the peace and comfort and beauty of Pontystrad got hold of him +and he asked himself: "Why not settle down here for the rest of his +life, put aside other ambitions, attempt no more than this initial +fraud, leave the hateful world wherein women had only three chances +to men's seven." Then there would arise once more fierce ambition, +the resolve to avenge Vivien Warren for her handicaps, the desire to +keep tryst with Honoria and to enjoy more of Rossiter's society. +Besides, he ran a constant risk of discovery under the affectionate +but puzzled inspection of the old nurse. In her mind, residence +amongst the "Wild Boars," service in an army, travel and adventure +generally during an absence of five years, as well as emergence from +adolescence into manhood, accounted for much change in physical +appearance, but not sufficiently for the extraordinary change in +_morale_: the contrast between the vicious, untidy, selfish, +insolent boy that had gone off to London with ill-concealed glee in +1896 and this grave-mannered, polite, considerate, pleasant-voiced +young man who had already managed to find good employment in London +before he revealed himself anew to his delighted father. + +These doubts David read in Nannie's mind. But he would not give +them time and chance to become more precise and formulated. +Gradually she would become used to the seeming miracle. In the +meantime he would return to London, and if his father's recovery was +complete he would not revisit "home" till Christmas. As soon as he +was able to write, his father would forward him the copy of his +birth-certificate, and he would likewise answer in the sense agreed +upon any letters of reference or enquiry: would state the +apprenticeship to architecture with Praed A.R.A., and then the +impulse to go out to South Africa, the slight wound--David insisted +it was slight, a fuss about nothing, because he had enquired about +necrosis of the jaw and realized that even if he had recovered it +would have left indisputable marks on face and throat. In fact there +were so many complications involved in an escape from the Boers, +only to be justified under the code of honour prevailing in war +time, that he would rather his father said little or nothing about +South Africa but left him to explain all that. A point of view +readily grasped by the Revd. Howel, who to get such a son back would +even have not thought too badly of desertion--and the negative +letters of the War Office said nothing of that. + +So early in September, after the most varied, anxious, successful +six weeks in his life--so far--David Vavasour Williams returned to +Fig Tree Court, Inner Temple. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +READING FOR THE BAR + + +It had been a hot, windless day in London, in early September. +Though summer was in full swing in the country without a hint of +autumn, the foliage in the squares and gardens of the Inns of Court +was already seared and a little shrivelled. The privet hedges were +almost black green; and the mould in the dismal borders that they +screened looked as though it had never known rain or hose water and +as if it could no more grow bright-tinted flowers than the asbestos +of a gas stove which it resembled in consistency and colour. It was +now an evening, ending one of those days which are peculiarly +disheartening to a Londoner returned from a long stay in the depths +of the country--a country which has hills and streams, ferny +hollows, groups of birches, knolls surmounted with pines, meadows of +lush, emerald-green grass, full-foliaged elms, twisted oaks, +orchards hung with reddening apples, red winding lanes between +unchecked hedges, blue mountains in the far distance, and the +glimpse of a river or of ponds large enough to be called a mere or +even a lake. The exhausted London to which David Williams had +returned a few days previously had lost a few thousands of its +West-end and City population--just, in fact, most of its interesting +if unlikable folk, its people who mattered, its insolent spoilt +darlings whom you liked to recognize in the Carlton atrium, in Hyde +Park, in a box at the theatre: yet the frowsy, worthy millions were +there all the same. The air of its then smelly streets was used up +and had the ammoniac strench of the stable. It was a weary London. +The London actors had not returned from Cornwall and Switzerland. +Provincial companies enjoyed--a little anxiously owing to uncertain +receipts at the box office--a brief license on the boards of famous +play-houses. The newspapers had exhausted the stunt of the silly +season and were at their flattest and most yawn-provoking. The South +African War had reached its dreariest stage.... + +Bertie Adams on this close September evening had out-stayed the +other employés of _Fraser and Warren_ in their fifth floor office at +No. 88-90 Chancery Lane. He had remained after office hours to do a +little work, a little "self-improvement"; and he was just about to +close the outer office and leave the key with the housekeeper, when +the lift came surging up and out of it stepped a young man in a +summer suit and a bowler hat who, to Bertie's astonishment, not only +dashed straight at the door of the partners' room, but opened its +Yale lock with a latch-key as though long accustomed to do so. "But, +sir!..." exclaimed the junior clerk (his promotion to that rank had +tacitly dated from Vivie Warren's departure). "It's all right," said +the stranger. "I'm Mr. David Williams and I've come to draw up some +notes for Mrs. Claridge. I dare say Miss Fraser has told you I +should work in the office every now and then whilst my cousin--Miss +Warren, you know--is away. You needn't wait, though you can close +the outer office before you go; and, by the bye, you might fetch me +_Who's Who_ for the present year." All this was said a little +breathlessly. + +Bertie brought the volume, then only half the size of its present +bulk, because it lacked our new nobility and gave no heed to your +favourite recreation. D.V. Williams stood in the yellow light of the +west window, reading a letter... "Cousin? No! Twin brother, +perhaps; but had she one?..." mused Bertie... and then, that +never-to-be-forgotten voice ... "Here's 'Oo's Oo--er--Hoo's Hoo, I +mean.... Miss..." He only added the last word as by some +sub-conscious instinct. + +"_Mister_ Williams," said Vivien-David-Warren Williams, facing him +with resolute eyes. "Be quite clear about that, Adams; _David +Vavasour Williams_, Miss Warren's cousin." + +"Indeed I will be, Miss ... Mister ... er ... Sir..." said the +transfigured Bertie (his brain voice saying over and over again in +ecstasy ... "_I_ tumble to it! _I_ tumble to it!"). And then again +"_Indeed_ I will, Mr. Williams. I'm a bit stupidlike this evenin' +... readin' too much.... May I stay and help you, Sir? I'm pretty +quick on the typewriter, Miss Warren may have told you ... Sir ... +and I ain't--I mean--_I am not_--half bad with me shorthand.... You +know--I mean, _she_ would know I'd joined them evenin' classes..." + +"Thank you, Adams; but if you have joined the evening classes you +oughtn't to interrupt your attendance there. I can _quite_ manage +here alone and you need not be afraid: I shall leave everything +properly closed. You could give up the key of the outer office as +you go out. You may often find me at work here after office hours, +but that need not disturb you ... and I need hardly say, after all +Miss Fraser and Miss Warren have told me about you, I rely on you to +be at all times thoroughly discreet and not likely to discuss the +work of this firm or my share in it with any one?"... + +"Indeed you may ... Mr. Williams ... indeed you may.... Oh! I'm so +happy.... Good-night ... Sir!" + +And Adams's heart was too full for attendance at a lecture on Roman +law. He went off instead to the play. He himself belonged now to the +world of romance. He knew of things--and wild horses and red-hot +tweezers should not tear the knowledge from him, or make him +formulate his deductions--he knew of things as amazing, as prodigal +of developments as anything in the problem play enacted beyond the +pit and the stalls; he was the younger brother of Herbert Waring and +the comrade of Jessie Joseph: at that moment deceiving the sleuth +hounds of Stage law by parading in her fiancé's evening dress and +going to prison for his sake. + +Beryl Claridge had taken up much of Vivie Warren's work on the 1st +of August in that year, while Honoria Fraser was touring in +Switzerland. Miss Mullet and Miss Steynes were replaced (Steynes +staying on a little later to initiate the new-comers) by two young +women so commonplace yet such efficient machines that their names +are not worth hunting up or inventing. If I have to refer to them I +will call them Miss A. and Miss B. + +Beryl Claridge was closely scanned by Bertie Adams, and frequently +compared in his mind with the absent and idealized Vivie. He decided +that although she was shrewd and clever and very good-looking, he +did not like her. She smoked too many cigarettes for 1901. She had +her curly hair "bobbed" (though the term was not invented then). She +put up her feet too high and too often; so much so that the +scandalized Bertie saw she wore black knickerbockers and no +petticoats under her smart "tailor-made." She snapped your head off, +was short, sharp and insolent, joked too much with the spectacled +women clerks (who became her willing slaves); then would ask Bertie +about his best girl and tell him he'd got jolly good teeth, a good +biceps and quite a nice beginning of a moustache. + +But she was a worker: no doubt of that! Of course, in the dead +season there were not many clients to shock or to win over by her +nonchalant manners, only a few women who required advice as to +houses, stocks, and shares, law, or private enquiries as to the +good faith of husbands or fiancés. Such as found their way up in the +lift were a little disappointed at seeing Beryl in Vivie's chair or +at not being received by their old friend Honoria Fraser. But Beryl +was too good a business woman to put them off with any license of +speech or manners. For the rest she spent August and early September +in "mugging up" the firm's business. Although deep down in her +curious little heart, under all her affectation of hardness and +insolent disdain of public or family opinion she firmly loved her +architect and the children she had borne him, she desired quite as +passionately to be self-supporting, to earn a sufficient income of +her own, to be dependent on no one. She might have her passing +caprices and her loose and flippant mode of talking, but she wasn't +going to be a failure, a cadger, a parasite, a "fallen" woman. She +fully realized that in England no woman _has_ fallen who is +self-supporting, whose income meets her expenses and who pays her +way. Given those guarantees, all else that she does which is not +actually criminal is eventually put down to mere eccentricity. + +So Honoria's offer and Honoria's business provided her with a most +welcome opening. She realized the opportunities that lay before this +Woman's Office for General Inquiries, established in the closing +years of the nineteenth century--this business that before Woman's +enfranchisement nibbled discreetly at the careers and the openings +for profit-making hitherto rigidly reserved for Man. She wasn't +going to let Honoria down. Honoria, she realized, was in herself +equivalent to many thousands of pounds in capital. Her reputation +was flawless. She was known to and esteemed by a host of women of +the upper middle class. Her Cambridge reputation for learning, her +eventual inheritance of eighty thousand pounds were unexpressed +reasons for many a woman of good standing preferring to confide her +affairs to the judgment of _Fraser and Warren_, in preference to +dealing with male legal advisers, male land agents, men on the Stock +Exchange, men in house property business. + +So Beryl became in most respects a source of strength to Honoria +Fraser, deprived for a time of the overt co-operation of her junior +partner. + +Beryl in the first few weeks of her stay evinced small interest in +the departure of Vivien Warren and her reasons for going abroad. She +had a scheme of her own in which her architect would take a +prominent part, for providing women--authoresses, actresses, or the +wives of the newly enriched--with week-end cottages; the desire for +which was born with the Twentieth century and fostered by the +invention of motors and bicycles. Cases before the firm for opinions +on intricate legal problems Beryl was advised to place before the +consideration of one of Honoria's friends, a law student, Mr. D.V. +Williams, who would shortly be back from his holiday and who had +agreed to look in at the office from time to time and go through +such papers as were set aside for him to read. Beryl had +remarked--without any intention behind it--on seeing some of his +notes initialled V.W. that it was rum he should have the same +initials as that Vivie girl whom she remembered at Newnham ... who +was "so silent and standoffish and easily shocked." But she noticed +later that when Mr. Williams got to work his initials were really +three and not two--D.V.W. One thing with the other: her departure +from the office at the regular closing hour--five--so that she might +see her babies before they were put to bed; Williams's habit of +coming to work after six; kept them from meeting till the October of +1901. When they did meet after Honoria's return from Switzerland, +Beryl scanned the law student critically; decided he was rather +nice-looking but very pre-occupied; perhaps engaged to some girl +whose parents objected; rather mysterious, _quand même_; she had +heard some one say this Mr. David Williams was a cousin or something +of Vivie Warren ... what if he were in love with Vivie and she had +gone away because she had some fad or other about not wanting to +marry? Well! All this could be looked into some other time, if it +were worth bothering about at all. Or could Williams be spoony on +Honoria? After her money? He was much younger--evidently--but young +men adored ripe women, and young girls idolized elderly soldiers. +_C'était à voir_ (Beryl ever since she had been to Paris on a stolen +honeymoon with the architect liked saying things to herself in +French). + +Towards the end of October, David received at Fig Tree Court a +letter from his father in Glamorganshire. + + Pontystrad Vicarage, + _October_ 20, 1901. + + MY DEAR SON,-- + + The improvement in my sight continues. I can now read a + little every day, by daylight, without pain or fatigue, and + write letters. I feel I owe you a long one; but I shall + write a portion each day and not try my eyes unduly. + + I am glad to know you are now settled down in chambers at + Fig Tree Court in the Temple and have begun your studies for + the Bar. You could not have taken up a finer profession. + What seems to me so wonderful is that you should be able to + earn your living at the same time and be no charge on me. I + accept your assurances that you need no support; but never + forget, my dear Son, that if you _do_, I am ready and + willing to help. You sowed your wild oats--perhaps we both + exaggerated the sins of the wild years--at any rate you have + made a noble reparation. What a splendid school the Colonies + must be! What a difference between the David who left me + five years ago for Mr. Praed's studio and the David who + returned to me last summer! I can never be sufficiently + thankful to Almighty God for the change He has wrought in + you! No lip religion, but a change of heart. I presume you + explained everything to the Colonial Office after you got + back to London and that you are now free to take up a civil + career? The people out there never sent me any further + information; but the other day one of my letters to you + (written after I had received the sad news) returned to me, + with the information that the hospital you were in had been + captured by the Boers and that you could not be traced. I + enclose it. You can now finish up the story yourself and let + the authorities know how you got away and returned home. + + The other day that impudent baggage Jenny Gorlais came and + asked to see me ... she said her husband was out of work and + refused to give her enough money to provide for all her + children, that he had advised her to apply to _you_ for the + maintenance of _your_ son! Relying on what you had told me I + sent for Bridget and we both told her we had made every + enquiry and now refused absolutely to believe in her stories + of five years ago--that we were sure you were _not_ the + father of her eldest child. Bridget, for example, believed + the postman was its father. Jenny burst into tears, and as + she did not persist in her claim my heart was moved, and I + gave her ten shillings, but told her _pretty plainly_ that + if she ever made such a claim again I should go to the + police. You should have heard Bridget defending you! _Such_ + a champion. If you want a witness to character for your + references you should call _her_! She is loud in your + praise. + + _October_ 22. + + There is one thing I want to tell you; and it is easier to + write it than say it. Your mother did not die when you were + three years old--much worse: she left me--ran away with an + engineer who was tracing out the branch railway. He seemed a + nice young fellow and I had him often up at the Vicarage, + and _that_ was the way he repaid my hospitality! He wrote to + me a year afterwards asking me to divorce her. As though a + Clergyman of the Church of England could do such a thing! I + had offered to take her back--not then--it would have been a + mockery--but by putting advertisements into the South Wales + papers. But after her paramour's letter--which I did not + answer--I never heard any more about her.... + +["Damn it all," said David to himself at this juncture of the +letter--he was training himself to swear in a moderate, gentlemanly +way--"Damn it all! Whatever I do, it seems I _cannot_ come from +altogether respectable stock."...] + + You grew up therefore without a mother's care, though good + Bridget did her best. When you were a child I fear I rather + neglected you. I was so disappointed and embittered that I + sought consolation in the legends of our beloved country and + in Scriptural exegesis. You were rather a naughty boy at + Swansea Grammar School and somewhat of a scamp at Malvern + College--Well! we won't go over all that again. I quite + understand your reticence about the past. Once again I think + the blame was mine as much as yours. I ought to have + interested myself more in your pursuits and games ... what a + pity, by the bye, that you seem to have lost your gift of + drawing and painting! I do remember how at one time we were + drawn together over the old Welsh legends and the very + clever drawings you made of national heroes and + heroines--they seemed to come on you as quite a surprise + when I took them out of the old portfolio. + + But about your mother--for it is necessary you should know + all I can tell you in case you have to answer questions as + to your parentage. Your mother's name was, as you know, Mary + Vavasour. It is a common name in South Wales though it seems + to be Norman French. She came to our Pontystrad school as a + teacher in 1873. Her father was something to do with mining + at Merthyr. I fell in love with her--she had a sweet + face--and married her in 1874. You were born two years + afterwards. Bridget had been my housekeeper before I was + married and I asked her to stay on lest your mother should + be inexperienced at first in the domestic arts. They never + got on well together and when Mary had recovered from her + confinement and seemed disposed to take up housekeeping I + sent away poor Bridget reluctantly and only took her back + after your mother's flight. Bridget was a second mother to + you as you know, though I fear you never showed her much + affection till these later days. + + + _October_ 23. + + My eyes seem to be improving instead of getting tired with + the new delights of reading and writing. I owe all this to + you and to the clever oculist at Clifton. Dr. Murgatroyd + from Pontyffynon looked in here the other day, to ask about + your return. He seemed almost to grudge me my restored sight + because I had got it from other people's advice. Said _he_ + could have advised an operation only he never believed my + heart would stand it. When I told him they had mixed the + anæsthetic with oxygen he became quite angry--and exclaimed + against these new-fangled notions. But I must not use up my + new found energy writing about him. I want to finish my + letter in a business-like fashion so that you may know all + that is necessary to be known about yourself and your + position. You may have at any moment to answer questions + before you get called to the Bar, and with your defective + memory--I am glad to hear things in the past are becoming + clearer to you--I am sure with God's grace you will wholly + recover soon from the effects of your wound and your + illness--What was I writing? I meant to say that you ought + to know the main facts about your family and your position. + + I was an only son. Your grandfather was a prosperous farmer + and auctioneer. You have distant cousins, Vaughans and + Williamses, and some others living at Shrewsbury named + Price. I have written to none of them about your return + because they never evinced any interest in me or my + concerns. Your mother's people, her Vavasour relations at + Cardiff--did not seem to me to be very respectable, though + her father was a well-educated man for his position. He + died--I heard--in a mine accident. + + I am not poorly off for a Welsh clergyman. My mother--a + Price of Ystrwy--wanted me to go into the Church and + prevailed on your grandfather to send me first to Malvern + and next to Cambridge. It was at Cambridge that I met your + comrade's father--Sam Gardner, I mean. He was rather wild in + his college days and to tell you the truth, I never cared to + keep up with him much--he had such very rowdy friends. My + mother died while I was at Cambridge and in his later years + your grandfather married again--his housekeeper--and rather + muddled his affairs, because at one time he was quite well + off. + + After I was ordained he purchased for me the advowson of + this living. All that came to me from his estate, however, + was a sum of about eleven thousand pounds. This used to + bring me in about five hundred pounds a year, and in + addition to that was the fluctuating two hundred and fifty + pounds income from my benefice. I took about three thousand + pounds out of my capital to pay the debts you ran up, to + article you to Mr. Praed; and, I must admit, to get my + "Tales from Taliessin" and "Legends of the Welsh Saints" + privately printed at Cardiff. I am afraid I wasted much good + money on the desire to see my Cymraeg studies in print. + + Well: there I am! with about eight or nine thousand pounds + to leave. I have not altered my will--leaving it all to you, + subject to an annuity of £50 a year to your faithful Nannie. + I was projecting an alteration in case of your death, when + you most happily returned. I may live another ten years yet. + You have put new life into me. One charge, however, I was + going to have laid on you; while you were with me I could + not bear to speak of these matters. If at any time after I'm + gone you should come across your unhappy mother and find her + in distressed circumstances, I bid you provide for her, but + how much, I leave entirely to your judgment. Meantime, here + I am with an income of nearly £700 a year. I live very + simply, as you see, but I give away a good deal in local + charity. The people are getting better wages now; in any + case they are usually most ungrateful. I feel I should be + happier if I diverted some of this alms-giving to you. You + must find this preparatory life very expensive. You must let + me send you twenty-five pounds every half-year for pocket + money. Here is a cheque on the South Wales Bank for the + first instalment. And remember, if you are in _any_ + difficulty about your career that a little money can get + over do not hesitate to apply to me. + + Your loving father, + HOWEL VAUGHAN WILLIAMS. + + P.S. I have taken five days to write this but see how steady + the handwriting is. It is a pleasure to me to look on my own + handwriting again. And I feel I owe it all to you! I also + forgot in the body of the letter to tell you one curious + thing. You know we are here on the borders of an interesting + vein of limestone which runs all round the coal beds. I dare + say you remember as a boy of fifteen or so spraining your + ankle in Griffith's Hole? Well Griffith's Hole turns out to + be the entrance into a wonderful cave in the limestone. + Hither came the other day a party of scientific men who + think that majestic first chapter of Genesis to be a + Babylonian legend! It appears they discovered or thought + they discovered the remains of Ancient man in Griffith's + Hole. I invited them to tea at the Vicarage and amongst them + was a very learned gentleman quite as wise as but less + aggressive than the others. He was known as "Professor + Rossiter"; and commenting on the similarity of my name with + that of a "very agreeable young gentleman" whom he had + recently seen in Gower, it turned out that you were an + acquaintance of his. He thinks it a great pity that you are + reading for the Bar and wishes you had taken up Science + instead. At any rate he hopes you will go and see him in + London one day--No. 1 Park Crescent. Portland Place. + + H. V. W. + +Several times in reading this letter the tears stood in David's +eyes. So much trust and kindness made him momentarily sorry at the +double life he was leading. If it were possible to establish the +death of the wastrel he was personating he would perhaps allow his +"father" to live on in this new-found happiness; but if the real +D.V.W. were alive some effort must be made to help him out of the +slough--perhaps to bring him back. He would try to find out through +Frank Gardner. + +Some time before Vivie Warren had taken her departure, she had left +behind in Honoria Fraser's temporary care a Power of Attorney duly +executed in favour of David Vavasour Williams; and reciprocally +D.V.W. had executed another in favour of Vivien Warren. Both these +documents lay securely in the little safe that David had had fitted +into the wall of his sitting-room in Fig Tree Court. Also David had +opened an account in his own name after he got back from Wales, at +the Temple Bar Branch of the C. &. C. Bank. Into this he now paid +the cheque for twenty-five pounds which his father had sent as +pocket money. + +A few days afterwards, Vivie Warren reappeared--in spirit--and +indited a letter to Frank Gardner's agents in Cape Town. She was +careful to give no address at the head of the letter and to post it +at Victoria Station. In it she said she was starting on a tour +abroad, but asked him to do what he could to trace the boy who had +lain so grievously ill in the hospital at Colesberg. Had he +recovered after the Boers had taken Colesberg? As a rumour had +reached her that he had, and had even returned to England. She +wanted to know, and if they ever met again would tell him why. +Meanwhile if he got any news would he address it to _her_, care of +Honoria Fraser, Queen Anne's Mansions, St. James's Park; as her own +address would be quite uncertain for the present. Or it would do +quite as well if he wrote to Praddy; but _not_ to his father, which +might only needlessly agitate the old clergyman down in Wales, whom +Vivie by an unexpected chance had come to know. + +The first result of this letter a year later was a statement of +Frank's belief, almost certainty, that his acquaintance of the +hospital _had_ died and been buried while the Boers held possession +of Colesberg; and that indeed was the utmost that was ever learnt +about the end of the ill-fated son of Howel Vaughan Williams and +Mary his wife, who were wedded in sunshine and with fair prospects +of happiness in the early summer of 1874. + +The new-born David Vavasour Williams having by November settled all +these details, having arranged to pay the very modest rent of +fifty-five pounds for his three rooms at Fig Tree Court, and +twenty-five pounds a year to the housekeeper who was to "do" for him +and another gentleman on the same floor--a gentleman who was most +anxious to be chummy with the new tenant of the opposite chambers +but whose advances were firmly though civilly kept at bay--having +likewise passed his preliminary examination (since he could not avow +that inside his clothes he was a third wrangler), having satisfied +his two "godfathers" of the Bar that he was a fit person to +recommend to the Benchers; having arranged to read with a barrister +in chambers, and settled all other preliminaries of importance: +decided that he would pay an afternoon call on the Rossiters in +Portland Place and see how the land lay there. + +Already a strange exhilaration was spreading over David's mind. Life +was not twice but ten times more interesting than it had appeared to +the prejudiced eyes of Vivien Warren. It was as though she--he--had +passed through some magic door, gone through the looking-glass and +was contemplating the same world as the one Vivie had known +for--shall we say fifteen?--years, but a world which viewed from a +different standpoint was quite changed in proportions, in colour, in +the conjunction of events. It was a world in which everything was +made smooth and easy before the semblance of manhood. What a joy to +be rid of skirts and petticoats! To be able to run after and leap on +to an omnibus, to wear the same hat day after day just stuck on top +of her curly head. Not, perhaps, to change her clothes, between her +uprising and her retirement to bed, unless she were going out to +dine. No simpering. No need to ask favours. No compliments. It is +true she felt awkward in the presence of women, not quite the same, +even with Honoria. But with men. What a difference! She felt she had +never really known men before. At first the frank speech, the +expletives, the smoking-room stories made her a little uncomfortable +and occasionally called forth an irrepressible blush. But this was +not to her disadvantage. It made her seem younger, and created a +good impression on her tutors and acquaintances. "A nice modest boy, +fresh from the country--pity to lead him astray--won't preserve his +innocence long--" was the vaguely defined impression, contact with +her--him, I mean--made on most decent male minds. Many a lad comes +up from the country to commence his career in London who knew far +less than the unfortunate Vivie had been compelled to know of the +shady side of life; who is compelled to lead a somewhat retired life +by straitness of means; whose determination towards probity and +regularity of life is respected by the men of law among whom he +finds himself. + +But David having decided--he did not quite know why--to pursue his +acquaintance with Professor Rossiter; having written to ask if he +might do so (as a matter of fact he frequently saw Rossiter walking +across the gardens of New Square to go to the museum of the Royal +College of Surgeons: he recollected him immediately but Rossiter did +not reciprocate, being absent-minded); and having received a card +from "Linda Rossiter" to say they would be at home throughout the +winter on Thursdays, between 4 and 6: went on one of those Thursdays +and made definite progress with the great friendship of his life. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE ROSSITERS + + +The Rossiters' house in Park Crescent was at the northern end of +Portland Place, and its high-walled garden--the stables that were +afterwards to become a garage--and Michael Rossiter's long, +glass-roofed studio-laboratory--abutted on one of those quiet, +deadly-respectable streets at the back that are called after Devon +or Dorset place names. + +The house is now a good deal altered and differently numbered, a +portion of it having been destroyed in one of the 1917 air-raids, +when the Marylebone Road was strewn with its broken glass for twenty +yards. But in the winter of 1901-2 and onwards till 1914 it was a +noted centre of social intercourse between Society and Science. The +Rossiters were well enough off--he made quite two thousand a year +out of his professorial work and his books, and her income which was +£5,000 when she first married had risen to £9,000 after they had +been married ten years; through the increase in value of Leeds town +property. Mrs. Rossiter had had two children, but were both dead, +her facile tears were dried, she satisfied her maternal instinct by +the keeping of three pug dogs which her husband secretly detested. +She also had a scarlet-and-blue macaw and two cockatoos and a +Persian cat; but these last her husband liked or tolerated for their +colour or their biological interest; only, as in the case of the +dogs, he objected (though seldom angrily, out of consideration for +his wife's feelings) to their being so messily and inopportunely +fed. + +Linda Rossiter was liable to lose her pets as she had lost her two +children by alternating days of forgetfulness with weeks of lavish +over-attention. But as she readily gave way to tears on the least +remonstrance, Michael in the course of eleven years of married life +remonstrated as little as possible. A clever, tactful parlour-maid +and two good housemaids, a manservant who was devoted to the +"professor" and a taxidermist who assisted him in his experiments +did the rest in keeping the big house tolerably tidy and +presentable. Rossiter himself was too intent on the stars, the gases +of decomposition, the hidden processes of life, miscegenation in +star-fish, microbic diseases in man, beasts, birds and bees, the +glands of the throat, the suprarenal capsules and the chemical +origin of life to care much for æsthetics, for furniture and house +decoration. He was the third son of an impoverished Northumbrian +squire who on his part cared only for the more barbarous +field-sports, and when he could take his mind off them believed that +at some time and place unspecified Almighty God had dictated the +English bible word for word, had established the English Church and +had scrupulously prescribed the functions and limitations of woman. +His wife--Michael Rossiter's tenderly-loved mother--had died from a +neglected prolapsus of the womb, and the old rambling house in +Northumberland situated in superb scenery, had in its furniture +grown more and more hideous to the eye as early and mid-Victorian +fashions and ideals receded and modern taste shook itself free from +what was tawdry, fluffy, stuffy, floppy, messy, cheaply imitative, +fringed and tasselled and secretive. + +Michael himself from sheer detestation of the surroundings under +which he had grown to manhood favoured the uncovered, the naked wood +or stone or slate, the bare floor, the wooden settee or +cane-bottomed chair, the massive side-board, the bare mantelpiece +and distempered wall. On the whole, their house in Portland Place +satisfied tolerably well the advanced taste in domestic scenery of +1901. But your eye was caught at once by the additions made by Mrs. +Rossiter. Linda conceived it was her womanly mission to lighten the +severity of Michael's choice in furniture and decorations. She +introduced rickety and expensive screens that were easily knocked +over; photographs in frames which toppled at a breath; covers on +every flat surface that could be covered--occasional tables, tops of +grand pianos. If she did not put frills round piano legs, she placed +tasselled poufs about the drawing-room that every short-sighted +visitor fell over, and used large bows of slightly discoloured +ribbon to mask unneeded brackets. In the reception rooms +food-bestrewn parrot stands were left where they ought never to be +seen; and there were gilt-wired parrot cages; baskets for the pugs +lined with soiled shawls; absurd ornaments, china cats with +exaggerated necks, alabaster figures of stereotyped female beauty +and flowerpot stands of ornate bamboo. She loved portières, and she +would fain have mitigated the bareness of the panelled or +distempered walls; only that here her husband was firm. She +unconsciously mocked the few well-chosen, well-placed pictures on +the walls (which she itched to cover with a "flock" paper) by +placing in the same room on bamboo easels that matched the +be-ribboned flower-stands pastel, crayon, or _gouache_ studies of +the worst possible taste. + +Michael's library alone was free from her improvements, though it +was sometimes littered with her work-bags or her work. She had long +ago developed the dreadful mistake that it "helped" Michael at his +work if she brought hers (perfectly futile as a rule) there too. "I +just sit silently in his room, my dear, and stitch or knit something +for poor people in Marrybone--I'm told you mayn't say Mary-le-bone. +I feel it _helps_ Michael to know I'm there, but of course I don't +interrupt him at his _work_." + +As a matter of fact she did, confoundedly. But fortunately she soon +grew sleepy or restless. She would yawn, as she believed "prettily," +but certainly noisily; or she would wonder "how time was going," and +of course her twenty-guinea watch never went, or if it was going was +seldom within one hour of the actual time. Or she would sneeze six +times in succession--little cat-like sneezes that were infinitely +disturbing to a brain on the point of grasping the solution of a +problem. Throughout the winter months she had a little cough. Oh no, +you needn't think I'm preparing the way for decease through +phthisis--it was one of those "kiffy" coughs due in the main to +acidity--too many sweet things in her diet, too little exercise. She +_thought_ she coughed with the greatest discretion but to the jarred +nerves of her husband a few hearty bellows or an asthmatic wheeze +would have been preferable to the fidgety, marmoset-like sounds that +came from under a lace handkerchief. Sometimes he would raise his +eyes to speak sharply; but at the sight of the mild gaze that met +his, the perfect belief that she was a soothing presence in this +room of hard thinking and close writing--this superb room with its +unrivalled library that he owed to the use of her wealth, his angry +look would soften and he would return smile for smile. + +Linda though a trifle fretful on occasion, especially with servants, +a little petulant and huffy with a sense of her own dignity and +importance as a rich woman, was completely happy in her marriage. +She had never regretted it for one hour, never swerved from the +conviction that she and Michael were a perfect match--he, tall, +stalwart, black-haired and strong; she "petite"--she loved the +French adjective ever since it had been applied to her at +Scarborough by a sycophantic governess--petite--she would repeat, +blonde, plump, or better still "potelée" (the governess had later +suggested, when she came to tea and hoped to be asked to stay) +_potelée_, blue-eyed and pink-cheeked. Dresden china and all the +stale similes applied to a type of little woman of whom the modern +world has grown intolerant. + +It was therefore into this _milieu_ that David found himself +introduced one Thursday at the end of November, 1901. He had walked +the short distance from Great Portland Street station. It was a fine +day with a red sunset, and a lemon-coloured, thin moon-crescent +above the sunset. The trees and bushes of Park Crescent were a +background of dull blue haze. The surface of the broad roads was dry +and polished, so his neat, patent-leather boots would still be fit +for drawing-room carpets. + +A footman in a very plain livery--here Michael was firm--opened the +massive door. David passed between some statuary of too frank a +style for Linda's modest taste and was taken over by a butler of +severe aspect who announced him into the great drawing-room as Mr. +David Williams. + +He recognized Rossiter at once, standing up with a tea-cup and +saucer, and presumed that a fluffy, much be-furbelowed little lady +at the main tea-table was Mrs. Rossiter, since she wore no hat. +There was besides a rather alarming concourse of men and women of +the world as he kept his eyes firmly fixed on Mrs. Rossiter for his +immediate goal. + +Rossiter met him half-way, shook hands cordially and introduced him +to his wife who bowed with one of her "sweet" looks. For the moment +David did not interest her. She was much more interested in trying +to give an impression of profundity to Lady Feenix who was +commenting on the professor's discoveries of the strange properties +of the thyroid gland. A few introductions were effected--Lady +Towcester, Lady Flower, Miss Knipper-Totes, Lady Dombey, Mr. +Lacrevy, Professor Ray Lankester, Mr. and Mrs. Gosse--and naturally +for the most part David only half caught their names while they, +without masking their indifference, closed their ears to his ("Some +student or other from his classes, I suppose--rather nicely dressed, +rather too good-looking for a young man"); and Rossiter, who had +been interrupted first by Mrs. Rossiter asking him to observe that +Lady Dombey had nothing on her plate, and secondly by David's +entrance, resumed his discourse. Goodness knew that he didn't _want_ +to discourse on these occasions, but Society expected it of him. +There were quite twenty--twenty-two--people present and most of +them--all the women--wanted to go away and say four hours +afterwards: + +"We were (I was) at the Rossiters this afternoon, and the Professor +was fascinating" ("great," "profoundly interesting," "shocking, my +dear," "scandalous," "disturbing," "illuminating," "more-than-usually- +enthralling-only-she-_would_-keep-interrupting-why-_is_-she-such-a-fool?") +according to the idiosyncrasy of the diner-out. "He talked to us +about the thyroid gland--I don't believe poor Bob's got one, between +ourselves--and how if you enlarged it or reduced it you'd adjust +people's characters to suit the needs of Society; and all about +chimpanzi's blood--I believe he _vivisects_ half through the night +in that studio behind the house--being the same as ours; and then +Ray Lankester and Chalmers Mitchell argued about the cæca--cæcums, +you know--something to do with appendicitis--of the mammalia, and +altogether we had a high old time--I _always_ learn something on +their Thursdays." + +Well: Rossiter resumed his description of an experiment he was +making--quite an everyday one, of course, for there were at least +three men present to whom he wasn't going to give away clues +prematurely. An experiment on the motor biallaxis of dormice. + +[Mrs. Rossiter had six months previously bought a dormouse in a cage +at a bazaar, and after idolizing it for a week had forgotten all +about it. Her husband had rescued it half starved; his assistant had +fed it up in the laboratory, and they had tried a few experiments on +it with painless drugs with astonishing results.] + +The recital really was interesting and entirely outside the +priggishness of Science, but it was marred in consecutiveness and +simplicity by Mrs. Rossiter's interruptions. "Michael dear, Lady +Dombey's cup!" Or: "Mike, could you cut that cake and hand it +round?" Or, if she didn't interrupt her husband she started stories +and side-issues of her own in a voice that was quite distinctly +heard, about a new stitch in crochet she had seen in the _Queen_, or +her inspection of the East Marrybone soup kitchen. + +However when all had taken as much tea and cakes and _marrons +glacés_ as they cared for--David was so shy that he had only one cup +of tea and one piece of tea-cake--the large group broke up into five +smaller ones. The few gradually converged, and dropping all nonsense +discussed biology like good 'uns, David listening eager-eyed and +enthralled at the marvels just beginning to peep out of the +dissecting and vivisecting rooms and chemical laboratories in the +opening years of the Twentieth century. Then one by one they all +departed; but as David was going too Rossiter detained him by a +kindly pressure on the arm--a contact which sent a half-pleasant, +half-disagreeable thrill through his nerves. + +"Don't hurry away unless you really _are_ pressed for time. I want +to show you some of my specimens and the place where I work." + +David followed him--after taking his leave of Mrs. Rossiter who +accepted his polite sentences--a little stammered--with a slightly +pompous acquiescence--followed him to the library and then through a +curtained door down some steps into a great studio-laboratory, +provided (behind screens) with washing places, and full of +mysteries, with cupboards and shelves and further rooms beyond and a +smell of chloride of lime combined with alcoholic preservatives and +undefined chemicals. After a tour round this domain in which David +was only slightly interested--for lack of the right education +and imagination--so far he--or--she had only the mind of a +mathematician--Rossiter led him back into the library, drew out +chairs, indicated cigarettes--even whiskey and soda if he wanted +it--David declined--and then began to say what was at the back of +his mind:-- + +"We met first in the train, the South Wales Express, you remember? I +fancy you told me then that you had been in South Africa, in this +bungled war, and had been either wounded or ill in some way. In fact +you went so far as to say you had had 'necrosis of the jaw,' a thing +I politely doubted because whatever it was it has left no +perceptible scar. Of course it's damned impertinent of me to +cross-examine you at all, or to ask _why_ you went to and why you +left South Africa. But I don't mind confessing you inspire me with a +good deal of interest. + +"Now the other day--as you know--I made the acquaintance of your +father in Wales--at Pontystrad. I told him I had shown a young +fellow some of those Gower caves and how his name was--like your +father's, 'Williams.' Of course we soon came to an understanding. +Then your father spoke of you in _high_ praise. What a delightful +nature was yours, how considerate and kind you were--don't blush, +though I admit it becomes you--Well you can pretty well guess how he +went on. But what interested me particularly was his next +admission: how different you were as a lad--rather more than the +ordinary wild oats--eh? And how completely an absence in South +Africa had changed you. You must forgive my cheek in dissecting your +character like this. My excuse is that you yourself had rather +vaguely referred to some wound or blood poisoning or operation, on +the jaw or the throat. Not to beat about the bush any more, the idea +came into my mind that _if_ in some way the knife or the enemy's +bullet had interfered with your thyroid gland--Twig what I mean? I +mean, that if your old man has not been exaggerating and that the +difference between the naughty boy whom he sent up to London +in--what was it? 1896?--and the perfectly behaved, good sort of chap +that you are _now_ is no more than what usually happens when young +men lose their cubbishness, _why_--_why_--do you take me?--I ask +myself whether the change had come about through some interference +with the thyroid gland. Do you understand? And I thought, seeing how +intensely interesting this research has become, you might have told +me more about it. Just what _did_ happen to you; where you were +wounded, who attended to you, what operation was performed on the +throat--only the rum thing is there seems to be no scar--well: now +_you_ help me out, that is unless you feel more inclined to say, +'What the _hell_ does it matter to _you_?'"... + +David by this time has grown scarlet with embarrassment and +confusion. But he endeavoured to meet the situation. + +"My character _has_ changed during the last five years, and +especially so since I came back from South Africa. But I am quite +sure it was not due to any operation, on the throat or anywhere +else. I really don't know _why_ I told you that silly falsehood in +the train--about necrosis of the jaw. The fact is that when I was in +hospital--at--Colesberg, a friend of mine in the same ward used--to +chaff me--and say I was going to have necrosis. I had got knocked +over one day--by--the--wind of a shell and thought I was done for, +but it really was next to nothing. P'raps I had a dose of fever on +top. At any rate they kept me in hospital, and one morning the +doctors disappeared and the Boers marched in and when I got well +enough I managed to escape and get away to--er--Cape Town and so +returned--with some money--my friend Frank Gardner lent me." (At +this stage the sick-at-heart Vivie was saying to herself, "_What_ an +account I'm laying up for Frank to honour when he comes back--if he +_does_ come back.") "I don't know _why_ I tell you all this, except +that I ought never to have misled you at the start. But _if_ you are +a kind and good man"--David's voice broke here--"You will forget all +about it and not upset my father, I can _assure_ you I haven't done +_anything_ really wrong. I haven't deserted--some day--perhaps--I +can tell you all about it. But at present all that South African +episode is just a horrid dream--I was more sinned against than +sinning" (tears were rather in the voice at this stage). "I want to +forget all about it--and settle down and vex my father no more. I +want to read for the Bar--a soldier's life is the very _opposite_ to +what I should choose if I were a free agent. But you will trust me, +won't you? You will believe me when I say I've done _nothing_ wrong, +nothing that you, if you knew all the facts, would call wrong...?" + +Speech here trailed off into emotion. Despite the severest +self-restraint the bosom rose and fell. A few tears trickled down +the smooth cheeks--it was an ingratiating boy on the verge of +manhood that Rossiter saw before him. He hastened to say: + +"My _dear_ chap! Don't say another word, unless you like to +blackguard me for my impertinence in putting these questions. I +_quite_ understand. We'll consider the whole thing erased from our +memories. Go on studying for the Bar with all your might, if you +must take up so barren a profession and won't become my pupil in +biology--Great openings, I can tell you, coming now in that +direction." (A pause.) + +"But if it's of any interest to you, just come here as often as you +like in your spare time--either to tea with Mrs. Rossiter or to see +me at work on my experiments. I've taken a great liking to you, if +you'll allow me to say so. I think there's good stuff in you. A +young man reading for the Bar in London is none the worse for a few +friends. He must often feel pretty lonely on a Sunday, for example. +And he may also--now I'm going to be impertinent and paternal +again--he may also pick up undesirable acquaintances, male--and +female. Don't you get feeling lonely, with your home far away in +Wales. Consider yourself free of this place at any rate, and my wife +and I can introduce you to some other people you might like to know. +I might introduce you to Mark Stansfield the Q.C. Do you know any +one in London, by the bye?" + +"Oh yes," said David, smiling with all but one tear dried on a still +coloured cheek. "I know Honoria Fraser--I know Mr. Praed the +architect--" + +"The A.R.A.? Of course; you or your father said you had +been his pupil. H'm. Praed. Yes, I visualize him. Rather a +dilettante--whimsical--I didn't like what I heard of him at one +time. However it's no affair of mine. And Honoria Fraser! She's +simply one of the best women I know. It's curious she wasn't +here--At least I didn't see her--this afternoon. She's a friend of +my wife's. I knew her when she was at Newnham. She had a great +friend--what was it? Violet? No, Vera? Vivien--yes that was it, +_Vivien_ Warren. Of course! Why that business she started for women +in the City somewhere is called _Fraser and Warren_. She was always +wanting to bring this Vivien Warren here. Said she had such a pretty +colouring. I own I rather like to see a pretty woman. But she didn't +come" (pulls at his pipe and thrusts another cigarette on David). +"Went abroad. Seemed rather morose. Some one who came with Honoria +said she had a bad mother, and Honoria very rightly shut him up. By +the bye, _where_ and _how_ did you come to meet Honoria first?" + +(David was on the point of saying--he was so unstrung--"Why we were +at Newnham together." Then resolved to tell another whopper--Indeed +I am told there is a fascination in certain circumstances about +lying--and replied): "Vivien Warren was my cousin. She was a +Vavasour on her mother's side--from South Wales--and my mother was a +Vavasour too--" And as the disguised Vivie said this, some inkling +came into her mind that there _was_ a real relationship between +Catharine Warren _née_ Vavasour and the Mary Vavasour who was +David's mother. A spasm of joy flashed through her at the +possibility of her story being in some slight degree true. + +"I see," said Rossiter, satisfied, and feeling now that the +interview had lasted long enough and that there would be just time +to glance at his assistant's afternoon work before he dressed for +dinner.... + +"Well, old chap. Good-bye for the present. Come often and see us and +look upon me--I must be fifteen years older than you are--What, +_twenty-four_? Impossible! You don't look a day older than +twenty--in fact, if you hadn't told me you'd been in South +Africa--However as I was saying, look on me as _in loco parentis_ +while you _are_ in London. I'll show you the way out into the hall. +Shall they call you a cab? No? You're quite right. It's a splendid +night for January. Where do you live? Here, write it down in my +address book.... '7 Fig Tree Court, Temple'--What a jolly address! +Are there fig trees in the Temple ... still? P'raps descended from +cuttings or layers the poor Templars brought from the Holy Land." + + +David returned to Fig Tree Court and his studies of criminology. But +his body and mind thrilled with the experiences of the afternoon; +and the musty records in works of repellent binding and close, +unsympathetic print of nineteenth century forgery, poisoning, +assaults-on-the-person, and cruelty-to-children cases for once +failed to hold his close attention. He sat all through the evening +after a supper of bread and cheese and ginger beer in his snug, +small room, furnished principally with well-filled book-shelves. The +room had a glowing fire and a green-shaded reading lamp. He sat +staring beyond his law books at visions, waking dreams that came and +went. The dangers of exposure that opened before him were in these +dreams, but there were other mind-pictures that filled his life with +a glow of colour. How different from the drab horizons that +encircled poor Vivie Warren less than a year ago! Poor Vivie, whom +even FitzJohn's Avenue at Hampstead had rejected, who had long since +been dropped--no doubt on account of rumours concerning her +mother--by the few acquaintances she had made at Cambridge, who had +parents living in South Kensington, Bayswater, and Bloomsbury. Here +was Portland Place receiving her in her guise as David Williams with +open arms. Men and women looked at her kindly, interestedly, and she +could look back at them without that protective frown. At night she +could walk about the town, go to the theatre, stroll along the +Embankment and attract no man's offensive attentions. She could +enter where she liked for a meal, a cup of tea, frequent the museum +of the Royal College of Surgeons when she would without waiting for +a "ladies" day; stop to look at a street fight, cause no sour looks +if she entered a smoking compartment on the train, mingle with the +man-world unquestioned, unhindered, unnoticed, exciting at most a +pleasant off-hand camaraderie due to her youth and good looks. + +Should she go on with the bold adventure? A thousand times yes! +David should break no law in Vivie's code of honour, do real wrong +to no one; but Vivie should see the life best worth living in London +from a man's standpoint. + +David however must be armed at every point and have his course +clearly marked out before his contemplation. He must steep himself +in the geography of South Africa--Why not get Rossiter to propose +him as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society? That _would_ be a +lark because they wouldn't admit women as members: they had refused +Honoria Fraser. David must read up--somewhere--the history of the +South African War as far as it went. He had better find out +something about the Bechuanaland Police Force; how as a member of +such a force he could have drifted as far south as the vicinity of +Colesberg; how thereabouts he could have got sick enough--he +certainly would say nothing more about a wound--to have been put +into hospital. He must find out how he could have escaped from the +Boers and come back to England without getting into difficulties +with the military or the Colonial Office or whoever had any kind of +control over the members of the Bechuanaland Border Police.... + +But the whole South African episode had better be dropped. Rossiter, +after his appeal, would set himself to forget and ignore it. It must +be damped down in the poor old father's mind as of relative +unimportance--after all, his father was a recluse who did not have +many visitors ... by the bye, he must remember to write on the +morrow and explain why he could not come down for Christmas or the +New Year ... would promise a good long visit in the Easter holidays +instead--Must remember that resolution to learn up some Welsh. What +a nuisance it was that you couldn't buy anywhere in London or in +South Wales any book about modern conversation in Welsh. The sort of +Welsh you learnt in the old-fashioned books, which were all that +could be got, was Biblical language--Some one had told David that if +you went into Smithfield Market in the early morning you might meet +the Welsh farmers and stock-drivers who had come up from Wales +during the night and who held forth in the Cymric tongue over their +beasts. But probably their language was such as would shock +Nannie.... Supposing Frank Gardner did come to England? In that case +it might be safer to confide in Frank. He was harum-scarum, but he +was chivalrous and he pitied Vivie. Besides he was a prime +appreciator of a lark. Should she even tell Rossiter? No, of +_course_ not. That was just one of the advantages of being "David." +As "David" she could form a sincere and inspiring friendship with +Rossiter which would be utterly beyond her reach as "Vivie." How +pale beside the comradeship of Honoria now appeared the hand-grips, +the hearty male free-masonry of a man like Rossiter. How ungrateful +however even to make such an admission to herself.... + +At present the only people who knew of her prank and guessed or knew +her purpose were Honoria and Bertie Adams. Honoria! what a noble +woman, what a true friend. Somehow, now she was David, she saw +Honoria in a different light. Poor Norie! She too had her wistful +leanings, her sorrows and disappointments. What a good thing it +would be if her mother decided to die--of course she would, could, +never say any such thing to Norie--to die and set free Honoria to +marry Major Petworth Armstrong! She felt Norie still hankered after +him, but perhaps kept him at bay partly because of her mother's +molluscous clingings--No! she wouldn't even sneer at Lady Fraser. +Lady Fraser had been one of the early champions of Woman's rights. +Very likely it was a dread of Vivie's sneers and disappointment that +had mainly kept back Norie from accepting Major Armstrong's +advances. Well, when next they met she--Vivie--or better still +David--would set that right. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +HONORIA AGAIN + + + 7, Fig Tree Court, Temple. + _March_ 20, 1902. + + + DEAR HONORIA,-- + + I am going down to spend Easter with my people in South + Wales. Before I leave I should so very much like a long talk + with you where we can talk freely and undisturbed. That is + impossible at the Office for a hundred reasons, especially + now that Beryl Claridge has taken to working early in her + new-found zeal, while Bertie Adams deems it his duty to stay + late. I am--really, truly--grieved to hear that your mother + is so ill again. I would not ask to meet her--even if she + was well enough to receive people--because she does not know + me and when one is as ill as she is, the introduction to a + stranger is a horrid jar. But if you _could_ fit in say an + hour's detachment from her side--is it "bed-side" or is she + able to get up?--and could receive me in your own + sitting-room, why then we could have that full and free talk + I should like on your affairs and on mine and on the joint + affairs of _Fraser and Warren_. + + Yours sincerely, + D. V. W. + + + DEAR DAVID,-- + + Come by all means. The wish for a talk is fully reciprocated + on my side. Mother generally tries to sleep in the afternoon + between three and six, and a Nurse is then with her. + + Yours sincerely, + H. F. + +"Mr. David Williams wishes to see you, Miss," said a waiter, +meeting Honoria on a Thursday afternoon, as she was emerging into +their tiny hall from her mother's room. + +"Show him up, please.... Ah _there_ you are, _David_. We must both +talk rather low as mother is easily waked. Come into my study; +fortunately it is at the other end of the flat." + + * * * * * + +They reach the study, and Honoria closes the door softly but firmly +behind them. + +"We never do kiss as a rule, having long ago given up such a messy +form of greeting; but certainly we wouldn't under these +circumstances lest we could be seen from the opposite windows and +thought to be 'engaged'; but though I may seem a little frigid in +greeting you, it is only because of the clothes you are +wearing'--You understand, don't you--?" + +"Quite, dearest. We cannot be too careful. Besides we long ago +agreed to be modern and sanitary in our manners." + +"Won't you smoke?" + +"Well, perhaps it would be more restful," said David, "more manly; +but as a matter of fact of late I have been rather 'off' smoking. It +is very wasteful, and as far as I am concerned it never produced +much effect--either way--on the nerves. Still, it gives one a nice +manly flavour. I always liked the smell of a smoking-room.... And +your mother: how is she?" + +"Very bad, I fear. The doctor tells me she can't last much longer, +and hypocritical as the phrase sounds I couldn't wish her to, unless +these pains can be mitigated, and this dreadful distress in +breathing.... I wonder if some day _I_ shall be like that, and if +behind my back a daughter will be saying she couldn't wish me to +live much longer, unless, etc. I shall miss her _frightfully_, if +she does die.... Armstrong has been more than kind. He has got a +woman's heart for tenderness. He thinks every day of some fresh +palliative until the doctors quite dislike him. Fortunately his +kindness gives mother a fleeting gleam of pleasure. She wants me to +marry him--I don't know, I'm sure.... Whilst she's so bad I don't +feel I could take any interest in love-making--and I suppose we +_should_ make love in a perfunctory way--We're all of us so bound by +conventions. We try to feel dismal at funerals, when often the +weather is radiant and the ride down to Brookwood most exhilarating. +And love-making is supposed to go with marriage ... heigh-ho! What +should you say if I _did_ marry--Major Armstrong...? Did you ever +hear of such a ridiculous name as Petworth? I should have to call +him 'Pet' and every one would think I had gone sentimental in middle +age. How _can_ parents be so unthinking about Christian names? He +can't see the thing as I do; it is almost the only subject on which +he is 'huffy.' _You_ are the other, about which more anon. He says +the Petworth property meant _everything_ to the Armstrongs, to _his_ +branch of the Armstrongs. But for that, they might have been any +other kind of Armstrong--it always kept him straight at school and +in the army, he says, to remember he was an Armstrong of Petworth. +They have held that poor little property (_I_ call it) alongside the +Egmonts and the Leconfields for three hundred years, though they've +been miserably poor. His second name is James--Petworth James +Armstrong. But he loathes being called 'Jimmy.' + +"Of course, dear, I've no illusions. I'm not bad to look at--indeed +I sometimes quite admire my figure when I see myself after my bath +in the cheval glass--but I'm pretty well sure that one of the +factors in Pet's admiration for me was my income. Mother, it seems, +has a little of her own, from one of her aunts, and if the poor +darling is taken--though it is simply horrid considering that +_if_--only that she has talked so freely to Army--I think I like +'Army' far better than 'Pet'--Well I mean she's been trying to tell +him ever since he first came to call that when she is gone I shall +have, all told, in my own right, Five thousand a year. So I took the +first opportunity of letting _him_ know that Two thousand a year of +that would be held in reserve for the work of the firm and for the +Woman's Cause generally.... Look here, I won't babble on much +longer.... I know you're dying to make _me_ confidences.... We'll +ring for tea to be sent in here, and whilst the waiter is coming and +going--Don't they take _such_ a time about it, when they're _de +trop_?--we'll talk of ordinary things that can be shouted from the +_house tops_. + +"I haven't been to the Office for three days. Does everything seem +to be going on all right?" + +_David_: "Quite all right. Bertie Adams tries dumbly to express in +his eyes his determination to see the firm and me through all our +troubles and adventures. I wish I could convey a discreet hint to +him not to be so _blatantly_ discreet. If there were a Sherlock +Holmes about the place he would spot at once that Adams and I shared +a secret.... But about Beryl--" (Enter waiter....) + +_Honoria_ (to waiter): "Oh--er--tea for two please. Remember it must +be China and the still-room maids _must_ see that the water has been +fresh-boiled. And buttered toast--or if you've got muffins...? You +have? Well, then muffins; and of course jam and cake. And--would you +mind--you always try, I know--bringing the things in very +quietly--here--? Because Lady Fraser is so easily waked..." + +(The Swiss waiter goes out, firmly convinced that Honoria's anxiety +for her lady mother is really due to the desire that the mother +should not interrupt a flirtation and a clandestine tea.) + +_Honoria_: "Well, about Beryl?" + +_David_: "Beryl, I should say, is going to become a great woman of +business. But for that, and--I think--a curious streak of fidelity +to her vacillating architect ('How happy could I be with either,' +don't you know, _he_ seems to feel--just now they say he is living +steadily at Storrington with his wife No. 1, who is ill, poor +thing) ... but for that and this, I think Beryl would enjoy a +flirtation with me. She can't quite make me out, and my unwavering +severity of manner. Her cross-questioning sometimes is maddening--or +it might become so, but that with both of us--you and me--retiring +so much into the background she has to lead such a strenuous life +and see one after the other the more important clients. Of +course--here's the tea..." + +(Brief interval during which the waiter does much unnecessary laying +out of the tea until Honoria says: "Don't let me keep you. I know +you are busy at this time. I will ring if we want anything.") David +continues: "Of course I come in for my share of the work after six. +On one point Beryl is firm; she doesn't mind coming at nine or at +eight or at half-past seven in the morning, but she _must_ be back +in Chelsea by half-past five to see her babies, wash them and put +them to bed. She has a tiny little house, she tells me, near +Trafalgar Square, and fortunately she's got an excellent and devoted +nurse, one of those rare treasures that questions nothing and is +only interested in the business in hand. She and a cook-general make +up the establishment. Before Mrs. Architect No. 1 became ill, Mr. +Architect used to visit her there pretty regularly, and is assumed +to be Mr. Claridge.... Well: to finish up about Beryl: I think +you--we--can trust her. She may be odd in her notions of morality, +but in finance or business she's as honest--as--a man." + +"My dear Vivie--I mean David--what a strange thing for _you_ to +say! I suppose it is part of your make-up--goes with the clothes and +that turn-over collar, and the little safety pin through the tie--?" + +_David_: "No, I said it deliberately. Men are mostly hateful things, +but I think in business they're more dependable than women--think +more about telling a lie or letting any one down. The point for you +to seize on is this--if you haven't noticed it already: that Beryl +has become an uncommonly good business woman. And what's more, my +dear, you've improved _her_ just as you improved _me_" (Honoria +deprecates this with a gesture, as she sits looking into the fire). +"Beryl's talk is getting ever so much less reckless. And she takes +jolly good care not to scandalize a client. She finds Adams--she +tells me--so severe at the least jest or personality that she only +talks to him now on business matters, and finds him a great +stand-by; and the other day she told Miss A.--as you call the senior +clerk--she ought to be ashamed of herself, bringing in a copy of the +_Vie Parisienne_. The way she settled Mrs. Gordon's affairs--you +remember, No. 3875 you catalogued the case--was masterly; and Mrs. +G. has insisted on paying 5 per cent. commission on the recovered +property. And it was Beryl who found out that leakage in the +'Variegated Tea Rooms' statement of accounts. I hadn't spotted it. +No. I think we needn't be anxious about Beryl, especially whilst I +am in Wales and you are giving yourself up--as you ought to do--to +your mother. But it's coming to _this_, Honoria--" (Enter waiter. +David says "Oh, damn," half audibly. Waiter is confirmed in his +suspicions, but as he likes Honoria immensely resolves to say +nothing about them in the Steward's room. She is such a kind young +lady. He explains he has come to take the tea things away, and +Honoria replies "Capital idea! Now, David, you'll be able to have +the whole table for your accounts!").... "It's coming to _this_, +Honoria," says David, clearing his throat, "that you will soon be +wanting not to be bothered any more with the affairs of _Fraser and +Warren_, and after I really get into the Law business I too shall +require to detach myself. Let us therefore be thankful that Beryl is +shaping so well. I rather think this summer you will have to get +more office accommodation and give her some more responsible women +to help her.... _Now_ finish what you were saying about Major +Armstrong." + +_Honoria_: "Of _course_ I shall marry him some day. I suppose I felt +that the day after I first met him. But it amuses me to be under no +illusion. I am sure this is what happened two years ago--or whenever +it was he came back wounded from your favourite haunt, South Africa. +Michael Rossiter--who likes 'Army' enormously--I think they were at +school or college together--said to Linda, his wife: 'Here's +Armstrong. One of the best. Wants to marry. Wife must have a little +money, otherwise he'll have to go on letting Petworth Manor. And +here's Honoria Fraser, one of the finest women I've ever met. +Getting a little long in the tooth--or will be soon. Let's bring 'em +together and make a match of it.' + +"So we are each convoked for a luncheon, with a projected +adjournment to Kew--which _you_ spoilt--and there it is. But joking +apart, 'Army' is a dear and I am sure by now he wants me even more +than my money--and I certainly want him. I'm rising thirty and I +long for children and don't want 'em to come to me too late in +life." + +_David_: "You said he didn't like _me_..." + +_Honoria_: "Oh that was half nonsense. When we all met last Sunday +at the Rossiters he became very jealous and suspicious. Asked who +was that whipper-snapper--I said you neither whipped nor snapped, +especially if kindly treated. He said then who was that Madonna +young man--a phrase it appears he'd picked up from Lord Cromer, +who used to apply it to every new arrival from the Foreign +Office--Armstrong was once his military secretary. I was surprised +to hear he thought you womanish--I spoke of your fencing, +riding,--was just going to add 'hockey,' and 'croquet': then +remembered they might be thought feminine pastimes, so referred to +your swimming. Military men always respect a good swimmer; I fancy +because many of them funk the water.... I was just going on to +explain that you were a cousin of a great friend of mine and helped +me in my business, when a commissionaire came from Quansions in a +hansom to say that mother was feeling very bad again. 'Army' and I +went back in the hansom, but I was crying a little and being a +gentleman he did not press his suit..." + +Enter Lady Fraser's nurse on tiptoe. Says in a very hushed voice +"Major Armstrong has called, Miss Fraser. He came to ask about Lady +Fraser. I said if anything she was a bit better and had had a good +sleep. He then asked if he might see you." + +_Honoria_: "Certainly. Would you mind showing him in here? It will +save my ringing for the waiter." + +Enter Major Armstrong. At the sight of David he flushes and looks +fierce. + +_Honoria_: "So glad you've come, dear Major. I hear mother has had a +good nap. I must go to her presently. You know David Vavasour +Williams?--Davy! You really _must_ leave out your second name! It +gets so fatiguing having to say it every time I introduce you." + +Armstrong bows stiffly and David, standing with one well-shaped foot +in a neat boot on the curb of the fireplace, looks up and returns +the bow. + +_Honoria_: "This won't do. You are two of my dearest friends, and +yet you hardly greet one another. I always determined from the age +of fifteen onwards I would never pass my life as men and women in a +novel do--letting misunderstandings creep on and on where fifty +words might settle them. _Army!_ You've often asked me to marry +you--or at least so I've understood your broken sentences. I never +refused you in so many words. Now I say distinctly 'Yes'--if you'll +have me. Only, you know quite well I can't actually marry you whilst +mother lies so ill..." + +Major Armstrong, very red in the face, in a mixture of exultation, +sympathy and annoyance that the affairs of his heart are being +discussed before a whipper-snapper stranger--says: "_Honoria!_ Do +you _mean_ it? Oh..." + +_Honoria_: "Of course I mean it! And if I drew back you could now +have a breach-of-promise-of-marriage action, with David as an +important witness. D.V.W.--who by the bye is a cousin of my +_greatest friend_--my friend for life, whether you like her--as you +ought to do--or not--Vivie Warren.... David is reading for the Bar; +and besides being your witness to what I have just said, might--if +you deferred your action long enough--be your Counsel.... Now look +here," (with a catch in the voice) "you two dear things. My nerves +are all to bits.... I haven't slept properly for nights and nights. +David, dear, if you _must_ talk any more business before you go down +to Wales, you must come and see me to-morrow.... Darling mother! I +can't _bear_ the thought you may not live to see my happiness." +(David discreetly withdraws without a formal good-bye, and as he +goes out and the firelight flickers up, sees Armstrong take Honoria +in his arms.) + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE BRITISH CHURCH + + +David had read hard all through Hilary term with Mr. Stansfield of +the Inner Temple; he had passed examinations brilliantly; he had +solved knotty problems in the legal line for _Fraser and Warren_, +and as already related he had begun to go out into Society. Indeed, +starting from the Rossiters' Thursdays and Praed's studio suppers, +he was being taken up by persons of influence who were pleased to +find him witty, possessed of a charming voice, of quiet but +unassailable manners. Opinions differed as to his good looks. Some +women proclaimed him as adorable, rather Sphynx-like, you know, but +quite fascinating with his well-marked eye-brows, his dark and curly +lashes, the rich warm tints of his complexion, the unfathomable grey +eyes and short upper lip with the down of adolescence upon it. Other +women without assigning any reason admitted he did not produce any +effect on their sensibility--they disliked law students, they said, +even if they were of a literary turn; they also disliked curates and +shopwalkers and sidesmen ... and Sunday-school teachers. Give them +_manly_ men; avowed soldiers and sailors, riders to hounds, +sportsmen, big game hunters, game-keepers, chauffeurs--the +chauffeur was becoming a new factor in Society, Bernard Shaw's +"superman"--prize-fighters, meat-salesmen--then you knew where you +were. + +Similarly men were divided in their judgment of him. Some liked him +very much, they couldn't quite say why. Others spoke of him +contemptuously, like Major Armstrong had done. This was due partly +to certain women being inclined to run after him--and therefore to +jealousy on behalf of the professional lady-killer of the +military species--and partly to a vague feeling that he was +enigmatic--Sphynx-like, as some women said. He was too silent +sometimes, especially if the conversation amongst men tended towards +racy stories; he was sarcastic and nimble-witted when he did speak. +And he was not easily bullied. If he encountered an insolent person, +he gave full effect to his five feet eight inches, the look from his +grey eyes was unwavering as though he tacitly accepted the +challenge, there was an invisible rapier hanging from his left hip, +a poise of the body which expressed dauntless courage. + +Honoria's stories of his skill in fencing, riding, swimming, +ball-games, helped him here. They were perfectly true or +sufficiently true--_mutatis mutandis_--and when put to the test +stood the test. David indeed found it well during this first season +in Town to hire a hack and ride a little in the Park--it only added +one way and another about fifty pounds to his outlay and impressed +certain of the Benchers who were beginning to turn an eye on him. +One elderly judge--also a Park rider--developed an almost +inconvenient interest in him; asked him to dinner, introduced him to +his daughters, and wanted to know a deal too much as to his position +and prospects. + +On the whole, it was a distinct relief from a public position, from +this increasing number of town acquaintances, this broader and +broader track strewn with cunning pitfalls, to lock up his rooms and +go off to Wales for the Easter holidays. Easter was late that +year--or it has to be for the purpose of my story--and David was +fortunate in the weather and the temperature. If West Glamorganshire +had looked richly, grandiosely beautiful in full summer, it had an +exquisite, if quite different charm in early spring, in April. The +great trees were spangled with emerald leaf-buds; the cherries, tame +and wild, the black-thorn, the plums and pears in orchards and on +old, old, grey walls, were in full blossom of virgin white. The +apple trees in course of time showed pink buds. The gardens +were full of wall-flowers--the inhabited country smelt of +wall-flowers--purple flags, narcissi, hyacinths. The woodland was +exquisitely strewn with primroses. In the glades rose innumerable +spears of purple half-opened bluebells; the eye ranged over an +anemone-dotted sward in this direction; over clusters of smalt-blue +dog violets in another. Ladies'-smocks and cowslips made every +meadow delicious; and the banks of the lowland streams were +gorgeously gilded with king-cups. The mountains on fine days were +blue and purple in the far distance; pale green and grey in the +foreground. Under the April showers and sun-shafts they became +tragic, enchanted, horrific, paradisiac. Even the mining towns were +bearable--in the spring sunshine. If man had left no effort untried +to pile hideosity on hideosity, flat ugliness on nauseous squalor, +he had not been able to affect the arch of the heavens in its lucid +blue, all smokes and vapours driven away by the spring winds; he had +not been able to neutralize the vast views visible from the miners' +sordid, one-storeyed dwellings, the panorama of hill and plain, of +glistening water, towering peaks, and larch forests of emerald green +amid the blue-Scotch pines and the black-green yews. + +David in previous letters, looking into his father's budget, had +shown him he could afford to keep a pony and a pony cart. This +therefore was waiting for him at the little station with the +gardener to drive. But in a week, David, already a good horseman, +had learnt to drive under the gardener's teaching, and then was able +to take his delighted father out for whole-day trips to revel in the +beauties of the scenery. + +They would have with them a wicker basket containing an ample lunch +prepared by the generous hands of Bridget. They would stop at +some spot on a mountain pass; tether the pony, sit on a plaid +shawl thrown over a boulder, and feast their eyes on green +mountain-shoulders reared against the pale blue sky; or gaze across +ravines not unworthy of Switzerland. Or they would put up pony and +cart at some village inn, explore old battlemented churches and +churchyards with seventeenth and eighteenth century headstones, so +far more tasteful and seemly than the hideous death memorials of the +nineteenth century. And ever and again the old father, looking more +and more like a Druid, would recite that charming Spring song, the +104th Psalm; or fragments of Welsh poetry sounding very good in +Welsh--as no doubt Greek poetry does in properly pronounced Greek, +but being singularly bald and vague in its references to earth, sea, +sky and flora when translated into plain English. + +David expressed some such opinions which rather scandalized his +father who had grown up in the conventional school of unbounded, +unreasoning reverence for the Hebrew, Greek and Keltic classics. +From that they passed to the great problems, the undeterminable +problems of the Universe; the awful littleness of men--mere lice, +perhaps, on the scurfy body of a shrinking, dying planet of a +fifth-rate sun, one of a billion other suns. The Revd. Howel like +most of the Christian clergy of all times of course never looked at +the midnight sky or gave any thought to the terrors and mysteries of +astronomy, a science so modern, in fact, that it only came into real +existence two or three hundred years ago; and is even now only taken +seriously by about ten thousand people in Europe and America. Where, +in this measureless universe--which indeed might only be one of +several universes--was God to be found? A God that had been upset by +the dietary of a small desert tribe, who fussed over burnt +sacrifices and the fat of rams at one time; at another objected to +censuses; at another and a later date wanted a human sacrifice to +placate his wrath; or who had washed out the world's fauna and flora +in a flood which had left no geological evidence to attest its +having taken place. "Did you ever think about the Dinosaurs, +father?" said David at the end of some such tirade--an outburst of +free-thinking which in earlier years might have upset that father to +wrath and angry protest, but which now for some reason only left him +dazed and absent-minded. (It was the Colonies that had done it, he +thought, and the studio talk of that dilettante architect. By and +bye, David would distinguish himself at the Bar, marry and settle +down, and resume the orthodox outlook of the English--or as he liked +to call it--the British Church.) + +"The Dinosaurs, my boy? No. What were they?" + +_David_: "The real Dragons, the Dragons of the prime, that swarmed +over England and Wales and Scotland, and Europe, Asia, and North +America--and I dare say Africa too. One of the most stupendous facts +of what you call 'creation,' though perhaps only one amongst many +skin diseases that have afflicted the planet--Well the Dinosaurs +went on developing and evolving and perfecting--so Rossiter +says--for three million years or so--Then they were scrap-heaped. +What a waste of creative energy!..." + +_Father_: "Ah it's Rossiter who puts all these ideas into your head, +is it?" + +_David_ (flushing); "Oh dear no! I used to think about them at (is +about to say 'Newnham,' but substitutes 'Malvern')--at Malvern--" + +_Father_ (drily): "I'm glad to hear you thought about +something--serious--at any rate--then, in the midst of your scrapes +and truancies--but go on, dear boy. It's a delight to me to hear you +speak. It reminds me--I mean your voice does--of your poor mother. +You know I loved her very tenderly, David, and though it is all past +and done with I believe I should forgive her _now_, if she only came +back to me. I'm sometimes _so_ lonely, boy. I wish you'd marry and +settle down here--there's lots of room for you--some nice girl--and +give me grandchildren before I die. But I suppose I must be patient +and wait first for your call to the Bar. What a dreary long time it +all takes! Why can't they, with one so clever, shorten the term of +probation? Or why wait for that to marry? I could give you an +allowance. As soon as you were called you could then follow the +South Wales circuit--well, go on about your Dinosaurs. I seem to +remember Professor Owen invented them--but _he_ never wavered in his +faith and was the great opponent of that rash man, Darwin. Oh, _I_ +remember now the old controversies--what a stalwart was the Bishop +of Winchester! They couldn't bear him at their Scientific +meetings--there was one at Bath, if I recollect right, and he put +them all to the right-about. What about your Dinosaurs? I'm not +denying their existence; it's only the estimates of time that are so +ridiculous. God made them and destroyed them in the great Flood, of +which their fossil remains are the evidence--" + +David however would desist from pursuing such futile arguments; feel +surprised, indeed, at his own outbreaks, except that he hated +insincerity. However new and disturbing to his father were these +flashes of the New Learning, in his outward conduct he was orthodox +and extremely well-behaved. The spiritual exercises of the Revd. +Howel had become jejune, and limited very much by his failing sight. +The recovery after the operation had come too late in life to bring +about any expansion of public or private devotions. Family prayers +were reduced to the recital from memory of an exhortation, a +confession, and an absolution, followed by the Lord's Prayer and a +benediction. Services in the church were limited to Morning and +Evening prayers, with Communion on the first Sunday in the month, +and a sermon following Morning prayer. There was no one to play the +organ if the schoolmistress failed to turn up--as she often did. +David however scrupulously turned the normal congregation of +five--Bridget, the maid of the time-being, the gardener-groom, the +sexton, and a baker-church-warden--into six by his unvarying +attendance. In the course of half his stay the rumour of his being +present and of his good looks and great spiritual improvement +attracted quite a considerable congregation, chiefly of young women +and a few sheepish youths; so that his father was at one and the +same time exhilarated and embarrassed. Was this to be a Church +revival? If so, he readily pardoned David his theories on the +Dinosaurs and his doubts as to the unvarying evidence of Divine +Wisdom in the story of Creation. + +If any other consideration than a deep affection for this dear old +man and repentance for his unwise ebullitions of Free Thought had +guided David in the matter it was an utter detestation of the +services and the influence of the Calvinist Chapel in the village, +the Little Bethel, presided over by Pastor Prytherch, a fanatical +blacksmith, who alternated spells of secret drunkenness and episodes +of animalism by orgies of self-abasement, during which he--in +half-confessing his own lapses--attributed freely and unrebukedly +the same vices to the male half of his overflowing congregation. +These out-pourings--"Pechadur truenus wyf i! Arglwydd madden i +mi!"--extempore prayers, psalms chanted with a swaying of the body, +hymns sung uproariously, scripture read with an accompaniment of +groans, hysteric laughter, and interjections of assent, and a +rambling discourse--lasting fully an hour, were in the Welsh +language; and David on his three or four visits--and it can be +imagined what a sensation _they_ caused! The Vicar's son--himself +perhaps about to confess his sins!--understood very little of the +subject matter, save from the extravagant gestures of the +participants. But he soon made up his mind that religion for +religion, that expressed by the English--"Well, father, you are +right--the 'British'"--Church in Wales was many hundred times +superior in reasonableness and stability to the negroid ebullitions +of the Calvinists. As a matter of fact they were scarcely more +followers of the reformer Calvin than they were of Ignatius Loyola; +it was just a symptomatic outbreak of some prehistoric Iberian, +Silurian form of worship, something deeply planted in the soil of +Wales, something far older than Druidism, something contemporary +with the beliefs of Neolithic days. + +Eighteen years ago, much of Wales was as enslaved by whiskey as are +still Keltic Scotland, Keltiberian Ireland, Lancashire, London and +wicked little Kent. It was only saved from going under completely by +decennial religious revivals, which for three months or so were +followed by total abstinence and a fierce-eyed continence. + +Just about this time--during David's extended spring holiday in +Wales (he had brought many law books down with him to read)--there +had begun one of the newspaper-made-famous Revivals. It was led by a +young prophet--a football half-back or whatever they are called, +though I, who prefer thoroughness, would, if I played football, +offer up the whole of my back to bear the brunt--who saw visions of +Teutonically-conceived angels with wings, who heard "voices," was in +constant communication with the Redeemer of Mankind and on familiar +terms with God, had a lovely tenor voice and moved emotional men and +hysterical, love-sick women to tears, even to bellowings by his +prayers and songs. He had for some weeks been confined in publicity +to half-contemptuous paragraphs in the South Wales Press. Then the +_Daily Chronicle_ took him up. Their well-known, emotional-article +writer, Mr. Sigsbee, saw "copy" in him, and--to do him justice (for +there I agreed with him)--a chance to pierce the armour of the +hand-in-glove-with-Government distillers, so went down to Wales to +write him up. For three weeks he became more interesting than a +Cabinet Minister. Indeed Cabinet Ministers or those who aspired to +become such at the next turn of the wheel truckled to him. Some were +afraid he might become a small Messiah and lead Wales into open +revolt; others that he might smash the whiskey trade and impair the +revenue. Mr. Lloyd George going to address a pro-Boer meeting at +Aberystwith (was it?) encountered him at a railway junction, +attended by a court of ex-footballers and reformed roysterers, and +said in the hearing of a reporter "I must fight with the Sword of +the Flesh; but you fight with the Sword of the Spirit"--whatever +that may have meant--and I do not pretend to complete accuracy of +remembrance--I only know I felt very angry with the whole movement +at the time, because it delayed indefinitely the _Daily Chronicle's_ +review of my new book. Well this Evan--in all such movements an Evan +is inevitable--Evan Gwyllim Jones--with the black eyes, abundant +black hair, beautiful features (he was a handsome lad) and glorious +voice, addressed meetings in the open air and in every available +building of four walls. Thousands withdrew their names from +foot-ballery, nigh on Two Millions must have taken the pledge--and +not merely an anti-whiskey pledge but a fierce renunciation of the +most diluted alcohol as well; and approximately two hundred and +fifty thousand confessed their sins of unchastity and swore to be +reborn Galahads for the rest of their lives. It was a spiritual +Spring-cleaning, as drastic and as overdone as are the domestic +upheavals known by that name. But it did a vast deal of good, all +the same, to South Wales; and though it was a seventh wave, the tide +of temperance, thrift, cleanliness, bodily and spiritual, has risen +to a higher level of average in the beautiful romantic Principality +ever since. Evan Gwyllim Jones, however, overdid it. He had to +retire from the world to a Home--some said even to a Mental +Hospital. Six months afterwards he emerged, cured of his "voices," +much plumper, and--perhaps--poor soul--shorn of some of his +illusions and ideals; but he married a grocer's widow of Cardiff, +and the _Daily Chronicle_ mentioned him no more. + +The infection of his meetings however penetrated to the agricultural +district in which Pontystrad was situated. Five villages went +completely off their heads. The blacksmith-pastor had to be put +under temporary restraint. Quite decent-looking, unsuspected folk +confessed to far worse sins than they had ever committed. There +arose an aristocracy of outcasts. Three inns where little worse than +bad beer was sold were gutted, respectable farmers' wives drank +Eau-de-Cologne instead of spirits, several over-due marriages took +place, there were a number of premature births, and the membership +of the football clubs was disastrously reduced. Such excitement was +generated that little work was done, and the illegitimate birth rate +of west Glamorganshire--always high--for the opening months of 1903 +became even higher. + +David was enlisted by the employers of labour, the farmers, +chemical works, mining and smelting-works managers, squires, and +postmasters to restore order. He preached against the Revivalists. +Not with any lack of sympathy, any apology for the real ills which +they denounced. He spoke with emphasis against the loosening of +morality, recommended early marriage, and above all _education_; +denounced the consumption of alcohol so strenuously and convincedly +that then and there as he spoke he resolved himself henceforth to +abstain from anything stronger than lager beer or the lighter +French and German wines. But he threw cold water resolutely on the +fantastical nonsense that accompanied these emotional outbursts of +so-called religion; invited his hearers to study--at any rate +elementarily--astronomy and biology; did not run down football but +advised a moderate interest only being taken in such futile sports; +recommended volunteering and an acquaintance with rifles as far +preferable, seeing that we always stood in danger of a European war +or of a drastic revival of insolent conservatism. + +Then he made his appeal to the women. He spoke of the dangers of +this hysteria; the need there was for level-headed house-keeping +women in our councils; how they should first qualify for and then +demand the suffrage, having already attained the civic vote. (Here +some of the employers of labour disapproved, plucked at his arm or +hem of his reefer jacket, and one squire lumbered off the platform.) +But he held on, warming with a theme that hitherto had hardly +interested him. His speeches were above the heads of his peasant +audiences; but they were a more sensitive harp to play on than the +average Anglo-Saxon audience. Many women wept, only decorously, as +he outlined their influence in a reformed village, a purified +Principality. The men applauded frantically because, despite some +prudent reserves, there seemed to be a promise of revolt in his +suggestions. David felt the electric thrill of the orator in harmony +with his audience; who for that reason will strive for further +triumphs, more resounding perorations. He introduced scraps of +Welsh--all his auto-intoxicated brain could remember (How physically +true was that taunt of Dizzy's--"Inebriated with the exuberance of +his own verbosity!"). + +And the delighted audience shouted back "You're the man we want! +Into Parliament you shall go, Davy-bach" and much else. So David +restored the five villages to sobriety in life and faith, yet left +them with a new enthusiasm kindled. Before he departed on his return +to London and the grind of his profession, he had effected another +change. Because he had spoken as he had spoken and touched the +hearts of emotional people, they came trickling back to his father's +church, to the "British" Church, as David now called it. Little +Bethel was empty, and the pastor-blacksmith not yet out of the +asylum at Swansea. The Revd. Howel Williams trod on air. His sermons +became terribly long and involved, but that was no drawback in the +minds of his Welsh auditory; though it made his son swear inwardly +and reconciled him to the approaching return to Fig Tree Court. The +old Druid felt inspired to convince the hundred people present that +the Church they had returned to _was_ the Church of their fathers, +not only back to Roman times, when Glamorganshire was basking in an +Italian civilization, but further still. He showed how the Druids +were rather to be described as Ante-Christian than Anti--with an +_i_; and played ponderously on this quip. In Druidism, he +observed--I am sure I cannot think why, but it was his hobby--you +had a remarkable foreshadowing of Christianity; the idea of the +human sacrifice, the Atonement, the Communion of Saints, the mystic +Vine, which he clumsily identified with the mistletoe, and what not +else. He read portions of his privately-published _Tales of +Taliessin_. In short such happiness radiated from his pink-cheeked +face and recovered eyes that David regretted in no wise his own +lapses into conventional, stereotyped religion. The Church of +Britain might be stiff and stomachered, as the offspring of +Elizabeth, but it was stately, it was respectable--as outwardly was +the great virgin Queen--and it was easy to live with. Only he +counselled his father to do two things: never to preach for more +than half-an-hour--even if it meant keeping a small American clock +going inside the pulpit-ledge; and to obtain a curate, so that the +new enthusiasm might not cool and his father verging on seventy, +might not overstrain himself. He pointed out that by letting off +most of the glebe land and pretermitting David's "pocket-money" he +might secure a young and energetic Welsh-speaking curate, the +remainder of whose living-wage would--he felt sure--be found out of +the diocesan funds of St. David's bishopric. + +The Revd. Howel let him have his way (This was after David had +returned to Fig Tree Court) and by the following June a stalwart +young curate was lodged in the village and took over the bulk of the +progressive church work from the fumbling hands of the dear old +Vicar. He was a thoroughly good sort, this curate, troubled by no +possible doubts whatever, a fervent tee-totaller, a half-back or +whole back--I forget which--at football, a good boxer, and an +unwearied organizer. Little Bethel was sold and eventually turned +into a seed-merchant's repository and drying-room. The curate in +course of time married the squire's daughter and I dare say long +afterwards succeeded the Revd. Howel Vaughan Williams when the +latter died--but that date is still far ahead of my story. At any +rate--isn't it _droll_ how these things come about?--David's action +in this matter, undertaken he hardly knew why--did much to fetter +Mr. Lloyd George's subsequent attempts to disestablish the British +Church in Wales. + +What did Bridget think of all this, of the spiritual evolution of +her nursling, of his identity with the vicious, shifty, idle youth +whose uncanny gift of design seemed to have been completely lost +after his stay in South Africa? David Vavasour Williams had left +home to the relief of his father and the whole village, if even to +the half-pitying regret of his old nurse, in 1896. He had spent a +year or more in Mr. Praed's studio studying to be an architect or a +scene painter. Then somehow or other he did not get on with Mr. +Praed and he enlisted impulsively in a South African Police force +(in the Army, it seemed to Bridget). He had somehow become involved +in a war with a South African people, called by Bridget "the Wild +Boars"; he is wounded or ill in hospital; is little heard of, almost +presumed dead. Throughout all these five years he scarcely ever +writes to his forgiving father; maintains latterly a sulky silence. +Then, suddenly in the summer of 1901, returns; preceded only by a +telegram but apparently vouched for by this Mr. Praed; and announces +himself as having forgotten his Welsh and most of the events of his +youth, but having acquired a changed heart, and an anxiety to make +up for past ill-behaviour by a present good conduct which seems +almost miraculous. + +Well: miracles were easily believed in by Bridget. Perhaps his +father's prayers had been answered. Providence sometimes meted out +an overwhelming boon to really good people. David was certainly a +Vavasour, if there was nothing Williamsy about his looks.... His +mother, in Mrs. Bridget Evanwy's private opinion, had been a +hussy.... Was David his father's son? Hadn't she once caught Mrs. +Howel Williams kissing a young stranger behind a holly bush and +wasn't that why Bridget had really been sent away? She had returned +to take charge of the pretty, motherless little boy when she herself +was a widow disappointed of children, and the child was only three. +Would she ever turn against her nursling now, above all, when he was +showing himself such a son to his old father? Not she. He might be +who and what he would. He was giving another ten years of renewed +life to the dear old Druid and the continuance of a comfortable home +to his old Nannie. + +They talked a great deal up at Little Bethel of a "change of +heart." Perhaps such things really took place, though Bridget Evanwy +from a shrewd appraisement of the Welsh nature doubted it. She would +like to, but couldn't quite believe that an angel from heaven had +taken possession of David's body and come here to play a divine +part; because David sometimes talked so strangely--seemed not only +to doubt the existence of a heavenly host, but even of Something +beyond, so awful in Bridget's mind that she hardly liked to define +it in words, though in her own Welsh tongue it was so earthily +styled "the Big Man." + +However, at all costs, she would stand by David ... and without +quite knowing why, she decided that on all future visits she herself +would "do out" his room, would attend to him exclusively. The "girl" +was a chatterer, albeit she looked upon Mr. David with eyes of awe +and a most respectful admiration, while David on his part scarcely +bestowed on her a glance. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +DAVID IS CALLED TO THE BAR + + +1902 was the year of King Edward's break-down in health but of his +ultimate Coronation; it was the year in which Mr. Arthur Balfour +became premier; it was the year in which motors became really +well-known, familiar objects in the London streets, and hansoms (I +think) had to adopt taximeter clocks on the eve of their +displacement by taxi-cabs. It was likewise the year in which the +South African War was finally wound up and the star of Joseph +Chamberlain paled to its setting, and Mrs. Pankhurst and her +daughter Christabel founded the Women's Social and Political Union +at Manchester. + +In 1903, the Fiscal controversy absorbed much of public attention, +the War Office was once more reformed, women's skirts still swept +the pavement and encumbered the ball-room, a Peeress wrote +to the _Times_ to complain of Modern Manners, Surrey beat +Something-or-other at the Oval, and modern Cricket was voted dull. + +In 1904, the Russo-Japanese War was concluded, and _Fraser and +Warren_ received a year's notice from the Midland Insurance Co. that +they must vacate their premises on the fifth floor of Nos. 88-90 +Chancery Lane. The business of _F. and W._ had grown so considerable +that, as the affairs of the Midland Insurance Co. had slackened, it +became intolerable to hear the lift going up and down to the fifth +floor all through the day. The housekeeper also thought it odd that +a well-dressed young gentleman should steal in and up, day after +day, after office hours to work apparently alone in _Fraser and +Warren's_ partners' room. _Fraser and Warren_ over the hand of its +junior partner, Mrs. Claridge, accepted the notice. Their business +had quite overgrown these inconveniently situated offices and a move +to the West End was projected. Mrs. Claridge's scheme for week-end +cottages had been enormously successful and had put much money not +only into the coffers of _Fraser and Warren_ but into the banking +account of that clever architect, Francis Brimley Storrington. + +[I find I made an absurd mistake earlier in this book in charging +the too amorous architect with a home at "Storrington." His home +really was in a midland garden city which he had designed, but his +name--a not uncommon one--was Storrington.] + +In the autumn of 1902, poor Lady Fraser died. In January, 1903, +Honoria married the impatient Colonel Armstrong. In January, 1904, +she had her first baby--a boy. + +At the close of 1904 Beryl Claridge made proposals to Honoria Fraser +relative to a change in the constitution of _Fraser and Warren_. +Honoria was to have an interest still as a sleeping partner in the +concern and some voice in its management and policy. But she was to +take no active share of the office work and "Warren" was to pass out +of it altogether. Beryl pointed out it was rather a farce when the +middle partner--she herself had been made the junior partner a year +before--was perpetually and mysteriously absent, year after year, +engaged seemingly on work of her own abroad. Her architect +semi-husband moreover, who if not in the firm was doing an +increasing share of its business, wanted to know _more_ about Vivien +Warren. "Was she or was she not the daughter of the 'notorious' Mrs. +Warren; because if so..." He took of course a highly virtuous line. +Like so many other people he compounded for the sins he was +inclined to by being severe towards the misdoings of others. _His_ +case--he would say to Beryl when they were together at Chelsea--was +_sui generis_, quite exceptional, they were really in a way +perfectly good people--_Tout savoir c'est tout pardonner, etc._; +whereas the _things_ that were _said_ about Mrs. Warren!... And +though Vivien was nothing nearer sin than being her daughter, still +if it were known or known more widely that _she_ was the Warren in +_Fraser and Warren_, why the wives of the wealthier clergy, for +example, and a number of Quakeresses would withdraw their affairs +from the firm's management. Whereas if only his little Berry could +become the boss, _he_ knew where to get "big money" to put behind +the Firm's dealings. The idea was all right; an association for the +special management on thoroughly honest lines of women's affairs. +They'd better get rid of that hulking young clerk, Bertie Adams, and +staff the entire concern with capable women. He himself would always +remain in the background, giving them ideas from time to time, and +if any were taken up merely being paid his fees and commissions. + +David Vavasour Williams, privately consulted by Norie, put forward +no objection. He disliked Beryl and was increasingly shy of his +rather clandestine work on the fifth floor of the Midland Insurance +Chambers; besides, if and when he were called to the Bar, he would +have to cease all connection with _Fraser and Warren_. The consent +of Vivie was obtained through the Power of Attorney she had left +behind. A new deed of partnership was drawn up. Honoria insisted +that Vivien Warren must be bought out for Three Thousand pounds, +which amount was put temporarily to the banking account of David +Vavasour Williams; she herself received another Three Thousand and a +small percentage of the future profits and a share in the direction +of affairs of THE WOMEN'S CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATION (_Fraser and +Claridge_) so long as she left a capital of Five Thousand pounds at +their disposal. + +So in 1905 David with Three Thousand pounds purchased an annuity of +£210 a year for Vivien Warren. That investment would save Vivie from +becoming at any time penniless and dependent, and consequently would +subserve the same purpose for her cousin and agent, David V. +Williams. + +Going to the C. and C. Bank, Temple Bar branch, to take stock of +Vivie's affairs, he found a Thousand pounds had been paid in to her +current account. Ascertaining the name of the payee to be L.M. +Praed, he hurried off at the first opportunity to Praed's studio. +Praed was entertaining a large party of young men and women to tea +and the exhibition of some wild futurist drawings and a few rather +striking designs for stage scenery and book covers. David had +perforce to keep his questions bottled up and take part in the +rather vapid conversation that was going on between young men with +_glabre_ faces and high-pitched voices and women with rather wild +eyes. + +[It struck David about this time that women were getting a little +out of hand, strained, over-inclined to laugh mirthless laughter, +greedy for sensuality, sensation, sincerity, sweetmeats. Something. +Even if they satisfied some fleeting passion or jealousy by +marrying, they soon wanted to be de-married, separated, divorced, to +don male costume, to go on the amateur stage and act Salome parts on +Sunday afternoons that most ladies of the real Stage had refused; +while the men that went about with them in these troops from +restaurant to restaurant, studio to studio, music hall to café +chantant, Brighton to Monte Carlo, Sandown to Goodwood, were shifty, +too well-dressed, too near neutrality in sex, without defined +professions, known by nicknames only, spend-thrifts, spongers, +bankrupts, and collectors of needless bric-à-brac.] + +However this mob at last quitted Praddy's premises and he and David +were left alone. + +Praed yawned, and almost intentionally knocked over an easel with a +semi-obscene drawing on it of a Sphynx with swelling breasts +embracing a lean young man against his will. + +_David_: "Praddy! why do you tolerate such people and why prostitute +your studio to such unwholesome art?" + +_Praed_: "My dear David! This is _indeed_ Satan rebuking sin. Why +there are three designs here--one I've just knocked over--beastly, +wasn't it?--that _you _ left with me when you went off at a tangent +to South Africa.... Really, we ought to have _some_ continuity you +know.... + +"But I agree with you.... I'm sick of the whole business of this +Nouvel Art and L'Art Nouveau, about Aubrey Beardsley and the +disgusting 'nineties generally--But what _will_ you? If Miss Vivie +Warren had condescended to accept me as a husband she might have +brought a wholesome atmosphere into my life and swept away all +this ... inspired me perhaps with some final ambition for the little +that remains of my stock of energy.... Heigh-ho! Well: what is the +quarrel now? The life I lead, the people who come here?" + +_David_: "No. I hardly came about that; though dear old Praddy, I +wish I had time to look after you ... Perhaps later.... No: what I +came to ask was: what _did_ you mean the other day by paying in a +Thousand Pounds to Vivie Warren's account at her bank? She's not in +want of money so far as I know, and you can't be so very rich, even +though you design three millionaire's houses a year. Who gave you +the money to pay in to my--to Vivie's account?" + +_Praed_: "Well, when Vivie herself comes to ask me, p'raps I'll +tell; but I can't see how it concerns _you_. Why not stop and +dine--à l'imprévu, but I dare say my housekeeper can rake something +together or it may not be too late to send out for a paté. We can +then talk of other things. When are you going to get your call?" + +_David_: "Sorry, dear old chap, but I can't stay to dinner. I'm not +going anywhere else but I've got some papers I _must_ study before I +go to bed. But I'll stop another half-hour at any rate. Don't ring +for lights or turn up the electric lamps. I would sooner sit in the +dark studio and put my question. Who has given me that thousand +pounds?" + +_Praed_: "That's _my_ business: _I_ haven't! I shan't give or lend +Vivie a penny till she consents to marry me. As to the rest, take it +and be thankful. You're not certain to get any more and I happen to +know it had what you would call a 'clean origin.'" + +_David_: "You mean it didn't come from those 'Hotels'?" + +_Praed_: "Well, at any rate not directly. Don't be a romantic ass, a +tiresome fool, and give me any trouble about it. A certain person I +imagine must have heard that _Fraser and Warren_ had been wound up +and couldn't bear the thought of your being hard up in consequence +... doesn't know you got a share of the purchase-money..." + + * * * * * + +David decided at any rate for the present to accept the addition to +his capital--you can perhaps push principle _too_ far; or, once you +plunge into affairs, you cease to be quite so high-souled. At any +rate nothing in David's middle-class mind was so horrible as penury +and the impotence that comes with it. How many months or years would +lie ahead of him before fees could be gained and a professional +income be earned? Besides he wanted to take Bertie Adams into his +service as a Clerk. A barrister must have a clerk, and David in his +peculiar circumstances could only engage one acquainted more or +less with his secret. + +So Bertie Adams fulfilled the ambition he had cherished for three +years--he felt all along it was coming true. And when David was +called to the Bar--which he was with all the stately ceremonial of a +Call night at the Inner Temple in the Easter term of 1905, more +elbow room was acquired at Fig Tree Court, and Bertie Adams was +installed there as clerk to Mr. David Vavasour Williams, who had +residential chambers on the third floor, and a fair-sized Office and +small private room on the second floor. Bertie's mother had "washed" +for both Honoria and Vivie in their respective dwellings for years, +and for David after he came to live at Fig Tree Court. A substantial +douceur to the "housekeeper" had facilitated this, for in the part +of the Temple where lies Fig Tree Court the residents do not call +their ministrants "laundresses," but "housekeepers." Curiously +enough the accounts were always tendered to the absent Vivie Warren, +but Mrs. Adams noted no discrepancy in their being paid by her son +or in an unmarried lady living in the Temple under the name of David +Williams. + +Installed as clerk and advised by his employer to court one of the +fair daughters of the housekeeper (Mrs. Laidly) with a view to +marriage and settling down in premises hard-by, Bertie Adams (who +like David had spent his time well between 1901 and 1905 and was now +an accomplished and serviceable barrister's clerk) soon set to work +to chum up with other clerks in this clerical hive and get for his +master small briefs, small chances for defending undefended cases in +which hapless women were concerned. + +But before we deal with the career of David at the Bar, which of +course did not properly commence--even as a brilliant junior--till +the early months of 1906, let us glance at the way in which he had +passed the intervening space of time between his return from Wales +in May, 1902, and the spending of his Long Vacation of 1905 as an +Esquire by the Common Law of England called to the Bar, and entitled +to wear a becoming grey wig and gown. + +He had begun in 1900 by studying Latin, Norman French--so greatly +drawn on in law terms--and English History. In the summer of 1901, +by one of those subterfuges winked at then, he had obtained two +rooms, sublet to him by a member of the Inn, in Fig Tree Court, +Inner Temple. In the autumn of that year, having made sure of his +parentage and his finance, he had approached the necessary +authorities with a view to his being admitted a member of the Inner +Temple, which meant filling up a form of declaration that he, David +Vavasour Williams, of Pontystrad, Glamorgan, a British subject, aged +twenty-four, son of the Revd. Howel Vaughan Williams, Clerk in Holy +Orders, of Pontystrad in the County of Glamorgan, was desirous of +being admitted a Student of the Honourable Society of the Inner +Temple for the purpose of being called to the Bar or of practising +under the Bar; and that he would not either directly or indirectly +apply for or take out any certificate to practise directly or +indirectly as a Pleader, Conveyancer or Draftsman in Equity without +the special permission of the Masters of the Bench of the said +Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. + +Further, David declared with less assurance but perhaps within the +four corners of the bare truth that he had not acted directly or +indirectly in the capacity of a Solicitor, Attorney-at-law, Writer +to the Signet or in about thirteen other specified legal positions; +that he was not a Chartered, Incorporated or Professional Accountant +("A good job we changed the device of the Firm," he thought), a Land +Agent, a Surveyor, Patent Agent, Consulting Engineer, or even as a +clerk to any such officer. Which made him rather shivery about what +he _had_ been doing for _Fraser and Warren_, but there was little +risk that any one would find out--And finally he declared that he +was not in Trade or an undischarged bankrupt. + +The next and most difficult step was to obtain two separate +Certificates from two separate barristers each of five years' +standing, to the effect that he was what he stated himself to be. +This required much thinking out, and was one of the reasons why he +did not go down as promised and spend his Christmas and New Year +with his father. + +Instead he wrote to Pontystrad explaining how important it was he +should get admitted as a Student in time to commence work in Hilary +term. Did his father know any such luminary of the law or any two +such luminaries? His father regretted that he only knew of one such +barrister of over five years' standing: the distinguished son of an +old Cambridge chum. To him he wrote, venturing to recall himself, +the more eagerly since this son of an old friend was himself a +Welshman and already distinguished by his having entered Parliament, +served with the Welsh Party, written a book on Welsh history, and +married a lady of considerable wealth. + +Next David applied to Rossiter with the result--as we have +seen--that he got an introduction to Mr. Stansfield. So he obtained +from Mr. Price and Mr. Stansfield the two certificates to the effect +that "David Vavasour Williams has been introduced to me by letter of +introduction from the Revd. Howel Williams" (or "Professor Michael +Rossiter, F.R.S.") "and has been seen by me; and that I, Mark +Stansfield, Barrister-at-law, King's Counsel" (or "John Price, +Barrister-at-law, Member of Parliament") "believe the said David +Vavasour Williams to be a gentleman of respectability and a proper +person to be admitted a Student of the Honourable Society of the +Inner Temple with a view to being called to the Bar." + +Copies of the letters of introduction accompanied the two +certificates. These of course were not obtained without several +visits to the unsuspicious guarantors; or at least one to Mr. Price +in Paper Buildings, for whom it was enough that David claimed to be +Welsh and showed a very keen interest in the Welsh tongue and its +Indo-German affinities, and three or four to Mr. Mark Stansfield, +K.C., one of the nicest, kindliest and most learned persons David +had ever met, whom he grieved deeply at deceiving. Stansfield had a +high opinion of Rossiter. The fact that he recommended David was +quite sufficient to secure his "guarantee." But apart from that, he +felt himself greatly drawn towards this rather shy, grave, +nice-looking young fellow with the steady eyes and the keen +intelligence. He had him to dine and to lunch; drew him out--as far +as David thought it prudent to go--and was surprised David had never +been to a University ("Only to Malvern--and then I studied with an +architect in London--Who? Mr. Praed, A.R.A.--but then I travelled +for a bit, and after that I felt more than ever I wanted to go in +for the Bar"--said David, with a charming smile which lit up his +young face ordinarily so staid). Stansfield consented that David +should come and read with him, and in many ways facilitated his +progress so materially and so kindly that more than once the +compunctious young Welshman thought of discarding the impersonation; +and might have done so had not this most estimable Stansfield died +of pneumonia in the last year of David's studenthood. + +Of course the preliminary examination was easily and quickly passed. +David translated his bit of Caesar's commentaries, answered +brilliantly the questions about Alfred the Great, the Anglo-Norman +kings, the Constitutions of Clarendon, Magna Charta and Mortmain, +Henry the Eighth and the Reformation, the Civil War and +Protectorate of Cromwell, the Bill of Rights and the Holy Alliance. +He paid his fees and his "caution" money; he ate the requisite six +dinners--or more, as he found them excellent and convenient--in each +term, attended all the lectures that interested him, and passed the +subsidiary examinations on them with fair or even high credit; and +finally got through his "Call-to-the-Bar" examination with tolerable +success; at any rate he passed. A friend of the deceased +Stansfield--whose death was always one of the scars in Vivie's +memory--introduced him to one of the Masters of the Bench who signed +his "call" papers. He once more made a declaration to the effect +that he was not a person in Holy Orders, that he was not a +Solicitor, Attorney-at-law, Writer to the Signet, etc., etc., a +Chartered, Incorporated or Professional Accountant; and again that +if called to the Bar, he would never become a member of the abhorred +professions over and over again enumerated; and was duly warned that +without special permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner +Temple he might not practise "under the Bar"--whatever that may mean +(I dare say it is some low-down procedure, only allowed in times of +scarcity). Then after having his name "screened" for twelve days in +all the Halls of the four Inns, and going in fear and trembling that +some one might turn up and object, he finally received his call to +the Bar on April 22 (if April 22 in that year was on a Sunday, then +on the following Monday) and was "called" at the Term Dinner where +he took wine with the Masters. He remembered seeing present at the +great table on the dais, besides the usual red-faced generals and +whiskered admirals, simpering statesmen, and his dearly loved +friend, Michael Rossiter--representing Science,--a more sinister +face. This was the well-known philanthropist and race-horse breeder, +Sir George Crofts, Bart., M.P. for a Norfolk borough. Their eyes +met, curiously interlocked for a moment. Sir George wondered to +himself where the dooce he had seen that, type of face before, those +grey eyes with the dark lashes. "Gad! he reminds me of Kitty Warren! +Well, I'll be damned" (he was eventually) "I wonder whether the old +gal had a son as well as that spitfire Vivie?!" + +Michael whispered a word or two to one of the Masters, and David was +presently summoned to attend the Benchers and their distinguished +guests in the inner chamber to which they withdrew for wine and +dessert. Rossiter made room for him, and he had to drink a glass of +port with the Benchers. Every one was very gracious. Rossiter said: +"I was a sort of godfather to him, don't you know. David! you must +do me credit and make haste to take silk and become a Judge." Crofts +moved from where he sat next to a Bishop. ("Damn it all! I like +bein' respectable, but why _will_ they always put me next a Bishop +or an Archdeacon? It spoils all my best stories.") He came +over--dragging his chair--to Rossiter and said "I say! Will you +introduce me to our young friend here?" He was duly introduced. +"H'm, Williams? _That_ doesn't tell me much. But somehow your face +reminds me awfully of--of--some one I used to know. J'ever have a +sister?" "No," said David. + +Crofts, he noticed, had aged very much in the intervening eight +years. He must now be no more than--58? But he had become very stout +and obviously suffered from blood pressure without knowing it. He +moved away a little, and David heard him talking to a Master about +Lady Crofts, who had come up to London for the season and how they +were both very anxious about his boy--"Yes, he had two children, a +boy and a girl, bless 'em--The boy had been ill with measles and +wasn't makin' quite the quick recovery they expected. What an +anxiety children were, weren't they? Though we wouldn't be without +'em, would we?" The Bencher assented out of civility, though as a +matter of fact he was an old bachelor and detested children or +anything younger than twenty-one. + +David after his call was presented with a bill to pay of £99. 10_s._ +His father hearing of this, insisted on sending him a cheque for +£150 out of his savings, adding he should be deeply hurt if it was +not accepted and no more said about it. How soon was David coming +down to see South Wales once more gloriously clothed with spring? + + +[Much of this review of the years between 1901 and 1905, many of +these sweet remembrances are being taken from Vivie's brain as she +lies on a hard bed in 1913, musing over the past days when, despite +occasional frights and anxieties, she was transcendently happy. Oh +"Sorrow's Crown of Sorrow, the remembering happier days!" She +recalled the articles she used to write from the Common Room or +Library of the Inn; how well they were received and paid for by the +editors of daily and weekly journals; what a lark they were, when +for instance she would raise a debate in the _Saturday Review_: +"Should Women be admitted to the Bar?" Or an appeal in the _Daily +News_ to do away with the Disabilities of Women. How poor +Stansfield, before he died, said he had never met any young fellow +with a tenderer heart for women, and advised him to marry whilst he +still had youth and fire. She remembered David's social success at +the great houses in the West End. How he might have gone out into +Society and shone more, much more, only he had to consider prudence +and expense; the curious women who fell in love with him, and whom +he had gently, tactfully to keep at arm's length. She remembered the +eager discussions in the Temple Debating Society, or at the "Moots" +of Gray's Inn, her successes there as an orator and a close +reasoner; how boy students formed ardent friendships for her and +prophesied her future success in Parliament, would have her promise +to take them into the Cabinet which David was to form when an +electorate swept him into power and sent the antiquated old rotters +of that day into the limbo of deserved occlusion. + +She saw and heard once more the amused delight of Honoria Armstrong +over her success, and the latent jealousy of the uxorious Colonel +Armstrong if she came too often to see Honoria in Sloane Street: And +she remembered--Oh God! _How_ she remembered--the close association +in those three priceless years with her "godfather" Michael +Rossiter; Rossiter who shaped her mind--it would never take a +different turn--who was patient with her stupidity and petulance; an +elder brother, a robust yet tactful chaffer; a banisher of too much +sensibility, a constant encouragement to effort and success. +Rossiter, she knew, with her woman's instinct, was innocently in +love with her, but believed all the time he was satisfying his +craving for a son to train, a disciple who might succeed him: for he +still believed that David when he had been called to the Bar and had +flirted awhile with Themis, would yet turn his great and growing +abilities to the service of Science. + +And Mrs. Rossiter in those times: Vivie smiled at the thought of her +undefined jealousy. She was anxious to be civil to a young man of +whom Michael thought so highly. She sympathized with his regret that +they had no children, but why could he not take up with one of her +cousin Bennet's boys from Manchester, or Sophy's son from +Northallerton, or one of his own brother's or sister's children? How +on earth did he become acquainted with this young man from South +Wales? But she was determined not to be separated in any way from +her husband, and so she sat with them as often and as long as she +could in the library. The studio-laboratory she could not stand with +its horrid smell of chemicals; she also dreaded vaguely that +vivisection went on there--Michael of course had a license, though +he was far too tender-hearted to torture sentient creatures. Still +he did odd things with frogs and rats and goats and monkeys; and her +dread was that she might one day burst in on one of these sacrifices +to science and see a transformed Michael, blood-stained, wielding a +knife and dangerous if interrupted in his pursuit of a discovery. + +But as the long talks and conferences of the two friends--really not +so far separated in age as one of them thought--generally took place +in the library, she assisted at a large proportion of them. Rossiter +would not have had it otherwise, though to David she was at times +excessively irksome. Her husband had long viewed her as a lay figure +on these occasions. He rarely replied to her flat remarks, her +inconsequent platitudes, her yawns and quite transparent signals +that it was time for the visitor to go. Sometimes David took her +hints and left: he had no business to make himself a bore to any +one. Sometimes however Michael at last roused to consciousness of +the fretful little presence would say "What? Sweety? _You_ still up. +Trot off to bed, my poppet, or you'll lose the roses in your +cheeks." + +The roses in Mrs. Rossiter's cheeks at that time were beginning to +be a trifle eczematous and of a fixed quality. Nevertheless, though +she tossed her head a little as she took up her "work" and swished +out of the great heavy door--which David opened--she was pleased to +think that Michael cared for her complexion and was solicitous about +her rest. + +And Vivie's eyes swam a little as she thought about the death of +Mark Stansfield, and the genuine tears that flowed down the cheeks +of his pupils when they learnt one raw February morning from the +housekeeper of his chambers that he had died at daybreak. "A better +man never lived" they agreed. And they were right. + +And she smiled again as she thought of some amongst those pupils, +the young dogs of those days, the lovers of actresses of the minor +order--ballet girls, it might have been; of the larks that went on +sometimes within and without the staid precincts of the Temple. +Harmless larks they were; but such as she had to withdraw from +discreetly. She played lawn tennis with them, she fenced +surprisingly well; but she had refused to join the "Devil's +Own"--the Inns of Court Volunteers, for prudent reasons; and though +it had leaked out that she was a good swimmer--that tiresome +impulsive Honoria had spread it abroad--she resolutely declined to +give proofs of her prowess in swimming baths. Her associates were +not so young as the undergraduates she had met in Newnham days: they +were an average ten years older. Their language at times made David +blush, but they had more discretion and reserve than the University +student, and they respected his desire to withdraw himself into +himself occasionally, and to abstain from their noisier amusements +without questioning his camaraderie. + +At this point in her smiling reminiscences, the wardress clanged +open the door and slammed down a mug of cocoa and a slab of brown +bread; and rapped out some orders in such a martinet utterance that +they were difficult to understand. (Don't be alarmed! She isn't +about to be executed for having deceived the Benchers of the Inner +Temple in 1905; she is only in prison for a suffragist offence).] + + +I can't wind up this chapter somehow without more or less finishing +the story of Beryl Claridge. She has been a source of anxiety to my +wife--who has read these chapters one by one as they left my +typewriter. "Was it wise to bring her in?" "Well, but my dear, she +was rather a common type of the New Woman in the early nineteen +hundreds." "Yes--but--" + +Of course the latent anxiety was that she might end up respectably. +And so she did. In 1906, the first Mrs. Storrington died at Ware +(Ware was where the architect husband had his legitimate home). She +had long been ill, increasingly ill of some terrible form of anæmia +which had followed the birth of her fourth child. She slowly faded +away, poor thing; and about the time David was returning from a +triumphant Christmas and New Year at Pontystrad--the Curate and his +young wife had made a most delightful partie carrée and David had +kissed the very slightly protesting Bridget under the native +mistletoe--Mrs. Storrington breathed her last, while her faithless +yet long forgiven Francis knelt by her bedside in agonies of +unavailing grief. + +Well: she died and was buried, and her four children, ranging from +nine to sixteen, sobbed very much and mourned for darling Mummie +without the slightest suspicion ("'twas better so," she had always +thought) that Dad had poisoned her wells of happiness ever since he +took up with that minx at Cambridge in the very year in which +long-legged Claribel was born. A few months after the poor lady was +consigned (under a really lovely cenotaph designed by her husband) +to Ware Churchyard--no, it was to Ware cemetery; Dad introduced them +all to a very sprightly and good-looking widow, Mrs. Claridge, who +had also been bereaved years ago and left with two perfect ducks of +children, four and five years old, to whom Claribel took +instinctively (the elder ones sniffed a little, disliking "kids"). + +Then about Christmas time, 1906, Dad told them that Mrs. Claridge +was going to make him happy by coming to tend his motherless +children; was going to be his wife. Francis, the eldest, stomped +about the garden at Ware and swore he would go back to Rugby during +the holidays; Elspeth, the gaunt girl of fourteen and Agnes, a +dreamy and endearing child, cried themselves to sleep in each +other's arms. Claribel, however, quite approved. And whether they +liked it or not, in January, 1907, the marriage took place--at the +Registrar's--and Beryl came to live for a short time at Ware, +bringing ducksome Margery and adorable Podge. In less than a month +Beryl had won over all her step-children, except Francis, who held +out till Easter, but was reduced to allegiance by the hampers she +sent to him at Rugby--; in three months they had all moved to a much +sweller house on the Chelsea Embankment. Father--Beryl voted "Dad" a +little lower-middle class--Father had somehow become connected with +some great business establishment of which Mother was the head. +Together they were making pots of money. Francis would go to +Sandhurst, Elspeth to a finishing school in Paris (her ambition), +and the others would spend the fine months of the year rollicking +with Margery and Podge on the Sussex coast. + +In 1907, also, they became aware that their new mother was not alone +in the world. A stately lady whose eyes seemed once to have done a +deal of weeping (they were destined alas! to do much more, for three +of her gallant, handsome sons were killed in the War, and _that_ +finally killed the poor old Dean of Thetford), who wore a graceful +Spanish mantilla of black lace when in draughty places, came to see +them after they had moved to Garden Corner on the Chelsea +Embankment. She turned out to be the mother of Mrs. Beryl and was +quite inclined to be their grandmother as well as Margery's and +Podge's. But her husband the Dean was--it appeared--too great an +invalid to come up to town. + +The second Mrs. Storrington, who was a woman of boundless energy, +could work all day with secretaries, and could dance all night, gave +brilliant parties in the season at her large Chelsea house. But she +never invited to them Mr. David Vavasour Williams, that rising young +barrister who had become so famous as a pleader of the causes of +friendless women. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE SHILLITO CASE + + +In the autumn of 1905, increase among women of the idea of full +citizenship made rapid strides. There was a feeling in the air that +Balfour must soon resign or go to the country, that a Liberal +Ministry would succeed to power, and that being Liberal it could +scarcely, in reason or with any logic, refuse to enlarge the +franchise to the advantage of the female half of the community. +These idealizers of the Liberal Party, which had really definitely +ceased to be Liberal in 1894, had a rude awakening. Annie Kenney and +Christabel Pankhurst dared to act as if they were men, and asked Sir +Edward Grey at his Manchester meeting in October, 1905, if a Liberal +Administration would give Votes to Women, should it be placed in +power at the next Election. Answer they had none, from the platform; +but the male audience rose in their hundreds, struck these audacious +hussies in the face, scratched and slapped them (this was the rôle +of the boys), and hustled them out into the street, bleeding and +dishevelled. Here for attempting to explain the causes of their +expulsion they were arrested by the police, and the following +morning were sent to prison, having declined to pay the fines +illegally imposed on them. + +This incident made a great impression on the newspaper-reading +public, because at that time the Press boycott on the Woman Suffrage +movement had not set in. It gave David much to think about, and he +found Honoria Fraser and several of his men and women friends had +joined the Woman Suffrage movement and were determined that the new +Liberal Government should not shirk the issue; an issue on which +many members of Parliament had been returned as acquiescent in the +principle. On that account they had received the whole-hearted +support of many, women owing allegiance to the Liberal Party. + +At first of course the new Government was too busy in allotting the +loaves and fishes of Office and in handing out the peerages, +baronetcies, knighthoods, Governorships, private secretaryships, and +promotions among the civil servants which had--not to put too fine a +point on it--been purchased by large and small contributions to the +Party Chest. + +[Such a procedure seems to be inseparable from our present Party +system. In this respect the Conservatives are no better than the +Liberals; and it is always possible that in a different way the +Labour Party when It comes into power will be similarly inclined to +reward those who have furnished the sinews of war. The House of +Commons in the last Act which revised the conditions of elections of +members of Parliament was careful to leave open many avenues along +which Money might attain to the heart of things.] + +But at length all such matters were settled, and the Cabinet was +free to face the steady demand of the women leaders of the +Suffrage movement; a demand that at any rate _some_ measure of +enfranchisement should be granted to the women of the British Isles +without delay. + +We all know how this demand was received by the leading men of the +Liberal Party and by the more prominent Liberals among their +supporters in the House; with evasions, silences, sneers, angry +refusals, hasty promises given to-day (when Ministers were +frightened) and broken to-morrow; with a whole series of +discreditable tongue-in-the-cheek tricks of Parliamentary +procedure; till at last the onlooker must have wondered at and felt +grateful for our British phlegm; surprised that so little actual +harm was done (except to the bodies of the Suffragists), that no +Home Secretary or Police Inspector or magistrate, no flippant +talker-out of would-be-serious Franchise Bills was assassinated, +trounced, tarred and feathered, kidnapped, nose-tweaked, or even +mud-bespattered. (I am reproducing here the growing comprehension of +the problem as it shaped in Vivie's mind, under the hat and +waistcoat of David Williams.) + +Honoria, faithful to her old resolve, continued to devote the +greater part of the Two Thousand a year she had set aside for the +Woman's Cause to financing the new Suffrage movement; and +incidentally she brought grist to David's mill by recommending him +as Counsel to many women in distress, arrested Suffragists. In 1906, +1907 and 1908 he made himself increasingly famous by his pleadings +in court on behalf of women who with dauntless courage and at the +cost of much bodily pain and even at the risk of death had forcibly +called attention to this grave defect in the British polity, the +withholding of the ordinary rights of tax-paying citizens from adult +women. + +Where the Suffragist was poor he asked no fee, or a small fee was +paid by some Suffragist Association. But he gained much renown over +his advocacy; he became quite a well-known personality outside as +well as inside the Law Courts and Police-stations by 1908. His +pleadings were sometimes so moving, so passionate that--_teste_ +Mrs. Pankhurst--"burly policemen in court had tears trickling down +their faces" as he described the courage, the flawless private +lives, the selfless devotion to a noble cause of these women +agitating for the rights of their sex--rich and poor, old and young. +Juries flinched from the verdict which some bitter-faced judge +enjoined; magistrates swerved from executing the secret orders of +the Home Office; policemen--again--for they are most of them decent +fellows--resigned their positions in the Force, sooner than carry +out the draconian policy of the Home Secretary. + +But of course concurrently he lost many a friend and friendship in +the Inns of Court. There were even growls that he should be +disbarred--after this espousal of the Suffrage cause had been made +manifest for three years. He might have been, but that he had other +compeers, below and above his abilities and position; advocates like +Lord Robert Brinsley, the famous son of the Marquis of Wiltshire. If +Williams was to be disbarred, why they would have to take the same +course with a Brinsley who also defended women law-breakers, +fighting for their constitutional rights. And of course such a +procedure as _that_ was unthinkable. Yet where a Brinsley sailed +unhampered, undangered over these troubled waters, poor David often +came near to crashing on the rocks. "To hear the fellow talk," said +one angry K.C. in the Library at the Inner Temple, "you'd think he +was a woman himself!" "Egad" said his brother K.C.--yes, he +really _did_ say "Egad," the oath still lingers in the Inns of +Court--"Egad, he looks like one. No hair on his face and I'll lay he +doesn't shave." + +There were of course other briefs he held, for payment or for love +of justice; young women who had killed their babies (as to these he +was far from sentimental; he only defended where the woman had any +claim to sympathy or mitigation of the unreal death sentence); +breach of promise actions where the woman had been grossly wronged; +affiliation cases in high life--or the nearest to high life that +makes a claim on the man for his fatherhood. He was a deadly +prosecutor in cases where women had been robbed by their male +trustees, or injured in any other way wherein, in those days, the +woman was at a disadvantage and the marriage laws were unjust. + +One way and another, with the zealous aid and business-like care of +his interests by his clerk, Albert Adams, David must have earned +between 1906 and the autumn of 1908, an average Three hundred a +year. As he paid Adams £150 a year and allowed him certain +perquisites, and lived within his own fixed income (from his annuity +and investments) of £290 a year, this meant a profit of about £500. +This was raised at a leap to £1,500 by the fees and the special gift +he received for defending Lady Shillito. + +The "Shillito Case," an indictment for murder, was tried at the +winter assize of the North-eastern Circuit, January or February, +1909. I dare say you have forgotten all about it now: Lady Shillito +changed her name, married again (eventually), and was lost in the +crowd--she may even, eleven years afterwards, be reading this novel +at the riper age of forty and be startled out of her well-fed apathy +by the revival of acute memories. + +There have been not a few similar cases before and since of +comparatively young, beautiful women murdering their elderly, +objectionable husbands in a clever cattish way, and of course +getting off through lack of evidence or with a short term of +imprisonment. (They were always treated in prison far more tenderly +than were Suffragettes, and the average wardress adored them and +obtained for them many little alleviations of their lot before the +Home Secretary gave way and released them.) Nowadays the War and the +pressing necessities of life, the coal famine, the milk famine, the +railway strikes have robbed such cases of all or nearly all their +interest. I could quite believe that women in similar circumstances +continue to murder their elderly husbands, and the doctors and +coroners and relations on "his" side tacitly agree not to raise a +fuss in the presence of much graver subjects of apprehension. + +I can also understand why these beautiful-women-elderly-husband +cases scarcely starred our Island story prior to the 'fifties of +the last century. It was only when chemical analysis had approached +its present standard of perfection that the presence of the more +subtle poisons could be detected in the stomach and intestines, and +that the young and beautiful wife could be charged with and found +guilty of the deed by the damning evidence of an analytical chemist. + +It was Rossiter who secured for David the conduct of Lady Shillito's +defence. Arbella[1] Shillito was his second cousin, a Rossiter by +birth, and would fain have married Michael herself, only that he was +not at that time thinking of marriage, and when his thoughts turned +that way--the very day after, as it were--he met Linda Bennet and +her thousands a year. But he retained a half humorous liking for +this handsome young woman. + + [Footnote 1: An old Northumbrian variant of Arabella.] + +Arbella, disappointed over Michael--though she was a mere slip of a +girl at the time--next decided that she must marry money. When she +was twenty-one she met Grimthorpe Shillito, an immensely rich man of +Newcastle-on-Tyne, whose foundries poured out big guns and many +other things made of iron and steel combined with acids and brains. +Grimthorpe was a curious-looking person, even at forty; in +appearance a mixture of Julius Caesar, several unpleasant-featured +Doges of Venice, and Voltaire in middle age. His looks were not +entirely his fault and doubtless acquired for him, in his moral +character, a worse definition than he deserved. He had travelled +much in his pursuit of metallurgy and chemistry; at forty he saw +rising before him the prospect of a peerage, due either for his +extraordinary discoveries and inventions in our use of steel, or +easily purchasable out of his immense wealth. What is the good of a +peerage if it ends with your life? He was not without his vanities, +though one of the most cynical men of his cynical period. + +He arrived therefore at the decision that he would marry some young +and buxom creature of decent birth and fit in appearance to be a +peeress, and decided on Arbella Rossiter. + +After a gulp or two and several _moues_ behind his back, she +accepted him. A brilliant marriage ceremony followed, conducted by a +Bishop and an Archdeacon. And then Arbella was carried off to live +in a Bluebeard's Castle he possessed on the Northumbrian coast. + +In the three years following her marriage she gave him two boys, +with which he was content, especially as his own health began to +fail a little just then. At the end of four years of marriage with +this cynical, Italianate tyrant, Arbella got very sick of him and +thought more and more tenderly of a certain subaltern in the Cavalry +whom she had once declined to marry on £500 a year. This subaltern +had returned from the South African war, a Colonel and still +extremely good-looking. They had met again at a garden party and +fallen once more deeply in love. If only her tiresome old Borgia +would die--was the thought that came too often into the mind of +Arbella, now entering the "thirties" of life, and with the least +possible misgiving of her Colonel's constancy if she became +presently "_un peu trop mûre_." + +She noticed at this time that Grimthorpe Shillito went on several +occasions to London to consult a specialist. He complained of +indigestion, was rather thin, and balder than ever, and difficult to +please in his food and appetite. + +This was her opportunity. She would have said, had she been +convicted, that he had driven her to it by his cruelties: that's as +may be.--She consulted the family doctor who attended to the +household of Bluebeard's Castle; suggested that Sir Grimthorpe (they +had just knighted him) might be the better for a strychnine tonic; +she had read somewhere that strychnine did wonders for middle-aged +men who had led rather a rackety life in their early manhood. + +The family doctor who disliked her and suspected her, as you or I +wouldn't have done, but doctors think of everything, feigned to +agree; and supplied her with little phials of _aqua distillata_ +flavoured with quinine. He himself was puzzled over Sir Grimthorpe's +condition but was a little offended at not being personally +consulted. + +The fact was that Sir G. had a very poor opinion of his abilities in +diagnosis and being naturally secretive and generally cussed, +preferred consulting a London specialist. He wasn't then Sir +Grimthorpe, the specialist wasn't very certain that it _was_ cancer +on the liver, and amid his multitude of consulters did not, unless +aroused, remember very clearly the case of a Mr. Shillito from +somewhere up in the North. + +But Shillito pondered gravely over the specialist's carefully +guarded phrases about "growths, possibly malign, but at the same +time--difficult to be sure quite so soon--perhaps harmless, might of +course be merely severe suppressed jaundice." When the pains +began--he hated the idea of operations, and knew that any operation +on the liver only at best staved off the dread, inevitable end for a +year or a few months--When the pains began, he had grown utterly +tired of life; so he compounded a subtle poison--he was a great +chemist and had--only his wife knew not of this--a cabinet which +contained a variety of mineral, vegetable, and acid poisons; and +kept the draught in a secret locker in his bedroom. Meantime +Arbella, who after all was human, was tortured at the sight of his +tortures. She felt she must end it, or her nerves would give way. +She trebled, she quintupled the dose of _aqua distillata_ embittered +with quinine. One night when the night nurse was sleeping ("resting +her eyes," she called it) the wretched man stole from his bed to +the night nursery and kissed both his boys. He then swiftly took the +phial from its hiding place and drank the contents and died in one +ghastly minute. + +When the night nurse awoke he was crisped in a horrible _rigor_. On +the night table was the phial with the remains of the draught. She +had noticed in the last day or two Lady Shillito fussing a good deal +about the sick man, pressing on him doses of a colourless medicine. +_What if she had stolen in while the nurse was asleep and placed a +finally fatal draught by the bedside?_ From that she proceeded to +argue (when she had leisure to think it out) that she _hadn't_ been +to sleep, had merely been resting her eyes. And she was now sure +that whilst she had closed those orbs she had heard--as indeed she +had, only it was Sir Grimthorpe himself--some one stealing into the +room. + +She communicated her suspicions to the doctor. The latter knew his +patient had not died of anything he had prescribed, but concluded +that Lady Shillito, wishing to be through with the business, had +prepared a fulminating dose obtained elsewhere; and insisted on +autopsy with a colleague, to whom he more than hinted his +suspicions. Together they found the strychnine they were looking for--not +very much, but the proportion that was combined by Shillito +with less traceable drugs to make the death process more rapid--and +quite overlooked the signs of cancer in the liver. + +The outcome was that Lady Shillito at the inquest found herself "in +a very unpleasant position" and was placed under arrest, and later +charged with the murder of her husband. + +Believing herself guilty she summoned all her resolution to her aid, +admitted nothing, appealed to Michael Rossiter and others for +advice. Thus David was drawn into the business. + +[But this doesn't sound very credible, you will say. "If the +husband felt he could not face the agony of death by cancer, why +didn't he leave a note saying so, and every one would have +understood and been quite 'nice' about it?" I really can't say. +Perhaps he wished to leave trouble for her behind him; perhaps he +divined the reason why she thought a day nurse unnecessary, and +insisted on giving him his day medicines with her own fair hands. +Perhaps he hoped for an open verdict. Perhaps he wasn't quite right +in his mind. I have told you the story as I remember it and my +memory is not perfect. Personally I've always been a bit sorry for +Grimthorpe. It is quite possible that all those hints as to his +"queerness" were invented by his wife to excuse herself. I only know +that Science benefited greatly from his researches, and that he +bequeathed some priceless collections to both branches of the +British Museum. Some one once told me he had a heart somewhere and +had loved intensely a sister much younger than himself and had only +begun to be "queer" and secretive and bald after her premature +death. I think also that in the last year of his life he was greatly +embittered at not getting the expected peerage; after the trouble +and disagreeableness he had gone through to obtain heirs for this +distinction this poor little attempt at immortality which it is in +the power of a Prime Minister to bestow.] + +The Grand Jury returned a true bill against Lady Shillito. David had +been studying the case from the morrow of the inquest, that is as +soon as Rossiter had learnt of the coming trouble. The latter though +he regarded Cousin Arbella as a rather amusing minx, an interesting +type in modern psychology (though really her type is as old +as--say--the Hallstadt period) had no wish to see her convicted of +murder. Furthermore he was getting so increasingly interested in +this clever David Williams that he would have liked to make his +fortune by helping him to a sensational success as a pleader, to +one of those cases which if successfully conducted mark out a path +to the Bench. So he insisted that David Williams be briefed for the +defence, and well fee'ed, in order that he might be able to devote +all his time to the investigation of the mystery. David had an +uphill task. He went down to the North in November, 1908, conferred +with Lady Shillito's solicitors, and at great length with the +curiously calm, ironly-resolved Lady Shillito herself. The evidence +was too much against her for him to prevent her being committed for +trial and lodged in reasonably comfortable quarters in Newcastle +jail, or for the Grand Jury to find no true bill of indictment. But +between these stages in the process and the actual trial for murder +in February, 1909, David worked hard and accumulated conclusive +evidence (with Rossiter's help) to prove his client's innocence of +the deed of which she believed herself guilty. To punish her as she +deserved he allowed her to think herself guilty till his defence of +her began. + +The prospect of a death on the gallows did not perturb Lady Shillito +in the least. She was perfectly certain that if found guilty her +beauty and station in life would avail to have the death penalty +commuted to a term of imprisonment which she would spend in the +Infirmary. Still, that would ruin her life pretty conclusively. She +would issue from prison a broken woman, whom in spite of her +wealth--if she retained any--no impossibly-faithful Colonel would +marry at the age of forty-five or fifty. So she followed the opening +hours of the trial with a dry mouth. + +With the help of Rossiter and of many and minute researches David +got on the track of the consultation in Harley Street, the warning +given of the possible cancer. He found in Sir Grimthorpe's +laboratory sufficient strychnine to kill an army. He was privately +informed by the family doctor (who didn't want to press matters to +a tragedy) that although he fully believed Arbella capable of the +deed, she certainly had--so far as the doctor's prescriptions were +concerned--obtained nothing from him which could have killed her +husband, even if she had centupled the dose. + +Lady Shillito appeared in the dock dressed as much as possible like +Mary, Queen of Scots on her trial; and was attended by a hospital +nurse with restoratives and carminatives. The Jury retired for a +quarter of an hour only, and returned a verdict of _Not Guilty_. The +Court was rent with applause, and the Judge commented very severely +on such a breach of decorum, apparently unknown to him in previous +annals of our courts of justice. Lady Shillito fainted and the nurse +fussed, and the Judge in his private room sent for Mr. Williams and +complimented him handsomely on his magnificent conduct of the case. +"Of course she _meant_ to poison him; but I quite agree with the +Jury, she didn't. He saved her the trouble. Now I suppose she'll +marry again. Well! I pity her next husband. Come and have lunch with +me." + +And in the course of the meal, His Ludship spoke warmly to Mr. +Williams of the bright prospects that lay before him if he would +drop those foolish Suffragette cases. + +David returned to London with Rossiter and remained silent all the +way. His companion believed him to be very tired, and refrained from +provoking conversation, but surrounded him with a quiet, fatherly +care. Arrived at King's Cross Rossiter said: "Don't go on to your +chambers. My motor's here. It can take your luggage on with mine to +Portland Place. You can have a wash and a rest and a talk when +you're rested; and after we've dined and talked the motor shall come +round and take you back to Fig Tree Court." + +Mrs. Rossiter was there to greet them, and whilst David went to wash +and rest and prepare himself for dinner, she chirrupped over her +big husband, and asked endless and sometimes pointless questions +about the trial and the verdict. "Did Michael believe she really +_had_ done it? She, for one, could believe anything about a woman +who obviously dyed her hair and improved her eyebrows. (Of course +Michael said he didn't, or the questions, as to why, how, when might +have gone on for hours). Was Mr. Williams's defence of Arbella so +very wonderful as the evening papers said? Why could he not have +gone straight home and rested _there_? It would have been so much +nicer to have had Mike all to herself on his return, and not have +this tiresome, melancholy young man spending the evening with them +... really _some_ people had _no_ tact ... could _not_ see they were +_de trop_. Why didn't Mr. Williams marry some nice girl and make a +home for himself? Not well enough off? Rubbish! She had known plenty +young couples marry and live very happily on Two hundred and fifty a +year, and Mr. Williams must surely be earning that? And if he must +always be dining out and spending the evening with other people, why +did he not make himself more 'general?' Not _always_ be absorbed in +her husband. Of course she understood that while Arbella's fate hung +in the balance they had to study the case together and have long +confabulations over poisons in the Lab'rat'ry...!" (This last +detestable word was a great worry to Mrs. Rossiter. Sometimes she +succeeded in suppressing as many vowels as possible; at others she +felt impelled to give them fuller values and call it "labóratorry.") +And so on, for an hour or so till dinner was announced. + +David sat silent all through this meal, under Mrs. Rossiter's +mixture of mirthless badinage: "We shall have you now proposing to +Lady Shillito after saving her life! I expect her husband won't have +altered his will as she didn't poison him, and she must have had +quite thirty thousand pounds settled on her.... They do say however +she's a great _flirt_..." Indiscreet questions: "How much will you +make out of this case? You don't know? I thought barristers had all +that marked on their briefs? And didn't she give you 'refreshers,' +as they call them, from time to time? What was it like seeing her in +prison? Was she handcuffed? Or chained? What did she wear when she +was tried?" And inconsequent remarks: "I remember my mamma--she died +when I was only fourteen--used to dream she was being tried for +murder. It distressed her very much because, as she said, she +couldn't have hurt a fly. What do _you_ dream about, Mr. Williams? +Some pretty young lady, I'll be bound. I dream about such _funny_ +things, but I nearly always forget what they were just as I am going +to tell Michael. But I did remember one dream just before Michael +went down to Newcastle to join you ... was it about mermaids? No. It +was about _you_--wasn't that funny? And you seemed to be dressed as +a mermaid--no, I suppose it must have been a mer_man_--and you were +trying to follow Michael up the rocks by walking on your tail; and +it seemed to hurt you awfully. Of course I know what it all came +from. Michael had wanted me to read Hans Andersen's fairy +stories--don't you think they're pretty? I do; but sometimes they +are about rather silly things, skewers and lucifer matches ... and I +had spent the afternoon at the Zoo. Michael's a fellow, of course, +and I use his ticket and always feel quite at home there ... and at +the Zoo that day I had seen one of the sea-lions trying to walk on +his tail.... Oh, _how_ I laughed! But what made me associate the +sea-lion with you and mermaids, I cannot say, but then as poor papa +used to say, 'Dreams are funny things'..." + +David's replies were hardly audible, and to his hostess's pressing +entreaties that he would try this dish or not pass that, he did not +answer at all. He felt, indeed, as though the muscles of his throat +would not let him swallow and if he opened his mouth wide enough to +utter a consecutive speech he would burst out crying. A great +desire--almost unknown to Vivie hitherto--seized him to get away +to some lonely spot and cry and cry, give full vent to some +unprecedented fit of hysteria. He could not look at Rossiter though +he knew that Michael's eyes were resting on his face, because if he +attempted to reply to the earnest gaze by a reassuring smile, the +lips would tremble and the tears would fall. + +At last when the dessert was reached and the servants--_do_ they +never feel telepathically at such moments that some one person +seated at the table, crumbling bread, wishes them miles away and +loathes their quiet ministrations?--the servants had withdrawn for a +brief respite till they reappeared with coffee, David rose to his +feet and stammered out something about not being well--would they +order the motor and let him go? And as he spoke, and tried to speak +in a level, "society" voice, his aching eyes saw the electric lamps, +the glinting silver, Mrs. Rossiter's pink, foolish face and crisp +little flaxen curls, Rossiter's bearded countenance with its honest, +concerned look all waltzing round and round in a dizzying whirl. He +made the usual vain clutches at unreal supports, and fainted into +Rossiter's arms. + +The latter carried him with little effort into the cool library and +laid him down on a couch. Mrs. Rossiter followed, full of +exclamations, vain questions, and suggestions of inapplicable or +unsuitable remedies. Rossiter paid little heed to her, and proceeded +to remove David's collar and tie and open his shirt front in order +to place a hand over the heart. Suddenly he looked up and round on +his wife, and said with a peremptoriness which admitted of no +questioning: "Go and see that one of the spare bedrooms is got +ready, a fire lit, and so on. Get this done _quickly_, and meantime +leave him to me. I have got restoratives here close at hand." + +Mrs. Rossiter awed into silence summoned the housemaid and +parlour-maid and hindered them as much as possible in the task of +getting a room ready. + +Meantime the sub-conscious David sighed a great deal and presently +wept a great deal in convulsive sobs, and then opened his eyes and +saw the tourbillon of whirling elements settling down into +Rossiter's grave, handsome face--yes, but a gravity somehow +interpenetrated by love, a love not ashamed to show itself--bending +over him with great concern. The secret had been guessed, was known; +and as they held each other with their eyes as though the world were +well lost in this discovery, their lips met in one kiss, and for a +minute Vivie's arms were round Michael's neck, for just one +unforgettable moment, a moment she felt she would cheerfully have +died to have lived through. + +They were soon unlaced, for sharp little high-heeled footsteps on +the tiled passage and the clinketing of trinkets announced the +return of Mrs. Rossiter. + +Vivie became David once more, but left behind her the glad tears of +relief that were coursing down David's cheeks. + +Mrs. Rossiter thought this was a very odd way for a barrister to +celebrate his winning a great case at the criminal courts, and +turned away in delicacy from the spectacle of a dishevelled and +obviously lachrymose young man with one arm dangling and the other +thrown negligently over the back of the leather couch. "Mr. +Williams's room is ready, Michael," she said primly. "All right, +dear; thank you. I will help Williams up to bed and have his luggage +sent up. He will be quite well to-morrow if he can get to sleep. You +needn't bother any more, dearie. Go into the drawing-room and I +will join you there presently." + +Rossiter gave the rather shuddery, shivery, teeth-clacking David an +arm till he saw him into the bedroom and resting on the bedroom +sofa. Then he drew up a chair and said in low but distinct tones:-- + +"Look here. I know you want to make me an explanation. Well! It can +wait. A little more of this strain and you'll be having brain +fever. Sleep if you can, and eat all the breakfast Linda sends you +up in the morning. Get up at eleven to-morrow and if you are fit +then to drive out in my motor, return to your chambers. When you +have calmed down to a normal pulse, write to me all you want to +say. No one shall read it but me ... I'll burn it afterwards or +send it back to you under seal. But at the present time, it may be +easier for both of us if our communications are only written and +not spoken. We have both been tried rather high; and both of us are +human, however high-principled. If you write, register the +letter.... Good-night..." + +This that follows is probably what Vivie wrote to Michael. He burnt +the long letter when he had finished reading it though he made +excerpts in a pocket-book. But I can more or less correctly surmise +how she would put her case; how she typed it herself in the solitude +of two evenings; how, indeed, her nervous break-down was made the +reason for fending off all clients and denying herself to all +callers. + +"I am not David Vavasour Williams. I am Vivien Warren, the daughter +of a woman who runs a series of disreputable Private Hotels on the +Continent. I had no avowed father, nor had my mother, who likewise +was illegitimate. She was probably the daughter of a Lieutenant +Warren who was killed in the Crimea, and _her_ mother's name was +Vavasour. My grandmother was probably--I can only deal with +probabilities and possibilities in this undocumented past--a Welsh +woman of Cardiff, and I should not be surprised if I were a sort of +cousin of the man I am personating. + +"He was the ne'er-do-weel, only son of a Welsh vicar, a pupil of +Praed's, who went out to South Africa and died or was killed in the +war. + +"You have met my adopted father. He fully believes I am the bad son, +the prodigal son, returned and reformed. He has grown to love me so +much that it really seems to have put new life into him. I have +helped him to get his affairs straight, and I think I may say he has +gained by this substitution of one son for another, even though the +new son is a daughter! I have taken none of his money, other than +small sums he has thrust on me. I have some money of my own, earned +in Honoria's firm, for I was the 'Warren' of her 'Fraser and +Warren.' She has known my secret all along, hasn't quite approved, +but was overborne by me in my resolve to show what a woman--in +disguise, it may be--could do at the Bar. + +"Michael! I started out twelve years ago--and the dreadful thing is +I am now _thirty-four_ in true truth! to conquer Man, and a man has +conquered me! I wanted to show that woman could compete with man in +all careers, and especially in the Law. So she can--have I not shown +it by what I have done? But it is a drawn battle. I have realized +that if some men are bad--rotten--others, like you--are supremely +good. I love you as I never thought I could love any one. I cannot +trust myself to write down how much I love you: it would read +shamefully and be too much a surrender of my first principle of +self-respect. + +"I am going to throw up the whole D.V.W. business. It has put us in +a false relation which was exasperating me and puzzling you. +Moreover the disguise was wearing very thin. Only those two loyal +souls, Honoria Fraser and Albert Adams, were cognizant of the +secret, but it was being guessed at and almost guessed right, in +certain quarters. Professional jealousy was on my track. I never +fainted before in my life--so far as I can remember--but I might +have done so elsewhere than in your dear house, after the strain of +such an effort as I made to save that worthless woman--she was your +cousin, which is why I fought for her so hard--How often is not +justice deflected by Love! I might, somewhere else, when +over-strained have had a fit of hysterics; and my disguise would +have been penetrated by eyes less merciful than yours. Then would +have come exposure and its consequences--damaging to You (_I_ should +not have mattered), to my poor old 'father' down in Wales--whom I +sincerely love--to Praddy, to Honoria.... + +"Let me be thankful to get off so easily! _Somme toute_, I have had +a glorious time, have seen the world from the man's point of +view--and I can assure you that from his point of view it is a jolly +place to live in--_He_ can walk up and down the Strand and receive +no insult. + +"Well now, to relieve your anxieties, I will tell you, that after a +brief visit to South Wales to recuperate from the exertions of that +trial, Mr. David Williams the famous young barrister at the Criminal +Bar will go abroad to investigate the White Slave Traffic. Miss +Vivien Warren privately believes--and hopes--that the horrors of +this traffic in British womanhood are greatly exaggerated. The lot +in life of many of these young women is so bad in their native land +that they cannot make it worse by going abroad, no matter in what +avowed career. But Mr. David Williams takes rather a higher line and +is resolved in any case to get at the Truth. Miss Warren, nathless, +has her misgivings anent her old mamma, and would like to know what +that old lady is doing at the present time, and whether she is past +reform. Miss Warren even has her moments of doubt as to the +flawless perfection of her own life: whether the path of duty in +1897 did not rather lie in the direction of a serious attempt to be +a daughter to her wayward mother and reclaim her then, instead of +going off at a tangent as the mannish type of New Woman, to whom +applicable Mathematics are everything and human affections very +little. I suppose the truth, the commonplace truth is, that rather +late in life, Vivien Warren has fallen in love in the old-fashioned +way--How Nature mocks at us!--and now sees things somewhat +differently. At any rate, David and Vivie, fused into one +personality, are going abroad for a protracted period ... going out +of your life, my dearest, for it is better so. Linda has every right +to you and Science is a jealous mistress. Moreover poor, outcast +Vivie has her own bitter pride. She is resolved to show that a woman +_can_ cultivate strength of character and an unflinching sobriety of +conduct, even when born of such doubtful stock as mine, even when +devoid of all religious faith. I know you love me, I glory in the +knowledge, but I know that you likewise are more strongly bound by +principles of right conduct because like myself you have no sham +theology.... + +"Michael! _why_ are we tortured like this? Why mayn't we love where +we please? Is this discipline necessary to the improvement of the +race? I only know that if we sinned against these human laws and +conventions, your great career in Science--and again, why in +Science? Lightness in love does not seem to affect the career of +orchestral conductors, actors, singers, play-wrights and house +painters--why weren't you one of these, and not a High Priest of the +only real religion? I only know also that if I fell, so many people +would have the satisfaction of saying: 'There! _what_ did I say? +What's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. _That's_ how the +Woman's Movement's goin' to end, you take my word for it! They'll +get a man somewhere, somehow, and then they'll clear out of it.' + +"I think I said before--I meant to say, at any rate, so as to ease +your mind: I'm all right as regards financial matters. I have a life +annuity and some useful savings. I shall give Bertie Adams a year's +salary; and if you feel, dear friend, you _must_ put forth your hand +to help me, help _him_ instead to get another position. He has a +wife and a young family, and for his class is just about as good a +chap as I have ever met--this is 'David' speaking! If you can do +nothing you may be sure Vivie will, even if she has to borrow +unclean money from her wicked old mother to keep Bertie Adams from +financial anxiety and his pretty young wife and the child they are +so proud of.... + +"I must finish this gigantic letter somewhere, though I'm not going +to stop writing to you. I couldn't--I should lose all hold on life +if I did. For the purpose of correspondence and finishing up things, +I shall be 'David Williams' for some time longer. You know his +address in Wales? Pontystrad Vicarage, Pontyffynon, Glamorgan, if +you've forgotten it. He'll be there till April, and then begin his +foreign tour and write to you at intervals from the Continent. As to +Vivie, I think she won't return to life and activity till the autumn +and _then_ she'll make things hum. She'll throw all the energy of +frustrated love into the Woman's Cause, and get 'em the Vote +somehow...!" + + +Early in the genesis of the book. I appointed a jury of matrons to +judge each chapter before it went to the Press, and to decide +whether it was suited to the restrictions of the circulating +library, and whether it would cause real distress or perturbation to +three persons whom we chose as representative readers of decent +fiction: Admiral Broadbent, Lady Percy Mountjoye, and old Mrs. +Bridges (Mrs. Bridges was said to have had a heart attack after +reading THE GAY-DOMBEYS--I did not wish her to have another). This +jury of broad-minded women of the world decided that Rossiter's +reply to Vivie's very long epistle should not see the light. He +himself would probably--had he known we were discussing his +affairs--have been thankful for this decision; because twelve hours +after he had written it he was heartily ashamed of his momentary +lapse from high principles, ashamed that the woman in the case +should have shown herself truer metal. He resolved, so far as our +poor human resolves are worth anything, to remain inflexibly true to +his devoted Linda and to his career in biological Science. He knew +too well that if he were caught in adultery it would be all over +with the great theories he was working to establish. The Royal +Society would condemn them. Besides, so fine a resolve as Vivie's, +to live on the heights must be respected. + +At the same time, it is certain that for the next three months he +muddled his experiments, confused his arguments, lost his temper +with a colleague on the Council of the Zoological Society, kicked +the pugs--even caused the most unbearable two of them to be poisoned +by his assistant--and lied in attributing their deaths to other +causes. He promised the weeping Linda a Pom instead; he said "Hell!" +when the macaw interrupted them with raucous screams. He let pass +all sorts of misprints in his article on the Ductless Glands for the +_Encyclopaedia Scotica_, he was always losing the thread of his +discourse in his lectures at the London Institution and University +College; and he spent too much of his valuable time writing hugely +long letters on all sorts of subjects to David Williams. + +David--or Vivie--replied much more laconically. In the first place +he--she--had had her say in the one big outpouring from which I +have quoted so freely; in the second she did not wish to stoke up +these fires lest they should become volcanic and break up a happy +home and a great career. She wrote once saying: "If ever you were in +trouble of any kind; if Linda should die before me, for example, I +would come back to you from the ends of the earth and even if I were +legitimately married to the Prince of Monaco; come back and serve +you as a drudge, as a butt for your wit, as a sick nurse. But +meantime, Michael, you must play the game." + +And so after this three months' frenzy was past, he did. It was not +always easy. Linda's devotion was touching. She perceived--though +she hardly liked admitting it--that her husband missed the society +of "that" Mr. Williams, in whom she, for one, never could see +anything particularly striking, and who was now travelling abroad on +a quest it would be indelicate to particularize, and one that in +_her_ opinion should have been taken up by a far older man, the +father of a grown-up family. She strove to replace Williams as an +intelligent companion in the Library and even in the Laboratory. She +gave up works of charity and espionage in Marylebone and many of her +trips into Society, to sit more often with the dear Professor, and +was a little distressed by his groans which seemed to be quite +unprovoked by her remarks or her actions. However as the months went +by, Rossiter buckled down more to his work, and Mrs. Rossiter +noticed that he engaged a new assistant at £300 a year to take +charge of his enormous correspondence. Mr. Bertie Adams seemed a +nice young man, though also afflicted at times with something that +gave melancholy to his gaze. But he had a good little wife who came +to make a home for him in Marylebone. Mrs. Rossiter being a kindly +woman went to call on her and was entirely taken up with their one +child whom she frequently asked to tea and found much more +interesting than the new Pom. "But it's got such a funny name, +Michael; I mean funny for their station in life. It's a girl and +they call it 'Vivvy,' which is short for Vivien. I told Mrs. Adams +she must have been reading Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_; but she +said 'No, she wasn't much of a reader: Adams was, and it was some +lady's name in a story that had stuck in his head, and that as her +mother's name was Susan and his was Jane, she hadn't minded.'" + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +DAVID GOES ABROAD + + +David Williams had an enthusiastic greeting when he went home to +Pontystrad for the Easter of 1909. It was an early Easter that year, +whether you like it or not; it suits my story better so, because +then David can turn up in Brussels at the end of April, and yet have +attended to a host of necessary things before his departure on a +long absence. + +He first of all devoted himself to making the old Vicar happy for a +few weeks in a rather blustery, showery March-April. His father was +full of wonderment and exultation over the honourable publicity his +barrister son had attained. "You'll be a Judge, Davy; at any rate a +K.C., before I'm dead! But marry, boy, _marry_. _That's_ what you +must do now. Marry and give me grandchildren." The burly curate +privately thought David a bit morbid in his passionate devotion to +the Woman's Cause, and this White Slave Traffic all rot. He had +worked sufficiently in the bad towns of the South Welsh coast and +had had an initiation into the lower-living parts of Birmingham and +London to be skeptical about the existence of these poor, deluded +virgins, lured from their humble respectable homes and thrust by +Shakespearean procuresses, bawds, and bullies into an impure life. +If they went to these places abroad it was probably with the hope of +greater gains, better food, and stricter medical attention. However, +he kept most of these thoughts to himself and his wife, the squire's +daughter; who as she somehow thought David _ought_ to have married +_her_, was a little bit sentimental about him and considered he was +a Galahad. + +Old Nannie remained as usual wistfully puzzled, half fearing the +explanation of the enigma if it ever came. + +Returned to London and Fig Tree Court--which he was soon +vacating--David obtained through his and her bankers a passport for +himself and another for Miss Vivien Warren, thirty-four, British +subject, and so forth, travelling on the Continent, a lady of +independent means. He re-arranged all David's and Vivie's money +matters, stored such of Vivie's property and his own as was +indispensable at Honoria Armstrong's house in Kensington, and left a +box containing a complete man's outfit in charge of Bertie Adams; +bade farewell as "David Williams" and "Uncle David" to Honoria and +her two babies, and to the still unkindly-looking Colonel Armstrong +(who very much resented the "uncle" business, which was perhaps why +Honoria out of a wholesome _taquinage_ kept it up); and called in +for a farewell chat with dear old Praddy--beginning to look a bit +shaky and rather too much bossed by his parlour-maid. Honoria had +said as he departed "Do try to run up against Vivie somewhere abroad +and tell her I shan't be happy till she returns and takes up her +abode among us once more. 'Army' is _longing_ to know her." ('Army' +didn't look it.) "Now pettums! Wave handikins to Uncle David. He's +goin' broadies. 'Army' dear, would you ask them to whistle for a +taxi? I know David doesn't want to walk all the way back to the +Temple in those lovely button boots." + +Praed told him all he wanted to know about the localities of the +Warren Private Hotels; most of all, that at which Vivie's mother +resided in the Rue Royale, Brussels. + +So at this establishment a well but plainly dressed English lady, +scarcely looking her age (thirty-four) turned up one morning, and +sent in a card to the lady-proprietress, Mme. Varennes. This card +was closely scanned by a heavy-featured Flemish girl who took it +upstairs to an _appartement_ on the first floor. She read: + + _Miss Vivien Warren_ + +and vaguely noted the resemblance of the two names Varennes and +Warren, and the fact that the establishment in which she earned a +lucrative wage was one of the "Warren" Hotels. + +With very short delay, Vivie was invited to ascend in a lift to the +first floor and was shown in to a gorgeously furnished bedroom +which, through an open door, gave a glimpse of an attractive boudoir +or sitting-room beyond, and beyond that again the plane trees of a +great boulevard breaking into delicate green leaf. A woman of +painted middle age in a _descente de lit_ that in its opulence +matched the hangings and furniture of the room, had been reclining +on a sofa, drinking chocolate and reading a newspaper. She rose +shakily to her feet, when the door closed behind Vivie, tottered +forward to meet her, and exclaimed rather theatrically "My +_daughter_ ... come back to me ... after all these years!" (a few +tears ran down the rouged cheeks). + +"Steady on, mother," said Vivie, propping her up, and feeling oh! so +clean and pure and fresh and wholesome by contrast with this +worn-out woman of pleasure. "Lie down again on your sofa, go on with +your _petit déjeuner_--which is surely rather late? There were signs +and appetizing smells of the larger meal being imminent as I passed +through the hotel. Now just lie down until you want to dress--if you +like, I'll help you dress" (swallowing hard to choke down a little +shudder of repulsion). "I'm not in any hurry. I've come to Brussels +to go into matters thoroughly. For the present, I am staying at the +Hotel Grimaud." + +Mrs. Warren was convulsively sobbing and ruining the complexion she +had just made up, before she changed out of her _descente de lit_: +"Why not stop here, dearie? Don't laugh! There's _lots_ that do and +never suspect for one minute it ain't like any other hotel; though +from all I see and hear, _all_ hotels are pretty much the same +now-a-days, whether they're called by my name or not. Of course a +man might find out pretty quick, but not a woman who wasn't in the +business herself. Why we actually _encourage_ decent women to come +here when we ain't pressed for room. They give the place a better +tone, don't you know. There's two clergyman's sisters come here most +autumns and stop and stop and don't notice anything. They come in +here and chat with me, and once they said they liked foreign +gentlemen better than their own fellow-countrymen: 'their manners +are so _affable_.' Why it was partly through people like that, that +I got to hear every now and then what _you_ was up to. Oh, I wasn't +taken in long by that David Williams business. Praddy didn't give +you away--to speak of, when I sent you that thousand pounds--Lord, I +was glad you kept it! But what fixed me was your portrait in the +_Daily Mirror_ a couple of years ago as 'the Brilliant young +Advocate, Mr. David Vavasour Williams.' Somehow the 'Vavasour' +seemed to fit in all right, though what you wanted with +my--ahem--maiden name, with what was pore mother's _reel_ name, +before she lived with your grandfather--Well as I say, I soon saw +through the whole bag o' tricks--But _what_ a lark! Beat anythink +_I_ ever did. What have you done with your duds? Gone back to bein' +Vivie once more?--" + +_Vivie_: "I'll tell you all about it in good time. But I would +rather not stay here all the same. I've found a quiet hotel near the +station. I will come and see you if you can make it easy for me; but +what I should very much prefer, if you can only get away from this +horrid place, is that you should come and see _me_. Why shouldn't +you give yourself a fortnight's holiday and go off with me to +Louvain ... or to Spa ... or some other quiet place where we can +talk over everything to our heart's content?" + +_Mrs. Warren_: "Not a bad idea. Do me a lot of good. I was feeling +awfully down, Vivie, when you came. I wasn't altogether taken aback +at your coming, dearie, 'cos Praddy had given me a kind of a hint +you might turn up. But somehow, though everything goes well in +business--we seldom had so busy a time as during this last +Humanitarian Congress of the Powers--all the diplomats came +here--mostly the old ones, the old and respectable--oh we _all_ like +respectability--yet I never 'ad such low spirits. My gals used to +come in here and find me cryin' as often as not.... 'Comment, +Madame,' they used to say, 'pourquoi pleurez vous? Tout va si bien! +_Quelle_ clientele, et pas chiche'--I suppose you understand French? +However about this trip to the country, look on it as _settled_. +I'll pack up now and away we go in the afternoon. And not to any of +your measly Hotels or village inns. Why I've got me _own_ country +place and me _own_ auto. Villa de Beau-séjour, a mile or so beyond +the lovely beech woods of Tervueren. Ain't so far from Louvain, so's +I can send you on there one day--Ah! There's some one you'd like to +see in Louvain, if I mistake not! You always was one for findin' out +things, and maybe I'll tell you more, now you've come back to me, +than what I'd a done with you standing up so stiff and proud and me +unfit to take up the hem of your skirt.... How I do ramble. Suppose +it's old age comin' on" (shudders). "About this Villa de Beau-séjour +... It was once a farm house, and even now it's the farm where I get +me eggs and milk and butter an' the fruit and vegetables for this +hotel. _He_ gave it to me--you know whom I mean by '_He_'? ... don't +do to talk too loud in a place like this.... They say he's pretty +bad just now, not likely to live much longer. I was his mistress +once, years ago--at least I was more a confidante than anything +else. _How_ he used to laugh at my stories! 'Que tu es une +drôlesse,' he used to say. I never used to mince matters and we were +none the worse for that. Bless you, he wasn't as bad as they painted +him, 'long of all this fuss about the blacks. As I say, he gave me +the Villa de Beau-séjour, and used to say if I behaved myself he +might some day make me 'Baronne de Beau-séjour.' How'd you have +liked that, eh? Sort of morganatic Queen? I lay I'd have put some +good management into the runnin' of those places. Aïe! How they used +to swindle 'im, and he believing himself always such a sharp man of +business! When that Vaughan hussy..." + +_Vivie_: "Very well. We'll go to Villa Beau-séjour. But don't give +me too many of your reminiscences or I may leave you after all and +go back to England. Whilst I'm with you, you must give up rouge and +patchouli and the kind of conversation that goes with them. I'm out +here trying to do my duty and duty is always unpleasant. I don't +want to be a kill-joy, but don't give me more of that side of your +character than you can help. It--it makes me sick, mother..." + +[Mrs. Warren--or Madame Varennes--whimpers a little, but soon cheers +up, rings the bell for her maid preparatory to dressing and being +the business woman over her preparations for departure. She notes +the address of Vivie's hotel and promises to call for her there in +the _auto_ at three o'clock. Vivie leaves her, descends the richly +carpeted stairs--the lift is worked by an odiously pretty, little, +plump soubrette dressed as a page boy--and goes out into the street. +Several lounging men stare hard at her, but decide she is too +English, too plainly dressed, and a little too old to neddle with. +This last consideration is apparent to Vivie's intelligence and she +muses on it with a wistful little smile, half humour, half regret. +She will at her leisure write a whole description of the scene to +Michael.] + +Those who come after us will never realize how delightful was +foreign travel before the War, before that War which installed +damnable Dora in power in all the countries of Europe, especially +France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and Holland. They will not +conceive it possible that the getting of a passport (as a mere means +of rapidly establishing one's identity at bank or post-office) was a +simple transaction done through a banker or a tourist agency, the +enclosing of stamps and the payment of a shilling or two; that there +was no question of _visas_ entailing endless humiliation and +back-breaking delays, waiting about in ante-rooms and empty +apartments of squalid, desolating ugliness situate always in the +most odious parts of a town. But the Foreign Offices of Europe were +agreed on one topic, and this was that having got their feet back on +the necks of the people, their serfs of the glebe should not, save +under circumstances hateful, fatiguing, unhealthy and humiliating, +travel through the lands that once were beautiful and bountiful and +are so no longer. + +So: Vivie, never having consciously been abroad before (though she +was later to learn she had actually been born in Brussels), began to +experience all the delights of travel in a foreign land. She woke up +the next morning to the country pleasures of Villa Beau-séjour, a +preposterous chateau-villa it might be, but attached to a charming +Flemish farm; with cows and pigs, geese and ducks, plump poultry and +white pigeons, with clumps of poplars and copses of hawthorns and +wild cherry trees which joined the little domain on to the splendid +forest of Tervueren. There were the friendly, super-intelligent big +dogs, like bastard St. Bernards or mastiffs in breed, that drew the +little carts which carried the produce of the farm to the markets +or to Brussels. There were cheery Flemish farm servants and buxom +dairy or poultry women, their wives; none of them particularly aware +that there was anything discreditable about Madame Varennes. They +may have vaguely remembered she had once lived under High +protection, but that, if anything, added to her prestige in their +eyes. She was an English lady who for purposes of business and may +be of _la haute politique_ chose to live in Belgium. She was a kind +mistress and a generous _patronne_. Vivie as her daughter was +assured of their respect, and by her polite behaviour won their +liking as well. + +"You know, Viv, old girl," said Mrs. Warren one day, "if you played +your cards all right, this pretty place might be yours after I'd +gone. Why don't yer pick up a decent husband somewhere and drop all +this foolishness about the Suffragettes? He needn't know too much +about me, d'yer see? And if you looked at things sensible-like, +you'd come in for a pot of money some day; and whilst I lived I'd +make you a good allowance--" + +"It's no use, dear mother"--involuntarily she said "dear": her +heart was hungry for affection, Wales was rapidly passing out of her +sphere, David's business must soon be wound up in that quarter and +where else had she to go? "So long as you keep on with those Hotels +I can't touch a penny. I oughtn't to have kept that thousand, only +Praddy assured me it was 'clean' money." + +_Mrs. W._: "So it was. I won it at Monte. I don't often gamble now, +I hate losing money. But we'd had a splendid season at Roquebrune +and I sat down one day at the tables, a bit reckless-like. Seemed as +if I couldn't lose. When I got up and left I had won Thirty thousand +francs. So I says to myself: 'This shall go to my little girl: I'll +send it through Praddy and he'll pay it into her bank. Then I shan't +feel anxious about her.'" + +"Mother! what a strange creature you are! Such a mixture of good and +bad--for I suppose it _is_ bad, I feel somehow it _is_ bad, +trafficking in women's bodies, as they put it sensationally. Towards +me you have always been compact of kindness; you took every +precaution to have me brought up well, out of knowledge of any +impurity; and well and modernly educated. You left me quite free to +marry whom I liked ... but ... but ... you stuck to this horrible +career..." + +"Well, Vivie. I did. But did you make any great effort to turn me +from it? Besides, _is_ it horrible? I won't promise much for Berlin +and Buda-Pest or even Vienna, because I haven't been in those +directions for ever so long, and the Germans are reg'lar getting out +of hand, they are, working up for something. I dessay if you looked +in at the Warren Hotels in those places you might find lots to say +against 'em. But you couldn't say the places I supervise here and at +Roquebrune are so bad? _I_ won't stop your looking into 'em. The +girls are treated right down well. Looked after if they fall sick +and given every encouragement to marry well. I even call those two +places--I've giv' up me Paris house this ten years--I even call them +my 'marriage markets.' Ah! an' I've given in my time not a few +_dots_ to decent girls that had found a good husband _dans la +clientèle_. Why they're no more than what you might call hotels a +bit larkier than what other Hotels are. I've never in all my twenty +years of Brussels management had a row with the police.... And as to +all this rot about the White Slave Traffic that you seem so excited +about ... well I'm not saying there's nothin' in it.... Antwerp, +Hamburg, Rotterdam--you'd hear some funny stories there ... but only +if you went as David Williams in your man's kit--My! what a wheeze +that's bin!... And from all they tell me, that place in South +America--Buenos Aires, is a reg'lar Hell. But ... God bless my soul +... there's nothin' to fuss about here. Our young ladies would take +on like anything if you forced them to go away from my care. It's +gettin' near the time when we close our Roquebrune establishment for +the summer, an' the girls'll all be goin' back to their homes in the +mountains and fattenin' up on new milk; still if you go there before +the middle of May you'll see things pretty much as they are in the +season; and what's more you'll see plenty of perfectly respectable +people stoppin' there. Of course the prices are high. But look at +the luxury! What that wicked Bax used to call 'All the Home +Comforts.' He liked 'is joke. I hear he's settlin' down at home with +his old Dutch. She's bin awful good to him, I must say. _I_ couldn't +stand 'im long. I don't often lose me temper but I did with him, +after he got licked by Paul Dombey, and I threw an inkpot at his +head and ain't seen him for a matter of thirteen or fourteen year. +He sold out all his shares in the Warren Hotels when he came a +cropper." + +"Well, mother, I'll have a look round. I'm truly glad you're quit of +the German and Austrian horrors, though you must bear the blame for +having organized them in the first place. I will presently put on +David Williams's clothes and see what I _can_ see of them. But if +you want me to be a daughter to you, you'll take the first and the +readiest opportunity of removing your name from these--_ach_!--these +legacies of the Nineteenth century. You'll wind up the Warren +Hotels' Company, and as to the two houses you've got here and at +Roquebrune, you'll turn them now into decent places where no +indecency is tolerated." + +_Mrs. Warren_: "I'll think it over and I don't say as I won't give +in to you. I'm tired of a rackety life and I'm proud of you and ... +and ... (cries) ... ashamed of meself ... ashamed whenever I look at +you. Though I've never bin what I call _bad_. I've helped many a +lame dog over a stile.... That's partly how you came into +existence--almost the only time I've ever been in love--Many years +ago--why, girl, you must be--getting on for thirty-five--let me see +... (muses). Yes, it was in the winter of '73-74. I'd bin at Ostende +with a young barrister from London ... him I told you about once, +who used to write plays, and we came on to Brussels because he had +some business with the Belgian Government. He left me pretty much to +myself just then, though quite open-handed, don't you know.... One +day I was walking through one of the poorer streets where the people +was very Flemish, and I stood looking up at an old doorway--Dunno' +why--S'pose I thought it picturesque--reminded me of Praddy's +drawin's. And an old woman comes up and says in French, 'Madame est +Anglaise?' In those days I couldn't hardly speak a word o' French, +but I said 'Oui.' Then she wants me to come upstairs but I thought +it was some trap. However as far as I could make out there was a +young Irishman there, she said, lying very sick of a fever and +seemingly had no friends. + +"Well: I took down the address and the next day I came there with +the concierge of the hotel where we were staying, and under his +protection we went upstairs. My! it was a beastly place--and your +poor father--for he _was_ your father--was tossing about and raving, +with burning cheeks and huge eyes, just like yours. Well! I had +plenty of money just then, so with the help of that concierge we +found a decent lodging--they wasn't so partic'lar then about +infection or they didn't think typhoid infectious--I took him there +in an ambulance, engaged a nurse, and in a fortnight he was +recovering. He turned out to be a seminarist--I think they called +it--from Ireland who was going to be trained for the priesthood at +Louvain--lots of Irish used to come there in those days. And somehow +a fit of naughtiness had overcome him--he was only twenty--and he +thought he'd like to see a bit of the world. So he'd sloped from +his college and had a bit of a spree at Brussels and Ostende. Then +he was took with this fever-- + +"His name was Fergus O'Conor and he always said he was descended +from the real old Irish Kings, and he was some kind of a Fenian. I +mean he used to go on something terrible against the English, and +say he would never rest till they were drove out of Ireland. When he +got well again he was that handsome--well I've never seen any one +like him, unless it's you. I expect when you dress up as David +Williams you're the image of what he was when I fell in love with +him. + +"And I did. And when me barrister friend--Mr. FitzSimmons--teased me +about it, and wanted me--he having finished his business--to return +with him to London I refused. Bein' a bit free with me speech in +those days I dessay I said 'Go to Hell.' But he only laughed and +left me fifty pounds. + +"Well, I lived with this young student for a matter of six months. A +lovely time we had, till he began gettin' melancholy--matter of no +money partly. He tried bein' a journalist. + +"Then the Church got him back. There came about a reg'lar change in +him, and just at the time when _you_ was comin' along. He woke up +one night in a cold sweat and said he was eternally damned. +'Nonsense,' I says, 'it's them crayfish; you ought never to eat that +bisque soup...' + +"But he meant it. He went back to Louvain--where I'm goin' to take +you in a day or two--and I suppose they made him do all sorts of +penances before they gave him absolution. But he stuck to it. In due +time he became a priest and entered one of them religious houses. +They think a lot of him at Louvain. I've seen him once or twice but +I can't bear to meet his eyes--they're somethin' like yours--make me +feel a reg'lar Jezebel. And as to you? Well, when he left me I +hadn't got much money left; so, before I begged a passage back to +England, I called in at the very hotel where you found me the other +day, and where me an' my barrister friend had been stayin'. I'd got +to know the proprietress a little--real kind-'earted woman she was. +She said to me 'See here. You stop with me and help me in the bureau +and have your baby. I'll look after you. And when you can get about +again, stop on and help me in my business. I reckon you're the type +of woman I've bin looking out for this long while.' And that's how +the first of the Warren Hotels was started and that's where you were +born ... in October, Eighteen--seventy--five--" + +(Vivie gave a little shudder, but her mother's thoughts were so +intent on the past that she did not perceive it.) + +_Mrs. Warren_: "Dj'ever see yer Aunt Liz?" + +Vivie told her of the grim experiences already touched on in Chapter +I. + +_Mrs. Warren_: "Well she dropped _me_--_com_pletely--from the time +she married that Canon. And I respected her. She was comfortably +off, her past was dead and done with. D'yer think _I_ wanted to +bother 'er? Not I. It depends so much on the way you was born and +brought up. If Liz had been the child of a respectable married +couple that could give her a good start in life, 'probability is +she'd have run straight from the first. Dunno about me. I was always +a bit larky. And yet d'you know, I think if yer father hadn't been a +sort of young god, with his head in the skies, and no reg'lar +income, if he'd a married me and been kind to me ... I should have +been an honest woman all the rest of me life.... + +"What do _you_ feel about morality? You don't seem to have much +faith in religion, yet you've always taken a high line--and somehow +I'm glad you have--about things that never seemed to me to matter +much. We're given these passions and desires--and my! don't it hurt, +falling in love!--and then the clergy, though they're awful +humbugs, tells us we must deny our cravings..." + +_Vivie_: "In the main the clergy are right in what they preach +though they give the wrong reasons. We must try to regulate our +passions or they will master us, stifle what is really good in us. +My solution of this problem which I am so sick of discussing.... But +let's finish with it while we are about it--my solution is that the +State and the Community should do their utmost to encourage, +subsidize, reward early marriages; and at the same time facilitate +in a reasonable degree divorce. Apply both these remedies and you +would go far to wipe out prostitution, which I think perfectly +horrible--I--I should like to penalize it. Perhaps it is the Irish +ascetic in my constitution. A good many early marriages might be +failures. Well then, at the end of ten years these should be +dissolvable, with proper provision made for the children. I think +many a couple if they knew that after a time and without scandal +their partnership could be dissolved wouldn't, when the time came, +want it. While on the other hand if you made the tie not +everlastingly binding, young people--especially if they hadn't to +trouble about means--would get married without hesitation or delay. +I should not only encourage that, but I should give every woman a +heavy bonus for bringing a living child into the world.... Now let's +talk of something else. When are you going to take me to Louvain?" + + * * * * * + +They went to Louvain a few days later and Vivie's newly awakened +senses for the beautiful in art revelled in the glorious +architecture, so much of which was afterwards wrecked in the War. + +Walking beneath the planes in a narrow street between monastic +buildings, they descried a gaunt, stately figure of a Father +Superior of some great Order. "There!" said Mrs. Warren; "that's +him, that's your father." They quickened their pace and were +presently alongside him. He flashed his great, grey eagle eyes for a +contemptuous second on the face of Mrs. Warren, who was all of a +tremble and could not meet the gaze. Vivie, he scarcely glanced at +as he strode towards a doorway which engulfed him, though the eyes +she had inherited would have met his unflinchingly. + + * * * * * + +David Williams duly visited Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, +Vienna, and Buda-Pest. Much of what he saw disgusted, even revolted, +him, but he found few of his fellow-countrywomen held captive and +crying to be delivered from a life of infamy. On his return to +England in the autumn of 1909, he published the results of his +observations; but they had very little effect on continental public +opinion. + +However Mrs. Warren in due course turned her two establishments into +hotels that gradually acquired a well-founded character of propriety +and were in time included amongst those recommended to quiet, +studious people by first class tourist agencies. Their names were +changed respectively from Hotel Leopold II to Hotel Edouard-Sept, +from The Homestead, Roquebrune, to Hotel du Royaume-Uni. Mrs. Warren +or Mme. Varennes retired completely from the management, but +arranged to retain for her own use the magnificently furnished +_appartement_ on the first floor of the Hotel Edouard-Sept at +Brussels, where Vivie had seen her in the late spring of 1909. She +still continued to receive a certain income from these two admirably +managed hostelries. + +Constrained by Vivie she bestowed large donations on charitable and +educational institutions affecting the welfare of women and +established a fund of Ten thousand pounds for the promotion of Woman +Suffrage in Great Britain, which fund was to be at Vivie's +disposal. But even with these sacrifices to _bienséance_ she +remained a lady of considerable fortune. + +She resisted however all invitations to make her home in England. +"No, dear; I've got used to foreign ways. I hate my own people; +they're such damned hypocrites; and the cooking don't suit my taste, +accustomed to the best." + +But she gave up brandy except as a very occasional _chasse_ after +the postprandial coffee. She no longer dyed her hair and used very +little rouge and no scent but lavender. Her hair turned a warm white +colour, and dressed à la Pompadour made her look what she probably +was at heart--quite a decent sort. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +VIVIE RETURNS + + +Honoria Armstrong, faithful in friendship and purpose as few people +are (though she abated never a whit her love for her dear, fierce, +blue-eyed, bristly-moustached, battle-scarred, bullying husband) +prepared for Vivie's return in the autumn of 1909 by securing for +her occupancy a nice little one-storeyed house in a Kensington back +street; one of those houses--I doubt not, now tenanted by +millionaires who don't want a large household, just a roof over +their heads--that remain over from the early nineteenth century, +when Kensington was emerging from a country village into villadom. +The broad, quiet road, named after our late dear Queen, has nothing +but these detached or semi-detached little _cottages ornés_, +one-storeyed villas with a studio behind, or two-storeyed components +of "terraces," for about a quarter of a mile; and just before the +War, building speculators were wont to pace its pavements with a +hungry gaze directed to left and right buying up in imagination all +this wasted space, pulling down these pretty stucco nests, and +building in their place castles of flats, high into the air. I don't +suppose this district will escape much longer the destruction of its +graceful flowering trees and vivid gardens, its air of an opulent +village; it will match with the rest of Kensingtonia in huge, +handsome buildings and be much sought after by the people who devote +their lives--till they commit suicide--to illicit love and the +Victory Balls at the Albert Hall. But in 1909--would that we were +all back in 1909!--it was as nice a part of London as a busy, +energetic, sober-living spinster, in the movement, yet liking home +retirement and lilac-scented privacy--could desire to inhabit, at +the absurd rental of fifty pounds a year, with comparatively low +rates, and the need for only one hard-working, self-respecting +Suffragette maid, with the monthly assistance of a charwoman of +advanced views. + +There Vivie took up her abode in November of the year indicated. +Honoria lived not far away, next door but one to the Parrys in +Kensington Square. She--Vivie--was aware that Colonel Armstrong did +not altogether like her, couldn't "place" her, felt she wasn't "one +of us," and therefore despite Honoria's many invitations to run in +and out and not to mind dear old "Army" who was _always_ like that +at first, just as their Chow was--she exercised considerable +discretion about her frequentation of the Armstrong household, +though she generally attended Honoria's Suffrage meetings, held +whenever the Colonel was called away to Aldershot or Hythe. + +Honoria by this time--the close of 1909--was the mother of four +lovely, healthy, happy children. She would give birth to a fifth the +following June (1910), and then perhaps she would stop. She often +said about this time--touching wood as she did so--"could any woman +be happier?" She was so happy that she believed in God, went +sometimes to St. Mary Abbott's or St. Paul's, Knightsbridge--the +music was so jolly--and gave largely to cheerful charities as well +as to the Suffrage Cause. She would in the approach to Christmas, +1909, look round and survey her happiness: could any one have a more +satisfactory husband? Of course he was a man and had silly mannish +prejudices, but then without them he would not be so lovable. Her +children--two boys and two girls--could you find greater darlings if +you spent a week among the well-bred childern playing round the +Round Pond? Such _natural_ children with really original remarks +and untrained ideas; not artificial Peter Pans who wistfully didn't +want to grow up; not slavish little mimics of the Children's stories +in vogue, pretending to play at Red Indians--when every one knew +that Red Indians nowadays dressed like all the other citizens of the +United States and Canada and sat in Congress and cultivated +political "pulls" or sold patent medicines; or who said "Good +hunting" and other Mowgli shibboleths to mystified relations from +the mid-nineteenth century country towns; nor children who teased +the cat or interfered with the cook or stole jam or did anything +else that was obsolete; or decried Sullivan's music in favour of +Debussy's or of Scarlatini's 17th century _tiraliras_; or wore +spectacles and had to have their front teeth in gold clamps. Just +clear-eyed, good-tempered, good-looking, roguish and spontaneously +natural and reasonably self-willed children, who adored their +parents and did not openly mock at the Elishas that called on them. + +Then there were Honoria's friends. I gave a sort of list of them in +Chapter II--which I am told has caused considerable offence, not by +what was put _in_ but to those who were left out. But they needn't +mind: if the protesters were nice people according to my standard, +you may be sure Honoria knew them. But of all her friends none was +dearer and closer--save her husband--than Vivie Warren--pal of pals, +brave comrade of the unflinching eyes. And somehow Vivie (since she +fell in love with Michael Rossiter) was ten times dearer than she +had been before: she was more understanding; she had a brighter eye, +a much greater sense of humour; she was tenderer; she liked children +as she never had done in bygone years, and was soon adopted by the +four children in Kensington Square as "Aunt Vivie" (They also--the +two elder ones--had a vague remembrance of an Uncle David who had +brought them toys and sweetmeats in a dim past). Aunt Vivie and +Mummie used to get up the most amusing Suffrage meetings in the +long, narrow garden behind the house; or they combined forces with +Lady Maud Parry, and spoke in lilting contralto or mezzo-soprano +(with the compliant tenor or baritone of here and there a captive +man) across the two gardens. Or somehow they commandeered the Square +Garden on the pretext of a vast Garden Party, at which every one +talked and laughed at once over their Suffrage views. + +Yes: Honoria was happy then, as indeed she had been during most of +her life, except when her brother died and her mother died. What did +she lack for happiness? Nothing that this world can give in the +opening twentieth century ... not even a very good pianola or a +motor. I feel somehow it was almost unfair (in my rage at the +inequality of treatment meted out by the Powers Beyond). Shall not +General Sir Petworth Armstrong die in the great débacle of the +world-wide War? I shall see, later. And yet I feel that this nucleus +of pure happiness housed in Kensington Square--or at Petworth +Manor--was to the little world that revolved round the Armstrongs +like a good radiator in a cold house. It warmed many a chilly nature +into fructification; it healed many a scar, it brightened many a +humble life, like that of Bertie Adams's hard-working, washerwoman +mother, or the game-keeper's crippled child at Petworth or the +newest, suburbanest little employé of _Fraser and Claridge's_ huge +establishment in the Brompton Road. It pulled straight the wayward +life of some young subaltern, about to come a cropper, but who after +a talk or two with that jolly Mrs. Armstrong took quite a different +course and made a decent marriage. It conjoined with many of the +social activities for good of one who might have been her twin +sister--Suzanne Feenix--only that Suzanne was twenty years older and +perhaps an inch or two shorter. Dear woman! My remembrance flashes a +kiss to your astral cheek--which in reality I should never have +dared to salute, so great was my awe of Colonel Armstrong's +muscles--as, at any reasonable time before or after the birth of +your last child in June, 1910, you stand in the hall of your sunny, +eighteenth century house, with the gold and green glint of the +Kensington garden behind you: saying with your glad eyes and bonny +mouth "Come to our Suffrage Party? _Such_ a lark! We've got Mrs. +Pankhurst here and the Police daren't raid us; they're so afraid of +'Army.' Of course he's away, but he knows _perfectly well_ what I'm +doing. He's _quite_ given in. Now Michael, you show Sir Harry and +Lady Johnston to the front seats..." + +(I looked round for the rather gloomy presence of Michael Rossiter, +but it was his little golden-haired god-son she meant.) + +You shall have your general back safe from the wars, with a wound +that gives only honour, a reasonable number of well-earned +decorations, and a reputation for rather better strategy than +Aldershot generally produces; and he shall live out his wholesome +life alongside yours, still dispensing happiness, even under a +Labour Government: till, as Burton used to wind up his Arabian +Nights love stories, "there came to them the Destroyer of delight +and the Sunderer of societies." + + +Honoria acted towards the Suffrage movement somewhat as in +older-fashioned days of Second Empire laxity well-to-do people +evaded military service under conscription by paying a substitute to +take their place in the fighting line. On account of her husband, +and the children she had just had or was going to have, she did not +throw herself into the physical struggle; but she still continued +out of her brother's ear-marked money to subsidize the cause. Rather +regretfully, she looked on from a motor, a balcony, a front window +or the safe plinth of some huge statue, whilst her comrades, with +less to risk physically and socially, matched their strength of +will, their trained muscles, their agility, astuteness and feminine +charm (seldom without some effect) against the brute force and +imperturbability of the Police. + +The struggle waxed hot and fierce in the early months of 1910. Vivie +held herself somewhat in the background also, not wishing to strike +publicly and effectively until she was sure for what principle she +endangered her life and liberty. Nevertheless she became a resource +of rising importance to the Suffrage cause. She was known to have +had a clever barrister cousin who for some reasons best known to +himself had of late kept in the background--ill-health, said some; +an unfortunate love affair, said another. But his pamphlet on the +White Slave Traffic on the Continent showed that he was still at +work. Vivie was thought to be fully equal in her knowledge of the +law to her cousin, though not allowed to qualify for the Bar. Case +after case was referred to her with the hope that if she could not +solve it, she might submit it to her cousin's judgment. In this way, +excellent legal advice was forthcoming which drove the Home Office +officials from one quandary to another. + +But Vivie in the spring of 1910, looking back on nearly twelve +months of womanly life (save for David's summer of continental +travel) decided that she didn't like being a woman, so far as Woman +was dressed in 1910 and for three or four hundred years previously. + +As "David" this had been more or less her costume: an undershirt +(two, in very cold weather), a pair of pants coming down to the +ankle, and well-fitting woollen socks on the feet. A shirt, +sometimes in day-time all of one piece with its turn-over collar; at +worst with a separate collar and a tie passed through it. Braces +that really braced and held up the nether garment of trousers; a +waistcoat buttoning fairly high up (no pneumonia blouse)--two +waistcoats if she liked, or a dandy slip buttoned innocently inside +the single vest to suggest the white lie of a second inner vest. +Over the waistcoat a coat or jacket. On the head a hat which fitted +the head in thirty seconds (allowing for David's shock of hair). +Lace-up or button boots, with perhaps at most six buttons; gloves +with one button; spats--if David wanted to be very dressy--with +three buttons. On top of all this a warm, easily-fitting overcoat or +a mackintosh. If you were really dressing to kill (as a man) it +might take half an hour; if merely to go about your business and not +be specially remarked for foppishness, twenty minutes. To divest +yourself of all this and get into paijamas and so to bed: ten +minutes. But when Vivie returned to herself and went about the world +of 1909-1910, and merely wished to pass as an inconspicuous, modest +woman she had to spend _hours_ in dressing and undressing, and this +is what she had to wear and waste so much of her time in adjusting +and removing:-- + +Next the skin, merino combinations, unwieldy garments requiring a +contortionist's education to put on without entangling your front +and hind limbs. The "combies" were specially buttoned with an +infinitude of small, scarcely visible buttons, which always wanted +sewing on and replacing, and were peevish about remaining in the +button hole. Often, too, the "combies" (I really can't keep writing +the full name) had to be tied here and there with little white +ribbons which preferred getting into a knot (no wonder the average +woman has a temper!). When the "combies" went to the wash, all these +ribbonlets had to be taken out, specially washed, specially ironed, +and ingeniously threaded back into position. + +Next to the combinations, proceeding outwards, came the corset, a +most serious affair. This exceedingly expensive instrument of +torture was compounded chiefly of silk (which easily frayed) and +whale-bone. Many good women of the middle class have gone to their +graves for three hundred years believing that Almighty God had +specially created toothless whales of the Family _Balænidæ_ solely +for the purpose of providing women with the only possible ingredient +for a corset; and for three hundred years, brave seamen of the +Dutch, British and Basque nations had gone to a watery grave to +procure for women this indispensable aid to correct clothing. But +these filaments of horny palatal processes are unamiable. Though +sheathed in silk or cotton, they, after the violent movements of a +Suffragette or a charwoman, break through the restraining sheath and +run into the body under the fifth rib, or press forward on to the +thigh. Which is why you often see a woman's face in an omnibus +express severe pain and her lips utter the exclamation "Aïe, Aïe." +Then this confounded corset had to be laced with pink ribbons at the +back and in front and both lacings demanded unusual suppleness of +arms and sense of touch in finger-tips; and when the corset went to +the wash the ribbons had to be drawn out, washed, ironed, and +threaded again. + +From the front of the corset hung two elastic suspenders as yet +awaiting their prey. But first must be drawn on the silk or +stockinette knickerbockers which in the 1910 woman replaced the +piteously laughable drawers of the Victorian period. Then the +suspenders clutched the rims of the stockings with an arrangement of +nickel and rubber which no _man_ would have tolerated for its +inefficiency but would have thrown back in the face of the shopman +and have been charged with assault. In times of stress, at public +meetings the suspenders would release the stockings from their hold, +and the latter roll about the ankles of the embarrassed pleader for +Woman's Rights ("Who would be free, themselves must strike the +blow," and first of all throttle the modiste, thought Vivie). + +Then there was the camisole that concealed the corset and had to be +"pinned" in with safety pins. The knickerbockers might not seek the +aid of braces; but they must be kept up by an elastic band. Over +the camisole, in 1910, came a blouse, pernickety and shiftless about +its waist fastening; and finally a hobble skirt, chiefly kept up by +safety pins, and so cut below as to hamper free movement of the +limbs as much as possible. + +Day-boots often had as many as twenty-one buttons--and, mind you, +not _sham_, buttons, as I used to think, out of swagger; but every +button demanded entrance into a practicable button hole. Or the +boots themselves were mere shoes with many buttoned spats drawn over +them. All the boots had high heels and the woman walked so as to put +a severe strain on her arched instep in order that she might bring +on by degrees "flat foot" for surgical treatment. + +Who shall describe the hats of 1910?--and before and since--in all +but the very poorest women? They were enormous; and so were the +hat-boxes; and they could only be held on to the head by running +hatpins through wisps of hair. + +I will not portray the evening dresses that it sometimes takes a +kindly husband an hour to fasten, with "press-buttons" and hooks and +eyes; and poor Vivie had no husband and depended on her suffragette +maid because at all costs she mustn't look dowdy or the woman's +cause might suffer at Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's receptions. + +As to night gear: of course Vivie being a free agent slept in +David's paijamas. She had long ago cut the Gordian knots of her +be-ribboned, girdled night gowns in favour of the Indian garment. +But can you wonder after this true recital of the simplest forms of +a decent woman's costume in 1909-1910 and even now (a recital drawn +from a paper on _Woman's dress_ delivered by David on one of the +last occasions in which he appeared at the Debating Society of the +Inner Temple--and checked by my jury of matrons)--can you wonder +that Vivie took very hardly to giving up a man's life in the clothes +of David Williams? How she vowed to herself--fruitlessly, because +now she is one of the best-dressed women in town (in a quiet +way)--that she would one day enfranchise women in their costume as +in their citizenship? This will never be done until the modistes of +Paris, in some great popular uprising, are strangled and burnt on +the Place de la Concorde. + +At the 1910 (January) Election, Michael Rossiter had been returned +as M.P. for one of the Midland Universities. His Science had +certainly suffered from his suppressed love for Vivie, a passion +which secretly tortured him, yet for which he dared ask no respite. +He thought it was about time that _real_ men of Science entered +Parliament to check the utter mismanagement of public affairs which +had been going on since 1900. He proposed to himself to make a +succession of brilliant speeches (he really was an admirable and +fluent lecturer) on Anthropology, Chemistry--Chemistry ought +to appeal, even to City men because it made such a lot of +money--Ethnology, Hygiene, Geography, Economic Botany, Regional +Zoology, Germ Diseases, Agriculture, etc., etc.; _and_ the absolute +necessity of giving Woman the same electoral privileges as Man. He +was always well inclined that way, but after he realized that David +was Vivie he became almost an embittered Suffragist. + +The Speaker took care that he had little scope for his Anthropology, +Economic Botany, Chemistry, Hygiene, etc., on Votes of Supply: but +he got in some nasty blows in the Woman's cause, and in fact was so +strangely rancorous that Ministers looked at him evilly and arranged +that he was not placed on the committee of the Conciliation Bill; +that amusing farce with which the Liberal Ministry sought in 1910 to +stave off the Suffrage dilemma. + +Rossiter and Vivie seldom met except at public receptions. Every now +and again he came to Suffrage meetings when she was going to speak; +and how well she spoke then! How real it all seemed to her! How +handsome she looked (even at 36) and how near she was to tears and a +breakdown; while his eyes burned; and when he got home poor little +Linda was in despair over her poor distraught Michael, who could +find no happiness or contentment in Ten Thousand a year, great fame +as the chief inventor of the Ductless Glands, and the man who had +issued a taxonomic classification of the _Bovidae_ which even +satisfied _me_. + +What a cruel force is Love! Or is the cruelty in human disciplinary +laws? Here were two persons eminently suited to be mates, calculated +while still in the prime of life to procreate offspring that would +be a credit to the nation, who asked for nothing more in life than +to lie in each other's arms--after which no doubt they would have +arisen and performed the most wonderful feats in inductive science +or in embroidery or mathematics. And they were inwardly raging, +losing their appetites, sleeping very badly yet eschewing drugs, +pursuing will-of-the-wisps in politics, wasting the best years of +their lives ... from a sense of duty, that sense of duty which has +made the Nordic White man the dominant race on the earth. "We suffer +individually but we gain collectively," Rossiter said to himself. + +In May, 1910, King Edward died, and all these gladiators, male and +female, willingly declared a Truce in the Suffrage battle, to obtain +a much needed rest in the weary conflict. As soon as political +activities were resumed, the Conciliation Bill by the energies of +the Liberal Whips was talked out (wasn't it?). At any rate it came +to nothing for that Session. Vivie took this as a decision. She +openly declared that the Vote never would be given by the House of +Commons or House of Lords until it was wrung from the Legislature by +a complete dislocation of public affairs, the nearest approach to a +revolution women could bring about without rifles and cannon. + +Meantime she refused to be duped by Ministers or by amiable +go-betweens. She resolved instead, perhaps for the last time, to +resume the clothes and status of David Williams, go down to Wales, +and stay with her father who was dying by slow degrees. + +The letters which the curate had written from time to time to D.V. +Williams, Esq., care of Michael Rossiter, Esq., F.R.S., and usually +forwarded on by Bertie Adams, had told David how much the Revd. +Howel Williams had failed since the cold spring of 1909, and how in +the colder spring of 1910 he had once or twice narrowly survived +influenza. In July, 1910, he was dying of heart failure. +Nevertheless the return of David, his well-beloved, brought to him a +flicker of renewed life, a little pink in the cheeks, and some +garrulity. + +He could hardly bear his darling son out of his sight, except for +the narrowest margin of necessary sleep; and often David slept +sitting up in an arm-chair in the Vicar's bedroom. The Revd. Howel +said nothing more about grandchildren; often--with a finer +sense--spoke to him not as though he were a son, but as a beloved +daughter. At last he died in his sleep one night, holding David's +hand, looking so ineffably happy that the impostor inwardly gloried +in his imposture as in one of the best deeds of his chequered life. + + * * * * * + +The will, of course, had not been changed, and David inherited all +his "father's" property. Out of it he settled £500 on the +miner's--or rather Jenny's--son who probably _was_ the offspring of +the real David Williams's boyish amour. He provided a handsome +annuity for poor, shaken, old Nannie; and the rest of the money +after paying all expenses he laid out on the endowment of a Village +Hall for games and study, social meetings and political discussions, +together with provision for an annual stipend of a hundred pounds +for the Vicar or curate of the parish who should run this Hall: +which was to be a lasting memorial to the Reverend Howel Vaughan +Williams, so learned in the lore of Wales. + +Having settled all these matters to his satisfaction, and certainly +to that of the Revd. Cadwalladr Jones (who succeeded as Vicar of +Pontystrad by a wise nudging and monetary pressure on the part of +the late Vicar's son), David returned to London at the close of +1910, took off his clothes and shed his personality. It was bruited +that he had gone abroad to nurse a health that was seriously +impaired through his incredible exertions over the Shillito case. He +left his cousin Vivie free to espouse the Suffrage cause, even unto +the extremest militancy. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT + + +The Conciliation Bill which was intended to give the Parliamentary +Vote to a little over one million women had passed its Second +reading on July 12, 1910, by a majority of 110 votes; in spite of +the bitter opposition of the Premier, the Chancellor of the +Exchequer, the Home Secretary, the President of the Board of Trade, +and the Secretary for the Colonies. The Premier's arguments against +it were, firstly, that "Women were Women"--this of course was a +deplorable fact--and that "the balance of power might fall into +their hands without the physical force necessary to impose their +decisions, etc., etc."; and finally "that in Force lay the ultimate +appeal" (rather a dangerous incitement to the sincere militants). +The Chancellor of the Exchequer took up a more subtle attitude than +the undisguised, grumpy hostility of his leader. + +His arguments at the time reminded me of an episode in East Africa +thirty years ago. A certain independent Chief tolerated the presence +on his territory of a plucky band of missionary pioneers. He did not +care about Christianity but he liked the trade goods the +missionaries brought to purchase food and pay for labour in the +erection of a station. These trade goods they kept in a storehouse +made of wattle and daub. But this temporary building was not proof +against cunning attempts at burglary on the part of the natives. The +missionaries at length went to the Chief (who was clothed +shamelessly in the stolen calicoes) and sought redress. "All +right," said the potentate, who kept a fretful realm in awe, "_But_ +you have no proof it _is_ my people who break in and steal. You just +catch one in the act, and _then_ you'll see what I'll do." + +So the Oxford and Cambridge athletic missionaries sat up night after +night under some camouflage and at last their patience was rewarded +by the capture of a naked, oily-skinned negro who emerged from a +tunnel he had dug under the store-foundations. Then they bore him +off to the Yao chieftain. + +"_Now_ we know where we are," said the Chief. "You've proved your +complaint. We'll have him burnt to death, after lunch, in the market +place. I presume you've brought a lunch-basket?" + +"Oh no!" said the horrified propagandists: "We don't want such a +penalty as _that_..." + +"Very good" said the Chief, "then we'll behead him..." "No! No!" + +"Crucify him?"--"No! No!"--"Peg him down over a Driver Ants' nest?" +"No! No!" + +"Then, if you don't want _any_ rational punishment, he shall go +free." And free he went. + +In the same way the Chancellor of the Exchequer of those days was so +hard to please over Suffrage measures that none brought forward was +democratic enough, far-reaching and overwhelming enough to secure +his adhesion. He was therefore forced to torpedo the Conciliation +Bill, to snatch away the half-loaf that was better than no bread at +all. He spoke and voted against these tentative measures of feminine +enfranchisement, with tongue in cheek, no doubt, and hand linked in +that of Lulu Grandcourt whose opposition to any vote being given to +woman and whole attitude towards the sex was so bitter that he had +to be reminded by Lord Aloysius Brinsley (who like his brother +Robert was a convinced Suffragist) that after all he, Lulu +Grandcourt, had deigned to be born of a woman, had even--maybe--been +spanked by one. + +The Speaker had hinted on the occasion of the second reading of the +Concilition Bill and at a later raising of the same question that +there might arise all sorts of obstacles to wreck the Woman's +Franchise measure in Committee; obstacles that apparently need not +be taken into account as dangerous to any measure affecting male +interests. Therefore many of the M.P.'s timorously voted for the +second reading of the Conciliation Bill in order to stand well with +their Constituencies, yet looked to the Premier to trip it up by +some adroit use of Parliamentary jiu-jitsu. They were not +disappointed in their ideal politician. The Bill after it had passed +its second reading by a large majority was referred to a Committee +of the whole House, which seemingly is fatal to any measure that +seeks to become law. + +So the stale summer of 1910 wore itself away in recriminations, +hopings against probability that the newer types of Liberal +statesmen were honest men, keepers of promises, not merely--as +Vivie said in one of the many speeches that got her into +trouble--"Bridge-players, first and foremost, golf-players when they +couldn't play bridge, or speculators on the Stock Exchange, +champagne drinkers; and prone to eat at their Lucullus banquets, +public and private, till they sometimes fainted with indigestion." + +My! But she was bitter in her Hyde Park speeches and at her Albert +Hall meetings against this band of mock-liberals who had seized the +impulse of the country towards reform which had grown up under the +Chamberlain era to instal themselves in power with the financial +backing of great Americo-German-Jewish internationalists, who in +those early years of the Twentieth century were ready to stake their +dollars on the Free Trade British Empire if they might guide its +policy. + +[Very likely if they had obtained the complete guidance they sought +for they might have staved off this ruinous war by telling Germany +bluntly she must keep her hands off France and Belgium; they might +also have seen to it that the War Office _was_ reformed and the +British army ready to fulfil Lord Haldane's promises; for there is +no doubt they had ability even if they despised the instruments they +worked with.] + +But as I say, Vivie was a bitter and most effective speaker. She +inflamed to action many a warm-hearted person like myself, like +Rossiter (who got into trouble--though it was hushed up--in +1910-1911 for slapping the face of a Secretary of State who spoke +slightingly of the women Suffragists and their motives). Yet I seem +to be stranded now, with a few others, in my pre-war enthusiasm over +the woman's cause, or, later, my horror at the German treatment of +Belgium. + +Where are the snows of yester-year; where is the animosity which in +the years between the burking of the Conciliation Bill and the +spring of 1914 grew up between the disinterested Reformers who +wanted Woman enfranchised and the Liberal ministers who fought so +doggedly, so unscrupulously, against such a rational completion of +representative government? The other day I glanced at a newspaper +and saw that Sir Michael and Lady Rossiter had been dining at the +Ritz with the Grandcourts, Princess Belasco, Sir Abel Batterby, the +great Police Surgeon, knighted for his skill and discretion in +forcible feeding, and the George Bounderbys (G.B. was the venomous +Private Secretary of a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and put +him up to most of his anti-suffrage dodges); and meeting Vivien +Rossiter soon afterwards I said, "How _could_ you?" "How could I +what?" "Dine with the people you once hated." "Oh I don't know, it's +all past and done with; we've got the Vote and somehow after those +years in Brussels I seem to have no hates and few loves +left"--However this is anticipating. I only insert this protest +because I may seem to be expressing a bitterness the protagonists +have ceased to feel, a triumph at the victory of their cause which +produces in them merely a yawn. + +Where is Mrs. Pankhurst? Somehow one thought she would never rest +till she was in the Cabinet. And Christabel? And Annie Kenney? +Married perchance to some permanent under Secretary of State and +viewing "direct action" with growing disapproval. + +And the Pethick Lawrences? Some one told me the other day that +they'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be forcibly fed. + +But in November, 1910, we all--we that were whole-hearted reformers, +true Liberals, not wolves in sheep's clothing, took very much to +heart what happened on the 18th of that month, when the Prime +Minister of the time announced that the Conference between the House +of Lords and the House of Commons on the Veto question having broken +down he had advised His Majesty to dissolve Parliament. This meant +that the Conciliation Bill was _finally_ done for; while the +declaration of the Prime Minister as to the future Programme of the +Liberal Party, if it was returned to power, excluded any mention of +a Woman's enfranchisement Bill. + +On Black Friday, November 18th, Vivie was present at the meeting in +Caxton Hall when Mrs. Pankhurst explained the position to the +Suffragist women assembled there. Her blood was fired by the recital +of their wrongs and she was prominent among the four hundred and +fifty volunteers who came forward to accompany Mrs. Pankhurst, Dr. +Garret Anderson and Susan Knipper-Totes (the two last, infirm old +ladies) when they proposed to march to the Houses of Parliament to +exercise their right of presenting a petition. + +The women proceeded to Parliament Square in small groups so as to +keep within the letter of the law. Some like Vivie carried banners +with pitiful devices--"Where there's a Bill there's a Way," "Women's +Will Beats Asquith's Skill," and so on.... She wished she had given +more direct attention to these mottoes, but much of this procedure +had been got up on impulse and little preparation made. It was near +to four o'clock on a fine November afternoon when the four hundred +and fifty women began their movement towards Parliament Square. A +red sun was sinking behind the House of Lords, the blue of the misty +buildings and street openings was enhanced by the lemon yellow +lights of the newly-lit lamps. The avenues converging on the Houses +of Parliament were choked with people, and vehicles had to be +diverted from the streets. The men in the watching crowd covered the +pavements and island "refuges," leaving the roadways to the little +groups of struggling women, and the large force--a thousand or +more--of opposing police. + +It was said at the time that the Government of the day, realizing by +their action or inaction in the House of Commons they had provoked +this movement of Mrs. Pankhurst's, had prepared the policy with +which to meet it. As on the eve of a General Election it might be +awkward if they made many arrests of women--perchance Liberal +women--on their way to the House to present a petition or escort a +deputation, the police should be instructed instead to repel the +Suffragists by force, to give them a taste of that "frightfulness" +which became afterwards so familiar a weapon in the Prussian +armoury. Some said also that the Government looked to the crowd +which was allowed to form unchecked on the pavements, the crowd of +rough men and boys--costers from Lambeth, longshore men from the +barges on the unembanked Westminster riverside, errand boys, +soldiers, sailors, clerks returning home, warehousemen, the tag-rag +and bob-tail generally of London when a row is brewing--looked to +this crowd to catch fire from the brutality of the police +(uniformed and in plain clothes) and really give the women +clamouring for the Vote "what for"; teach them a lesson as to what +the roused male can do when the female passes the limits of domestic +license. A few deaths might result (and did), and many injuries, but +the treatment they received would make such an impression on Mrs. +Pankhurst's followers that they would at last realize the futility +of measuring their puny force against the muscle of man. Force, as +the Premier had just said, must be the decisive factor. + +But unfortunately for these calculations the large male crowd took +quite a different line. The day had gone by when men and boys were +wont to cry to some expounding Suffragette: "Go home and mind yer +biby." Dimly these toilers and moilers, these loafers and wasters +now understood that women of a courage rarely matched in man were +fighting for the cause of all ill-governed, mal-administered, +swindled, exploited people of either sex. The mass of men, _in_ the +mass, is chivalrous. It admires pluck, patience, and persistency. So +the crowd instead of aiding the police to knock sense into the women +began to take sides with the buffeted, brutalized and bleeding +Suffragettes. + +Fortunately before the real fighting began, and no doubt as a stroke +of policy on the part of some Police Inspector, Mrs. Pankhurst +convoying the two frail old ladies--Dr. Garret Anderson and Susan +Knipper-Totes--champions of the Vote when Woman Suffrage was outside +practical politics--had reached the steps of the Strangers' entrance +to the House of Commons. From this point of 'vantage a few of the +older leaders of the deputation were able to witness the four or +five hours' struggle in and around Parliament Square, the Abbey, +Parliament Street, Great George Street which made Black Friday one +of the note-worthy days in British history--though, _more nostro_, +it will be long before it is inserted in school books. + +Here, while something like panic signalized the Legislative Chamber +and Cabinet ministers scurried in and out like flurried rabbits and +finally took refuge in their private rooms--here was fought out the +decisive battle between physical and moral force over the suffrage +question. The women were so _exaltées_ that they were ready to face +death for their cause. The police were so exasperated that they saw +red and some went mad with sex mania. It was a horrible spectacle in +detail. Men with foam on their moustaches were gripping women by the +breasts, tearing open their clothing, and proceeding to rabid +indecencies. Or, if not sex-mad, they twisted their arms, turned +back their thumbs to dislocation, rained blows with fists on pale +faces, covering them with blood. They tore out golden hair or thin +grey locks with equal disregard. Mounted police were summoned to +overawe the crowd, which by this time whether suffragist and female, +or neutral, non-committal and male, was giving the police on foot a +very nasty time. The four hundred and fifty women of the original +impulse had increased to several thousand. Dusk had long since +deepened into a night lit up with arc lamps and the golden radiance +of great gas-lamp clusters. Flares were lighted to enable the police +to see better what they were doing and who were their assailants. +But the women showed complete indifference to the horses; and the +horses with that exquisite forbearance that the horse can show to +the distraught human, did their utmost not to trample on small feet +and outspread hands. + +Here and there humanity asserted itself. One policeman--helmetless, +his fair, blond face scratched and bleeding--had in berserkr rage +felled a young woman in the semi-darkness. He bore his senseless +victim into the shelter of some nook or cloister and turned on her +his bull's eye lantern. She was a beautiful creature, in private +life a waitress at a tea shop. Her hat was gone and her hair +streamed over her drooping face and slender shoulders. The policeman +overcome with remorse exclaimed--mentioning the Home Secretary's +name "---- be damned; this ain't the job for a decent man." The +Suffragette revived under his care. He escorted her home, resigned +from the police force, married her and I believe has lived happily +ever afterwards, if he was not killed in the War. + +Vivie had struggled for about two hours to reach the precincts of +the House, with or without her banner. Probably without, because she +had freely used its staff as a weapon of defence, and her former +skill in fencing stood her in good stead. But at last she was +gripped by two constables, one of them an oldish man and the other a +plain-clothes policeman, whom several spectators had singled out for +his pleasure in needless brutalities. + +These men proceeded to give her "punishment," and involuntarily she +shrieked with mingled agony of pain and outraged sex-revolt. A man +who had paused irresolutely on the kerb of a street refuge came to +her aid. He dealt the grey-haired constable a blow that sent him +reeling and then seized the plain-clothes man by his coat collar. A +struggle ensued which ended in the intervener being flung with such +violence on the kerb stone that he was temporarily stunned. +Presently he found himself being dragged along with his heels +dangling, while Vivie, described in language which my jury of +matrons will not allow me to repeat, was being propelled alongside +him, her clothes nearly torn off her, to some police station where +they were placed under arrest. As soon as they had recovered breath +and complete consciousness, had wiped the blood from cut heads, +noses, and lips, they looked hard at each other. "Thank you _so_ +much," said Vivie, "it _was_ good of you." "That's enough," said +her defender, "it wanted the voice to make me sure; but somehow I +thought all along it _was_ Vivie. Don't you know me? Frank Gardner!" + + +While waiting for the formalities to be concluded and their +transference to cells in which they were to pass the night, Frank +told Vivie briefly that he had returned from Rhodesia a prosperous +man on a brief holiday leaving his wife and children to await his +return. Hearing there was likely to be an unusual row that evening +over the Suffrage question he had sauntered down from the Strand to +see what was going on and had been haunted by the conviction that he +would meet Vivie in the middle of the conflict. But when he rushed +to her defence his action was instinctive, the impulse of any +red-blooded man to defend a woman that was being brutally +maltreated. + + +The next morning they were haled before the magistrate. Michael +Rossiter was in court as a spectator, feverishly anxious to pay +Vivie's fine or to find bail, or in all and every way to come to her +relief. He seemed rather mystified at the sight of Frank Gardner +arraigned with her. But presently the prosecuting counsel for the +Chief Commissioner of Police arrived and told the astonished +magistrate it was the wish of the Home Secretary that the prisoners +in the dock should all be discharged, Vivie and Frank Gardner among +them. At any rate no evidence would be tendered by the prosecution. + +So they were released, as also was each fresh batch of prisoners +brought in after them. Vivie went in a cab to her house in the +Victoria Road; Frank back to his hotel. Both had promised to +foregather at Rossiter's house in Portland Place at lunch. + +Hitherto Vivie had refrained from entering No. 1 Park Crescent. She +had not seen it or Mrs. Rossiter since David's attack of faintness +and hysteria in February, 1909, nearly two years ago. Why she went +now she scarcely knew, logically. It was unwise to renew relations +too closely with Rossiter, who showed his solicitude for her far too +plainly in his face. The introduction to Linda Rossiter in her +female form would be embarrassing and would doubtless set that good +lady questioning and speculating. + +Yet she felt she must see Rossiter--writing was always dangerous and +inadequate--and reason with him; beg him not to spoil his own +chances in life for her, not lose his head in politics and personal +animosities on her behalf, as he seemed likely to do. Already people +were speaking of him as a parallel to ----, and ----, and ---- (you +can fill the blanks for yourself with the names of great men of +science who have become ineffective, quarrelsome, isolated members +of Parliament); saying it was a great loss to Science and no gain to +the legislature. + +As to Frank Gardner, she was equally eager for a long explanatory +talk with him. Except that her life had inured her to surprises and +unexpected meetings, it was sufficiently amazing that Frank and she, +who had not seen each other or touched hands for thirteen years, +should meet thus in a dangerous scuffle in a dense struggling crowd +outside the Houses of Parliament. She must so arrange matters after +lunch that Frank should not prevent her hour's talk with Rossiter, +yet should have the long explanation he himself deserved. An idea. +She would telephone to Praddy and invite herself and Frank to tea at +his studio after she had left the Rossiters. + +Mrs. Rossiter was used to unexpected guests at lunch. People on +terms of familiarity dropped in, or the Professor detained some +colleague or pupil and made him sit down to the meal which was +always prepared and seated for four. Therefore she was not +particularly taken aback when her husband appeared at five minutes +to one in the little drawing-room and after requesting that the +macaw and the cockatoo might be removed for the nonce to a back +room--as they made sustained conversation impossible, announced that +he expected momently--ah! there was the bell--two persons whose +acquaintance he was sure Linda would like to make. One was Captain +Frank Gardner, who owned a big ranch in Rhodesia, and--er--the +other--oh no! no relation--was Miss Warren.... + +"What, one of the Warrens of Huddersfield? Well, I never! And where +did you pick her up? Strange she shouldn't have written to me she +was coming up to town! I could--" + +"No, this is a Miss Vivien Warren--" + +"Vivien? How curious, why that is the name of the Adams's little +girl--" + +"A Miss Vivien Warren," went on Rossiter patiently--"a well-known +Suffragist who--" + +"Oh Michael! _Not_ a Suffragette!" wailed Mrs. Rossiter, imagining +vitriol was about to be thrown over the surviving pug and damage +done generally to the furniture--But at this moment the butler +announced: "Captain Frank Gardner and Miss Warren." + +Gardner was well enough, a lean soldierly-looking man, brown with +the African sun, with pleasant twinkling blue eyes, a thick +moustache and curly hair, just a little thin on the top. His face +was rather scarred with African adventure and did not show much +special trace of his last night's tussle with the police. There was +a cut at the back of his head where he had fallen on the kerb stone +but that was neatly plastered, and you do not turn your back much on +a hostess, at any rate on first introduction. + +But Vivie had obviously been in the wars. She had--frankly--a black +eye, a cut and swollen lip, and her ordinarily well-shaped nose was +a trifle swollen and reddened. But her eyes likewise were twinkling, +though the bruised one was bloodshot. + +"I'm sorry, Mrs. Rossiter, to be introduced to you like this. I +don't know _what_ you will think of me. It's the first time I've +been in a really bad row.... We were trying to get to the House of +Commons, but the police interfered and gave us the full privileges +of a man as regards their fists. Captain Gardner here--who is an old +friend of mine--intervened, or I'm afraid I shouldn't have got off +as cheaply as I did. And your husband kindly came to the police +court to testify to our good character, and then invited us to +lunch." + +_Mrs. Rossiter_: "Why how your voice reminds me of some one who used +to come here a good deal at one time--a Mr. David Williams. I +suppose he isn't any relation?" + +_Vivie_ (while Frank Gardner looks a little astonished): "Oh--my +cousin. I knew you knew him. He has often talked to me about you. +I'll tell you about David by and bye, Frank." + +At this interchange of Christian names Mrs. Rossiter thinks she +understands the situation: they are engaged, have been since last +night's rescue. But what _extraordinary_ people the dear Professor +_does_ pick up! Have _they_ got ductless glands, she wonders? + +Rossiter who has been fidgeting through this dialogue considers that +lunch is ready, so they proceed to the small dining-room, "the +breakfast-room." Mrs. Rossiter was always very proud of having a +_small_ drawing-room (otherwise, "me boudwor") and a _small_ +dining-room. It prepared the way for greater magnificence at big +parties and also enabled one to be cosier with a few friends. + +At luncheon: + +_Mrs. Rossiter_ to _Frank Gardner_, archly: "I suppose you've come +home to be married?" + +_Frank_: "Oh no! I'm not a bigamist, I've got a wife already and +four children, and jolly glad I shall be to get back to 'em. I can't +stand much of the English climate, after getting so used to South +African sunshine. No. I came on a business trip to England, leaving +my old dear out at the farm near Salisbury, with the kids--we've got +a nice English governess who helps her to look after 'em. A year or +two hence I hope to bring 'em over to see the old country and we may +have to put the eldest to school: children run wild so in South +Africa. As to Miss Warren, she's an old friend of mine and a very +dear one. I hadn't seen her for--for--thirteen years, when the sound +of her voice--She's got one of those voices you never forget--the +sound of her voice came up out of that beastly crowd of gladiators +yesterday, and I found her being hammered by two policemen. I pretty +well laid one out, though I hadn't used my fists for a matter of ten +years. Then I got knocked over myself, I passed a night in a police +cell feeling pretty sick and positively maddened at not being able +to ask any questions. Then at last morning came, I had a wash and +brush up--the police after all aren't bad chaps, and most of 'em +seemed jolly well ashamed of last night's doin's--Then I met Vivie +in Court and your husband too. He took me on trust and I'm awfully +grateful to him. I've got a dear old mater down in Kent--Margate, +don't you know--my dad's still alive, Vivie!--and she'd have been +awfully cut up at hearing her son had been spending the night in a +police cell and was goin' to be fined for rioting, only fortunately +the Home Secretary said we weren't to be punished.... But Professor +Rossiter's coming on the scene was a grand thing. Besides being an +M.P., I needn't tell _you_, Mrs. Rossiter, he has a world-wide +reputation. Oh, we read your books, sir, out in South Africa, _I_ +can tell you--Well--er--and here we are--and I'm monopolizing the +conversation." + +Vivie sat opposite her old lover, and near to the man who loved her +now with such ill-concealed passion that his hand trembled for her +very proximity. She felt strangely elated, strangely gay, at times +inclined to laugh as she caught sight of her bruised and puffy +face in an opposite mirror, yet happy in the knowledge that +notwithstanding the thirteen years of separation, her repeated +rejection of his early love, her battered appearance, Frank still +felt tenderly towards her, still remembered the timbre of her voice. +Her mouth was too sore and swollen to make eating very pleasant. She +trifled with her food but she felt young and full of gay adventure. +Mrs. Rossiter a little overwhelmed with all the information Gardner +had poured out, a little irritated also at the dancing light in +Vivie's eyes, turned her questionings on her. + +_Mrs. Rossiter_: "I suppose you are the Miss Warren who speaks so +much. I often see your name in the papers, especially in _Votes for +Women_ that the Professor takes in. Isn't it funny that a man should +care so much about women getting the vote? I'm sure _I_ don't want +it. I'm _quite_ content to exercise _my_ influence through _him_, +especially now he's in Parliament. But then I have my home to look +after, and I'm _much_ too busy to go out and about and mix myself up +in politics. I'm quite content to leave all that to the menfolk." + +_Vivie_: "Quite so. In your position no doubt I should do the same; +but you see I haven't any menfolk. There is my mother, but she +prefers to live abroad, and as she is comfortably off she can employ +servants to look after her." (This hint of wealth a little reassured +Mrs. Rossiter, who believed most Suffragettes to be adventuresses.) +"So, as I have no ties I prefer to give myself up to the service of +women in general. When they have the vote and other privileges of +men, then of course I can attend to my private interests and +pursuits--mathematical calculations, insurance risks--" + +_Mrs. Rossiter_: "It is _extraordinary_ how like your voice is to +your cousin's. If I shut my eyes I could think he was back again. +Not," (she added hastily) "that he has not, no doubt, _plenty_ to do +abroad. Do you ever see him now? Why does he not marry and settle +down? One never hears of him now as a barrister. But then he used to +_feel_ his cases too much. The last time he was here he fainted and +had to stay here all night. + +"And yet he had won his case and got his--what do you say? client? +off--I dare say you remember it? She was my husband's cousin though +we hardly liked to say so at the time: it is so unpleasant having a +murder in the family. Fortunately she was let off; I mean, the jury +said 'not guilty,' though personally I--However that is neither here +nor there, and since then she's married Colonel Kesteven--Won't you +have some pheasant? No? I remember your cousin used to have a very +poor appetite, especially when one of his cases was on. _How_ he +used--excuse my saying so--how he used to tire poor Michael--Mr. +Rossiter! Talk, talk, talk! in the evenings, and I knew the +Professor had his lectures to prepare, but hints were thrown away on +Mr. David." + +Rossiter broke in: + +"Now what would you like to do in the afternoon, Miss Warren? And +Gardner? You, by the bye, have the first claim on our hospitality. +You have just arrived from Africa and the only thing we have done +for you, so far, is to drag you into a disgraceful row." + +_Frank_: "Well, _I_ should like a glimpse of the Zoo. I'm quite +willing to pay my shilling and give no more trouble, but if Vivie is +going there too we could all walk up together. After that I'm going +to revisit an old acquaintance of mine and Vivie's, Praed the +architect--lives somewhere in Chelsea if I remember right--" + +_Vivie_: "In Hans Place. I don't particularly want to go to the Zoo. +I look so odd I might over-excite the monkeys. I think I should like +to try a restful visit to the Royal Botanic. I'm so fond of their +collection of weird succulent plants--things that look like stones +and suddenly produce superb flowers." + +_Mrs. Rossiter_: "We belong to the Botanic as well as to the Zoo. +_I_ could take you there after lunch." + +_Rossiter_: "You forget, dearie, you've got to open that Bazaar in +Marylebone Town Hall--" + +_Linda_: "Oh, have I? To be sure. But it's Lady Goring that does the +opening, I'm _much_ too nervous. Still I promised to come. Would +Miss Warren care to come with me?" + +_Vivie_: "I should have liked to awfully: I love bazaars; but just +at this moment I'm thinking more of those succulent plants ... and +my battered face." + +_Rossiter_: "I'll make up your minds for you. We'll _all_ drive to +the Zoo in Linda's motor. Gardner shall look at the animals and then +find his way to Hans Place. I'll escort Miss Warren to the Botanic, +and then come on and pick you up, Linda, at the Town Hall." + +That statement seemed to satisfy every one, so after coffee and a +glance round the laboratory and the last experiments, they proceeded +to the Zoo, with at least an hour's daylight at their disposal. + +Rossiter and Vivie were at last alone within the charmed circle of +the Botanic Gardens. They made their way slowly to the great Palm +House and thence up twisty iron steps to a nook like a tree refuge +in New Guinea, among palm boles and extravagant aroid growths. + +"Now Michael," said Vivie--despite her bruised face she looked very +elegant in her grey costume, grey hat, and grey suède gloves, and he +had to exercise great self-restraint, remember that he was known by +sight to most of the gardeners and to the ubiquitous secretary, in +order to refrain from crushing her to his side: "Now Michael: I want +a serious talk to you, a talk which will last for another eighteen +months--which is about the time that has elapsed since we had our +last--You're _not_ keeping the pact we made." + +"What was that?" + +"Why you promised me that your--your--love--No! I won't misuse that +word--Your friendship for me should not spoil your life, your +career, or make Linda unhappy. Yet it is doing all three. You've +lived in a continual agitation since you got into Parliament, and +now you'll be involved in more electioneering in order to be +returned once more. Meantime your science has come to a dead stop. +And it's so far more important for us than getting the Vote. All +this franchise agitation is on a much lower plane. It amuses and +interests me. It keeps me from thinking too much about you. +Besides, I am naturally rather combative; I secretly enjoy these +rough-and-tumbles with constituted authority. I also really _do_ +think it is a _beastly_ shame, this preference shown for man, in +most of the careers and in the franchise. But don't you worry +_yourself_ unduly about it. If I really thought that you cared so +much about me that it was turning you away from _our_ religion, +scientific research, I'd go over to Brussels to my mother and stay +there. I really would; and I really will if you don't stop following +me about from meeting to meeting and going mad over the Suffrage +question in the House. Is it true that you struck a Cabinet minister +the other day? Mr. ----?" + +_Rossiter_: "Yes, it's true, and he asked for it. If I am +unreasonable what are _they_? ----, ----, _and_ ----? Why have they +such a bitter feeling against your sex? Have they had no mothers, no +sweethearts, no sisters, no wives? If I'd never met you I should +still have been a Suffragist. I think I _was_ one, as a boy, +watching what my mother suffered from my father, and how he collared +all her money--I suppose it was before the Married Woman's Property +Act--and grudged her any for her dress, her little comforts, her +books, or even for proper medical advice. And to hear these Liberal +Cabinet Ministers--_Liberal_, mind you--talk about women, often with +the filthy phrases of the street--Well: he got a smack on the jaw +and decided to treat the incident as a trifling one ... his private +secretary patched it up somehow, but I expressed no regret.... + +"Well, darling, I'll try to do as you wish. I'll try to shut you out +of my thoughts and return to my experiments, when I'm not on +platforms or in the House. I think I shall get in again--it's a mere +matter of money, and thanks to Linda that isn't wanting. I'm not +going to withdraw from politics, you bet, however disenchanted I may +be. It's because the decent, honest, educated men withdraw that +legislation and administration are left to the case-hardened rogues +... and the uneducated ... and the cranks. But don't make things +_too_ hard for me. Keep out of prison ... keep off hunger +strikes--If you're going to be man-handled by the police--Ah! _why_ +wasn't _I_ there, instead of in the House? Gardner had all the +luck.... I was glad to hear he was married." + +_Vivie_: "Oh you needn't be jealous of poor Frank. And he'll soon be +back in South Africa. You needn't be jealous of _any_ one. I'm all +yours--in spirit--for all time. Now we must be going: it's getting +dusk and we should be irretrievably ruined if we were locked up in +this dilapidated old palm house. Besides, I'm to meet Frank at +Praddy's studio in order to tell him the history of the last +thirteen years." + +As they walked away: "You know, Michael, I'm still hoping we may be +friends without being lovers. I wonder whether Linda would get to +like me?" + +At Praed's studio. Lewis Maitland Praed is looking older. He must be +now--November, 1910--about fifty-eight or fifty-nine. But he has +still a certain elegance, the look of a lesser Leighton about him. +Frank has been there already for half an hour, and the tea-table +has been, so to speak, deflowered. Vivie accepts a cup, a muffin, +and a marron glacé. Then says, "Now, dear Praddy, summon your +mistress, _dons l'honnête sens du mot_, and have this tea-table +cleared so that we can have a hugely long and uninterrupted talk. I +have got to give Frank a summary of all that I've done in the past +thirteen years. Meanwhile Frank, as your record, I feel convinced, +is so blameless and normal that it could be told before any +parlour-maid, you start off whilst she is taking away the tea, +fiddling with the stove, and prolonging to the uttermost her +services to a master who has become her slave." + +The parlour-maid enters, and casts more than one searching glance at +Vivie's bruised features, but performs her duties in a workmanlike +manner. + +_Frank_: "My story? Oh well, it's a happy one on the whole--very +happy. Soon as the war was over, I got busy in Rhodesia and pitched +on a perfect site for a stock and fruit farm. The B.S.A. Co. was +good to me because I'd known Cecil Rhodes and Dr. Jim; and by +nineteen four I was going well, they'd made me a magistrate, and +some of my mining shares had turned out trumps. Then Westlock came +out as Governor General, and Lady Enid had brought out with her a +jolly nice girl as governess to her children. She was the daughter +of a parson in Hertfordshire near the Brinsley estates. Well, I +won't say--bein' the soul of truth--that I fell in love with +her--straight away--because I don't think I ever fell deep in +love--straight away--with any girl but you, Vivie. But I did feel, +as it was hopeless askin' you to marry me, here was the wife I +wanted. She was good enough to accept me and the Westlocks were +awfully kind and made everything easy. Lady Enid's a perfect +brick--and, by the bye, she's a great Suffragist too. Well: we were +married at Pretoria in 1904, and now we've got four children; a +sturdy young Frank, a golupshous Vivie--oh, I told Muriel +everything, she's the sort of woman you can--And the other two are +called Bertha after my mother and Charlotte after Mrs. Bernard +Shaw. I sent you, Vivie--a newspaper with the announcement of my +marriage--Dj'ever get it?" + +_Vivie_: "Never. But I was undergoing a sea-change of my own, just +then, which I will tell you all about presently." + +_Frank_: "Well then. I came back to England on a hurried visit. You +remember, Praddy? But you were away in Italy and I couldn't find +Vivie anywhere. I called round at where your office was--Fraser and +Warren--where we parted in 1897--and there was no more Fraser and +Warren. Nobody knew anything about what had become of you. P'raps I +might have found out, but I got a bit huffy, thought you might have +written me a line about my marriage. I did write to Miss Fraser, but +the letter was returned from the Dead Letter office," (_Vivie_: "She +married Colonel Armstrong.") "Well, there it is! By some devilish +lucky chance I had no sooner got to London from Southhampton, day +before yesterday, than some one told me all about the expected row +between the Suffragettes and the police. Thought I'd go and see for +myself what this meant. No idea before how far the thing had gone, +or what brutes the police could be. Had a sort of notion, don't know +why, that dear old Viv would be in it, up to the neck. Got mixed up +in the crowd and helped a woman or two out of it. Lady Feenix--they +said it was--picked up some and took 'em into her motor. And then I +heard a cry which could only be in Vivie's voice--dear old +Viv--(leans forward with shining eyes to press her hand) and ... +there we are. How're the bruises?" + +_Vivie_: "Oh, they ache rather, but it is such _joy_ to have such +friends as you and Praddy and Michael Rossiter, that I don't mind +_what_ I go through..." + +_Frank_: "But I say, Viv, about this Rossiter man. He seems awfully +gone on you...?" + +_Vivie_ (flushing in the firelight): "Does he? It's only friendship. +I really don't see them often but he came to my assistance once at a +critical time. And now that Praddy's all-powerful parlour-maid's +definitely left us, I will tell you _my_ story." + +So she does, between five and half-past six, almost without +interruption from the spell-bound Frank--who says it licks any novel +he ever read, and she ought to turn it into a novel--with a happy +ending--or from Praed who is at times a little somnolent. Then at +half-past six, the practical Frank says: + +"Look here, you chaps, I could go on listening till midnight, but +what's the matter with a bit of dinner? I dare say Praddy's +parlour-maid might turn sour if we asked her at a moment's notice to +find dinner for three. Why not come out and dine with me at the Hans +Crescent Hotel? Close by. I'll get a quiet table and we can finish +our talk there. To-morrow I must go down to Margate to see the dear +old mater, and it may be a week before I'm up again." + +They adjourn to the hostelry mentioned. + +Over coffee and cigarettes, Vivie makes this appeal to Frank: "Now +Frank, you know all my story. Tell me first, what really became of +the real David Williams, the young man you met in the hospital and +wrote to me about?" + +_Frank_: "'Pon my life I don't know. I never heard one word about +him after I got clear of the hospital myself. You know it fell into +Boer hands during that rising in Cape Colony. I expect the 'real' +David Williams, as you call him, died from neglected wounds or +typhoid--or recovered and took to drink, or went up country and got +knocked on the head by the natives for interfering with their +women--Good riddance of bad rubbish, I expect. What do you want me +to do? I'll swear to anything in reason." + +_Vivie_: "I want you to do this. Run down one day before you go back +to Africa, to South Wales, to Pontystrad--It's not far from +Swansea--And call at the Vicarage on the pretext that you've come to +enquire about David Vavasour Williams whom you once knew in South +Africa. It'll give verisimilitude to my stories. They'll probably +say they haven't seen him for ever so long, but that you can hear of +him through Professor Rossiter. I dare say it's a silly idea of +mine, but what I fear sometimes--is that if the fact comes out that +_I_ was David Williams, some Vaughan or Price or other Williams may +call the old man's will in question and get it put into Chancery, +get the money taken away from poor old Bridget Evanwy and the +village hall which I've endowed. That's all. If it wasn't that I've +disposed of my supposed father's money in the way I think he would +have liked best, I shouldn't care a hang if they found out the trick +I'd played on the Benchers. D'you see?" + +_Frank_: "I see." + +The next day Vivie wisely spent in bed, healing her wounds and +resting her limbs which after the mental excitement was over ached +horribly. Honoria came round and listened, applauded, pitied, +laughed and concurred. + +But she was well enough on the following Tuesday after Black Friday +to attend another meeting of the W.S.P.U. at Caxton Hall, to hear +one more ambiguous, tricky, many-ways-to-be-interpreted promise of +the then Prime Minister. Mrs. Pankhurst pointing out the vagueness +of these assurances announced her intention then and there of going +round to Downing Street to ask for a more definite wording. Vivie +and many others followed this dauntless lady. Their visit was +unexpected, the police force was small and the Suffragettes had two +of the Cabinet Ministers at their mercy. They contented themselves +by shaking, hustling, frightening but not otherwise injuring their +victims before the latter were rescued and put into taxi-cabs. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +MILITANCY + + + The Lilacs, + Victoria Road, S.W. + _December_ 31, 1910. + + DEAR MICHAEL,-- + + I'm so glad you got returned all right by your University. I + feared very much your championship of the Woman's Cause + might have told against you. But these newer Universities + are more liberal-minded. + + I am keeping my promise to tell you of any important move I + am making. So this is to inform you, _in very strict + confidence_, of my latest dodge. For the effective + organization of my particular branch of the W.S.P.U. + activities, I must have an office. "The Lilacs" is far too + small, and besides I shrink from having my little home + raided or too much visited even by confederates. I learned + the other day that the old Fraser and Warren offices on the + top floor of 88-90 Chancery Lane were vacant. The Midland + Insurance Co. that occupied nearly all the building has + cleared out and the block is to be given over to a multitude + of small undertakings. Well: I secured our old rooms! Simply + splendid, with the two safes that Honoria, untold ages ago, + fitted into the walls, and hid so cleverly that if there is + no treachery it would be hard for the police to find them + and raid them. The Midland Insurance Co. did not behave well + to Fraser and Warren, so Beryl Storrington, when she was + clearing out said nothing about the safes, which were not + noticed by the Company. Honoria kept the keys and now hands + them over to me. + + The W.S.P.U. has taken--also under an alias--other offices + on the same side of the way, at No. 94, top storey. We find + we can, by using the fire escape, pass over the intervening + roofs and reach the parapet outside the "partners' room" at + the 88-90 building. I shall once again make use of the + little room next the partners' office as a bedroom or + rather, "tiring" room, where I can if necessary effect + changes of costume. I have taken the new offices in the name + of Mr. Michaelis[1] for a special reason; and with some + modifications of David's costume I have appeared in person + to assume possession of them. I generally enter No. 94 + dressed as Vivie Warren. All this may sound very silly to + you, like playing at conspiracy. But these precautions seem + to be necessary. The Government is beginning to take + Suffragism seriously, and a whole department at New Scotland + Yard has been organized to cope with our activities. + + [Footnote 1: Michaelis, I believe, was a Greek merchant + dealing with sponges, emery powder, coral, and other + products of the Mediterranean shores whose acquaintance + Vivie had originally made when interested in the shares of + that Levantine house, Charles Davis and Co. Of Ionian birth + he had become a naturalized British subject, but having + grown wealthy had decided to transfer himself to Athens and + enter political life. He had consented amusedly to Vivie's + adoption of his name for her new tenancy and had given her + an old passport, which you could do in the days that knew + not Dora--she resembling him somewhat in appearance. He was + aware of her Suffragist activities and guessed she might + want it occasionally for eluding the police on trips + abroad.--H.H.J.] + + One reason I have in writing this letter--a letter I hope + you will burn after you have read and noted its contents--is + to ask you to lend me for a while the services of Bertie + Adams as clerk. Of course I shall insist on paying his + salary whilst I employ him, and indemnifying him for + anything he may suffer in my service--that of the W.S.P.U. I + am fairly well off for money now. Besides the funds the + W.S.P.U. places at my disposal, I have the interest on + mother's Ten Thousand pounds, and she would give me more if + I asked for it. She has quite taken to the idea of spending + her ill-gotten gains on the Enfranchisement of Women! (I am + going over to see her for a week or so, when it is not quite + so cold.) + + What business am I going specially to undertake in Mr. + Michaelis's office on the top storey of 88-90? I will tell + you. Scotland Yard is getting busy about us, the + Suffragists, trying to find out all it can that is + detrimental to our personal characters, our upbringing, our + progeniture, our businesses and our relations; whether we + had a forger in the family, whether I am the daughter of the + "notorious" Mrs. Warren, whether Mrs. Canon Burstall is + really my aunt and whether she couldn't be brought to use + her private influence on me to keep me quiet, in case it + came out that Kate Warren was her sister, and that she led + Kate into that way of life wherein she earned her shameful + livelihood. I have had one or two covert hints from Aunt Liz + promising to open up relations _if_ only I'll behave myself! + Scotland Yard has already had the sorry triumph of causing + one or two of our most prominent workers to retire from the + ranks because they were not properly married or had been + married after the eldest child was born; or had once "been + in trouble," over some peccadillo, or had had a son or a + sister who though now upright and prosperous had once been + in the clutches of the law. + + Now my idea is to turn the tables on all this. I myself am + impeccable in a real court of equity. My avatar as David + Williams was by way of being a superb adventure. I only + retired from the harmless imposture lest I might compromise + you, and you are so far gone in politics now that the + revelation--if it came about--that you were deceived by me + and by my "father"--would do you no harm. For a number of + reasons I know pretty well that the Benchers would not make + themselves ridiculous by having the story of my successful + entry into their citadel told in open court. I have in fact, + through a devious channel, received the assurance that if I + do not resume this character (of D.V.W.) nothing more will + be said. What, then, have I to fear? My mother _s'est bien + rangée_. She leads a life of the most respectable. If they + challenge her, she can counter with some of the most piquant + scandals of the last thirty years. + + My own careful study of criminology and the assiduous + searchings of Albert Adams in the same direction; my + mother's anecdotes of the lives of statesmen, + police-magistrates, prosecuting counsel, judges, + press-editors--many of whom have enjoyed her hospitality + abroad--have given me numerous hints in what direction to + pursue my researches. Consequently the office of Mr. + Michaelis will be the Criminal Investigation Department of + the W.S.P.U. I feel instinctively I am touching pitch and + that you will disapprove ... but if we are to fight with + clean hands, _que Messieurs les Assassins commencent_! If + Scotland Yards drops slander and infamous suggestions as a + weapon we will let our poisoned arrows rust in the armoury. + + How _beastly_ all this is! _Why_ do they drive us to these + extremes? I know already enough to blast the characters of + several among our public men. Yet I know in so doing I + should wreck the life-happiness of faithful wives, believing + sisters or daughters, or bright-faced children. Perhaps I + won't, when it comes to the pinch. But somehow, I think, if + they guess I have this knowledge in my possession, they will + leave David Williams and Kate Warren alone. + + Sometimes, d'you know, I wake up in the middle of the night + at the Lilacs or in my reconstituted bedroom at 88-90, and + wish I were quit of all this Suffrage business, all this + vain struggle against predominant man--and away with you on + a Pacific Island. Then I realize that we should have large + cockroaches and innumerable sand fleas in our new home, that + we should have broken Linda's heart, have set back the + Suffrage cause as much as Parnell's adultery postponed Home + Rule; and above all that I am already thirty-five and shall + soon be thirty-six and that it wouldn't be very long before + you in comfort-loving middle age sighed for the well-ordered + life of No. 1, Park Crescent, Portland Place! + + On the whole, I think the most rational line I can take is + to continue resolutely this struggle for the Vote. With the + Vote must come the opening of Parliament to women. I'm not + too old to aspire to be some day Secretary of State for Home + Affairs. Because the General Post Office has already become + interested in my correspondence, and because this is really + a "pivotal" letter I am not trusting it to the post but am + calling with it at No. 1 and handing it personally to your + butler. I look to you to destroy it when you have read its + contents--if you go to that length. + + Yours, + VIVIE. + +Rossiter read this letter an hour or so after it had been delivered, +frowned a good deal, made notes in one of his memorandum books; then +tore the sheets of typewriting into four and placed them on the +fire. Having satisfied himself that the flames had caught them, he +went up with a sullen face to dress for dinner: Linda was giving a +New Year's Eve dinner to friends and relations and he had to play +the part of host with assumed heartiness. + +In the perversity of fate, one piece of the typewritten letter +escaped the burning except along the edge. A puff of air from the +chimney or the opened door, as Linda entered the room, lifted it off +the cinders and deposited it on the hearth. Linda had dressed early +for the party, had felt a little hurt at the locked door of +Michael's dressing-room, and had come with some vague intention into +his study, to see perhaps if the fire was burning brightly: because +to avoid unnecessary journies upstairs they would receive their +guests to-night in the study and thence pass to the dining-room. +But the fire had gone sulky, as fires do sometimes even with +well-behaved chimneys and first-class coal. She noted the charred +portion of paper lying untidily on the hearth, with typewriting on +its upper surface. Picking it up she read inside the scorched +margin: + + + ria kept the keys and now them over to me. + W.S.P.U. has taken--also under an alias--other of + same side of the way, at No. 94, top storey. We + using the fire-escape, pass over the intervening r + reach the parapet outside the "partners' room" at the + ding. I shall once again make use of the little room + tners' office as a bedroom or rather "tiring" room, w + if necessary effect changes of costume. I have tak + ces in the name of Mr. Michaelis for a special reas + ome modifications of David's costume I have appeared in p + ssume possession of them. I generally enter No. 94 dressed a + Warren. All this may sound very silly to you, like pla + + +"Warren!" That name stood out clear. Did it mean the suffragette, +Vivien Warren, who had sometimes been here, and in whose adventures +her husband seemed so unbecomingly interested? One of the great +ladies who were Anti-Suffragists and had already decoyed Mrs. +Rossiter within their drawing-rooms had referred with great +disapproval to Miss Warren as the daughter of a most notorious woman +whom their husbands wouldn't hear mentioned because of her shocking +past. And David, David of course must be that tiresome David +Williams, supposed to be a cousin of Vivien Warren, but really +seeming in these allusions to be a disguise in which this bold +female deceived people. And "Mr. Michaelis?" Could that be her own +Michael? The shameless baggage! She choked at the thought. Was it a +conspiracy into which they were luring her husband, already rather +compromised as a man of science by his enthusiasm for the Suffrage +cause? People used to speak of Michael almost with awe, he was so +clever, he made such wonderful discoveries. Now, since he had become +a politician he had many enemies, and several ladies of high title +referred to him contemptuously even in her hearing and cut _her_ +without compunction, though she had Ten thousand a year. She felt +all the same a profound conviction that Michael was the most +honourable of men. Yet why all this mystery? The W.S.P.U.? Those +letters stood for some more than usually malignant Suffrage Society. +She had seen the letters often in "Votes for Women."... + +Her musings here were stayed by the sound of her husband's steps in +the passage. Hastily she thrust the half sheet of charred paper into +her corsage and brushed off the fragments of the burnt edges from +her laces; then turned and affected to be tidying the writing table +as Michael came in. + +_Rossiter_: "Linda! Surely not putting my papers in order--or rather +disorder? I thought you were far too intimate with my likes and +dislikes to do that!... Why, what's the matter?" + +_Linda_: "Oh nothing. I was only seeing if they had made up your +fire. I--I--haven't touched anything." + +(Rossiter looked anxiously at the grate, but was relieved to see +nothing but burnt, shrivelled squares of paper. He poked the fire +fiercely and at any rate demolished the remains of Vivie's letter.) + +_Rossiter_: "Yes: it isn't very cheerful. They must brighten it +while we are at dinner; though as we shall go to the drawing-room +afterwards we shan't need a huge fire here. There! It looks better +after that poke. I threw some papers on it to start a flame just +before I went up to dress.... Why dearie! What cold hands and what +flushed cheeks!"... + +_Linda_: "Oh Michael! You'll always love me, won't you? I--I know +I'm not clever, not half clever enough for you. But I _do_ try to +help you all I can. I--I--" (Sobs.) + +_Rossiter_ (really distressed): "_Of course_ I love you! What silly +notion have you got into your head?" (He asks himself anxiously +"Surely all that letter was burnt before she came in?") "Come! Pull +yourself together. Be worthy of that dress. It is such a beauty." + +_Linda_: "I thought you'd like it. I remembered your saying that +blue always became me." (Dabs at her eyes with a small lace +handkerchief.) + +Loud double knocks begin to sound. Dinner guests are soon announced. +Linda and Michael receive them heartily. Rossiter--as many a public +man does and has to do--shoves his vain regrets, remorse, anxiety, +weary longing for the unattainable--somewhere to the back of his +brain, where these feelings will not revive till he lies awake at +three in the morning; and prepares to entertain half-a-dozen hearty +men and buxom women who are easily impressed by a little spoon-fed +science. Linda is soon distracted from the scrap of paper in her +bosom and gives all her attention to her cousins and grown-up school +friends from Bradford and Northallerton who are delighted to see the +New Year in amid the gaieties of London. + +But before she rings for her maid and undresses that night, she +locks the burnt fragment in a secret drawer of her desk. + + +The Ministry which was returned to power in December, 1910, had to +plan during the first half of 1911 to keep the Suffragists becalmed +with promises and prevent their making any public protest which +might mar the Coronation festivities. So various Conciliation Bills +were allowed to be read to the House of Commons and to reach Second +readings at which they were passed with huge majorities. Then they +came to nothingness by being referred to a Committee of the whole +House. Still a hope of some solution was dangled before the +oft-deluded women, who could hardly believe that British Ministers +of State would be such breakers of promises and tellers of +falsehoods. In November, 1911, there being no reason for further +dissembling, the Government made the announcement that it was +contemplating a Manhood Suffrage Bill, which would override +altogether the petty question as to whether a proportion of women +should or should not enjoy the franchise. This new electoral measure +was to be designed for men only, but--the Government opined--it +might be susceptible of amendment so as to admit women likewise. + +[Probably the Government had satisfied itself beforehand that, +acting on some unwritten code of Parliamentary procedure, the +Speaker would rule out such an amendment as unconstitutional. At any +rate, this is what he did in 1913.] + +The wrath of the oft-deluded women flamed out with immediate +resentment when the purport of this trick was discerned. Led by Mrs. +Pethick Lawrence a band of more than a thousand women and men (and +some of the presumed men were, like Vivie, women in men's clothes, +as it enabled them to move about with more agility and also to +escape identification) entered Whitehall and Parliament Street armed +with hammers and stones. They broke all the windows they could in +the fronts of the Government offices and at the residences of +Ministers of State. Vivie found herself shadowed everywhere by +Bertie Adams though she had given him no orders to join the crowd, +indeed had begged him to mind his own business and go home. "This +_is_ my business," he had said curtly, and for once masterfully, and +she gave way. Though Vivie for her own reasons carried no hammer or +stone and as one of the principal organizers of the militant +movement had been requested by the inner Council of the W.S.P.U. to +keep out of prison as long as possible, she could not help cheering +on the boldest and bravest in the mild violence of their protest. To +the angry police she seemed merely an impertinent young man, hardly +worth arresting when they could barely master the two hundred and +twenty-three arch offenders with glass-breaking weapons in their +hands. So a constable contented himself with marching on her feet +with all his weight and thrusting his elbows violently into her +breast. + +She well-nigh fainted with the pain; in fact would have fallen in +the crowd but for the interposition of Adams who carried her out of +it to the corner of Parliament Street, where he pounced on one of +the many taxis that crawled about the outskirts of the shouting, +swaying crowd, sure of a fare from either police or escaping +Suffragists. Feeling certain that some policeman had not left the +disguised Vivie entirely unobserved--indeed Bertie had half thought +he caught the words above the din: "That's David Williams, that is," +he told the taxi man to drive along the Embankment to the Temple. By +the time they had reached the nearest access on that side of +Fountain Court, Vivie was sufficiently recovered from her semi-swoon +to get out, and leaning heavily on Bertie's arm, limp slowly through +the intricacies of the Temple and out into Fleet Street by +Sergeant's Inn. Then with fresh efforts and further halts they made +their way to 94, Chancery Lane. + +Some one was sitting up here with one electric light on, ready for +any development connected with W.S.P.U. work that night. To +her--fortunately it was a woman--Bertie handed over his stricken +chief, and then made his way home to his little house in Marylebone +and a questioning and not too satisfied wife. The Suffragette in +charge of the top storey at 94 knew something, fortunately, of first +aid, was deft of hands and full of sympathy. Vivie's--or Mr. +Michaelis's--lace-up boots were carefully removed and the poor +crushed and bleeding toes washed with warm water. The collar was +taken off and the shirt unbuttoned revealing a terrible bruise on +the sternum where the policeman's elbow had struck her--better +however there, though it had nearly broken the breastbone, than on +either side, as such a blow might have given rise to cancer. As it +was, Vivie when she coughed spat blood. + +A cup of hot bovril and an hour's rest on a long chair and she was +ready, supremely anxious indeed, to try the last adventure: an +excursion across the roofs and up and down fire-escapes on to the +parapet of her own especial dwelling, the old offices of Fraser and +Warren at No. 88-90. The great window of the partners' room opened +to her manipulations--it had been carefully left unbolted before +her departure for Caxton Hall; and aided cautiously and cleverly by +her suffragette helper, Vivie at last found herself--or Mr. +Michaelis did--in the snug little bedroom that knew her chiefly in +her male form. + +Here she was destined to lie up for several weeks till the feet and +the chest were healed and sound again. Hither by the normal entrance +came a woman suffragette surgeon to heal, and Vivie's woman clerk to +act as secretary; whilst Adams typed away in the outer office on Mr. +Michaelis's business or went on long and mysterious errands. Hither +also came the little maid from the Lilacs, bringing needed changes +of clothes, letters, and messages from Honoria. A stout young man +with a fresh colour went up in the lift at No. 94 to the flat or +office of "Algernon Mainwaring," and then skipped along the winding +way between the chimney stacks and up and down short iron ladders +till he too reached the parapet, entered through the opened +casement, and revealed himself as a great W.S.P.U. leader, costumed +like Vivie as a male, but in reality a buxom young woman only +waiting for the Vote to be won to espouse her young man--shop +steward--and begin a large family of children. From this leader, +Vivie received humbly the strictest injunctions to engage in no more +disabling work for the present, to keep out of police clutches and +the risk of going to prison or of attracting too much police +attention at 88-90 Chancery Lane. "You are our brain-centre at +present. Our offices for show and for raiding by the police have +been at Clifford's Inn and are now in Lincoln's Inn. But the really +precious information we possess is ... well, you know where it is: +walls may have ears ... your time for public testimony hasn't come +yet ... we'll let you know fast enough when it has and _you_ won't +flinch, _I'm_ quite sure..." + +As a matter of fact, though Vivie's intelligence and inventiveness, +her knowledge of criminal law, of lawyers and of city business, her +wide education, her command of French (improved by the frequent +trips to Brussels--where indeed she deposited securely in her +mother's keeping some of the funds and the more remarkable documents +of the Suffrage cause) and her possession of monetary supplies were +not to be despised: as a figure-head, she was of doubtful value. +There was always that mother in the background. If Vivie was in +court for a suffrage offence of a grave character the prosecuting +Counsel would be sure to rake up the "notorious Mrs. Warren" and +drag in the White Slave Traffic, to bewilder a jury and throw +discredit on the militant side of the Suffrage cause. Of course if +the true story of Vivie were fully known, she would rise triumphant +from such a recital.... Still ... throw plenty of mud and some of +it will stick.... And what _was_ her full, true story? Even in the +pure passion of the fight for liberty among these young and +middle-aged women, the tongue of scandal occasionally wagged in +moments of lassitude, discouragement, undeception. At such times +some weaker sister with a vulgar mind, or a mind with vulgar streaks +in it, might hint at the great interest taken in Vivie by a +distinguished man of science who had become an M.P. and a raging +suffragist. Or indecorum would be hinted in the relations between +this enigmatic woman, so prone seemingly to don male costume, and +the burly clerk who attended her so faithfully and had brought her +home on the night of Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's spirited raid. + +So much so, that Vivie with a sigh, as soon as she attained +convalescence was fain to send for Bertie and tell him with +unanswerable decision that he must return to his work with Rossiter +and thither she would send from time to time special instructions if +he could help her business in any way. + +This was done in January, 1912. Vivie's feet were now healed and the +woman surgeon was satisfied that she could walk on them without +displacing the reset bones. The slight fracture in the breastbone +had repaired itself by one of Nature's magic processes. So one day +our battered heroine doffed the invalid garments of Michaelis and +donned those of any well-dressed woman of 1912, including a thick +veil. Thus attired she passed from the parapet to the fire-escape +(recalling the agony these gymnastics had caused her the previous +November), and from the fire-escape to the roof of No. 92 +(continuous with the roof of 94), and past the chimney stacks, into +the top storey of 94, and so on down to the street, where a taxi was +waiting to convey her to the Lilacs. + +(The W.S.P.U., by the bye, to bluff Scotland Yard had added to the +name of "Algernon Mainwaring, 5th Floor," the qualification of +"Hygienic Corset-maker," as an explanation--possibly--of why so many +women found their way to the top storey of No. 94.) + +Arrived at the Lilacs, Vivie took up for a brief spell the life of +an ordinary young woman of the well-to-do middle class, seriously +interested in the suffrage question but non-militant. She attended +several of Honoria's or Mrs. Fawcett's suffrage parties or public +meetings and occasionally spoke and spoke well. She also went over +to Brussels twice in 1912 to keep in touch with her mother. Mrs. +Warren had had one or two slight warnings that a life of pleasure +saps the strongest constitution.[1] She lived now mainly at her +farm, the Villa Beau-séjour, and only occasionally occupied her +_appartement_ in the Rue Royale. She must have been about fifty-nine +in the spring of 1912, and was beginning to "soigner son salut," +that is to say to take stock of her past life, apologize for it to +herself and see how she could atone reasonably for what she had done +wrong. A decade or two earlier she would have turned to religion, +inevitably to that most attractive and logical form, the religion +expounded by the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. She would +have confessed her past, slightly or very considerably _gazée_, to +some indulgent confessor, have been pardoned, and have presented a +handsome sum to an ecclesiastical charity or work of piety. But she +had survived into a skeptical age and she had conceived an immense +respect for her clever daughter. Vivie should be her spiritual +director; and Vivie's idea put before her at their reconciliation +three years previously had seemed the most practical way of making +amends to Woman for having made money in the past out of the +economic and physiological weakness of women. She had fined herself +Ten Thousand pounds then; and out of her remaining capital of Fifty +or Sixty thousand (all willed with what else she possessed to her +daughter) she would pay over more if Vivie demanded it as further +reparation. Still, she found the frequentation of churches soothing +and gave much and often to the mildly beseeching Little Sisters of +the Poor when they made their rounds in town or suburbs. + + [Footnote 1: Or so the observers say who haven't had a life of + pleasure.] + +"What do you think about Religion, Viv old girl?" she said one day +in the Eastertide of 1912, when Vivie was spending a delicious +fortnight at Villa Beau-séjour. + +"Personally," said Vivie, "I hate all religions, so far as I have +had time to study them. They bind up with undisputed ethics more or +less preposterous theories concerning life and death, the properties +of matter, man, God, the universe, the laws of nature, the food we +should eat, the relations of the sexes, the quality of the weekly +day of rest. Gradually they push indisputable ethics on one side and +are ready to apply torture, death, or social ostracism to the +support of these preposterous theories and explanations of God and +Man. Such theories"--went on Vivie, though her mother's attention +had wandered to some escaped poultry that were scratching +disastrously in seed beds--"Such theories and explanations, mark +you--_do_ listen, mother, since you asked the question..." + +"I'm listenin', dearie, but you talk like a book and I don't know +what some of your words mean--What's ethics?" + +"Well 'ethics' means er--er--'morality'; it comes from a Greek word +meaning 'character.'..." + +_Mrs. Warren_: "You talk like a book--" + +_Vivie_: "I do sometimes, when I remember something I've read. But +now I've lost my thread.... What I meant to finish up with was +something like this 'Such theories and explanations were formulated +several hundred, or more than two thousand years ago, in times when +Man's knowledge of himself, of his surroundings, of the earth and +the universe was almost non-existent, yet they are preserved to our +times as sacred revelations, though they are not superior to the +fancies and fetish rites of a savage.' There! All that answer is +quoted from Professor Rossiter's little book (_Home University +Library_, "The Growth of the Human Mind")." + +_Mrs. Warren_: "Rossiter! Is that the man you're sweet on?" + +_Vivie_: "Don't put it so coarsely. There is a great friendship +between us. We belong to a later generation than you. A man and a +woman can be friends now without becoming lovers." + +_Mrs. Warren_: "Go _on_! Don't humbug me. Men and women's the same +as when I was young. I'm sorry, all the same, dear girl. There are +you, growin' middle-aged and not married to some good-'earted chap +as 'd give you three-four children I could pet in me old age. +Wodjer want to go fallin' in love with some chap as 'as got a wife +already? _I_ know your principles. There's iron in yer blood, same +as there is in that proud priest, your father. I know you'd break +your 'eart sooner 'n have a good time with the professor. My! It +seems to me Love's as bad as Religion for bringin' about sorrer!" + +_Vivie_: "If you mean that it is answerable for the same intense +happiness and even more intense _un_happiness, I suppose you're +right. I'm _miserable_, mother, and it's some relief to me to say +so. If I could become honourably the wife of Michael Rossiter I'm +afraid I should let Suffrage have the go-by. But as I can't, why +this struggle for the vote is the only thing that keeps me going. I +shall fight for it for another ten years, and by that time certain +physiological changes may have taken place in me, and my feelings +towards Rossiter will have calmed down." + +(Here Mrs. Warren proceeded to call out rather disharmoniously in +Flemish to the poultry woman, and asked why the something-or-other +she let the Houdans spoil the seed beds.) + +_Mrs. Warren_ resuming: "Well it's clear you're your father's +daughter. 'E'd 'ave gone on--_did_ go on--in just such a way. 'Im +and me were jolly well suited to one another. I'd got to reg'lar +love 'im. I'd 'a bin a true wife to him, and 'ave worked my fingers +to the bone for 'im, and you bet I'd 'ave made a livin' somehow. And +he'd have written some jolly good books and 'ave made lots of money. +But no! This beastly Religion comes in with its scare of Hell fire +and back 'e goes to the priests and 'is prayers and 'is penances. +The last ten years or so 'e's bin filled up with pride. 'Is passions +'ave died down and 'e thinks 'imself an awful swell as the head of +his Order. And they do say as 'e's got 'is fingers in several pies +and is a reg'lar old conspirator, working up the Irish to do +something against England. Yer know since I've made my peace with +you.... _Ain't_ it a rum go, by the bye? Ten or twenty years ago +it'd 'a bin 'my peace with God.' I dunno nothin' about God--can't +see 'im at the end of a telescope, anyways. But I _can_ see you, +Vivie, and there's no one livin' I respect more" (speaks with real +feeling).... "Well, as I was sayin', since I'd set myself right with +you and wound up the business of the hotels I ain't so easy cowed by +'is looks as I used to be. So every now and then it amuses me to run +over in my auto to Louvain and stroll about there and watch 'im as +'e comes out for 'is promenade, pretendin' to be readin' a breviary +or some holy book. I know it riles 'im.... + +"Well, but for high principles, 'e and I might 'a bin as 'appy as +'appy and 'ad a large family. And there was nothin' to stop 'im +a-marryin' me, if that was all he wanted to feel comfortable about +it. But jus' see. He's had a life that seems to me downright +sterile, and I--well, I ain't been _really_ happy till we made it up +three years ago" (leans over, and kisses Vivie a little +timorously). + +"Now there's you, burning yourself out 'cos your high principles +won't let you go for once in a way on the spree with this +Rossiter--s'posin' 'e's game, of course.... You've too much pride to +throw yourself at his head. But if he loves you as bad as you loves +'im, why don't you ask him" (instinctively the old ministress of +love speaks here) "ask 'im to take you over to Paris for a trip? +I'll lay 'e 'as to go over now'n again to the Sorbonne or one of +them scientific institutes. _She'd_ never come to 'ear of it. An' +after one or two such honeymoons you'd soon get tired of 'im, +specially now you're gettin' on a bit in years, and may be you'd +settle down quietly after that. Or if you ain't reg'lar set on +_'im_, why not giv' up this suffrage business and live a bit with me +here? There's plenty of upstanding, decent, Belgian men in good +positions as'd like to have an English wife. _They_ wouldn't look +too shy at my money..." + +_Vivie_: "Get thee behind me, Satan! Mother, you oughtn't to make +such propositions. Don't you understand, we must all have a religion +somewhere. Some principle to which we sacrifice ourselves. Rossiter +would be horrified if he could hear you. His mistress is Science, +besides which he is really devoted to his wife and would do nothing +that could hurt her. You don't know England, it's clear. Supposing +for one moment I could consent--and I couldn't--we should be found +out to a certainty, and then Michael's career would be ruined. + +"My religion, though I sometimes weary of it and sneer at it, is +Women's Rights: women must have precisely the same rights as men, no +disqualification whatever based merely on their being women. Did you +read those disgusting letters in the _Times_ by the surgeon, the +midwifery man, Sir Wrigsby Blane? Declaring that the demand for the +Vote was based on immorality, and pretending that once a month, till +they were fifty, and for several years _after_ they were fifty, +women were not responsible for their actions, because of what he +vaguely called 'physiological processes.' What poisonous rubbish! +You know as well as I do that in most cases it makes little or no +difference; and if it does, what about men? Aren't _they_ at certain +times not their normal selves? When they're full up with wine or +beer or whiskey, when they're courting, when they're pursuing some +illicit love, when after fifty they get a little odd in their ways +through this, that and the other internal trouble or change of +function? What's true of the one sex is equally true of the other. +Most men and women between twenty and sixty jolly well know what +they want, and generally they want something reasonable. We don't +legislate for the freaks, the unbalanced, the abnormal; or if we do +restrict the vote in those cases, let's restrict it for males as +well as females--But don't you see at the same time what a text I +should furnish to this malign creature if I ran away to Paris with +Michael, and made the slightest false step ... even though it had no +bearing on the main argument?..." + +At this juncture Vivie, whose obsession leads her more and more to +address every one as a public meeting--is interrupted by the smiling +_bonne à tout faire_ who announces that _le déjeuner de Madame est +servi_, and the two women gathering up books and shawls go in to the +gay little _saile-à-manger_ of the Villa Beau-séjour. + +On Vivie's return to London, after her Easter holiday, she threw +herself with added zest into the Suffrage struggle. The fortnight of +good feeding, of quiet nights and lazy days under her mother's roof +had done her much good. She was not quite so thin, the dark circles +under her grey eyes had vanished, and she found not only in herself +but even in the most middle-aged of her associates a delightful +spirit of tomboyishness in their swelling revolt against the Liberal +leaders. It was specially during the remainder of 1912 that Vivie +noted the enormous good which the Suffrage movement had done and was +doing to British women. It was producing a splendid camaraderie +between high and low. Heroines like Lady Constance Lytton +mingled as sister with equally heroic charwomen, factory girls, +typewriteresses, waitresses and hospital nurses. Women doctors of +Science, Music, and Medicine came down into the streets and did the +bravest actions to present their rights before a public that now +began to take them seriously. Debutantes, no longer quivering with +fright at entering the Royal Presence, modestly but audibly called +their Sovereign's attention to the injustice of Mr. Asquith's +attitude towards women, while princesses of the Blood Royal had +difficulty in not applauding. Many a tame cat had left the fire-side +and the skirts of an inane old mother (who had plenty of people to +look after her selfish wants) and emerged, dazed at first, into a +world that was unknown to her. Such had thrown away their crochet +hooks, their tatting-shuttles and fashion articles, their Church +almanacs, and Girl's Own Library books, and read and talked of +social, sexual, and industrial problems that have got to be faced +and solved. Colour came into their cheeks, assurance into their +faded manners, sense and sensibility into their talk; and whatever +happened afterwards they were never crammed back again into the +prison of Victorian spinsterhood. They learnt rough cooking, skilled +confectionery, typewriting, bicycling, jiu-jitsu perhaps. "The +maidens came, they talked, they sang, they read; till she not fair +began to gather light, and she that was became her former beauty +treble" sang in prophecy, sixty years before, the greatest of poets +and the poet-prophet of Woman's Emancipation. Many a woman has +directly owed the lengthened, happier, usefuller life that became +hers from 1910-1911-1912 onwards to the Suffrage movement for the +Liberation of Women. + +The crises of 1912 moreover were not so acute as bitterly to envenom +the struggle in the way that happened during the two following +years. There was always some hope that the Ministry might permit the +passing of an amendment to the Franchise Bill which would in some +degree affirm the principle of Female Suffrage. It is true that a +certain liveliness was maintained by the Suffragettes. The W.S.P.U. +dared not relax in its militancy lest Ministers should think the +struggle waning and Woman already tiring of her claims. The vaunted +Manhood Suffrage Bill had been introduced by an anti-woman-suffrage +Quaker Minister and its Second reading been proposed by an equally +anti-feminist Secretary of State--this was in June-July, 1912; and +no member of the Cabinet had risen to say a word in favour of the +Women's claims. Still, something might be done in Committee, in the +autumn Session--if there were one--or in the following year. There +was a simmering in the Suffragist ranks rather than any alarming +explosion. In March, before Vivie went to Brussels, Mrs. Pankhurst +had carried out a window-smashing raid on Bond Street and Regent +Street and the clubs of Piccadilly, during which among the two +hundred and nineteen arrests there were brought to light as +"revolutionaries" two elderly women surgeons of great distinction +and one female Doctor of Music. In revenge the police had raided the +W.S.P.U. offices at Clifford's Inn, an event long foreseen and +provided against in the neighbouring Chancery Lane. + +The Irish Nationalist Party had shown its marked hostility to the +enfranchisement of women in any Irish Parliament and so a few +impulsive Irish women had thrown things at Nationalist M.P.'s +without hurting them. Mr. Lansbury had spoken the plain truth to the +Prime Minister in the House of Commons and had been denied access to +that Chamber where Truth is so seldom welcome. + +In July the slumbering movement towards resisting the payment of +taxes by vote-less women woke up into real activity, and there were +many ludicrous and pathetic scenes organized often by Vivie and +Bertie Adams at which household effects were sold and bought in by +friends to satisfy the claims of a tax-collector. In the autumn +Vivie and others of the W.S.P.U. organized great pilgrimages--the +marches of the Brown Women--from Scotland, Wales, Devon and Norfolk +to London, to some goal in Downing Street or Whitehall, some +door-step which already had every inch of its space covered by +policemen's boots. These were among the pleasantest of the +manifestations and excited great good humour in the populace of town +and country. They were extended picnics of ten days or a fortnight. +The steady tramp of sixteen to twenty miles a day did the women +good; the food _en route_ was abundant and eaten with tremendous +appetite. The pilgrims on arrival in London were a justification in +physical fitness of Woman's claim to equal privileges with Man. + +Vivie after her Easter holiday took an increasingly active part in +these manifestations of usually good-humoured insurrection. As +Vivien Warren she was not much known to the authorities or to the +populace but she soon became so owing to her striking appearance, +telling voice and gift of oratory. All the arts she had learnt as +David Williams she displayed now in pleading the woman's cause at +the Albert Hall, at Manchester, in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Countess +Feenix took her up, invited her to dinner parties where she found +herself placed next to statesmen in office, who at first morose and +nervous--expecting every moment a personal assault--gradually +thawed when they found her a good conversationalist, a clever woman +of the world, becomingly dressed. After all, she had been a third +wrangler at Cambridge, almost a guarantee that her subsequent life +could not be irregular, according to a man's standard in England of +what an unmarried woman's life should be. She deprecated the +violence of the militants in this phase. + +But she was Protean. Much of her work, the lawless part of it, was +organized in the shape and dress of Mr. Michaelis. Some of her +letters to the Press were signed Edgar McKenna, Albert Birrell, +Andrew Asquith, Edgmont Harcourt, Felicia Ward, Millicent Curzon, +Judith Pease, Edith Spenser-Churchhill, Marianne Chamberlain, or +Emily Burns; and affected to be pleas for the granting of the +Suffrage emanating from the revolting sons or daughters, aunts, +sisters or wives of great statesmen, prominent for their opposition +to the Women's Cause. The W.S.P.U. had plenty of funds and it did +not cost much getting visiting cards engraved with such names and +supplied with the home address of the great personage whom it was +intended to annoy. One such card as an evidence of good faith would +be attached to the plausibly-worded letter. The _Times_ was seldom +taken in, but great success often attended these audacious +deceptions, especially in the important organs of the provincial +press. Editors and sub-editors seldom took the trouble and the time +to hunt through _Who's Who_, or a Peerage to identify the writer of +the letter claiming the Vote for Women. No real combination of names +was given, thus forgery was avoided; but the public and the +unsuspecting Editor were left with the impression that the +Premier's, Colonial Secretary's, Home Secretary's, Board of Trade +President's, or prominent anti-suffragist woman's son, daughter, +brother, sister, wife or mother-in-law did not at all agree with the +anti-feminist opinions of its father, mother, brother or husband. +If the politician were foolish enough to answer and protest, he was +generally at a disadvantage; the public thought it a good joke and +no one (in the provinces) believed his disclaimers. + +Vivie generally heckled ministers on the stump and parliamentary +candidates dressed as a woman of the lower middle class. It would +have been unwise to do so in man's guise, in case there should be a +rough-and-tumble afterwards and her sex be discovered. Although in +order to avoid premature arrest she did not herself take part +in those most ingenious--and from the view of endurance, +heroic--stow-aways of women interrupters in the roofs, attics, +inaccessible organ lofts or music galleries of public halls, she +organized many of these surprises beforehand. It was Vivie to whom +the brilliant idea came of once baffling the police in the rearrest +of either Mrs. Pankhurst or Annie Kenney. Knowing when the police +would come to the building where one or other of these ladies was to +make her sensational re-appearance, she had previously secreted +there forty other women who were dressed and veiled precisely +similarly to the fugitive from justice. Thus, when the force of +constables claimed admittance, forty-one women, virtually +indistinguishable one from the other, ran out into the street, and +the bewildered minions of the law were left lifting their helmets to +scratch puzzled heads and admitting "the wimmen were a bit too much +for us, this time, they were." + +In her bedroom at 88-90 she kept an equipment of theatrical +disguises; very natural-looking moustaches which could be easily +applied and which remained firmly adhering save under the +application of the right solvent; pairs of tinted spectacles; wigs +of credible appearance; different styles of suiting, different types +of women's dress. She sometimes sat in trains as a handsome, +impressive matron of fifty-five, with a Pompadour confection and a +tortoiseshell _face-à-main_, conversing with ministers of state or +permanent officials on their way to their country seats, and saying +"_Horrid_ creatures!" if any one referred to the activities of the +Suffragettes. Thus disguised she elicited considerable information +sometimes, though she might really be on her way to organize the +break-up of the statesman's public meeting, the enquiry into +discreditable circumstances which might compel his withdrawal from +public life, or merely the burning down of his shooting box. + +This life had its risks and perils, but it agreed with her health. +It was exciting and took her mind off Rossiter. + +Rossiter for his part experienced a slackening in the tension of his +mind during the same year 1912. He was touched by his wife's faint +suspicion of his alienated affection and by her dogged determination +to be sufficient to him as a companion and a helper; and a little +ashamed at his middle-aged--he was forty-seven--infatuation for a +woman who was herself well on in the thirties. There were times when +a rift came in the cloud of his passion for Vivie, when he looked +out dispassionately on the prospect of the rest of his life--he +could hope at most for twenty more years of mental and bodily +activity and energy. Was this all too brief period to be filled up +with a senile renewal of sexual longing! He felt ashamed of the +thoughts that had occupied so much of his mind since he had laid +David Williams on the couch of his library, to find it was Vivie +Warren whose arms were round his neck. He was not sorry this love +for a woman he could not possess had sent him into Parliament. He +was beginning to enjoy himself there. He had found himself, had lost +that craven fear of the Speaker that paralyzes most new members. He +knew when to speak and when to be silent; and when he spoke +unsuspected gifts of biting sarcasm, clever characterization, +convincing scorn of the uneducated minister type came to his aid. +His tongue played round his victims, unequipped as they were with +his vast experience of reality, vaguely discursive, on the surface +as are most lawyers, at a loss for similes and tropes as are most +men of business, or dull of wits as are most of the fine flowers of +the public schools, stultified with the classics and scripture +history. He knew that unless there was some radical change of +government he could not be a minister; but he cared little for that. +He was rich--thanks to his wife--he was recovering his influence and +his European and American reputation as a great discoverer, a deep +thinker. He enjoyed pulverizing the Ministry over their suffrage +insincerities and displaying his contempt of the politician elected +only for his money influence in borough, county, or in the +subscription lists of the Chief Whip. Though his pulses still beat a +little quicker when he held Vivie's hand in his at some reception of +Lady Feenix's or a dinner party at the Gorings--Vivie as the child +of a "fallen" woman had a prescriptive right of entrance to Diana's +circle--he had not the slightest intention of running away with her, +of nipping his career in two, just as he might be scaling the last +heights to the citadel of fame: either as a politician of the new +type, the type of high education, or as one of the giants of +inductive science. Besides in 1912, if I mistake not, Dr. +Smith-Woodward and Mr. Charles Dawson made that discovery of the +remains of an ape-like man in the gravels of mid-Sussex; and the +hounds of Anthropology went off on a new scent at full cry, Rossiter +foremost in the pack. + +Mrs. Rossiter in the same year allowed herself more and more to be +tempted into anti-suffrage discussions at the houses of peers or of +strong-minded, influential ladies who were on the easiest terms with +peers and potentates. She still resented the line her husband +had taken in politics and believed it to be chiefly due to an +inexplicable interest in Vivien Warren who she began to feel was the +same person as "David Williams." + +If she could only master the "Anti" arguments--they sounded so +convincing from the lips of Miss Violet Markham or Mrs. Humphry Ward +or some suave King's Counsel with the remnants of mutton-chop +whiskers--if she could wean Michael away from that disturbing +nonsense--he could assign "militancy" as the justification of his +change of mind...! All that was asked by Authority, so far as she +could interpret hints from great ladies, was neutrality, the return +of Professor Rossiter to the paths of pure science in which area no +one disputed his eminence. _Then_ he might receive that knighthood +that was long overdue; better still his next lot of discoveries in +anatomy might bring him the peerage he richly deserved and which her +wealth would support. He could then rest on his oars, cease his more +or less nasty investigations; they could take a place in the country +and move from this much too large house which lay almost outside the +limits of Society's London to a really well-appointed flat in +Westminster and have a thoroughly enjoyable old age. + +Honoria in these times did not see so much of Vivie as before. Her +warrior husband spent a good deal of 1912 at home as he had a +Hounslow command. He had come to realize--some spiteful person had +told him--who Vivie's mother had been, and told Honoria in accents +of finality that the "Aunt Vivie" nonsense must be dropped and Vivie +must not come to the house. At the most, if she _must_ meet her +friend of college days--oh, he was quite willing to believe in her +personal propriety, though there were odd stories in circulation +about her dressing as a man and doing some very rum things for the +W.S.P.U.--still if she _must_ see her, it would have to be in public +places or at her friends, at Lady Feenix's, if she liked. No. He +wasn't attacking the cause of Suffrage. Women could have the vote +and welcome so far as he was concerned: they couldn't be greater +fools than the men, and they were probably less corrupt. He himself +never remembered voting in his life, so Honoria was no worse off +than her husband. But he drew the line in his children's friends at +the daughter of a.... + +Here Honoria to avoid hearing something she could not forgive put +her plump hand over his bristly mouth. He kissed it and somehow she +couldn't take the high tone she had at first intended. She simply +said "she would see about it" and met the difficulty by giving up +her suffrage parties for a bit and attending Lady Maud's instead; +where you met not only poor Vivie, but--had she been in London and +guaranteed reformed and _rangée_--you might have met Vivie's mother; +as well as the Duchess of Dulborough--American, and intensely +Suffrage--the charwoman from Little Francis Street, the bookseller's +wife, the "mother of the maids" from Derry and Toms; and that very +clever chemist who had mended Juliet Duff's nose when she fell on +the ice at Princes'--they would both be there. Honoria said nothing +to Vivie and Vivie said nothing to Honoria about the inhibition, but +together with her irrational jealousy of _Eoanthropos dawsoni_ and +irritation at the growing contentedness with things as they were on +the part of Rossiter, it made her a trifle more reckless in her +militancy. + +And Praddy? How did he fare in these times? Praed felt himself +increasingly out of the picture. He was not far gone in the sixties, +sixty-one, perhaps at most. But out of the movement. In his prime +the people of his set--the cultivated upper middle class, with a few +recruits from the peerage--cared only about Art in some shape or +form--recondite music, the themes of which were never obvious enough +to be hummed, the androgyne poetry of the 'nineties, morbidities +from the Yellow Book, and Scarlet Sins that you disclaimed for +yourself, to avoid unpleasantness with the Criminal Investigation +Department, but freely attributed to people who were not in the +room; the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley and successors in audacity +and ugly indecency who left Beardsley a mere disciple of Raphael +Tuck; also architecture which ignored the housemaid's sink, the +box-room and the fire-escape. + +The people who still came to his studio because he had the +reputation of being a wit and the husband of his parlour-maid (whom +to her indignation they called Queen Cophetua) cared not a straw +about Art in any shape or form. The women wanted the Vote--few of +them knew why--the men wanted to be aviators, motorists beating the +record in speed on French trial trips, or Apaches in their relations +with the female sex or prize-fighters--Jimmy Wilde had displaced +Oscar, to the advantage of humanity, even Praddy agreed. + +To Praed however Vivie took the bitterness, the disillusions which +came over her at intervals: + +"I feel, Praddy, I'm getting older and I seem to be at a loose end. +D'you know I'm on the verge of thirty-seven--and I have no definite +career? I'm rather tired of being a well-meaning adventuress." + +"Then why," Praddy would reply, "don't you go and live with your +mother?" + +"Ugh! I couldn't stand for long that life in Belgium or elsewhere +abroad. They seem miles behind us, with all our faults. Mother only +seems to think now of good things to eat and a course of the waters +at Spa in September to neutralize the over-eating of the other +eleven months. There is no political career for women on the +Continent." + +"Then why not marry and have children? That is a career in itself. +Look at Honoria, how happy she is." + +"Yes--but there is only one man I could love, and he's married +already." + +"Pooh! nonsense. There are as many good fish in the sea as ever came +out of it. If you won't do as Beryl did--by the bye isn't she a +swell in these days! And _strict_ with her daughters! She won't let +'em come here, I'm told, because of some silly story some one set +abroad about me! And that humbug, Francis Brimley Storrington--by +the bye he's an A.R.A. now and scarcely has enough talent to design +a dog kennel, yet they've given him the job of the new stables at +Buckingham Palace. Well if you won't share some one else's husband, +pick out a good man for yourself. There must be plenty going--some +retired prize-fighter. They seem all the rage just now, and are +supposed to be awfully gentlemanly out of the ring." + +"Don't be perverse. You know exactly how I feel. I'm wasting the +prime of my life. I see no clear course marked out before me. +Sometimes I think I would like to explore Central Africa or get up a +Woman's Expedition to the South Pole. Life has seemed so flat since +I gave up being David Williams. Then I lived in a perpetual thrill, +always on my guard. I tire every now and then of my monkey tricks, +and the praise of all these women leaves me cold. I wish I were as +simple minded as most of them are. To them the Vote seems the +beginning of the millennium. They seem to forget that after we've +_got_ the Vote we shall have another fight to be admitted as members +to the House. You may be sure the men will stand out another fifty +years over _that_ surrender. I alternate in my moods between the +reckless fury of an Anarchist and the lassitude of Lord Rosebery. To +think that I was once so elated and conceited about being a Third +Wrangler...!" + +With the closing months of 1912, however, there was a greater +tenseness, a sharpening of the struggle which once more roused +Vivie to keen interest. When she returned from an autumn visit to +Villa Beau-séjour she found there had been a split between the +"Peths" and the "Panks." The Girondist section of the women +suffragists had separated from those who could see no practical +policy to win the Vote but a regime of Terrorism--mild terrorism, it +is true--somewhat that of the Curate in _The Private Secretary_ who +at last told his persecutors he should _really have to give them a +good hard knock_. The Peths drew back before the Pankish programme +(mild as this would seem, to us of Bolshevik days and of Irish +insurrection). _Votes for Women_ returned to the control of the +Pethick Lawrences, and the Pankhurst party to which Vivie belonged +were to start a new press organ, _The Suffragette_. + +The Panks, it seemed, had a more acute fore-knowledge than the +Peths. The latter had felt they were forcing an open door; that the +Liberal Ministry would eventually squeeze a measure of Female +Suffrage into the long-discussed Franchise Bill; and that too much +militancy was disgusting the general public with the Woman's cause. +The former declared all along that Women were going to be done in +the eye, because all the militancy hitherto had got very little in +man's way, had only excited smiles, and shoulder-shrugs. Ministers +of the Crown in 1912 had compared the hoydenish booby-traps and +bloodless skirmishes of the Suffragettes with the grim fighting, the +murders, burnings, mob-rule of the 1830's, when MEN were agitating +for Reform; or the mutilation of cattle, the assassinations, +dynamite outrages, gun-powder plots, bombs and boycotting of the +long drawn-out Irish agitation for Home Rule. An agitation which was +now resulting in the placing on the Statute Book of a Home Rule +Bill, while another equally deadly agitation--in promise--was being +worked up by Sir Edward Carson, the Duke of This and the Marquis of +That, and a very rising politician, Mr. F.E. Smith, to defeat the +operation of Home Rule for Ireland. In short, if one might believe +the second-rate ministers who were not repudiated by their superiors +in rank, the Vote for Women could only be wrung from the reluctance +of the tyrant man, _if_ the women made life unbearable for the male +section of the community. + +It was a dangerous suggestion to make, or would have proved so, had +these sneering politicians been provoking men to claim their +constitutional rights: bloodshed would almost certainly have +followed. But the leaders of the militant women ordered (and were +obeyed) that no attacks on life should be part of the Woman's +militant programme. Property might be destroyed, especially such as +did not impoverish the poor; but there were to be no railway +accidents, no sinking of ships, no violent deeds dangerous to life. +At the height and greatest bitterness of militancy no statesman's +life was in danger. + +The only recklessness about life was in the militant women. They +risked and sometimes lost their lives in carrying out their +protests. They invented the Hunger Strike (the prospect of which as +an inevitable episode ahead of her, filled Vivie with tremulous +dread) to balk the Executive of its idea of turning the prisons of +England into Bastilles for locking up these clamant women who had +become better lawyers than the men who tried them. But think what +the Hunger Strike and its concomitant, Forcible Feeding, meant in +the way of pain and danger to the life of the victim. The Government +were afraid (unless you were an utterly unknown man or woman of the +lower classes) of letting you die in prison; so to force them to +release you, you had first to refuse for four days all food--the +heroic added all drink. Then to prevent your death--and being human +you, the prisoner, must have hoped they were keeping a good look-out +on your growing weakness--the prison doctor must intervene with his +forcible feeding. This was a form of torture the Inquisition would +have been sorry to have overlooked, and one no doubt that the +Bolsheviks have practised with great glee. The patient was strapped +to a chair or couch or had his--usually her--limbs held down by +warders (wardresses) and nurses. A steel or a wooden gag was then +inserted, often with such roughness as to chip or break the teeth, +and through the forced-open mouth a tube was pushed down the throat, +sometimes far enough to hurt the stomach. This produced an +apoplectic condition of choking and nausea, and as the stomach +filled up with liquid food the retching nearly killed the patient. +The windpipe became involved. Food entered the lungs--the tongue was +cut and bruised (Think what a mere pimple on the tongue means to +some of us: it keeps _me_ awake half the night)--the lips were torn. +Worse still--requiring really a pathological essay to which I am not +equal--was feeding by slender pipes through the nose. The far +simpler and painless process _per rectum_ was debarred because it +might have constituted an indecent assault. + +Was ever Ministry in a greater dilemma? It was too old-fashioned, +too antiquely educated to realize the spirit of its age, the pass at +which we had arrived of conceding to Women the same rights as to +men. Women were ready to die for these rights (not to kill others in +order to attain them). Yet for fear of wounding the national +sentimentality they must not be allowed to die; they must not be +saved from suicide by any action savouring of indecency; so they +must be tortured as prisoners hardly were in the worst days of the +Inquisition or at the worst-conducted public school of the Victorian +era. + +But Vivie's gradually rising wrath was to be brought by degrees to +boiling-point through the spring of 1913, and to explode at last +over an incident more tragic than any one of the five or six hundred +cases of forcible feeding. + +Early in 1913, the Speaker intimated that any insertion of a Woman +Suffrage Amendment into the Manhood Franchise Bill would be +inconsistent with some unwritten code of Parliamentary procedure of +which apparently he was the sole guardian and interpreter. Ministers +who had probably prepared this _coup_ months before went about +expressing hypocritical laments at the eccentricities of our +constitution; and the Franchise Act was abandoned. A little later, +frightened at the renewal of arson in town and country, at +interferences with their week-end golf courses, at the destruction +of mails in the letter-boxes, and the slashing of Old Masters at the +National Gallery (purchased at about five times their intrinsic +value by a minister who would not have spent one penny of national +money to encourage native art), the Cabinet let it be known that a +way would be found presently to give Woman Suffrage a clear run. A +private member would be allowed to bring in a Bill for conferring +the franchise on women, and the opinion of the House would be sought +on its merits independently of party issues. The Government Whips +would be withdrawn and members of the Government be left free to +vote as they pleased. + +It was a fair deduction, however, from what was said at that time +and later, that the strongest possible pressure--arguments _ad +hominem_ and in a sense _ad pecuniam_--was brought to bear on +Liberals and on Irish Nationalists to vote against the Bill. Had the +Second reading been carried, the Government would have resigned and +a Home Rule Bill for Ireland have been once more postponed. + +The rejection of Mr. Dickinson's measure by a majority of +forty-seven convinced the Militants that Pharaoh had once more +hardened his heart; and the hopelessness of the Woman's cause at +that juncture inspired one woman with a resolution to give her life +as a protest in the manner most calculated to impress the male mind +of the British public. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +IMPRISONMENT + + +Prior to the Derby day of 1913, Vivie had heard of Emily Wilding +Davison as a Northumbrian woman, distantly related to the Rossiters +and also to the Lady Shillito she had once defended. She came from +Morpeth in Northumberland and had had a very distinguished +University career at Oxford and in London, of which latter +university she was a B.A. The theme of the electoral enfranchisement +of Women had gradually possessed her mind to the exclusion of all +other subjects; she became in fact a fanatic in the cause and a +predestined martyr to it. In 1909 she had received her first +sentence of imprisonment for making a constitutional protest, and to +escape forcible feeding had barricaded her cell. The Visiting +Committee had driven her from this position by directing the warders +to turn a hose pipe on her and knock her senseless with a douche of +cold water; for which irregularity they were afterwards fined and +mulcted in costs. Two years later, for another Suffragist offence +(setting fire to a pillar box after giving warning of her intention) +she went to prison for six months. Here the tortures of forcible +feeding so overcame her reason--it was alleged--that she flung +herself from an upper gallery, believing she would be smashed on the +pavement below and that her death under such circumstances might +call attention to the agony of forcible feeding and the reckless +disregard of consequences which now inspired educated women who were +resolved to obtain the enfranchisement of their sex. But an iron +wire grating eight feet below broke her fall and only cut her face +and hands. The accident or attempted suicide, however, procured the +shortening of her sentence. + +Vivie and she often met in the early months of 1913, and on the +first day of June she confided to a few of the W.S.P.U. her +intention of making at Epsom a public protest against public +indifference to the cause of the Woman's Franchise. This protest was +to be made in the most striking manner possible at the supreme +moment of the Derby race on the 4th of June. Probably no one to whom +she mentioned the matter thought she contemplated offering up her +own life; at most they must have imagined some speech from the Grand +Stand, some address to Royalty thrown into the Royal pavilion, some +waving of a Suffrage Flag or early-morning placarding of the +bookies' stands. + +Vivie however had been turning her thoughts to horse-racing as a +field of activity. She was amused and interested at the effect that +had been produced in ministerial circles by her interference with +the game of golf. If now something was done by the militants +seriously to impede the greatest of the sports, the national form of +gambling, the protected form of swindling, the main interest in life +of the working-class, of half the peerage, all the beerage, the +chief lure of the newspapers between October and July, and the +preoccupation of princes, she might awaken the male mind in a very +effectual way to the need for settling the Suffrage question. + +So she determined also to see the running of the Derby, as a +preliminary to deciding on a plan of campaign. She had become +hardened to pushing and scrouging, so that the struggle to get a +seat in one of the fifty or sixty race trains leaving Waterloo or +Victoria left her comparatively calm. She was dressed as a young man +and had no clothing impediments, and as a young man she was better +able to travel down with racing rascality. In that guise she did +not attract too much attention. Rough play may have been in the mind +of the card-playing, spirit-drinking scoundrels that occupied the +other seats in the compartment, but Vivie in her man's dress created +a certain amount of suspicion and caution. "Look's like a 'tec,'" +one man whispered to another. So the card-playing was not thrust on +her as a round-about form of plunder, and the stories told were more +those derived from the spicy columns of the sporting papers, in +words of double meaning, than the outspoken, stable obscenity +characteristic of the race-course rabble. + +Vivie arriving early managed to secure a fairly good seat on the +Grand Stand, to which she could have recourse when the crowd on the +race course became too repulsive or too dangerous. She wished as +much as possible to see all aspects of the premier race meeting. +Indeed, meeting a friend of Lady Feenix's, a good-natured young peer +who halted irresolute between four worlds--the philosophic, the +political, the philanthropic, and the sporting, she introduced +herself as "David Williams"--hoping no Bencher was within +hearing--said "Dare say you remember me? Lady Feenix's? Been much +abroad lately--really feel quite strange on an English race course," +and persuaded him to take her round before the great people of the +day were all assembled. She was shown the Royal pavilion being got +ready for the King and Queen, the weighing room of the jockeys, the +paddock and temporary stables of the horses that were to race that +day. Here was a celebrated actress in a magnificent lace dress and +a superb hat, walking up and down on the sun-burnt, trodden turf, in +a devil of a temper. Her horse--for with her lovers' money she kept +a racing stable--had been scratched for the race--I really can't +tell you why, not having been able to study all the _minutiæ_ of +racing. [Talking of that, _how_ annoying it is--or was--when +one cared about things of great moment, to take up an evening +newspaper's last edition and read in large type "Official +Scratchings," with a silly algebraic formula underneath about horses +being withdrawn from some race, when you thought it was a bear fight +in the Cabinet.] Vivie gathered from her guide that to-day would be +rather a special Derby, because it did not often happen that a +King-Emperor was there to see a horse from his own racing stables +running in the classic race. + +Then, thanking the pleasant soldier-peer for his information, Vivie +(David Williams) left him to his duties as equerry and member of the +Jockey-Club and entered the dense crowd on either side of the race +course. It reminded her just slightly of Frith's Derby Day. There +were the gypsies, the jugglers, the acrobats, the costers with their +provision barrows; the grooms and stable hands; the beggars and +obvious pick-pockets; the low-down harlots--the high-up ones were +already entering the seats of the Grand Stand or sitting on the +four-in-hand coaches or in the open landaulettes and Silent Knights. +But evidently the professional betting men were a new growth since +the mid-nineteenth century. They were just beginning to assemble, +wiping their mouths from the oozings of the last potation; some, the +aristocrats of their calling, like sporting peers in dress and +appearance; others like knock-about actors on the music-hall stage. +The generality were remarkably similar to ordinary city men or to +the hansom-cab drivers of twenty years ago. + +In the very front of the crowd on the Grand Stand side, leaning with +her elbows on the wooden rail, she descried Emily Davison. Vivie +edged and sidled through the crowd and touched her on the shoulder. +Emily looked up with a start, surprised at seeing the friendly face +of a young man, till she recognized Vivie by her voice. "Dear +Emily," said Vivie, "you look so tired. Aren't you over-trying your +strength? I don't know what you have in hand, but why not postpone +your action till you are quite strong again?" + +"I shall never be stronger than I am to-day and it can't be +postponed, cost me what it will," was the reply, while the sad eyes +looked away across the course. + +"Well," said Vivie, "I wanted you to know that I was close by, +prepared to back you up if need be. And there are others of our +Union about the place. That young man over there talking to the +policeman is really A---- K---- though she is supposed to be in +prison. Mrs. Tuke is somewhere about, Mrs. Despard is on the Grand +Stand, and Blanche Smith is selling _The Suffragette_." + +"Thank you," said Miss Davison, turning round for an instant, and +pressing Vivie's hand, "Good-bye. I hope what I am going to do will +be effectual." + +Vivie did not like to prolong the talk in case it should attract +attention. Individual action was encouraged under the W.S.P.U., and +when a member wished to do something on her own, her comrades did +not fuss with advice. So Vivie returned to the Grand Stand. + +Presently there was the stir occasioned by the arrival of the Royal +personages. Vivie noted with a little dismay that while she was +wearing a Homburg hat all the men near her wore the black and +glistening topper which has become--or had, for the tyranny of +custom has lifted a little since the War--the conventional head-gear +in which to approach both God and the King. There was a great +raising of these glistening hats, there were grave bows or smiling +acknowledgments from the pavilion. Then every one sat down and the +second event was run. + +Still Emily Wilding Davison made no sign. Vivie could just descry +her, still in the front of the crowd, still gazing out over the +course, pressed by the crowd against the broad white rail. + + * * * * * + +The race of the day had begun. The row of snickering, plunging, +rearing, and curvetting horses had dissolved, as in a kaleidoscope, +into a bunch, and a pear-shaped formation with two or three horses +streaming ahead as the stem of the pear. Then the stem became +separated from the pear-shaped mass by its superior speed, and again +this vertical line of horses formed up once more horizontally, +leaving the mass still farther behind. Then the horses seen from the +Grand Stand disappeared--and after a minute reappeared--three, four, +five--and the bunch of them, swerving round Tattenham Corner and +thundering down the incline towards the winning post.... The King's +horse seemed to be leading, another few seconds would have brought +it or one of its rivals past the winning post, when ... a slender +figure, a woman, darted with equal swiftness from the barrier to the +middle of the course, leapt to the neck of the King's horse, and in +an instant, the horse was down, kneeling on a crumpled woman, and +the jockey was flying through the air to descend on hands and knees +practically unhurt. The other horses rushed by, miraculously +avoiding the prostrate figures. Some horse passed the winning post, +a head in front of some other, but no one seemed to care. The race +was fouled. Vivie noted thirty seconds--approximately--of amazed, +horrified silence. Then a roar of mingled anger, horror, enquiry +went up from the crowd of many thousands. "It's the Suffragettes" +shouted some one. And up to then Vivie had not thought of connecting +this unprecedented act with the purposed protest of Emily Wilding +Davison. She sprang to her feet, and shouting to all who might have +tried to stop her "I'm a friend of the lady. I am a doctor"--she +didn't care what lie she told--she was soon authoritatively pushing +through the ring of police constables who like warrior ants had +surrounded the victims of the protest--the shivering, trembling +horse, now on its legs, the pitifully crushed, unconscious +woman--her hat hanging to the tresses of her hair by a dislodged +hat-pin, her thin face stained with blood from surface punctures. +The jockey was being carried from the course, still unconscious, but +not badly hurt. + +A great surgeon happening to be at Epsom Race course on a friend's +drag, had hurried to offer his services. He was examining the +unconscious woman and striving very gently to straighten and +disentangle her crooked body. Presently there was a respectful stir +in the privileged ring, and Vivie was conscious by the raising of +hats that the King stood amongst them looking down on the woman who +had offered up her life before his eyes to enforce the Woman's +appeal. He put his enquiries and offered his suggestions in a low +voice, but Vivie withdrew, less with the fear that her right to be +there and her connection with the tragedy might be questioned, as +from some instinctive modesty. The occasion was too momentous for +the presence of a supernumerary. Emily Wilding Davison should have +her audience of her Sovereign without spectators. + +Returning with a blanched face to the seething crowd, and presently +to the Grand Stand, Vivie's mood altered from awe to anger. The +"bookies" were beside themselves with fury. She noted the more +frequent of the nouns and adjectives they applied to the dying woman +for having spoilt the Derby of 1913, but although she went to the +trouble, in framing her indictment of the Turf, of writing down +these phrases, my jury of matrons opposes itself to their appearance +here, though I am all for realism and completeness of statement. +After conversing briefly and in a lowered voice with such +Suffragettes as gathered round her, so that this one could carry the +news to town and that one his to communicate with Miss Davison's +relations, Vivie--recklessly calling herself to any police +questioner, "David Williams" and eliciting "Yes, sir, I have seen +you once or twice in the courts," reached once more the Grand Stand +with its knots of shocked, puzzled, indignant, cynical, consternated +men and women. Most of them spoke in low tones; but one--a blond Jew +of middle age--was raving in uncontrolled anger, careless of what he +said or of who heard him. He was short of stature with protruding +bloodshot eyes, an undulating nose, slightly prognathous muzzle and +full lips, and a harsh red moustache which enhanced the prognathism. +His silk hat tilted back showed a great bald forehead, in which +angry, bluish veins stood out like swollen earth worms. "Those +Suffragettes!" he was shouting or rather shrieking in a nasal whine, +"if I had _my_ way, I'd lay 'em out along the course and have 'em +---- by ----. The ----'s!" + +The shocked auditory around him drew away. Vivie gathered he was +Mr. ---- well, perhaps I had better not give his name,[1] even +in a disguised form. He had had a chequered career in South +America--Mexico oil, Peruvian rubber, Buenos Aires railways, and a +corner in Argentine beef--but had become exceedingly rich, a fortune +perhaps of twenty millions. He had given five times more than any +other aspirant in benefactions to charities and to the party chest +of the dominant Party, but the authorities dared not reward him with +a baronetcy because of the stories of his early life which had to be +fought out in libel cases with Baxendale Strangeways and others. But +he had won through these libel cases, and now devoted his vast +wealth to improving our breed of horses by racing at Newmarket, +Epsom, Doncaster, Gatwick, Sandown and Brighton. Racing had, in +fact, become to him what Auction Bridge was to the Society gamblers +of those days, only instead of losing and winning tens and hundreds +of pounds, his fluctuations in gains and losses were in thousands, +generally with a summing up on the right side of the annual account. +But whether on the Turf, at the billiard table, or in the stock +market he was or had become a bad loser. He lost his temper at the +same time. On this occasion Miss Davison's suicide or martyrdom +would leave him perhaps on the wrong side in making up his day's +book to the extent of fifteen hundred pounds. Viewed in the right +proportion it would be equivalent to our--you and me--having given a +florin to a newspaper boy as the train was moving, instead of a +penny. But no doubt her unfortunate impulse had spoiled the day for +him in other ways, upset schemes that were bound up with the winning +of the King's horse. Yet his outburst and the shocking language he +applied to the Suffrage movement made history: for they fixed on him +Vivie's attention when she was looking out for some one or something +on whom to avenge the loss of a comrade. + + [Footnote 1: He died in 1917. My jury of matrons has excised his + phrases.] + +She forthwith set out for London and wrote up the dossier of Mr. +----. In the secret list of buildings which were to be destroyed by +fire or bombs, with as little risk as possible to human or animal +life, she noted down the racing stables, trainers' houses and +palaces of Mr. ---- at Newmarket, Epsom, the Devil's Dyke, and the +neighbourhood of Doncaster. + + +Rossiter and Vivie met for the first time for a year at Emily +Davison's funeral. Rossiter had been profoundly moved at her +self-sacrifice; she was moreover a Northumbrian and a distant +kinswoman. Perhaps, also, he felt that he had of late been a little +lukewarm over the Suffrage agitation. His motor-brougham, +containing with himself the very unwilling Mrs. Rossiter, followed +in the procession of six thousand persons which escorted the coffin +across London from Victoria station to King's Cross. A halt was made +outside a church in Bloomsbury where a funeral service was read. + +Mrs. Rossiter thought the whole thing profoundly improper. In the +first place the young woman had committed suicide, which of itself +was a crime and disentitled you to Christian burial; in the second +she had died in a way greatly to inconvenience persons in the +highest society; in the third she had always understood that racing +was a perfectly proper pastime for gentlemen; and in the fourth this +incident, touching Michael through his relationship with the +deceased, would bring him again in contact with that Vivie +Warren--_there_ she was and there was _he_, in close converse--and +make a knighthood from a nearly relenting Government well-nigh +impossible. Rossiter, after the service, had begged Vivie to come +back to tea with them in Park Crescent and give Mrs. Rossiter and +himself a full account of what took place at Epsom. Vivie had +declined. She had not even spoken to the angry little woman, who had +refused to attend the service and had sat fuming all through the +half hour in her electric brougham, wishing she had the courage and +determination to order the chauffeur to turn round and run her home, +leaving the Professor to follow in a taxi. But perhaps if she did +that, he would go off somewhere with that Warren woman. + +Michael presently re-entered the carriage and in silence they +returned to Portland Place. + +The next day his wife meeting one of her Anti-Suffrage friends said: + +"Er--supposing--er--you had got to know something about these +dreadful militant women, something which might help the police, yet +didn't want to get _too_ much mixed up with it yourself, and +_certainly_ not bring your husband into it--the Professor +_thoroughly_ disapproves of militancy, even though he may have +foolish ideas about the Vote--er--what would you do?" + +"Well, what is it?" + +"It's part of a letter." + +"Well, I should just send it to the Criminal Investigation +Department, New Scotland Yard, and tell them under what +circumstances it came into your possession. You needn't even give +your name or address. They'll soon know whether it's any use or +not." So Mrs. Rossiter took from her desk that scrap of partly burnt +paper with the typewritten words on it which she had picked out of +the grate two and a half years before, and posted it to the Criminal +Investigation Department, with the intimation that this fragment had +come into the possession of the sender some time ago, and seemed to +refer to a militant Suffragist who called herself "Vivie Warren" or +"David Williams," and perhaps it might be of some assistance to the +authorities in tracking down these dangerous women who now stuck at +nothing. She posted the letter with her own hands in the North West +district. Park Crescent, Portland Place, she always reflected, was +still in the _Western_ district, though it lay perilously near the +North West border line, beyond which Lady Jeune had once written, no +one in Society thought of living. This was a dictum that at one time +had occasioned Mrs. Rossiter considerable perturbation. It was +alarming to think that by crossing the Marylebone Road or migrating +to Cambridge Terrace you had passed out of Society. + + +It took the police a deuce of a time--two months--to make use +effectively of the information contained in Mrs. Rossiter's scrap of +burnt paper; though the statement of their anonymous correspondent +that Vivie Warren and David Williams were probably the same person +helped to locate Mr. Michaelis's office. It was soon ascertained +that Miss Vivien Warren, well known as a sort of Society speaker on +Suffrage, lived at the Lilacs in Victoria Road, Kensington. But when +a plain-clothes policeman called at Victoria Road he was only told +by the Suffragette caretaker (whose mother now usually lived with +her to console her for her mistress's frequent absences) that Miss +Warren was away just then, had recently been much away from home, +probably abroad where her mother lived. (Here the enquirer +registered a mental note: Miss Warren has a mother living abroad: +could it be _the_ Mrs. Warren?). Polite and respectful calls on Lady +Feenix, Lady Maud Parry, and Mrs. Armstrong--Vivie's known +associates--elicted no information, till on leaving the last-named +lady's house in Kensington Square the detective heard Colonel +Armstrong come in from the garden and call out "Ho-no-ria." +"'--ria," he said to himself, "'-ria kept the keys, and +now--' Honoria. What was her name before she married Colonel +Armstrong?--why--" He soon found out--"Fraser." "Wasn't there once a +firm, _Fraser and Warren_, which set up to be some new dodge for +establishing women in a city career?--Accountancy? Stockbroking? +Where did _Fraser and Warren_ have their office? Fifth floor of +Midland Insurance office in Chancery Lane. What was that building +now called? No. 88-90." Done. + +These two sentences run over a period of--what did I say? Two +months?--in their deductions and guesses and consultation of +out-of-date telephone directories. But on one day in September, +1913, two plain-clothes policemen made their way up to the fifth +floor of 88-90 Chancery Lane and found the outer door of Mr. +Michaelis's office locked and a notice board on it saying "Absent +till Monday." Not deterred by this, they forced open the door--to +the thrilling interest of a spectacled typewriteress, who had no +business on that landing at all, but she usually made assignations +there with the lift man. And on the writing table in the outer +office they found a note addressed to Miss Annie Kenney, which said +inside: "Dear Annie. If you should chance to look in between your +many imprisonments and find me out, you will know I am away on the +Firm's business, livening up the racing establishments of the Right +Honble Sir ---- ----, Bart. Bart. No one knows anything about this +at No. 94." + +(This note was purely unnecessary--a bit of swagger perhaps, lest +Miss Kenney should think Vivie never did anything dangerous, but +only planned dangerous escapades for others. Like the long letter of +Vivie to Michael Rossiter, written on the last day of December, +1910, which he had imperfectly destroyed, it was a reminder of that +all-too-true saying: "Litera scripta manet.") + +If the outer door of Michaelis's office was locked how could Miss +Kenney be expected to call and find this note awaiting her? Why, +_here_ came in the "No. 94" of the scrap of paper. There was an +over-the-roofs communication between the block of 88-90 and House +No. 94. The policemen in fact found that the large casement of the +partners' room was only pulled to, so that it was easily opened from +the outside. From the parapet they passed to the fire-escapes and +through the labyrinth of chimney stacks to a similar window leading +into the top storey of 94, the office of Mr. Algernon Mainwaring, +Hygienic Corset-maker. This office at the time of their unexpected +entry was fairly full of Suffragettes planning all sorts of direful +things. So the plain-clothes policemen had a rare haul that day and +certainly had Mrs. Rossiter to thank for rising to be Inspectors and +receiving some modest Order of later days. It was about the worst +blow the W.S.P.U. had; before the outbreak of War turned suddenly +the revolting women into the stanchest patriots and the right hands +of muddling ministers. For in addition to many a rich find in No. 94 +and a dozen captives caught red-handed in making mock of the +Authorities, the plain-clothes policemen made themselves thoroughly +at home in Mr. Michaelis's quarters till the following Monday. And +when in the fore-noon of that day, Mr. Michaelis entered his rooms, +puzzled and perturbed at finding the outer door ajar, he was +promptly arrested on a multiform charge of arson ... and on being +conveyed to a police station and searched he was found to be Miss +Vivien Warren. + +At intervals in the summer and early autumn of 1913 the male section +of the public had been horrified and scandalized at the destruction +going on in racing establishments, particularly those of Sir George +Crofts and of a well-known South American millionaire, whose +distinguished services to British commerce and immense donations to +Hospitals and Homes would probably be rewarded by a grateful +government. If these outrages were not stopped, horse-racing and +race-horse breeding must come to a stand-still; and we leave our +readers to realize what _that_ would mean! There would be no horses +for the plough or the gig, or the artillery gun-carriage; +no--er--fox-hunting, and without fox-hunting and steeple-chasing and +point-to-point races you could have no cavalry and without cavalry +you could have no army. If we neglected blood stock we would deal +the farmer a deadly blow, we should--er-- + +You know the sort of argument? Reduced to its essentials it is +simply this:--That a few rich people are fond of gambling and fond +of the excitement that is concentrated in the few minutes of the +horse race. Some others, not so rich, believe that by combining +horse-racing with a certain amount of cunning and bold cheating +they can make a great deal of money. A few speculators have invested +funds in spaces of open turf, and turn these spaces into race +courses. Having no alternative, no safer method of gambling offered +them, and being as fond of gambling as other peoples of the world, +the men of the labouring classes and a few of their women, the +publicans and their frequenters, army officers, farmers, and women +of uncertain virtue stake their money on horses they have never +seen, who may not even exist, and thus keep the industry going. And +the chevaliers of this "industry," the go-betweens, the parasites of +this sport, are the twelve thousand professional book-makers and +racing touts. + +Somehow the Turf has during the last hundred years, together with +its allies the Distillers and Brewers, the Licensed Victuallers and +the Press that is supported by these agencies, acquired such a hold +over the Government Departments, the Labour Party, the Conservative +Party, and Liberal politicians who are descended from county +families, that it has more interest with those who govern us than +the Church, the Nonconformist Conscience, the County Palatine of +Lancaster or any other body of corporate opinion. So that when in +September, 1913, representatives of the Turf (and no doubt of the +Trade Unions) went to the Home Secretary in reference to the burning +and bombing of racing stables, trainers' houses, Grand Stands and +the residences of racing potentates, and said "Look here! This has +GOT TO STOP," the Home Secretary and the Cabinet knew they were up +against no ordinary crisis. At the same time Sir Edward Carson, the +Marquis of Londonderry, the Duke of Abercorn, Mr. F.E. Smith and +nearly a third of the Colonels in the British Army of Ulster descent +were actively organizing armed resistance to any measure of Home +Rule; while Keltiberian Ireland was setting up the Irish Volunteers +to start a Home Rule insurrection. You can therefore imagine for +yourselves the mental irritability of members of the Liberal Cabinet +in the autumn of the sinister year 1913. I have been told that there +were days at the House of Commons during the Autumn Session of that +year when the leading ministers would just shut themselves up in +their Private Rooms and scream on end for a quarter of an hour.... +Of course an exaggeration, a sorry jest. + +In retrospect one feels almost sorry for them: the Great War must +have come almost as a relief. Not one of them was what you would +call a bad man. Some of them suffered over forcible feeding and the +Cat and Mouse Act as acutely as does the loving father or mother who +says to the recently spanked child, "You _know_, dear, it hurts _me_ +almost as much as it hurts _you_." If one met them out at dinner +parties, or in an express train which they could not stop by pulling +the communication cord, and sympathized with their dilemma, they +would ask plaintively _what_ they could do. They could not yield to +violence and anarchy; yet they could not let women die in prison. + +Of course the answer was this, but it was one they waved aside: +"Dissolve Parliament and go to the Country on the one question of +Votes for Women. If the Country returns a great majority favourable +to that concession, you must bring in a Bill for eliminating the sex +distinction in the suffrage. If on the other hand, the Country votes +against the reform, then you must leave it to the women to make a +male electorate change its mind. And meantime if men and women, to +enforce some principle, rioted and were sent to prison for it, and +then started to abstain from food and drink, why they must please +themselves and die if they wanted to." + +But this was just what the Liberal Ministry of those days would not +do; at all costs they must stick to office, emoluments, patronage, +the bestowal of honours, and the control of foreign policy. They +clung to power, in fact, at all costs; even inconsistency with the +bedrock principle of Liberalism: no Taxation without Representation. + + +It was decided in the innermost arcana of the Home Office that an +example should be made of Vivie. They had evidently in her got hold +of something far more dangerous than a Pankhurst or a Pethick +Lawrence, a Constance Lytton or an Emily Davison. The very probable +story--though the Benchers were loth to take it up--that she had +actually in man's garb passed for the Bar and pleaded successfully +before juries, appalled some of the lawyer-ministers by its +revolutionary audacity. They might not be able to punish her on that +count or on several others of the misdemeanours imputed to her; but +they had got her, for sure, on Arson; and on the arson not of +suburban churches, which occurred sometimes at Peckham or in the +suburbs of Birmingham and made people laugh a little in the trains +coming up to town and say there were far too many churches, seemed +to them; _but_ the burning down of racing establishments. _That_ was +Bolshevism, indeed, they would have said, had they been able to +project their minds five years ahead. Being only in 1913 they called +Vivie by the enfeebled term of Anarchist, the word applied by +_Punch_ to Mr. John Burns in 1888 for wishing to address the Public +in Trafalgar Square. + +So it was arranged that Vivie's trial should take place in October +at the Old Bailey and that a judge should try her who was quite +certain he had never stayed at a Warren Hotel; who would be careful +to keep great names out of court; and restrain counsel from dragging +anything in to the simple and provable charge of arson which might +give Miss Warren a chance to say something those beastly newspapers +would get hold of. + +I am not going to give you the full story of Vivie's trial. I have +got so much else to say about her, before I can leave her in a quiet +backwater of middle age, that this must be a story which has gaps to +be filled up by the reader's imagination. You can, besides, read for +yourself elsewhere--for this is a thinly veiled chronicle of real +events--how she was charged, and how the magistrate refused bail +though it was offered in large amounts by Rossiter and Praed, the +latter with Mrs. Warren's purse behind him. How she was first lodged +in Brixton Prison and at length appeared in the dock at the Old +Bailey before a Court that might have been set for a Cinematograph. +There was a judge with a full-bottomed wig, a scarlet and ermine +vesture, there was a jury of prosperous shopkeepers, retired half +pay officers, a hotelkeeper or two, a journalist, an architect, and +a builder. A very celebrated King's Counsel prosecuted--the Cabinet +thus said to the Racing World "We've done _all_ we can"--and Vivie +defended herself with the aid of a clever solicitor whom Bertie +Adams had found for her. + +From the very moment of her arrest, Bertie Adams had refused--even +though they took away his salary--to think of anything but Vivie's +trial and how she might issue from it triumphant. He must have lost +a stone in weight. He was ready to give evidence himself, though he +was really quite unconcerned with the offences for which Vivie was +on trial; prepared to swear to anything; to swear he arranged the +conflagrations; that Miss Warren had really been in London when +witness had seen her purchasing explosives at Newmarket (both +stories were equally untrue). Bertie Adams only asked to be allowed +to perjure himself to the tune of Five Years' penal servitude if +that would set Vivie free. Yet at a word or a look from her he +became manageable. + +The Attorney General of course began something like this. "I am +very anxious to impress on you," he said, addressing the jury, "that +from the moment we begin to deal with the facts of this case, all +questions of whether a woman is entitled to the Parliamentary +franchise, whether she should have the same right of franchise as a +man are matters which in no sense are involved in the trial of this +issue. All you have to decide is whether the prisoner in the dock +committed or procured and assisted others to commit the very serious +acts of arson of which she is accused..." + +Nevertheless he or the hounds he kept in leash, the lesser counsel, +sought subtly to prejudice the jury's mind against Vivie by dragging +in her parentage and the eccentricities of her own career. As +thus:-- + +_Counsel for the prosecution_: "We have in you the mainspring of +this rebellious movement..." + +_Vivie_: "Have you?" + +_Counsel_: "Are you not the daughter of the notorious Mrs. Warren?" + +_Vivie_: "My mother's name certainly is Warren. For what is she +notorious?" + +_Counsel_: "Well--er--for being associated abroad with--er--a +certain type of hotel synonymous with a disorderly house--" + +_Vivie_: "Indeed? Have you tried them? My mother has managed the +hotels of an English Company abroad till she retired altogether from +the management some years ago. It was a Company in which Sir George +Crofts--" + +_Judge_, interposing: "We need not go into that--I think the Counsel +for the prosecution is not entitled to ask such questions." + +_Counsel_: "I submit, Me Lud, that it is germane to my case that the +prisoner's upbringing might have--" + +_Vivie_: "I am quite willing to give you all the information I +possess as to my upbringing. My mother who has resided mainly at +Brussels for many years preferred that I should be educated in +England. I was placed at well-known boarding schools till I was old +enough to enter Newnham. I passed as a Third Wrangler at Cambridge +and then joined the firm of Fraser and Warren. As you seem so +interested in my relations, I might inform you that I have not many. +My mother's sister, Mrs. Burstall, the widow of Canon Burstall, +resides at Winchester; my grandfather, Lieutenant Warren, was killed +in the Crimea--or more likely died of neglected wounds owing to the +shamefully misconducted, man-conducted Army Medical Service of those +days. My mother in early days was better known as Miss Kate +Vavasour. She was the intimate friend of a celebrated barrister +who--" + +_Judge_, intervening: "We have had enough of this discursive +evidence which really does not bear on the case at all. I must ask +the prosecuting counsel to keep to the point and not waste the time +of the court." + +_Prosecuting Counsel_ (who has meantime received three or four +energetic notes from his leader, begging him to remember his +instructions and not to be an ass): "Very good M'Lud." (To Vivie) +"Do you know Mr. David Vavasour Williams, a barrister?" + +_Vivie_: "I have heard of him." + +_Counsel_: "Have you spoken of him as your cousin?" + +_Vivie_: "I may have done. He is closely related to me." + +_Counsel_: "I put it to you that _you_ are David Williams, or at any +rate that you have posed as being that person." + +_Judge_, interposing with a weary air: "_Who_ is David Williams?" + +_Counsel_: "Well--er--a member of the Bar--well known in the +criminal courts--Shillito case--" + +_Judge_: "Really? I had not heard of him. Proceed." + +_Counsel_ (to Vivie): "You heard my questions?" + +_Vivie_: "I have never posed as being other than what I am, a woman +much interested in claiming the Parliamentary Franchise for Women; +and I do not see what these questions have to do with my indictment, +which is a charge of arson. You introduce all manner of irrelevant +matter--" + +_Counsel_: "You decline to answer my questions?" + +(Vivie turns her head away.) + +_Judge_, to Counsel: "I do not quite see the bearing of your +enquiries." + +_Counsel_: "Why, Me Lud, it is common talk that prisoner is the +well-known barrister, David Vavasour Williams; that in this disguise +and as a pretended man she passed the necessary examinations and was +called to the Bar, and--" + +_Judge_: "But what bearing has this on the present charge, which is +one of Arson?" + +_Counsel_: "I was endeavouring by my examination to show that the +prisoner has often and successfully passed as a man, and that the +evidence of witnesses who affirmed that they only saw _a young man_ +at or near the scene of these incendiary fires, that a young man, +supposed to have set the stables alight, once dashed in and rescued +two horses which had been overlooked, might well have been the +prisoner who is alleged to have committed most of these crimes in +man's apparel--" + +_Judge_: "I see." (To Vivie) "Are you David Vavasour Williams?" + +_Vivie_: "Obviously not, my Lord. My name is Vivien Warren and my +sex is feminine." + +_Judge_, to Counsel: "Well, proceed with your examination--" (But +here the Leader of the prosecution takes up the rôle and brushes his +junior on one side). + + +Vivie of course was convicted. The case was plain from the start, as +to her guilt in having organized and carried out the destruction of +several great Racing establishments or buildings connected with +racing. There had been no loss of life, but great damage to +property--perhaps two or three hundred thousand pounds, and a +serious interruption in the racing fixtures of the late summer and +early autumn. The jury took note that on one occasion the prisoner +in the guise of a young man had personally carried out the rescue of +two endangered horses; and added a faintly-worded recommendation to +mercy, seeing that the incentive to the crimes was political +passion. + +But the judge put this on one side. In passing sentence he said: "It +is my duty, Vivien Warren, to inflict what in my opinion is a +suitable and adequate sentence for the crime of which you have been +most properly convicted. I must point out to you that whatever may +have been your motives, your deeds have been truly wicked because +they have exposed hard-working people who had done you no wrong to +the danger of being burnt, maimed or killed, or at the least to the +loss of employment. You have destroyed property of great value +belonging to persons in no way concerned with the granting or +withholding of the rights you claim for women. In addition, you have +for some time past been luring other people--young men and young +women--to the committal of crime as your assistants or associates. I +cannot regard your case as having any political justification or +standing, or as being susceptible of any mitigation by the +recommendation of the jury. The least sentence I can pass upon you +is a sentence of Three years' penal servitude." + +Vivie took the blow without flinching and merely bowed to the judge. +There was the usual "sensation in Court." Women's voices were heard +saying "Shame!" "Shame!" "Three cheers for Vivie Warren," and a +slightly ironical "Three cheers for David Whatyoumay-callem +Williams." The judge uttered the usual unavailing threats of prison +for those who profaned the majesty of the Court; Honoria, Rossiter, +Praed (in tears), Bertie Adams, looking white and ill, all the noted +Suffragists who were out of prison for the time being and could +obtain admittance to the Court, crowded round Vivie before the +wardresses led her away from the dock, assuring her they would move +Heaven and Earth, first to get the sentence mitigated, and secondly +to have her removed to the First Division. + +But on both points the Government proved adamant. An interview +between Rossiter and the Home Secretary nearly ended in a personal +assault. All the officials concerned refused to see Honoria, who +almost had a serious quarrel with her husband, the latter averring +that Vivien Warren had only got what she asked for. Vivien was +therefore taken to Holloway to serve her sentence as a common felon. + + +"Didn't she hunger-strike to force the Authorities to accord her +better prison treatment?" She did. But she was very soon, and with +extra business-like brutality, forcibly fed; and that and the +previous starvation made her so ill that she spent weeks in +hospital. Here it was very plainly hinted to her that between +hunger-striking and forcible feeding she might very soon die; and +that in her case the Government were prepared to stand the racket. +Moreover she heard by some intended channel about this time that +scores of imprisoned suffragists were hunger-striking to secure her +better treatment and were endangering if not their lives at any rate +their future health and validity. So she conveyed them an earnest +message--and was granted facilities to do so--imploring them to do +nothing more on her account; adding that she was resolved to go +through with her imprisonment; it might teach her valuable lessons. + +The Governor of the prison fortunately was a humane and reasonable +man--unlike some of the Home Office or Scotland Yard officials. He +read the newspapers and reviews of the day and was aware who Vivie +Warren was. He probably made no unfair difference in her case from +any other, but so far as he could mould and bend the prison +discipline and rules it was his practice not to use a razor for +stone-chipping or a cold-chisel for shaving. He therefore put Vivie +to tasks co-ordinated with her ability and the deftness of her +hands--such as book-binding. She had of course to wear prison +dress--a thing of no importance in her eyes--and her cell was like +all the cells in that and other British prisons previous to the +newest reforms--dark, rather damp, cruelly cold in winter, and +disagreeable in smell; badly ventilated and oppressively ugly. But +it was at any rate clean. She had not the cockroaches, bugs, fleas +and lice that the earliest Suffragists of 1908 had to complain of. +Five years of outspoken protests on the part of educated, +delicate-minded women had wrought great reforms in our prisons--the +need for which till then was not apparent to the perceptions of +Visiting Magistrates. + +The food was better, the wardresses were less harsh, the chaplains a +little more endurable, though still the worst feature in the prison +personnel, with their unreasoning Bibliolatry, their contemptuous +patronage, their lack of Christian pity--Christ had never spoken to +_them_, Vivie often thought--their snobbishness. The chaplain of her +imprisonment became quite chummy when he learnt that she had been a +Third Wrangler at Cambridge, knew Lady Feenix, and had lived in +Kensington prior to committing the offences for which she was +imprisoned. However this helped to alleviate her dreary seclusion +from the world as he occasionally dropped fragments of news as to +what was going on outside, and he got her books through the prison +library that were not evangelical pap. + +One day when she had been in prison two months she had a great +surprise--a visit from her mother. Strictly speaking this was only +to last fifteen minutes, but the wardress who had conceived a liking +for her intimated that she wouldn't look too closely at her watch. +Honoria came too--with Mrs. Warren--but after kissing her friend and +leaving some beautiful flowers (which the wardress took away at once +with pretended sternness and brought back in a vase after the +visitors had left) Honoria with glistening eyes and a smile that was +all tremulous sweetness, intimated that Mrs. Warren had so much to +say that she, Honoria, was not going to stay more than that _one_ +minute. + +Mrs. Warren had indeed so much to impart in the precious half hour +that it was one long gabbled monologue. + +"When I heard you'd got into trouble, my darling, I _was_ put about. +Some'ow I'd never thought of your being pinched and acshally sent to +prison. It was in the Belgian papers, and a German friend of +mine--Oh! quite proper I assure you! He's a Secretary of their +legation at Brussels and ages ago he used to be one of my clients +when the Hotel had a different name. Well, he was full of it. +'Madam,' 'e said, 'your English women are splendid. They're going to +bring about a revolt, you'll see, and that, an' your Ulster movement +'ll give you a lot of trouble next year.' + +"Well: I wrote at once to Praddy, givin' him an order on my London +agents, 'case he should want cash for your defence. I offered to +come over meself, but he replied that for the present I'd better +keep away. Soon as I heard you was sent to prison I come over and +went straight to Praddy. My! He _was_ good. He made me put up with +him, knowin' I wanted to live quiet and keep away from the old set. +'There's my parlour-maid,' 'e says, 'sort of housekeeper to +me--good sort too, but wants a bit of yumourin.' You'll fix it up +with her,' he says. And I jolly soon did. I give her to begin with +a good tip, an' I said: 'Look 'ere, my gal--she's forty-five I +should think--Every one's in trouble _some_ time or other in their +lives, and _I'm_ in trouble now, if you like. And the day's come,' I +said, 'when all women ought to stick by one another.' 'Pears she's +always had the highest opinion of you; very different, you was, from +_some_ of 'er master's friends. I says 'Right-o; then _now_ we know +where we are.' + +"Praddy soon got into touch with the authorities, but for some +reason they wouldn't pass on a letter or let me come and see you, +till to-day. But here I am, and here I'm goin' to stay--with +Praddy--till they lets you out. I'm told that if you be'ave yourself +they'll let me send you a passel of food, once a week. Think of +that! My! won't I find some goodies, and paté de foie gras. I'll +come here once a month, as often as they'll let me, till I gets you +out. 'N after that, we'll leave this 'orrid, 'yprocritical old +country and live 'appily at my Villa, or travel a bit. Fortunately +I've plenty of money. Bein' over here I've bin rearranging my +investments a bit. Fact is, I 'ad a bit of a scare this autumn. They +say in Belgium, War is comin'. Talkin' to this same German--He's +always pumpin' me about the Suffragettes so I occasionally put a +question or so to 'im, 'e knowing 'what's, what' in the money +market--'e says to me just before I come over, 'What's your English +proverb, Madame Varennes, about 'avin' all your eggs in one basket? +Is all your money in English and Belgian securities?' I says +'Chiefly Belgian and German and Austrian, and some I've giv' to me +daughter to do as she likes with.' 'Well' 'e says, 'friend speakin' +to friend, you've giv' me several good tips this autumn,' he says. +'Now I'll give you one in return. Sell out your Austrian +investments--there's goin' to be a big war in the Balkans next year +and as like as not _we_ shall be here in Belgium. Sell out most of +yer Belgian stock and put all your money into German funds. They'll +be safe there, come what may.' I thanked 'im; but I haven't quite +done what he suggested. I'm takin' all my money out of Austrian +things and all but Ten thousand out of Belgian funds. I'm leavin' my +German stock as it was, but I'm puttin' Forty thousand pounds--I've +got Sixty thousand altogether--all yours some day--into Canadian +Pacifics and Royal Mail--people 'll always want steamships--and New +Zealand Five per cents. I don't like the look of things in old +England nor yet on the Continent. Now me time's up. Keep up your +heart, old girl; it'll soon be over, specially if you don't play the +fool and rile the prison people or start that silly hunger strike +and ruin your digestion. G--good-bye; and G-God b-bless you, my +darlin'" added Mrs. Warren relapsing into tears and the conventional +prayer, of common humanity, which always hopes there _may_ be a +pitiful Deity, somewhere in Cosmos. + +Going out into the corridor, she attempted to press a sovereign into +the wardress's hard palm. The latter indignantly repudiated the gift +and said if Mrs. Warren tried on such a thing again, her visits +would be stopped. But her indignation was very brief. She was +carrying Honoria's flowers at the time, and as she put them on the +slab in Vivie's cell, she remarked that say what you liked, there +was nothing to come up to a mother, give her a mother rather than a +man any day. + +On other occasions Bertie Adams came with Mrs. Warren; even +Professor Rossiter, who also went to see Vivie's mother at Praed's, +and conceived a whimsical liking for the unrepentant, outspoken old +lady. + +Vivie's health gradually recovered from the effects of the forcible +feeding; the prison fare, supplemented by the weekly parcels, suited +her digestion; the peace of the prison life and the regular work at +interesting trades soothed her nerves. She enjoyed the respite from +the worries of her complicated toilettes, the perplexity of what to +wear and how to wear it; in short, she was finding a spell of prison +life quite bearable, except for the cold and the attentions of the +chaplain. She gathered from the fortnightly letter which her +industry and good conduct allowed her to receive, and to answer, +that unwearied efforts were being made by her friends outside to +shorten her sentence. Mrs. Warren through Bertie Adams had found out +the cases where jockeys and stable lads had lost their effects in +the fires or explosions which had followed Vivie's visits to their +employers' premises, and had made good their losses. As to their +employers, they had all been heavily insured, and recovered the +value of their buildings; and as to the insurance companies _they_ +had all been so enriched by Mr. Lloyd George's legislation that the +one-or-two hundred thousand pounds they had lost, through Vivie's +revenge for the seemingly-fruitless death of Emily Wilding Davison, +was a bagatelle not worth bothering about. But all attempts to get +the Home Office to reconsider Miss Warren's case or to shorten her +imprisonment (except by the abridgment that could be earned in the +prison itself) were unavailing. So long as the Cabinet held Vivie +under lock and key, the Suffrage movement--they foolishly +believed--was hamstrung. + +So the months went by, and Vivie almost lost count of time and +almost became content to wait. Till War was declared on August 4th, +1914. A few days afterwards followed the amnesty to Suffragist +prisoners. From this the Home Office strove at first to exclude +Vivien Warren on the plea that her crime was an ordinary crime and +admitted of no political justification; but at this the wrath of +Rossiter and the indignation of the W.S.P.U. became so alarming that +the agitated Secretary of State--not at all sure how we were going +to come out of the War--gave way, and an order was signed for +Vivie's release on the 11th of August; on the understanding that she +would immediately proceed abroad; an understanding to which she +would not subscribe but which in her slowly-formed hatred of the +British Government she resolved to carry out. + +Mrs. Warren, assured by Praed and Rossiter that Vivie's release was +a mere matter of a few days, had left for Brussels on the 5th of +August. If--as was then hoped--the French and Belgian armies would +suffice to keep the Germans at bay on the frontier of Belgium, she +would prefer to resume her life there in the Villa de Beau-séjour. +If however Belgium was going to be invaded it was better she should +secure her property as far as possible, transfer her funds, and make +her way somehow to a safe part of France. Vivie would join her as +soon as she could leave the prison. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +BRUSSELS AND THE WAR: 1914 + + +The Lilacs in Victoria Road had been disposed of--through +Honoria--as soon as possible, after the sentence of Three years' +imprisonment had been pronounced on Vivie; and the faithful +Suffragette maid had passed into Honoria's employ at Petworth, a +fact that was not fully understood by Colonel Armstrong until he had +become General Armstrong and perfectly indifferent to the Suffrage +agitation which had by that time attained its end. So when Vivie had +come out of prison and had promised to write to all the wardresses +and to meet them some day on non-professional ground; had found +Rossiter waiting for her in his motor and Honoria in hers; had +thanked them both for their never-to-be-forgotten kindness, and had +insisted on walking away in her rather creased and rumpled clothes +of the previous year with Bertie Adams; she sought the hospitality +of Praddy at Hans Place. The parlour-maid received her sumptuously, +and Praddy's eyes watered with senile tears. + +But Vivie would have no melancholy. "Oh Praddy! If you only knew. +It's worth going to prison to know the joy of coming out of it! I'm +so happy at thinking this is my last day in England for ever so +long. When the War is over, I think I shall settle in Switzerland +with mother--or perhaps all three of us--you with us, I mean--in +Italy. We'll only come back here when the Women have got the Vote. +Now to-night you shall take me to the theatre--or rather I'll take +_you_. I've thought it all out beforehand, and Bertie Adams has +secured the seats. It's _The Chocolate Soldier_ at the Adelphi, the +only war piece they had ready; there are two stalls for us and +Bertie and his wife are going to the Dress Circle. My Cook's ticket +is taken for Brussels and I leave to-morrow by the Ostende route." + +"To-morrow" was the 12th of August, and Dora was not yet in being to +interpose every possible obstacle in the way of the civilian +traveller. Down to the Battle of the Marne in September, 1914, very +little difficulty was made about crossing the Channel, especially +off the main Dover-Calais route. + +So in the radiant noon of that August day Vivie looked her last on +the brown-white promontories, cliffs and grey castle of Dover, +scarcely troubling about any anticipations one way or the other, and +certainly having no prevision she would not recross the Channel for +four years and four months, and not see Dover again for five or six +years. + +British war vessels were off the port and inside it. But there was +not much excitement or crowding on the Ostende steamer or any of +those sensational precautions against being torpedoed or mined, +which soon afterwards oppressed the spirits of cross-Channel +passengers. Vessels arriving from Belgium were full of passengers of +the superior refugee class, American and British tourists, or +wealthy people who though they preferred living abroad had begun to +think that the Continent just now was not very healthy and England +the securest refuge for those who wished to be comfortable. + +Vivie being a good sailor and economical by nature, never thought of +securing a cabin for the four or five hours' sea-journey. She sat on +the upper deck with her scanty luggage round her. A nice-looking +young man who had a cabin the door of which he locked, was walking +up and down on the level deck and scrutinizing her discreetly. And +when at last they worked their way backwards into Ostende--the +harbour was full of vessels, chiefly mine-dredgers and torpedo +boats--she noticed the obsequiousness of the steamer people and how +he left the ship before any one else. + +She followed soon afterwards, having little encumbrances in the way +of luggage; but she observed that he just showed a glimpse of some +paper and was allowed to walk straight through the Douane with +unexamined luggage, and so, on to the Brussels train. + +But she herself had little difficulty. She put her hand luggage--she +had no other--into a first-class compartment, and having an hour and +a half to wait walked out to look at Ostende. + +Summer tourists were still there; the Casino was full of people, the +shops were doing an active trade; the restaurants were crowded with +English, Americans, Belgians taking tea, chocolate, or liqueurs at +little tables and creating a babel of talk. Newspapers were being +sold everywhere by ragamuffin boys who shouted their head-lines in +French, Flemish, and quite understandable English. A fort or two at +Liége had fallen, but it was of no consequence. General Léman could +hold out indefinitely, and the mere fact that German soldiers had +entered the town of Liége counted for nothing. Belgium had virtually +won the war by holding up the immense German army. France was +overrunning Alsace, Russia was invading East Prussia and also +sending uncountable thousands of soldiers, via Archangel, to +England, whence they were being despatched to Calais for the relief +of Belgium. + +"It looks," thought Vivie, after glancing at the _Indépendance +Belge_, "As though Belgium were going to be extremely interesting +during the next few weeks; I may be privileged to witness--from a +safe distance--another Waterloo." + +Then she returned to the train which in her absence had been so +crowded with soldiers and civilian passengers that she had great +difficulty in finding her place and seating herself. The young man +whom she had seen pacing the deck of the steamer approached her and +said: "There is more room in my compartment; in fact I have +selfishly got one all to myself. Won't you share it?" + +She thanked him and moved in there with her suit case and rugs. +When the train had started and she had parried one or two polite +enquiries as to place and ventilation, she said: "I think I ought to +tell you who I am, in case you would not like to be seen speaking to +me--I imagine you are in diplomacy, as I noticed you went through +with a Red passport.--I am Vivien Warren, just out of prison, and an +outlaw, more or less." + +"'The outlaws of to-day are the in-laws of to-morrow,' as the +English barrister said when he married the Boer general's daughter. +I have thought I recognized you. I have heard you speak at Lady +Maud's and also at Lady Feenix's Suffrage parties. My name is Hawk. +I suppose you've been in prison for some Suffrage offence? So has my +aunt, for the matter of that." + +_Vivie_: "Yes, but in her case they only sentenced her to the First +Division; whereas _I_ have been doing nine months' hard." + +_Hawk_: "What was your crime?" + +_Vivie_: "I admit nothing, it is always wisest. But I was accused of +burning down Mr. ----'s racing stables--and other things..." + +_Hawk_: "_That_ beast. Well, I suppose it was very wrong. Can't +quite make up my mind about militancy, one way or the other. But +here we are up against the biggest war in history, and such +peccadilloes as yours sink into insignificance. By the bye, my aunt +was amnestied and so I suppose were you?" + +_Vivie_: "Yes, but not so handsomely. I was requested to go away +from England for a time, so here I am, about to join my mother in +Brussels--or in a little country place near Brussels." + +_Hawk_: "Well, I've been Secretary of Legation there. I'm just going +back to--to--well I'm just going back." + +At Bruges they were told that the train would not leave for Ghent +and Brussels for another two hours--some mobilization delay; so Hawk +proposed they should go and see the Memlings and then have some +dinner. + + +"Don't you think they're perfectly wonderful?"--_àpropos_ of the +pictures in the Hospital of St. Jean. + +_Vivie_: "It depends on what you mean by 'wonderful.' If you admire +the fidelity of the reproduction in colour and texture of the +Flemish costumes of the fifteenth century, I agree with you. It is +also interesting to see the revelations of their domestic +architecture and furniture of that time, and the types of domestic +dog, cow and horse. But if you admire them as being true pictures of +life in Palestine in the time of Christ, or in the Rhineland of the +fifth century, then I think they--like most Old Masters--are +perfectly rotten. And have you ever remarked another thing about all +paintings prior to the seventeenth century: how _plain_, how _ugly_ +all the people are? You never see a single good-looking man or +woman. Do let's go and have that dinner you spoke of. I've got a +prison appetite." + + +At Ghent another delay and a few uneasy rumours. The Court was said +to be removing from Brussels and establishing itself at Antwerp. The +train at last drew into the main station at Brussels half an hour +after midnight. Vivie's mother was nowhere to be seen. She had +evidently gone back to the Villa Beau-séjour while she could. It was +too late for any tram in the direction of Tervueren. There were no +taxis owing to the drivers being called up. Leaving most of her +luggage at the cloak-room--it took her about three-quarters of an +hour even to approach the receiving counter--Vivie walked across to +the _Palace Hotel_ and asked the night porter to get her a room. But +every room was occupied, they said--Americans, British, wealthy war +refugees from southern Belgium, military officers of the Allies. The +only concession made to her--for the porter could hold out little +hope of any neighbouring hotel having an empty room--was to allow +her to sit and sleep in one of the comfortable basket chairs in the +long atrium. At six o'clock a compassionate waiter who knew the name +of Mrs. Warren gave her daughter some coffee and milk and a +_brioche_. At seven she managed to get her luggage taken to one of +the trams at the corner of the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique. The +train service to Tervueren was suspended--and at the Porte de Namur +she would be transferred to the No. 45 tram which would take her out +to Tervueren. + +Even at an early hour Brussels seemed crowded and as the tram passed +along the handsome boulevards the shops were being opened and +tourists were on their way to Waterloo in brakes. Every one seemed +to think in mid-August, 1914, that Germany was destined to receive +her _coup-de-grâce_ on the field of Waterloo. It would be so +appropriate. And no one--at any rate of those who spoke their +thoughts aloud--seemed to consider that Brussels was menaced. + +Leaving her luggage at the tram terminus, Vivie sped on foot through +forest roads, where the dew still glistened, to the Villa +Beau-séjour. Mrs. Warren was not yet dressed, but was rapturous in +her greeting. Her chauffeur had been called up, so the auto could +not go out, but a farm cart would be sent for the luggage. + +"I believe, mother, I'm going to enjoy myself enormously," said +Vivie as she sat in the verandah in the morning sunshine, making a +delicious _petit déjeuner_ out of fresh rolls, the butter of the +farm, a few slices of sausage, and a big cup of frothing chocolate +topped with whipped cream. The scene that spread before her was +idyllic, from a bucolic point of view. The beech woods of Tervueren +shut out any horizon of town activity; black and white cows were +being driven out to pasture, a flock of geese with necks raised +vertically waggled sedately along their own chosen path, a little +disturbed and querulous over the arrival of a stranger; turkey hens +and their half-grown poults and a swelling, strutting turkey cock, a +peacock that had already lost nearly all his tail and therefore +declined combat with the turkey and was, moreover, an isolated +bachelor; guinea-fowls scratching and running about alternately; and +plump cocks and hens of mixed breed covered most of the ground in +the adjacent farm yard and the turf of an apple orchard, where the +fruit was already reddening under the August sun. Pigeons circled +against the sky with the distinct musical notes struck out by their +wings, or cooed and cooed round the dove cots. The dairy women of +the farm laughed and sang and called out to one another in Flemish +and Wallon rough chaff about their men-folk who were called to the +Colours. There was nothing suggestive here of any coming tragedy. + +This was the morning of the 13th of August. For three more days +Vivie lived deliriously, isolated from the world. She took new books +to the shade of the forest, and a rug on which she could repose, and +read there with avidity, read also all the newspapers her mother had +brought over from England, tried to master the events which had so +rapidly and irresistibly plunged Europe into War. Were the Germans +to blame, she asked herself? Of course they were, technically, in +invading Belgium and in forcing this war on France. But were they +not being surrounded by a hostile Alliance? Was not this hostility +on the part of Servia towards Austria stimulated by Russia in order +to forestal the Central Powers by a Russian occupation of +Constantinople? Why should the Russian Empire be allowed to stretch +for nine millions of square miles over half Asia, much of Persia, +and now claim to control the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor? If +England might claim a large section of Persia as her sphere of +influence, and Egypt likewise and a fourth part of Africa, much of +Arabia, and Cyprus in the Mediterranean, why might not Germany and +Austria expect to have their little spheres of influence in the +Balkans, in Asia Minor, in Mesopotamia? We had helped France to +Morocco and Italy to Tripoli; why should we bother about Servia? It +might be unkind, but then were we not unkind towards her father's +country, Ireland? Were we very tender towards national independence +in Egypt, in Persia? + +Yet this brutal invasion of France, this unprovoked attack on Liège +were ugly things. France had shown no disposition to egg Servia on +against Austria, and Sir Edward Grey in the last days of June--she +now learnt for the first time, for she had seen no newspapers in +prison, where it is part of the dehumanizing policy of the Home +Office to prevent their entry, or the dissemination of any +information about current events--Sir Edward Grey had clearly shown +Great Britain did not approve of Servian intrigues in Bosnia. Well: +let the best man win. Germany was just as likely to give the Vote to +her women as was Britain. The Germans were first in Music and in +Science. She for her part didn't wish to become a German subject, +but once the War was over she would willingly naturalize herself +Belgian or Swiss. + +And the War must soon be over. Europe as a whole could not allow +this devastation of resources. America would intervene. Already the +Germans realized their gigantic blunder in starting the attack. +Their men were said to be--she read--much less brave than people had +expected. The mighty German Armies had been held up for ten days by +a puny Belgian force and the forts of Liège and Namur. There would +presently be an armistice and Germany would have to make peace with +perhaps the cession to France of Metz as a _solatium_, while Germany +was given a little bit more of Africa, and Austria got nothing.... + +Meantime the Villa Beau-séjour seemed after Holloway Prison a +paradise upon earth. Why quarrel with her fate? Why not drop +politics and take up philosophy? She felt herself capable of writing +a Universal History which would be far truer if more cynical than +any previous attempt to show civilized man the route he had followed +and the martyrdom he had undergone. + +On the 17th of August she took the tram into Brussels. It seemed +however as if it would never get there, and when she reached the +Porte de Namur she was too impatient to wait for the connection. She +could not find any gendarme, but at a superior-looking flower-shop +she obtained the address of the British Legation. + +She asked at the lodge for Mr. Hawk; but there was only a Belgian +coachman in charge, and he told her the Minister and his staff had +followed the Court to Antwerp. Mr. Hawk had only left that morning. +"What a nuisance," said Vivie to herself. "I might have found out +from him whether there is any truth in the rumours that are flying +about Tervueren." + +These rumours were to the effect that the Germans had captured all +the forts of Liège and their brave defender, General Léman; that +they were in Namur and were advancing on Louvain. "I wonder what we +had better do?" pondered Vivie. + +In her bewilderment she took the bold step of calling at the Hotel +de Ville, gave her name and nationality, and asked the advice of +the municipal employé who saw her as to what course she and her +mother had better pursue: leave Tervueren and seek a lodging in +Brussels; or retreat as far as Ghent or Bruges or even Holland? The +clerk reassured her. The Germans had certainly occupied the +south-east of Belgium, but dared not push as far to the west and +north as Brussels. They risked otherwise being nipped between the +Belgian army of Antwerp and the British force marching on Mons.... +He directed her attention to the last _communiqué_ of the Ministry +of War: "La situation n'a jamais été meilleure. Bruxelles, à l'abri +d'un coup de main, est défendue par vingt mille gardes civiques +armés d'un excellent fusil," etc. + +Vivie returned therefore a trifle reassured. At the same time she +and her mother spent some hours in packing up and posting valuable +securities to London, via Ostende, in packing for deposit in the +strong rooms of a Brussels bank Mrs. Warren's jewellery and plate. +The tram service from Tervueren had ceased to run. So they induced a +neighbour to drive them into Brussels in a chaise: a slow and +wearisome journey under a broiling sun. Arrived in Brussels they +found the town in consternation. Placarded on the walls was a notice +signed by the Burgomaster--the celebrated Adolphe Max--informing the +Bruxellois that in spite of the resistances of the Belgian army it +was to be feared the enemy might soon be in occupation of Brussels. +In such an event he adjured the citizens to avoid all panic, to give +no legitimate cause of offence to the Germans, to renounce any idea +of resorting to arms! The Germans on their part were bound +by the laws of war to respect private property, the lives of +non-combatants, the honour of women, and the exercise of religion. + +Vivie and her mother found the banks closed and likewise the railway +station. They now had but one thought: to get back as quickly as +possible to Villa Beau-séjour, and fortunately for their dry-mouthed +impatience their farmer friend was of the same mind. Along the +Tervueren road they met numbers of peasant refugees in carts and on +foot, driving cattle, geese or pigs towards the capital; urging on +the tugging dogs with small carts and barrows loaded with personal +effects, trade-goods, farm produce, or crying children. All of them +had a distraught, haggard appearance and were constantly looking +behind them. From the east, indeed, came the distant sounds of +explosions and intermittent rifle firing. Mrs. Warren was blanched +with fear, her cheeks a dull peach colour. She questioned the people +in French and Flemish, but they only answered vaguely in raucous +voices: "Les Allemands!" "De Duitscher." + +One old woman, however, had flung herself down by the roadside, +while her patient dog lay between the shafts of the little cart till +she should be pleased to go on. She was more communicative and told +Mrs. Warren a tale too horrible to be believed, about husband, son, +son-in-law all killed, daughter violated and killed too, cottage in +flames, livestock driven off. Recovering from her exhaustion she +rose and shook herself. "I've no business to be here. I should be +with _them_. I was just packing this cart for the market when it +happened. Why did I go away? Oh for shame! I'll go back--to +_them_..." And forthwith she turned the dog round and trudged the +same way they were going. + +At last they came opposite the courtyard of the Villa and saw the +lawn and gravel sweep full of helmeted soldiers in green-grey +uniform, their bodies hung with equipment--bags, great-coats, +rolled-up blankets, trench spades, cartridge bandoliers. Vivie +jumped down quickly, said to her mother in a low firm voice: "Leave +everything to me. Say as little as possible." Then to the farmer: +"Nous vous remercions infiniment. Vous aurez mille choses à faire +chez vous, je n'en doute. Nous réglerons notre compte tout-à +l'heure.... Pour le moment, adieu." She clutched the handbags of +valuables, slung them somehow on her left arm, while with her other +she piloted the nearly swooning Mrs. Warren into the court. + +They were at once stopped by a non-commissioned officer who asked +them in abrupt, scarcely understandable German what they wanted. +Vivie guessing his meaning said in English--she scarcely knew any +German: "This is our house. We have been absent in Brussels. We want +to see the officer in command." The soldier knew no English, but +likewise guessed at their meaning. He ordered them to wait where +they were. Presently he came out of the Villa and said the Herr +Oberst would see them. Vivie led her mother into the gay little +hall--how pleasant and cool it had looked in the early morning! It +was now full of surly-looking soldiers. Without hesitating she took +a chair from one soldier and placed her mother in it. "You rest +there a moment, dearest, while I go in and see the officer in +command." The corporal she had first spoken with beckoned her into +the pretty sitting-room at the back where they had had their early +breakfast that morning. + +Here she saw seated at a table consulting plans of Brussels and +other papers a tall, handsome man of early middle age, who might +indeed have passed for a young man, had he not looked very tired and +care-worn and exhibited a bald patch at the back of his head, +rendered the more apparent because the brown-gold curls round it +were dank with perspiration. He rose to his feet, clicked his heels +together and saluted. "An English young lady, I am told, rather ... +a ... surprise ... on ... the ... outskirts ... of Brussels..." (His +English was excellent, if rather staccato and spaced.) "It ... is +... not ... usual ... for ... Englishwomen ... to ... be owners ... +of chateaux ... in Belgium. But I ... hear ... it ... is ... your +mother ... who is the owner ... from long time, and you are her +daughter newly arrived from England? Nicht wahr? Sie verstehen nicht +Deutsch, gnädiges Fraulein?" + +"No," said Vivie, "I don't speak much German, and fortunately you +speak such perfect English that it is not necessary." + +"I have stayed some time in England," was the reply; "I was once +military attaché in London. Both your voice and your face seem--what +should one say? Familiar to me. Are you of London?" + +"Yes, I suppose I may say I am a Londoner, though I believe I was +born in Brussels. But I don't want to beat about the bush: there is +so much to be said and explained, and all this time I am very +anxious about my mother. She is in the hall outside--feels a little +faint I think with shock--might she--might I?"-- + +"But my dear Miss--?" + +"Miss Warren--" + +"My dear Miss Warren, of course. We are enemies--pour le moment--but +we Germans are not monsters. ("What about those peasants' stories?" +said Vivie to herself.) Your lady mother must come in here and take +that fauteuil. Then we can talk better at our ease." + +Vivie got up and brought her mother in. + +"Now you shall tell me everything--is it not so? Better to be quite +frank. À la guerre comme à la guerre. First, you are English?" + +"Yes. My mother is Mrs. Warren, I am her daughter, Vivien Warren. My +mother has lived many years in Belgium, though also in other places, +in Germany, Austria and France. Of late, however, she has lived +entirely here. This place belongs to her." + +"And you?" + +"I? I have just been released from prison in London, Holloway +Prison..." + +"My dear young lady! You are surely joking--what do you say? You +pull my leg? But no; I see! You have been Suffragette. Aha! _I_ +understand you are _the_ Miss Warren, the Miss Warren who make the +English Government afraid, nicht wahr? You set fire to Houses of +Parliament..." + +_Vivie_ (interrupting): "No, no! Only to some racing stables..." + +_Oberst_: "I understand. But you are rebel?" + +_Vivie_: "I hate the present British Government--the most +hypocritical, the most..." + +_Oberst_: "But we are in agreement, you and I! This is splendid. But +now we must be praktisch. We are at war, though we hope here for a +peaceful occupation of Belgium. You will see how the Flämisch--Ah, +you say the Fleming?--the Flemish part of Belgium will receive us +with such pleasure. It is only with the Wälsch, the Wallon part we +disagree.... But there is so much for me to do--we must talk of all +these things some other time. Let us begin our business. I must +first introduce myself. I am Oberst Gottlieb von Giesselin of the +Saxon Army. (He rose, clicked heels, bowed, and sat down.) I see you +have three heavy bags you look at often. What is it?" + +_Vivie_ (taking courage): "It is my mother's jewellery and some +plate. She fears--" + +_Von G._: "I understand! We have a dr-r-eadful reputation, we poor +Germans! The French stuff you up with lies. But we are better than +you think. You shall take them in two--three days to Brussels when +things are quiet, and put them in some bank. Here I fear I must +stay. I must intrude myself on your hospitality. But better for you +perhaps if I stay here at present. I will put a few of my men in +your--your--buildings. Most of them shall go with their officers to +Tervueren for billet." (Turning to Mrs. Warren.) "Madam, you must +cheer up. I foresee your daughter and I will be great friends. Let +us now look through the rooms and see what disposition we can make. +I think I will have to take this room for my writing, for my work. I +see you have telephone here. _Gut_!" + +Leaving Mrs. Warren still seated, but a little less stertorous in +breathing, a little reassured, Vivie and Oberst von Giesselin then +went over the Villa, apportioning the rooms. The Colonel and his +orderly would be lodged in two of the bedrooms. Vivie and her mother +would share Mrs. Warren's large bedroom and retain the salon for +their exclusive occupation. They would use the dining-room in common +with their guest. + +Vivie looking out of the windows occasionally, as they passed from +room to room, saw the remainder of the soldiery strolling off to be +lodged at their nearest neighbour's, the farmer who had driven them +in to Brussels that morning. There were perhaps thirty, accompanying +a young lieutenant. How would he find room for them, poor man? They +were more fortunate in being asked only to lodge six or seven in +addition to the Colonel's orderly and soldier-clerk. Before sunset, +the Villa Beau-séjour was clear of soldiers, except the few that had +gone to the barn and the outhouses. The morning room had been fitted +up with a typewriter at which the military clerk sat tapping. The +Colonel's personal luggage had been placed in his bedroom. A soldier +was even sweeping up all traces of the invasion of armed men and +making everything tidy. It all seemed like a horrid dream that was +going to end up happily after all. Presently Vivie would wake up +completely and there would even be no Oberst, no orderly; only the +peaceful life of the farm that was going on yesterday. Here a sound +of angry voices interrupted her musings. The cows returning by +themselves from the pasture were being intercepted by soldiers who +were trying to secure them. Vivie in her indignation ran out and +ordered the soldiers off, in English. To her surprise they obeyed +silently, but as they sauntered away to their quarters she was +saddened at seeing them carrying the bodies of most of the turkeys +and fowls and even the corpse of the poor tailless peacock. They had +waited for sundown to rob the hen-roosts. + +Very much disillusioned she ran to the morning room and burst in on +the Colonel's dictation to his clerk. "Excuse me, but if you don't +keep your soldiers in better order you will have very little to eat +whilst you are here. They are killing and carrying off all our +poultry." + +The Colonel flushed a little at the peremptory way in which she +spoke, but without replying went out and shouted a lot of orders in +German. His orderly summoned soldiers from the barn and together +they drove the cows into the cow-sheds. All the Flemish servants +having disappeared in a panic, the Germans had to milk the cows that +evening; and Vivie, assisted by the orderly, cooked the evening +meal in the kitchen. He was, like his Colonel, a Saxon, a +pleasant-featured, domesticated man, who explained civilly in the +Thuringian dialect--though to Vivie there could be no discrimination +between varieties of High German--that the Sachsen folk were "Eines +gütes leute" and that all would go smoothly in time. + +Nevertheless the next morning when she could take stock she found +nearly all the poultry except the pigeons had disappeared; and most +of the apples, ripe and unripe, had vanished from the orchard trees. +The female servants of the farm, however, came back; and finding no +violence was offered took up their work again. Two days afterwards, +von Giesselin sent Vivie into Brussels in his motor, with his +orderly to escort her, so that she might deposit her valuables at a +bank. She found Brussels, suburbs and city alike, swarming with +grey-uniformed soldiers, most of whom looked tired and despondent. +Those who were on the march, thinking Vivie must be the wife of some +German officer of high rank, struck up a dismal chant from dry +throats with a refrain of "Gloria, Viktoria, Hoch! Deutschland, +Hoch!" At the bank the Belgian officials received her with +deference. Apart from being the daughter of the well-to-do Mrs. +Warren, she was English, and seemed to impose respect even on the +Germans. They took over her valuables, made out a receipt, and +cashed a fairly large cheque in ready money. Vivie then ventured to +ask the bank clerk who had seen to her business if he had any news. +Looking cautiously round, he said the rumours going through the town +were that the Queen of Holland, enraged that her Prince Consort +should have facilitated the crossing of Limburg by German armies, +had shot him dead with a revolver; that the Crown Prince of Germany, +despairing of a successful end of the War, had committed suicide at +his father's feet; that the American Consul General in Brussels--to +whom, by the bye, Vivie ought to report herself and her mother, in +order to come under his protection--had notified General Sixt von +Arnim, commanding the army in Brussels, that, _unless he vacated the +Belgian capital immediately_, England would bombard Hamburg and the +United States would declare war on the Kaiser. Alluring stories like +these flitted through despairing Brussels during the first two +months of German occupation, though Vivie, in her solitude at +Tervueren, seldom heard them. + +After her business at the bank she walked about the town. No one +took any notice of her or annoyed her in any way. The restaurants +seemed crowded with Belgians as well as Germans, and the Belgians +did not seem to have lost their appetites. The Palace Hotel had +become a German officers' club. On all the public buildings the +German Imperial flag hung alongside the Belgian. Only a few of the +trams were running. Yet you could still buy, without much difficulty +at the kiosques, Belgian and even French and British newspapers. +From these she gathered that the German forces were in imminent +peril between the Belgian Antwerp army on the north and the British +army advancing from the south; and that in the plains of Alsace the +French had given the first public exhibition of the new "Turpin" +explosive. The results had been _foudroyant_ ... and simple. +Complete regiments of German soldiers had been destroyed in _one +minute_. It seemed curious, she thought, that with such an arm as +this the French command did not at once come irresistibly to the +rescue of Brussels.... + +However, it was four o'clock, and there was her friend the enemy's +automobile drawn up outside the bank, awaiting her. She got in, and +the soldier chauffeur whirled her away to the Villa Beau-séjour, +beyond Tervueren. + +On her return she found her mother prostrate with bad news. Their +nearest neighbour, Farmer Oudekens who had driven them into Brussels +the preceding day had been executed in his own orchard only an hour +ago. It seemed that the lieutenant in charge of the soldiers +billeted there had disappeared in the night, leaving his uniform and +watch and chain behind him. The farmer's story was that in the night +the lieutenant had appeared in his room with a revolver and had +threatened to shoot him unless he produced a suit of civilian +clothes. Thus coerced he had given him his eldest son's Sunday +clothes left behind when the said son went off to join the Belgian +army. The lieutenant, grateful for the assistance, had given him as +a present his watch and chain. + +On the other hand the German non-commissioned officers insisted +their lieutenant had been made away with in the night. The farmer's +allegation that he had deserted (as in fact he had) only enhanced +his crime. The finding of the court after a very summary trial was +"guilty," and despite the frantic appeals of the wife, reinforced +later on by Mrs. Warren, the farmer had been taken out and shot. + +The evening meal consequently was one of strained relations. Colonel +von Giesselin came to supper punctually and was very spruce in +appearance. But he was gravely polite and uncommunicative. And after +dessert the two ladies asked permission to retire. They lay long +awake afterwards, debating in whispers what terror might be in store +for them. Mrs. Warren cried a good deal and lamented futilely her +indolent languor of a few days previously. _Why_ had she not, while +there was yet time, cleared out of Brussels, gone to Holland, and +thence regained England with Vivie, and from England the south of +France? Vivie, more stoical, pointed out it was no use crying over +lost opportunities. Here they were, and they must sharpen their wits +to get away at the first opportunity. Perhaps the American Consul +might help them? + +The next morning, however, their guest, who had insensibly turned +host, told Vivie the tram service to Brussels, like the train +service, was suspended indefinitely, and that he feared they must +resign themselves to staying where they were. Under his protection +they had nothing to fear. He was sorry the soldiers had helped +themselves so freely to the livestock; but everything had now +settled down. Henceforth they would be sure of something to eat, as +he himself had got to be fed. And all he asked of them was their +agreeable society. + +Two months went by of this strange life. Two months, in which Vivie +only saw German newspapers--which she read with the aid of von +Giesselin. Their contents filled her with despair. They made very +little of the Marne rebuff, much of the capture of Antwerp and +Ostende, and the occupation of all Belgium (as they put it). Vivie +noted that the German Emperor's heart had bled for the punishment +inflicted on Louvain. (She wondered how that strange personality, +her father, had fared in the destruction of monastic buildings.) But +she had then no true idea of what had taken place, and the +far-reaching harm this crime had done to the German reputation. She +noted that the German Press expressed disappointment that the cause +of Germany, the crusade against Albion, had received no support from +the Irish Nationalists, or from the "revolting" women, the +Suffragettes, who had been so cruelly maltreated by the +administration of Asquith and Sir Grey. + +This point was discussed by the Colonel, but Vivie found herself +speaking as a patriot. How _could_ the Germans expect British women +to turn against their own country in its hour of danger? + +"Then you would not," said von Giesselin, "consent to write some +letters to your friends, if I said I could have them sent safely to +their destination?--only letters," he added hastily, seeing her +nostrils quiver and a look come into her eyes--"to ask your Suffrage +friends to bring pressure to bear on their Government to bring this +d-r-r-eadful War to a just peace. That is all we ask." But Vivie +said "with all her own private grudge against the present ministry +she felt _au fond_ she was _British_; she must range herself in time +of war with her own people." + +Mrs. Warren went much farther. She was not very voluble nowadays. +The German occupation of her villa had given her a mental and +physical shock from which she never recovered. She often sat quite +silent and rather huddled at meal times and looked the old woman +now. In such a conversation as this she roused herself and her voice +took an aggressive tone. "My daughter write to her friends to ask +them to obstruct the government at such a time as this? _Never!_ I'd +disown her if she did, I'd repudiate her! She may have had her own +turn-up with 'em. I was quite with her there. But that, so to +speak, was only a domestic quarrel. We're British all through, and +don't you forget it--sir--(she added deprecatingly): British _all +through_ and we're goin' to beat Germany yet, _you'll_ see. The +British navy never _has_ been licked nor won't be, this time." + +Colonel von Giesselin did not insist. He seemed depressed himself at +times, and far from elated at the victories announced in his own +newspapers. He would in the dreary autumn evenings show them the +photographs of his wife--a sweet-looking woman--and his two +solid-looking, handsome children, and talk with rapture of his home +life. Why, indeed, was there this War! His heart like his Emperor's +bled for these unhappy Belgians. But it was all due to the +Macchiavellian policy of "Sir Grey and Asquiss." If Germany had not +felt herself surrounded and barred from all future expansion of +trade and influence she would not have felt forced to attack France +and invade Belgium. Why, see! All the time they were talking, +barbarous Russia, egged on by England, was ravaging East Prussia! + +Then, in other moods, he would lament the war and the policy of +Prussia. How he had loved England in the days when he was military +attaché there. He had once wanted to marry an Englishwoman, a Miss +Fraser, a so handsome daughter of a Court Physician. + +"Why, that must have been Honoria, my former partner," said Vivie, +finding an intense joy in this link of memory. And she told much of +her history to the sentimental Colonel, who was conceiving for her a +sincere friendship and camaraderie. They opened up other veins of +memory, talked of Lady Feenix, of the musical parties at the Parrys, +of Emily Daymond's playing, of this, that and the other hostess, of +such-and-such an actress or singer. + +The Colonel of course was often absent all day on military duties. +He advised Vivie strongly on such occasions not to go far from Mrs. +Warren's little domain. "I am obliged to remind you, dear young +lady, that you and your mother are my prisoners in a sense. Many bad +things are going on--things we cannot help in war--outside this +quiet place..." + +In November, however, there was a change of scene, which in many +ways came to Vivie and her mother with a sense of great relief. +Colonel von Giesselin told them one morning he had been appointed +Secretary to the German Governor of Brussels, and must reside in the +town not far from the Rue de la Loi. He proposed that the ladies +should move into Brussels likewise; in fact he delicately insisted +on it. Their pleasant relations could thus continue--perhaps--who +knows?--to the end of this War, "to that peace which will make us +friends once more?" It would in any case be most unsafe if, without +his protection, they continued to reside at this secluded farm, on +the edge of the great woods. In fact it could not be thought of, and +another officer was coming here in his place with a considerable +suite. Eventually compensation would be paid to Mrs. Warren for any +damage done to her property. + +The two women readily agreed. In the curtailment of their movements +and the absence of normal means of communication their life at Villa +Beau-séjour was belying its name. Their supply of money was coming +to an end; attempts must be made to regularize that position by +drawing on Mrs. Warren's German investments and the capital she +still had in Belgian stock--if that were negotiable at all. + +Where should they go? Mrs. Warren still had some lien on the Hotel +Édouard-Sept (the name, out of deference to the Germans, had been +changed to Hotel Impérial). With the influence of the Government +Secretary behind her she might turn out some of its occupants and +regain the use of the old "appartement." This would accommodate +Vivie too. And there was no reason why their friend should not place +his own lodging and office at the same hotel, which was situated +conveniently on the Rue Royale not far from the Governor's residence +in the Rue de la Loi. + +So this plan was carried out. And in December, 1914, Mrs. Warren had +some brief flicker of happiness once more, and even Vivie felt the +nightmare had lifted a little. It was life again. Residence at the +Villa Beau-séjour had almost seemed an entombment of the living. +Here, in the heart of Brussels, at any rate, you got some news every +day, even if much of it was false. The food supply was more certain, +there were 700,000 people all about you. True, the streets were very +badly lit at night and fuel was scarce and dear. But you were in +contact with people. + +In January, Vivie tried to get into touch with the American +Legation, not only to send news of their condition to England but to +ascertain whether permission might not be obtained for them to leave +Belgium for Holland. But this last plea was said by the American +representative to be unsustainable. For various reasons, the German +Government would not permit it, and he was afraid neither Vivie nor +her mother would get enough backing from the British authorities to +strengthen the American demand. She must stop on in Brussels till +the War came to an end. + +"But how are we to live?" asked Vivie, with a catch in her throat. +"Our supply of Belgian money is coming to an end. My mother has +considerable funds invested in England. These she can't touch. She +has other sums in German securities, but soon after the War they +stopped sending her the interest on the plea that she was an +'enemy.' As to the money we have in Belgium, the bank in Brussels +can tell me nothing. What are we to do?" The rather cold-mannered +American diplomatist--it was one of the Secretaries of Legation and +he knew all about Mrs. Warren's past, and regarded Vivie as an +outlaw--said he would try to communicate with her friends in England +and see if through the American Relief organization, funds could be +transmitted for their maintenance. She gave him the addresses of +Rossiter, Praed, and her mother's London bankers. + +Vivie now tried to settle down to a life of usefulness. To increase +their resources she gave lessons in English to Belgians and even to +German officers. She offered herself to various groups of Belgian +ladies who had taken up such charities as the Germans permitted. She +also asked to be taken on as a Red Cross helper. But in all these +directions she had many snubs to meet and little encouragement. +Scandal had been busy with her name--the unhappy reputation of her +mother, the peculiar circumstances under which she had left England, +the two or three months shut up at Tervueren with Colonel von +Giesselin, and the very protection he now accorded her and her +mother at the Hotel Impérial. She felt herself looked upon almost as +a pariah, except among the poor of Brussels in the Quartier des +Marolles. Here she was only regarded as a kind Englishwoman, +unwearied in her efforts to alleviate suffering, mental and bodily. + + +And meantime, silence, a wall of silence as regarded +England--England which she was beginning to look upon as the +paradise from which she had been chased. Not a word had come through +from Rossiter, from Honoria, Bertie Adams, or any of her Suffrage +friends. I can supply briefly what she did not know. + +Rossiter at the very outbreak of War had offered his services as one +deeply versed in anatomy and in physiology to the Army Medical +Service, and especially to a great person at the War Office; but had +been told quite cavalierly that they had no need of him. As he +persisted, he had been asked--in the hope that it might get rid of +him--to go over to the United States in company with a writer of +comic stories, a retired actor and a music-hall singer, and lecture +on the causes of the War in the hope of bringing America in. This he +had declined to do, and being rich and happening to know personally +General Armstrong (Honoria's husband) he had been allowed to +accompany him to the vicinity of the front and there put his +theories of grafting flesh and bone to the test; with the ultimate +results that his work became of enormous beneficial importance and +he was given rank in the R.A.M.C. Honoria, racked with anxiety about +her dear "Army," and very sad as to Vivie's disappearance, slaved at +War work as much as her children's demands on her permitted; or even +put her children on one side to help the sick and wounded. Vivie's +Suffrage friends forgot she had ever existed and turned their +attention to propaganda, to recruiting for the Voluntary Army which +our ministers still hoped might suffice to win the War, to the +making of munitions, or aeroplane parts, to land work and to any +other work which might help their country in its need. + +And Bertie Adams? + +When he realized that his beloved and revered Miss Warren was shut +off from escape in Belgium, could not be heard of, could not be got +at and rescued, he went nearly off his nut.... He reviewed during a +succession of sleepless nights what course he might best pursue. His +age was about thirty-two. He might of course enlist in the army. But +though very patriotic, his allegiance lay first at the feet of Vivie +Warren. If he entered the army, he might be sent anywhere but to the +Belgian frontier; and even if he got near Belgium he could not dart +off to rescue Vivie without becoming a deserter. So he came speedily +to the conclusion that the most promising career he could adopt, +having regard to his position in life and lack of resources, was to +volunteer for foreign service under the Y.M.C.A., and express the +strongest possible wish to be employed as near Belgium as was +practicable. So that by the end of September, 1914, Bertie was +serving out cocoa and biscuits, writing paper and cigarettes, hot +coffee and sausages and cups of bovril to exhausted or resting +soldiers in the huts of the Y.M.C.A., near Ypres. Alternating with +these services, he was, like other Y.M.C.A. men in the same district +and at the same time, acting as stretcher bearer to bring in the +wounded, as amateur chaplain with the dying, as amateur surgeon with +the wounded, as secretary to some distraught officer in high command +whose clerks had all been killed; and in any other capacity if +called upon. But always with the stedfast hope and purpose that he +might somehow reach and rescue Vivie Warren. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE GERMANS IN BRUSSELS: 1915-1916 + + +In the early spring of 1915, Vivie, anxious not to see her mother in +utter penury, and despairing of any effective assistance from the +Americans (very much prejudiced against her for the reasons already +mentioned), took her mother's German and Belgian securities of a +face value amounting to about £18,000 and sold them at her Belgian +bank for a hundred thousand francs (£4,000) in Belgian or German +bank notes. She consulted no one, except her mother. Who was there +to consult? She did not like to confide too much to Colonel von +Giesselin, a little too prone in any case to "protect" them. But as +she argued with Mrs. Warren, what else were they to do in their +cruel situation? If the Allies were eventually victorious, Mrs. +Warren could return to England. There at least she had in safe +investments £40,000, ample for the remainder of their lives. If +Germany lost the War, the German securities nominally worth two +hundred thousand marks might become simply waste paper; even now +they were only computed by the bank at a purchase value of about one +fifth what they had stood at before the War. If Germany were +victorious or agreed to a compromise peace, her mother's shares in +Belgian companies might be unsaleable. Better to secure now a lump +sum of four thousand pounds in bank notes that would be legal +currency, at any rate as long as the German occupation lasted. And +as one never knew what might happen, it was safer still to have all +this money (equivalent to a hundred thousand francs), in their own +keeping. They could live even in war time, on such a sum as this +for four, perhaps five years, as they would be very economical and +Vivie would try to earn all she could by teaching. It was useless to +hope they would be able to return to Villa Beau-séjour so long as +the German occupation lasted, or during that time receive a penny in +compensation for the sequestration of the property. + +The notes for the hundred thousand francs therefore were carefully +concealed in Mrs. Warren's bedroom at the Hotel Impérial and Vivie +for a few months afterwards felt slightly easier in her mind as to +the immediate future; for, as a further resource, there were also +the jewels and plate at the bank. + +They dared hope for nothing from Villa Beau-séjour. Von Giesselin, +after more entreaty than Vivie cared to make, had allowed them with +a special pass and his orderly as escort to go in a military motor +to the Villa in the month of April in order that they might bring +away the rest of their clothes and personal effects of an easily +transportable nature. But the visit was a heart-breaking +disappointment. Their reception was surly; the place was little else +than a barrack of disorderly soldiers and insolent officers. Any +search for clothes or books was a mockery. Nothing was to be found +in the chests of drawers that belonged to them; only stale food and +unnameable horrors or military equipment articles. The garden was +trampled out of recognition. There had been a beautiful vine in the +greenhouse. It was still there, but the first foliage of spring hung +withered and russet coloured. The soldiers, grinning when Vivie +noticed this, pointed to the base of the far spreading branches. It +had been sawn through, and much of the glass of the greenhouse +deliberately smashed. + +On their way back, Mrs. Warren, who was constantly in tears, +descried waiting by the side of the road the widow of their +farmer-neighbour, Madame Oudekens. She asked the orderly that they +might stop and greet her. She approached. Mrs. Warren got out of the +car so that she might more privately talk to her in Flemish. Since +her husband's execution, the woman said, she had had to become the +mistress of the sergeant-major who resided with her as the only +means, seemingly, of saving her one remaining young son from exile +in Germany and her daughters from unbearably brutal treatment; +though she added, "As to their virtue, _that_ has long since +vanished; all I ask is that they be not half-killed whenever the +soldiers get drunk. Oh Madame! If you could only say a word to that +Colonel with whom you are living?" + +Mrs. Warren dared not translate this last sentence to Vivie, for +fear her daughter forced her at all costs to leave the Hotel +Impérial. Where, if she did, were they to go? + +The winter of 1914 had witnessed an appalling degree of +frightfulness in eastern Belgium, the Wallon or French-speaking part +of the country more especially. The Germans seemed to bear a special +grudge against this region, regarding it as doggedly opposed to +absorption into a Greater Germany; whereas they hoped the Flemish +half of the country would receive them as fellow Teutons and even as +deliverers from their former French oppressors. Thousands of old men +and youths, of women and children in the provinces south of the +Meuse had been shot in cold blood; village after village had been +burnt. Scenes of nearly equal horror had taken place between +Brussels and Antwerp, especially around Malines. Von Bissing's +arrival as Governor General was soon signalized by those dreaded Red +Placards on the walls of Brussels, announcing the verdicts of +courts-martial, the condemnation to death of men and women who had +contravened some military regulation. + +Yet in spite of this, life went on in Brussels once more--by von +Bissing's stern command--as though the country were not under the +heel of the invader. The theatres opened their doors; the cinemas +had continuous performances; there was Grand Opera; there were +exhibitions of toys, or pictures, and charitable bazaars. Ten days +after the fall of Antwerp _char-à-bancs_ packed with Belgians drove +out of Brussels to visit the scenes of the battles and those +shattered forts, so fatuously deemed impregnable, so feeble in their +resistance to German artillery. + +Vivie, even had she wished to do so, could not have joined the +sight-seers. As the subjects of an enemy power she and her mother +had had early in January to register themselves at the Kommandantur +and were there warned that without a special passport they might not +pass beyond the limits of Brussels and its suburbs. Except in the +matter of the farewell visit to the farm at Tervueren, Vivie was +reluctant to ask for any such favour from von Giesselin, though she +was curious to see the condition of Louvain and to ascertain whether +her father still inhabited the monastic house of his order--she had +an idea that he was away in Germany in connection with his schemes +for raising the Irish against the British Government. Von Giesselin +however was becoming sentimentally inclined towards her and she saw +no more of him than was necessary to maintain polite relations. Frau +von Giesselin, for various reasons of health or children, could not +join him at Brussels as so many German wives had done with other of +the high functionaries (to the great embitterment of Brussels +society); and there were times when von Giesselin's protestations of +his loneliness alarmed her. + +The King of Saxony had paid a visit to Brussels in the late autumn +of 1914 and had invited this Colonel of his Army to a fastuous +banquet given at the Palace Hotel. The King--whom the still defiant +Brussels Press, especially that unkillable _La Libre Belgique_, +reminded ironically of his domestic infelicity, by enquiring +whether he had brought Signor Toselli to conduct his orchestra--was +gratified that a subject of his should be performing the important +duties of Secretary to the Brussels Government, and his notice of +von Giesselin gave the latter considerable prestige, for a time; an +influence which he certainly exercised as far as he was able in +softening the edicts and the intolerable desire to annoy and +exasperate on the part of the Prussian Governors of province and +kingdom. He even interceded at times for unfortunate British or +French subjects, stranded in Brussels, and sometimes asked Vivie +about fellow-countrymen who sought this intervention. + +This caused her complicated annoyances. Seeing there was some hope +in interesting her in their cases, these English governesses, +tutors, clerks, tailors' assistants and cutters, music-hall singers, +grooms appealed to Vivie to support their petitions. They paid her +or her mother a kind of base court, on the tacit assumption that +she--Vivie--had placed Colonel von Giesselin under special +obligations. If in rare instances, out of sheer pity, she took up a +case and von Giesselin granted the petition or had it done in a +higher quarter, his action was clearly a personal favour to her; and +the very petitioners went away, with the ingratitude common in such +cases, and spread the news of Vivie's privileged position at the +Hotel Impérial. It was not surprising therefore that in the small +circles of influential British or American people in Brussels she +was viewed with suspicion or contempt. She supported this odious +position at the Hotel Impérial as long as possible, in the hope that +Colonel von Giesselin when he had realized the impossibility of +using herself or her mother in any kind of intrigue against the +British Government would do what the American Consul General +professed himself unable or unwilling to do: obtain for them +passports to proceed to Holland. + +Von Giesselin, from December, 1914, took up among other duties that +of Press Censor and officer in charge of Publicity. After the +occupation of Brussels and the fall of Antwerp, the "patriotic" +Belgian Press had withdrawn itself to France and England or had +stopped publication. Its newspapers had been invited to continue +their functions as organs of news-distribution and public opinion, +but of course under the German Censorate and martial law. As one +editor said to a polite German official: "If I were to continue the +publication of my paper under such conditions, my staff and I would +all be shot in a week." + +But the large towns of Belgium could not be left without a Press. +Public Opinion must be guided, and might very well be guided in a +direction favourable to German policy. The German Government had +already introduced the German hour into Belgian time, the German +coinage, the German police system, and German music; but it had no +intention, seemingly, of forcing the German speech on the old +dominions of the House of Burgundy. On the contrary, in their tenure +of Belgium or of North-east France, the Germans seemed desirous of +showing how well they wrote the French language, how ready they were +under a German regime to give it a new literature. Whether or not +they enlisted a few recreants, or made use of Alsatians or +Lorrainers to help them, it is never-the-less remarkable how free as +a rule their written and printed French was from mistakes or German +idioms; though their spoken French always remained Alsatian. It +suffered from that extraordinary misplacement and exchange in the +upper and lower consonants which has distinguished the German +people--that nation of great philologists--since the death of the +Roman Empire. German officers still said "Barton, die fous brie," +instead of "Pardon, je vous prie" (if they were polite), but they +were quite able to contribute _articles de fond_ to a pretended +national Belgian press. Besides there was a sufficiency of Belgian +"Sans-Patries" ready to come to their assistance: Belgian nationals +of German-Jewish or Dutch-Jewish descent, who in the present +generation had become Catholic Christians as it ranged them with the +best people. They were worthy and wealthy Belgian citizens, but +presumably would not have deeply regretted a change in the political +destinies of Belgium, provided international finance was not +adversely affected. There were also a few Belgian Socialists--a few, +but enough--who took posts under the German provisional government, +on the plea that until you could be purely socialistic it did not +matter under what flag you drew your salary. + +Von Giesselin was most benevolently intentioned, in reality a +kind-hearted man, a sentimentalist. Not quite prepared to go to the +stake himself in place of any other victim of Prussian cruelty, but +ready to make some effort to soften hardships and reduce sentences. +(There were others like him--Saxon, Thuringian, Hanoverian, +Württembergisch--or the German occupation of Belgium might have +ended in a vast Sicilian Vespers, a boiling-over of a maddened +people reckless at last of whether they died or not, so long as they +slew their oppressors.) He hoped through the pieces played at the +theatres and through his censored, subsidized press to bring the +Belgians round to a reasonable frame of mind, to a toleration of +existence under the German Empire. But his efforts brought down on +him the unsparing ridicule of the Parisian-minded Bruxellois. They +were prompt to detect his attempts to modify the text of French +operettas so that these, while delighting the lovers of light music, +need not at the same time excite a military spirit or convey the +least allusion of an impertinent or contemptuous kind towards the +Central Powers. Thus the couplets + + "Dans le service de l'Autriche + Le militaire n'est pas riche" + +were changed to + + "Dans le service de la Suisse + Le militaire n'est pas riche." + +These passionate lines of a political exile: + + "A l'étranger un pacte impie + Vendait mon sang, liait ma foi, + Mais à present, o ma patrie + Je pourrai done mourir pour toi!" + +were rendered harmless as + + "A l'étranger, en réverie + Chaque jour je pleurais sur toi + Mais à present, o ma patrie + Je penserai sans cesse à toi!" + +The pleasure he took in recasting this doggerel--calling in Vivie to +help him as presumably a good scholar in French--got on her nerves, +and she was hard put to it to keep her temper. + +Sometimes he proposed that she should take a hand, even become a +salaried subordinate; compose articles for his subsidized paper, +"_L'Ami de l'Ordre_" (nicknamed "L'Ami de L'Ordure" by the +Belgians), "_La Belgique_," "_Le Bruxellois_," "_Vers la Paix_." +He would allow her a very free hand, so long as she did not attack +the Germans or their allies or put in any false news about military +or naval successes of the foes of Central Europe. She might, for +instance, dilate on the cruel manner in which the Woman Suffragists +had been persecuted in England; give a description of forcible +feeding or of police ferocity on Black Friday. + +Vivie declined any such propositions. "I have told you already, and +often," she said, "I am deeply grateful for all you have done for +my mother and me. We might have been in a far more uncomfortable +position but for your kindness. But I cannot in any way associate +myself with the German policy here. I cannot pretend for a moment to +condone what you do in this country. If I were a Belgian woman I +should probably have been shot long ago for assassinating some +Prussian official--I can hardly see von Bissing pass in his +automobile, as it is, without wishing I had a bomb. But there it is. +It is no business of mine. As I can't get away, as you won't let us +go out of the country--Switzerland, Holland--and as I don't want to +go mad by brooding, find something for me to do that will occupy my +thoughts: and yet not implicate me with the Germans. Can't I go and +help every day in your hospitals? If you'll continue your kindness +to mother--and believe me"--she broke off--"I _do_ appreciate what +you have done for us. I shall _never_ forget I have met _one true +German gentleman_--if you'll continue to be as kind as before, you +will simply give instructions that mother is in no way disturbed or +annoyed. There are Germans staying here who are odious beyond +belief. If they meet my mother outside her room they ask her +insulting questions--whether she can give them the addresses +of--of--light women ... you know the sort of thing. I have always +been outspoken with you. All I ask is that mother shall be allowed +to stay in her own room while I am out, and have her meals served +there. But the hotel people are beginning to make a fuss about the +trouble, the lack of waiters. A word from you--And then if my mind +was at ease about her I could go out and do some good with the poor +people. They are getting very restive in the Marolles quarter--the +shocking bad bread, the lack of fuel--Most of all I should like to +help in the hospitals. My own countrywomen will not have me in +theirs. They suspect me of being a spy in German pay. Besides, your +von Bissing has ordered now that all Belgian, British, and French +wounded shall be taken to the German Red Cross. Well: if you want +to be kind, give me an introduction there. Surely it would be bare +humanity on your part to let an Englishwoman be with some of those +poor lads who are sorely wounded, dying perhaps"--she broke +down--"The other day I followed two of the motor ambulances along +the Boulevard d'Anspach. Blood dripped from them as they passed, and +I could hear some English boy trying to sing 'Tipperary--'" + +"My _tear_ Miss Warren--I will try to do all that you want--You will +not do _anything I_ want, but never mind. I will show you that +Germans can be generous. I will speak about your mother. I am sorry +that there are bad-mannered Germans in the hotel. There are +some--what-you-call 'bounders'--among us, as there are with you. It +is to be regretted. As to our Red Cross hospitals, I know of a +person who can make things easy for you. I will write a letter to my +cousin--like me she is a Saxon and comes from Leipzig--Minna von +Stachelberg. She is but a few months widow, widow of a Saxon +officer, Graf von Stachelberg who was killed at Namur. Oh! it was +very sad; they were but six months married. Afterwards she came here +to work in our Red Cross--I think now she is in charge of a ward..." + +So Vivie found a few months' reprieve from acute sorrow and bitter +humiliation. Gräfin von Stachelberg was as kind in her way as her +cousin the Colonel, but much less sentimental. In fact she was of +that type of New German woman, taken all too little into account by +our Press at the time of the War. There were many like her of the +upper middle class, the professorial class, the lesser nobility to +be found not only in Leipzig but in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfort, +Halle, Bonn, München, Hannover, Bremen, Jena, Stuttgart, +Cologne--nice to look at, extremely modern in education and good +manners, tasteful in dress, speaking English marvellously well, +highly accomplished in music or with some other art, advocates of +the enfranchisement of women. The War came just too soon. Had Heaven +struck down that epilept Emperor and a few of his ministers, had +time been given for the New German Woman to assert herself in +politics, there would have been no invasion of Belgium, no +maltreatment of Servia. Germany would have ranged herself with the +Western powers and Western culture. + +Minna von Stachelberg read her cousin's note and received the worn +and anxious-looking Vivie like a sister ... like a comrade, she +said, in the War for the Vote ... "which we will resume, my dear, as +soon as this dreadful Man's war is over, only we won't fight with +the same weapons." + +But though kind, she was not gushing and she soon told Vivie that in +nursing she was a novice and had much to learn. She introduced her +to the German and Belgian surgeons, and then put her to a series of +entirely menial tasks from which she was to work her way up by +degrees. But if any English soldier were there and wanted sympathy, +she should be called in to his ward ... From that interview Vivie +returned almost happy. + +In the hot summer months she would sometimes be allowed to accompany +Red Cross surgeons and nurses to the station, when convoys of +wounded were expected, if there was likelihood that British soldiers +would be amongst them. These would cheer up at the sound of her +pleasant voice speaking their tongue. Yet she would witness on such +occasions incongruous incidents of German brutality. Once there came +out of the train an English and a French soldier, great friends +evidently. They were only slightly wounded and the English soldier +stretched his limbs cautiously to relieve himself of cramp. At that +moment a German soldier on leave came up and spat in his face. The +Frenchman felled the German with a resounding box on the ear. +Alarums! Excursions! A German officer rushed up to enquire while the +Frenchman was struggling with two colossal German military policemen +and the Englishman was striving to free him. Vivie explained to the +officer what had occurred. He bowed and saluted: seized the +soldier-spitter by the collar and kicked him so frightfully that +Vivie had to implore him to cease. + +Moreover the Red Placards of von Bissing were of increasing +frequency. As a rule Vivie only heard what other people said of +them, and that wasn't very much, for German spies were everywhere, +inviting you to follow them to the dreaded Kommandantur in the Rue +de la Loi--a scene of as much in the way of horror and mental +anguish as the Conciergerie of Paris in the days of the Red Terror. +But some cheek-blanching rumour she had heard on a certain Monday in +October caused her to look next day on her way home at a fresh Red +Placard which had been posted up in a public place. The daylight had +almost faded, but there was a gas lamp which made the notice +legible. It ran: + + CONDAMNATIONS + + Par jugement du 9 Octobre, 1915, le tribunal de campagne a + prononcé les condamnations suivantes pour trahison commise + pendant l'état de guerre (pour avoir fait passer des recrues + à l'ennemi): + + 1° Philippe BAUCQ, architecte à Bruxelles; + + 2° Louise THULIEZ, professeur à Lille; + + 3° Edith CAVELL, directrice d'un institut médical à + Bruxelles; + + 4° Louis SEVERIN, pharmacien à Bruxelles; + + 5° Comtesse JEANNE DE BELLEVILLE, à Montignies. + + À LA PEINE DE MORT + + * * * * * + +Vivie then went on to read with eyes that could hardly take in the +words a list of other names of men and women condemned to long terms +of hard labour for the same offence--assisting young Belgians to +leave the Belgium that was under German occupation. And further, +the information that of the five condemned to death, _Philip Bauck_ +and _Edith Cavell_ had already been _executed_. + + * * * * * + +The monsters! Oh that von Bissing. How gladly she would die if she +might first have the pleasure of killing him! That pompous old man +of seventy-one with the blotched face, who had issued orders that +wherever he passed in his magnificent motor he was to be saluted +with Eastern servility, who boasted of his "tender heart," so that +he issued placards about this time punishing severely all who split +the tongues of finches to make them sing better. Edith Cavell--she +did not pause to consider the fate of patriotic Belgian women--but +Edith Cavell, directress of a nursing home in Brussels, known far +and wide for her goodness of heart. She had held aloof from Vivie, +but was that to be wondered at when there was so much to make her +suspect--living, seemingly, under the protection of a German +official? But the very German nurses and doctors at the Red Cross +hospital had spoken of her having given free treatment in her Home +to Germans who needed immediate operations, and for whom there was +no room in the military hospitals--And for such a trivial offence as +_that_--and to kill her before there could be any appeal for +reconsideration or clemency. Oh _what_ a nation! She would tend +their sick and wounded no more. + +She hurried on up the ascent of the Boulevard of the Botanic Garden +on her way to the Rue Royale. She burst into von Giesselin's office. +He was not there. A clerk looking at her rather closely said that +the Herr Oberst was packing, was going away. Vivie scarcely took in +the meaning of his German phrases. She waited there, her eyes +ablaze, feeling she must tell her former friend and protector what +she thought of his people before she renounced any further +relations with him. + +Presently he entered, his usually rather florid face pale with +intense sorrow or worry, his manner preoccupied. She burst out: +"_Have_ you seen the Red Placard they have just put up?" + +"What about?" he said wearily. + +"The assassination by your Government of Edith Cavell, a crime for +which England--yes, and America--will _never_ forgive you.... From +this moment I--" + +"But have you not heard what has happened to _me_? I am _dismissed_ +from my post as Secretary, I am ordered to rejoin my regiment in +Lorraine--It is very sad about your Miss Cavell. I knew nothing of +it till this morning when I received my own dismissal--And _oh_ my +dear Miss, I fear we shall never meet again." + +"Why are they sending you away?" asked Vivie drily, compelled to +interest herself in his affairs since they so closely affected her +own and her mother's. + +"Because of this," said von Giesselin, nearly in tears, pulling from +a small portfolio a press cutting. "Do you remember a fortnight ago +I told you some one, some Belgian had written a beautiful poem and +sent it to me for one of our newspapers? I showed it to you at the +time and you said--you said 'it was well enough, but it did not seem +to have much point.'" Vivie did remember having glanced very +perfunctorily at some effusion in typewriting which had seemed +unobjectionable piffle. She hadn't cared two straws whether he +accepted it or not, only did not want to be too markedly +indifferent. Now she took it up and still read it through +uncomprehendingly, her thoughts absent with the fate of Miss Cavell. +"Well! what is all the fuss about? I still see nothing in it. It is +just simply the ordinary sentimental flip-flap that a French +versifier can turn out by the yard." + +"It is _far_ worse than that! It is a horrible--what the French +call 'acrostiche,' a deadly insult to our people. And I never saw +it, the Editor never saw it, and you, even, never guessed its real +meaning![1] The original, as you say, was in typewriting, and at the +bottom was the name and address of a very well-known homme de +lettres: and the words: 'Offert à la rédaction de l'Ami de L'Ordre.' +He say now, _never never_ did he send it. It was a forgery. When we +came to understand what it meant all the blame fall on me. I am sent +back to the Army--I shall be killed before Verdun, so good-bye dear +Miss--We have been good friends. Oh this War: this d-r-r-eadful +War--It has spoilt everything. Now we can never be friends with +England again." + + [Footnote 1: I have obtained a copy and give it here as it had an + almost historical importance in the events of the German occupation. + But the reader must interpret its meaning for himself. + + LA GUERRE + + Ma soeur, vous souvient-il qu'aux jours de notre enfance, + En lisant les hauts fails de l'histoire de France, + Remplis d'admiration pour nos frères Gaulois, + Des généraux fameux nous vantions les exploits? + + En nos âmes d'enfants, les seuls noms des victoires + Prenaient un sens mystique evocateur de gloires; + On ne rêvait qu'assauts et combats; a nos yeux + Un général vainqueur etait l'égal des dieux. + + Rien ne semblait ternir l'éclat de ces conquétes. + Les batailles prenaient des allures de fêtes + Et nous ne songions pas qu'aux hurrahs triomphants + Se mêlaient les sanglots des mères, des enfants. + + Ah! nous la connaissons, hélas, l'horrible guerre: + Le fléau qui punit les crimes de la terre, + Le mot qui fait trembler les mères à genoux + Et qui seme le deuil et la mort parmi nous! + + Mais ou sqnt les lauriers que réserve l'Histoire + A celui qui demain forcera la Victoire? + Nul ne les cueillira: les lauriers sont flétris + Seul un cypres s'élève aux torubes de nos fils.] + + + +He gave way to much emotion. Vivie, though still dazed with the +reverberating horror of Edith Cavell's execution, tried to regain +her mind balance and thank him for the kindness he had shown them. +But it was now necessary to see her mother who might also be +undergoing a shock. As she walked up to their bedroom she reflected +that the departure of von Giesselin would have to be followed by +their own exile to some other lodging. They would share in his +disgrace. + +The next morning in fact the Belgian manager of the hotel with many +regrets gave them a month's warning. The hotel would be required for +some undefined need of the German Government and he had been told no +one could be lodged there who was not furnished with a permit from +the Kommandantur. + +For three weeks Vivie sought in vain for rooms. Every suitable place +was either full or else for reasons not given they were refused. She +was reduced to eating humble pie, to writing once more to Gräfin von +Stachelberg and imparting the dilemma in which they were placed. Did +this kind lady know where a lodging could be obtained? She herself +could put up with any discomfort, but her mother was ill. If she +could help them, Vivie would humbly beg her pardon for her angry +letter of three weeks ago and resume her hospital work. Minna von +Stachelberg made haste to reply that there were some things better +not discussed in writing: if Vivie could come and see her at six one +evening, when she had a slight remission from work-- + +Vivie went. Out of hearing, Gräfin von Stachelberg--who, however, to +facilitate intercourse, begged Vivie to call her "Minna,"--"We may +all be dead, my dear, before long of blood-poisoning, bombs from +your aeroplanes, a rising against us in the Marolles quarter--" said +very plainly what she thought of Edith Cavell's execution. "It makes +me think of Talleyrand--was it not?--who said 'It is a blunder; +worse than a crime' ... these terrible old generals, they know +nothing of the world outside Germany." As to her cousin, Gottlieb +von Giesselin--"Really dear, if in this time of horrors one _dare_ +laugh at anything, I feel--oh it is too funny, but also, too +'schokking,' as we suppose all English women say. Yet of course I am +sad about him, because he is a good, kind man, and I know his wife +will be very very unhappy when she hears--And it means he will die, +for certain. He must risk his life to--to--regain his position, and +he will be shot before Verdun in one of those dreadful assaults." +Then she told Vivie where she might find rooms, where at any rate +she could use her name as a reference. Also: "Stay away at present +and look after your mother. When she is quite comfortably settled, +come back and work with me--here--it is at any rate the only way in +which you can see and help your countrymen." + +One day in November when their notice at the hotel was nearly +expired, Vivie proposed an expedition to her mother. They would walk +slowly--because Mrs. Warren now got easily out of breath--up to the +Jardin Bontanique; Vivie would leave her there in the Palm House. It +was warm; it was little frequented; there were seats and the +Belgians in charge knew Mrs. Warren of old time. Vivie would then go +on along the inner Boulevards by tram and look at some rooms +recommended by Minna von Stachelberg in the Quartier St. Gilles. + +Mrs. Warren did as she was told. Vivie left her seated in one of the +long series of glass houses overlooking Brussels from a terrace, +wherein are assembled many glories of the tropics: palms, dracaenas, +yuccas, aloes, tree-ferns, cycads, screw-pines, and bananas: +promising to be back in an hour's time. + +Somehow as she sat there it seemed to Mrs. Warren it was going for +her to be the last hour of fully conscious life--fully conscious and +yet a curious mingling in it of the past and present. She had sat +here in the middle of the 'seventies with Vivie's father, the young +Irish seminarist, her lover for six months. He had a vague interest +in botany, and during his convalescence after his typhoid fever, +when she was still his nurse, not yet his mistress, she used to +bring him here to rest and to enjoy the aspect of these ferns and +palms. What a strange variety of men she had known. Some she had +loved, more or less; some she had exploited frankly. Some--like +George Crofts and Baxendale Strangeways--she had feared, though in +her manner she had tried to conceal her dread of their violence. +Well! she had taken a lot of money off the rich, but she had never +plundered the poor. Her greatest conquest--and that when she was a +woman of forty--was the monarch of this very country which now lay +crushed under the Kaiser's heel. For a few months he had taken a +whimsical liking to her handsome face, well-preserved figure, and +amusing cockney talk. But he had employed her rather as the mistress +of his menus plaisirs, as his recruiting agent. He had rewarded her +handsomely. Now it was all in the dust: her beautiful Villa +Beau-séjour a befouled barrack for German soldiers. She herself a +homeless woman, repudiated by the respectable British and Americans +more or less interned in this unhappy city. + +Not much more than a year ago she had been one of the most respected +persons in Brussels, with a large income derived from safe +investments. Now all she had for certain was something over three +thousand pounds in bank notes that might turn out next month to be +worthless paper. And was she certain even of them? Had Vivie before +they left the hotel remembered to put some, at least, of this +precious sum on her person? Suppose, whilst they were out, looking +for a fresh dwelling place, the hotel servants or the police raided +her bedroom and found the little hoard of notes? This imagined +danger made her want to cry. They were so friendless now, she in +particular felt so completely deserted. Had she deserved this +punishment by Fate? Was there after all a God who minded much about +the sex foolishnesses and punished you for irregularities--for +having lovers in your youth, for selling your virtue and inducing +other women to sell theirs? Was she going to die soon and was there +a hereafter?' She burst out crying in an abandonment of grief. + +An elderly gardener who had been snipping and sweeping in the next +house came up and vaguely recognized her as a well-known +Bruxelloise, a good-natured lady, a foreigner who, strange to say, +spoke Flemish. "Ach," he said, looking out where he thought lay the +source of her tears, at the dim view of beautiful Brussels through +the steamy glass, "Onze arme, oude Brüssel." Mrs. Warren wept +unrestrainedly. "Madame is ill?" he enquired. Mrs. Warren +nodded--she felt indeed very ill and giddy. He left her and returned +shortly with a small glass of Schnapps. "If Madame is faint--?" She +sipped the cordial and presently felt better. Then they talked of +old times. Madame had kept the Hotel Leopold II in the Rue +Royale? Ah, _now_ he placed her. A _superb_ establishment, always +well-spoken of. Her self-respect returned a little. "Yes," she said, +"never a complaint! I looked after those girls like a mother, indeed +I did. Many a one married well from there." The gardener +corroborated her statement, and added that her _clientèle_ had been +of the most chic. He had a private florist's business of his own and +he had been privileged often to send bouquets to the pensionnaires +of Madame. But Madame was not alone surely in these sad times. Had +he not seen her come here with a handsome English lady who was said +to have been--to have been--fortunately--_au mieux_ with one of the +German officials? + +"_That_ was my daughter," Mrs. Warren informed him with pride.... +"She is a lady who has taken a high degree at an English University. +She has been an important person in the English feminist movement. +When this dreadful war is over, I and my daughter will--" + +At this juncture Vivie entered. "_Mother_, I hope you haven't +missed me, haven't been unwell?" she said, looking rather +questioningly at the little glass of Schnapps, only half of which +had been drunk. + +"Well yes, dear, I have. _Terrible_ low spirits and all swimmy-like. +Thought I was going to faint. But this man here has been so kind +"--her tears flowed afresh--"We've bin talking of old times; he used +to know me before--" + +_Vivie_: "Quite so. But I think, dear, we had better be going back. +I want to talk to you about the new rooms I've seen. Are you equal +to walking? If not perhaps this kind man would try to get us a +cab...?" + +But Mrs. Warren said it was no distance, only round the corner, and +she could well walk. When they got back she would go and lie down. +Vivie, reading her mother's thoughts, pressed a five-franc note into +the gardener's not reluctant palm, and they regained the Rue Royale. + +But just as they were passing through the revolving door of the +Hotel Impérial, a German who had been installed as manager came up +with two soldiers and said explosively: "Heraus! Foutez-nous le +camp! Aout you go! Don't show your face here again!" + +"But," said Vivie, "our notice doesn't expire till the end of this +week...!" + +"Das macht nichts. The rooms are wanted and I won't have you on the +premises. Off you go, or these soldiers shall take you both round to +the Kommandantur." + +"But our luggage? _Surely_ you will let me go up to our room and +pack it--and take it away? We..." + +"Your luggage has been packed and is in the corridor. If you send +round for it, it shall be delivered to your messenger. But you are +not to stop on the premises another minute. You understand?" he +almost shrieked. + +"But--" + +For answer, the soldiers took them by the shoulders and whirled +them through the revolving door on to the pavement, where a crowd +began to collect, as it does in peace or war if you cough twice or +sneeze three times in Brussels. "Englische Hure! Englische +Küpplerin," shouted the soldiers as they retreated and locked the +revolving door. Mrs. Warren turned purple and swayed. Vivie caught +her round the waist with her strong arm.... Thus was Mrs. Warren +ejected from the once homely inn which she had converted by her +energy, management and capital into the second most magnificent +hostelry of Brussels; thus was Vivie expelled from the place of her +birth.... + +Hearing the shouting and seeing the crowd a Belgian gendarme came +up. To him Vivie said, "Si vous êtes Chrétien et pas Allemand--" +"Prenez garde, Madame," he said warningly--"Vous m'aiderez à porter +ma mère à quelqu' endroit ou elle peut se remettre..." + +He assisted her to carry the inert old woman across the street and a +short distance along the opposite pavement. Here, there was a +pleasant, modest-looking tea-shop with the name of Walcker over the +front, and embedded in the plate glass were the words "Tea Rooms." +These of course dated from long before the war, when the best +Chinese tea was only four francs the demi-kilo and the fashion for +afternoon tea had become established in Brussels. Vivie and her +mother had often entered Walcker's shop in happier days for a cup of +tea and delicious forms of home-made pastry. Besides the cakes, +which in pre-war times were of an excellence rarely equalled, they +had been drawn to the pleasant-looking serving woman. She was so +English in appearance, though she only spoke French and Flemish. +Behind the shop was a cosy little room where the more intimate +clients were served with tea; a room with a look-out into a little +square of garden. Thither Mrs. Warren was carried or supported. She +regained consciousness slightly as she was placed on a chair, +opened her eyes, and said "Thank you, my dears." Then her head fell +over to one side and she was dead--seemingly.... + +The _agent de police_ went away to fetch a doctor and to disperse +the crowd of _ketjes_[1] and loafers which had transferred itself +from the hotel to the tea-shop. The shop woman, who was one of those +angels of kindness that turn up unexpectedly in the paths of unhappy +people, called in a stout serving wench from the kitchen, and the +three of them carried Mrs. Warren out of the inner tea-room into the +back premises and a spare bedroom. Here she was laid on the bed, +partially undressed and all available and likely restoratives +applied. + + [Footnote 1: Street urchins of Brussels. How they harassed the + Germans and maddened them by mimicking their military manoeuvres!] + +The doctor when he came pronounced her dead, thought it was probably +an effusion of blood on the brain but couldn't be certain till he +had made an autopsy. + +"What _am_ I to do?" said Vivie thinking aloud.... + +"Why, stay here till all the formalities are over and you can find +rooms elsewhere," said Mme. Trouessart, the owner-servant of the +tea-shop. "I have another spare room. For the moment my locataires +are gone. I know you both very well by sight, you were clients of +ours in the happy days before the War. Madame votre mère was, I +think, the gérante of the Hotel Édouard-Sept when I first came to +manage here. Since then, you have often drunk my tea. Je me nomme +'Trouessart' c'est le nom de mon mari qui est ... qui est--Vous +pouvez diviner où il est, où est à present tout Belge loyal qui peut +servir. Le nom Walcker? C'était le nom de nom père, et de plus est, +c'était un nom Anglais transformé un peu en Flamand. Mon +arrière-grand-père etait soldat Anglais. Il se battait à Waterloo. +For me, I spik no English--or ver' leetle." + +She went on to explain, whilst the doctors occupied themselves with +their gruesome task, and Vivie was being persuaded to take some +nourishment, that her great grandfather had been a soldier servant +who had married a Belgian woman and settled down on the site of this +very shop a hundred years ago. He and his wife had even then +made a specialty of tea for English tourists. She, his great +grand-daughter, had after her marriage to Monsieur Trouessart +carried on the business under the old name--Walker, made to look +Flemish as Walcker. + +Vivie when left alone suddenly thought of the money question. She +remembered then that before going out to look for rooms she had +transferred half the notes from their hiding-place to an inner +pocket. They were still there. But what about her luggage and her +mother's, and the remainder of the money? In her distress she wrote +to Gräfin von Stachelberg. Minna came over from her hospital at half +past six in the evening. By that time the doctor had given the +necessary certificate of the cause of death, and an undertaker had +come on the scene to make his preparations. + +Minna went over to the Hotel Impérial with Vivie. Appearing in her +Red Cross uniform, she was admitted, announced herself as the Gräfin +von Stachelberg, and demanded to know what justification the manager +could offer for his extraordinary brutality towards these English +ladies, the result of which had been the death of the elder lady. +The manager replied that inasmuch as the All Highest himself was to +arrive that very evening to take up his abode at the Hotel Impérial, +the hotel premises had been requisitioned, etc., etc. He still +refused absolutely to allow Vivie to proceed to her room and look +for her money. She might perhaps be allowed to do so when the +Emperor was gone. As to her luggage he would have it sent over to +the tea-shop. (The money, it might be noted, she never recovered. +There were many things also missing from her mother's trunks and no +satisfaction was ever obtained.) + +So there was Vivie, one dismal, rainy November evening in 1915; +homeless, her mother lying dead in a room of this tea-shop, and in +her own pocket only a matter of thirty thousand francs to provide +for her till the War was over. A thousand pounds in fluctuating +value was all that was left of a nominal twenty thousand of the year +before. + +But the financial aspect of the case for the time being did not +concern her. The death of her mother had been a stunning shock, and +when she crossed over to the hotel--what irony, by the bye, to think +she had been born there thirty-nine years ago, in the old inn that +had preceded the twice rebuilt hotel!--when she crossed the street +with Minna, it had been with blazing, tearless eyes and the desire +to take the hotel manager and his minions by the coat collar, fling +_them_ into the street, and assert her right to go up to her room. +But now her violence was spent and she was a broken, weeping woman +as she sat all night by the bedside of her dead mother, holding the +cold hand, imprinting kisses on the dead face which was now that of +a saintly person with nothing of the reprobate in its lineaments. + + * * * * * + +The burial for various reasons had to take place in the Cemetery of +St. Josse-ten-Noode, near the shuddery National Shooting Range where +Edith Cavell and numerous Belgian patriots had recently been +executed. Minna von Stachelberg left her hospital, with some one +else in charge, and insisted on accompanying Vivie to the interment. +This might have been purely "laïc"; not on account of any harsh +dislike to the religious ceremony on Vivie's part; only due to the +fact that she knew no priest or pastor. But there appeared at the +grave-side to make a very suitable and touching discourse and to +utter one or two heartfelt prayers, a Belgian Baptist minister, a +relation of Mme. Trouessart. + +Waterloo left many curious things behind it. Not only a tea-shop or +two; but a Nonconformist nucleus, that intermarried, as Sergeant +Walker or Walcker had done, with Belgian women and left descendants +who in the third generation--and by inherent vigour, thrift, +matrimony and conversion--had built up quite a numerous +congregation, which even grew large enough and rich enough to +maintain a mission of its own in Congoland. Kind Mme. Trouessart +(née Walcker), distressed and unusually moved at the sad +circumstances of Mrs. Warren's death, had called in her uncle the +Baptist pastor (who also in some unexplained way seemed to hold a +brief for the Salvation Army). He prayed silently by the death-bed +which, under the circumstances, was more tactful than open +intercession. He helped greatly over all the formalities of the +funeral, and he took upon himself the arrangement of the ceremony, +so that everything was done decorously, and certainly to the +satisfaction of the Belgians, who attended. Such people would be +large-minded in religion--you might be Protestant, if you were not +Catholic, or you might be Jewish; but a funeral without some outward +sign of faith and hope would have puzzled and distressed them. + +To Vivie's great surprise, there was a considerable attendance at +the ceremony. She had expected no more than the company of Minna--an +unprofessing but real Christian, if ever there were one, and the +equally Christian if equally hedonist Mme. Trouessart. But there +came in addition quite a number of shopkeepers from the Rue Royale, +the Rues de Schaerbeek, du Marais, de Lione, and de l'Association, +with whom Mrs. Warren had dealt in years gone by. "C'etait une dame +_très_ convenable," said one purveyor, and the others agreed. "Elle +me paya écus sonnants," said another, "et toujours sans +marchander." There was even present a more distinguished +acquaintance of the past: a long-retired Commissaire de Police of +the Quartier in which Mrs. Warren's hotel was situated. + +He appeared in the tightly-buttoned frock-coat of civil life, with a +minute disc of some civic decoration in his button hole, and an +incredibly tall chimney-pot hat. He came to render his _respectueux +hommages_ to the maîtresse-femme who had conducted her business +within the four corners of the law, "sans avoir maille à partir avec +la police des moeurs." + +Mrs. Warren at least died with the reputation of one who promptly +paid her bills; and the whole _assistance_, as it walked slowly back +to Brussels, recalled many a deed of kindness and jovial charity on +the part of the dead Englishwoman. + + * * * * * + +Vivie, on sizing up her affairs, got Monsieur Walcker, the Baptist +pasteur, to convey a letter to the American Consulate General. +Walcker was used to such missions as these, of which the German +Government was more or less cognizant. The Germans, among their many +contradictory features, had a great respect for religion, a great +tolerance as to its forms. They not only appreciated the difference +between Jews and Christians, Catholics and Lutherans, but between +the Church of England and the various Free Churches of Britain and +America. The many people whom they sentenced to death must all have +their appropriate religious consolation before facing the firing +party. Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists were all provided for; +there was a Church of England chaplain for the avowed Anglicans; but +what was to be done for the Free Churches and Nonconformist sects of +the Anglo-Saxons? They were not represented by any captive pastor; +so in default this much respected Monsieur Walcker, the Belgian +Baptist, was called in to minister to the Nonconformist mind in its +last agony. He therefore held a quasi-official position and was +often entrusted with missions which would have been dealt with +punitorily on the part of any one else. Consequently he was able to +deliver Vivie's communication to the American Consul-General with +some probability of its being sent on. It contained no further +appeal to American intervention than this: that the Consul-General +would try to convey to England the news of her mother's death to +such-and-such solicitors, and to Lewis Maitland Praed A.R.A. in Hans +Place. + +She went to the Brussels bank a fortnight after her mother's death +whilst still availing herself of the hospitality of Madame +Trouessart: to withdraw the jewellery and plate which she had +deposited there on her mother's account. But there she found herself +confronted with the red tape of the Latin which is more formidable, +even, than that of the land of Dora at the present day. These +deposited articles were held on the order of Mrs. Warren; they could +not be given up till her will was proved and letters of +administration had been granted. So _that_ small resource in funds +was withheld, at any rate till some time after peace had been +declared. However she had a thousand pounds (in notes) between her +and penury, and the friendship of Minna von Stachelberg. She would +resume her evening lessons in English--Madame Trouessart had found +her several pupils--and she would lodge--as they kindly invited her +to do--with the Baptist pastor and his wife in the Rue Haute. And +she would help Minna at the hospital, and hope to be rewarded with +the opportunity of bringing comfort and consolation to the wounded +British prisoners. + +Thus, with no unbearable misery, she passed the year 1916. There +were short commons in the way of food, and the cold was sometimes +cruel. But Madame Walcker was a wonderful cook and could make soup +from a sausage skewer, and heaped _édredons_ on Vivie's bed. Vivie +sighed a little over the Blue Placards which announced endless +German victories by land and sea; and she gasped over the dreadful +Red Placards with their lists of victims sentenced to death by the +military courts. She ground her teeth over the announcement of +Gabrielle Petit's condemnation, and behind the shut door of Minna's +small sitting-room--and she only shut the door not to compromise +Minna--she raved over the judicial murder of this Belgian heroine, +who was shot, as was Edith Cavell, for nothing more than assisting +young Belgians to escape from German-occupied Belgium. + +She witnessed the air-raids of the Allies, when only comforting +papers were dropped on Brussels city, but bombs on the German +aerodromes outside; and she also saw the Germans turn their guns +from the aeroplanes--which soared high out of their reach or skimmed +below range--on to thickly-inhabited streets of the poorer quarters, +to teach them to cheer the air-craft of the Allies! + +She beheld--or she was told of--many acts of rapine, considered +cruelty and unreasoning ferocity on the part of German officials or +soldiers; yet saw or heard of acts and episodes of unlooked-for +kindness, forbearance and sympathy from the same hated people. Von +Giesselin, after all, was a not uncommon type; and as to Minna von +Stachelberg, she was a saint of the New Religion, the Service of +Man. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE BOMB IN PORTLAND PLACE + + +Mrs. Rossiter said to herself in 1915 that she had scarcely known a +happy day, or even hour, since the War began. In the first place +Michael had again shown violence of temper with ministers of state +over the release from prison of "that" Miss Warren--"a convict doing +a sentence of hard labour." And then, when he had got her released, +and gone himself with their beautiful new motor--whatever _could_ +the chauffeur have thought?--to meet her at the prison gates, +_there_ he was, afterwards, worrying himself over the War: not +content as she was, as most of her friends were, as the newspapers +were, to leave it all to Lord Kitchener and Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward +Grey, and even Mr. Lloyd George--though the latter had made some +rather foolish and exaggerated speeches about Alcohol. Michael, if +he went on like this, would _never_ get his knighthood! + +Then when Michael had at last, thanks to General Armstrong, found +his right place and was accomplishing marvels--the papers said--as a +"mender of the maimed"--here was she left alone in Portland Place +with hardly any one to speak to, and all her acquaintances--she now +realized they were scarcely her friends--too much occupied with war +work to spend an afternoon in discussing nothing very important over +a sumptuous tea, still served by a butler and footman. + +Presently, too, the butler left to join the Professor in France and +the footman enlisted, and the tea had to be served by a _distraite_ +parlour-maid, with her eye on a munitions factory--so that she +might be "in it"--and her heart in the keeping of the footman, who, +since he had gone into khaki, was irresistible. + +Mrs. Rossiter of course said, in 1914, that she would take up war +work. She subscribed most handsomely to the Soldiers' and Sailors' +Families' Association, to the Red Cross, to the Prince of Wales's +Fund (one of the unsolved war-time mysteries ... what's become of +it?), to the Cigarette Fund, the 1914 Christmas Plum Pudding Fund, +the Blue Cross, the Purple Cross, the Green Cross funds; to the +outstandingly good work at St. Dunstan's and at Petersham--(I am +glad she gave a Hundred pounds each to _them_); and to the +French, Belgian, Russian, Italian, Serbian, Portuguese and Japanese +Flag Days and to Our Own Day; besides enriching a number of +semi-fraudulent war charities which had alluring titles. + +But if, from paying handsomely to all these praise-worthy endeavours +to mitigate the horrors of war, she proceeded to render personal +service, she became the despair of the paid organizers and +business-like workers. She couldn't add and she couldn't subtract or +divide with any certainty of a correct result; she couldn't spell +the more difficult words or remember the right letters to put after +distinguished persons' names when she addressed envelopes in her +large, childish handwriting; she couldn't be trusted to make +enquiries or to detect fraudulent appeals. She lost receipts and +never grasped the importance of vouchers; she forgot to fill up +counterfoils, or if reminded filled them up "from memory" so that +they didn't tally; she signed her name, if there was any choice of +blank spaces, in quite the wrong place. + +So, invariably, tactful secretaries or assistant secretaries were +told off to explain to her--ever so nicely--that "she was no +business woman" (this, to the daughter of wholesale manufacturers, +sounded rather flattering), and that though she was invaluable as a +"name," as a patroness, or one of eighteen Vice Presidents, she was +of no use whatever as a worker. + +She had no country house to place at the disposal of the Government +as a convalescent home. Michael after a few experiments forbade her +offering any hospitality at No. 1 Park Crescent to invalid officers. +Such as were entrusted to her in the spring of 1915 soon found that +she was--as they phrased it--"a pompous little, middle-class fool," +wielding no authority. They larked in the laboratory with Red Cross +nurses, broke specimens, and did very unkind and noisy things ... +besides smoking in both the large _and_ the small dining-rooms. So, +after the summer of 1915, she lived very much alone, except that she +had the Adams children from Marylebone to spend the day with her +occasionally. + +Poor Mrs. Adams, though a valiant worker, was very downcast and +unhappy. She confided to Mrs. Rossiter that although she dearly +loved her Bert--"and a better husband I defy you to find"--he never +seemed all hers. "Always so wrapped up in that Miss Warren or 'er +cousin the barrister." And no sooner had war broken out than off he +was to France, as a kind of missionary, she believed--the Young +Men's Christian Something or other; "though before the War he didn't +seem particular stuck on religion, and it was all she could do to +get him sometimes to church on a Sunday morning. Oh yes: she got 'er +money all right; and she couldn't say too much of Mr. and Mrs. +Rossiter's kindness. There was Bert, not doin' a stroke of work for +the Professor, and yet his pay going on all the same. Indeed she was +putting money by, because Bert was kep' out there, and all found." + +However his two pretty children were some consolation to Mrs. +Rossiter, whom they considered as a very grand lady and one that was +lavishly kind. + +Mrs. Rossiter tried sometimes in 1915 having working parties in her +house or in the studio; and if she could attract workers gave them +such elaborate lunches and plethoric teas that very little work was +done, especially as she herself loved a long, aimless gossip about +the Royal Family or whether Lord Kitchener had ever _really_ been in +love. Or she tried, since she was a poor worker herself--her only +jersey and muffler were really finished by her maid--reading aloud +to the knitters or stitchers, preferably from the works of Miss +Charlotte Yonge or some similar novelist of a later date. But that +was found to be too disturbing to their sense of the ludicrous. For +she read very stiltedly, with a strange exotic accent for the love +passages or the death scenes. As Lady Victoria Freebooter said, she +would have been _priceless_ at a music-hall matinée which was +raising funds for war charities, if only she could have been induced +to read passages from Miss Yonge in _that_ voice for a quarter of an +hour. Even the Queen would have had to laugh. + +But as that could not be brought off, it was decided that working +parties at her house led to too much giddiness from suppressed +giggles or torpor from too much food. So she relapsed once more into +loneliness. Unfortunately air-raids were now becoming events of +occasional fright and anxiety in London, and this deterred Cousin +Sophie from Darlington, Cousin Matty from Leeds, Joseph's wife from +Northallerton or old, married schoolfellows from other northern or +midland towns coming to partake of her fastuous hospitality. Also, +they all seemed to be busy, either over their absent husbands' +business, or their sons', or because they were plunged in war work +themselves. "And really, in these times, I couldn't stand Linda for +more than five minutes," one of them said. + +As to the air-raids, she was not greatly alarmed at them. Of course +it was very uncomfortable having London so dark at night, but then +she only went out in the afternoon, and never in the evening. And +the Germans seemed to be content and discriminating enough not to +bomb what she called "the resi_den_tial" parts of London. The +nearest to Portland Place of their attentions was Hampstead or +Bloomsbury. "We are protected, my dear, by the open spaces of +Regent's Park. They wouldn't like to waste their bombs on poor me!" + +However her maid didn't altogether like the off chance of the +Germans or our air-craft guns making a mistake and trespassing on +the residential parts of London, so she persuaded her mistress to +spend part of the winter of 1915-16 at Bournemouth. Here she was not +happy and far lonelier even than in London. She did not like to send +all that way for the Adams children, she had a parlour suite all to +herself at the hotel, and was timid about making acquaintances +outside, since everybody now-a-days wanted you to subscribe to +something, and it was so disagreeable having to say "no." She was +not a great walker so she could not enjoy the Talbot woods; the sea +made her feel sad, remembering that Michael was the other side and +the submarines increasingly active: in short, air-raids or no +air-raids, she returned home in March, and her maid, who had been +with her ten years, gave her warning. + +But then she had an inspiration! She engaged Mrs. Albert Adams to +take her place, and although the parlour-maid at this took offence +and cut the painter of domestic service, went off to the munitions +till Sergeant Frederick Summers should get leave to come home and +marry her; and they were obliged to engage another parlour-maid in +her place at double the wages: Mrs. Rossiter had done a very wise +thing. "Bert" had been home for three weeks in the preceding +February, and the recently bereaved Mrs. Adams had united her tears +with Mrs. Rossiter's on the misery of the War which separated +attached husbands and wives. It now alleviated the sorrows of both +that they should be together as mistress and maid. The cook--a most +important factor--had always liked Bertie and adored his "sweet, +pretty little children." "If you'll let 'em sleep in the spare room +on the fourth floor, next their mother, and play in the day-time in +the servants' 'all, they'll be no manner of difficulty _nor_ bother +to me and the maids. We shall love to 'ave 'em, the darlin's. And +they'll serve to cheer you up a bit ma'am till the Professor comes +back." + +Mrs. Adams was a very capable person who hated dust and grime. The +big house wanted some such intervention, as since the butler's +departure it had become rather slovenly, save in the portions +occupied by Mrs. Rossiter. Charwomen were got in, and spring +cleanings on a gigantic scale took place, so that when Rossiter did +return he thought it had never looked so nice, or his Linda been so +cheery and companionable. + +But before this happy confirmation of her wisdom in engaging Nance +Adams as maid and factotum, Mrs. Rossiter had several waves of doubt +and distress to breast. There was the Suffrage question. Once +converted by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Miss Violet Markham, Sir Almroth +Wright--whose _prénom_ she could not pronounce--the late Lord +Cromer, and the impressive Lord Curzon, to the perils of the Woman's +Vote, Mrs. Rossiter was hard to move from her uncompromising +opposition to the enfranchisement of her sex. Some adroit champion +of the Wrong had employed the argument that _once_ Women got the +vote, _the Divorce Laws would be greatly enlarged_. This would be +part of the scheme of the wild women to get themselves all married; +that and _the legalisation of Polygamy_ which would follow the Vote +_as surely as the night the day_. Linda had an undefined terror that +her Michael might take advantage of such licentiousness to depose +her, like the Empress Josephine was put aside in favour of a +child-producing rival; or if polygamy came into force, that Miss +Warren might lawfully share the Professor's affections. + +She was therefore greatly perturbed in the course of 1916 at the +sudden throwing up of the sponge by the Anti-suffragists. However, +there it was. The long struggle drew to a victorious close. Example +as well as precept pointed to what women could do and were worth; +sound arguments followed the inconveniences of militancy, and the +men were convinced. Or rather, the men in the mass and the fighting, +working men had for some time been convinced, but the great +statesmen who had so obstinately opposed the measures were now +weakening at the knees before the results of their own mismanagement +in the conduct of the War. + +A further perplexity and anxiety for Mrs. Rossiter arose over the +German spy mania. She had been to one of Lady Towcester's afternoon +parties "to keep up our spirits." Lady Towcester collected for at +least six different charities and funds, and Mrs. Rossiter was a +generous subscriber to all six. Touching the wood of the central +tea-table, she had remarked to Lady Victoria and Lady Helen +Freebooter how fortunate they (who lived within the prescribed area +defined by Lady Jeune) had been in so far escaping air-raids. + +"But don't you know why?" said Lady Victoria. + +Mrs. Rossiter didn't. + +"Because in Manchester Square, in Cavendish--Grosvenor--Hanover +Squares, in Portland Place--a few doors off your own house--in +Harley Street and Wigmore Street: there are special friends of the +Kaiser living. They _may_ call themselves by English names, they may +even be ex-cabinet-ministers; but they are working for the Kaiser, +all the same. And _he_ wouldn't be such a fool as to have them +bombed, would he?" + +"Especially as it is well known that there _is a wireless +installation_ on a house in Portland Place which communicates with +a similar installation in the Harz Mountains," added Lady Helen. + +This was a half-reassuring, half-terrifying statement. It was +comfortable to know that you lived under the Kaiser's wing--Mrs. +Rossiter hoped the aim of the aeronauts was accurate, and their +knowledge of London topography good. At the same time it was +alarming to feel that you might be involved in that final blow up of +the villains which must bring such scoundreldom to a close. But if +Lady Vera and Lady Helen knew all this for a fact, why not tell the +Police? "What would be the good? They'd deny everything and we +should only be sued for libel." + +However to form some conception of how English home life was +undermined with plots, she was advised to go and see Mr. Dennis +Eadie in _The Man That Stayed at Home_. She did, taking Mrs. Adams +with her to the Dress Circle for a matinée. Both were very much +impressed, and on their return expected the fireplaces to open all +of a piece and reveal German spies with masked faces and pistols, +standing in the chimney. + +At last these and other nightmares were dispelled by the arrival of +Rossiter on leave of absence in the autumn of 1916. He had the rank +of Colonel in the R.A.M.C., and wore the khaki uniform--Mrs. +Rossiter proudly thought--of a General. He had shaved off his beard +and trimmed his moustache and looked particularly soldierly. The +butler who came with him though not precisely a soldier but a sort +of N.C.O. in a medical corps, also looked quite martial, and had so +much to say for himself that Mrs. Rossiter felt he could never +become a butler again. But he did all the same, and a most efficient +one though a little breezy in manner. + +Linda now entered on an aftermath of matrimonial happiness. Rossiter +was to take quite a long leave so that he could pursue the most +important researches in curative surgery--bone grafting and the +like; not only in his own laboratory but at the College of Surgeons +and the Zoological Gardens Prosectorium. With only occasional +week-ends at home he had been away from London since September, +1914; had known great hardships, the life of the trenches and the +bomb-proof shelter, stewed tea and bad tinned milk, rum and water, +bully beef, plum and apple jam, good bread, it is true, but shocking +margarine for butter. He had slept for weeks together on an old sofa +more or less dressed, kept warm by his great-coat and two Army +blankets of woven porcupine quills (seemingly) the ends of which +tickled his nose and scratched his face. He had been very cold and +sweatingly hot, furiously hungry with no meal to satisfy his healthy +appetite, madly thirsty and no long drink attainable; unable to +sleep for three nights at a time owing to the noise of the +bombardment; surfeited with horrible smells; sickened with butchery; +shocked at his own failures to retrieve life, yet encouraged by an +isolated victory, here and there, over death and disablement. So the +never-before-appreciated comfort of his Park Crescent home filled +him with intense gratitude to Linda. + +Had he known, he owed some of his acknowledgment to Mrs. Adams; who +had worked both hard and tactfully in her undefined position of +lady's-maid-housekeeper-companion. But naturally he didn't know, +though he praised his wife warmly for her charity of soul in taking +pity on the poor little woman and her two children. He could only +give the slightest news about Bertie, but said he was a sort of +jack-of-all-trades for the Y.M.C.A. As to Vivie--"that Miss +Warren"--he answered his wife's questions neither with the glowering +taciturnity nor suspicious loquacity of former times. "Miss Warren? +Vivie? I fancy she's still at Brussels, but there is no chance of +finding out. There is a story that her mother is dead. P'raps now +they'll let her come away. She must be jolly well sick of Brussels +by now. When I last heard of Adams he was still hoping to get into +touch with her. I hope he won't take any risks. She's a clever woman +and I dare say can take care of herself. I hope we shall all meet +again when the War is over." + +He seemed very pleased to hear of the new Conciliation Bill, the +general agreement all round on the Suffrage question and the +enlargement of the electorate. He had always told Linda it was bound +to come. "And after it has come, dearie, you mark my words: things +will go on pretty much as before." But his real, intense, absorbing +interest lay in the new experiments he was about to make in bone +grafting and cartilage replacing, and the functions of the pituitary +body and the interstitial glands. To carry these out adequately the +Zoological Society had accumulated troops of monkeys and baboons. At +a certain depôt in Camden Town dogs were kept for his purposes. And +the vaults and upper floors of the Royal College of Surgeons were at +Rossiter's disposal, with Professor Keith to co-operate. Never had +his house in Portland Place--to be accurate the Park Crescent end +thereof--seemed so conveniently situated, or its studio-laboratory +so well designed. "Air-raids? Pooh! Just about one chance in a +million we should be struck. Besides: can't think of that, when so +much is at stake. That's a fine phrase, 'Menders of the Maimed.' +Just what we want to be! No more artificial limbs if we can help you +to grow your own new legs and arms--perhaps. At any rate, mend up +those that are a hopeless mash. Grand work! Only bright thing in the +War. Now dear, are you ready with that lymph?" + +And she was. Never had Linda been so happy. She overcame her disgust +at the sight of blood, at monkeys, dogs, and humans under +anæsthetics, at yellow fat, gleaming sinew, and blood-stained bone. +She was careful as a washer-up. The services of Mrs. Adams were +enlisted, and she was more deft even than her mistress; and the +butler, who was by this time a regular hospital dresser, greatly +admired her pretty arms when they were bared to the elbow, and her +flushed cheeks when she took a humble part in some tantalizing +adjustment. + +"I'm some use to you after all," Linda would say when they retired +from the studio for a rest and she made the tea. "Some _use_? I +should think so!" said Rossiter (whether truly or not). And he +reproached himself that twenty years ago he had not trained and +developed her to help him in his work, to be a real companion in his +studies. + +He was really fond of her through the winter of 1916. And so jovial +and lover-like, so boyish in his fun, so like the typical Tommy home +from the trenches. When he was overjoyed at the success of some +uncovered and peeped-at experiment, he would sing, "When _I_ get me +civvies on again, an' it's Home Sweet Home once more"; and ask for +the ideal cottage "with rowses round the door--And a nice warm +bottle in me nice warm bed, An' a nice soft pillow for me nice soft +'ead..." Mrs. Rossiter began to think there was a good side to the +War, after all. It made some men more conscious of their home +comforts and less exigent for intellectuality in their home +companions. + +They went out very little into Society. Rossiter held that war-time +parties were scandalous. He poohpoohed the idea that immodest +dancing with frisky matrons or abandoned spinsters was necessary +to restore the shell-shocked nerves of temporary captains, +locally-ranked majors, or the recently-joined subaltern. He was far +too busy for twaddly tea-fights and carping at hard-worked generals +who were doing their best and a good best too. He and Linda did dine +occasionally with Honoria, but the latter felt she could not let +herself go about Vivie in the presence of Mrs. Rossiter and seemed +a little cold in manner. + +Ordinarily, after working hard all day while the daylight lasted +they much preferred an evening of complete solitude. Rossiter's new +robustness of taste included love of a gramophone. Money being no +consideration with them, they acquired a tip-top one with +superlative records; not so much the baaing, bellowing and shrieking +of fashionable singers, but orchestral performances, heart-melting +duets between violin and piano (_what_ human voice ever came up to a +good violin or violoncello?), racy comic songs, inspiriting two +steps, xylophone symphonies, and dreamy, sensuous waltzes. This +gramophone Linda learnt to work; and while Michael read voraciously +the works of Hunter, Hugh Owen Thomas, Stromeyer, Duchenne, Goodsir, +Wolff, and Redfern on bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, +periosteum and osteogenesis--or, more often, Keith's compact and +lucid analysis of their experiments and conclusions--Linda let loose +in the scented air of a log fire these varied melodies which attuned +the mind to extraordinary perceptibility. + +The little Adamses were allowed to steal in and listen, on condition +they never uttered a word to break the spell of Colonel Rossiter's +thoughts. + +I think also Rossiter felt his wife had been unjustly snubbed by the +great ladies and the off-hand, harum-scarum young war-workers; so he +flatly declined to have any of them messing around his studio or +initiated into his research work. It was intimated that the Rossiter +Thursday afternoons of long ago would not be resumed until after the +peace. Linda therefore derived much consolation and satisfaction for +past injuries to her pride when Lady Vera--or Victoria--Freebooter +called one day just before Christmas and said "Oh--er--mother's let +our house till February and thinks we'd better--I mean the Marrybone +Guild of war-workers--meet at _your_ house instead"; and she, +Linda, had the opportunity of replying: "Oh, I'm sorry, _but_ It's +QUITE impossible. The Professor--I mean, Colonel Rossiter--and I are +so _very_ busy ... we are seeing _no_ one just now. Indeed we've +enlisted all the servants to help the Colonel in his work, so I +can't even offer you a cup of tea.... I must _rush_ back at once.... +You'll excuse me?" + +"That Rossiter woman is quite off her head with grandeur," said Lady +Vera to Lady Helen. "I expect Uncle Algy has let out that her +husband is in the New Year's honours." + +And so he was. But Uncle Algy, though he might have babbled to his +nieces, had not written a word to the Rossiters. So they just +enjoyed Christmas--too much, they thought, more than any Christmas +before--in the simple satisfaction of being Colonel and Mrs. +Rossiter, all in all to each other, but rendered additionally happy +by making those about them happy. The little Adamses staggered under +their presents and had a Christmas Tree to which they were allowed +to ask their two grannies--Mrs. Laidly from Fig Tree Court and Mrs. +Adams from the Kilburn Laundry--and numerous little friends from +Marylebone, who had been washed and curled and crimped and adjured +not to disgrace their parents, _or_ father--in the trenches--would +be told "as sure as I stand here." + +(The little Adamses were also warned that if they _ever_ again were +heard calling Mrs. Rossiter "Gran'ma," they'd--but the threat was +too awful to be uttered, especially as their mother at this time was +always on the verge of tears, either at getting no news of Bert or +at the unforgettable kindness of Bert's employer.) + +Mrs. Rossiter, quite unaware that she was soon to be a Dame, gave +Christmas entertainments at St. Dunstan's, at the Marylebone +Workhouse, and to all the wounded soldiers in the parish. And on +December 31, 1916, Michael received a note from the Prime Minister +to say that His Majesty, in recognition of his exceptional services +in curative surgery at the front, had been pleased to bestow on him +a Knight Commandership of the Bath. "So that, Linda, you can call +yourself Lady Rossiter, and you will have to get some new cards +printed for both of us." + +Linda didn't feel quite that ecstasy over her title that she had +expected in her day-dreams. She was getting a little frightened at +her happiness. Generations of Puritan forefathers and mothers had +left some influence of Calvinism on her mentality. She was brought +up to believe in a jealous God, whose Providence when you felt too +happy on earth just landed you in some unexpected disaster to fit +you for the Kingdom of Heaven--a Kingdom which all healthy human +beings shrink from entering with the terror of the unknown and a +certain homeliness of disposition which is humbly content with this +cosy planet and a corporeal existence. + +However it was very nice to leave cards of calling on Lady +Towcester--even though she was out of town on account of +air-raids--and on others, inscribed: "Lady Rossiter, Colonel Sir +Michael Rossiter, Sir Michael and Lady Rossiter;" and to see printed +foolscap envelopes for Michael arrive from the War Office and lie on +the hall table, addressed: Colonel Sir Michael Rossiter K.C.B. etc., +etc., etc., etc. + +And later on, in January or February, for some very good reason, Sir +Michael and Lady Rossiter were received in audience by the King and +Queen at Buckingham Palace. The King had already watched Sir Michael +at work in his laboratory just behind the French front; so they two, +as Linda timidly glanced at them, had no lack of subjects for +conversation. But the Queen! Linda had thought she could _never_ +have talked to a Queen without swooning, and indeed had arrived +primed with much sal volatile. Yet there, as in some realistic +dream, she was led on to talk about her war charities and Sir +Michael's experiments without trembling, and found herself able to +listen with intelligence to the Queen's practical suggestions about +war work and the application of relief funds in crowded districts. +"_We actually compared notes!_" said a flushed and triumphant Linda +to her Michael, as they drove away through the blue twilight of St. +James's Park. + +And so far from being puffed up by this, people said they had always +thought Lady Rossiter was kind, but they really before had never +imagined there was so much in her. She was even allowed to preside +as Vice President, in the absence of Lady Towcester; and got through +it quite creditably--kind hearts being more than coronets--and made +a little speech to which cook and Nance Adams called out "Hear, +_Hear_!" and roused quite a hearty response. + + +Of course it was an awful wrench when Michael had to return to +France. But he would be back in the autumn, and meantime she must +remember she was a soldier's wife. So the summer was got through +with cheerfulness, especially as she was now treated with much more +regard in the different committees whereof she was Vice President. +On these committees she met Honoria Armstrong, and the longing to +renew the old friendship and talk about Michael's superlative +qualities to one who had long known them, took her over to +Kensington Square, impulsively. Honoria perceived the need +instinctively. The coldness engendered by Linda's silly +Anti-suffragism disappeared. They both talked by the hour together +of their respective husbands and their outstanding virtues and +charming weaknesses. The Armstrong children took to calling her Aunt +Linda--Michael and Petworth, after all, were brothers-in-arms and +friends from youth. Lady Rossiter was delighted, and lavished +presents on them, till Honoria reminded her it was war-time and +extravagance in all things was reprehensible, even in British-made +toys. + +They discussed the Vote, soon to be theirs, and how it should be +exercised. From that--by some instinct--Honoria passed on to a talk +about Vivien Warren ... a selective talk. She said nothing about +David Williams, but enlarged on Vivie's absolute "straightness," +especially towards other women; her business capacities, her +restoration of her mother to the ranks of the respectable; till at +last it seemed as though the burning down of racing stables was a +meritorious act ... "ridding England of an evil that good might +come." And there was poor Vivie, locked up in Brussels, if indeed +she were still living. + +Linda felt shocked at her own treachery to the Woman's Cause in +having betrayed that poor, well-meaning Miss Warren to the police. +Never could she confess this to Lady Armstrong (Sir Petworth had +just been knighted for a great success in battle), tell her about +the fragment of letter she had forwarded anonymously to Scotland +Yard. Perhaps she might some day tell Michael, when he returned. In +any case she would say at the next opportunity that as soon as Miss +Warren reappeared in England, he might ask her to the house as often +as he liked--even to stay with them if she were in want of a home. + +She said as much to Michael when he came back in September, 1917, to +make some further investigations into bone grafting. He seemed +genuinely pleased at her broad-mindedness, and said it would indeed +be delightful when the War was over--and it _surely_ must be over +soon--now Mr. Lloyd George and Clemenceau and President Wilson had +taken it in hand--it would indeed be delightful to form a circle of +close friends who had all been interested in the Woman's Movement. +As to Vivie ... if she were not dead ... he should advise her to go +in for Parliament. + +He had had no news of her since ever so long; what was worse, he +had now very great misgivings about Bertie Adams. During the autumn +of 1916 he had disappeared in the direction of La Bassée. There were +stories of his having joined some American Relief Expedition at +Lille--a most dangerous thing to do; insensate, if it were not a mad +attempt to get through to Brussels in disguise to rescue Miss +Warren. No one in the Y.M.C.A. believed for a moment that he had +done anything dishonourable. Most likely he had been killed--as so +many Y.M.C.A. people were just then, assisting to bring in the +wounded or going up to the trenches with supplies. Mrs. Adams had +better be prepared, cautiously, for a bereavement. Rossiter himself +was very sad about it. He had missed Bertie's services much these +last three years. He had never known a better worker--turn his hand +to anything--Such a good indexer, for example. + +Linda wondered whether _she_ could do any indexing? Three years ago +Michael would have replied: "_You?_ Nonsense, my dear. You'd only +make a muddle of it. Much better stick to your housekeeping" (which +as a matter of fact was done in those days by cook, butler and +parlour-maid). But now he said, thoughtfully: + +"Well--I don't know--perhaps you might. There's no reason you +shouldn't try." + +And Linda began trying. + +But she also worked regularly in the laboratory now, calling it at +his suggestion the lab, and stumbling no more over the word. She +wore a neat overall with tight sleeves and her hair plainly dressed +under a little white, pleated cap. She never now caught anything +with her sleeve and switched it off the table; she never let +anything drop, and was a most judicious duster and wiper-up. + +Rossiter in this autumn of 1917 was extremely interested in certain +crucial experiments he was making with spiculum in sponge-cells; +with scleroblasts, "mason-cells," osteoblasts, and "consciousness" +in bone-cells. Most of the glass jars in which these experiments +were going on (those of the sponges in sea-water) required daylight +for their progress. There was no place for their storage more +suitable than that portion of his studio-laboratory which was above +ground; and the situation of his house in regard to air attacks, +bombs, shrapnel seemed to him far more favourable than the upper +rooms at the College of Surgeons. That great building was often +endangered because of its proximity to the Strand and Fleet Street; +and the Strand and Fleet Street, being regarded by the Germans as +arteries of Empire, were frequently attacked by German air-craft. + +But in Rossiter's studio there was an under-ground annex as +continuation of the house cellars; and the household was instructed +that if, in Rossiter's absence, official warnings of an air-raid +were given, certain jars were to be lifted carefully off the shelves +and brought either into the library or taken down below in case, +through shrapnel or through the vibration of neighbouring +explosions, the glass of the studio roof was broken. + +One day in October, 1917, the German air fleet made a determined +attack on London. It was intended this time to belie the stories of +the heart of the Western district being exempted from punishment +because Lady So-and-so lived there and had lent her house in East +Anglia to the Empress and her children in 1912, or because Sir +Somebody-else was really an arch spy of the Germans and had to go on +residing in London. So the aeroplanes this time began distributing +their explosives very carefully over the residential area between +Regent's Park and Pall Mall, the Tottenham Court Road and +Selfridge's. + +Lady Rossiter in her overall was disturbed at her indexing by the +clamour of an approaching daylight raid; by the maroons, the +clanging of bells, the hooters, the gunfire; and finally by the not +very distant sounds of exploding bombs. She called and rang for the +servants, and then rushed from the library into the studio to +commence removing the more important of the jars to a place of +greater safety. She had seized two of them, one under each arm, and +was making for the library door, when there came the most awful +crash she had ever heard, and resounding bangs which seemed to echo +indefinitely in her ears.... + +Rossiter was working in the Prosectorium at the Zoo when the +daylight air-raid began. It seemed to be coming across the middle of +London; so, hastily doffing his overall, he left the Gardens and +walked rapidly towards Portland Place. He had hardly got past the +fountain presented by Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy in wasted +benevolence, than he heard the deafening report of the bomb which +had wrecked his studio, reduced it to a tangle of iron girders and +stanchions, strewn its floor with brick rubble and thick dust, and +left his wife a human wreck, lying unconscious with a broken spine, +surrounded by splinters of glass, broken jars, porcelain trays, and +nasty-looking fragments of sponge and vertebrate anatomy. With an +almost paralyzing premonition of disaster he ran as quickly as +possible towards Park Crescent. The Marylebone Road was strewn with +glass, and a policeman--every one else had taken shelter--was +ringing and knocking at his front door to ascertain the damage and +possible loss of life. Michael let both of them in with his +latch-key. In the hall the butler was lying prone, stunned by a +small statue which had been flung at him by the capricious violence +of the explosion. All the mirrors were shivered and most of the +pictures were down. At the entrance to the library cook was +standing, all of a tremble. The two little Adamses rushed up to him: +"Oh Sir Michael! Mummie is dead and Gran'ma is awfully hurted." + +But Mummie--Mrs. Adams--was not dead; neither was the expensive +parlour-maid. Both had fainted or been stunned by the explosion on +their way to help their mistress. Both lay inanimate on the library +floor. The library glass door was shivered to dangerous jagged +splinters, but the iron framework--"Curse it"--remained a tangled, +maddening obstacle to his further progress. He could see through the +splinters of thick glass something that looked like Linda, lying on +her back--and--something that looked like blood. The policeman who +followed him was strong and adroit. Together they detached the glass +splinters and wrenched open the framework, with space enough, at any +rate, to pass through without the rending of clothes into the +studio. + +Linda Rossiter was regaining consciousness for just a few more +minutes of sentient life. She was aware there had been a dreadful +accident to some one; perhaps to herself. But she fully believed she +had first of all saved the precious jars. No doubt they had put her +to bed, and as there was something warm (her blood, poor thing) +round her body, they must have packed her with hot water bottles. +Some idea of Michael's no doubt. How _kind_ he was! + +She would soon get right, with him to look after her. She opened +her eyes to meet his, as he bent over her, and said with the ghost +of an arch smile: "I--have been--of some use--to you, haven't--I? +... (then the voice faltered and trailed away) ... I ... +saved--your--specimens--" + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +BERTIE ADAMS + + +One day, early in April, 1917, Vivie was standing in a corridor of +the Hôpital de St. Pierre talking to Minna von Stachelberg. She had +just come from the railway station, where in common with the few +British and Americans who remained in Brussels she had been to take +a respectful and grateful farewell of the American Minister and his +wife, who were leaving Belgium for Holland, prior to the American +declaration of war. American diplomacy had done little for her or +her mother, but it had been the shield, the salvation, the only hope +of Belgium. Moreover, the break-off of diplomatic relations +initiated the certain hope of a happier future. American +intervention in the war _must_ lead to Peace and Freedom. Germany +_must_ now be beaten and Belgium set free. + +So she had contributed her mite to the fund which purchased spring +flowers--hothouse-grown, for this April was a villainous +prolongation of winter--with which to strew the approach to the +station and fill the reserve compartment of the train. + +As Vivie was nearing the end of her description--and Minna was +hoping it _was_ the end, as she wanted to get back to her +patients--two German policemen marched up to Vivie, clicked their +heels, saluted, and said in German, "Mademoiselle Varennes, nicht +wahr? Be good enough to accompany us to the Kommandantur." + +At this dread summons, Vivie turned pale, and Minna dismayed began +to ask questions. The Polizei answered that they had none to +give.... Might she accompany her friend? She might not. Then +followed a ride in a military motor, with the two silent policemen. + +They arrived outside the Kommandantur.... More clanking, clicking, +and gruff conversation in German. She got out, in response to a +tight pressure on her arm, a grip in fact, and accompanied her grim +guide through halls and corridors, and at last entered a severely +furnished office, a kind of magistrate's court, and was confronted +with--Bertie Adams! A whiskered, bearded, moustached, shabbily +dressed (in a quasi-military uniform) Bertie Adams: lean, and +hollow-eyed, but with the love-light in his eyes. He turned on her +such a look of dog-like fealty, of happy recognition that although, +by instinct and for his safety, she was about to deny all knowledge +of him, she could not force her eyes or tongue to tell the lie. + +"Oh miss, oh my dear Miss Warren! _How_ I have hungered and thirsted +for a sight of you all these months and years! To see you once more +is worth all and more I've gone through to get here. They may shoot +me now, if they've got the heart--Not that I've done anything to +deserve it--I've simply had one object in view: To come here and +help you." + +He looked around as if instinctively to claim the sympathy of the +policemen. To say he met with none would be to make them out more +inhuman than they were. But as all this speech was in English they +understood but little of what he had said. They guessed he loved the +woman to whom he spake, but he may have been pleading with her not +to give him away, to palliate his acts of espionage. + +Vivie replied: + +"_Dear_ Bertie! You can't be gladder to see me than I am you. I +greet you with all my heart. But you must be aware that in coming +here like this you--" her words stuck in her throat--she knew not +what to say lest she might incriminate him farther-- + +A police officer broke in on her embarrassment and said in German: +"Es ist genug--You recognize him, Madame? He was arrested this +morning at the Hotel Impérial, enquiring for you. Meantime, you also +are under arrest. Please follow that officer." + +"May I communicate with my friends?" said Vivie, with a dry tongue +in a dry mouth. + +"Who are your friends?" + +"Gräfin von Stachelberg, at the Hôpital de St. Pierre; le Pasteur +Walcker, Rue Haute, 33--" + +"I will let them know that you are arrested on a charge of high +treason--in league with an English spy," he hissed. + +Then Vivie was pushed out of the room and Bertie was seized by two +policemen-- + + +They did not meet again for three days. It was a Saturday, and a +police agent came into the improvised cell where Vivie was +confined--who had never taken off her clothes since her arrest and +had passed three days of such mental distress as she had never +known, unable to sleep on the bug-infested pallet, unable to eat a +morsel of the filthy food--and invited her to follow him. "By the +grace of the military governor of the prison of Saint-Gilles"--he +said this in French as she understood German imperfectly--"you are +permitted to proceed there to take farewell of your English friend, +the prisoner A-dams, who has been condemned to death." + + +Bertie had been tried by court-martial in the Senate, on the Friday. +He followed all the proceedings in a dazed condition. Everything was +carried on in German, but the parts that most concerned him were +grotesquely translated by a ferocious-looking interpreter, who +likewise turned Bertie's stupid, involved, self-condemnatory answers +into German--no doubt very incorrectly. Bertie however protested, +over and over again, that Miss Warren knew _nothing_ of his +projects, and that his only object in posing as an American and +travelling with false passports was to rescue Miss Warren from +Brussels and enable her to pass into Holland, "or get out of the +country _some_ 'ow." As to the Emperor, and taking his life--"why +lor' bless you, _I_ don't want to take _any one's_ life. I 'ate war, +more than ever after all I've seen of it. Upon my honour, gentlemen, +all I want is Miss Warren." Here one member of the court made a +facetious remark in German to a colleague who sniggered, while, with +his insolent light blue eyes, he surveyed Bertie's honest, earnest +face, thin and hollowed with privations and fatigue.... + +He was perfunctorily defended by a languid Belgian barrister, tired +of the invidious rôle of mechanical pleading for the lives of +prisoners, especially where, as in this case, they were foredoomed, +and eloquence was waste of breath, and even got you disliked by the +impatient ogres, thirsty for the blood of an English man or +woman.... "Du reste," he said to a colleague, "agissait-il d'un +Belge, mon cher, tu sais que l'on se sentirait forcé à risquer le +déplaisir de ces ogres: tandis que, pour un pauvre bougre +d'Anglais...? Et qu'ont-ils fait pour nous, les Anglais? Nous avons +tâché de leur boucher le trou à Liège--et--il--nous--ont--abandonné. +Enfin--allons boire un coup--" + + +Verdict: as translated by the ferocious interpreter:-- + +"Ze Court faind you Geeltee. You are condemned to Dess, and you will +be shot on Monday." + +In the prison of Saint-Gilles--as I believe elsewhere in +Belgium--though there might be a military governor in control who +was a German, the general direction remained in the hands of the +Belgian staff which was there when the German occupation began. +These Belgian directors and their subordinates were as kind and +humane to the prisoners under their charge as the Germans were the +reverse. Everything was done at Saint-Gilles to alleviate the mental +agony of the condemned-to-death. The German courts tried to prolong +and enhance the agony as much as possible, by sentencing the +prisoners three days, six days, a week before the time of execution +(though for fear of a reprieve this sentence was not immediately +published) and letting them know that they had just so many days or +hours to live: consequently most of them wasted away in prison with +mind-agony, inability to sleep or eat; and even opiates or +soporifics administered surreptitiously by the Belgian prison +doctors were but slight alleviations. + +Bertie when first placed in his cell at Saint-Gilles asked for pen, +ink, and paper. They were supplied to him. He was allowed to keep on +the electric light all night, and he distracted his mind--with some +dreadful intervals of horror at his fate--by trying to set forth on +paper for Vivie to read an explanation and an account of his +adventures. He intended to wind up with an appeal for his wife and +children. + +Vivie never quite knew how Bertie had managed to cross the War zone +from France into Belgium, and reach Brussels without being arrested. +When they met in prison they had so little time to discuss such +details, in face of the one awful fact that he was there, and was in +all probability going to die in two days. But from this incomplete, +tear-stained scribble that he left behind and from the answers he +gave to her few questions, she gathered that the story of his quest +was something like this:-- + +He had planned an attempt to reach her in Brussels or wherever she +might be, from the autumn of 1914 onwards. The most practicable way +of doing so seemed to be to pass as an American engaged in Belgian +relief work, in the distribution of food. Direct attempts to be +enrolled for such work proved fruitless, only caused suspicion; so +he lay low. In course of time he made the acquaintance of one of +those American agents of Mr. Hoover--a tousle-haired, hatless, +happy-go-lucky, lawless individual, who made mock of laws, rules, +precedents, and regulations. He concealed under a dry, taciturn, +unemotional manner an intense hatred of the Germans. But he was +either himself of enormous wealth or he had access to unlimited +national funds. He spent money like water to carry out his relief +work and was lavishly generous to German soldiers or civilians if +thereby he might save time and set aside impediments. He took a +strong liking to Bertie, though he showed it little outwardly. The +latter probably in his naïveté and directness unveiled his full +purpose to this gum-chewing, grey-eyed American. When the news of +Mrs. Warren's death had reached Bertie through a circuitous +course--Praed-Honoria-Rossiter--he had modified his scheme and at +the same time had become still more ardent about carrying it into +execution. In fact he felt that Mrs. Warren's death was opportune, +as with her still living and impossible to include in a flight, +Vivie would probably have refused to come away. + +Therefore in the summer of 1916, he asked his American friend to +obtain two American passports, one for himself and one for "his +wife, Mrs. Violet Adams." Mr. Praed had sent him a credit for Five +hundred pounds in case he could get it conveyed to Vivie. Bertie +turned the credit into American bank notes. This money would help +him to reach Brussels and once there, if Vivie would consent to pass +as his wife, he might convey her out of Belgium into Holland, as two +Americans working under the Relief Committee. + +It had been excessively difficult and dangerous crossing the War +zone and getting into occupied Belgium. There was some hint in his +talk of an Alsatian spy who helped him at this stage, one of those +"sanspatries" who spied impartially for both sides and sold any one +they could sell (Fortunately after the Armistice most of these +Judases were caught and shot). The spy had probably at first +blackmailed him when he was in Belgium--which is why of the Five +hundred pounds in dollar notes there only remained about a third in +his possession when he reached Brussels--and then denounced him to +the authorities, for a reward. + +But his main misfortune lay in the long delay before he reached +Brussels. During that time, the entire American diplomatic and +consular staff was leaving Belgium; and the Emperor was arriving +more or less secretly in Brussels (it was said in the hope that a +personal talk with Brand Whitlock might stave off the American +declaration of war). + +Bertie on his arrival dared not to go to the American legation for +fear of being found out and disavowed. So he had asked his way in +very "English" French, and wearing the semi-military uniform of an +American Relief officer--to the Hotel "Edward-Sett," where he +supposed Vivie would be or could be heard of. When he reached the +Hotel Impérial and asked for "Miss Warren," he had been at once +arrested. Indeed probably his steps had been followed all the way +from the railway station to the door of the hotel by a plain-clothes +German policeman. The Germans were convinced just then that many +Englishmen and some American cranks were out to assassinate the +Kaiser. They took Bertie's appearance at the door of the Hotel +Impérial as a proof of his intention. They considered him to have +been caught red-handed, especially as he had a revolver concealed on +his person and was obviously travelling with false passports. + +"Ah, Bertie," said Vivie, when they first met in his cell at +Saint-Gilles prison. "If _only_ I had not led you into this! I am +mad with myself..." + +"Are you, miss? But 'oo could 'a foreseen this war would come along! +We thought all we 'ad to fight was the Police and the 'Ome Office to +get the Vote. And _then_, you'd 'a bin able to come out into the +open and practise as a barrister--and me, again, as your clerk. It +was our damned Government that made you go abroad and get locked up +'ere. And once I realized you couldn't get away, thinks I to meself, +_I'll_ find a way..." + +It was here that Vivie began questioning him as to how he had +reached Brussels from the War zone; and as, towards the end of his +story--some of which he said she would find he had written down in +case they wouldn't let him see her--the reference to the Emperor +came in, she sprang up and tried the door of the cell. It was +fastened without, but a face covered the small, square opening +through which prisoners were watched; and a rough voice asked her +what she wanted. It was the German police agent or spy, who, perched +on a stool outside, next this small window, was there to listen to +all they said. As they naturally spoke in English and the rough +creature only knew "God-dam," and a few unrepeatable words, he was +not much the wiser for his vigil. + +"I want--I _must_ see the Director," said Vivie. + +Presently the Director came. + +"Oh, sir," said Vivie, "give me paper and an envelope, I _implore_ +you. There is pen and ink here and I will write a letter to the +Emperor, a petition. I will tell him briefly the true story of this +poor young man; and _then_, if you will only forward it he may grant +a reprieve." + +The Director said he would do his best. After all, you never knew; +and the Kaiser, though he said he hated them always, had a greater +regard for the English than for any other nation. As he glanced +from Vivie and her face of agonized appeal to the steadfast gaze +which Bertie fixed on her, as on some fairy godmother, his own eyes +filled with tears--as indeed they did many, many times over the +tragic scenes of the German Terror. + +Another request. Could Vivie see or communicate with Gräfin von +Stachelberg?--with Pasteur Walcker? + +Here the police agent intervened--"Nothing of the kind! You're not +going to hold a salon here. Far too many concessions already. Much +more fuss and trouble, and I shall take you back to the Kommandantur +and report. Write your letter to the All Highest, who may deign to +receive it. As to Pastor Walcker, he shall come to-morrow, Sunday, +to prepare the Englishman for his death, on Monday--" + +Vivie wrote her letter--probably in very incoherent language. It was +handed to the German police agent. He smiled sardonically as he took +it in his horny hand with its dirty broken nails. The Governor +General disliked these appeals to the All Highest. Indeed, in most +cases executions that were intended to take place were only +announced at the same time as the condemnation, to obviate the worry +of these appeals. Besides, he knew the Emperor had left that morning +for Charleville, after having bestowed several decorations on the +police officials who told him they had just frustrated an English +plot for his assassination. + + +Vivie and Bertie were at length alone, for the police agent was +bored, couldn't understand their talk, and gave himself an afternoon +off. In this prison of Saint-Gilles, the cells were in many ways +superior to those of English prisons. They were well lit through a +long window, not so high up but that by standing on a chair you +could look out on the prison garden. Through this window the rays of +the sun could penetrate into and light up the cell. There was no +unpleasant smell--one of the horrors of Holloway. The floor was a +polished parquet. The bed was comfortable. There was a table, even a +book-shelf. The toilet arrangements were in no way repulsive or +obvious. + +Vivie insisted on Bertie lying down on the bed; she would sit on the +chair by his side. He must be so exhausted.... + +"And what about _you_, miss? I'll lay you ain't slept these last +three nights. _What_ a mess I've made of the 'ole thing!" + +"Bertie! _Why_ did you do this? _Why_ did you risk your life to come +here; _oh why, oh why_?" wailed Vivie. + +"Because I loved you, because I've always loved you, better'n any +one else on earth--since I was a boy of fourteen and you spoke so +kind to me and encouraged me to get on and improve myself; and giv' +me books, and encouraged me about me cricket. I suppose I'm going to +die, so I ain't got any shame about tellin' you all this. Though if +I thought I was goin' to live, I'd cut my tongue out sooner'n offend +you--Oh,"--he gave a kind of groan--"When the news come about Mrs. +Warren bein' dead an' you p'raps without money and at the mercy of +these Germans ... well!--all I wonder at is I didn't steal an +airyplane, and come in that. I tell you I had to exercise great +self-control to stay week after week fiddling with the food +distribution and pretendin' to be an American.... + +"Well! There it is! We must all die sooner or later. It's a wonder I +ain't dead already. I've bin in some tight places since I come out +for the Y.M.C.A.... + +"And talkin' about the Y.M.C.A., miss, I do _beg_ of you, if you get +out of this--an' I'm sure you will--they'll never kill _you_," said +Bertie adoringly, looking up at the grave, beautiful face that bent +over him--"I do _beg_ of you to make matters right with the +Y.M.C.A. I ain't taken away one penny of their money--I served 'em +faithfully up to the last day before I saw my chance of hooking it +across the lines--They must think me dead--and so must poor Nance, +my wife. For I haven't dared to write to any one since I've bin in +Belgium. But I did send her a line 'fore I started, sayin', 'Don't +be surprised if you get no letter from me for some time. I'll turn +up all right, you bet your boots--' + +"That may 'ave kept 'er 'opin'. An' soon you'll be able to let 'er +know. Who can say? _I_ dunno! But Peace, you'd think, must come +soon--Seems like our poor old world is comin' to an end, don't it? +_What_ times we've 'ad--if you don't mind me puttin' it like that! I +remember when I had to be awful careful always to say 'Sir' to you, +and 'Mr. David' or 'Mr. Williams'"--and a roguish look, a gleam of +merriment came into Bertie's eyes, and he laughed a laugh that was +half sob. "If you was to write your life, no one 'ud believe it, +miss. It licks any novel I ever read--and I've read a tidy few, +looking after the Y.M.C.A. libraries.... + +"My! But you was wonderful as a pleader in the courts! I used +sometimes to reg'lar cry when I heard you takin' up the case of some +poor girl as 'ad bin deserted by 'er feller, and killed 'er baby. +'Tricks of the trade,' says some other barrister's clerk, sneerin' +because you wasn't 'is boss. An' then I'd punch 'is 'ead.... An' I +don't reckon myself a soft-'earted feller as a rule.... Reklect that +Shillito Case--?" + +"_Don't_, Bertie! _Don't_ say such things in praise of me. I'm not +_worth_ such love. I'm just an arrogant, vain, quarrelsome woman.... +Look how many people I've deceived, what little good I've really +done in the world--" + +"Rub--bish! You done good wherever you went ... to my pore +mother--wonder, by the bye, what _she_ thinks and 'ow _she's_ +gettin' on? Sons are awful ungrateful and forgettin'. What with +you--and Nance--and the little 'uns, I ain't scarcely give a thought +to poor mother. But you'll let her know, won't you, miss?... + +"Think 'ow good you was to your old father down in Wales, 'im as you +called your father--an' 'oo's to say 'e wasn't? You never know.... +Miss Warren! what a pity it is you never married. There's lots was +sweet on you, I'll bet. Yet I remember I used to 'ate the idea of +your doin' so, and was glad you dressed up as a man, an' took 'em +all in.... I may tell you all, miss, now I'm goin' to die, day after +to-morrow. My poor Nance! She see there was some one that always +occupied my mind, and she used to get jealous-like, at times. But +never did I let on it was you. Why I wouldn't even 'av said it to +myself--I respected you more than--than--" + +And Bertie, at a loss for a parallel, ceased speaking for a time, +and gulped down the sobs that were mastering him. + +Then, after this pause--"I haven't a word to say against Nance. No +one could 'a bin a better wife. I know, miss, if you get away from +here you'll look after her and my kids? I ain't bin much of a father +to 'em lately. P'raps this is a punishment for neglecting my home +duties--As they used to say to you when you was Suffragin'." He gave +a bitter laugh--"Two such _nice_ kids.... I ain't seen 'em since +last February twelve-month ... more'n a year ago ... I got a bit of +leave then.... There's little Vivie--the one we called after you.... +She's growin' up so pretty ... and Bert! 'E'll be a bigger and a +better man than me, some day. 'E's started in life with better +chances. I 'ope 'e'll be a cricketer. There's no game comes up to +cricket, in my opinion..." + +At this juncture, the Belgian Directeur of the jail opened the door +and asked Vivie to follow him, telling Bertie she would return in +the afternoon. At the same time, a warder escorting two good conduct +prisoners who did the food distribution proceeded to place quite an +appetizing meal in Bertie's cell. "Dear miss," said the Directeur in +French, "You are so wise, I know, you will do what I wish...?" + +(Vivie bowed.) + +"I shall not send you back to the Kommandantur. I will take that on +myself. But I must regard you while here as my prisoner"--he smiled +sadly--"Come with me. I will give you a nice cell where you shall +eat and sleep, and--yes--and my wife shall come and see you..." + + +In the evening of that day, Vivie was led back to Bertie's cell. +There she found kind Pasteur Walcker. In some way he had heard of +Bertie's condemnation--perhaps seen it posted up on a Red +Placard--and in his quiet assumption that whatever he did was right, +had not waited for an official summons but had presented himself at +the prison of Saint-Gilles and asked to see the Directeur. He +constituted himself Bertie's spiritual director from that time +onwards.... He spoke very little English but he was there more to +sympathize than to preach-- + +"Ce n'est pas, chère Mamselle que je suis venu le troubler sur les +questions de réligion. J'ai voulu le rassurer--et vous aussi--que +j'ai déjà mis en train tous les precédés possibles, et que je +connais, pour obtenir sa grace.... But," he went on, "I have spoken +to the prison doctor and begged him meantime to give the poor young +man an injection or a dose of something to make him sleep a little +while..." + +Then he withdrew. + +The daylight turned pink and faded to grey whilst Vivie sat by the +bed holding the left hand of the sleeping man. Exhausted with +emotion, she dropped off to sleep herself, slid off the chair on to +the parquet, laid her head on the angle of his pillow and slept +likewise.... + +The electric light suddenly shone out from a globe in the angle of +the wall which served two cells. She awoke; Bertie awoke. He was +still happy in some opiate dream and his eyes in his haggard face +looked at her with a sleepy, happy affection. Loth to awaken him to +reality she kissed him on the cheek and withdrew from the cell--for +the Directeur, out of delicacy, had withdrawn and left the door +ajar. She rejoined him in the corridor and he led her to her own +quarters for the night; where, worn out with sorrow and fatigue, she +undressed and slept dreamlessly. + +But the hour of the awakening on that wintry Sunday morning! It was +snowing intermittently and the sky, seen from the high window, was +lead-coloured. Owing to the scarcity of fuel, the cell was unwarmed. +She dressed hurriedly, feeling still untidy and dishevelled when she +had finished. Her breakfast, and with it a little packet of white +powder from the prison doctor, to be taken with the breakfast. She +swallowed it. If it were poison sent by the German Government, what +matter? But it was in reality some drug which took the edge off +sorrow. + +Bertie had evidently been given a similar dose. They spent the +morning and the afternoon of that Sunday together, almost happily. +With intervals of dreamy silence, they talked of old times. Neither +would have been surprised had the cell walls dissolved as in a +transformation scene and they had been able to step out into the +Fountain Court of the Temple or into the cheerful traffic of +Chancery Lane. + +When however she returned to his cell after her evening meal, his +mood had changed; the effect of the drug had passed. He had moods of +despair and wild crying. No response had come, no answer to Vivie's +appeal, no result from Monsieur Walcker's activities. Bertie +reproached himself for cowardice ... then the doctor came in. "An +injection in the arm? So! He will sleep now till morning. Espérons +toujours! Et vous, ma pauvre Mademoiselle. Vous êtes excédée. +Permettez que je vous fasse la meme piqure?" + +But she thanked him and said she wanted all her wits about her, +though she promised "se maîtriser"--to keep calm. + +What a night! Her ears had a sense of hearing that was +preternaturally acute. The most distant step in the corridors was +audible. Was it a reprieve? One such sound multiplied itself into +the footsteps of two men walking, coming ever nearer--nearer--nearer +till they stopped outside her cell door. With a clank it was opened. +She sprang up. Fortunately she had not undressed. "You've brought a +reprieve?" she gasped. But the Directeur and Monsieur Walcker only +stood with downcast faces. "It will soon be morning," the Directeur +said. "There is no hope of a reprieve. He is to be executed at seven +at the Tir National. All we have secured for you is permission to +accompany him to the end. But if you think _that_ too painful, too +great a strain, I would suggest that you--" + +"Nothing could overstrain me," said Vivie, "or rather I don't care +if anything kills me. I will go with him and stay with him, till the +very last moment, stay with him till he is buried if you permit!" + +She made some hasty toilette, more because she wanted to look a fit +companion for him, and not a wretched derelict. They summoned her, +proffering a cup of acorn coffee, which she waved aside. The bitter +cold air of the snowy April morning braced her. She entered the +shuttered, armoured prison taxi in which Bertie and a soldier were +placed already. Bertie had his arms tied, but not too painfully. He +was shivering with the cold, but as he said, "_Not_ afraid, miss. +It'll come out allright, some'ow. That Mr. Walcker, 'e done me a lot +of good. At any rate I'll show how an Englishman can die. 'Sides 'e +says reprieves sometimes comes at the last moment. They takes a +pleasure in tantalizin' you. And the doctor put somethin' in me cup +of coffee, sort of keeps me spirits up." + +But for Vivie, that drive was an unforgettable agony. They went +through suburbs where the roads had been unrepaired or torn up by +shrapnel. The snow lay in places so thickly that it nearly stopped +the motor. Still, it came to an end at last. The door on one side +was wrenched open; she was pulled out rather unceremoniously; then, +the pinioned Bertie, who was handed over to a guard; and the soldier +escort after him, who took his place promptly by his side. Vivie had +just time to note the ugly red-brick exterior of the main +building of the Tir National. It reminded her vaguely of some +hastily-constructed Exhibition at Earl's Court or Olympia. Then she +was pushed inside a swinging door, into a freezing corridor; where +the Prison Directeur and Monsieur Walcker were standing--irresolute, +weeping.... + +"Where is Bertie?" she asked. + +"He is being prepared for the shooting party," they answered. "It +will soon be over ... dear dear lady ... try to be calm--" + +"I will be as calm as you like," she said, "I will behave with the +utmost correctitude or whatever you call it, if you--if they--the +soldiers--the officer--will let me see him--as you promised--up to +the last, the very last. But by God--if there _is_ a God--if you or +they prevent me, I'll--" + +Inexplicably, sheer mind-force prevailed, without the need for +formulating the threat the poor grief-maddened woman might have +uttered--she moved unresisted to a swing door which opened on to a +kind of verandah. Here was drawn up the firing party, and in front +of them, fifteen feet away on snow-sodden, trampled grass, stood +Bertie. He caught sight of Vivie passing in, behind the firing +party, and standing beyond them at the verandah rail. He +straightened himself; ducked his head aside from the handkerchief +with which they were going to bandage his eyes, and shouted "Take +away your blasted handkerchief! _I_ ain't afraid o' the guns. If +you'll let me look at HER, I'll stand as quiet as quiet." + +The officer in command of the firing party shrugged his shoulders. +The soldier escort desisted from his attempts to blindfold the +Englishman and stood aside, out of range. Bertie fixed his glowing +eyes on the woman he had loved from his youth up, the rifles rang +out with a reverberating bellow, and he fell out of her sight, +screened by the soldiers, a crumpled body over which they threw a +sheet. + +What happened then to Vivie? I suppose you expect the time-worn +trick of the weary novelist, anxious to put his pen down and go to +his tea: "Then she seemed swallowed up in a cloud of blackness and +knew no more"--till it was convenient to the narrator to begin a +fresh chapter. But with me it must be the relentless truth and +nothing but the truth, in all its aspects. Vivie was deafened, +nearly stunned by the frightful noise of the volley in a confined +space. Next, she was being unceremoniously pushed out of the +verandah, into the corridor, and so out into the snow-covered space +in front of the brick building; whilst the officer was examining the +dead body of the fallen man, ready to give the _coup-de-grâce_, if +he were not dead. But he was. Vivie was next conscious that she had +the most dreadful, blinding headache she had ever known, and with it +felt an irresistible nausea. The prison Directeur was taking her +hand and saying: "Mademoiselle: it is my duty to inform you that you +are no longer under arrest. You are free to return to your lodging." +Minna von Stachelberg had come from somewhere and was taking her +right arm, to lead her Brussels-ward; and Pasteur Walcker was +ranging himself alongside to be her escort. Unable to reply to any +of them, she strode forward by herself to where under the snow lay +an ill-kept grass plot, and there was violently sick. The +anæsthetics and soporifics of the last two days were having their +usual aftermath. After that came on a shuddering faintness and a +rigor of shivers, under which her teeth clacked. Some doctor came +forward with a little brandy. She put the glass to her lips, then +pushed it aside, took Pasteur Walcker's proffered arm, and walked +towards the tram terminus. + +Then they were in the tram, going towards the heart of Brussels. How +commonplace! Fat frowsy market women got in--or got out--with their +baskets; clerks entered with portfolios--don't they call them +"serviettes"?--under their arms; German policemen, Belgian +gendarmes, German soldiers, a priest with his breviary came and went +as though this Monday morning were like any other. Vivie walked +quite firmly and staidly from the tram halt to the Walckers' house +in the Rue Haute. There she was met by Madame Walcker, who at a sign +from her husband took her upstairs, silently undressed her and put +her to bed with a hot water bottle and a cup of some hot drink which +tasted a little of coffee. + +After that Vivie passed three days of great sickness and nausea, a +furred tongue, and positively no appetite. Finally she arose a week +after the execution and looked at herself in the mirror. She was +terribly haggard, she looked at least fifty-five--"They must have +taken me for his mother or his aunt; never for his sweetheart," she +commented bitterly to herself. And her brown-gold hair was now +distinctly a cinder grey. + +The next day she went back to work at the hospital. + +To Minna, she said: "I can _never, never, never_ forget your +kindness and sympathy. 'Sister' seems an insufficient name to call +you by. Whatever happens, unless you cast me off, we shall be +friends.... I dare say I even owe my life to you, if it is worth +anything. But it is. I want to live--now--I want to live to be +revenged. I want to live to help Bertie's"--her voice still shook +over the name--"Bertie's wife and children. I expect but for you I +should have been tried already in the Senate for complicity with ... +Bertie ... and found guilty and shot..." + +_Minna_: "I won't go so far as to say you are right. But I certainly +_was_ alarmed about you, when you were arrested. Of course I knew +nothing--_nothing_--about that poor young man till just before his +execution when Pastor Walcker came to me. Even then I could do +nothing, and I understood so badly what had happened. But about you: +I said to myself, if I do not do _something_, you can perhaps be +sentenced to imprisonment ... and I _did_ bestir myself, you can +bet!" (Minna liked to show she knew a slangy phrase or two.) "So I +telegraphed to the Emperor, I besieged von Bissing at the Ministère +des Sciences et des Arts; wrote to him, telegraphed to him, +telephoned to him, sat in his anterooms, neglected my hospital work +entirely from Friday to Monday-- + +"I expect as a matter of fact they found nothing in that poor +young's man's papers to implicate you. They just wanted--the +brutes--to give you a good fright ... and I dare say ... such is the +military mind--even wished you to see him shot. + +"By the bye, I suppose you have heard that von Bissing is very ill? +Dying, perhaps--" + +_Vivie_: "I _hope_ so. I am _so_ glad. I hope it's a painful +illness and that he'll die and find there really _is_ a Hell, and an +uncommonly hot one!" + + +It must not be supposed from the frequent quotations from Countess +von Stachelberg's condemnations of German cruelties that she was an +unpatriotic woman, repudiating, apostatizing from her own country. +On the contrary: she held--mistakenly or not--that Germany had been +the victim of secret diplomacy, had been encircled by a ring fence +of enemies, refused the economic guarantees she required, and the +colonial expansion she desired. Minna disliked the Slavs, did not +believe in them, save as musicians, singers, painters, dancers, +and actors. She believed Germany had a great civilizing, +culture-spreading mission in South-east Europe; and that the germs +of this war lay in the policy of Chamberlain, the protectionism of +the United States, the revengeful spirit and colonial selfishness of +France. + +But she shuddered over the German cruelties in Belgium and France. +The horrors of War were a revelation to her and she was henceforth a +Pacifist before all things. "_Your_ old statesmen and _our_ old or +middle-aged generals, my dear, are alike to blame. But you and I +know where the _real_ mischief lies. We are mis-ruled by an +All-Man Government. _I_, certainly, don't want the other extreme, +an All-Woman Government. What we want, and must have, is a +Man-and-Woman--a Married--Government. _Then_ we shall settle our +differences without going to war." + +Vivie agreed with her, cordially. + +She--Vivie--I really ought to begin calling her "Vivien": she is +forty-one by now--in resuming her duties at the Hôpital de St. +Pierre found no repugnance in tending wounded German soldiers--the +officers she did shrink from--She realized that the soldiers were +but the slaves of the officer class, of Kaiserdom. Her reward for +this degree of Christianity was to have a batch of wounded English +boys or men to look after. She saw again Bertie Adams in many of +them, especially in the sergeants and corporals. They, in turn, +thought her a very handsome, stately lady, but rather maudlin at +times. "So easy to set 'er off a-cryin' as though 'er 'eart would +break, poor thing.... And I says 'why ma'am, the pain's _nuthin_', +nuthin' to what it use ter be.' 'Spec' she lost some son in the war. +Wonder 'ow she came to be 'ere? Ain't the Germans afraid of 'er!"... + +They were. The mental agony she had been through had etherialized +her face, added to its look of age and gravity, but imparted +likewise a sort of "awfulness." She exhaled an aura of righteous +authority. She had been through the furnace, and foolishness and +petulance had been burnt out of her ... though, thank goodness, she +retained some sense of humour. She had probably never been so +handsome from the painter's point of view, though one could not +imagine a young man falling in love with her now. + +Her personality was first definitely noted by the Bruxellois the day +that von Bissing's funeral cortège passed through the streets of +Brussels on its way to Germany. Vivien Warren was sufficiently +restored to health then to stand on the steps of some monument and +cry "Vive la Belgique! À bas les tyrans!" The policemen and the +spies looked another way and affected deafness. They had orders not +to arrest her unless she actually resorted to firearms or other +lethal weapons. + +It was said that her appeal for Bertie Adams did reach the Emperor, +two days too late; that he pished and pshawed over von Bissing's +cruel precipitancy. "Englishmen," he muttered to his entourage, +"don't assassinate. The Irish do. But _how_ I'm going to make peace +with England, _I_ don't know...!" + +(His Hell on Earth must have been that few people admired the +English character more than he did, and yet, unprovoked, he had +blundered into war with England.) + +However, though it was too late to save "this lunatic Adams," he +gave orders that Vivie was to be let alone. He even, through Gräfin +von Stachelberg, transmitted to her his regrets that she and her +mother had been treated so cavalierly at the Hotel Impérial. It was +not through any orders of his. + +So: Vivie became quite a power in Brussels during that last anxious +year and a half of waiting, between May, 1917, and November, 1918. +German soldiers, still limping from their wounds, saluted her in the +street, remembering her kindness in hospital, and the letters she +unweariedly wrote at their dictation to their wives and +families--for she had become quite a scholar in German. The scanty +remains of the British Colony and the great ladies among the +patriotic Belgians now realized how false were the stories that had +circulated about her in the first year of the War; and extended to +her their friendship. And the Spanish Minister who had taken the +place of the American as protector of British subjects, invited her +to all the fêtes he gave for Belgian charities and Red Cross funds. +Through his Legation she endeavoured to send information to the +Y.M.C.A. and to Bertie's widow that Albert Adams of the Y.M.C.A. +"had died in Brussels from the consequences of the War." + +I dare say in the autumn of 1917, if Vivien Warren had applied +through the Spanish Minister for a passport to leave Belgium for +some neutral country, it would have been accorded to her: the German +authorities would have been thankful to see her no more. She +reminded them of one of the cruellest acts of their administration. +But she preferred to stay for the historical revenge of seeing the +Germans driven out of Belgium, and Belgian independence restored. +And she could not go lest Bertie's grave should be forgotten. In +common with Edith Cavell, Gabrielle Petit, Philippe Bauck, and the +other forty or fifty victims of von Bissing's "Terror," he had been +buried in the grassy slopes of the amphitheatre of the Rifle range, +near where he had been executed. Every Sunday, wet or fine, Vivien +went there with fresh flowers. She had marked the actual grave with +a small wooden cross bearing his name, till the time should come +when she could have his remains transferred to English soil. + +One day, as she was leaving the hospital in the autumn of 1917, a +shabby man pushed into her hand a soiled, way-worn copy of the +_Times_, a fortnight old. "Three francs," he whispered. She paid +him. It was no uncommon thing for her or one of her English or +Belgian acquaintances to buy the _Times_ or some other English daily +at a price ranging from one franc to ten, and then pass it round the +friendly circle of subscribers who apportioned the cost. On this +occasion she opened her _Times_ in the tram, going home, and glanced +at its columns. In any one but "Mees Varennes" in these days of +1917, 1918, this would have been a punishable offence; but in her +case no spy or policeman noted the infringement of regulations about +the enemy press. On one of the pages she read the account of a bad +air-raid on Portland Place, and a reference--with a short obituary +notice elsewhere--to the death of one of the victims of the German +bombs. This was "Linda, Lady Rossiter, the dearly loved wife of Sir +Michael Rossiter, whose discoveries in the way of bone grafting and +other forms of curative surgery had been among the outstanding +achievements in etc., etc." + +"Dear me!" said Vivien to herself, as the tram coursed on beyond her +usual stopping place and the conductor obstinately looked the other +way, "I'm glad she lived to be _Lady_ Rossiter. It must have given +her such pleasure. Poor thing! And to think the knowledge that he's +a widower hardly stirs my pulses one extra beat. And how I _loved_ +that man, seven years, six years, five years ago! Hullo! Where am I? +Miles from the Rue Haute! Conducteur! Arrêtez, s'il vous plaît." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +AFTER THE ARMISTICE + + +The Bruxellois felt very disheartened in the closing months of 1917. +The Russian revolution had brought about the collapse of Russia as +an enemy of Germany; and the Germans were enabled to transport most +of their troops on the Russian frontier to the west and to the +Italian frontier. Italy had lost half Venetia and enormous +quantities of guns in the breach of her defences at Caporetto. It +seemed indeed at any moment, when the ice and snow of that dreadful +winter of 1917-18 melted, as though Italy would share the fate of +Rumania. Though the British army had had a grand success with their +Tanks, they had, ere 1917 ended, lost nearly all the ground gained +round Cambrai. Besides, the submarine menace was imperilling the +British food supplies and connections with America. As to the United +States: was their intervention going to be more than money loans and +supplies of material? Would they really supply the fighting men, the +one thing at this crisis necessary to defeat Germany? + +Belgium had been divided administratively into two distinct +portions, north and south of the Meuse. North of the Meuse she was +to be a Dutch-speaking country either part of Germany eventually, or +given to Holland to compensate her for her very benevolent +neutrality towards Germany during the War. A handful of Flemish +adventurers appeared at Brussels to form the Council of Flanders, +and sickened the Bruxellois by their lavish praise of the German +administration and servile concurrence with all German measures. + +The events of the spring of 1918 accentuated the despair in the +Belgian capital. When the Germans broke through the defences of the +new lines which ran through Picardy and Champagne, reached the +vicinity of Amiens, retook Soissons, and recrossed the Marne, it +seemed as though Belgian independence had been lost; the utmost she +could hope for would be the self-government of a German province. + +But Vivie was not among the pessimists. She discerned a smouldering +discontent among the German soldiers, even when Germany seemed near +to a sweeping victory over France and Britain. + +The brutality of the soldiers, their deliberate, nasty dirtiness +during the first two years of the War seemed due rather to their +officers' orders than to an anti-human disposition of their own. +Many of the soldiers in Belgium, in Brussels, turned round--so to +speak--and conceived a horror of what they had done, of what they +had been told to do. Men who on the instigation of their +officers--and these last, especially the Prussians, seemed fiends +incarnate--had offered violence to young Belgian women, ended by +offering to marry them, even showed themselves kind husbands, only +too willing to become domesticated, groaning at having to leave +their temporary homes and return to the terrible fighting on the +Yser or in France. + +There were, for example, the soldiers stationed at the Villa +Beau-séjour and at the Oudekens' farm. Vivie had a growing desire to +find out what had happened to her mother's property. One day, late +in February, 1918, when there was a premature breath and feeling of +Spring in the air, she called on her friend--as he had become--the +Directeur of the Prison of Saint-Gilles, and asked him--since she +herself could not deign to ask any favour or concession of the +German authorities--to obtain for her a permit to proceed to +Tervueren, the railway service between Brussels and that place +having been reopened. She walked over--with what reminiscences the +roads and paths were filled--to the Villa, and showing her pass was +received, not uncivilly, by the sergeant-major in charge. +Fortunately the officers had all gone, voting it very dull, with +Brussels so near and yet so far. After their departure the +sergeant-major and his reduced guard of men had begun to make the +place more homelike. The usual German thrift had shown itself. They +had reassembled the remains of Mrs. Warren's herd of cows. These had +calves and were giving milk. There were once more the beginnings of +a poultry yard. The rooms had been cleaned at any rate of their +unspeakable filth, though the dilapidations and the ruined furniture +made tears of vexation stand in Vivie's eyes. However she kept her +temper and told the sergeant that it was _her_ property now; that +she intended to reclaim it at the end of the War, and that if he saw +to it that the place was handed back to her with no further damage, +she would take care that he was duly rewarded; and as an instalment +she gave him a good tip. He replied with a laugh and a shrug "That +may well come about." ("Das könnte wohl geschehen.") + +He had already heard of the Engländerin whom the Kommandantur was +afraid to touch, and opened his heart to her; even offering to +prepare her a little meal in her own _salle à manger_. With what +strange sensations she sat down to it. The sergeant as he brought in +the _oeufs au plat_ said the soldiers were already sick of the +War. Most wanted to go back to Germany, but a few were so much in +love with Belgium that they hoped they might be allowed to settle +down there; especially those who spoke Platt-deutsch, to whom +Flemish came so easy. + +From Villa Beau-séjour, Vivien Warren passed on to the Oudekens' +farm, wondering what she would see--Some fresh horror? But on the +contrary, Mme. Oudekens looked years younger; indeed when Vivien +first stood outside the house door, she had heard really hearty +laughter coming from the orchard where the farmer's widow was +pinning up clothes to dry. Yet it was here that the woman's husband +had been shot and buried, as the result of a field-court's sentence. + +But when she answered Vivien's questions, after plying her with +innumerable enquiries, she admitted with a blush that Heinrich, the +German sergeant, with whom she had first cohabited by constraint, +had recently married her at the Mairie, though the Curé had refused +to perform the religious service. Heinrich was now invariably kind +and worked hard on the farm. He hoped by diligently supplying the +officers' messes in Brussels with poultry and vegetables that he and +his assistants--two corporals--might be overlooked and not sent back +into the fighting ranks. As to her daughters, after a few months of +promiscuity--a terrible time that Mme. Oudekens wanted to +forget--they had been assigned to the two corporals as their +exclusive property. They were both of them about to become mothers, +and if no one interfered, as soon as this accursed War was over +their men would marry them. "But," said Vivie, "suppose your husband +and these corporals are married already, in Germany?" "Qu'est-ce-que +ça fait?" said Mme. Oudekens. "C'est si loin." By making these +little concessions she had already saved her youngest son from +deportation to Germany. + +The enormous demands for food in Brussels, which in 1918 had a +floating population of over a million and where the Germans were +turning large dogs into pemmican, had tripled the value of all +productive farms so near the capital as those round Tervueren, +especially now the railway service was reopened. Many of the +peasants were making huge fortunes in complicity with some German +soldier-partner. + +In Brussels itself, soldiers often sided with the people against the +odious "polizei," the intolerable German spies and police agents. +Conflicts would sometimes occur in the trams and the streets when +the German police endeavoured to arrest citizens for reading the +_Times_ or _La Libre Belgique_, or for saying disrespectful things +about the Emperor. + +The tremendous rush of the German offensive onward to the Marne, +Somme, and Ypres salient in March-June, 1918, was received by the +shifting garrison of Brussels with little enthusiasm. Would it not +tend to prolong the War? The German advance into France was +spectacular, but it was paid for by an appalling death-roll. The +hospitals at Brussels were filled to overflowing with wounded and +dying men. The Austrians who were brought from the Italian front to +replenish the depleted battalions, quarrelled openly with the +Prussians, and in some cases had to be surrounded in a barrack +square and shot down. + +The first real check to the German Army in its second march on +Paris--that which followed its crossing of the Marne near +Dormans--was prophetically greeted by the Bruxellois as the turning +of the tide. The Emperor had gone thither from the Hotel Impérial in +order to witness and follow the culminating march on Paris. But Foch +now struck with his reserves, and the head of the tortoise was +nipped off. The driving back of the Germans over the Marne coincided +with the Belgian National Fête of July 21. Not since 1914 had this +fête been openly observed. But on this day in 1918, the German +police made no protest when a huge crowd celebrated the fête day in +every church and every street. Vivien herself, smiling and laughing +as she had not done since Bertie's death, attended the service in +Sainte-Gudule and joined in singing _La Brabançonne_ in place of +_Te Deum, laudamus_. In the streets and houses of Brussels every +piano, every gramophone was enrolled to play the _Marseillaise_, +_Vers l'Avenir_, and _La Brabançonne_, the Belgian national anthem +(uninspiring words and dreary tune). From this date onwards--July +21--the German _débacle_ proceeded, with scarcely one day's +intermission, with never a German regain of lost ground. + +When the Americans had retaken St. Mihiel on September 14, then did +Belgians boldly predict that their King would be back in Brussels by +Christmas. But their prophecies were outstripped by events. Already, +in the beginning of October, the accredited German Press in Belgium +was adjuring the Belgians not to be impatient, but to let them +evacuate Belgium quietly. At the end of October, Minna von +Stachelberg told Vivien that she and the other units of the German +Red Cross had received instructions to leave and hand over their +charges to the Belgian doctors and nurses. The two women took an +affectionate farewell of each other, vowing they would meet +again--somewhere--when the War was over. British wounded now began +to cease coming into Brussels, so Vivie was free to attend to her +own affairs. + +Enormous quantities of German plunder were streaming out of Belgium +by train, by motor, in military lorries, in carts and waggons. +Nearly all this belonged to the officers, and the already-rebellious +soldiers broke out in protestations. "Why should they who had done +all the fighting have none of the loot?" So they won over the +Belgian engine-drivers--delighted to see this quarrel between the +hyenas--and held up the trains in the suburban stations north of +Brussels. There were pitched battles which ended always in the +soldiers' victory. + +The soldiers then would hold auctions and markets of the plunder +captured in the trains and lorries. They were in a hurry to get a +little money to take back with them to Germany. Vivie, who had laid +her plans now as to what to do after the German evacuation of +Brussels, attended these auctions. She was nearly always civilly +treated, because so many German soldiers had known her as a friend +in hospital and told other soldiers. At one such sale she bought a +serviceable motor-car for 750 francs; at another drums of petrol. + +She had provided herself with funds by going to her mother's bank +and reopening the question of the deposited jewels and plate. Now +that the victory of the Allies seemed certain, the bank manager was +more inclined to make things easy for her. He had the jewels and +plate valued--roughly--at £3,000; and although he would not +surrender them till the will could be proved and she could show +letters of administration, he consented on behalf of the bank to +make her a loan of 30,000 francs. + +On November 10th, a German soldier who followed Vivien about with +humble fidelity since she had cured him of a bad whitlow--and also +because, as he said, it was a joy to speak English once more--for he +had been a waiter at the Savoy Hotel--came to her in the Boulevard +d'Anspach and said "The Red flag, lady, he fly from Kommandantur. +With us I think it is Kaput." This was what Vivien had been waiting +for. Asking the man to follow her, she first stopped outside a shop +of military equipment, and after a brief inspection of its goods +entered and purchased a short, not too flexible riding-whip, with a +heavy handle. Then as the trams were densely crowded, she walked at +a rapid pace--glancing round ever and again to see that her German +soldier was following--up the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique and +along the Rue Royale until she came to the Hotel Impérial. Here she +halted for a minute to have the soldier close behind her; then gave +the revolving door a turn and found herself and him in the marble +hall once built for Mrs. Warren's florid taste. "Call the Manager," +she said--trying not to pant--to two Belgian servants who came up, +a porter and a lift man. The Manager--he who had ejected her and her +mother in 1915--was fortunately a little while in appearing. He was +really packing up with energy so as to depart with all the plunder +he could transport before the way of escape was closed. This little +delay enabled Vivien to get her breath and resume an impressive +calm. + +"Well: what you want?" the Manager said insolently, recollecting +her. + +"This first," she said, seizing him suddenly by his coat collar. + +"I want--to--give--you--the--soundest--thrashing you have ever +had..." + +And before he could offer any effective resistance she had lashed +him well with the riding _cravache_ about the shoulders, hands, back +and face. He wrenched himself free and crouched ready for a counter +attack. But the Belgian servants intervened and tripped him up; and +the German soldier--the ex-waiter from the Savoy--said that Madame +was by nature so kind that there must be some good reason for this +chastisement. + +"There is," she replied, now she had got her breath and was inwardly +feeling ashamed at her resort to such violent methods. + +"Three years ago, this creature turned my mother and myself out of +this hotel with such violence that my mother died of it a few +minutes afterwards. He stole our money and much of our property. I +have inherited from my mother, to whom this hotel once belonged, a +right over certain rooms which she used to occupy. I resume that +right from to-day. I shall go to them now. As to this wretch, throw +him out on to the pavement. He can afterwards send for his luggage, +and what really is his he shall have." + +Her orders were executed. + +She then sent a message to Mme. Walcker and to the kind tea-shop +woman, Mme. Trouessart, close by, explaining what she had done and +why. "I shall take control of this hotel in the name of the Belgian +Company that owns it, a Company in which, through my mother, I +possess shares. I shall stay here till responsible persons take it +over and I shall resume possession of the _appartement_ that +belonged to my mother." Meantime, would Madame Trouessart engage a +few stout wenches to eke out the scanty hotel staff, most of which +being German had already commenced its flight back to the fatherland +with all the plunder it could carry off. The soldier-ex-hotel-waiter +was provisionally engaged to remain, as long as the Belgian +Government allowed him, and three stalwart British soldiers, until +the day before prisoners-of-war, were enlisted in her service and +armed with revolvers to repel any ordinary act of brigandage. + +By the end of November she had the Hotel Édouard-Sept--with the +old name restored--running smoothly and ready for the new +guests--British, French officers and civilians who would follow +the King of the Belgians on his return to his capital. The +re-established Belgian authorities soon put her into possession of +the Villa Beau-séjour. The German sergeant-major here had kept faith +with her, and in return for handing over everything intact, +including the herd of cows, received a _douceur_ which amply +rewarded him for this belated honesty before he, too, set his face +towards Germany with the rest of the evacuating army. The motor-car +she had bought enabled her to fetch supplies of food from farm to +hotel and to perform many little services to Belgians who were +returning to their old homes. Madame Trouessart, not as yet having +any stock of tea with which to reopen her tea-shop to the first +incoming of curious tourists, agreed to live with Miss Warren at the +hotel and act as her deputy, if affairs took her away from Brussels. + +It was at the Hotel Édouard-Sept, the place where she had been +born, that Rossiter met her when he arrived in Brussels after the +Armistice. She felt a little tremulous when his card was sent up to +her, and kept him waiting quite five minutes while she saw that her +hair was tidy and estimated before the glass the extent to which it +had gone grey. She had let it grow of late years--the days of David +Williams and Mr. Michaelis seemed very remote--and spent some time +and consideration in arranging it. Her costume was workmanlike and +that of an hotel manageress in the morning; yet distinctly set off +her figure and suited her character of an able-bodied, intellectual +woman. + + * * * * * + +"Vivie!" + +"Michael!" + +"My _dear_! You're handsomer than ever!" + +"Michael! Your khaki uniform becomes you; and I'm _so_ glad you've +got rid of that beard. _Now_ we can see your well-shaped chin. But +still: we mustn't stand here, paying one another compliments, though +this meeting is _too_ wonderful: I never thought I should see you +again. Let's come to realities. I suppose the real heart-felt +question at the back of your mind is: _can_ I let you have a room? I +can, but not a bath-room suite; they're all taken..." + +_Michael_: "Nonsense! I'm going to be put up at the Palace Hotel. +Jenkins--you remember the butler of old time?--Jenkins, and my +batman, a refined brigand, a polished robber, have already been +there and commandeered something.... + +"No. I came here, firstly to find out if you were living; secondly +to ask you to marry me" ... (a pause) ... "and thirdly to find out +what happened to Bertie Adams. A message came through the Spanish +Legation here, a year and a half ago, to the effect that he had died +at Brussels from the consequences of the War. However, unless you +can tell me at once this is all a mistake, we can go into his +affairs later. My first question is--Oh! Bother all this cackle.... +_Will_ you marry me?" + +_Vivie_: "Dear, brave Bertie, whom I shall everlastingly mourn, was +shot here in Brussels by the abominable Germans, as a spy, on April +8th, 1917. He was of course no more a spy than you are or I am. The +poor devoted fool--I rage still, because I shall never be worth such +folly, such selfless devotion--got into Belgium with false +passports--American: in the hope of rescuing me. He came and +enquired here--my last address in his remembrance--and came by sheer +bad luck just as the Kaiser was about to arrive. They jumped to the +conclusion that--" + +_Rossiter_: "_Awfully, cruelly_ sad. But you can give me the details +of it later on. You must have a long, long story of your own to tell +which ought to be of poignant interest. But ... will you marry me? I +suppose you know dear Linda died--was killed by a bomb in a German +air-raid last year--October, 1917. I really felt _heart-broken_ +about it, but I know now I am only doing what she would have wished. +She came at last to talk about you _quite_ differently, _quite_ +understanding--" + +_Vivie_: "That's what all widowers say. They always declare the dead +wife begged them to marry again, and even designated her successor. +Poor Linda! Yes, I read an account of it in a copy of the _Times_; +but I couldn't of course communicate with you to say how _truly, +truly_ sorry I was. I am glad to know she spoke nicely of me. Did +she really? Or have you only made it up?" + +_Michael_: "_Of course_ I haven't. She really did. Do you know, she +and I quite altered after the War began? She lost all her old +silliness and inefficiency--or at any rate only retained enough of +the old childishness to make her endearing. And I really grew to +love her. I quite forgot you. Yes: I admit it.... + +"But somehow, after she was dead the old feeling for you came back +... and without any disloyalty to Linda. I felt in a way--I know it +is an absurd thing for a man of science to say, for we have still no +proof--I felt somehow as though she lived still. That's why I don't +want to get rid of the Park Crescent house. Her presence seems to +linger there. But I also knew--instinctively--that she would like us +to come together.... She..." + +_Waiter_ (knocking at door and slightly opening it): "Madame! Le +Général Tompkins veut vous voir. Il ajoute qu'il n'est pas habitué à +attendre. Il y a aussi M'sieur Émile Vandervelde, qui arrive +instamment et qui n'a pas d'installation..." + +_Rossiter_: "Damn! Let me go and settle with 'em. Tompkins! I never +heard such cheek--" + +_Vivien_: "Not at all. You forget I am Manageress." (To Waiter) +"Entrez done! Dîtes au Général que je serai à sa disposition dans +trois minutes; et montrez-lui ce que nous avons en fait de chambres. +Tous les appartements avec bain sont pris. Casez M'sieur Vandervelde +quelque part. Du reste, je descendrai."... (Waiter goes out) ... +"Michael! It is impossible to have a sentimental conversation here, +and at this hour--Eleven o'clock on a busy morning. If you want an +answer to your second question, now you've seen me, meet me outside +the Palm House of the Jardin Botanique, at 3 p.m. I'll get off +somehow for an hour just then. Don't forget! It's close by +here--along the Rue Royale. Be absolutely punctual, or else I shall +think that having _seen_ me, seen how changed I am, you have altered +your mind. I shall _quite_ understand; only I _may_ come back at +five minutes past three and accept General Tompkins. Acquaintances +ripen quickly in Brussels." + + * * * * * + +In the Palm House--or rather one of its many compartments; 3.5 p.m., +on a beautiful afternoon in early December. The sun is sinking over +outspread Brussels in a pink and yellow haze radiating from the +good-humoured-looking, orange orb. There are no other visitors to +the Palm House, at any rate not to this compartment, except the +superintending gardener--the same that cheered the last hours of +Mrs. Warren. He recognizes Vivien and salutes her gravely. Seeing +that she is accompanied by a gentleman in khaki he discreetly +withdraws out of hearing and tidies up a tree fern. Vivien and +Michael seat themselves on two green iron chairs under the fronds +and in front of grey stems. + +_Vivie_: "This is a favourite place of mine for assignations. I +can't think why it is so little appreciated by young Brussels. These +palm houses are much more beautiful than anything at Kew; they are +in the heart of Brussels, over which, as you see, you have a +wonderful view. It was much more frequented when the Germans were +here. With all their brutality they did not injure this unequalled +collection of Tropical plants. They made the Palm House an allowance +of coal and coke in winter while we poor human beings went without. +I used often to come in here on a winter's day to get warm and to +forget my sorrows.... + +"Look at that superb Raphia--_what_ fronds! And that Phoenix +spinosa--and that Aralia--" + +_Rossiter_: "Bother the Aralia. I haven't come here for a Botany +lesson. Besides, it isn't an Aralia; it's a Gomphocarpus.... Vivie! +_Will_ you marry me?" + +_Vivie_: "My dear Michael: I was forty-three last October." + +_Michael_: "I was _fifty-three_ last November, the day the Armistice +was signed. But I feel more like thirty-three. Life in camp has +quite rejuvenated me..." + +_Vivie_ (continuing): ... "And my hair is cinder grey--an +unfortunate transition colour. And if the gardener were not looking +I should say: 'Feel my elbows ... Dreadfully bony! And my face has +become..." She turns her face towards him. He sees tears trembling +on the lower lashes of her grey eyes, but something has come into +the features, some irradiation of love--is it the light of the +sunset?--which imparts a tender youthfulness to the curvature of +cheek, lips and chin. Her face, indeed, might be of any age: it held +the undying beauty of a goddess, in whom knowledge has sweetened to +tenderness and divinity has dissolved in a need for compassion; and +the youthful assurance of a happy woman whose wish at last is +won.... + +For a minute she looks at him without finishing her sentence. Then +she sits up straighter and says explicitly: "Yes, I will." + + * * * * * + +The gardener managed an occasional peep at them, sitting hand in +hand. He wished the idyll to last as long as the clear daylight, but +the hour for closing was four o'clock--"Il n'y avait pas à nier." +Either they were husband and wife, reunited, after years of +war-severance; or they were mature lovers, and probably of the most +respectable. In either case, the necessary hint that ecstasies must +transfer themselves at sunset from the glass houses of the Jardin +Botanique to the outer air was best conveyed on this occasion by a +discreet gift of flowers. Accordingly he went on to where exotic +lilies were blooming, picked a few blossoms, returned, came with +soft padding steps up to Vivie, offered them with a bow and "Mes +félicitations _sincères_, Madame." Vivie laughed and took the +lilies; Rossiter of course gave him a ten-franc note. And they +sauntered slowly back to the hotel. + + + + +L'ENVOI + + +I am reproached by such Art Critics as deign to notice my pictures +with "finishing my foregrounds over much,"--filling them with +superabundant detail, making the primroses more important than the +snow-peaks. And by my publishers with forgetting the price of paper +and the cost of printing. My jury of matrons thinks I don't know +where to leave off and that I might very well close this book on the +answer that Mrs. Warren's daughter gave to Sir Michael Rossiter's +proposal of marriage in the Palm House at Brussels. "The reader," +they say, "can very well fill in the rest of the story for himself +or herself. It is hardly likely that Vivie will cry off at the last +moment, or Michael reconsider the plunge into a second marriage. Why +therefore waste print and paper and our eyesight in describing the +marriage ceremony, the inevitable visit to Honoria, and what Vivie +did with the property she inherited from her mother?" + +No doubt they are all right. Yet I am distrustful of my readers' +judgment and imagination. I feel both want guiding, and I doubt +their knowledge of the world and goodness of heart being equal to +mine, except in rare cases. + +So I throw out these indications to influence the sequels they may +plan to this story. + +I think that Michael and Vivie were married at the British Legation +in Brussels between Christmas and the New Year of 1918-1919; before +that Legation was erected into an Embassy; and that the marriage +officer was kind, genial Mr. Hawk when he returned to Brussels from +The Hague and proceeded to get the Legation into working order. I am +sure Mr. Hawk entered into the spirit of the thing and gave an +informal breakfast afterwards in the Rue de Spa to which Mons. and +Mme. Walcker, Mons. and Mme. Trouessart, and the Directeur of the +prison of Saint-Gilles and his wife were invited. I think the head +gardener of the Jardin Botanique who had charge of the Tropical +houses cribbed from the collections some of the most magnificent +blooms, and presented them to Vivie on the morning of her marriage; +and that afterwards she laid the bouquet on her mother's newly +finished tomb in the cemetery of St. Josse-ten-Noode, where, the +weather being singularly mild for the time of year, the flowers +lasted fresh and blooming for several days. + +I am sure she and Michael then crossed the road and passed on to the +building of the Tir National; entered it and stood for a moment in +the verandah from which Vivie had seen Bertie Adams executed; and +passed on over the tussocky grass to the graves of Bertie Adams and +Edith Cavell, where they did silent homage to the dead. I believe a +few days afterwards they visited the Senate where the victims of von +Bissing's "Terror" had been tried, browbeaten, insulted, mocked. And +the functionary who showed them over this superb national palace is +certain to have included in his exposition the once splendid +carpets which the German officers prior to their evacuation of the +Senate--all but the legislative chamber of which was used as a +barracks for rough soldiery--had sprayed and barred, streaked and +splodged with printing ink. He would also have pointed out the +three-hundred-year-old tapestries they had ripped from the walls and +the historical portraits they had slashed, and would again have +emphasized the fact that in all these senseless devastations the +officers were far worse than the men. + +Also I am certain that Michael and Vivie made a pilgrimage to the +prison of Saint-Gilles, and stood silently in the cell where Bertie +Adams and Vivie had spent those terrible days of suspense and +despair between April 6 and April 8, 1917; and that when they +entered that other compartment of the prison where Edith Cavell had +passed her last days before her execution, they listened with +sympathetic reverence to the recital by the Directeur of verses from +"l'Hymne d'Édith Cavell"--as it is now called--no other than the sad +old poem of human sorrow, _Abide with me_; and that they appreciated +to the full the warmth of Belgian feeling which has turned the cell +of Edith Cavell into a Chapelle Ardente in perpetuity. + +I think they returned to England in January, 1919, so that Michael +might get back quickly to his work of mending the maimed, now +transferred to English hospitals; and so that Vivie--always a +practical woman--should prove her mother's will, secure her heritage +and have it in hand as a fund from which to promote all the +happiness she could. I doubt whether she will give much of it to +"causes" rather than cases and to politics in preference to persons. +I think she was awfully disgusted when she was back in the England +of to-day not to find Mrs. Fawcett Prime Ministress and First Lady +of the Treasury, Annie Kenney at the Board of Trade and Christabel +Pankhurst running the Ministry of Health. It was disheartening after +the long struggle for the Woman's Vote and the equality of the sexes +in opportunity to find the same old men-muddlers in charge of all +public affairs and departments of state, and the only woman on the +benches of the House of Commons a millionaire peeress never before +identified with the struggle for the Woman's Cause. + +However I think her disenchantment did not diminish the rapture at +finding herself once more in the intimacy of Honoria Armstrong. Sir +Petworth, when he ran over on leave from the Army of Occupation, +thought her enormously improved, though he had the tact not to say +so. He frankly made the _amende honorable_ for his suspicions and +churlishness of the past, and himself--I think--insisted on his +frank and friendly children calling her "Aunt Vivie." I am equally +sure that Vivie was not long in London before she appeared at dear +old Praddy's studio, beautifully gowned and looking years younger +than forty-three; and I shouldn't wonder but that her presence once +more in his circle will give his frame a fillip so that he may cheat +Death over a few more annual outbreaks of influenza. I am convinced +that he has left all his money, after providing a handsome annuity +for the parlour-maid, to Vivie, knowing that in her hands, far +more--and far more quickly than in those that direct princely and +public charities--will his funds reach the students and the +poverty-stricken artists whom he wants to benefit. + +I think that after spending the first five months of 1919 in London, +getting No. 1 Park Crescent tidy again and fully repaired (because +Michael wished to pursue more thoroughly than ever his biological +researches), Vivie and Michael went off to spend their real +honeymoon in the Occupied Territory of the Rhineland, in that +never-to-be forgotten June, memorable for its splendid sunshine and +the beauty of its flowers and foliage. I think they did this +expressly (under the guise of a visit to General Armstrong), so that +Vivie and Minna von Stachelberg--now Minna Schultz--might foregather +at Bonn. Minna had married again, an officer of no family but of +means and of fine physique whom she had nursed in Brussels. His left +arm had been shattered, but the skill of the Belgian surgeons and +her devoted nursing had saved it from being amputated. She had +wished however to have him examined by some great exponent of +curative surgery at Bonn University, and the conjunction of the +celebrated Sir Michael Rossiter--who in his discussions of anatomy +with the Bonn professors forgot there had ever been a war between +Britain and Germany--was most opportune. + +I think however that Sir Michael said this was all humbug on Minna's +part, and that all she wanted--her husband, Major Schultz, looking +the picture of health--was to meet once more her well-beloved Vivie. +At any rate I am sure they met in the Rhineland in a propitious +month when you could be out of doors all day and all night; and that +Minna said some time or other how happy she was in her second +marriage, and that however heartily she disliked militarism and +condemned War, soldiers made the nicest husbands. I think before she +and Vivie parted to go their several ways, they determined to work +for the building up of an Anglo-German reconciliation, and for the +advocacy in both countries of a Man-and-Woman Government. + +I think, nevertheless, that Vivie being a sound business woman and +possessing a strong sense of justice on the lines of an eye for an +eye, will claim at least Five Thousand pounds from the German +Government for the devastations and thefts at the Villa Beau-séjour; +and that having got it and having disposed of her mother's jewellery +and plate for £3,500, she will present the Villa Beau-séjour +property and an endowment of £8,000 to the Town of Brussels, as an +educational orphanage for the children of Belgian soldiers who have +died in the War, where they may receive a practical education in +agriculture and poultry farming. + +I fancy she gave a Thousand pounds to Pasteur Walcker's Congo +Mission; and transferred to Mme. Trouessart all her shares in and +rights over the Hotel Édouard-Sept. + +I also picture to myself the Rossiters having a motor tour of pure +pleasure and delight of the eyes in South Wales in September, 1919. + +I imagine their going to Pontystrad and surprising the Vicar and +Vicaress and puzzling them by purposely-diffuse stories of Vivie's +cousin the late David Vavasour Williams, intended to convey the +idea, without telling unnecessary fibs, that David died abroad +during the War, but that Vivie in his memory and that of his dear +old father intends to continue a strong personal interest in the +Village Hall and its educational aims. I also picture Vivie going +alone to Mrs. Evanwy's rose-entwined cottage. The old lady is now +rather shaky and does not walk far from her little garden with its +box bower and garden seat. I can foreshadow Vivie dispelling some of +the mystery about David Williams and being embraced by the old +Nannie with warm affection and the hearty assurances that she had +guessed the secret from the very first but had been so drawn to the +false David Williams and so sure of his honest purposes that nothing +would have induced her to undeceive the old Vicar. I can even +imagine the old lady ere--years hence--paralysis strikes her +down--telling Vivie so much gossip about the Welsh Vavasours that +Vivie becomes positively certain her mother came from that stock and +that she really was first cousin to the boy she personated for the +laudable purpose of showing how well a woman could practise at the +Bar. + +I like to think also that by the present year of grace--1920--the +Rossiters will have become convinced that No. 1 Park Crescent, even +with the Zoo and the Royal Botanic Gardens close by and the +ornamental garden of Regent's Park in between, does not satisfy all +their needs and ambitions: that they will have resolved even before +this year began--to supplement it by a home in the country for +week-ends, for summer visits, and finally for rest in their old age. +That for this purpose they will acquire some ideal Grange or Priory, +or ample farmstead near Petworth and the Armstrongs' home, over +against the South Downs, and near the river Rother; that it shall be +in no mere suburb of Petworth but in a stately little village with +its own character and history going back to Roman times and a church +with a Saxon body and a Norman chancel. And that in the ideal +churchyard of this enviable church with ancient yews and 18th +century tomb-stones, and old, old benches in the sunshine for the +grandfathers and loafers of the village to sit on and smoke of a +Sabbath morning, a place shall be found for the bones of Bertie +Adams; reverently brought over from the grassy amphitheatre of the +Tir National to repose in this churchyard of West Sussex which looks +out over one of the finest cricket pitches in the county. If, then, +there is any lien between the mouldering fragments of our bodies and +the inexplicable personality which has been generated in the living +brain, the former office boy of _Fraser and Warren_ will know that +he is always present in the memory of Vivien Rossiter, that she has +placed the few physical fragments still representing him in such a +setting as would have delighted his honest, simple nature in his +lifetime. He would also know that his children are now hers and her +husband's; that his Nance very rightly married the excellent butler, +Jenkins, with whom he had discussed many a cricket score; and that +Love, after all, is stronger than Death. + + +THE END + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Mrs. Warren's Daughter, by Sir Harry Johnston + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. WARREN'S DAUGHTER *** + +***** This file should be named 15380-8.txt or 15380-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/3/8/15380/ + +Produced by Janet Kegg and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + diff --git a/15380-8.zip b/15380-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..db4a4fd --- /dev/null +++ b/15380-8.zip diff --git a/15380-h.zip b/15380-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..834207e --- /dev/null +++ b/15380-h.zip diff --git a/15380-h/15380-h.htm b/15380-h/15380-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..627dd96 --- /dev/null +++ b/15380-h/15380-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,14797 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" + content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> +<meta content="pg2html (binary v0.17)" + name="generator" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of + Mrs. Warren's Daughter, + by Sir Harry Johnston +</title> +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[*/ + <!-- + body { margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + p { text-indent: 1.5em; + margin-top: .75em; + font-size: 100%; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { text-align: center; } + hr { width: 20%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; } + hr.long { width: 65%; } + hr.full { width: 100%; } + + .foot { margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; + text-indent: -1em; font-size: 90%; } + .fverse { margin-left: 25%; text-align: left; + text-indent: 0; font-size: 90%; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: 0 } + .verse {margin-left: 15%; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5em; } + .center {text-align: center; text-indent: 0;} + .sc {font-variant: small-caps; } + .ar {margin-right: 20%; text-align: right; margin-top: 0;} + .heading {margin-right: 10%; text-align: right; margin-bottom: 0;} + .closing { text-align: left; margin-left: 50%; margin-right: 5%; + margin-top: .5em; text-indent: -4em; } + .bquote {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; margin-bottom: 0; + text-indent: 0; } + .bquote2 {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; margin-bottom: 0; + margin-top: 0; text-indent: 1em; font-size: 90%; } + .note {text-align: center; text-indent: 0; font-size: 90%;} + .note2 {margin-left: 20%; text-align: left; font-size: 85%; } + .noindent {text-indent: 0} + .toc { font-variant: small-caps; text-align: center; text-indent: 0; + font-size: 90%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: .5em; } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; font-size: 90%;} + center { padding: 0.8em; } + + a:link {color: blue; text-decoration: none; } + link {color: blue; text-decoration: none; } + a:visited {color: blue; text-decoration: none; } + a:hover {color: red } + + +/*]]>*/ + // --> +</style> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Warren's Daughter, by Sir Harry Johnston + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mrs. Warren's Daughter + A Story of the Woman's Movement + +Author: Sir Harry Johnston + +Release Date: March 16, 2005 [EBook #15380] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. WARREN'S DAUGHTER *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Kegg and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div style="height: 8em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> +<hr class="long" /> +<h1> + MRS. WARREN'S<br /> + DAUGHTER +</h1> +<h3> +A Story of the Woman's Movement +</h3> + +<p><br /></p> +<h5> +BY +</h5> +<h2>SIR HARRY JOHNSTON +</h2> +<p><br /></p> +<h5> +New York<br /> +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +1920 +</h5> + +<hr class="long" /> + + <p class="center">TO</p> + + <p class="center">MY JURY OF MATRONS:</p> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="dedication"> +<tr><td align='left'>WINIFRED JOHNSTON</td><td align='left'>ELLA HEPWORTH-DIXON</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>CATHERINE WELLS</td><td align='left'>ANGELA MOND</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>BEATRICE SANDS</td><td align='left'>MARGARET POWYS</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>ANNETTE HENDERSON </td><td align='left'>FLORENCE FELLOWES</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>MARY LEVY</td><td align='left'>RAY ROCKMAN-BRAHAM</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>FLORENCE TRAVERS</td><td align='left'>MAUD PARRY</td></tr></table> + + +<p class="note"> + THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED, <br /> + IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT—IN THE MAIN—IT HAS <br /> + THEIR SYMPATHY AND APPROVAL.</p> + + <p class="ar"> <span class="sc">H. H. Johnston</span></p> + +<p class="note2"> + POLING,<br /> + <i>March, 1920</i> +</p> + +<hr class="long" /> + +<a name="2H_PREF"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + PREFACE +</h2> +<p> +The earlier part of Vivien Warren's life and that of her mother, +Catherine Warren, was told by Mr. George Bernard Shaw in his play, +"Mrs. Warren's Profession," published first in 1898. +</p> +<p> +(<i>Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant</i>: 1. <i>Unpleasant</i>. Constable and +Co., 6th Edition.) +</p> +<p> +I have his permission to continue the story from 1898 onwards. To +understand my sequel it is not necessary to have read the play which +so brilliantly placed the Warren problem before us. But as most +persons of average good education have found Mr. Shaw's comedies +necessary to their mental furnishing, their understanding of +contemporary life, it is probable that all who would be drawn to +this book are already acquainted with the story of Mrs. Warren, and +will be interested in learning what happened after that story was +laid down by Mr. Shaw in 1897. I would in addition placate hostile +or peevish reviewers by reminding them of the continuity of human +histories; of biographies, real—though a little disguised by the +sauce of fiction—and unreal—because entitled <i>Life and Letters, by +His Widow</i>. The best novel or life-story ever written does not +commence with its opening page. The real commencement goes back to +the Stone ages or at any rate to the antecedent circumstances which +led up to the crisis or the formation of the characters portrayed. +Mr. Pickwick had a father, a grandfather; a mother in a mob-cap; in +the eighteenth century. It is permissible to speculate on their +stories and dispositions. Neither does a novel or a biography end +with the final page of its convenient instalment. +</p> + +<p> +When you lay down the book which describes the pathetic failure of +Lord Randolph Churchill, you do so with curiosity as to what will +become of Winston. With a pre-knowledge of the Pickwick Club, one +may usefully employ the imagination in tracing out the possible +careers of Sam Weller's chubby little boys; grown into old men, and +themselves, perchance, leaving progeny that may have married into +the peerage from the Turf, or have entered the War Cabinet at the +beckoning of Mr. Lloyd George. +</p> +<p> +I know of descendants of Madame de Brinvilliers in England who have +helped to found the Y.W.C.A.; and collateral offshoots from the +Charlotte Corday stock who are sternly opposed to the assassination +of statesmen-journalists. +</p> +<p> +So, I have taken on myself the continuation of the story outlined +twenty-three years ago by Mr. Shaw in its late Victorian stage. <i>He</i> +had a prior claim to do so; just as he might have shown us the +life—but not the letters, for she was illiterate—of Catherine +Warren's mother, the frier of fish and letter of lodgings on Tower +Hill in the 'forties and 'fifties of the last century; and of the +young Lieutenant Warren of the Tower garrison who lodged and +cohabited with her at intervals between 1850 and 1854, when he went +out to the Crimea and there died of frost-bite and neglected wounds. +Mr. Shaw has waived such claims, having, as Vivie's grandmother +would have said, "other fish to fry." But for this I should not have +ventured to take up the tale, as I hold an author while he lives has +a prescriptive right to his creations. I shall feel no bitterness in +Nirvana if, after my death, another continues the story of Vivie or +of her friends and collateral relations, under circumstances which I +shall not live to see. +</p> +<p> +In justice to Mr. Shaw I should state that the present book is +entirely my own, and that though he has not renounced a polite +interest in Vivie he is in no way responsible for her career and +behaviour. He may even be annoyed at both. +</p> +<p class="ar"> + <span class="sc">H. H. Johnston</span>. +</p> + + + + +<hr class="long" /> +<div style="height: 2em;"><br /><br /></div> + + +<h3> + CONTENTS +</h3> + + <p class="toc"><a href="#2H_PREF"> +Preface by the Author</a> +</p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0001"> +I. Vivie and Norie +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0002"> +II. Honoria and Her Friends +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0003"> +III. David Vavasour Williams +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0004"> +IV. Pontystrad +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0005"> +V. Reading for the Bar +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0006"> +VI. The Rossiters +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0007"> +VII. Honoria Again +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0008"> +VIII. The British Church +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0009"> +IX. David is Called to the Bar +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0010"> +X. The Shillito Case +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0011"> +XI. David Goes Abroad +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0012"> +XII. Vivie Returns +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0013"> +XIII. The Suffrage Movement +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0014"> +XIV. Militancy +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0015"> +XV. Imprisonment +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0016"> +XVI. Brussels and the War: 1914 +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0017"> +XVII. The Germans in Brussels: 1915-1916 +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0018"> +XVIII. The Bomb in Portland Place +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0019"> +XIX. Bertie Adams +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0020"> +XX. After the Armistice +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0023"> +L'Envoi +</a></p> + +<hr class="long" /> + +<a name="2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + MRS. WARREN'S DAUGHTER +</h2> +<a name="2HCH0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER I +</h2> +<h3> + VIVIE AND NORIE +</h3> +<p> +The date when this story begins is a Saturday afternoon in June, +1900, about 3 p.m. The scene is the western room of a suite of +offices on the fifth floor of a house in Chancery Lane, the offices +of <i>Fraser and Warren</i>, Consultant Actuaries and Accountants. There +is a long window facing west, the central part of which is open, +affording a passage out on to a parapet. Through this window, and +still better from the parapet outside, may be seen the picturesque +spires and turrets of the Law Courts, a glimpse here and there of +the mellow, red-brick, white-windowed houses of New Square, the +tree-tops of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the hint beyond a steepled +and chimneyed horizon of the wooded heights of Highgate. All this +outlook is flooded with the brilliant sunshine of June, scarcely +dimmed by the city smoke and fumes. +</p> +<p> +In the room itself there are on each of the tables vases of flowers +and a bunch of dark red roses on the top of the many pigeon-holed +bureau at which Vivien Warren is seated. The walls are mainly +covered with book-shelves well filled with consultative works on +many diverse subjects. There is another series of shelves crowded +with neat, green, tin boxes containing the papers of clients. A dark +green-and-purple portière partly conceals the entry into a washing +place which is further fitted with a gas stove for cooking and +cupboards for crockery and provisions. At the opposite end of the +room is a door which opens into a small bedroom. The fireplace in +the main room is fitted with the best and least smelly kind of gas +stove obtainable in 1900. +</p> +<p> +There are two square tables covered with piles of documents neatly +tied with green tape and ranged round the central vase of flowers; a +heavy, squat earthenware vase not easily knocked over; and there is +a second bureau with pigeon-holes and a roll top, similar to the one +at which Vivien Warren is seated. This is for the senior partner, +Honoria Fraser. Between the bureaus there is plenty of space for +access to the long west window and consequently to the parapet which +can be used like a balcony. Two small arm-chairs in green leather on +either side of the fireplace, two office chairs at the tables and a +revolving chair at each bureau complete the furniture of the +partners' room of <i>Fraser and Warren</i> as you would have seen it +twenty years ago. +</p> +<p> +The rest of their offices consisted of a landing from which a lift +and a staircase descended, a waiting-room for clients, pleasantly +furnished, a room in which two female clerks worked, and off this a +small room tenanted by an office boy. You may also add in +imagination an excellent lavatory for the clerks, two telephones +(one in the partners' room), hidden safes, wall-maps; and you must +visualize everything as pleasing in colour—green, white, and +purple—flooded with light; clean, tidy, and admirably adapted for +business in the City. +</p> +<p> +Vivien Warren, as already mentioned, was, as the curtain goes up, +seated at her bureau, reading a letter. The letter was headed "Camp +Hospital, Colesberg, Cape Colony, May 2, 1900"; and ran thus:— +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + <span class="sc">Dearest Vivie</span>,— +</p> + + <p class="bquote"> + Here I am still, but my leg is mending fast. The enteric was + the worse trouble. That is over and done with, though I am + the colour of a pig-skin saddle. My leg won't let me frisk + just yet, but otherwise I feel as strong as a horse. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + When I was bowled over three months ago and the enteric got + hold of me, on top of the bullet through my thigh, I lost my + self-control and asked the people here to cable to you to + come and nurse me. It was silly perhaps—the nursing here is + quite efficient—and if any one was to have come out on my + account it ought to have been the poor old mater, who wanted + to very much. But somehow I could only think of <i>you</i>. I + wanted you more than I'd ever done before. I hoped somehow + your heart might be touched and you might come out and nurse + me, and then out of pity marry me. Won't you do so? Owing to + my stiff leg I dare say I shall be invalided out of the Army + and get a small wound pension. And I've a project which will + make lots of money—up in Rhodesia—a tip I've had from a + man in the know. I'm going to take up some land near + Salisbury. Ripping country and climate and all that. It + would suit you down to the ground. You could put all that + Warren business behind you, forget it all, drop the name, + start a new career as Mrs. Frank Gardner, and find an + eternally devoted husband in the man that signs this letter. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + I've been out here long enough to be up to all the ropes, + and I'd already made a bit of money in Rhodesia before the + war broke out and I got a commission. At any rate I've + enough to start on as a married man, enough to give you a + decent outfit and your passage out here and have a honeymoon + before we start work on our future home. Darling Vivie! Do + think about it. You'd never regret it. I'm a very different + Frank to the silly ass you knew in the old Haslemere days. + Now here's a five pound note to cover the cost of a full + cable to say "yes," and when you'll be ready to start. When + I get your answer—somehow I feel it'll <i>be</i> "yes"—I'll + send you a draft on a London bank to pay for a suitable + trousseau and your passage from London to Cape Town, and <i>of + course</i> I'll come and meet you there, where we can be + married. I shan't sleep properly till I get your "yes." +</p> +<p class="closing"> + Your ever loving and always faithful +</p> +<p class="ar"> + <span class="sc">Frank</span>. +</p> + +<p class="bquote"> + P.S. There's a poor fellow here in the same ward dying—I + should say—of necrosis of the jaw—Vavasour Williams is his + name or a part of his name. His father was at Cambridge with + my old man, and—isn't it rum?—he was a pupil of + <i>Praddy's</i>!! He mucked his school and 'varsity career, + thought next he'd like to be an architect or a scene + painter. My dad recommended Praddy as a master. He worked in + the Praed studio, but got the chuck over some foolery. Then + as he couldn't face his poor old Governor, he enlisted in + the Bechuanaland Border police, came out to South Africa and + got let in for this show. The doctors and nurses give him + about a month and he doesn't know it. He can't talk much + owing to his jaw being tied up—usually he writes me + messages, all about going home and being a good boy, turning + over a new leaf, and so on. I suppose the last person you + ever see nowadays is the Revd. Sam Gardner? You know they + howked him out of Woodcote? He got "preferment" as he calls + it, and a cure of souls at Margate. Rather rough on the dear + old mater—bless her, <i>always</i>—She so liked the Hindhead + country. But if you run up against Praddy you might let him + know and he might get into touch with Vavasour Williams's + people—twig?—F.G. +</p> +<p> +Vivie rose to her feet half-way through this letter and finished it +standing by the window. +</p> +<p> +She was tall—say, five feet eight; about twenty-five years of age; +with a well-developed, athletic figure, set off by a smart, +tailor-made gown of grey cloth. Yet although she might be called a +handsome woman she would easily have passed for a good-looking young +man of twenty, had she been wearing male costume. +</p> +<p> +Her brown-gold hair was disposed of with the least ostentation +possible and with no fluffiness. Her eyebrows were too well +furnished for femininity and nearly met when she frowned—a too +frequent practice, as was the belligerent look from her steely grey +eyes with their beautiful Irish setting of long dark lashes. She had +a straight nose and firm rounded chin, a rather determined look +about the mouth—lower lip too much drawn in as if from perpetual +self-repression. But all this severity disappeared when she smiled +and showed her faultless teeth. The complexion was clear though a +little tanned from deliberate exposure in athletics. Altogether a +woman that might have been described as "jolly good-looking," if it +had not been that whenever any man looked at her something hostile +and forbidding came into the countenance, and the eyebrows formed an +angry bar of hazel-brown above the dark-lashed eyes. But her "young +man" look won for her many a feminine friendship which she +impatiently repelled; for sentimentality disgusted her. +</p> +<p> +The door of the partners' room opened and in walked Honoria Fraser. +She was probably three years older than Vivie and likewise a +well-favoured woman, a little more matronly in appearance, somewhat +after the style of a married actress who really loves her husband +and has preserved her own looks wonderfully, though no one would +take her for less than twenty-eight. +</p> +<p> +At the sight of her, Vivie lost her frown and tossed the letter on +to the bureau. +</p> +<p> +Honoria Fraser had been lunching with friends in Portland Place. +</p> +<p> +<i>Honoria</i>: "What a swotter you are! I <i>thought</i> I should find you +here. I suppose the staff departed punctually at One? I've come +back expressly from the Michael Rossiters to carry you off to +them—or rather to Kew. They're going to have tea with the +Thiselton-Dyers and then revel in azaleas and roses. I shall go out +and charter a hansom and we'll drive down ... it'll be some +compensation for your having worked extra hard whilst I've been +away.... +</p> +<p> +"I met such a delightful man at the Rossiters'!" (slightly flushing) +"Don't look at me so reproachfully! There <i>are</i> delightful men—a +few—in existence. This one has been wounded in South Africa and +he's so good-looking, though the back of his head is scarred and +he'll always walk with a limp.... Now then! Why do you look so +solemn? Put on your hat..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I look solemn because I'm just considering a proposal of +marriage—or rather, the fewest words in which I can refuse it. I +don't think I want to go to Kew at all ... much sooner we had tea +together, here, on the roof..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "I suppose it's Frank Gardner again, as I see his +handwriting on that envelope. Well I'm sorry about Kew—I should +have enjoyed it..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i> (bitterly): "I expect it's that 'delightful man' that +attracts you." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "Nonsense! I'm vowed to virginity, like you are ... I +really don't care if I never see Major Armstrong again ... though he +certainly <i>is</i> rather a darling ... very good-looking ... and, d'you +know, he's almost a Pro-Boer, though the Boers ambushed him.... Says +this war's a beastly mistake.... +</p> +<p> +"Well: I'll have tea here instead, if you like, and we can talk +business, which we haven't done for a fortnight. I must get out of +the way of paying visits in the country. They make one so +discontented with the City afterwards. I've had a feeling lately I +should like to have been a farmer.... Too much of the work of the +firm has been thrown on you.... But there's lots and lots I want to +talk over. I abandon Kew, willingly, and as to Major Armstrong.... +However he can always find my address if he cares to..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i> (sits down in one of the arm chairs and Norie takes the +other): "Oh don't pity me. I love hard work and work which interests +me. And as to working for <i>you</i>, you know there's nothing I +wouldn't..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "Oh stow that!... You've been a full-fledged partner for a +year and ought to be getting callous or suspicious ... I <i>did</i> take +some money out of the petty cash yesterday. I must remember to put +it down. I took quite a lot ... for theatre tickets ... and you may +be suspecting Bertie Adams ... we can't call this an Adamless Eden, +can we? I wonder why we keep an office boy and not an office girl? I +suppose such things will soon be coming into being. We've women +clerks and typewriteresses ... Adams, I notice, is growing, and he +has the trace of a moustache and is already devoted to you ... +dog-like..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "He's still more devoted to cricket, fortunately; and as +soon as Rose and Lilian had gone he was off too.... Only, I fancy, +he discards Regent's Park now in favour of Hendon or Herne Hill..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "Now, about Frank Gardner..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Yes, that cablegram.... Let's frame it and send it off as +soon as we can; then get tea ready. Talking of tea: I was just +thinking before Frank's letter came how much good you'd done me—in +many other ways than setting me up in business." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "Shut up!..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "How, when we first worked together, I used to think it +necessary to imitate men by drinking an occasional whiskey and +soda—though I loathe spirits—and smoking a cigar—ugh!—And how +you drew me back to tea and a self-respecting womanliness—China +tea, of course, and cigarettes. Why <i>should</i> we have wanted to be +like men?... much better to be the New Woman.... +</p> +<p> +"As to Frank's cablegram..." (Goes to bureau, tries over several +drafts of message, consults Postal Guide as to cable rates <i>per</i> +word, and reads aloud) ... "How's this? 'Captain Frank Gardner Camp +Hospital Colesberg Cape Colony. Sorry must say no Best wishes +recovery writing. Vivie.' That'll cost just Two pounds and out of +the balance I shall buy a good parcel of books to send him, and some +strawberries and cakes for our tea." (Therewith she puts on hat +carefully—for she is always very particular, in a young-gentlemanly +way, about her appearance—goes out to send off cablegram from +Chancery Lane post-office, buy strawberries and cakes from Fleet +Street shops, and so back to the office by four o'clock. Meantime +Norie is reading through some of the recent correspondence on the +file.) +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i> (on her return): "Pouf! It <i>was</i> hot in Fleet Street! I'm +sorry for poor Frankie, because he seems so to have set his heart on +marrying me. But I do hope he will take this answer as <i>final</i>." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "I suppose you are not refusing him for the same old +reason—that vague suggestion that he might be your half-brother?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Oh <i>no</i>! Besides I pretty well know for a fact he isn't, +he simply couldn't be. I'm absolutely sure my father wasn't Sam +Gardner, any more than George Crofts was. I believe it was a young +Irish seminarist, some student for the priesthood whom my mother met +in Belgium the year before I was born. If I ever find out more I +will tell you. <i>You</i> haven't seen 'Soapy Sam,' the Vicar of +Woodcote, or that beast, George Crofts; but if you <i>had</i>, you'd be +as sure as I am that neither of them was <i>my</i> father—thank +goodness! As to Frank—yes—for a short time I <i>was</i> fond of +him—till I learnt about my mother's 'profession.' It was rather a +silly sort of fondness. He was two years younger than I; I suppose +my feeling for him was half motherly ... I neither encouraged him +nor did I repel him. I think I was experimenting ... I rather wanted +to know what it felt like to be kissed by a man. Frank was a nice +creature, so far as a man can be. But all those horrid revelations +that broke up our summer stay at Haslemere four years ago—when I +ran away to you—gave me an utter disgust for marriage. And what a +life mine would have been if I had married him then; or after he +went out to South Africa! <i>Ghastly</i>! Want of money would have made +us hate one another and Frank would have been sure to become +patronizing. Because I was without a father in the legitimate way he +would have thought he was conferring a great honour on me by +marrying me, and would probably have expected me to drudge for him +while he idled his time away.... Oh, when I think what a life I have +led here, with you, full of interesting work and bright prospects, +free from money anxieties—dearest, dearest Norie—I can't thank you +enough. No, I'm not going to be sentimental—the New Woman is never +that. I'm going to get the tea ready; and after we've had tea on the +balcony we really must go into business matters. Your being away so +much the last fortnight, things have accumulated that I did not like +to decide for myself..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i> (speaking rather louder as Vivie is now busy in the +adjoining roomlet, boiling the kettle on the gas stove and preparing +the tea): "Yes. And I've got <i>lots</i> to talk over with you. All sorts +of plans have come into my head. I don't know whether I have been +eating anything more than usually brain stimulating—everything has +a physical basis—but I have come back from this scattered holiday +full of new ideas." +</p> +<p> +Presently they are seated on camp-stools sipping tea, eating +strawberries and cakes, under the striped sun-blind. +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i> continues: "Do you remember Beryl Clarges at Newnham?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Yes—the pretty girl—short, curly hair, brown eyes, +rather full lips, good at mathematics—hockey ... purposely shocked +you by her outspokenness—well?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "Well, she's had a baby ... a month ago ... awful rumpus +with her people ... Father's Dean Clarges ... Norwich or Ely, I +forget which ... They've put her in a Nursing Home in Seymour +Street. Mother wears a lace mantilla and cries softly. Beryl went +wrong, as they call it, with an architect." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Pass your cup ... Don't take <i>all</i> the strawberries +(<i>Norie</i>: "Sorry! Absence of mind—I've left you three fat ones") +Architect? Strange! I always thought all architects were like +Praddy—had no passions except for bricks and mortar and chiselled +stone and twirligig iron grilles ... perhaps just a thrill over a +nude statue. Why, till you told me this I'd as soon have trusted my +daughter—if I had one—with an architect as with a Colonel of +Engineers—You know! The kind that believes in the identity of the +Ten Lost Tribes with the British and is a True Protestant! Poor +Beryl! But how? what? when? why?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "I think it began at Cambridge—the acquaintance did ... +Later, it developed into a passion. He had already one wife in +Sussex somewhere and four children. He took a flat for her in +Town—a studio—because Berry had given up mathematics and was going +in for sculpture; and there, whenever he could get away from +Storrington or some such place and from his City office, he used to +visit Beryl. This had been going on for three years. But last +February she had to break it to her mother that she was six months +gone. The other wife knows all about it but refuses to divorce the +naughty architect, and at the same time has cut off supplies—What +<i>cowards</i> men are and how <i>little</i> women stand by women! And then +it's a poor deanery and Beryl has five younger brothers that have +got to be educated. Her sculpture was little more than commissions +executed for her architect's building and I expect that resource +will now disappear ... I half think I shall bring her in here, when +she is well again. She's got a very good head-piece and you know we +are expanding our business ... She'd make a good House Agent ... She +writes sometimes for <i>Country Life</i>..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Ye-es.... But you can't provide for many more of our +college-mates. Any more gone wrong?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "It depends how you qualify 'wrong.' I really don't see +that it is 'wronger' for a young woman to yield to 'storgé' and have +a baby out of wedlock than for a man to engender that baby. Society +doesn't damn the man, unless he is a Cabinet Minister or a Cleric; +but it does its best to ruin the woman ... unless she's an actress +or a singer. If a woman likes to go through all the misery of +pregnancy and the pangs of delivery on her own account and without +being legally tied up with a man, why can't she? Beryl, at any rate, +is quite unashamed, and says she shall have as many children as her +earnings support ... that it will be great fun choosing their +sires—more variety in their types.... Is <i>she</i> the New Woman, I +wonder?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Well the whole thing bores me ... I suppose I am +embittered and disgusted. I'm sick of all this sexual nonsense.... +Yes, after all, I approve of the marriage tie: it takes away the +romance of love, and it's that romance which is usually so +time-wasting and so dangerous. It conceals often a host of horrors +... But I'm a sort of neuter. All I want in life is hard work ... a +cause to fight for.... Revenge ... revenge on Man. God! How I hate +men; how I despise them! We can do anything they can if we train and +educate. I have taken to your business because it is one of the +crafty paths we can follow to creep into Man's fastnesses of the +Law, the Stock-Market, the Banks and Actuarial work..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "My dear! You have quite a platform manner already. I +predict you will soon be addressing audiences of rebellious +women.... But I am more the Booker Washington of my sex. I want +women to work—even at quite humble things—before they insist on +equal rights with man. At any rate I want to help them to make an +honest livelihood without depending on some one man.... Business +seems to be good, eh? If the first half of this year is equalled by +the second, I should think there would be a profit to be divided of +quite a thousand pounds?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Quite. Of course we are regular pirates. None of the +actuarial or accountancy corporations will admit women, so we can't +pass exams and call ourselves chartered actuaries or incorporated +accountants. But if women clients choose to consult us there is no +law to prevent them, or to make our giving advice illegal. So we +advise and estimate and do accounts and calculate probabilities. +Then although we can't call ourselves Solicitors we can—or at any +rate we do—give legal advice. We can't figure on the Stock +Exchange, but we can advise clients about their investments and buy +and sell stock and real estate (By the bye I want you to give me +your opinion on the tithe question, the liability on that Kent fruit +farm). We are consulted on contracts ... I'm going to start a women +authors' branch, and perhaps a tourist agency. Some day we will have +a women's publishing business, we'll set up a women's printing +press, a paper mill.... Of course as you know I am working hard on +law ... not only to understand men's roguery in every direction, but +so that if necessary I can add pleading in the courts to some other +woman's solicitor work. That's going to be my first struggle with +Man: to claim admittance to the Bar.... If we can once breach that +rampart the Vote must inevitably follow. Oh <i>how</i> we have been dumb +before our shearers! The rottenness of Man's law.... The perjury, +corruption, waste of time, special pleading that go on in our male +courts of <i>in</i>justice, the verdicts of male juries!" +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "Just so. But can't you find a little time to be social? +Why be so morose? For instance, why not come and be introduced to +Michael Rossiter? He's a dear—amazingly clever—a kind of +prophet—Your one confidant, Stead, thinks a lot of him." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "<i>Dear</i> Norie—I can't. I swore two years ago I would drop +Society and run no risk of being found out as 'Mrs. Warren's +daughter.' That beast George Crofts revenged himself because I +wouldn't marry him by letting it be known here and there that I +<i>was</i> the daughter of the 'notorious Mrs. Warren'; whereupon several +of the people I liked—you remember?—dropped me—the Burne-Joneses, +the Lacrevys. Or if it wasn't Crofts some other swine did. But for +the fact that it would upset our style as a firm I could change my +name: call myself something quite different.... +</p> +<p> +"D'you know, I've sometimes thought I'd cut my hair short and dress +in men's clothes, and go out into the world as a man ... my voice is +almost a tenor—<i>Such</i> a lark! I'd get admitted to the Bar. But the +nuisance about that would be the references. I'm an outlaw, you see, +through no fault of mine.... I couldn't give <i>you</i> as a reference, +and I don't know any man who would be generous enough to take the +risk of participating in the fraud.... unless it were Praed—good +old Praddy. I'm sure it's been done now and again. They call Judge +FitzSimmons 'an old woman.' Well, d'you know, I believe he <i>is</i> ... +a wise old woman." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "Well: bide a wee, till our firm is doing a roaring +business: I can pretend then to take in a male partner, p'raps. +Rose and Lilian are very hard-working and we can't afford to lose +them yet. If you appeared one morning dressed as a young man they +might throw up their jobs and go elsewhere..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "You may be quite sure I won't let <i>you</i> down. Moreover I +haven't the money for any vagaries yet, though I have an instinct +that it is coming. You know those Charles Davis shares I bought at +5<i>s.</i> 3<i>d.</i>? Well, they rose to 29<i>s.</i> whilst you were away; so I +sold out. We had three hundred, and that, less commissions, made +about £350 profit; the boldest coup we have had yet. And all because +I spotted that new find of emery powder in Tripoli, saw it in a +Consular Report.... +</p> +<p> +"I want to be rich and therefore powerful, Norie! Then people will +forget fast enough about my shameful parentage." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "How <i>is</i> she? Do you ever hear from or of her now?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I haven't heard <i>from</i> her for two years, since I left her +letters unanswered. But I hear <i>of</i> her every now and again. No. Not +through Crofts. I suppose you know—if you take any interest in that +wretch—that since he married the American quakeress he took his +name off the <i>Warren Hotels Company</i> and sold out much of his +interest. He is now living in great respectability, breeding race +horses. They even say he has given up whiskey. He has got a son and +has endowed six cots in a Children's hospital. No. I think it must +be <i>mother</i> who has notices posted to me, probably through that +scoundrel, Bax Strangeways ... generally in the <i>London Argus</i> and +the <i>Vie-de-Paris</i>—cracking up the Warren Hotels in Brussels, +Berlin, Buda-Pest and Roquebrune. <i>What</i> a comedy!... +</p> +<p> +"There's my Aunt Liz at Winchester—Mrs. Canon Burstall—won't know +me—I'm too compromising. But I'm sure her money-bags have been +filled at one time—perhaps are still—out of the profits on +mother's 'Hotels.'..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "I didn't remember your aunt was married ... or rather I +suppose I did, but thought she was a widow, real or <i>soi-disant</i>..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "So she is, after four years of happy married life! My +'uncle' Canon Burstall—Oh what a screaming joke the whole thing +is!... I doubt if he was aware he had a niece.... Don't you remember +he was killed in the Alps last autumn?..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "I remember your going down to see your aunt after you +broke off relations with your mother in—in—1897...?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Yes. I wanted to see how the land lay and not judge any +one unfairly. Besides I—I—didn't like being dependent entirely on +you—at that time—for support: and Praed was in Italy. I knew that +Aunt Liz, like mother, was illegitimate—and guessed she had once +made her living in the higher walks of prostitution—she was a +stockbroker's mistress at one time—. But she had married and +settled down at Winchester ... She met her Canon—the Alpine +traveller ... in Switzerland. I felt if she took no money from +mother's 'houses,' I could perhaps make a home with her, or at any +rate have <i>some</i> kith and kin to go to. She had no children.... +But—I must have told you all this years ago?—she almost pushed me +out of her house for fear I should stay till the Canon came in from +the afternoon service; denied everything; threatened me as though I +was a blackmailer; almost looked as if she could have killed me and +buried me in the garden of the Canonry.... +</p> +<p> +"I've examined the business of the <i>Warren Hotels Ltd.</i> since then, +but it's a private company, and all its doings are so cleverly +concealed.... Aunt Liz doesn't figure amongst the shareholders any +more than Crofts does. That horrid Bax holds most of the shares now, +and mother the rest.... Yet Aunt Liz must be rich and she certainly +didn't get it from the Canon, who only left a net personality of +under £4,000.... I read his will at Somerset House.... She has had +her portrait in the <i>Queen</i> because she gave a large subscription to +the underpinning of Winchester Cathedral and the restoration of +Wolvesey as a clergy house.... Mother must be very rich, I should +judge, from certain indications. I expect <i>she</i> will retire from the +'Hotels,' some day, wipe out the past, and buy a new present with +her money.... She'll have <i>her</i> portrait in the <i>Queen</i> some day as +a Vice-President of the Girls' Friendly Society!... And yet she's +such a gambler and a rake that she <i>may</i> get pinched over the White +Slave traffic.... I was on tenterhooks over that Lewissohn case the +other day, fearing every moment to see mother's name mixed up with +it, or else an allusion to her 'Hotels.' But I fancy she has been +wise enough—indeed I should guess that Aunt Liz had long ago warned +her to leave England alone as a recruiting ground and to collect her +chambermaids, waitresses, musicians, typists from the Continent +only—Austria, Alsace, Bohemia, Belgium, Italy, the Rhineland, +Paris, Russia, Poland. Knowing what we British people are, can't you +almost predict the <i>bias</i> of Aunt Liz's mind? How she would solace +herself that her dividends were not derived from the prostitution of +English girls but only of 'foreigners'?..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "You seem to have studied the geography of the business +pretty thoroughly!..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i> (bitterly): "Yes. I have talked it over with Stead from time +to time. I believe he has only spared mother and the Warren Hotels +out of consideration for me ... He wants me to change my surname and +give myself a chance..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "I see" (pausing). "Of course it is rather an idea, as you +refuse to disguise yourself by marriage. You'd change your name and +then listen with equanimity to fulminations against the Warren +Hotels. But there would be an awkwardness in the firm. We oughtn't +to change our title just as we are getting a good clientèle.... I +must think ... If only we could pretend you'd been left some +property—but that sort of lie is soon found out!—and had to change +your name to—to—to. Oh well, we could soon think of some name +beginning with a W—Walters, Waddilove—Waddilove is a delicious +name in cold weather, suggesting cotton-wool or a warm duvet—or +Wilson—or Wilberforce. But I'm afraid the staff—Rose Mullet and +Lily Steynes and the amorous Bertie Adams—would think it odd, put +two and two together, and guess right. Warren, after all, is such a +common name. And we've got so used to our three helpers, we could +hardly turn them off, and take on new people whom perhaps we +couldn't trust.... We must think it over.... +</p> +<p> +"Now I must go back to Queen Anne's Mansions and sit a little while +with Mummy. Come and dine with us? There'll only be us three ... no +horrid man to fall in love with you.... You needn't put on a low +dress ... and we'll go to the dress circle at some play afterwards." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "But those papers on my desk? I must have your opinion for +or against..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "All right. It's half-past five. I'll give them half an +hour's study whilst you wash up the tea things and titivate. Then +we'll take a hansom to Quansions: the Underground is so grimy." +</p> +<a name="2HCH0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER II +</h2> +<h3> + HONORIA AND HER FRIENDS +</h3> +<p> +The story of Honoria Fraser was something like this: partly +guesswork, I admit. Although I know her well I can only put her past +together by deductions based on a few admitted facts, one or two +letters and occasional unfinished sentences, interrupted by +people coming in. Is it not <i>always</i> thus with our friends and +acquaintances? I long to know all about them from their birth +(including date and place of birth and parentage) onwards; what the +father's profession was and why on earth he married the mother +(after I saw the daguerreotype portrait), and how they became +possessed of so much money, and why she went back to live with <i>her</i> +mother between the birth of her second child and the near advent of +her third. But in how very few cases do we know their whole story, +do we even care to know more than is sufficient for our purpose in +issuing or accepting invitations? There are the Dombeys—the Gorings +as they're now called, who live near us. I've seen the tombstone of +Lucilla Smith in Goring churchyard, but I don't know <i>for a fact</i> +that Lord Goring was the father of Lucilla's son (who was killed in +the war). I guess he was, from this and that, from what Mrs. Legg +told me, and what I overheard at the Sterns'. If he wasn't, then he +has only himself to thank for the wrong assumption: I mean, from his +goings-on. +</p> +<p> +Then again, the Clementses, who live at the Grange. I feel +instinctively they are <i>nice</i> people, but I haven't the least idea +who <i>she</i> was and how <i>he</i> made his money, though from his acreage +and his motors I am entitled to assume he has a large income. She +seems to know a lot about Spain; but I don't feel encouraged to ask +her: "Was your father in the wine trade? Is <i>that</i> why you know +Xeres so well?" Clements himself has in his study an enlarged +photograph of a handsome woman with a kind of mourning wreath round +the frame—beautifully carved. Is it the portrait of a former wife? +Or of a sister who committed suicide? Or was it merely bought in +Venice for the sake of the carving? Perhaps I shall know some +day—if it matters. In a moment of expansion during the Railway +Strike, Mrs. Clements will say: "<i>That</i> was poor Walter's first. She +died of acute dyspepsia, poor thing, on their marriage tour, and was +buried at Venice. Don't ever allude to it because he feels it so +dreadfully." And my curiosity will have been rewarded for its long +and patient restraint. Clements' little finger on his left hand is +mutilated. I have never asked why—a lawn-mowing machine? Or a bite +from some passionate mistress in a buried past? I note silently that +he disapproves of palmistry— +</p> +<p> +But about Honoria Fraser, to whom I was introduced by Mr. George +Bernard Shaw twenty years ago: She was born in 1872, as <i>Who's Who</i> +will tell you; also that she was the daughter and eldest child of a +famous physician (Sir Meldrum Fraser) who wrought some marvellous +cures in the 'sixties, 'seventies and 'eighties, chiefly by dieting +and psycho-therapy. (He got his knighthood in the first jubilee year +for reducing to reasonable proportions the figure of good-hearted, +thoroughly kindly, and much loved Princess Mary of Oxford.) +He—Honoria's father—was married to a beautiful woman, a relation +of Bessie Rayner Parkes, with inherited advanced views on the Rights +and Position of Woman. Lady Fraser was, indeed, an early type of +Suffragist and also wrote some poetry which was far from bad. They +had two children: Honoria, born, as I say, in 1872; and John (John +Stuart Mill Fraser was his full name—too great a burden to be +borne) four years later than Honoria, who was devoted to him, +idolized him, as did his mother and father. Honoria went to Bedford +College and Newnham; John to one of the two most famous of our +public schools (I need not be more precise), with Cambridge in view +afterwards. +</p> +<p> +But in the case of John a tragedy occurred. He had risen to be head +of the school; statesmen with little affectation applauded him on +speech days. He had been brilliant as a batsman, was a champion +swimmer, and <i>facile princeps</i> in the ineptitudes of the classics; +and showed a dazzling originality in other studies scarcely within +the school curriculum. Further he was growing out of boy gawkiness +into a handsome youth of an Apolline mould, when, on the morning of +his eighteenth birthday, he was found dead in his bed, with a bottle +of cyanide of potassium on the bed-table to explain why. +</p> +<p> +All else was wrapt in mystery ... at any rate it was a mystery I +have no wish to lay bare. The death and the inquest verdict, +"Suicide while of unsound mind, due to overstudy," broke his +father's heart and his mother's: in the metaphorical meaning of +course, because the heart is an unemotional pump and it is the brain +and the nerve centres that suffer from our emotions. Sir Meldrum +Fraser died a year after his son. He left a fortune of eighty +thousand pounds. Half of this went at once to Honoria and the other +half to the life-use of Lady Fraser with a reversion to her +daughter. +</p> +<p> +Honoria after her father's death left Cambridge and moved her mother +from Harley Street to Queen Anne's Mansions so that with her +shattered nerves and loss of interest in life she might have no +household worries, or at any rate nothing worse than remonstrating +with the still-room maids on the twice-boiled water brought in for +the making of tea; or with the culinary department over the +monotonous character of the savouries or the tepid ice creams which +dissolved so rapidly into fruit-juice when they were served after a +house-dinner. <a href="#note-1" name="noteref-1"><small>[1]</small></a> Honoria herself, mistress of a clear two thousand +pounds a year, and more in prospect, carried out plans formed while +still at Newnham after her brother's death. She, like Vivien Warren, +her three-years-younger friend and college-mate, was a great +mathematician—a thing I never could be and a status I am incapable +of understanding; consequently one I view at first with the deepest +respect. I am quite astonished when I meet a male or female +mathematician and find they require food as I do, are less quick at +adding up bridge scores, lose rather than win at Goodwood, and write +down the "down" train instead of the "up" in their memorabilia. But +there it is. They have only to apply sines and co-sines, tangents +and logarithms to a stock exchange quotation for me to grovel before +their superior wisdom and consult them at every turn in life. +</p> +<p> +Honoria had resolved to turn her great acquirements in Algebra and +the Higher Mathematics to practical purposes. Being the ignoramus +that I am—in this direction—I cannot say how it was to be done; +but both she and Vivie had grasped the possibilities which lay +before exceptionally well-educated women on the Stock Exchange, in +the Provision markets, in the Law, in Insurance calculations, and +generally in steering other and weaker women through the +difficulties and pitfalls of our age; when in nine cases out of +thirteen (Honoria worked out the ratio) women of large or moderate +means have only dishonest male proficients to guide them. +</p> +<p> +Moreover Honoria's purpose was two-fold. She wished to help women in +their business affairs, but she also wanted to find careers for +women. She, like Vivien Warren, was a nascent suffragist—perhaps a +born suffragist, a reasoned one; because the ferment had been in her +mother, and her grandmother was a friend of Lydia Becker and a +cousin of Mrs. Belloc. John's death had been a horrible numbing +shock to Honoria, and she felt hardly in her right mind for three +months afterwards. Then on reflection it left some tarnish on her +family, even if the memory of the dear dead boy, the too brilliant +boy, softened from the poignancy of utter disappointment into a +tender sorrow and an infinite pity and forgiveness. +</p> +<p> +But the tragedy turned her thoughts from marriage to some mission of +well-doing. She determined to devote that proportion of her +inheritance which would have been John's share to this end: the +liberation and redemption of women. +</p> +<p> +She was no "anti-man," like Vivie. She liked men, if truth were +told, a tiny wee bit more than women. But she wished in the moods +that followed her brother's death in 1894 to be a mother by +adoption, a refuge for the fallen, the bewildered, the unstrung. She +helped young men back into the path of respectability and +wage-earning as well as young women. She was even, when opportunity +offered, a matchmaker. +</p> +<p> +Being heiress eventually to £4,000 a year (a large income in pre-war +days) and of attractive appearance, she had no lack of suitors, even +though she thought modern dancing inane, and had little skill at +ball-games. I have indicated her appearance by some few phrases +already; but to enable you to visualize her more definitely I might +be more precise. She was a tall woman rather than large built, like +the young Juno when first wooed by Jove. Where she departed from the +Junonian type she turned towards Venus rather than Minerva; in spite +of being a mathematician. You meet with her sisters in physical +beauty among the Americans of Pennsylvania, where, to a stock mainly +Anglo-Saxon, is added a delicious strain of Gallic race; or you see +her again among the Cape Dutch women who have had French Huguenot +great grandparents. It is perhaps rather impertinent continuing +this analysis of her charm, seeing that she lives and flourishes +more than ever, twenty years after the opening of my story; not very +different in outward appearance at 48, as Lady Armstrong—for of +course, as you guess already, she married Major—afterwards Sir +Petworth—Armstrong—than she was at twenty-eight, the partner, +friend and helper of Vivien Warren. +</p> +<p> +Being in comfortable circumstances, highly educated, handsome, +attractive, with a mezzo-soprano voice of rare beauty and great +skill as a piano-forte accompanyist, she had not only suitors who +took her rejection without bitterness, but hosts of friends. She +knew all the nice London people of her day: Lady Feenix, who in some +ways resembled her, Diana Dombey, who did not <i>quite</i> approve of +her, being a little uncertain yet about welcoming the New Woman, all +the Ritchies, married and unmarried, Lady Brownlow, the Duchess of +Bedford (Adeline), the Michael Fosters, most of the Stracheys (she +liked the ones I liked), the Hubert Parrys, the Ripons (how she +admired Lady Ripon, as who did not!), Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, Miss +Lena Ashwell, the Bernard Shaws, the Wilfred Meynells, the H.G. +Wellses, the Sidney Webbs; and—leaving uninstanced a number of +other delightful, warm-blooded, pleasant-voiced, natural-mannered +people—the Rossiters. +</p> +<p> +Or at least, Michael Rossiter. For although you could tolerate for +his sake Mrs. Rossiter, and even find her a source of quiet +amusement, you could hardly say you liked her—not in the way you +could say it of most of the men and women I have specified. Michael +Rossiter, who comes into this story, ought really if there were a +discriminating wide-awake, up-to-date Providence—which there is +not—to have met Honoria when she was twenty. (At nineteen such a +woman is still immature; and moreover until she was twenty, Honoria +had not mastered the Binomial Theorem.) Had he married her at that +period he would himself have been about twenty-seven which is quite +soon enough for a great man of science to marry and procreate +geniuses. But as a matter of fact, when he came down to Cambridge +in—? 1892—to deliver a course of Vacation lectures on embryology, +he was already two years married to Linda Bennet, an heiress, the +daughter and niece (her parents died when she was young and she +lived with an uncle and aunt) of very rich manufacturers at Leeds. +</p> +<p> +So, though his eye, quick to discern beauty, and his brain tentacles +ready to detect intelligence combined with a lovely nature, soon +singled out Honoria Fraser, amongst a host of less attractive +girl-graduates, he had no more thought of falling in love with her +than with a princess of the blood-royal. He might, long since, +within a month of his marriage have found out his Linda to be a +pretty little simpleton with a brain incapable of taking in any more +than it had learnt at a Scarborough finishing school; but he was too +instinctive a gentleman to indulge in any flirtation, any deviation +whatever from mental or physical monogamy. For he remembered always +that it was his wife's money which had enabled him to pursue his +great researches without the heart-breaking delays, limitations and +insufficiencies involved in Government or Royal Society grants; and +that Linda had not only endowed him with all her worldly goods—all +but those he had insisted in putting into settlement—but that she +had given him all her heart and confidence as well. +</p> +<p> +Still, he liked Honoria. She was eager to learn much else beyond the +hard-grained muses of the square and cube; she was the daughter of a +prosperous and boldly experimental physician, whose wife was a +champion of women's rights. So he pressed Honoria to come with her +mother and make the acquaintance of himself and Linda in Portland +Place. +</p> +<p> +Why was Michael Rossiter wedded to Linda Bennet when he was no more +than twenty-five, and she just past her coming of age? Because fresh +from Edinburgh and Cambridge and with a reputation for unusual +intuition in Biology and Chemistry he had come to be Science master +at a great College in the North, and thus meeting Linda at the +Philosophical Institute of Leeds had caused her to fall in love with +him whilst he lectured on the Cainozoic fauna of Yorkshire. He was +himself a Northumbrian of borderland stock: something of the Dane +and Angle, the Pict and Briton with a dash of the Gypsy folk: a +blend which makes the Northumbrian people so much more productive of +manly beauty, intellectual vivacity, bold originality than the +slow-witted, bulky, crafty Saxons of Yorkshire or the under-sized, +rugged-featured Britons of Lancashire. +</p> +<p> +Linda fell in love all in one evening with his fiery eyes, black +beard, the Northumbrian burr of his pronunciation, and the daring of +his utterances, though she could scarcely grasp one of his +hypotheses. Her uncle and aunt being narrowly pietistic she was +bored to death with the Old Testament, and Rossiter's scarcely +concealed contempt for the Mosaic story of creation captured her +intellect; while the physical attraction she felt was that which the +tall, handsome, resolute brunet has for the blue-eyed fluffy little +blonde. She openly made love to him over the tea and coffee served +at the "soirée" which followed the lecture. Her slow-witted guardian +had no objection to offer; and there were not wanting go-betweens to +urge on Rossiter with stories of her wealth and the expanding value +of her financial interests. He wanted to marry; he was touched by +her ill-concealed passion, found her pretty and appealingly +childlike. So, after a short wooing, he married her and her five +thousand pounds a year, and settled down in Park Crescent, Portland +Place, so as to be near the Zoo and Tudell's dissecting rooms, to +have the Royal Botanic gardens within three minutes' walk, and the +opportunity of turning a large studio in the rear of his house into +a well-equipped chemical and dissecting laboratory. One of his close +pursuits at that time was the analysis of the Thyroid gland and its +functions, its over or under development in British statesmen, +dramatic authors and East End immigrants. +</p> +<hr /> +<a name="note-1"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="foot"> +[<a href="#noteref-1">1</a>] This, of course, was twenty, years ago.—H.H.J. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER III +</h2> +<h3> + DAVID VAVASOUR WILLIAMS +</h3> +<p> +It is in the spring of 1901. A fine warm evening, but at eight +o'clock the dusk is already on the verge of darkness as Honoria +emerges from the lift at her Chancery Lane Office (near the corner +of Carey Street), puts her latch-key into the door of the partners' +room, and finds herself confronting the silhouette of a young man +against the western glow of the big window. +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i> (inwardly rather frightened): "Hullo! Who are <i>you</i> and what +are you doing here?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i> (mimicking a considerate, cringing burglar): "Sorry to +startle you, lidy, but I don't mean no 'arm. I'll go quiet. Me +name's D.V. Williams..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "You absurd creature! But you shouldn't play such pranks on +these respectable premises. You gave me a <i>horrid</i> start, and I +realized for the first time that I've got a heart. I really must sit +down and pant." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I am sorry, dearest. I had not the slightest notion +you would be letting yourself into the office at this hour—8 +o'clock—and I was just returning from my crammers..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "I came for those Cranston papers. Mother is ill. I may +have to sit up with her after Violet Hunt goes, so I thought I would +come here, fetch the bundle of papers and plans, and go through them +in the silent watches of the night, <i>if</i> mother sleeps. But do you +mean to say you have already started this masquerade?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I do. You see Christabel Pankhurst has been turned down +as a barrister. They won't let her qualify for the Bar, because +she's a woman, so they certainly won't let <i>me</i> with my pedigree; +just as, merely because we are women, they won't let us become +Chartered Actuaries or Incorporated Accountants. After we had that +long talk last June I got a set of men's clothes together, a regular +man's outfit. The suit doesn't fit over well but I am rectifying +that by degrees. I went to a general outfitter in Cornhill and told +a cock-and-bull story—as it was an affair of ready cash they didn't +stop to question me about it. I said something about a sea-faring +brother, just my height, a trifle stouter in build—lost all his kit +at sea—been in hospital—now in convalescent home—how I wanted to +save him all the fatigue possible—wouldn't want more than +reach-me-downs at present, etc., etc. They rather flummoxed me at +first by offering a merchant service uniform, but somehow I got over +that, though this serge suit has rather a sea-faring cut. I got so +unnecessarily explanatory with the shopman that he began to pay me +compliments, said my brother must be a good-looking young chap if he +was at all like me. However, I got away with the things in a cab, +and told the cab to drive to St. Paul's station, and on the way +re-directed him here. +</p> +<p> +"Last autumn I began practising at night-time after all our +familiars had left these premises. Purposely I did not tell you +because I feared your greater caution and instinctive respectability +might discourage me. Otherwise, nobody's spotted me, so far. I'd +intended breaking it to you any day now, because I've gone too far +to draw back, for weal or woe. But either we have been rushed with +business, or you've been anxious about Lady Fraser—How is she?" +(Norie interpolates "Very poorly.") "So truly sorry!—I was +generally just about to tell you when Rose or Lilian—tiresome +things!—would begin most assiduously passing in and out with +papers. Even now I mustn't keep you, with your mother so ill..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i> (looking at her wrist-watch): "Violet has very kindly +promised to stay with mother till ten.... I can give you an hour, +though I must take a few minutes off that for the firm's business as +I haven't been here much for three days..." (They talk business for +twenty minutes, during which Norie says: "It's really <i>rather</i> odd, +how those clothes change you! I feel vaguely compromised with a +handsome young man bending over me, his cheek almost touching +mine!"—and Vivie retorts "Oh, <i>don't</i> be an ass!") +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "So you really <i>are</i> going to take the plunge?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I really <i>am</i>. As soon as it suits your convenience, Vivie +Warren will retire from your firm and go abroad. You must either +replace her by Beryl Clarges or allow Mr. Vavasour Williams" +(Honoria interpolates: "<i>Ridiculous</i> name! How did you think of +it?") "to come and assist in the day-time or after office hours. You +can say to the winds that he is Vivie's first cousin, remarkably +like her in some respects.... Rose Mullet is engaged to be married +and is only—she told me yesterday with many blushes—staying on to +oblige us. Lilian Steynes said the other day that if we were making +any changes in the office, much as she liked her work here, her +mother having died she thought it was her duty to go and live with +her maternal aunt in the country. The aunt thinks she can get her a +post as a brewery clerk at Aylesbury, and she is longing to breed +Aylesbury ducks in her spare time.—There is Bertie Adams, it's +true. There's something so staunch about him and he is so useful +that he and Praed and Stead are the three exceptions I make in my +general hatred of mankind..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "He will be very much cut up at your going—or seeming to +go." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Just so. I think I shall write him a farewell note, +saying it's only for a time: I mean, that I may return later +on—dormant partnership—nothing really changed, don't you know? But +that as Rose and Lilian are going, Mrs.—what does she call herself, +Claridge?"—(Norie interpolates: "Yes, that was her idea: she +doesn't want to blazon the name of Clarges as the symbol of Free +Love, 'cos of the dear old Dean; yet Claridge will not be too much +of a surrender and is sure to invoke respectability, because of the +Hotel")—"Mrs. Claridge, then, is coming in my stead—He's to help +her all he can—and my cousin, who is reading for the Bar, will also +look in when you are very busy. I shall, of course, see about +rooms in one of the Inns of Court—the Temple perhaps. I have +been stealthily watching Fig Tree Court. I <i>think</i> I can get +chambers there—a man is turning out next month—got a Colonial +appointment—I've put my new name down at the lodge and I shall have +to rack my brains for references—you will do for one—or perhaps +not—however that I can work out later. Of course I won't take the +final plunge till I have secured the rooms. Meantime I will use my +bedroom here but promise you I will be awfully prudent..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "I couldn't possibly have Beryl 'living in,' with a child +hanging about the place; so I think if you <i>do</i> go I shall turn your +bedroom into an apartment which Beryl and I can use for toilet +purposes but where we can range out on book-shelves a whole lot of +our books. Just now they are most inconveniently stored away in +boxes. It's rather tiresome about Beryl. I believe she's going to +have <i>another</i> child. At any rate she says it may be four months +before she can come to work here regularly. I asked her about it the +other day, because if mother gets worse I may be hindered about +coming to the office, and I didn't want you to get overworked,—so I +said to Beryl.... That reminds me, she referred to the coming child +and added that its father was a policeman. Quite a nice creature in +his private life. Of course she's only kidding. I expect it's the +architect all the time. You know how she delighted in shocking us at +Newnham. I wish she hadn't this kink about her. P'raps I'm getting +old-fashioned already—You used to call me 'the Girondist.' But if +the New Woman <i>is</i> to go on the loose and be unmoral like the +rabbits, won't the cause suffer from middle-class opposition?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Perhaps. But it may gain instead the sympathies of the +lower and the upper classes. Why do you bother about Beryl? I agree +with you in disliking all this sexuality..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "Does one <i>ever</i> quite know why one likes people? There is +<i>something</i> about Beryl that gets over me; and she <i>is</i> a worker. +You know how she grappled with that Norfolk estate business?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Well, it's fortunate she and I have not met since Newnham +days. You must tip her the story that I am going away for a +time—abroad—and that a young—young, because I look a mere boy, +dressed up in men's clothes—a young cousin of mine, learned in the +law, is going to drop in occasionally and do some of the work..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "I'm afraid I'm rather weak-willed. I <i>ought</i> to stop this +prank before it has gone too far, just as I ought to discourage +Beryl's babies. Your schemes sound so stagey. Off the stage +you never take people in with such flimsy stories and weak +disguises—you'll tie yourself up into knots and finally get sent to +prison.... However.... I can't help being rather tickled by your +idea. It's vilely unjust, men closing two-thirds of the respectable +careers to women, to bachelor women above all..." (A pause, and the +two women look out on a blue London dotted with lemon-coloured, +straw-coloured, mauve-tinted lights, with one cold white radiance +hanging over the invisible Piccadilly Circus)—"Well, go ahead! +Follow your star! I can be confident of one thing, you won't do +anything mean or disgraceful. Deceiving Man while his vile laws and +restrictions remain in force is no crime. Be prudent, so far as +compromising our poor little firm here is concerned, because if you +bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave we shall lose a +valuable source of income. Besides: any public scandal just now in +which I was mixed up might kill my mother. Want any money?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "You generous darling! <i>Never, never</i> shall I forget your +kindness and your trust in me. You have at any rate saved one soul +alive." (Honoria deprecates gratitude.) "No, I don't want +money—yet. You made me take and bank £700 last January over that +Rio de Palmas coup—heaps more than my share. Altogether I've got +about £1,000 on deposit at the C. and C. bank, the Temple Bar +branch. I've many gruesome faults, but I <i>am</i> thrifty. I think I can +win through to the Bar on that. Of course, if afterwards briefs +don't come in—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "Well, there'll always be the partnership which will go on +unaltered. I shall pretend you are only away for a time and your +share shall be regularly paid in to your bank. Of course I shall +meet Mr. Vavasour Williams now and again and I can tell him things +and consult with him. If we think Beryl, after she is installed here +as head clerk—of course I shan't make her a partner for <i>years</i> and +<i>years</i>—not at all if she remains flighty—if we think she is +unsuspicious, and Bertie Adams likewise, and the new clerks and the +housekeeper and her husband, there is no reason why you should not +come here fairly often and put in as much work as you can on our +business." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Yes. Of course I must be careful of one predicament. I +have studied the regulations about being admitted to the English +Bar. They are very quaint and medieval or early Georgian. You +mayn't be a Chartered Accountant or Actuary—the Lord alone knows +why! I suppose some Lord Chancellor was done in the eye in +Elizabeth's reign by an actuary and laid down that law. Equally you +mayn't be a clergyman. As to that we needn't distress ourselves. +It's rather piteous about the prohibiting Accountants, because as +women we are not allowed to qualify in <i>any</i> capacity as Accountants +or Actuaries; and work here is only permissible by our not +pretending to belong to any recognized body like the Institute of +Actuaries. So that in coming to work for you I must not seem to be +in any way doing the business of Accountants or Actuaries. Indeed it +might be awkward for my scheme if I was too openly associated with +Fraser and Warren. +</p> +<p> +"I already think of myself as Williams—I shall pose of course as a +Welshman. My appearance <i>is</i> rather Welsh, don't you think? It's the +Irish blood that makes me look Keltic—I'm sure my father was an +Irish student for the priesthood at Louvain, and certain scraps of +information I got out of mother make me believe that <i>her</i> mother +was a pretty Welsh girl from Cardiff, brought over to London Town by +some ship's captain and stranded there, on Tower Hill. +</p> +<p> +"However, I have still the whole scheme to work out and when I'm +ready to start on it—which will be very soon—I'll let you know. +Now, though I'd love to discuss all the other details, I mustn't +forget your mother will be wanting you—I wish <i>I</i> had a mother to +tend—I wonder" (wistfully) "whether I was too hard on mine? +</p> +<p> +"D'you mind posting these letters as you go out? I shall change back +to Vivie Warren in a dressing gown, give myself a light supper, and +then put in two hours studying Latin and Norman French. Good night, +dearest!" +</p> +<p> +Two months after this conversation Vivie decided to pay a call on +an old friend of her mother's, Lewis Maitland Praed, if you want his +full name, a well-known architect, and one of the few male friends +of Catherine Warren who had not also been her lover. Why, he never +quite knew himself. When he first met her she was the boon +companion, the mistress—more or less, and unattached—of a young +barrister, a college friend of Praed's. Kate Warren at that time +called herself Kitty Vavasour; and on the strength of having done a +turn or two on the music halls considered herself an actress with a +right to a professional name. It was in this guise that the "Revd." +Samuel Gardner met her and had that six months' infatuation for her +which afterwards caused him so much disquietude; though it preceded +the taking of his ordination vows by quite a year, and his marriage +to his wife—much too good for him—in 1874. [The Revd. Sam, you may +remember, was the father of the scapegrace Frank who nearly captured +Vivie's young affections and had written from South Africa proposing +marriage at the opening of this story.] +</p> +<p> +Kate Vavasour in 1872 was an exceedingly pretty girl of nineteen or +twenty; showily dressed, and quick with her tongue. She was +good-natured and jolly, and though Praed himself was the essence of +refinement there was something about her reckless mirth and joy in +life—the immense relief of having passed from the sordid life of a +barmaid to this quasi-ladyhood—that enlisted his sympathies. Though +she was always somebody else's mistress until she developed +her special talent as a manageress of high-class houses of +accommodation, "private hotels" on the Continent, chiefly frequented +by English and American <i>roués</i>—Praed kept an eye on her career, +and occasionally rendered her, with some cynicism, unobtrusive +friendly services in disentangling her affairs when complications +threatened. He was an art student in those days of the 'seventies, +possessed of about four hundred a year, beginning to go through the +aesthetic phase, and not decided whether he would emerge a painter +of pictures or an architect of grandiose or fantastic buildings. To +his studio Miss Kitty Vavasour or Miss Kate Warren would often come +and pose for the head and shoulders, or for some draped caryatid +wanted for an ambitious porch in an imaginary millionaire's house in +Kensington Palace Gardens. When in 1897, Vivie had learnt about her +mother's "profession," she had flung off violently from all her +mother's "friends," except "Praddy." She even continued to call him +by this nickname, long ago bestowed on him by her mother. At distant +intervals she would pay him a visit at his house and studio near +Hans Place; when Honoria's advice and assistance did not meet the +case of some grave perplexity. +</p> +<p> +So one afternoon in June, 1901, she came to his little dwelling with +its large studio, and asked to have a long talk to him, whilst his +parlour-maid—he was still a bachelor—denied him to other callers. +They had tea together and Vivie plunged as quickly as possible into +her problem. +</p> +<p> +"You know, Praddy dear, I want to be a Barrister. But as a female +they will never call me to the Bar. So I'm going to send Vivien +Warren off for a long absence abroad—the few who think about me +will probably conclude that money has carried the day and that I've +gone to help my mother in her business—and in her absence Mr. +Vavasour Williams will take up the running. David V. Williams—don't +interrupt me—will study for the Bar, eat through his terms—six +dinners a year, isn't it?—pass his examinations, and be called to +the English Bar in about three years from now. Didn't you once have +a pupil called Vavasour Williams?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Praed</i>: "What, David, the Welsh boy? Yes. His name reminded me of +your mother in one of her stages. David Vavasour Williams. I took +him on in—let me see? I think it was in 1895 or early 1896. But how +did you hear about him?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Never mind, or never mind for the moment. Tell me some +more about him." +</p> +<p> +<i>Praed</i>: "Well to sum him up briefly he was what school boys and +subalterns would call 'a rotter.' Not without an almost mordid +cleverness; but the Welsh strain in him which in the father turned +to emotional religion—the father was Vicar or Rector of +Pontystrad—came out in the boy in unhealthy fancies. He had almost +the talent of Aubrey Beardsley. But I didn't think he had a good +influence over my other pupils, so before I planned that Italian +journey—on which you refused to accompany me—I advised him to +leave my tuition—I wasn't modern enough, I said. I also advised him +to make up his mind whether he wanted to be a sane architect—he +despised questions of housemaids' closets and sanitation and lifts +and hot-water supply—or a scene painter. I think he might have had +a great career at Drury Lane over fairy palaces or millionaire +dwellings. But I turned him out of my studio, though I put the fact +less brutally before his father—said I should be absent a long +while in Italy and that I feared the boy was too undisciplined. +Afterwards I think he went into some South African police force..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "He did, and died last year in a South African hospital. +Had he—er—er—many relations, I mean did he come of well-known +people?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Praed</i>: "I fancy not. His father was just a dreamy old Welsh +clergyman always seeing visions and believing himself a descendant +of the Druids, Sam Gardner told me; and his mother had either died +long ago or had run away from her husband, I forget which. In a way, +I'm sorry David's dead. He had a sort of weird talent and wild good +looks. By the way, he wasn't altogether unlike <i>you</i>." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Thank you for the double-edged compliment. However what +you say is very interesting. Well now, my idea is that David +Vavasour Williams did <i>not</i> die in a military hospital; he recovered +and returned, firmly resolved to lead a new life.—Is his father +living by the bye? Did he believe his son was dead?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Praed</i>: "Couldn't tell you, I'm sure. I never took any further +interest in him, and until you mentioned it—I don't know on whose +authority—I didn't know he was dead. On the whole a good riddance +for his people, I should say, especially if he died on the field of +honour. But what lunatic idea has entered your mind with regard to +this poor waster?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Why my idea, as I say, is that D.V.W. got cured of his +necrosis of the jaw—I suppose it is not invariably deadly?—came +home with a much improved morale, studied hard, and became a +barrister, thinking it morally a superior calling to architecture +and scene painting. In short, I shall be from this day forth +Vavasour Williams, law-student! Would it be safe, d'you think, in +that capacity to go down and see his old father?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Praed</i>: "<i>Vivie</i>! I <i>did</i> think you were a sober-minded young +woman who would steer clear of—of—crime: for this impersonation +would be a punishable offence..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "<i>Crime</i>? <i>What</i> nonsense! I should consider I was +justified in a Court of Equity if I burnt down or blew up the Law +Courts or one of the Inns or broke the windows of the Chartered +Institute of Actuaries or the Incorporated Law Society. All these +institutions and many others bar the way to honourable and lucrative +careers for educated women, and a male parliament gives us no +redress, and a male press laughs at us for our feeble attempts to +claim common rights with men. Instead of proceeding to such violence +I am merely resorting to a very harmless guile in getting round the +absurd restrictions imposed by the benchers of the Inns of Court, +namely that all who claim a call to the Bar should not be +<i>accountants</i>, <i>actuaries</i>, <i>clergymen</i> or <i>women</i>. I am going to +give up the accountancy business—or rather, the law has never +allowed either Honoria or me to become chartered accountants, so +there is nothing to give up. To avoid any misapprehension she is +going to change the title on our note paper and brass plate to +'General Inquiry Agents.' That will be sufficiently non-committal. +Well then, as to sex disqualification, a few weeks hence I shall +become David Vavasour Williams, and I presume he was a male? You +don't have to pass a medical examination for the Bar, do you?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Praed</i>: "Really, Vivie, you are <i>unnecessarily</i> coarse..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I don't care if I am, poor outlaw that I am! Every avenue +to an honest and ambitious career seems closed to me, either because +I am a woman or—in women's careers—the few that there are—because +I am Kate Warren's daughter. <i>I</i> am not to blame for my mother's +misdeeds, yet I am being punished for them. That beast of a friend +of yours—that filthy swine, George Crofts—set it about after I +refused to marry him that I was 'Mrs. Warren's Daughter,' and the +few nice people I knew from Cambridge days dropped me, all except +Honoria and her mother." +</p> +<p> +<i>Praed</i>: "Well, <i>I</i> haven't dropped you. <i>I'll</i> always stick by +you" (observes that Vivie is trying to keep back her tears). +"Vivie—<i>darling</i>—what do you want me to do? Why not marry me and +spend half my income, take the shelter of my name—I'm an A.R.A. +now—You needn't do more than keep house for me.... I'm rather +a valetudinarian—dare say I shan't trouble you long—we +could have a jolly good time before I went off with a heart +attack—travel—study—write books together—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i> (recovering herself): "Thanks, dear Praddy; you are a brick +and I really—in a way—have quite got to love you. Except an office +boy in Chancery Lane and W.T. Stead, I don't know any other decent +man. But I'm not going to marry any one. I'm going to become +Vavasour Williams—the name is rotten, but you must take what you +can get. Williams is a quiet young man who only desires to be left +alone to earn his living respectably at the Bar, and see there if he +cannot redress the balance in the favour of women. But there is +something you <i>could</i> do for me, and it is for that I came to see +you to-day—by the bye, we have both let our tea grow cold, but <i>for +goodness' sake</i> don't order any more on my account, or else your +parlour-maid will be coming in and out and will see that I've been +crying and you look flushed. What I wanted to ask was this—it's +really very simple—<i>If Mr. Vavasour Williams, aged twenty-four, +late in South Africa, once your pupil in architecture</i> or scene +painting or whatever it was—<i>gives you as a reference to character, +you are to say the best you can of him</i>. And, by the bye, he will be +calling to see you very shortly and you could lend further +verisimilitude to your story by renewing acquaintance with him. You +will find him very much improved. In every way he will do you +credit. And what is more, if you don't repel him, he will come and +see you much oftener than his cousin—I'm not ashamed to adopt her +as a cousin—Vivie Warren could have done. Because Vivie, with her +deplorable parentage, had your good name to think of, and visited +you very seldom; whereas there could be raised <i>no</i> objection from +your parlour-maid if Mr. D.V. Williams came rather often to chat +with you and ask your advice. Think it over, dear friend—Good-bye." +</p> +<p> +Early in July, Norie and Vivie were standing at the open west +window in their partners' room at the office, trying to get a little +fresh air. The staff had just gone its several ways to the suburbs, +glad to have three hours of daylight before it for cricket and +tennis. Confident therefore of not being overheard, Vivie began: +"I've got those rooms in Fig Tree Court. I shall soon be ready to +move my things in. I'll leave some of poor Vivie Warren's effects +behind if you don't mind, in case she comes back some day. Do you +think you can rub along if I take my departure next week? I want to +give myself a fortnight's bicycle holiday in Wales—as D.V. +Williams—a kind of honeymoon with Fate, before I settle down as a +law student. After I come back I can devote much of the summer +recess to our affairs, either openly or after office hours. You +could then take a holiday, in August. You badly need one. What about +Beryl?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "Beryl is well over her accouchement and is confident of +being able to start work here on August 1.... It's a boy this time. +I haven't seen it, so I can't say whether it resembles a policeman +more than an architect. Besides babies up till the age of six months +only resemble macrocephalic idiots.... I shall be <i>wary</i> with +Beryl—haven't committed myself—ourselves to any engagement beyond +six months. She's amazingly clever, but I should say quite +heartless. Two babies in three years, and both illegitimate—the +real Mrs. Architect very much upset, no doubt, Mr. Architect getting +wilder and wilder in his work through trying to maintain two +establishments—they say he left out all the sanitation in Sir Peter +Robinson's new house and let the builders rush up the walls without +damp courses—and it's killing her father, the Dean. It's not as +though she hid herself away, but she goes out so much! They are +talking of turning her out of her club because of the things she +says before the waitresses..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "What things?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "Why, about its being very healthy to have babies when +you're between the ages of twenty and thirty; and how with this +twilight sleep business she doesn't mind how often; that it's fifty +times more interesting than breeding dogs and cats or guinea-pigs; +and she's surprised more single women don't take it up. I think she +must be détraquée.... I have a faint hope that by taking her in hand +and interesting her in our work—which <i>entre nous deux</i>—is turning +out to be very profitable—I may sober her and regularize her. No +doubt in 1950 most women will talk as she does to-day, but the +advance is too abrupt. It not only robs <i>her</i> parents of all +happiness, but it upsets <i>my</i> mother. She now wrings her hands over +her own past and fears that by working so strenuously for the +emancipation of women she has assisted to breach the dam—Can't you +imagine the way the old cats of both sexes go on at her?—the dam +which held up female virtue, and that Society now will be drowned in +a flood of Free Love..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Well! We'll give her a six months' trial here, and see if +our mix-up of advice in Law, Banking, Estate management, +Stock-and-share dealing, Divorce, Private Enquiries, probate, etc., +does not prove <i>much</i> more interesting than an illicit connection +with a hare-brained architect.... If she proves impossible you'll +pack her off and Vivie shall return and D.V. Williams go abroad.... +Don't you think there is something that ought to win over Providence +in that happily chosen name? <i>D.V.</i> Williams? And my mother once +actually called herself 'Vavasour.' +</p> +<p> +"Well, then, barring accidents and the unforeseen, it's agreed I go +on my holiday next Saturday, to return never no more—perhaps—?—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i> (with a sigh): "Yes!" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "How's your mother?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Norie</i>: "Oh, as to her, I'm glad to say '<i>much</i> better.' When I +can get away, after the new clerks and Beryl are installed and +everything is going smoothly, I shall take her to Switzerland, to a +deliciously quiet spot I know and nobody else knows up the +Göschenenthal. The Continent won't be so hot for travelling if we +don't start till the end of August..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie:</i> "<i>Then</i>, dearest ... in case you don't come to the office +any more this week, I'll say good-bye—for—for some time..." +</p> +<p> +(They grip hands, they hesitate, then kiss each other on the cheek, +a very rare gesture on either's part—and separate with tears in +their eyes.) +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +The following Monday morning, Bertie Adams, combining in his +adolescent person the functions of office boy, junior clerk, and +general factotum, entered the outer office of Fraser and Warren and +found this letter on his desk:— +</p> + <p class="heading"> + Midland Insurance Chambers,<br /> + 88-90, Chancery Lane, W.C.<br /> + July 12, 1901. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + Fraser and Warren<br /> + General Inquiry Agents +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + + <span class="sc">Dear Bertie</span>— +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + I want to prepare you for something. If you had been an + ordinary Office boy, I should not have bothered about you or + confided to you anything concerning the Firm. But you are by + now almost a clerk, and from the day I joined Miss Fraser in + this business, you have helped me more than you know—helped + me not only in my work, but to understand that there <i>can</i> + be good, true, decent-minded, trustworthy ... you won't like + it if I say "boys" ... young men. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + I am going away for a considerable time, I cannot say how + long—probably abroad. But Miss Fraser thinks I can still + help in the work of her firm, so I remain a partner. A + cousin of mine, Mr. D.V. Williams, may come in occasionally + to help Miss Fraser. I shall ask him to keep an eye on you. + Miss Rose Mullet and Miss Steynes are likewise leaving the + service of the firm. I dare say you know Miss Mullet is + getting married and how Miss Steynes is going to live at + Aylesbury. Two other ladies are coming in their place, and + much of my own work will be undertaken by a Mrs. Claridge, + whom you will shortly see. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + It is rather sad this change in what has been such a happy + association of busy people, nobody treading on any one + else's toes; but there it is! "The old order changeth, + giving place to the new ... lest one good custom should + corrupt the world"—you will read in the Tennyson I gave you + last Christmas. Let's hope it won't be when I return: + "Change and Decay in all around I see" ... as the rather + dismal hymn has it. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + Sometimes change is a good thing. You serve a noble mistress + in Miss Fraser and I am sure you realize the importance of + her work. It may mean so much for women's careers in the + next generation. I shan't quite lose touch with you. I dare + say Miss Fraser, even if I am far away, will write to me + from time to time and give me news of the office and tell me + how you get on. Don't be ashamed of being ambitious: keep up + your studies. Why don't you—but perhaps you do?—join + evening classes at the Polytechnic?—or at this new London + School of Economics which is close at hand? Make up your + mind to be Lord Chancellor some day ... even if it only + carries you as far as the silk gown of a Q.C. I suppose I + ought now to write "K.C." A few years ago we all thought the + State would go to pieces when Victoria died. Yet you see we + are jogging along pretty well under King Edward. In the same + way, you will soon get so used to the new Head Clerk, Mrs. + Claridge, that you will wonder what on earth you saw to + admire in +</p> +<p class="closing"> <span class="sc">Vivien Warren</span>. +</p> + +<p> +This letter came like a cricket ball between the eyes to Bertie +Adams. His adored Miss Warren going away and no clear prospect of +her return—her farewell almost like the last words on a death-bed.... +He bowed his head over his folded arms on his office desk, and +gave way to gruff sobs and the brimming over of tear and nose glands +which is the grotesque accompaniment of human sorrow. +</p> +<p> +He forgot for a while that he was a young man of nineteen with an +unmistakable moustache and the status of a cricket eleven captain. +He was quite the boy again and his feeling for Vivien Warren, which +earlier he had hardly dared to characterize, out of his intense +respect for her, became once more just filial affection. +</p> +<p> +His good mother was a washerwoman-widow, in whom Honoria Fraser had +interested herself in her Harley Street girlhood. Bertie was the +eldest of six, and his father had been a coal porter who broke his +back tumbling down a cellar when a little "on." Bertie—he now +figured as Mr. Albert Adams in the cricket lists—was a well-grown +youth, rather blunt-featured, but with honest hazel eyes, +fresh-coloured, shock-haired. Vivie had once derided him for trying +to woo his frontal hair into a flattened curl with much pomade ... +he now only sleeked his curly hair with water. You might even have +called him "common." He was of the type that went out to the War +from 1914 to 1918, and won it, despite the many mistakes of our +flurried strategicians: the type that so long as it lasts unspoilt +will make England the predominant partner, and Great Britain the +predominant nation; the type out of which are made the bluejacket +and petty officer, the police sergeant, the engine driver, the +railway guard, solicitor's clerk, merchant service mate, engineer, +air-pilot, chauffeur, army non-commissioned officer, head gardener, +head game-keeper, farm-bailiff, head printer; the trustworthy +manservant, the commissionaire of a City Office; and which in other +avatars ran the British World on an average annual income of £150 +before the War. When women of a similar educated lower middle class +come into full equality with men in opportunity, they should marry +the Bertie Adamses of their acquaintance and not the stockbrokers, +butchers, drapers, bookies, professional cricketers or pugilists. +They would then become the mothers of the salvation-generation of +the British people which will found and rule Utopia. +</p> +<p> +However, Bertie Adams was quite unconscious of all these +possibilities, and thought of himself modestly, rather cheaply. +Swallowing the fourth or fifth sob, he rose from his crouching over +the desk, wiped his face with a wet towel, smoothed his hair, put +straight his turn-over collar and smart tie, and went to his work +with glowing eyes and cheeks; resolved to show Miss Warren that she +had not thought too highly of him. +</p> +<p> +Nevertheless, when Miss Mullet arrived and giggled over the details +of her trousseau and Lily Steynes discussed the advertisements of +Aylesbury ducks in the current <i>Exchange and Mart</i>, he was reserved +and rather sarcastic with them both. He intimated later that he had +long been aware of the coming displacements; but he said not a word +of Vivie's letter. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER IV +</h2> +<h3> + PONTYSTRAD +</h3> +<p> +On a morning in mid-July, 1901, Mr. D.V. Williams bicycled to +Paddington Station from New Square, Lincoln's Inn. The brown canvas +case fitted to the frame of his male bicycle contained a change of +clothes, a suit of paijamas, a safety razor, tooth-brush, hair-brush +and comb. He himself was wearing a well-cut dark grey suit—Norfolk +jacket, knickerbockers and thick stockings. +</p> +<p> +Having had his bicycle labelled "Swansea," he entered a first-class +compartment of the South Wales express. Though not lavish on his +expenditure he was travelling first because he still felt a little +uneasy in the presence of men—mostly men of the rougher type. +Perhaps there was a second class in those days; there may be still. +But I have a distinct impression that Mr. Vavasour Williams, law +student, travelled "first" on this occasion: for this was how +he met a person of whom his friend, Honoria Fraser, had often +spoken—Michael Rossiter. +</p> +<p> +He did not of course—till after they had passed Swindon—know the +name of his travelling companion. Five minutes before the train left +Paddington there entered his compartment of the corridor carriage a +tall man with a short, curly black beard and nice eyes—eyes like +agates in colour. There was a touch of grey about the temples, +otherwise the head hair, when he changed from a hard felt hat to a +soft travelling cap, showed as dark as the beard and moustache. His +frame was strong, muscular and loosely built, and he had clever, +nervous hands with fingers somewhat spatulate. His clothes did not +much suggest the tourist—they seemed more like a too well-worn town +morning suit of dark blue serge; as though he had left home in an +absent-minded mood intent on some hurriedly conceived plan. He cast +one or two quick glances at David; once, indeed, as they got out +into full daylight, away from tunnels and high walls, letting his +glance lengthen into a searching look. Then he busied himself with a +number of scientific periodicals he had brought to read in the +train. +</p> +<p> +Impelled, he knew not why, to provoke conversation, David asked +(quite needlessly), "This <i>is</i> the South Wales express, I mean the +Swansea train, is it not?" +</p> +<p> +Blackbeard was struck with the unusualness of the voice—a very +pleasant one to come from the lips of a man—and replied: "It is; at +least I got in under that impression as I am intending to go to +Swansea; but in any case the ticket inspector is sure to come along +the corridor presently and we'll make sure then. We stop at Swindon, +I think, so if we've made a mistake we can rectify it there." +</p> +<p> +Then after a pause he resumed: "I think you said you were going to +Swansea? Might I ask if you are bound on the same errand as I am? I +mean, are you one of Boyd Dawkins's party to examine the new cave on +the Gower coast?" +</p> +<p> +<i>D.V.W.</i>: "Oh no—I—I am going inland from Swansea to—to have a +bicycling tour. I'm going to a place on the river—I don't know how +to pronounce it—at least I've forgotten. The river's name is spelt +Llwchwr." +</p> +<p> +<i>Blackbeard</i>: "You should change your mind and turn south—come and +see these extraordinary caves. Are you interested in palæontology?" +(David hesitates) "What careless people call 'prehistoric animals' +or 'prehistoric man.' They have been ridiculously misled by comic +artists in <i>Punch</i> who imagine a few thousand years of Prehistory +would take us back to the Cretaceous period; really four or five +million years before Man came into existence, when this country and +most other lands swarmed with preposterous reptiles that had become +extinct long before the age of mammals. However, I don't suppose +this interests you. I only spoke because I thought you might be one +of Boyd Dawkins's pupils ... or one of mine." +</p> +<p> +<i>David</i>: "On the contrary, I am very, very much interested in the +subject, but I am afraid it has lain rather outside my line of +studies so far—p'raps I will turn south when I have seen something +of the part of Glamorgan I am going to. I'm really Welsh in origin, +but I know Wales imperfectly because I left it when I was quite +young" ("This'll be good practice," Vivie's brain voice was saying +to herself) ... "I've returned recently from South Africa." +</p> +<p> +<i>Blackbeard</i>: "What were you doing there?" +</p> +<p> +<i>David</i>: "I—I—was in the army ... at least in a police force ... I +got wounded, had to go into hospital—necrosis of the jaw ... I came +home when I got well..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Blackbeard</i>: <i>"Necrosis of the jaw!</i> That was a bad thing. But you +seem to have got over it very well. I can't see any scar from where +I am..." +</p> +<p> +<i>David</i>: "Oh no. It was only a <i>slight</i> touch and I dare say I +exaggerate ... I've left the Army however and now I'm reading +Law..." +</p> +<p> +Blackbeard thinks at this point that he has gone far enough in +cross-examination and returns to his periodicals and pamphlets. But +there's something he likes—a wistfulness—in the young man's face, +and he can't quite detach his mind to the presence of palæolithic +man in South Wales. At Swindon they both get out—there was still +lingering the practice of taking lunch there—have a hasty lunch +together and more talk, and share a bottle of claret. +</p> +<p> +On returning to their compartment, Rossiter offers David a cigar but +the young man prefers smoking a cigarette. By this time they have +exchanged names. D.V.W. however is reticent about the South African +War—says it was all too horrible for words, and should never have +taken place and he can't bear to think about it and was knocked out +quite early in the day. Now all he asks is peace and quiet and the +opportunity of studying law in London so that he may become some day +a barrister. Rossiter says—after more talk, "Pity you're going in +for the Bar—we've too many lawyers already. You should take up +Science"—and as far as the Severn Tunnel discourses illuminatingly +on biology, mineralogy, astronomy, chemistry as David-Vivien had +never heard them treated previously. In the Severn Tunnel the noise +of the train silences both professor and listener, who willingly +takes up the position of pupil. Between Newport and Neath, David +thinks he has never met any one so interesting. It has been his +first real induction into the greatest of all books: the Book of the +Earth itself. Rossiter on his part feels indefinably attracted by +this young expatriated Welshman. David does not say much, but what +he does contribute to the conversation shows him a quick thinker and +a person of trained intelligence. Yet somehow the professor of +Biology in the University of London—and many other things +beside—F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.L.S., Gold Medallist of this and that +Academy and University abroad—does not "see" him as a soldier or a +non-commissioned officer in the British Army: law-student is a more +likely qualification. However as they near Swansea, Michael Rossiter +gives Mr. D.V. Williams his card (D.V.W. regrets he cannot +reciprocate but says he has hardly settled down yet to any address) +and—though as a rule he is taciturn in trains and cautious about +making acquaintances—expresses the hope he will call at 1, Park +Crescent some afternoon—"My wife and I are generally at home on +Thursdays"—when all are back in town for the autumn. They separate +at Swansea station. +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +David spends the night at Swansea, employing some of his time there +by enquiring at the Terminus Hotel as to the roads that lead up the +valley of the Llwchwr, what sort of a place is Pontystrad ("the +bridge by the meadow"), whether any one knows the clergyman of that +parish, Mr.... er ... Howel Vaughan Williams. The "boots" or one of +the "bootses," it appears, comes from the neighbourhood of +Pontystrad and knows the reverend gentleman by sight—a nice old +gentleman—has heard that he's aged much of late years since his son +ran away and disappeared out in Africa. His sight was getting bad, +Boots understood, and he could not see to do all the reading and +writing he was once so great at. +</p> +<p> +After a rather wakeful night, during which D.V. Williams is more +disturbed by his thoughts and schemes than by the continual noises +of the trains passing into and out of Swansea, he rises early and +drafts a telegram:— +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + Revd. Howel Williams, Vicarage, Pontystrad, Glamorgan. Hope + return home this evening. All is well. +</p> +<p class="ar"> <span class="sc">David</span>. +</p> +<p> +Then pays his bill and tries to mount his bicycle the wrong way to +the great amusement of the Boots; then remembers the right way and +rides off, with the confidence of one long accustomed to bicycling, +through the crowded traffic of Swansea in the direction of Llwchwr. +</p> +<p> +It was a very hot ride through a very lovely country, now largely +spoilt by mining and metallurgy, along a road that was constantly +climbing up steeply to descend abruptly. David of course could have +travelled by rail to the Pontyffynon station and thence have ridden +back three miles to Pontystrad. But he wished purposely to bicycle +the whole way from Swansea and take in with the eye the land of his +fathers. He was postponing as long as possible the test of meeting +his father, the father of the young n'eer-do-weel who had been lying +for months in a South African field hospital the year before. He +halted for a cup of tea at Llandeilotalybont ... Wales has many +place names like this ... and being there not many miles from +Pontystrad was able to glean more recent and more circumstantial +information about the man he proposed to greet as "father." +</p> +<p> +At half-past six that evening, having perspired and dried, perspired +and dried, strained a tendon and acquired a headache, he halted +before the gate of the Vicarage garden at Pontystrad, having been +followed thither to his secret annoyance by quite a troop of village +boys of whom he had imprudently asked the way. As they talked Welsh +he could not tell what they were saying, but conjectured that his +telegram had arrived and that he was expected. +</p> +<p> +Standing under the porch of the house was an old man with a long +white beard like a Druid in spectacles shading his eyes and +expectant... +</p> +<p> +A bicycle might prove an incumbrance in the ensuing interview, so +David hastily propped his against a fuchsia hedge and hurried +forward to meet the old man, who extended hands to envelop him, not +trusting to his eyes. An old, rosy-cheeked woman in a sunbonnet came +up behind the old man, shrieked out "Master David!" and only waited +with twitching fingers for her own onslaught till the father had +first embraced his prodigal son. This was done at least three times, +accompanied with tears, blessings, prayers, the uplifting of poor +filmy eyes to a cloudless Heaven—"Diolch i Dduw!"—ejaculations as +to the wonder of it—"Rhyfeddol yw yn eiholl ffyrdd"—God's +Providence—His ways are past finding out! "Ni ellir olrain ei +Ragluniaeth!"—"My own dear boy! Fy machgen annwyli!" +</p> +<p> +Then the old woman took her turn: "Master David! Eh, but you're +changed, mun!"—then a lot of Welsh exclamations, which until the +Welsh can agree to spell their tongue phonetically I shall not +insert—"Five years since you left us! Eh, and I never thought to +see you no more. Some said you wass dead, others that you wass taken +prisoner by the Wild Boars. But here you are, and welcome—indeed—" +Then Master David between the embraces was scanned, a little more +critically than by the purblind father, but with distinct approval. +</p> +<p> +At last David stood apart in the stone-flagged hall of the Vicarage. +His abundant hair was rumpled, his face was stained by other +people's tears, his collar, tie, dress disordered, and his heart +touched. It was a rare experience in his twenty-four years of +life—he guessed that should be his age—to find himself really +taken on trust, really desired and loved. Honoria's friendship +was a pure and precious thing, but in its very purity carefully +restrained. Praddy's kindness, and the office boy's worship had both +been gratifying to Vivie's self-esteem, but both had to be kept at +bay. Somehow the love of a father and of an old nurse were of a +different category to these other contacts. +</p> +<p> +All these thoughts passed through David's brain in thirty seconds. +He shook himself, straightened himself, smiled adequately, and tried +to live up to the situation. +</p> +<p> +"Dear father! And dear ... Nannie! (A bold but successful +deduction). How sweet of you both—greeting me like this. I've come +home a very different David to the one that left you—what was it? +Five—six years ago?—to go to Mr. Praed's studio. I've learnt a lot +in the interval. But I'm so sick of the past, I don't want to talk +about it more than I can help, and I've been in very queer health +since I got ill—and—wounded—in—South Africa. My memory has gone +for many things—I'm afraid I've forgotten all my Welsh, Nannie, but +it'll soon come back, that is, if I may stay here a bit." +(Exclamations from father and nurse: "This is your <i>home</i>, +Davy-bach!") "I'm not going to stay too long this time because I've +got my living to earn in London.... +</p> +<p> +"Did you never hear anything about me from ... South Africa ... or +the War Office—or—your old college chum, Mr. Gardner?" +</p> +<p> +"I heard—my own dear boy—" said the Revd. Howel, again taking him +in his arms in a renewed spasm of affection. "I heard you were +wounded and very ill in the camp hospital at Colesberg. It was a +nursing sister, I think, who sent me the information. I wrote +several times to the War Office, my letters were acknowledged, that +was all. Then Sam Gardner wrote to me from Margate and said his son +had been in the same hospital with you. Later on I saw in a Bristol +paper that this hospital—Colesberg—had fallen into the hands of +the Boers and the Cape insurgents. Then I said to myself 'My poor +boy's been taken prisoner' and as time went on, 'My poor boy's dead, +or he would have written to me.'" +</p> +<p> +Here the Revd. Howel stopped to wipe his eyes and blow his nose. +David touched through his armour of cynicism, said—Nannie retiring +to prepare the evening meal—"Father dear, though I don't want to +refer too often to the past, I behaved disgracefully some time ago +and the Colonies seemed my only chance of setting myself right. I +did manage to get away from the Boers, but I had not the courage to +present myself before you till I had done something to regain your +good opinion. I have got now good employment in London and I'm even +reading up Law. We will talk of that by and bye but I tell you +now—from my heart—I am a different David to the one you knew, and +you shall never regret taking me back." +</p> +<p> +Both father and son were crying now, for emotion especially in Wales +is catching. But the father laughed through his tears; and +incoherently thanked God for the return of the prodigal—a fine +upstanding lad—whole and sound. "No taint about <i>you</i>, Davy, <i>I'll</i> +be bound. Why your voice alone shows you've been a clean liver. It's +music in my ears, and if I could see as well as I can hear I'd wager +you're a handsome lad and have lost much of your foolishness. Davy, +lad" (lowering his voice) "you've no cause to be anxious about +Jenny. She—she—had a boy, but we got her married to a miner—I +made it right with him. She has another child now, but they're being +brought up together. We won't refer to it again. She lives twenty +miles from here, at Gower—and ... and ... there's an end of it.... +</p> +<p> +"Now you won't run away back to London till you're obliged? Where's +your luggage? At Pontyffynon?" +</p> +<p> +"No," said David, a little non-plussed at evidences of his dissolute +past and this unexpected fatherhood assumed on his account. "I +haven't more luggage than what is contained in my bicycle bag. But +don't let that concern you. I'll go over to Swansea one day or some +nearer town and buy what may be necessary, and I'll stay with you +all my holidays, tell you all my plans, and even after I go back to +London I'll always come down here when I can get away. For the +present I'm going simply to enjoy myself for the first time in my +life. The last four years we'll look on as a horrid dream. What a +paradise you live in." His eye ranged over the two-storeyed, +soundly-built stone house facing south, with mountains behind and +the western sun throwing shafts of warm yellow green over the lawn +and the flower beds; over clumps of elms in the middle, southern +distance, that might have been planted by the Romans (who loved this +part of Wales). Bees, butterflies and swallows were in the air; the +distant lowing of kine, the scent of the roses, the clatter in the +kitchen where Nannie aided by another female servant was preparing +supper, even the barking of a watch dog; aware that something +unusual was going on, completed the impression of the blissful +countryside. "What a paradise you live in! How <i>could</i> I have left +it?" +</p> +<p> +"Ay, dear lad; I doubt not it looks strange and new to you since +you've been in South Africa and London. But it'll soon seem homelike +enough. And now you'll like to see your room, and have a wash before +supper. Tom, the gardener, shall take in your bicycle and give it a +rub over. I've still got the old one here in the coach-house which +you left behind. Tom's new, since you left. He's not so clever with +the bees as your old friend Evan was, but he's a steadier lad. I +fear me Evan led you into some of your scrapes. The fault was partly +mine. I shouldn't have let you run wild so much, but I was so +wrapped up in my studies—Well, well!" +</p> +<p> +David was careful to play his part sufficiently to say when shown +into his old bedroom, "Just the same, father; scarcely a bit +altered—but isn't the bed moved—to another place?" +</p> +<p> +"You're right, my boy—Ah! your memory can't be as bad as you +pretend. Yes, we moved it there, Bridget and I, because the +Archdeacon came once to stay and complained of the draught from the +window." +</p> +<p> +"The deuce he did!" said David. "Well, <i>I</i> shan't complain of +anything." +</p> +<p> +His father left him and he then proceeded to lay out the small +store of things he had brought in his bicycle bag, giving special +prominence to the shaving tackle. He had just finished a summary +toilet when there was a tap on the door, and, suppressing an +exclamation of impatience—for he dearly wanted time and solitude +for collected thought—he admitted Bridget. +</p> +<p> +"Well, Nannie," he said, "come for a gossip?" +</p> +<p> +"Yess. I can hardly bear to take my eyes off you, for you've +changed, you <i>have</i> changed. And yet, I don't know? You don't look +much older than you wass when you went off to London to be an +architect. Your cheek—" (lifting her hand and stroking it, while +David tried hard not to wince) "Your cheek's as soft and smooth as +it was then, as any young girl's. Wherever you've been, the world +has not treated you very bad. No one would have dreamt you'd been +all the way to South Africa to them Wild Boars. But some men wear +wonderful well. I suppose your father giv' you a bit of a shock? +He's much older looking; and he wassn't suffering, to speak of, from +his sight when you went away. And now he can hardly see to read even +with his new spectol. Old Doctor Murgatroyd can't do nothing for +him—Advises him to go to see some Bristol or London eye-doctor. But +after you seemed to disappear in Africa he had no heart for trying +to get his sight back. He'd sit for hours doing nothing but think +and talk, all about old Welsh times, or Bible times. Of course he +knows hiss services by heart; hiss only job wass with the +Lessons.... But you see, he'd often only have me and the girl and +Tom in church. There's a new preacher up at Little Bethel that's +drawn all the village folk to hear him. But your father'll be a +different man now—you see, he'll be like a boy again. And if you +could stay long enough, you might take him to Bristol—or Clifton I +think it wass—to see if they could do anything about his eyes.... +</p> +<p> +"The past's the past and we aren't going to say no more about it, +and now you've turned over a new leaf—somehow I <i>can't</i> feel you're +the same person—don't go worrying yourself about that slut Jenny. +<i>She's</i> all right. After your baby was born at her mother's, she +went into service at Llanelly and there she met a miner who's at +work on the new coal mine in Gower. He wasn't a bad sort of chap and +when he'd heard her story he said for a matter of twenty pound he'd +marry her and take over her baby. So your father paid the twenty +pounds, and if she'll only keep straight she'll be none the worse +for what's happened. I always said it wass my fault. It wass the +year I had to go away to my sister, and your father had to go to St. +David's, and after all, if it hadn't 'a-been you, it 'd 'a-been +young Evan. Why there's bin some girls in the village have had two +and even three babies before they settled down and got married. Now +we must dish up supper. I've given you lots and lots of pancakes and +the cream and honey you wass always so fond of—you bad boy—" She +ventured a kiss on the smooth cheek of her nursling and heavily +descended the stairs. +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +David had a very bad night, because to please his old nurse he had +eaten too many of her pancakes with cream and honey. In fact, he had +at last to tip-toe down through a sleeping house cautiously to let +himself out and relieve his feelings by pacing the verandah till the +nausea passed off. After that he lay long awake trying to size up +the situation. He got his thoughts at last into some such shape as +this:— +</p> +<p> +"It's clear I was a regular young rake before I was sent up to +London to be Praddy's pupil. Apparently I seduced the housemaid or +kitchenmaid—my father's establishment seems to consist of Nannie +who is housekeeper and cook, and a maid who does housework and +helps in the kitchen—and this unfortunate girl who fell a prey to +my solicitations—or more likely misled me—afterwards gave birth to +a child attributed either to my fatherhood or the gardener's. But +the matter has been hushed up by a payment of twenty pounds and the +girl is now married and respectable and ought to give no further +trouble. I suppose that was a climax of naughtiness on my part and +the main reason why I was sent away. The two people who matter most +have received me without doubt or question, but the one to be +wary about is the old nurse, whose very affection makes her +inconveniently inquisitive. <i>Mem.</i> get up and lock my door, or else +she may come in with hot water or something in the morning and take +me by surprise. +</p> +<p> +"The original David is evidently dead and well out of the way. There +can be no harm in my taking his place, at any rate for a few years: +it may give the old man new life and genuine happiness, for I shall +play my part as a good son, and certainly shall cost him nothing. +I'll begin by taking him to an oculist and finding out what is wrong +with his eyes.... Probably only cataract. It may be possible to +effect a cure and he can then finish his book on the history of +Glamorganshire from earliest times. Must remember, by the bye, that +the Welsh change most of the old <i>m's</i> into <i>f's</i> and that this +country is called Forganwg, with the <i>w</i> pronounced like <i>oo</i>, and +the <i>f</i> like <i>v</i>. Must learn some Welsh. What a nuisance. But +nothing is worth doing if it isn't done well. If I can keep this +deception up this would be a jolly place to come to for occasional +holidays, and I simply couldn't have a better reference to +respectability, sex and station with the benchers of Lincoln's Inn +than 'my father,' the Revd. Howel Williams, Vicar of Pontystrad. +They'll probably want a second or a third reference. Can I rely on +Praddy? Is it possible I might work up my acquaintance with that +professor whom I met in the train? I'll see. Perhaps I could attend +classes of his if he lectures in London." +</p> +<p> +Then the plotting David fell asleep at last and woke to hear the +loud tapping on his door at eight o'clock, of Bridget, rather +surprised to find the door locked, but entering (when he had garbed +himself in his Norfolk jacket and opened the door), with hot water +for shaving and a cup of tea. +</p> +<p> +It was a hot July morning, and while he dressed, the southern breeze +came in through the open window scented by the roses and the lemon +verbena growing against the wall. His father was pacing up and down +the hall and the verandah restlessly awaiting him, fearing lest the +whole episode of the day before might not have been one of his +waking dreams. His failing sight made reading almost a torture and +writing more a matter of feeling than visual perception. Time +therefore hung wearisomely on his hands; Bridget was not a good +reader, besides being too busy a housekeeper to have time for it. +Had David really returned to him? Would he sometimes read aloud and +sometimes write his letters, or even the finish of his History? Too +good to be true! +</p> +<p> +But there was David coming down the stairs, greeting him with tender +affection. "Read and write for you, father? Of course! But before I +go back to London—and unfortunately I <i>must</i> go back early in +August—I'm going to take you to see an oculist—Bristol or Clifton +perhaps—and get your sight restored." +</p> +<p> +After breakfast, however, the father decided he must take David +round the village, to see and be seen. David was not very anxious to +go, but as the Revd. Howel looked disappointed he gave in. +</p> +<p> +It had to be got over some time or other. So they first visited the +church, a building in the form of a cross, with an imposing +battlemented tower. Here David asked to inspect the registers and +found therein (while the old gentleman silently prayed or sat in +mute thankfulness in a sunny corner)—the record of his father's +marriage to Mary Vavasour twenty-six years before (Mary was +twenty-three and the Revd. Howel forty at the time) and of his own +baptism two years afterwards. +</p> +<p> +Then issuing from the church, father and son walked through the +village, the father pointing out the changes for better or worse +that had taken place in four years, and not noticing the vagueness +of his son's memories of either persons or features in the +landscape. The village, like most Welsh villages, was of +white-washed cottages, slate-roofed, but it was embowered with that +luxuriance of foliage and flowers which makes Glamorganshire—out of +sight of the coal-mining—seem an earthly paradise. Every now and +then the Revd. Howel would nudge his son and say: "That man who +spoke was old Goronwy, as big a scoundrel now as he was five years +ago," or he would introduce David to a villager of whom he thought +more favourably. If she were a young woman she generally smirked and +looked sideways; if a man he grunted out a Welsh greeting or only +gave a nod of surly recognition. Several professed fluent +recognition but some said in Welsh "he wasn't a bit like the Mr. +David <i>they</i> had known." Whereupon the Revd. Howel laughed and said: +"Wait till you have been out to South Africa fighting for your king +and country and see if <i>that</i> doesn't change <i>you</i>!" +</p> +<p> +The visit to the Clifton oculist resulted in a great success. The +oculist after two or three days' preparation in a nursing home +performed the operation and advised David then to leave his father +for a few days (promising if any unfavourable symptoms supervened he +would telegraph) so that he might pass the time in sleep as much as +possible, and with no mental stimulation. During this interval David +transferred himself and his bicycle to Swansea, and thence visited +the Gower caves where he ran up against Rossiter once more and +spent delightful hours being inducted into palæontology by Rossiter +and his companions. Then back to—by contrast—boresome Clifton +(except for its Zoological Gardens). After another week his father +was well enough to be escorted home. In another fortnight he might +be able to use his eyes, and soon after that would be able to read +and write—in moderation. +</p> +<p> +But David could not wait to see his intervention crowned with +complete success. He must keep faith with Honoria who would be +wanting a long holiday in Switzerland; and their joint business must +not suffer by his absence from London. There were, indeed, times +when the peace and comfort and beauty of Pontystrad got hold of him +and he asked himself: "Why not settle down here for the rest of his +life, put aside other ambitions, attempt no more than this initial +fraud, leave the hateful world wherein women had only three chances +to men's seven." Then there would arise once more fierce ambition, +the resolve to avenge Vivien Warren for her handicaps, the desire to +keep tryst with Honoria and to enjoy more of Rossiter's society. +Besides, he ran a constant risk of discovery under the affectionate +but puzzled inspection of the old nurse. In her mind, residence +amongst the "Wild Boars," service in an army, travel and adventure +generally during an absence of five years, as well as emergence from +adolescence into manhood, accounted for much change in physical +appearance, but not sufficiently for the extraordinary change in +<i>morale</i>: the contrast between the vicious, untidy, selfish, +insolent boy that had gone off to London with ill-concealed glee in +1896 and this grave-mannered, polite, considerate, pleasant-voiced +young man who had already managed to find good employment in London +before he revealed himself anew to his delighted father. +</p> +<p> +These doubts David read in Nannie's mind. But he would not give +them time and chance to become more precise and formulated. +Gradually she would become used to the seeming miracle. In the +meantime he would return to London, and if his father's recovery was +complete he would not revisit "home" till Christmas. As soon as he +was able to write, his father would forward him the copy of his +birth-certificate, and he would likewise answer in the sense agreed +upon any letters of reference or enquiry: would state the +apprenticeship to architecture with Praed A.R.A., and then the +impulse to go out to South Africa, the slight wound—David insisted +it was slight, a fuss about nothing, because he had enquired about +necrosis of the jaw and realized that even if he had recovered it +would have left indisputable marks on face and throat. In fact there +were so many complications involved in an escape from the Boers, +only to be justified under the code of honour prevailing in war +time, that he would rather his father said little or nothing about +South Africa but left him to explain all that. A point of view +readily grasped by the Revd. Howel, who to get such a son back would +even have not thought too badly of desertion—and the negative +letters of the War Office said nothing of that. +</p> +<p> +So early in September, after the most varied, anxious, successful +six weeks in his life—so far—David Vavasour Williams returned to +Fig Tree Court, Inner Temple. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER V +</h2> +<h3> + READING FOR THE BAR +</h3> +<p> +It had been a hot, windless day in London, in early September. +Though summer was in full swing in the country without a hint of +autumn, the foliage in the squares and gardens of the Inns of Court +was already seared and a little shrivelled. The privet hedges were +almost black green; and the mould in the dismal borders that they +screened looked as though it had never known rain or hose water and +as if it could no more grow bright-tinted flowers than the asbestos +of a gas stove which it resembled in consistency and colour. It was +now an evening, ending one of those days which are peculiarly +disheartening to a Londoner returned from a long stay in the depths +of the country—a country which has hills and streams, ferny +hollows, groups of birches, knolls surmounted with pines, meadows of +lush, emerald-green grass, full-foliaged elms, twisted oaks, +orchards hung with reddening apples, red winding lanes between +unchecked hedges, blue mountains in the far distance, and the +glimpse of a river or of ponds large enough to be called a mere or +even a lake. The exhausted London to which David Williams had +returned a few days previously had lost a few thousands of its +West-end and City population—just, in fact, most of its interesting +if unlikable folk, its people who mattered, its insolent spoilt +darlings whom you liked to recognize in the Carlton atrium, in Hyde +Park, in a box at the theatre: yet the frowsy, worthy millions were +there all the same. The air of its then smelly streets was used up +and had the ammoniac strench of the stable. It was a weary London. +The London actors had not returned from Cornwall and Switzerland. +Provincial companies enjoyed—a little anxiously owing to uncertain +receipts at the box office—a brief license on the boards of famous +play-houses. The newspapers had exhausted the stunt of the silly +season and were at their flattest and most yawn-provoking. The South +African War had reached its dreariest stage.... +</p> +<p> +Bertie Adams on this close September evening had out-stayed the +other employés of <i>Fraser and Warren</i> in their fifth floor office at +No. 88-90 Chancery Lane. He had remained after office hours to do a +little work, a little "self-improvement"; and he was just about to +close the outer office and leave the key with the housekeeper, when +the lift came surging up and out of it stepped a young man in a +summer suit and a bowler hat who, to Bertie's astonishment, not only +dashed straight at the door of the partners' room, but opened its +Yale lock with a latch-key as though long accustomed to do so. "But, +sir!..." exclaimed the junior clerk (his promotion to that rank had +tacitly dated from Vivie Warren's departure). "It's all right," said +the stranger. "I'm Mr. David Williams and I've come to draw up some +notes for Mrs. Claridge. I dare say Miss Fraser has told you I +should work in the office every now and then whilst my cousin—Miss +Warren, you know—is away. You needn't wait, though you can close +the outer office before you go; and, by the bye, you might fetch me +<i>Who's Who</i> for the present year." All this was said a little +breathlessly. +</p> +<p> +Bertie brought the volume, then only half the size of its present +bulk, because it lacked our new nobility and gave no heed to your +favourite recreation. D.V. Williams stood in the yellow light of the +west window, reading a letter... "Cousin? No! Twin brother, +perhaps; but had she one?..." mused Bertie... and then, that +never-to-be-forgotten voice ... "Here's 'Oo's Oo—er—Hoo's Hoo, I +mean.... Miss..." He only added the last word as by some +sub-conscious instinct. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Mister</i> Williams," said Vivien-David-Warren Williams, facing him +with resolute eyes. "Be quite clear about that, Adams; <i>David +Vavasour Williams</i>, Miss Warren's cousin." +</p> +<p> +"Indeed I will be, Miss ... Mister ... er ... Sir..." said the +transfigured Bertie (his brain voice saying over and over again in +ecstasy ... "<i>I</i> tumble to it! <i>I</i> tumble to it!"). And then again +"<i>Indeed</i> I will, Mr. Williams. I'm a bit stupidlike this evenin' +... readin' too much.... May I stay and help you, Sir? I'm pretty +quick on the typewriter, Miss Warren may have told you ... Sir ... +and I ain't—I mean—<i>I am not</i>—half bad with me shorthand.... You +know—I mean, <i>she</i> would know I'd joined them evenin' classes..." +</p> +<p> +"Thank you, Adams; but if you have joined the evening classes you +oughtn't to interrupt your attendance there. I can <i>quite</i> manage +here alone and you need not be afraid: I shall leave everything +properly closed. You could give up the key of the outer office as +you go out. You may often find me at work here after office hours, +but that need not disturb you ... and I need hardly say, after all +Miss Fraser and Miss Warren have told me about you, I rely on you to +be at all times thoroughly discreet and not likely to discuss the +work of this firm or my share in it with any one?"... +</p> +<p> +"Indeed you may ... Mr. Williams ... indeed you may.... Oh! I'm so +happy.... Good-night ... Sir!" +</p> +<p> +And Adams's heart was too full for attendance at a lecture on Roman +law. He went off instead to the play. He himself belonged now to the +world of romance. He knew of things—and wild horses and red-hot +tweezers should not tear the knowledge from him, or make him +formulate his deductions—he knew of things as amazing, as prodigal +of developments as anything in the problem play enacted beyond the +pit and the stalls; he was the younger brother of Herbert Waring and +the comrade of Jessie Joseph: at that moment deceiving the sleuth +hounds of Stage law by parading in her fiancé's evening dress and +going to prison for his sake. +</p> +<p> +Beryl Claridge had taken up much of Vivie Warren's work on the 1st +of August in that year, while Honoria Fraser was touring in +Switzerland. Miss Mullet and Miss Steynes were replaced (Steynes +staying on a little later to initiate the new-comers) by two young +women so commonplace yet such efficient machines that their names +are not worth hunting up or inventing. If I have to refer to them I +will call them Miss A. and Miss B. +</p> +<p> +Beryl Claridge was closely scanned by Bertie Adams, and frequently +compared in his mind with the absent and idealized Vivie. He decided +that although she was shrewd and clever and very good-looking, he +did not like her. She smoked too many cigarettes for 1901. She had +her curly hair "bobbed" (though the term was not invented then). She +put up her feet too high and too often; so much so that the +scandalized Bertie saw she wore black knickerbockers and no +petticoats under her smart "tailor-made." She snapped your head off, +was short, sharp and insolent, joked too much with the spectacled +women clerks (who became her willing slaves); then would ask Bertie +about his best girl and tell him he'd got jolly good teeth, a good +biceps and quite a nice beginning of a moustache. +</p> +<p> +But she was a worker: no doubt of that! Of course, in the dead +season there were not many clients to shock or to win over by her +nonchalant manners, only a few women who required advice as to +houses, stocks, and shares, law, or private enquiries as to the +good faith of husbands or fiancés. Such as found their way up in the +lift were a little disappointed at seeing Beryl in Vivie's chair or +at not being received by their old friend Honoria Fraser. But Beryl +was too good a business woman to put them off with any license of +speech or manners. For the rest she spent August and early September +in "mugging up" the firm's business. Although deep down in her +curious little heart, under all her affectation of hardness and +insolent disdain of public or family opinion she firmly loved her +architect and the children she had borne him, she desired quite as +passionately to be self-supporting, to earn a sufficient income of +her own, to be dependent on no one. She might have her passing +caprices and her loose and flippant mode of talking, but she wasn't +going to be a failure, a cadger, a parasite, a "fallen" woman. She +fully realized that in England no woman <i>has</i> fallen who is +self-supporting, whose income meets her expenses and who pays her +way. Given those guarantees, all else that she does which is not +actually criminal is eventually put down to mere eccentricity. +</p> +<p> +So Honoria's offer and Honoria's business provided her with a most +welcome opening. She realized the opportunities that lay before this +Woman's Office for General Inquiries, established in the closing +years of the nineteenth century—this business that before Woman's +enfranchisement nibbled discreetly at the careers and the openings +for profit-making hitherto rigidly reserved for Man. She wasn't +going to let Honoria down. Honoria, she realized, was in herself +equivalent to many thousands of pounds in capital. Her reputation +was flawless. She was known to and esteemed by a host of women of +the upper middle class. Her Cambridge reputation for learning, her +eventual inheritance of eighty thousand pounds were unexpressed +reasons for many a woman of good standing preferring to confide her +affairs to the judgment of <i>Fraser and Warren</i>, in preference to +dealing with male legal advisers, male land agents, men on the Stock +Exchange, men in house property business. +</p> +<p> +So Beryl became in most respects a source of strength to Honoria +Fraser, deprived for a time of the overt co-operation of her junior +partner. +</p> +<p> +Beryl in the first few weeks of her stay evinced small interest in +the departure of Vivien Warren and her reasons for going abroad. She +had a scheme of her own in which her architect would take a +prominent part, for providing women—authoresses, actresses, or the +wives of the newly enriched—with week-end cottages; the desire for +which was born with the Twentieth century and fostered by the +invention of motors and bicycles. Cases before the firm for opinions +on intricate legal problems Beryl was advised to place before the +consideration of one of Honoria's friends, a law student, Mr. D.V. +Williams, who would shortly be back from his holiday and who had +agreed to look in at the office from time to time and go through +such papers as were set aside for him to read. Beryl had +remarked—without any intention behind it—on seeing some of his +notes initialled V.W. that it was rum he should have the same +initials as that Vivie girl whom she remembered at Newnham ... who +was "so silent and standoffish and easily shocked." But she noticed +later that when Mr. Williams got to work his initials were really +three and not two—D.V.W. One thing with the other: her departure +from the office at the regular closing hour—five—so that she might +see her babies before they were put to bed; Williams's habit of +coming to work after six; kept them from meeting till the October of +1901. When they did meet after Honoria's return from Switzerland, +Beryl scanned the law student critically; decided he was rather +nice-looking but very pre-occupied; perhaps engaged to some girl +whose parents objected; rather mysterious, <i>quand même</i>; she had +heard some one say this Mr. David Williams was a cousin or something +of Vivie Warren ... what if he were in love with Vivie and she had +gone away because she had some fad or other about not wanting to +marry? Well! All this could be looked into some other time, if it +were worth bothering about at all. Or could Williams be spoony on +Honoria? After her money? He was much younger—evidently—but young +men adored ripe women, and young girls idolized elderly soldiers. +<i>C'était à voir</i> (Beryl ever since she had been to Paris on a stolen +honeymoon with the architect liked saying things to herself in +French). +</p> +<p> +Towards the end of October, David received at Fig Tree Court a +letter from his father in Glamorganshire. +</p> +<p class="heading"> + Pontystrad Vicarage,<br /> + <i>October</i> 20, 1901. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + <span class="sc">My dear Son</span>,— +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + The improvement in my sight continues. I can now read a + little every day, by daylight, without pain or fatigue, and + write letters. I feel I owe you a long one; but I shall + write a portion each day and not try my eyes unduly. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + I am glad to know you are now settled down in chambers at + Fig Tree Court in the Temple and have begun your studies for + the Bar. You could not have taken up a finer profession. + What seems to me so wonderful is that you should be able to + earn your living at the same time and be no charge on me. I + accept your assurances that you need no support; but never + forget, my dear Son, that if you <i>do</i>, I am ready and + willing to help. You sowed your wild oats—perhaps we both + exaggerated the sins of the wild years—at any rate you have + made a noble reparation. What a splendid school the Colonies + must be! What a difference between the David who left me + five years ago for Mr. Praed's studio and the David who + returned to me last summer! I can never be sufficiently + thankful to Almighty God for the change He has wrought in + you! No lip religion, but a change of heart. I presume you + explained everything to the Colonial Office after you got + back to London and that you are now free to take up a civil + career? The people out there never sent me any further + information; but the other day one of my letters to you + (written after I had received the sad news) returned to me, + with the information that the hospital you were in had been + captured by the Boers and that you could not be traced. I + enclose it. You can now finish up the story yourself and let + the authorities know how you got away and returned home. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + The other day that impudent baggage Jenny Gorlais came and + asked to see me ... she said her husband was out of work and + refused to give her enough money to provide for all her + children, that he had advised her to apply to <i>you</i> for the + maintenance of <i>your</i> son! Relying on what you had told me I + sent for Bridget and we both told her we had made every + enquiry and now refused absolutely to believe in her stories + of five years ago—that we were sure you were <i>not</i> the + father of her eldest child. Bridget, for example, believed + the postman was its father. Jenny burst into tears, and as + she did not persist in her claim my heart was moved, and I + gave her ten shillings, but told her <i>pretty plainly</i> that + if she ever made such a claim again I should go to the + police. You should have heard Bridget defending you! <i>Such</i> + a champion. If you want a witness to character for your + references you should call <i>her</i>! She is loud in your + praise. +</p> +<p class="heading"> <i>October</i> 22. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + There is one thing I want to tell you; and it is easier to + write it than say it. Your mother did not die when you were + three years old—much worse: she left me—ran away with an + engineer who was tracing out the branch railway. He seemed a + nice young fellow and I had him often up at the Vicarage, + and <i>that</i> was the way he repaid my hospitality! He wrote to + me a year afterwards asking me to divorce her. As though a + Clergyman of the Church of England could do such a thing! I + had offered to take her back—not then—it would have been a + mockery—but by putting advertisements into the South Wales + papers. But after her paramour's letter—which I did not + answer—I never heard any more about her.... +</p> +<p> +["Damn it all," said David to himself at this juncture of the +letter—he was training himself to swear in a moderate, gentlemanly +way—"Damn it all! Whatever I do, it seems I <i>cannot</i> come from +altogether respectable stock."...] +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + You grew up therefore without a mother's care, though good + Bridget did her best. When you were a child I fear I rather + neglected you. I was so disappointed and embittered that I + sought consolation in the legends of our beloved country and + in Scriptural exegesis. You were rather a naughty boy at + Swansea Grammar School and somewhat of a scamp at Malvern + College—Well! we won't go over all that again. I quite + understand your reticence about the past. Once again I think + the blame was mine as much as yours. I ought to have + interested myself more in your pursuits and games ... what a + pity, by the bye, that you seem to have lost your gift of + drawing and painting! I do remember how at one time we were + drawn together over the old Welsh legends and the very + clever drawings you made of national heroes and + heroines—they seemed to come on you as quite a surprise + when I took them out of the old portfolio. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + But about your mother—for it is necessary you should know + all I can tell you in case you have to answer questions as + to your parentage. Your mother's name was, as you know, Mary + Vavasour. It is a common name in South Wales though it seems + to be Norman French. She came to our Pontystrad school as a + teacher in 1873. Her father was something to do with mining + at Merthyr. I fell in love with her—she had a sweet + face—and married her in 1874. You were born two years + afterwards. Bridget had been my housekeeper before I was + married and I asked her to stay on lest your mother should + be inexperienced at first in the domestic arts. They never + got on well together and when Mary had recovered from her + confinement and seemed disposed to take up housekeeping I + sent away poor Bridget reluctantly and only took her back + after your mother's flight. Bridget was a second mother to + you as you know, though I fear you never showed her much + affection till these later days. +</p> +<p class="heading"> <i>October</i> 23. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + My eyes seem to be improving instead of getting tired with + the new delights of reading and writing. I owe all this to + you and to the clever oculist at Clifton. Dr. Murgatroyd + from Pontyffynon looked in here the other day, to ask about + your return. He seemed almost to grudge me my restored sight + because I had got it from other people's advice. Said <i>he</i> + could have advised an operation only he never believed my + heart would stand it. When I told him they had mixed the + anæsthetic with oxygen he became quite angry—and exclaimed + against these new-fangled notions. But I must not use up my + new found energy writing about him. I want to finish my + letter in a business-like fashion so that you may know all + that is necessary to be known about yourself and your + position. You may have at any moment to answer questions + before you get called to the Bar, and with your defective + memory—I am glad to hear things in the past are becoming + clearer to you—I am sure with God's grace you will wholly + recover soon from the effects of your wound and your + illness—What was I writing? I meant to say that you ought + to know the main facts about your family and your position. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + I was an only son. Your grandfather was a prosperous farmer + and auctioneer. You have distant cousins, Vaughans and + Williamses, and some others living at Shrewsbury named + Price. I have written to none of them about your return + because they never evinced any interest in me or my + concerns. Your mother's people, her Vavasour relations at + Cardiff—did not seem to me to be very respectable, though + her father was a well-educated man for his position. He + died—I heard—in a mine accident. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + I am not poorly off for a Welsh clergyman. My mother—a + Price of Ystrwy—wanted me to go into the Church and + prevailed on your grandfather to send me first to Malvern + and next to Cambridge. It was at Cambridge that I met your + comrade's father—Sam Gardner, I mean. He was rather wild in + his college days and to tell you the truth, I never cared to + keep up with him much—he had such very rowdy friends. My + mother died while I was at Cambridge and in his later years + your grandfather married again—his housekeeper—and rather + muddled his affairs, because at one time he was quite well + off. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + After I was ordained he purchased for me the advowson of + this living. All that came to me from his estate, however, + was a sum of about eleven thousand pounds. This used to + bring me in about five hundred pounds a year, and in + addition to that was the fluctuating two hundred and fifty + pounds income from my benefice. I took about three thousand + pounds out of my capital to pay the debts you ran up, to + article you to Mr. Praed; and, I must admit, to get my + "Tales from Taliessin" and "Legends of the Welsh Saints" + privately printed at Cardiff. I am afraid I wasted much good + money on the desire to see my Cymraeg studies in print. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + Well: there I am! with about eight or nine thousand pounds + to leave. I have not altered my will—leaving it all to you, + subject to an annuity of £50 a year to your faithful Nannie. + I was projecting an alteration in case of your death, when + you most happily returned. I may live another ten years yet. + You have put new life into me. One charge, however, I was + going to have laid on you; while you were with me I could + not bear to speak of these matters. If at any time after I'm + gone you should come across your unhappy mother and find her + in distressed circumstances, I bid you provide for her, but + how much, I leave entirely to your judgment. Meantime, here + I am with an income of nearly £700 a year. I live very + simply, as you see, but I give away a good deal in local + charity. The people are getting better wages now; in any + case they are usually most ungrateful. I feel I should be + happier if I diverted some of this alms-giving to you. You + must find this preparatory life very expensive. You must let + me send you twenty-five pounds every half-year for pocket + money. Here is a cheque on the South Wales Bank for the + first instalment. And remember, if you are in <i>any</i> + difficulty about your career that a little money can get + over do not hesitate to apply to me. +</p> +<p class="closing"> + Your loving father,<br /> + <span class="sc">Howel Vaughan Williams</span>. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + P.S. I have taken five days to write this but see how steady + the handwriting is. It is a pleasure to me to look on my own + handwriting again. And I feel I owe it all to you! I also + forgot in the body of the letter to tell you one curious + thing. You know we are here on the borders of an interesting + vein of limestone which runs all round the coal beds. I dare + say you remember as a boy of fifteen or so spraining your + ankle in Griffith's Hole? Well Griffith's Hole turns out to + be the entrance into a wonderful cave in the limestone. + Hither came the other day a party of scientific men who + think that majestic first chapter of Genesis to be a + Babylonian legend! It appears they discovered or thought + they discovered the remains of Ancient man in Griffith's + Hole. I invited them to tea at the Vicarage and amongst them + was a very learned gentleman quite as wise as but less + aggressive than the others. He was known as "Professor + Rossiter"; and commenting on the similarity of my name with + that of a "very agreeable young gentleman" whom he had + recently seen in Gower, it turned out that you were an + acquaintance of his. He thinks it a great pity that you are + reading for the Bar and wishes you had taken up Science + instead. At any rate he hopes you will go and see him in + London one day—No. 1 Park Crescent. Portland Place. +</p> +<p class="ar"> H. V. W. +</p> + +<p> +Several times in reading this letter the tears stood in David's +eyes. So much trust and kindness made him momentarily sorry at the +double life he was leading. If it were possible to establish the +death of the wastrel he was personating he would perhaps allow his +"father" to live on in this new-found happiness; but if the real +D.V.W. were alive some effort must be made to help him out of the +slough—perhaps to bring him back. He would try to find out through +Frank Gardner. +</p> +<p> +Some time before Vivie Warren had taken her departure, she had left +behind in Honoria Fraser's temporary care a Power of Attorney duly +executed in favour of David Vavasour Williams; and reciprocally +D.V.W. had executed another in favour of Vivien Warren. Both these +documents lay securely in the little safe that David had had fitted +into the wall of his sitting-room in Fig Tree Court. Also David had +opened an account in his own name after he got back from Wales, at +the Temple Bar Branch of the C. &. C. Bank. Into this he now paid +the cheque for twenty-five pounds which his father had sent as +pocket money. +</p> +<p> +A few days afterwards, Vivie Warren reappeared—in spirit—and +indited a letter to Frank Gardner's agents in Cape Town. She was +careful to give no address at the head of the letter and to post it +at Victoria Station. In it she said she was starting on a tour +abroad, but asked him to do what he could to trace the boy who had +lain so grievously ill in the hospital at Colesberg. Had he +recovered after the Boers had taken Colesberg? As a rumour had +reached her that he had, and had even returned to England. She +wanted to know, and if they ever met again would tell him why. +Meanwhile if he got any news would he address it to <i>her</i>, care of +Honoria Fraser, Queen Anne's Mansions, St. James's Park; as her own +address would be quite uncertain for the present. Or it would do +quite as well if he wrote to Praddy; but <i>not</i> to his father, which +might only needlessly agitate the old clergyman down in Wales, whom +Vivie by an unexpected chance had come to know. +</p> +<p> +The first result of this letter a year later was a statement of +Frank's belief, almost certainty, that his acquaintance of the +hospital <i>had</i> died and been buried while the Boers held possession +of Colesberg; and that indeed was the utmost that was ever learnt +about the end of the ill-fated son of Howel Vaughan Williams and +Mary his wife, who were wedded in sunshine and with fair prospects +of happiness in the early summer of 1874. +</p> +<p> +The new-born David Vavasour Williams having by November settled all +these details, having arranged to pay the very modest rent of +fifty-five pounds for his three rooms at Fig Tree Court, and +twenty-five pounds a year to the housekeeper who was to "do" for him +and another gentleman on the same floor—a gentleman who was most +anxious to be chummy with the new tenant of the opposite chambers +but whose advances were firmly though civilly kept at bay—having +likewise passed his preliminary examination (since he could not avow +that inside his clothes he was a third wrangler), having satisfied +his two "godfathers" of the Bar that he was a fit person to +recommend to the Benchers; having arranged to read with a barrister +in chambers, and settled all other preliminaries of importance: +decided that he would pay an afternoon call on the Rossiters in +Portland Place and see how the land lay there. +</p> +<p> +Already a strange exhilaration was spreading over David's mind. Life +was not twice but ten times more interesting than it had appeared to +the prejudiced eyes of Vivien Warren. It was as though she—he—had +passed through some magic door, gone through the looking-glass and +was contemplating the same world as the one Vivie had known +for—shall we say fifteen?—years, but a world which viewed from a +different standpoint was quite changed in proportions, in colour, in +the conjunction of events. It was a world in which everything was +made smooth and easy before the semblance of manhood. What a joy to +be rid of skirts and petticoats! To be able to run after and leap on +to an omnibus, to wear the same hat day after day just stuck on top +of her curly head. Not, perhaps, to change her clothes, between her +uprising and her retirement to bed, unless she were going out to +dine. No simpering. No need to ask favours. No compliments. It is +true she felt awkward in the presence of women, not quite the same, +even with Honoria. But with men. What a difference! She felt she had +never really known men before. At first the frank speech, the +expletives, the smoking-room stories made her a little uncomfortable +and occasionally called forth an irrepressible blush. But this was +not to her disadvantage. It made her seem younger, and created a +good impression on her tutors and acquaintances. "A nice modest boy, +fresh from the country—pity to lead him astray—won't preserve his +innocence long—" was the vaguely defined impression, contact with +her—him, I mean—made on most decent male minds. Many a lad comes +up from the country to commence his career in London who knew far +less than the unfortunate Vivie had been compelled to know of the +shady side of life; who is compelled to lead a somewhat retired life +by straitness of means; whose determination towards probity and +regularity of life is respected by the men of law among whom he +finds himself. +</p> +<p> +But David having decided—he did not quite know why—to pursue his +acquaintance with Professor Rossiter; having written to ask if he +might do so (as a matter of fact he frequently saw Rossiter walking +across the gardens of New Square to go to the museum of the Royal +College of Surgeons: he recollected him immediately but Rossiter did +not reciprocate, being absent-minded); and having received a card +from "Linda Rossiter" to say they would be at home throughout the +winter on Thursdays, between 4 and 6: went on one of those Thursdays +and made definite progress with the great friendship of his life. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER VI +</h2> +<h3> + THE ROSSITERS +</h3> +<p> +The Rossiters' house in Park Crescent was at the northern end of +Portland Place, and its high-walled garden—the stables that were +afterwards to become a garage—and Michael Rossiter's long, +glass-roofed studio-laboratory—abutted on one of those quiet, +deadly-respectable streets at the back that are called after Devon +or Dorset place names. +</p> +<p> +The house is now a good deal altered and differently numbered, a +portion of it having been destroyed in one of the 1917 air-raids, +when the Marylebone Road was strewn with its broken glass for twenty +yards. But in the winter of 1901-2 and onwards till 1914 it was a +noted centre of social intercourse between Society and Science. The +Rossiters were well enough off—he made quite two thousand a year +out of his professorial work and his books, and her income which was +£5,000 when she first married had risen to £9,000 after they had +been married ten years; through the increase in value of Leeds town +property. Mrs. Rossiter had had two children, but were both dead, +her facile tears were dried, she satisfied her maternal instinct by +the keeping of three pug dogs which her husband secretly detested. +She also had a scarlet-and-blue macaw and two cockatoos and a +Persian cat; but these last her husband liked or tolerated for their +colour or their biological interest; only, as in the case of the +dogs, he objected (though seldom angrily, out of consideration for +his wife's feelings) to their being so messily and inopportunely +fed. +</p> +<p> +Linda Rossiter was liable to lose her pets as she had lost her two +children by alternating days of forgetfulness with weeks of lavish +over-attention. But as she readily gave way to tears on the least +remonstrance, Michael in the course of eleven years of married life +remonstrated as little as possible. A clever, tactful parlour-maid +and two good housemaids, a manservant who was devoted to the +"professor" and a taxidermist who assisted him in his experiments +did the rest in keeping the big house tolerably tidy and +presentable. Rossiter himself was too intent on the stars, the gases +of decomposition, the hidden processes of life, miscegenation in +star-fish, microbic diseases in man, beasts, birds and bees, the +glands of the throat, the suprarenal capsules and the chemical +origin of life to care much for æsthetics, for furniture and house +decoration. He was the third son of an impoverished Northumbrian +squire who on his part cared only for the more barbarous +field-sports, and when he could take his mind off them believed that +at some time and place unspecified Almighty God had dictated the +English bible word for word, had established the English Church and +had scrupulously prescribed the functions and limitations of woman. +His wife—Michael Rossiter's tenderly-loved mother—had died from a +neglected prolapsus of the womb, and the old rambling house in +Northumberland situated in superb scenery, had in its furniture +grown more and more hideous to the eye as early and mid-Victorian +fashions and ideals receded and modern taste shook itself free from +what was tawdry, fluffy, stuffy, floppy, messy, cheaply imitative, +fringed and tasselled and secretive. +</p> +<p> +Michael himself from sheer detestation of the surroundings under +which he had grown to manhood favoured the uncovered, the naked wood +or stone or slate, the bare floor, the wooden settee or +cane-bottomed chair, the massive side-board, the bare mantelpiece +and distempered wall. On the whole, their house in Portland Place +satisfied tolerably well the advanced taste in domestic scenery of +1901. But your eye was caught at once by the additions made by Mrs. +Rossiter. Linda conceived it was her womanly mission to lighten the +severity of Michael's choice in furniture and decorations. She +introduced rickety and expensive screens that were easily knocked +over; photographs in frames which toppled at a breath; covers on +every flat surface that could be covered—occasional tables, tops of +grand pianos. If she did not put frills round piano legs, she placed +tasselled poufs about the drawing-room that every short-sighted +visitor fell over, and used large bows of slightly discoloured +ribbon to mask unneeded brackets. In the reception rooms +food-bestrewn parrot stands were left where they ought never to be +seen; and there were gilt-wired parrot cages; baskets for the pugs +lined with soiled shawls; absurd ornaments, china cats with +exaggerated necks, alabaster figures of stereotyped female beauty +and flowerpot stands of ornate bamboo. She loved portières, and she +would fain have mitigated the bareness of the panelled or +distempered walls; only that here her husband was firm. She +unconsciously mocked the few well-chosen, well-placed pictures on +the walls (which she itched to cover with a "flock" paper) by +placing in the same room on bamboo easels that matched the +be-ribboned flower-stands pastel, crayon, or <i>gouache</i> studies of +the worst possible taste. +</p> +<p> +Michael's library alone was free from her improvements, though it +was sometimes littered with her work-bags or her work. She had long +ago developed the dreadful mistake that it "helped" Michael at his +work if she brought hers (perfectly futile as a rule) there too. "I +just sit silently in his room, my dear, and stitch or knit something +for poor people in Marrybone—I'm told you mayn't say Mary-le-bone. +I feel it <i>helps</i> Michael to know I'm there, but of course I don't +interrupt him at his <i>work</i>." +</p> +<p> +As a matter of fact she did, confoundedly. But fortunately she soon +grew sleepy or restless. She would yawn, as she believed "prettily," +but certainly noisily; or she would wonder "how time was going," and +of course her twenty-guinea watch never went, or if it was going was +seldom within one hour of the actual time. Or she would sneeze six +times in succession—little cat-like sneezes that were infinitely +disturbing to a brain on the point of grasping the solution of a +problem. Throughout the winter months she had a little cough. Oh no, +you needn't think I'm preparing the way for decease through +phthisis—it was one of those "kiffy" coughs due in the main to +acidity—too many sweet things in her diet, too little exercise. She +<i>thought</i> she coughed with the greatest discretion but to the jarred +nerves of her husband a few hearty bellows or an asthmatic wheeze +would have been preferable to the fidgety, marmoset-like sounds that +came from under a lace handkerchief. Sometimes he would raise his +eyes to speak sharply; but at the sight of the mild gaze that met +his, the perfect belief that she was a soothing presence in this +room of hard thinking and close writing—this superb room with its +unrivalled library that he owed to the use of her wealth, his angry +look would soften and he would return smile for smile. +</p> +<p> +Linda though a trifle fretful on occasion, especially with servants, +a little petulant and huffy with a sense of her own dignity and +importance as a rich woman, was completely happy in her marriage. +She had never regretted it for one hour, never swerved from the +conviction that she and Michael were a perfect match—he, tall, +stalwart, black-haired and strong; she "petite"—she loved the +French adjective ever since it had been applied to her at +Scarborough by a sycophantic governess—petite—she would repeat, +blonde, plump, or better still "potelée" (the governess had later +suggested, when she came to tea and hoped to be asked to stay) +<i>potelée</i>, blue-eyed and pink-cheeked. Dresden china and all the +stale similes applied to a type of little woman of whom the modern +world has grown intolerant. +</p> +<p> +It was therefore into this <i>milieu</i> that David found himself +introduced one Thursday at the end of November, 1901. He had walked +the short distance from Great Portland Street station. It was a fine +day with a red sunset, and a lemon-coloured, thin moon-crescent +above the sunset. The trees and bushes of Park Crescent were a +background of dull blue haze. The surface of the broad roads was dry +and polished, so his neat, patent-leather boots would still be fit +for drawing-room carpets. +</p> +<p> +A footman in a very plain livery—here Michael was firm—opened the +massive door. David passed between some statuary of too frank a +style for Linda's modest taste and was taken over by a butler of +severe aspect who announced him into the great drawing-room as Mr. +David Williams. +</p> +<p> +He recognized Rossiter at once, standing up with a tea-cup and +saucer, and presumed that a fluffy, much be-furbelowed little lady +at the main tea-table was Mrs. Rossiter, since she wore no hat. +There was besides a rather alarming concourse of men and women of +the world as he kept his eyes firmly fixed on Mrs. Rossiter for his +immediate goal. +</p> +<p> +Rossiter met him half-way, shook hands cordially and introduced him +to his wife who bowed with one of her "sweet" looks. For the moment +David did not interest her. She was much more interested in trying +to give an impression of profundity to Lady Feenix who was +commenting on the professor's discoveries of the strange properties +of the thyroid gland. A few introductions were effected—Lady +Towcester, Lady Flower, Miss Knipper-Totes, Lady Dombey, Mr. +Lacrevy, Professor Ray Lankester, Mr. and Mrs. Gosse—and naturally +for the most part David only half caught their names while they, +without masking their indifference, closed their ears to his ("Some +student or other from his classes, I suppose—rather nicely dressed, +rather too good-looking for a young man"); and Rossiter, who had +been interrupted first by Mrs. Rossiter asking him to observe that +Lady Dombey had nothing on her plate, and secondly by David's +entrance, resumed his discourse. Goodness knew that he didn't <i>want</i> +to discourse on these occasions, but Society expected it of him. +There were quite twenty—twenty-two—people present and most of +them—all the women—wanted to go away and say four hours +afterwards: +</p> +<p> +"We were (I was) at the Rossiters this afternoon, and the Professor +was fascinating" ("great," "profoundly interesting," "shocking, my +dear," "scandalous," "disturbing," "illuminating," +"more-than-usually-enthralling-only-she-<i>would</i>-keep-interrupting-why-<i>is</i>-she-such-a-fool?") +according to the idiosyncrasy of the diner-out. "He talked to us +about the thyroid gland—I don't believe poor Bob's got one, between +ourselves—and how if you enlarged it or reduced it you'd adjust +people's characters to suit the needs of Society; and all about +chimpanzi's blood—I believe he <i>vivisects</i> half through the night +in that studio behind the house—being the same as ours; and then +Ray Lankester and Chalmers Mitchell argued about the cæca—cæcums, +you know—something to do with appendicitis—of the mammalia, and +altogether we had a high old time—I <i>always</i> learn something on +their Thursdays." +</p> +<p> +Well: Rossiter resumed his description of an experiment he was +making—quite an everyday one, of course, for there were at least +three men present to whom he wasn't going to give away clues +prematurely. An experiment on the motor biallaxis of dormice. +</p> +<p> +[Mrs. Rossiter had six months previously bought a dormouse in a cage +at a bazaar, and after idolizing it for a week had forgotten all +about it. Her husband had rescued it half starved; his assistant had +fed it up in the laboratory, and they had tried a few experiments on +it with painless drugs with astonishing results.] +</p> +<p> +The recital really was interesting and entirely outside the +priggishness of Science, but it was marred in consecutiveness and +simplicity by Mrs. Rossiter's interruptions. "Michael dear, Lady +Dombey's cup!" Or: "Mike, could you cut that cake and hand it +round?" Or, if she didn't interrupt her husband she started stories +and side-issues of her own in a voice that was quite distinctly +heard, about a new stitch in crochet she had seen in the <i>Queen</i>, or +her inspection of the East Marrybone soup kitchen. +</p> +<p> +However when all had taken as much tea and cakes and <i>marrons +glacés</i> as they cared for—David was so shy that he had only one cup +of tea and one piece of tea-cake—the large group broke up into five +smaller ones. The few gradually converged, and dropping all nonsense +discussed biology like good 'uns, David listening eager-eyed and +enthralled at the marvels just beginning to peep out of the +dissecting and vivisecting rooms and chemical laboratories in the +opening years of the Twentieth century. Then one by one they all +departed; but as David was going too Rossiter detained him by a +kindly pressure on the arm—a contact which sent a half-pleasant, +half-disagreeable thrill through his nerves. +</p> +<p> +"Don't hurry away unless you really <i>are</i> pressed for time. I want +to show you some of my specimens and the place where I work." +</p> +<p> +David followed him—after taking his leave of Mrs. Rossiter who +accepted his polite sentences—a little stammered—with a slightly +pompous acquiescence—followed him to the library and then through a +curtained door down some steps into a great studio-laboratory, +provided (behind screens) with washing places, and full of +mysteries, with cupboards and shelves and further rooms beyond and a +smell of chloride of lime combined with alcoholic preservatives and +undefined chemicals. After a tour round this domain in which David +was only slightly interested—for lack of the right education +and imagination—so far he—or—she had only the mind of a +mathematician—Rossiter led him back into the library, drew out +chairs, indicated cigarettes—even whiskey and soda if he wanted +it—David declined—and then began to say what was at the back of +his mind:— +</p> +<p> +"We met first in the train, the South Wales Express, you remember? I +fancy you told me then that you had been in South Africa, in this +bungled war, and had been either wounded or ill in some way. In fact +you went so far as to say you had had 'necrosis of the jaw,' a thing +I politely doubted because whatever it was it has left no +perceptible scar. Of course it's damned impertinent of me to +cross-examine you at all, or to ask <i>why</i> you went to and why you +left South Africa. But I don't mind confessing you inspire me with a +good deal of interest. +</p> +<p> +"Now the other day—as you know—I made the acquaintance of your +father in Wales—at Pontystrad. I told him I had shown a young +fellow some of those Gower caves and how his name was—like your +father's, 'Williams.' Of course we soon came to an understanding. +Then your father spoke of you in <i>high</i> praise. What a delightful +nature was yours, how considerate and kind you were—don't blush, +though I admit it becomes you—Well you can pretty well guess how he +went on. But what interested me particularly was his next +admission: how different you were as a lad—rather more than the +ordinary wild oats—eh? And how completely an absence in South +Africa had changed you. You must forgive my cheek in dissecting your +character like this. My excuse is that you yourself had rather +vaguely referred to some wound or blood poisoning or operation, on +the jaw or the throat. Not to beat about the bush any more, the idea +came into my mind that <i>if</i> in some way the knife or the enemy's +bullet had interfered with your thyroid gland—Twig what I mean? I +mean, that if your old man has not been exaggerating and that the +difference between the naughty boy whom he sent up to London +in—what was it? 1896?—and the perfectly behaved, good sort of chap +that you are <i>now</i> is no more than what usually happens when young +men lose their cubbishness, <i>why</i>—<i>why</i>—do you take me?—I ask +myself whether the change had come about through some interference +with the thyroid gland. Do you understand? And I thought, seeing how +intensely interesting this research has become, you might have told +me more about it. Just what <i>did</i> happen to you; where you were +wounded, who attended to you, what operation was performed on the +throat—only the rum thing is there seems to be no scar—well: now +<i>you</i> help me out, that is unless you feel more inclined to say, +'What the <i>hell</i> does it matter to <i>you</i>?'"... +</p> +<p> +David by this time has grown scarlet with embarrassment and +confusion. But he endeavoured to meet the situation. +</p> +<p> +"My character <i>has</i> changed during the last five years, and +especially so since I came back from South Africa. But I am quite +sure it was not due to any operation, on the throat or anywhere +else. I really don't know <i>why</i> I told you that silly falsehood in +the train—about necrosis of the jaw. The fact is that when I was in +hospital—at—Colesberg, a friend of mine in the same ward used—to +chaff me—and say I was going to have necrosis. I had got knocked +over one day—by—the—wind of a shell and thought I was done for, +but it really was next to nothing. P'raps I had a dose of fever on +top. At any rate they kept me in hospital, and one morning the +doctors disappeared and the Boers marched in and when I got well +enough I managed to escape and get away to—er—Cape Town and so +returned—with some money—my friend Frank Gardner lent me." (At +this stage the sick-at-heart Vivie was saying to herself, "<i>What</i> an +account I'm laying up for Frank to honour when he comes back—if he +<i>does</i> come back.") "I don't know <i>why</i> I tell you all this, except +that I ought never to have misled you at the start. But <i>if</i> you are +a kind and good man"—David's voice broke here—"You will forget all +about it and not upset my father, I can <i>assure</i> you I haven't done +<i>anything</i> really wrong. I haven't deserted—some day—perhaps—I +can tell you all about it. But at present all that South African +episode is just a horrid dream—I was more sinned against than +sinning" (tears were rather in the voice at this stage). "I want to +forget all about it—and settle down and vex my father no more. I +want to read for the Bar—a soldier's life is the very <i>opposite</i> to +what I should choose if I were a free agent. But you will trust me, +won't you? You will believe me when I say I've done <i>nothing</i> wrong, +nothing that you, if you knew all the facts, would call wrong...?" +</p> +<p> +Speech here trailed off into emotion. Despite the severest +self-restraint the bosom rose and fell. A few tears trickled down +the smooth cheeks—it was an ingratiating boy on the verge of +manhood that Rossiter saw before him. He hastened to say: +</p> +<p> +"My <i>dear</i> chap! Don't say another word, unless you like to +blackguard me for my impertinence in putting these questions. I +<i>quite</i> understand. We'll consider the whole thing erased from our +memories. Go on studying for the Bar with all your might, if you +must take up so barren a profession and won't become my pupil in +biology—Great openings, I can tell you, coming now in that +direction." (A pause.) +</p> +<p> +"But if it's of any interest to you, just come here as often as you +like in your spare time—either to tea with Mrs. Rossiter or to see +me at work on my experiments. I've taken a great liking to you, if +you'll allow me to say so. I think there's good stuff in you. A +young man reading for the Bar in London is none the worse for a few +friends. He must often feel pretty lonely on a Sunday, for example. +And he may also—now I'm going to be impertinent and paternal +again—he may also pick up undesirable acquaintances, male—and +female. Don't you get feeling lonely, with your home far away in +Wales. Consider yourself free of this place at any rate, and my wife +and I can introduce you to some other people you might like to know. +I might introduce you to Mark Stansfield the Q.C. Do you know any +one in London, by the bye?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes," said David, smiling with all but one tear dried on a still +coloured cheek. "I know Honoria Fraser—I know Mr. Praed the +architect—" +</p> +<p> +"The A.R.A.? Of course; you or your father said you had +been his pupil. H'm. Praed. Yes, I visualize him. Rather a +dilettante—whimsical—I didn't like what I heard of him at one +time. However it's no affair of mine. And Honoria Fraser! She's +simply one of the best women I know. It's curious she wasn't +here—At least I didn't see her—this afternoon. She's a friend of +my wife's. I knew her when she was at Newnham. She had a great +friend—what was it? Violet? No, Vera? Vivien—yes that was it, +<i>Vivien</i> Warren. Of course! Why that business she started for women +in the City somewhere is called <i>Fraser and Warren</i>. She was always +wanting to bring this Vivien Warren here. Said she had such a pretty +colouring. I own I rather like to see a pretty woman. But she didn't +come" (pulls at his pipe and thrusts another cigarette on David). +"Went abroad. Seemed rather morose. Some one who came with Honoria +said she had a bad mother, and Honoria very rightly shut him up. By +the bye, <i>where</i> and <i>how</i> did you come to meet Honoria first?" +</p> +<p> +(David was on the point of saying—he was so unstrung—"Why we were +at Newnham together." Then resolved to tell another whopper—Indeed +I am told there is a fascination in certain circumstances about +lying—and replied): "Vivien Warren was my cousin. She was a +Vavasour on her mother's side—from South Wales—and my mother was a +Vavasour too—" And as the disguised Vivie said this, some inkling +came into her mind that there <i>was</i> a real relationship between +Catharine Warren <i>née</i> Vavasour and the Mary Vavasour who was +David's mother. A spasm of joy flashed through her at the +possibility of her story being in some slight degree true. +</p> +<p> +"I see," said Rossiter, satisfied, and feeling now that the +interview had lasted long enough and that there would be just time +to glance at his assistant's afternoon work before he dressed for +dinner.... +</p> +<p> +"Well, old chap. Good-bye for the present. Come often and see us and +look upon me—I must be fifteen years older than you are—What, +<i>twenty-four</i>? Impossible! You don't look a day older than +twenty—in fact, if you hadn't told me you'd been in South +Africa—However as I was saying, look on me as <i>in loco parentis</i> +while you <i>are</i> in London. I'll show you the way out into the hall. +Shall they call you a cab? No? You're quite right. It's a splendid +night for January. Where do you live? Here, write it down in my +address book.... '7 Fig Tree Court, Temple'—What a jolly address! +Are there fig trees in the Temple ... still? P'raps descended from +cuttings or layers the poor Templars brought from the Holy Land." +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +David returned to Fig Tree Court and his studies of criminology. But +his body and mind thrilled with the experiences of the afternoon; +and the musty records in works of repellent binding and close, +unsympathetic print of nineteenth century forgery, poisoning, +assaults-on-the-person, and cruelty-to-children cases for once +failed to hold his close attention. He sat all through the evening +after a supper of bread and cheese and ginger beer in his snug, +small room, furnished principally with well-filled book-shelves. The +room had a glowing fire and a green-shaded reading lamp. He sat +staring beyond his law books at visions, waking dreams that came and +went. The dangers of exposure that opened before him were in these +dreams, but there were other mind-pictures that filled his life with +a glow of colour. How different from the drab horizons that +encircled poor Vivie Warren less than a year ago! Poor Vivie, whom +even FitzJohn's Avenue at Hampstead had rejected, who had long since +been dropped—no doubt on account of rumours concerning her +mother—by the few acquaintances she had made at Cambridge, who had +parents living in South Kensington, Bayswater, and Bloomsbury. Here +was Portland Place receiving her in her guise as David Williams with +open arms. Men and women looked at her kindly, interestedly, and she +could look back at them without that protective frown. At night she +could walk about the town, go to the theatre, stroll along the +Embankment and attract no man's offensive attentions. She could +enter where she liked for a meal, a cup of tea, frequent the museum +of the Royal College of Surgeons when she would without waiting for +a "ladies" day; stop to look at a street fight, cause no sour looks +if she entered a smoking compartment on the train, mingle with the +man-world unquestioned, unhindered, unnoticed, exciting at most a +pleasant off-hand camaraderie due to her youth and good looks. +</p> +<p> +Should she go on with the bold adventure? A thousand times yes! +David should break no law in Vivie's code of honour, do real wrong +to no one; but Vivie should see the life best worth living in London +from a man's standpoint. +</p> +<p> +David however must be armed at every point and have his course +clearly marked out before his contemplation. He must steep himself +in the geography of South Africa—Why not get Rossiter to propose +him as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society? That <i>would</i> be a +lark because they wouldn't admit women as members: they had refused +Honoria Fraser. David must read up—somewhere—the history of the +South African War as far as it went. He had better find out +something about the Bechuanaland Police Force; how as a member of +such a force he could have drifted as far south as the vicinity of +Colesberg; how thereabouts he could have got sick enough—he +certainly would say nothing more about a wound—to have been put +into hospital. He must find out how he could have escaped from the +Boers and come back to England without getting into difficulties +with the military or the Colonial Office or whoever had any kind of +control over the members of the Bechuanaland Border Police.... +</p> +<p> +But the whole South African episode had better be dropped. Rossiter, +after his appeal, would set himself to forget and ignore it. It must +be damped down in the poor old father's mind as of relative +unimportance—after all, his father was a recluse who did not have +many visitors ... by the bye, he must remember to write on the +morrow and explain why he could not come down for Christmas or the +New Year ... would promise a good long visit in the Easter holidays +instead—Must remember that resolution to learn up some Welsh. What +a nuisance it was that you couldn't buy anywhere in London or in +South Wales any book about modern conversation in Welsh. The sort of +Welsh you learnt in the old-fashioned books, which were all that +could be got, was Biblical language—Some one had told David that if +you went into Smithfield Market in the early morning you might meet +the Welsh farmers and stock-drivers who had come up from Wales +during the night and who held forth in the Cymric tongue over their +beasts. But probably their language was such as would shock +Nannie.... Supposing Frank Gardner did come to England? In that case +it might be safer to confide in Frank. He was harum-scarum, but he +was chivalrous and he pitied Vivie. Besides he was a prime +appreciator of a lark. Should she even tell Rossiter? No, of +<i>course</i> not. That was just one of the advantages of being "David." +As "David" she could form a sincere and inspiring friendship with +Rossiter which would be utterly beyond her reach as "Vivie." How +pale beside the comradeship of Honoria now appeared the hand-grips, +the hearty male free-masonry of a man like Rossiter. How ungrateful +however even to make such an admission to herself.... +</p> +<p> +At present the only people who knew of her prank and guessed or knew +her purpose were Honoria and Bertie Adams. Honoria! what a noble +woman, what a true friend. Somehow, now she was David, she saw +Honoria in a different light. Poor Norie! She too had her wistful +leanings, her sorrows and disappointments. What a good thing it +would be if her mother decided to die—of course she would, could, +never say any such thing to Norie—to die and set free Honoria to +marry Major Petworth Armstrong! She felt Norie still hankered after +him, but perhaps kept him at bay partly because of her mother's +molluscous clingings—No! she wouldn't even sneer at Lady Fraser. +Lady Fraser had been one of the early champions of Woman's rights. +Very likely it was a dread of Vivie's sneers and disappointment that +had mainly kept back Norie from accepting Major Armstrong's +advances. Well, when next they met she—Vivie—or better still +David—would set that right. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER VII +</h2> +<h3> + HONORIA AGAIN +</h3> +<p class="heading"> + 7, Fig Tree Court, Temple.<br /> + <i>March</i> 20, 1902. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + <span class="sc">Dear Honoria</span>,— +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + I am going down to spend Easter with my people in South + Wales. Before I leave I should so very much like a long talk + with you where we can talk freely and undisturbed. That is + impossible at the Office for a hundred reasons, especially + now that Beryl Claridge has taken to working early in her + new-found zeal, while Bertie Adams deems it his duty to stay + late. I am—really, truly—grieved to hear that your mother + is so ill again. I would not ask to meet her—even if she + was well enough to receive people—because she does not know + me and when one is as ill as she is, the introduction to a + stranger is a horrid jar. But if you <i>could</i> fit in say an + hour's detachment from her side—is it "bed-side" or is she + able to get up?—and could receive me in your own + sitting-room, why then we could have that full and free talk + I should like on your affairs and on mine and on the joint + affairs of <i>Fraser and Warren</i>. +</p> +<p class="closing"> + Yours sincerely,<br /> + D. V. W. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + <span class="sc">Dear David</span>,— +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + Come by all means. The wish for a talk is fully reciprocated + on my side. Mother generally tries to sleep in the afternoon + between three and six, and a Nurse is then with her. +</p> +<p class="closing"> + + Yours sincerely,<br /> + H. F. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. David Williams wishes to see you, Miss," said a waiter, +meeting Honoria on a Thursday afternoon, as she was emerging into +their tiny hall from her mother's room. +</p> +<p> +"Show him up, please.... Ah <i>there</i> you are, <i>David</i>. We must both +talk rather low as mother is easily waked. Come into my study; +fortunately it is at the other end of the flat." +</p> + +<hr /> +<p> +They reach the study, and Honoria closes the door softly but firmly +behind them. +</p> +<p> +"We never do kiss as a rule, having long ago given up such a messy +form of greeting; but certainly we wouldn't under these +circumstances lest we could be seen from the opposite windows and +thought to be 'engaged'; but though I may seem a little frigid in +greeting you, it is only because of the clothes you are +wearing'—You understand, don't you—?" +</p> +<p> +"Quite, dearest. We cannot be too careful. Besides we long ago +agreed to be modern and sanitary in our manners." +</p> +<p> +"Won't you smoke?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, perhaps it would be more restful," said David, "more manly; +but as a matter of fact of late I have been rather 'off' smoking. It +is very wasteful, and as far as I am concerned it never produced +much effect—either way—on the nerves. Still, it gives one a nice +manly flavour. I always liked the smell of a smoking-room.... And +your mother: how is she?" +</p> +<p> +"Very bad, I fear. The doctor tells me she can't last much longer, +and hypocritical as the phrase sounds I couldn't wish her to, unless +these pains can be mitigated, and this dreadful distress in +breathing.... I wonder if some day <i>I</i> shall be like that, and if +behind my back a daughter will be saying she couldn't wish me to +live much longer, unless, etc. I shall miss her <i>frightfully</i>, if +she does die.... Armstrong has been more than kind. He has got a +woman's heart for tenderness. He thinks every day of some fresh +palliative until the doctors quite dislike him. Fortunately his +kindness gives mother a fleeting gleam of pleasure. She wants me to +marry him—I don't know, I'm sure.... Whilst she's so bad I don't +feel I could take any interest in love-making—and I suppose we +<i>should</i> make love in a perfunctory way—We're all of us so bound by +conventions. We try to feel dismal at funerals, when often the +weather is radiant and the ride down to Brookwood most exhilarating. +And love-making is supposed to go with marriage ... heigh-ho! What +should you say if I <i>did</i> marry—Major Armstrong...? Did you ever +hear of such a ridiculous name as Petworth? I should have to call +him 'Pet' and every one would think I had gone sentimental in middle +age. How <i>can</i> parents be so unthinking about Christian names? He +can't see the thing as I do; it is almost the only subject on which +he is 'huffy.' <i>You</i> are the other, about which more anon. He says +the Petworth property meant <i>everything</i> to the Armstrongs, to <i>his</i> +branch of the Armstrongs. But for that, they might have been any +other kind of Armstrong—it always kept him straight at school and +in the army, he says, to remember he was an Armstrong of Petworth. +They have held that poor little property (<i>I</i> call it) alongside the +Egmonts and the Leconfields for three hundred years, though they've +been miserably poor. His second name is James—Petworth James +Armstrong. But he loathes being called 'Jimmy.' +</p> +<p> +"Of course, dear, I've no illusions. I'm not bad to look at—indeed +I sometimes quite admire my figure when I see myself after my bath +in the cheval glass—but I'm pretty well sure that one of the +factors in Pet's admiration for me was my income. Mother, it seems, +has a little of her own, from one of her aunts, and if the poor +darling is taken—though it is simply horrid considering that +<i>if</i>—only that she has talked so freely to Army—I think I like +'Army' far better than 'Pet'—Well I mean she's been trying to tell +him ever since he first came to call that when she is gone I shall +have, all told, in my own right, Five thousand a year. So I took the +first opportunity of letting <i>him</i> know that Two thousand a year of +that would be held in reserve for the work of the firm and for the +Woman's Cause generally.... Look here, I won't babble on much +longer.... I know you're dying to make <i>me</i> confidences.... We'll +ring for tea to be sent in here, and whilst the waiter is coming and +going—Don't they take <i>such</i> a time about it, when they're <i>de +trop</i>?—we'll talk of ordinary things that can be shouted from the +<i>house tops</i>. +</p> +<p> +"I haven't been to the Office for three days. Does everything seem +to be going on all right?" +</p> +<p> +<i>David</i>: "Quite all right. Bertie Adams tries dumbly to express in +his eyes his determination to see the firm and me through all our +troubles and adventures. I wish I could convey a discreet hint to +him not to be so <i>blatantly</i> discreet. If there were a Sherlock +Holmes about the place he would spot at once that Adams and I shared +a secret.... But about Beryl—" (Enter waiter....) +</p> +<p> +<i>Honoria</i> (to waiter): "Oh—er—tea for two please. Remember it must +be China and the still-room maids <i>must</i> see that the water has been +fresh-boiled. And buttered toast—or if you've got muffins...? You +have? Well, then muffins; and of course jam and cake. And—would you +mind—you always try, I know—bringing the things in very +quietly—here—? Because Lady Fraser is so easily waked..." +</p> +<p> +(The Swiss waiter goes out, firmly convinced that Honoria's anxiety +for her lady mother is really due to the desire that the mother +should not interrupt a flirtation and a clandestine tea.) +</p> +<p> +<i>Honoria</i>: "Well, about Beryl?" +</p> +<p> +<i>David</i>: "Beryl, I should say, is going to become a great woman of +business. But for that, and—I think—a curious streak of fidelity +to her vacillating architect ('How happy could I be with either,' +don't you know, <i>he</i> seems to feel—just now they say he is living +steadily at Storrington with his wife No. 1, who is ill, poor +thing) ... but for that and this, I think Beryl would enjoy a +flirtation with me. She can't quite make me out, and my unwavering +severity of manner. Her cross-questioning sometimes is maddening—or +it might become so, but that with both of us—you and me—retiring +so much into the background she has to lead such a strenuous life +and see one after the other the more important clients. Of +course—here's the tea..." +</p> +<p> +(Brief interval during which the waiter does much unnecessary laying +out of the tea until Honoria says: "Don't let me keep you. I know +you are busy at this time. I will ring if we want anything.") David +continues: "Of course I come in for my share of the work after six. +On one point Beryl is firm; she doesn't mind coming at nine or at +eight or at half-past seven in the morning, but she <i>must</i> be back +in Chelsea by half-past five to see her babies, wash them and put +them to bed. She has a tiny little house, she tells me, near +Trafalgar Square, and fortunately she's got an excellent and devoted +nurse, one of those rare treasures that questions nothing and is +only interested in the business in hand. She and a cook-general make +up the establishment. Before Mrs. Architect No. 1 became ill, Mr. +Architect used to visit her there pretty regularly, and is assumed +to be Mr. Claridge.... Well: to finish up about Beryl: I think +you—we—can trust her. She may be odd in her notions of morality, +but in finance or business she's as honest—as—a man." +</p> +<p> +"My dear Vivie—I mean David—what a strange thing for <i>you</i> to +say! I suppose it is part of your make-up—goes with the clothes and +that turn-over collar, and the little safety pin through the tie—?" +</p> +<p> +<i>David</i>: "No, I said it deliberately. Men are mostly hateful things, +but I think in business they're more dependable than women—think +more about telling a lie or letting any one down. The point for you +to seize on is this—if you haven't noticed it already: that Beryl +has become an uncommonly good business woman. And what's more, my +dear, you've improved <i>her</i> just as you improved <i>me</i>" (Honoria +deprecates this with a gesture, as she sits looking into the fire). +"Beryl's talk is getting ever so much less reckless. And she takes +jolly good care not to scandalize a client. She finds Adams—she +tells me—so severe at the least jest or personality that she only +talks to him now on business matters, and finds him a great +stand-by; and the other day she told Miss A.—as you call the senior +clerk—she ought to be ashamed of herself, bringing in a copy of the +<i>Vie Parisienne</i>. The way she settled Mrs. Gordon's affairs—you +remember, No. 3875 you catalogued the case—was masterly; and Mrs. +G. has insisted on paying 5 per cent. commission on the recovered +property. And it was Beryl who found out that leakage in the +'Variegated Tea Rooms' statement of accounts. I hadn't spotted it. +No. I think we needn't be anxious about Beryl, especially whilst I +am in Wales and you are giving yourself up—as you ought to do—to +your mother. But it's coming to <i>this</i>, Honoria—" (Enter waiter. +David says "Oh, damn," half audibly. Waiter is confirmed in his +suspicions, but as he likes Honoria immensely resolves to say +nothing about them in the Steward's room. She is such a kind young +lady. He explains he has come to take the tea things away, and +Honoria replies "Capital idea! Now, David, you'll be able to have +the whole table for your accounts!").... "It's coming to <i>this</i>, +Honoria," says David, clearing his throat, "that you will soon be +wanting not to be bothered any more with the affairs of <i>Fraser and +Warren</i>, and after I really get into the Law business I too shall +require to detach myself. Let us therefore be thankful that Beryl is +shaping so well. I rather think this summer you will have to get +more office accommodation and give her some more responsible women +to help her.... <i>Now</i> finish what you were saying about Major +Armstrong." +</p> +<p> +<i>Honoria</i>: "Of <i>course</i> I shall marry him some day. I suppose I felt +that the day after I first met him. But it amuses me to be under no +illusion. I am sure this is what happened two years ago—or whenever +it was he came back wounded from your favourite haunt, South Africa. +Michael Rossiter—who likes 'Army' enormously—I think they were at +school or college together—said to Linda, his wife: 'Here's +Armstrong. One of the best. Wants to marry. Wife must have a little +money, otherwise he'll have to go on letting Petworth Manor. And +here's Honoria Fraser, one of the finest women I've ever met. +Getting a little long in the tooth—or will be soon. Let's bring 'em +together and make a match of it.' +</p> +<p> +"So we are each convoked for a luncheon, with a projected +adjournment to Kew—which <i>you</i> spoilt—and there it is. But joking +apart, 'Army' is a dear and I am sure by now he wants me even more +than my money—and I certainly want him. I'm rising thirty and I +long for children and don't want 'em to come to me too late in +life." +</p> +<p> +<i>David</i>: "You said he didn't like <i>me</i>..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Honoria</i>: "Oh that was half nonsense. When we all met last Sunday +at the Rossiters he became very jealous and suspicious. Asked who +was that whipper-snapper—I said you neither whipped nor snapped, +especially if kindly treated. He said then who was that Madonna +young man—a phrase it appears he'd picked up from Lord Cromer, +who used to apply it to every new arrival from the Foreign +Office—Armstrong was once his military secretary. I was surprised +to hear he thought you womanish—I spoke of your fencing, +riding,—was just going to add 'hockey,' and 'croquet': then +remembered they might be thought feminine pastimes, so referred to +your swimming. Military men always respect a good swimmer; I fancy +because many of them funk the water.... I was just going on to +explain that you were a cousin of a great friend of mine and helped +me in my business, when a commissionaire came from Quansions in a +hansom to say that mother was feeling very bad again. 'Army' and I +went back in the hansom, but I was crying a little and being a +gentleman he did not press his suit..." +</p> +<p> +Enter Lady Fraser's nurse on tiptoe. Says in a very hushed voice +"Major Armstrong has called, Miss Fraser. He came to ask about Lady +Fraser. I said if anything she was a bit better and had had a good +sleep. He then asked if he might see you." +</p> +<p> +<i>Honoria</i>: "Certainly. Would you mind showing him in here? It will +save my ringing for the waiter." +</p> +<p> +Enter Major Armstrong. At the sight of David he flushes and looks +fierce. +</p> +<p> +<i>Honoria</i>: "So glad you've come, dear Major. I hear mother has had a +good nap. I must go to her presently. You know David Vavasour +Williams?—Davy! You really <i>must</i> leave out your second name! It +gets so fatiguing having to say it every time I introduce you." +</p> +<p> +Armstrong bows stiffly and David, standing with one well-shaped foot +in a neat boot on the curb of the fireplace, looks up and returns +the bow. +</p> +<p> +<i>Honoria</i>: "This won't do. You are two of my dearest friends, and +yet you hardly greet one another. I always determined from the age +of fifteen onwards I would never pass my life as men and women in a +novel do—letting misunderstandings creep on and on where fifty +words might settle them. <i>Army!</i> You've often asked me to marry +you—or at least so I've understood your broken sentences. I never +refused you in so many words. Now I say distinctly 'Yes'—if you'll +have me. Only, you know quite well I can't actually marry you whilst +mother lies so ill..." +</p> +<p> +Major Armstrong, very red in the face, in a mixture of exultation, +sympathy and annoyance that the affairs of his heart are being +discussed before a whipper-snapper stranger—says: "<i>Honoria!</i> Do +you <i>mean</i> it? Oh..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Honoria</i>: "Of course I mean it! And if I drew back you could now +have a breach-of-promise-of-marriage action, with David as an +important witness. D.V.W.—who by the bye is a cousin of my +<i>greatest friend</i>—my friend for life, whether you like her—as you +ought to do—or not—Vivie Warren.... David is reading for the Bar; +and besides being your witness to what I have just said, might—if +you deferred your action long enough—be your Counsel.... Now look +here," (with a catch in the voice) "you two dear things. My nerves +are all to bits.... I haven't slept properly for nights and nights. +David, dear, if you <i>must</i> talk any more business before you go down +to Wales, you must come and see me to-morrow.... Darling mother! I +can't <i>bear</i> the thought you may not live to see my happiness." +(David discreetly withdraws without a formal good-bye, and as he +goes out and the firelight flickers up, sees Armstrong take Honoria +in his arms.) +</p> +<a name="2HCH0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER VIII +</h2> +<h3> + THE BRITISH CHURCH +</h3> +<p> +David had read hard all through Hilary term with Mr. Stansfield of +the Inner Temple; he had passed examinations brilliantly; he had +solved knotty problems in the legal line for <i>Fraser and Warren</i>, +and as already related he had begun to go out into Society. Indeed, +starting from the Rossiters' Thursdays and Praed's studio suppers, +he was being taken up by persons of influence who were pleased to +find him witty, possessed of a charming voice, of quiet but +unassailable manners. Opinions differed as to his good looks. Some +women proclaimed him as adorable, rather Sphynx-like, you know, but +quite fascinating with his well-marked eye-brows, his dark and curly +lashes, the rich warm tints of his complexion, the unfathomable grey +eyes and short upper lip with the down of adolescence upon it. Other +women without assigning any reason admitted he did not produce any +effect on their sensibility—they disliked law students, they said, +even if they were of a literary turn; they also disliked curates and +shopwalkers and sidesmen ... and Sunday-school teachers. Give them +<i>manly</i> men; avowed soldiers and sailors, riders to hounds, +sportsmen, big game hunters, game-keepers, chauffeurs—the +chauffeur was becoming a new factor in Society, Bernard Shaw's +"superman"—prize-fighters, meat-salesmen—then you knew where you +were. +</p> +<p> +Similarly men were divided in their judgment of him. Some liked him +very much, they couldn't quite say why. Others spoke of him +contemptuously, like Major Armstrong had done. This was due partly +to certain women being inclined to run after him—and therefore to +jealousy on behalf of the professional lady-killer of the +military species—and partly to a vague feeling that he was +enigmatic—Sphynx-like, as some women said. He was too silent +sometimes, especially if the conversation amongst men tended towards +racy stories; he was sarcastic and nimble-witted when he did speak. +And he was not easily bullied. If he encountered an insolent person, +he gave full effect to his five feet eight inches, the look from his +grey eyes was unwavering as though he tacitly accepted the +challenge, there was an invisible rapier hanging from his left hip, +a poise of the body which expressed dauntless courage. +</p> +<p> +Honoria's stories of his skill in fencing, riding, swimming, +ball-games, helped him here. They were perfectly true or +sufficiently true—<i>mutatis mutandis</i>—and when put to the test +stood the test. David indeed found it well during this first season +in Town to hire a hack and ride a little in the Park—it only added +one way and another about fifty pounds to his outlay and impressed +certain of the Benchers who were beginning to turn an eye on him. +One elderly judge—also a Park rider—developed an almost +inconvenient interest in him; asked him to dinner, introduced him to +his daughters, and wanted to know a deal too much as to his position +and prospects. +</p> +<p> +On the whole, it was a distinct relief from a public position, from +this increasing number of town acquaintances, this broader and +broader track strewn with cunning pitfalls, to lock up his rooms and +go off to Wales for the Easter holidays. Easter was late that +year—or it has to be for the purpose of my story—and David was +fortunate in the weather and the temperature. If West Glamorganshire +had looked richly, grandiosely beautiful in full summer, it had an +exquisite, if quite different charm in early spring, in April. The +great trees were spangled with emerald leaf-buds; the cherries, tame +and wild, the black-thorn, the plums and pears in orchards and on +old, old, grey walls, were in full blossom of virgin white. The +apple trees in course of time showed pink buds. The gardens +were full of wall-flowers—the inhabited country smelt of +wall-flowers—purple flags, narcissi, hyacinths. The woodland was +exquisitely strewn with primroses. In the glades rose innumerable +spears of purple half-opened bluebells; the eye ranged over an +anemone-dotted sward in this direction; over clusters of smalt-blue +dog violets in another. Ladies'-smocks and cowslips made every +meadow delicious; and the banks of the lowland streams were +gorgeously gilded with king-cups. The mountains on fine days were +blue and purple in the far distance; pale green and grey in the +foreground. Under the April showers and sun-shafts they became +tragic, enchanted, horrific, paradisiac. Even the mining towns were +bearable—in the spring sunshine. If man had left no effort untried +to pile hideosity on hideosity, flat ugliness on nauseous squalor, +he had not been able to affect the arch of the heavens in its lucid +blue, all smokes and vapours driven away by the spring winds; he had +not been able to neutralize the vast views visible from the miners' +sordid, one-storeyed dwellings, the panorama of hill and plain, of +glistening water, towering peaks, and larch forests of emerald green +amid the blue-Scotch pines and the black-green yews. +</p> +<p> +David in previous letters, looking into his father's budget, had +shown him he could afford to keep a pony and a pony cart. This +therefore was waiting for him at the little station with the +gardener to drive. But in a week, David, already a good horseman, +had learnt to drive under the gardener's teaching, and then was able +to take his delighted father out for whole-day trips to revel in the +beauties of the scenery. +</p> +<p> +They would have with them a wicker basket containing an ample lunch +prepared by the generous hands of Bridget. They would stop at +some spot on a mountain pass; tether the pony, sit on a plaid +shawl thrown over a boulder, and feast their eyes on green +mountain-shoulders reared against the pale blue sky; or gaze across +ravines not unworthy of Switzerland. Or they would put up pony and +cart at some village inn, explore old battlemented churches and +churchyards with seventeenth and eighteenth century headstones, so +far more tasteful and seemly than the hideous death memorials of the +nineteenth century. And ever and again the old father, looking more +and more like a Druid, would recite that charming Spring song, the +104th Psalm; or fragments of Welsh poetry sounding very good in +Welsh—as no doubt Greek poetry does in properly pronounced Greek, +but being singularly bald and vague in its references to earth, sea, +sky and flora when translated into plain English. +</p> +<p> +David expressed some such opinions which rather scandalized his +father who had grown up in the conventional school of unbounded, +unreasoning reverence for the Hebrew, Greek and Keltic classics. +From that they passed to the great problems, the undeterminable +problems of the Universe; the awful littleness of men—mere lice, +perhaps, on the scurfy body of a shrinking, dying planet of a +fifth-rate sun, one of a billion other suns. The Revd. Howel like +most of the Christian clergy of all times of course never looked at +the midnight sky or gave any thought to the terrors and mysteries of +astronomy, a science so modern, in fact, that it only came into real +existence two or three hundred years ago; and is even now only taken +seriously by about ten thousand people in Europe and America. Where, +in this measureless universe—which indeed might only be one of +several universes—was God to be found? A God that had been upset by +the dietary of a small desert tribe, who fussed over burnt +sacrifices and the fat of rams at one time; at another objected to +censuses; at another and a later date wanted a human sacrifice to +placate his wrath; or who had washed out the world's fauna and flora +in a flood which had left no geological evidence to attest its +having taken place. "Did you ever think about the Dinosaurs, +father?" said David at the end of some such tirade—an outburst of +free-thinking which in earlier years might have upset that father to +wrath and angry protest, but which now for some reason only left him +dazed and absent-minded. (It was the Colonies that had done it, he +thought, and the studio talk of that dilettante architect. By and +bye, David would distinguish himself at the Bar, marry and settle +down, and resume the orthodox outlook of the English—or as he liked +to call it—the British Church.) +</p> +<p> +"The Dinosaurs, my boy? No. What were they?" +</p> +<p> +<i>David</i>: "The real Dragons, the Dragons of the prime, that swarmed +over England and Wales and Scotland, and Europe, Asia, and North +America—and I dare say Africa too. One of the most stupendous facts +of what you call 'creation,' though perhaps only one amongst many +skin diseases that have afflicted the planet—Well the Dinosaurs +went on developing and evolving and perfecting—so Rossiter +says—for three million years or so—Then they were scrap-heaped. +What a waste of creative energy!..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Father</i>: "Ah it's Rossiter who puts all these ideas into your head, +is it?" +</p> +<p> +<i>David</i> (flushing); "Oh dear no! I used to think about them at (is +about to say 'Newnham,' but substitutes 'Malvern')—at Malvern—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Father</i> (drily): "I'm glad to hear you thought about +something—serious—at any rate—then, in the midst of your scrapes +and truancies—but go on, dear boy. It's a delight to me to hear you +speak. It reminds me—I mean your voice does—of your poor mother. +You know I loved her very tenderly, David, and though it is all past +and done with I believe I should forgive her <i>now</i>, if she only came +back to me. I'm sometimes <i>so</i> lonely, boy. I wish you'd marry and +settle down here—there's lots of room for you—some nice girl—and +give me grandchildren before I die. But I suppose I must be patient +and wait first for your call to the Bar. What a dreary long time it +all takes! Why can't they, with one so clever, shorten the term of +probation? Or why wait for that to marry? I could give you an +allowance. As soon as you were called you could then follow the +South Wales circuit—well, go on about your Dinosaurs. I seem to +remember Professor Owen invented them—but <i>he</i> never wavered in his +faith and was the great opponent of that rash man, Darwin. Oh, <i>I</i> +remember now the old controversies—what a stalwart was the Bishop +of Winchester! They couldn't bear him at their Scientific +meetings—there was one at Bath, if I recollect right, and he put +them all to the right-about. What about your Dinosaurs? I'm not +denying their existence; it's only the estimates of time that are so +ridiculous. God made them and destroyed them in the great Flood, of +which their fossil remains are the evidence—" +</p> +<p> +David however would desist from pursuing such futile arguments; feel +surprised, indeed, at his own outbreaks, except that he hated +insincerity. However new and disturbing to his father were these +flashes of the New Learning, in his outward conduct he was orthodox +and extremely well-behaved. The spiritual exercises of the Revd. +Howel had become jejune, and limited very much by his failing sight. +The recovery after the operation had come too late in life to bring +about any expansion of public or private devotions. Family prayers +were reduced to the recital from memory of an exhortation, a +confession, and an absolution, followed by the Lord's Prayer and a +benediction. Services in the church were limited to Morning and +Evening prayers, with Communion on the first Sunday in the month, +and a sermon following Morning prayer. There was no one to play the +organ if the schoolmistress failed to turn up—as she often did. +David however scrupulously turned the normal congregation of +five—Bridget, the maid of the time-being, the gardener-groom, the +sexton, and a baker-church-warden—into six by his unvarying +attendance. In the course of half his stay the rumour of his being +present and of his good looks and great spiritual improvement +attracted quite a considerable congregation, chiefly of young women +and a few sheepish youths; so that his father was at one and the +same time exhilarated and embarrassed. Was this to be a Church +revival? If so, he readily pardoned David his theories on the +Dinosaurs and his doubts as to the unvarying evidence of Divine +Wisdom in the story of Creation. +</p> +<p> +If any other consideration than a deep affection for this dear old +man and repentance for his unwise ebullitions of Free Thought had +guided David in the matter it was an utter detestation of the +services and the influence of the Calvinist Chapel in the village, +the Little Bethel, presided over by Pastor Prytherch, a fanatical +blacksmith, who alternated spells of secret drunkenness and episodes +of animalism by orgies of self-abasement, during which he—in +half-confessing his own lapses—attributed freely and unrebukedly +the same vices to the male half of his overflowing congregation. +These out-pourings—"Pechadur truenus wyf i! Arglwydd madden i +mi!"—extempore prayers, psalms chanted with a swaying of the body, +hymns sung uproariously, scripture read with an accompaniment of +groans, hysteric laughter, and interjections of assent, and a +rambling discourse—lasting fully an hour, were in the Welsh +language; and David on his three or four visits—and it can be +imagined what a sensation <i>they</i> caused! The Vicar's son—himself +perhaps about to confess his sins!—understood very little of the +subject matter, save from the extravagant gestures of the +participants. But he soon made up his mind that religion for +religion, that expressed by the English—"Well, father, you are +right—the 'British'"—Church in Wales was many hundred times +superior in reasonableness and stability to the negroid ebullitions +of the Calvinists. As a matter of fact they were scarcely more +followers of the reformer Calvin than they were of Ignatius Loyola; +it was just a symptomatic outbreak of some prehistoric Iberian, +Silurian form of worship, something deeply planted in the soil of +Wales, something far older than Druidism, something contemporary +with the beliefs of Neolithic days. +</p> +<p> +Eighteen years ago, much of Wales was as enslaved by whiskey as are +still Keltic Scotland, Keltiberian Ireland, Lancashire, London and +wicked little Kent. It was only saved from going under completely by +decennial religious revivals, which for three months or so were +followed by total abstinence and a fierce-eyed continence. +</p> +<p> +Just about this time—during David's extended spring holiday in +Wales (he had brought many law books down with him to read)—there +had begun one of the newspaper-made-famous Revivals. It was led by a +young prophet—a football half-back or whatever they are called, +though I, who prefer thoroughness, would, if I played football, +offer up the whole of my back to bear the brunt—who saw visions of +Teutonically-conceived angels with wings, who heard "voices," was in +constant communication with the Redeemer of Mankind and on familiar +terms with God, had a lovely tenor voice and moved emotional men and +hysterical, love-sick women to tears, even to bellowings by his +prayers and songs. He had for some weeks been confined in publicity +to half-contemptuous paragraphs in the South Wales Press. Then the +<i>Daily Chronicle</i> took him up. Their well-known, emotional-article +writer, Mr. Sigsbee, saw "copy" in him, and—to do him justice (for +there I agreed with him)—a chance to pierce the armour of the +hand-in-glove-with-Government distillers, so went down to Wales to +write him up. For three weeks he became more interesting than a +Cabinet Minister. Indeed Cabinet Ministers or those who aspired to +become such at the next turn of the wheel truckled to him. Some were +afraid he might become a small Messiah and lead Wales into open +revolt; others that he might smash the whiskey trade and impair the +revenue. Mr. Lloyd George going to address a pro-Boer meeting at +Aberystwith (was it?) encountered him at a railway junction, +attended by a court of ex-footballers and reformed roysterers, and +said in the hearing of a reporter "I must fight with the Sword of +the Flesh; but you fight with the Sword of the Spirit"—whatever +that may have meant—and I do not pretend to complete accuracy of +remembrance—I only know I felt very angry with the whole movement +at the time, because it delayed indefinitely the <i>Daily Chronicle's</i> +review of my new book. Well this Evan—in all such movements an Evan +is inevitable—Evan Gwyllim Jones—with the black eyes, abundant +black hair, beautiful features (he was a handsome lad) and glorious +voice, addressed meetings in the open air and in every available +building of four walls. Thousands withdrew their names from +foot-ballery, nigh on Two Millions must have taken the pledge—and +not merely an anti-whiskey pledge but a fierce renunciation of the +most diluted alcohol as well; and approximately two hundred and +fifty thousand confessed their sins of unchastity and swore to be +reborn Galahads for the rest of their lives. It was a spiritual +Spring-cleaning, as drastic and as overdone as are the domestic +upheavals known by that name. But it did a vast deal of good, all +the same, to South Wales; and though it was a seventh wave, the tide +of temperance, thrift, cleanliness, bodily and spiritual, has risen +to a higher level of average in the beautiful romantic Principality +ever since. Evan Gwyllim Jones, however, overdid it. He had to +retire from the world to a Home—some said even to a Mental +Hospital. Six months afterwards he emerged, cured of his "voices," +much plumper, and—perhaps—poor soul—shorn of some of his +illusions and ideals; but he married a grocer's widow of Cardiff, +and the <i>Daily Chronicle</i> mentioned him no more. +</p> +<p> +The infection of his meetings however penetrated to the agricultural +district in which Pontystrad was situated. Five villages went +completely off their heads. The blacksmith-pastor had to be put +under temporary restraint. Quite decent-looking, unsuspected folk +confessed to far worse sins than they had ever committed. There +arose an aristocracy of outcasts. Three inns where little worse than +bad beer was sold were gutted, respectable farmers' wives drank +Eau-de-Cologne instead of spirits, several over-due marriages took +place, there were a number of premature births, and the membership +of the football clubs was disastrously reduced. Such excitement was +generated that little work was done, and the illegitimate birth rate +of west Glamorganshire—always high—for the opening months of 1903 +became even higher. +</p> +<p> +David was enlisted by the employers of labour, the farmers, +chemical works, mining and smelting-works managers, squires, and +postmasters to restore order. He preached against the Revivalists. +Not with any lack of sympathy, any apology for the real ills which +they denounced. He spoke with emphasis against the loosening of +morality, recommended early marriage, and above all <i>education</i>; +denounced the consumption of alcohol so strenuously and convincedly +that then and there as he spoke he resolved himself henceforth to +abstain from anything stronger than lager beer or the lighter +French and German wines. But he threw cold water resolutely on the +fantastical nonsense that accompanied these emotional outbursts of +so-called religion; invited his hearers to study—at any rate +elementarily—astronomy and biology; did not run down football but +advised a moderate interest only being taken in such futile sports; +recommended volunteering and an acquaintance with rifles as far +preferable, seeing that we always stood in danger of a European war +or of a drastic revival of insolent conservatism. +</p> +<p> +Then he made his appeal to the women. He spoke of the dangers of +this hysteria; the need there was for level-headed house-keeping +women in our councils; how they should first qualify for and then +demand the suffrage, having already attained the civic vote. (Here +some of the employers of labour disapproved, plucked at his arm or +hem of his reefer jacket, and one squire lumbered off the platform.) +But he held on, warming with a theme that hitherto had hardly +interested him. His speeches were above the heads of his peasant +audiences; but they were a more sensitive harp to play on than the +average Anglo-Saxon audience. Many women wept, only decorously, as +he outlined their influence in a reformed village, a purified +Principality. The men applauded frantically because, despite some +prudent reserves, there seemed to be a promise of revolt in his +suggestions. David felt the electric thrill of the orator in harmony +with his audience; who for that reason will strive for further +triumphs, more resounding perorations. He introduced scraps of +Welsh—all his auto-intoxicated brain could remember (How physically +true was that taunt of Dizzy's—"Inebriated with the exuberance of +his own verbosity!"). +</p> +<p> +And the delighted audience shouted back "You're the man we want! +Into Parliament you shall go, Davy-bach" and much else. So David +restored the five villages to sobriety in life and faith, yet left +them with a new enthusiasm kindled. Before he departed on his return +to London and the grind of his profession, he had effected another +change. Because he had spoken as he had spoken and touched the +hearts of emotional people, they came trickling back to his father's +church, to the "British" Church, as David now called it. Little +Bethel was empty, and the pastor-blacksmith not yet out of the +asylum at Swansea. The Revd. Howel Williams trod on air. His sermons +became terribly long and involved, but that was no drawback in the +minds of his Welsh auditory; though it made his son swear inwardly +and reconciled him to the approaching return to Fig Tree Court. The +old Druid felt inspired to convince the hundred people present that +the Church they had returned to <i>was</i> the Church of their fathers, +not only back to Roman times, when Glamorganshire was basking in an +Italian civilization, but further still. He showed how the Druids +were rather to be described as Ante-Christian than Anti—with an +<i>i</i>; and played ponderously on this quip. In Druidism, he +observed—I am sure I cannot think why, but it was his hobby—you +had a remarkable foreshadowing of Christianity; the idea of the +human sacrifice, the Atonement, the Communion of Saints, the mystic +Vine, which he clumsily identified with the mistletoe, and what not +else. He read portions of his privately-published <i>Tales of +Taliessin</i>. In short such happiness radiated from his pink-cheeked +face and recovered eyes that David regretted in no wise his own +lapses into conventional, stereotyped religion. The Church of +Britain might be stiff and stomachered, as the offspring of +Elizabeth, but it was stately, it was respectable—as outwardly was +the great virgin Queen—and it was easy to live with. Only he +counselled his father to do two things: never to preach for more +than half-an-hour—even if it meant keeping a small American clock +going inside the pulpit-ledge; and to obtain a curate, so that the +new enthusiasm might not cool and his father verging on seventy, +might not overstrain himself. He pointed out that by letting off +most of the glebe land and pretermitting David's "pocket-money" he +might secure a young and energetic Welsh-speaking curate, the +remainder of whose living-wage would—he felt sure—be found out of +the diocesan funds of St. David's bishopric. +</p> +<p> +The Revd. Howel let him have his way (This was after David had +returned to Fig Tree Court) and by the following June a stalwart +young curate was lodged in the village and took over the bulk of the +progressive church work from the fumbling hands of the dear old +Vicar. He was a thoroughly good sort, this curate, troubled by no +possible doubts whatever, a fervent tee-totaller, a half-back or +whole back—I forget which—at football, a good boxer, and an +unwearied organizer. Little Bethel was sold and eventually turned +into a seed-merchant's repository and drying-room. The curate in +course of time married the squire's daughter and I dare say long +afterwards succeeded the Revd. Howel Vaughan Williams when the +latter died—but that date is still far ahead of my story. At any +rate—isn't it <i>droll</i> how these things come about?—David's action +in this matter, undertaken he hardly knew why—did much to fetter +Mr. Lloyd George's subsequent attempts to disestablish the British +Church in Wales. +</p> +<p> +What did Bridget think of all this, of the spiritual evolution of +her nursling, of his identity with the vicious, shifty, idle youth +whose uncanny gift of design seemed to have been completely lost +after his stay in South Africa? David Vavasour Williams had left +home to the relief of his father and the whole village, if even to +the half-pitying regret of his old nurse, in 1896. He had spent a +year or more in Mr. Praed's studio studying to be an architect or a +scene painter. Then somehow or other he did not get on with Mr. +Praed and he enlisted impulsively in a South African Police force +(in the Army, it seemed to Bridget). He had somehow become involved +in a war with a South African people, called by Bridget "the Wild +Boars"; he is wounded or ill in hospital; is little heard of, almost +presumed dead. Throughout all these five years he scarcely ever +writes to his forgiving father; maintains latterly a sulky silence. +Then, suddenly in the summer of 1901, returns; preceded only by a +telegram but apparently vouched for by this Mr. Praed; and announces +himself as having forgotten his Welsh and most of the events of his +youth, but having acquired a changed heart, and an anxiety to make +up for past ill-behaviour by a present good conduct which seems +almost miraculous. +</p> +<p> +Well: miracles were easily believed in by Bridget. Perhaps his +father's prayers had been answered. Providence sometimes meted out +an overwhelming boon to really good people. David was certainly a +Vavasour, if there was nothing Williamsy about his looks.... His +mother, in Mrs. Bridget Evanwy's private opinion, had been a +hussy.... Was David his father's son? Hadn't she once caught Mrs. +Howel Williams kissing a young stranger behind a holly bush and +wasn't that why Bridget had really been sent away? She had returned +to take charge of the pretty, motherless little boy when she herself +was a widow disappointed of children, and the child was only three. +Would she ever turn against her nursling now, above all, when he was +showing himself such a son to his old father? Not she. He might be +who and what he would. He was giving another ten years of renewed +life to the dear old Druid and the continuance of a comfortable home +to his old Nannie. +</p> +<p> +They talked a great deal up at Little Bethel of a "change of +heart." Perhaps such things really took place, though Bridget Evanwy +from a shrewd appraisement of the Welsh nature doubted it. She would +like to, but couldn't quite believe that an angel from heaven had +taken possession of David's body and come here to play a divine +part; because David sometimes talked so strangely—seemed not only +to doubt the existence of a heavenly host, but even of Something +beyond, so awful in Bridget's mind that she hardly liked to define +it in words, though in her own Welsh tongue it was so earthily +styled "the Big Man." +</p> +<p> +However, at all costs, she would stand by David ... and without +quite knowing why, she decided that on all future visits she herself +would "do out" his room, would attend to him exclusively. The "girl" +was a chatterer, albeit she looked upon Mr. David with eyes of awe +and a most respectful admiration, while David on his part scarcely +bestowed on her a glance. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER IX +</h2> +<h3> + DAVID IS CALLED TO THE BAR +</h3> +<p> +1902 was the year of King Edward's break-down in health but of his +ultimate Coronation; it was the year in which Mr. Arthur Balfour +became premier; it was the year in which motors became really +well-known, familiar objects in the London streets, and hansoms (I +think) had to adopt taximeter clocks on the eve of their +displacement by taxi-cabs. It was likewise the year in which the +South African War was finally wound up and the star of Joseph +Chamberlain paled to its setting, and Mrs. Pankhurst and her +daughter Christabel founded the Women's Social and Political Union +at Manchester. +</p> +<p> +In 1903, the Fiscal controversy absorbed much of public attention, +the War Office was once more reformed, women's skirts still swept +the pavement and encumbered the ball-room, a Peeress wrote +to the <i>Times</i> to complain of Modern Manners, Surrey beat +Something-or-other at the Oval, and modern Cricket was voted dull. +</p> +<p> +In 1904, the Russo-Japanese War was concluded, and <i>Fraser and +Warren</i> received a year's notice from the Midland Insurance Co. that +they must vacate their premises on the fifth floor of Nos. 88-90 +Chancery Lane. The business of <i>F. and W.</i> had grown so considerable +that, as the affairs of the Midland Insurance Co. had slackened, it +became intolerable to hear the lift going up and down to the fifth +floor all through the day. The housekeeper also thought it odd that +a well-dressed young gentleman should steal in and up, day after +day, after office hours to work apparently alone in <i>Fraser and +Warren's</i> partners' room. <i>Fraser and Warren</i> over the hand of its +junior partner, Mrs. Claridge, accepted the notice. Their business +had quite overgrown these inconveniently situated offices and a move +to the West End was projected. Mrs. Claridge's scheme for week-end +cottages had been enormously successful and had put much money not +only into the coffers of <i>Fraser and Warren</i> but into the banking +account of that clever architect, Francis Brimley Storrington. +</p> +<p> +[I find I made an absurd mistake earlier in this book in charging +the too amorous architect with a home at "Storrington." His home +really was in a midland garden city which he had designed, but his +name—a not uncommon one—was Storrington.] +</p> +<p> +In the autumn of 1902, poor Lady Fraser died. In January, 1903, +Honoria married the impatient Colonel Armstrong. In January, 1904, +she had her first baby—a boy. +</p> +<p> +At the close of 1904 Beryl Claridge made proposals to Honoria Fraser +relative to a change in the constitution of <i>Fraser and Warren</i>. +Honoria was to have an interest still as a sleeping partner in the +concern and some voice in its management and policy. But she was to +take no active share of the office work and "Warren" was to pass out +of it altogether. Beryl pointed out it was rather a farce when the +middle partner—she herself had been made the junior partner a year +before—was perpetually and mysteriously absent, year after year, +engaged seemingly on work of her own abroad. Her architect +semi-husband moreover, who if not in the firm was doing an +increasing share of its business, wanted to know <i>more</i> about Vivien +Warren. "Was she or was she not the daughter of the 'notorious' Mrs. +Warren; because if so..." He took of course a highly virtuous line. +Like so many other people he compounded for the sins he was +inclined to by being severe towards the misdoings of others. <i>His</i> +case—he would say to Beryl when they were together at Chelsea—was +<i>sui generis</i>, quite exceptional, they were really in a way +perfectly good people—<i>Tout savoir c'est tout pardonner, etc.</i>; +whereas the <i>things</i> that were <i>said</i> about Mrs. Warren!... And +though Vivien was nothing nearer sin than being her daughter, still +if it were known or known more widely that <i>she</i> was the Warren in +<i>Fraser and Warren</i>, why the wives of the wealthier clergy, for +example, and a number of Quakeresses would withdraw their affairs +from the firm's management. Whereas if only his little Berry could +become the boss, <i>he</i> knew where to get "big money" to put behind +the Firm's dealings. The idea was all right; an association for the +special management on thoroughly honest lines of women's affairs. +They'd better get rid of that hulking young clerk, Bertie Adams, and +staff the entire concern with capable women. He himself would always +remain in the background, giving them ideas from time to time, and +if any were taken up merely being paid his fees and commissions. +</p> +<p> +David Vavasour Williams, privately consulted by Norie, put forward +no objection. He disliked Beryl and was increasingly shy of his +rather clandestine work on the fifth floor of the Midland Insurance +Chambers; besides, if and when he were called to the Bar, he would +have to cease all connection with <i>Fraser and Warren</i>. The consent +of Vivie was obtained through the Power of Attorney she had left +behind. A new deed of partnership was drawn up. Honoria insisted +that Vivien Warren must be bought out for Three Thousand pounds, +which amount was put temporarily to the banking account of David +Vavasour Williams; she herself received another Three Thousand and a +small percentage of the future profits and a share in the direction +of affairs of <span class="sc">The Women's Co-operative Association</span> (<i>Fraser and +Claridge</i>) so long as she left a capital of Five Thousand pounds at +their disposal. +</p> +<p> +So in 1905 David with Three Thousand pounds purchased an annuity of +£210 a year for Vivien Warren. That investment would save Vivie from +becoming at any time penniless and dependent, and consequently would +subserve the same purpose for her cousin and agent, David V. +Williams. +</p> +<p> +Going to the C. and C. Bank, Temple Bar branch, to take stock of +Vivie's affairs, he found a Thousand pounds had been paid in to her +current account. Ascertaining the name of the payee to be L.M. +Praed, he hurried off at the first opportunity to Praed's studio. +Praed was entertaining a large party of young men and women to tea +and the exhibition of some wild futurist drawings and a few rather +striking designs for stage scenery and book covers. David had +perforce to keep his questions bottled up and take part in the +rather vapid conversation that was going on between young men with +<i>glabre</i> faces and high-pitched voices and women with rather wild +eyes. +</p> +<p> +[It struck David about this time that women were getting a little +out of hand, strained, over-inclined to laugh mirthless laughter, +greedy for sensuality, sensation, sincerity, sweetmeats. Something. +Even if they satisfied some fleeting passion or jealousy by +marrying, they soon wanted to be de-married, separated, divorced, to +don male costume, to go on the amateur stage and act Salome parts on +Sunday afternoons that most ladies of the real Stage had refused; +while the men that went about with them in these troops from +restaurant to restaurant, studio to studio, music hall to café +chantant, Brighton to Monte Carlo, Sandown to Goodwood, were shifty, +too well-dressed, too near neutrality in sex, without defined +professions, known by nicknames only, spend-thrifts, spongers, +bankrupts, and collectors of needless bric-à-brac.] +</p> +<p> +However this mob at last quitted Praddy's premises and he and David +were left alone. +</p> +<p> +Praed yawned, and almost intentionally knocked over an easel with a +semi-obscene drawing on it of a Sphynx with swelling breasts +embracing a lean young man against his will. +</p> +<p> +<i>David</i>: "Praddy! why do you tolerate such people and why prostitute +your studio to such unwholesome art?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Praed</i>: "My dear David! This is <i>indeed</i> Satan rebuking sin. Why +there are three designs here—one I've just knocked over—beastly, +wasn't it?—that <i>you </i> left with me when you went off at a tangent +to South Africa.... Really, we ought to have <i>some</i> continuity you +know.... +</p> +<p> +"But I agree with you.... I'm sick of the whole business of this +Nouvel Art and L'Art Nouveau, about Aubrey Beardsley and the +disgusting 'nineties generally—But what <i>will</i> you? If Miss Vivie +Warren had condescended to accept me as a husband she might have +brought a wholesome atmosphere into my life and swept away all +this ... inspired me perhaps with some final ambition for the little +that remains of my stock of energy.... Heigh-ho! Well: what is the +quarrel now? The life I lead, the people who come here?" +</p> +<p> +<i>David</i>: "No. I hardly came about that; though dear old Praddy, I +wish I had time to look after you ... Perhaps later.... No: what I +came to ask was: what <i>did</i> you mean the other day by paying in a +Thousand Pounds to Vivie Warren's account at her bank? She's not in +want of money so far as I know, and you can't be so very rich, even +though you design three millionaire's houses a year. Who gave you +the money to pay in to my—to Vivie's account?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Praed</i>: "Well, when Vivie herself comes to ask me, p'raps I'll +tell; but I can't see how it concerns <i>you</i>. Why not stop and +dine—à l'imprévu, but I dare say my housekeeper can rake something +together or it may not be too late to send out for a paté. We can +then talk of other things. When are you going to get your call?" +</p> +<p> +<i>David</i>: "Sorry, dear old chap, but I can't stay to dinner. I'm not +going anywhere else but I've got some papers I <i>must</i> study before I +go to bed. But I'll stop another half-hour at any rate. Don't ring +for lights or turn up the electric lamps. I would sooner sit in the +dark studio and put my question. Who has given me that thousand +pounds?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Praed</i>: "That's <i>my</i> business: <i>I</i> haven't! I shan't give or lend +Vivie a penny till she consents to marry me. As to the rest, take it +and be thankful. You're not certain to get any more and I happen to +know it had what you would call a 'clean origin.'" +</p> +<p> +<i>David</i>: "You mean it didn't come from those 'Hotels'?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Praed</i>: "Well, at any rate not directly. Don't be a romantic ass, a +tiresome fool, and give me any trouble about it. A certain person I +imagine must have heard that <i>Fraser and Warren</i> had been wound up +and couldn't bear the thought of your being hard up in consequence +... doesn't know you got a share of the purchase-money..." +</p> + +<hr /> +<p> +David decided at any rate for the present to accept the addition to +his capital—you can perhaps push principle <i>too</i> far; or, once you +plunge into affairs, you cease to be quite so high-souled. At any +rate nothing in David's middle-class mind was so horrible as penury +and the impotence that comes with it. How many months or years would +lie ahead of him before fees could be gained and a professional +income be earned? Besides he wanted to take Bertie Adams into his +service as a Clerk. A barrister must have a clerk, and David in his +peculiar circumstances could only engage one acquainted more or +less with his secret. +</p> +<p> +So Bertie Adams fulfilled the ambition he had cherished for three +years—he felt all along it was coming true. And when David was +called to the Bar—which he was with all the stately ceremonial of a +Call night at the Inner Temple in the Easter term of 1905, more +elbow room was acquired at Fig Tree Court, and Bertie Adams was +installed there as clerk to Mr. David Vavasour Williams, who had +residential chambers on the third floor, and a fair-sized Office and +small private room on the second floor. Bertie's mother had "washed" +for both Honoria and Vivie in their respective dwellings for years, +and for David after he came to live at Fig Tree Court. A substantial +douceur to the "housekeeper" had facilitated this, for in the part +of the Temple where lies Fig Tree Court the residents do not call +their ministrants "laundresses," but "housekeepers." Curiously +enough the accounts were always tendered to the absent Vivie Warren, +but Mrs. Adams noted no discrepancy in their being paid by her son +or in an unmarried lady living in the Temple under the name of David +Williams. +</p> +<p> +Installed as clerk and advised by his employer to court one of the +fair daughters of the housekeeper (Mrs. Laidly) with a view to +marriage and settling down in premises hard-by, Bertie Adams (who +like David had spent his time well between 1901 and 1905 and was now +an accomplished and serviceable barrister's clerk) soon set to work +to chum up with other clerks in this clerical hive and get for his +master small briefs, small chances for defending undefended cases in +which hapless women were concerned. +</p> +<p> +But before we deal with the career of David at the Bar, which of +course did not properly commence—even as a brilliant junior—till +the early months of 1906, let us glance at the way in which he had +passed the intervening space of time between his return from Wales +in May, 1902, and the spending of his Long Vacation of 1905 as an +Esquire by the Common Law of England called to the Bar, and entitled +to wear a becoming grey wig and gown. +</p> +<p> +He had begun in 1900 by studying Latin, Norman French—so greatly +drawn on in law terms—and English History. In the summer of 1901, +by one of those subterfuges winked at then, he had obtained two +rooms, sublet to him by a member of the Inn, in Fig Tree Court, +Inner Temple. In the autumn of that year, having made sure of his +parentage and his finance, he had approached the necessary +authorities with a view to his being admitted a member of the Inner +Temple, which meant filling up a form of declaration that he, David +Vavasour Williams, of Pontystrad, Glamorgan, a British subject, aged +twenty-four, son of the Revd. Howel Vaughan Williams, Clerk in Holy +Orders, of Pontystrad in the County of Glamorgan, was desirous of +being admitted a Student of the Honourable Society of the Inner +Temple for the purpose of being called to the Bar or of practising +under the Bar; and that he would not either directly or indirectly +apply for or take out any certificate to practise directly or +indirectly as a Pleader, Conveyancer or Draftsman in Equity without +the special permission of the Masters of the Bench of the said +Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. +</p> +<p> +Further, David declared with less assurance but perhaps within the +four corners of the bare truth that he had not acted directly or +indirectly in the capacity of a Solicitor, Attorney-at-law, Writer +to the Signet or in about thirteen other specified legal positions; +that he was not a Chartered, Incorporated or Professional Accountant +("A good job we changed the device of the Firm," he thought), a Land +Agent, a Surveyor, Patent Agent, Consulting Engineer, or even as a +clerk to any such officer. Which made him rather shivery about what +he <i>had</i> been doing for <i>Fraser and Warren</i>, but there was little +risk that any one would find out—And finally he declared that he +was not in Trade or an undischarged bankrupt. +</p> +<p> +The next and most difficult step was to obtain two separate +Certificates from two separate barristers each of five years' +standing, to the effect that he was what he stated himself to be. +This required much thinking out, and was one of the reasons why he +did not go down as promised and spend his Christmas and New Year +with his father. +</p> +<p> +Instead he wrote to Pontystrad explaining how important it was he +should get admitted as a Student in time to commence work in Hilary +term. Did his father know any such luminary of the law or any two +such luminaries? His father regretted that he only knew of one such +barrister of over five years' standing: the distinguished son of an +old Cambridge chum. To him he wrote, venturing to recall himself, +the more eagerly since this son of an old friend was himself a +Welshman and already distinguished by his having entered Parliament, +served with the Welsh Party, written a book on Welsh history, and +married a lady of considerable wealth. +</p> +<p> +Next David applied to Rossiter with the result—as we have +seen—that he got an introduction to Mr. Stansfield. So he obtained +from Mr. Price and Mr. Stansfield the two certificates to the effect +that "David Vavasour Williams has been introduced to me by letter of +introduction from the Revd. Howel Williams" (or "Professor Michael +Rossiter, F.R.S.") "and has been seen by me; and that I, Mark +Stansfield, Barrister-at-law, King's Counsel" (or "John Price, +Barrister-at-law, Member of Parliament") "believe the said David +Vavasour Williams to be a gentleman of respectability and a proper +person to be admitted a Student of the Honourable Society of the +Inner Temple with a view to being called to the Bar." +</p> +<p> +Copies of the letters of introduction accompanied the two +certificates. These of course were not obtained without several +visits to the unsuspicious guarantors; or at least one to Mr. Price +in Paper Buildings, for whom it was enough that David claimed to be +Welsh and showed a very keen interest in the Welsh tongue and its +Indo-German affinities, and three or four to Mr. Mark Stansfield, +K.C., one of the nicest, kindliest and most learned persons David +had ever met, whom he grieved deeply at deceiving. Stansfield had a +high opinion of Rossiter. The fact that he recommended David was +quite sufficient to secure his "guarantee." But apart from that, he +felt himself greatly drawn towards this rather shy, grave, +nice-looking young fellow with the steady eyes and the keen +intelligence. He had him to dine and to lunch; drew him out—as far +as David thought it prudent to go—and was surprised David had never +been to a University ("Only to Malvern—and then I studied with an +architect in London—Who? Mr. Praed, A.R.A.—but then I travelled +for a bit, and after that I felt more than ever I wanted to go in +for the Bar"—said David, with a charming smile which lit up his +young face ordinarily so staid). Stansfield consented that David +should come and read with him, and in many ways facilitated his +progress so materially and so kindly that more than once the +compunctious young Welshman thought of discarding the impersonation; +and might have done so had not this most estimable Stansfield died +of pneumonia in the last year of David's studenthood. +</p> +<p> +Of course the preliminary examination was easily and quickly passed. +David translated his bit of Caesar's commentaries, answered +brilliantly the questions about Alfred the Great, the Anglo-Norman +kings, the Constitutions of Clarendon, Magna Charta and Mortmain, +Henry the Eighth and the Reformation, the Civil War and +Protectorate of Cromwell, the Bill of Rights and the Holy Alliance. +He paid his fees and his "caution" money; he ate the requisite six +dinners—or more, as he found them excellent and convenient—in each +term, attended all the lectures that interested him, and passed the +subsidiary examinations on them with fair or even high credit; and +finally got through his "Call-to-the-Bar" examination with tolerable +success; at any rate he passed. A friend of the deceased +Stansfield—whose death was always one of the scars in Vivie's +memory—introduced him to one of the Masters of the Bench who signed +his "call" papers. He once more made a declaration to the effect +that he was not a person in Holy Orders, that he was not a +Solicitor, Attorney-at-law, Writer to the Signet, etc., etc., a +Chartered, Incorporated or Professional Accountant; and again that +if called to the Bar, he would never become a member of the abhorred +professions over and over again enumerated; and was duly warned that +without special permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner +Temple he might not practise "under the Bar"—whatever that may mean +(I dare say it is some low-down procedure, only allowed in times of +scarcity). Then after having his name "screened" for twelve days in +all the Halls of the four Inns, and going in fear and trembling that +some one might turn up and object, he finally received his call to +the Bar on April 22 (if April 22 in that year was on a Sunday, then +on the following Monday) and was "called" at the Term Dinner where +he took wine with the Masters. He remembered seeing present at the +great table on the dais, besides the usual red-faced generals and +whiskered admirals, simpering statesmen, and his dearly loved +friend, Michael Rossiter—representing Science,—a more sinister +face. This was the well-known philanthropist and race-horse breeder, +Sir George Crofts, Bart., M.P. for a Norfolk borough. Their eyes +met, curiously interlocked for a moment. Sir George wondered to +himself where the dooce he had seen that, type of face before, those +grey eyes with the dark lashes. "Gad! he reminds me of Kitty Warren! +Well, I'll be damned" (he was eventually) "I wonder whether the old +gal had a son as well as that spitfire Vivie?!" +</p> +<p> +Michael whispered a word or two to one of the Masters, and David was +presently summoned to attend the Benchers and their distinguished +guests in the inner chamber to which they withdrew for wine and +dessert. Rossiter made room for him, and he had to drink a glass of +port with the Benchers. Every one was very gracious. Rossiter said: +"I was a sort of godfather to him, don't you know. David! you must +do me credit and make haste to take silk and become a Judge." Crofts +moved from where he sat next to a Bishop. ("Damn it all! I like +bein' respectable, but why <i>will</i> they always put me next a Bishop +or an Archdeacon? It spoils all my best stories.") He came +over—dragging his chair—to Rossiter and said "I say! Will you +introduce me to our young friend here?" He was duly introduced. +"H'm, Williams? <i>That</i> doesn't tell me much. But somehow your face +reminds me awfully of—of—some one I used to know. J'ever have a +sister?" "No," said David. +</p> +<p> +Crofts, he noticed, had aged very much in the intervening eight +years. He must now be no more than—58? But he had become very stout +and obviously suffered from blood pressure without knowing it. He +moved away a little, and David heard him talking to a Master about +Lady Crofts, who had come up to London for the season and how they +were both very anxious about his boy—"Yes, he had two children, a +boy and a girl, bless 'em—The boy had been ill with measles and +wasn't makin' quite the quick recovery they expected. What an +anxiety children were, weren't they? Though we wouldn't be without +'em, would we?" The Bencher assented out of civility, though as a +matter of fact he was an old bachelor and detested children or +anything younger than twenty-one. +</p> +<p> +David after his call was presented with a bill to pay of £99. 10<i>s.</i> +His father hearing of this, insisted on sending him a cheque for +£150 out of his savings, adding he should be deeply hurt if it was +not accepted and no more said about it. How soon was David coming +down to see South Wales once more gloriously clothed with spring? +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +[Much of this review of the years between 1901 and 1905, many of +these sweet remembrances are being taken from Vivie's brain as she +lies on a hard bed in 1913, musing over the past days when, despite +occasional frights and anxieties, she was transcendently happy. Oh +"Sorrow's Crown of Sorrow, the remembering happier days!" She +recalled the articles she used to write from the Common Room or +Library of the Inn; how well they were received and paid for by the +editors of daily and weekly journals; what a lark they were, when +for instance she would raise a debate in the <i>Saturday Review</i>: +"Should Women be admitted to the Bar?" Or an appeal in the <i>Daily +News</i> to do away with the Disabilities of Women. How poor +Stansfield, before he died, said he had never met any young fellow +with a tenderer heart for women, and advised him to marry whilst he +still had youth and fire. She remembered David's social success at +the great houses in the West End. How he might have gone out into +Society and shone more, much more, only he had to consider prudence +and expense; the curious women who fell in love with him, and whom +he had gently, tactfully to keep at arm's length. She remembered the +eager discussions in the Temple Debating Society, or at the "Moots" +of Gray's Inn, her successes there as an orator and a close +reasoner; how boy students formed ardent friendships for her and +prophesied her future success in Parliament, would have her promise +to take them into the Cabinet which David was to form when an +electorate swept him into power and sent the antiquated old rotters +of that day into the limbo of deserved occlusion. +</p> +<p> +She saw and heard once more the amused delight of Honoria Armstrong +over her success, and the latent jealousy of the uxorious Colonel +Armstrong if she came too often to see Honoria in Sloane Street: And +she remembered—Oh God! <i>How</i> she remembered—the close association +in those three priceless years with her "godfather" Michael +Rossiter; Rossiter who shaped her mind—it would never take a +different turn—who was patient with her stupidity and petulance; an +elder brother, a robust yet tactful chaffer; a banisher of too much +sensibility, a constant encouragement to effort and success. +Rossiter, she knew, with her woman's instinct, was innocently in +love with her, but believed all the time he was satisfying his +craving for a son to train, a disciple who might succeed him: for he +still believed that David when he had been called to the Bar and had +flirted awhile with Themis, would yet turn his great and growing +abilities to the service of Science. +</p> +<p> +And Mrs. Rossiter in those times: Vivie smiled at the thought of her +undefined jealousy. She was anxious to be civil to a young man of +whom Michael thought so highly. She sympathized with his regret that +they had no children, but why could he not take up with one of her +cousin Bennet's boys from Manchester, or Sophy's son from +Northallerton, or one of his own brother's or sister's children? How +on earth did he become acquainted with this young man from South +Wales? But she was determined not to be separated in any way from +her husband, and so she sat with them as often and as long as she +could in the library. The studio-laboratory she could not stand with +its horrid smell of chemicals; she also dreaded vaguely that +vivisection went on there—Michael of course had a license, though +he was far too tender-hearted to torture sentient creatures. Still +he did odd things with frogs and rats and goats and monkeys; and her +dread was that she might one day burst in on one of these sacrifices +to science and see a transformed Michael, blood-stained, wielding a +knife and dangerous if interrupted in his pursuit of a discovery. +</p> +<p> +But as the long talks and conferences of the two friends—really not +so far separated in age as one of them thought—generally took place +in the library, she assisted at a large proportion of them. Rossiter +would not have had it otherwise, though to David she was at times +excessively irksome. Her husband had long viewed her as a lay figure +on these occasions. He rarely replied to her flat remarks, her +inconsequent platitudes, her yawns and quite transparent signals +that it was time for the visitor to go. Sometimes David took her +hints and left: he had no business to make himself a bore to any +one. Sometimes however Michael at last roused to consciousness of +the fretful little presence would say "What? Sweety? <i>You</i> still up. +Trot off to bed, my poppet, or you'll lose the roses in your +cheeks." +</p> +<p> +The roses in Mrs. Rossiter's cheeks at that time were beginning to +be a trifle eczematous and of a fixed quality. Nevertheless, though +she tossed her head a little as she took up her "work" and swished +out of the great heavy door—which David opened—she was pleased to +think that Michael cared for her complexion and was solicitous about +her rest. +</p> +<p> +And Vivie's eyes swam a little as she thought about the death of +Mark Stansfield, and the genuine tears that flowed down the cheeks +of his pupils when they learnt one raw February morning from the +housekeeper of his chambers that he had died at daybreak. "A better +man never lived" they agreed. And they were right. +</p> +<p> +And she smiled again as she thought of some amongst those pupils, +the young dogs of those days, the lovers of actresses of the minor +order—ballet girls, it might have been; of the larks that went on +sometimes within and without the staid precincts of the Temple. +Harmless larks they were; but such as she had to withdraw from +discreetly. She played lawn tennis with them, she fenced +surprisingly well; but she had refused to join the "Devil's +Own"—the Inns of Court Volunteers, for prudent reasons; and though +it had leaked out that she was a good swimmer—that tiresome +impulsive Honoria had spread it abroad—she resolutely declined to +give proofs of her prowess in swimming baths. Her associates were +not so young as the undergraduates she had met in Newnham days: they +were an average ten years older. Their language at times made David +blush, but they had more discretion and reserve than the University +student, and they respected his desire to withdraw himself into +himself occasionally, and to abstain from their noisier amusements +without questioning his camaraderie. +</p> +<p> +At this point in her smiling reminiscences, the wardress clanged +open the door and slammed down a mug of cocoa and a slab of brown +bread; and rapped out some orders in such a martinet utterance that +they were difficult to understand. (Don't be alarmed! She isn't +about to be executed for having deceived the Benchers of the Inner +Temple in 1905; she is only in prison for a suffragist offence).] +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +I can't wind up this chapter somehow without more or less finishing +the story of Beryl Claridge. She has been a source of anxiety to my +wife—who has read these chapters one by one as they left my +typewriter. "Was it wise to bring her in?" "Well, but my dear, she +was rather a common type of the New Woman in the early nineteen +hundreds." "Yes—but—" +</p> +<p> +Of course the latent anxiety was that she might end up respectably. +And so she did. In 1906, the first Mrs. Storrington died at Ware +(Ware was where the architect husband had his legitimate home). She +had long been ill, increasingly ill of some terrible form of anæmia +which had followed the birth of her fourth child. She slowly faded +away, poor thing; and about the time David was returning from a +triumphant Christmas and New Year at Pontystrad—the Curate and his +young wife had made a most delightful partie carrée and David had +kissed the very slightly protesting Bridget under the native +mistletoe—Mrs. Storrington breathed her last, while her faithless +yet long forgiven Francis knelt by her bedside in agonies of +unavailing grief. +</p> +<p> +Well: she died and was buried, and her four children, ranging from +nine to sixteen, sobbed very much and mourned for darling Mummie +without the slightest suspicion ("'twas better so," she had always +thought) that Dad had poisoned her wells of happiness ever since he +took up with that minx at Cambridge in the very year in which +long-legged Claribel was born. A few months after the poor lady was +consigned (under a really lovely cenotaph designed by her husband) +to Ware Churchyard—no, it was to Ware cemetery; Dad introduced them +all to a very sprightly and good-looking widow, Mrs. Claridge, who +had also been bereaved years ago and left with two perfect ducks of +children, four and five years old, to whom Claribel took +instinctively (the elder ones sniffed a little, disliking "kids"). +</p> +<p> +Then about Christmas time, 1906, Dad told them that Mrs. Claridge +was going to make him happy by coming to tend his motherless +children; was going to be his wife. Francis, the eldest, stomped +about the garden at Ware and swore he would go back to Rugby during +the holidays; Elspeth, the gaunt girl of fourteen and Agnes, a +dreamy and endearing child, cried themselves to sleep in each +other's arms. Claribel, however, quite approved. And whether they +liked it or not, in January, 1907, the marriage took place—at the +Registrar's—and Beryl came to live for a short time at Ware, +bringing ducksome Margery and adorable Podge. In less than a month +Beryl had won over all her step-children, except Francis, who held +out till Easter, but was reduced to allegiance by the hampers she +sent to him at Rugby—; in three months they had all moved to a much +sweller house on the Chelsea Embankment. Father—Beryl voted "Dad" a +little lower-middle class—Father had somehow become connected with +some great business establishment of which Mother was the head. +Together they were making pots of money. Francis would go to +Sandhurst, Elspeth to a finishing school in Paris (her ambition), +and the others would spend the fine months of the year rollicking +with Margery and Podge on the Sussex coast. +</p> +<p> +In 1907, also, they became aware that their new mother was not alone +in the world. A stately lady whose eyes seemed once to have done a +deal of weeping (they were destined alas! to do much more, for three +of her gallant, handsome sons were killed in the War, and <i>that</i> +finally killed the poor old Dean of Thetford), who wore a graceful +Spanish mantilla of black lace when in draughty places, came to see +them after they had moved to Garden Corner on the Chelsea +Embankment. She turned out to be the mother of Mrs. Beryl and was +quite inclined to be their grandmother as well as Margery's and +Podge's. But her husband the Dean was—it appeared—too great an +invalid to come up to town. +</p> +<p> +The second Mrs. Storrington, who was a woman of boundless energy, +could work all day with secretaries, and could dance all night, gave +brilliant parties in the season at her large Chelsea house. But she +never invited to them Mr. David Vavasour Williams, that rising young +barrister who had become so famous as a pleader of the causes of +friendless women. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER X +</h2> +<h3> + THE SHILLITO CASE +</h3> +<p> +In the autumn of 1905, increase among women of the idea of full +citizenship made rapid strides. There was a feeling in the air that +Balfour must soon resign or go to the country, that a Liberal +Ministry would succeed to power, and that being Liberal it could +scarcely, in reason or with any logic, refuse to enlarge the +franchise to the advantage of the female half of the community. +These idealizers of the Liberal Party, which had really definitely +ceased to be Liberal in 1894, had a rude awakening. Annie Kenney and +Christabel Pankhurst dared to act as if they were men, and asked Sir +Edward Grey at his Manchester meeting in October, 1905, if a Liberal +Administration would give Votes to Women, should it be placed in +power at the next Election. Answer they had none, from the platform; +but the male audience rose in their hundreds, struck these audacious +hussies in the face, scratched and slapped them (this was the rôle +of the boys), and hustled them out into the street, bleeding and +dishevelled. Here for attempting to explain the causes of their +expulsion they were arrested by the police, and the following +morning were sent to prison, having declined to pay the fines +illegally imposed on them. +</p> +<p> +This incident made a great impression on the newspaper-reading +public, because at that time the Press boycott on the Woman Suffrage +movement had not set in. It gave David much to think about, and he +found Honoria Fraser and several of his men and women friends had +joined the Woman Suffrage movement and were determined that the new +Liberal Government should not shirk the issue; an issue on which +many members of Parliament had been returned as acquiescent in the +principle. On that account they had received the whole-hearted +support of many, women owing allegiance to the Liberal Party. +</p> +<p> +At first of course the new Government was too busy in allotting the +loaves and fishes of Office and in handing out the peerages, +baronetcies, knighthoods, Governorships, private secretaryships, and +promotions among the civil servants which had—not to put too fine a +point on it—been purchased by large and small contributions to the +Party Chest. +</p> +<p> +[Such a procedure seems to be inseparable from our present Party +system. In this respect the Conservatives are no better than the +Liberals; and it is always possible that in a different way the +Labour Party when It comes into power will be similarly inclined to +reward those who have furnished the sinews of war. The House of +Commons in the last Act which revised the conditions of elections of +members of Parliament was careful to leave open many avenues along +which Money might attain to the heart of things.] +</p> +<p> +But at length all such matters were settled, and the Cabinet was +free to face the steady demand of the women leaders of the +Suffrage movement; a demand that at any rate <i>some</i> measure of +enfranchisement should be granted to the women of the British Isles +without delay. +</p> +<p> +We all know how this demand was received by the leading men of the +Liberal Party and by the more prominent Liberals among their +supporters in the House; with evasions, silences, sneers, angry +refusals, hasty promises given to-day (when Ministers were +frightened) and broken to-morrow; with a whole series of +discreditable tongue-in-the-cheek tricks of Parliamentary +procedure; till at last the onlooker must have wondered at and felt +grateful for our British phlegm; surprised that so little actual +harm was done (except to the bodies of the Suffragists), that no +Home Secretary or Police Inspector or magistrate, no flippant +talker-out of would-be-serious Franchise Bills was assassinated, +trounced, tarred and feathered, kidnapped, nose-tweaked, or even +mud-bespattered. (I am reproducing here the growing comprehension of +the problem as it shaped in Vivie's mind, under the hat and +waistcoat of David Williams.) +</p> +<p> +Honoria, faithful to her old resolve, continued to devote the +greater part of the Two Thousand a year she had set aside for the +Woman's Cause to financing the new Suffrage movement; and +incidentally she brought grist to David's mill by recommending him +as Counsel to many women in distress, arrested Suffragists. In 1906, +1907 and 1908 he made himself increasingly famous by his pleadings +in court on behalf of women who with dauntless courage and at the +cost of much bodily pain and even at the risk of death had forcibly +called attention to this grave defect in the British polity, the +withholding of the ordinary rights of tax-paying citizens from adult +women. +</p> +<p> +Where the Suffragist was poor he asked no fee, or a small fee was +paid by some Suffragist Association. But he gained much renown over +his advocacy; he became quite a well-known personality outside as +well as inside the Law Courts and Police-stations by 1908. His +pleadings were sometimes so moving, so passionate that—<i>teste</i> +Mrs. Pankhurst—"burly policemen in court had tears trickling down +their faces" as he described the courage, the flawless private +lives, the selfless devotion to a noble cause of these women +agitating for the rights of their sex—rich and poor, old and young. +Juries flinched from the verdict which some bitter-faced judge +enjoined; magistrates swerved from executing the secret orders of +the Home Office; policemen—again—for they are most of them decent +fellows—resigned their positions in the Force, sooner than carry +out the draconian policy of the Home Secretary. +</p> +<p> +But of course concurrently he lost many a friend and friendship in +the Inns of Court. There were even growls that he should be +disbarred—after this espousal of the Suffrage cause had been made +manifest for three years. He might have been, but that he had other +compeers, below and above his abilities and position; advocates like +Lord Robert Brinsley, the famous son of the Marquis of Wiltshire. If +Williams was to be disbarred, why they would have to take the same +course with a Brinsley who also defended women law-breakers, +fighting for their constitutional rights. And of course such a +procedure as <i>that</i> was unthinkable. Yet where a Brinsley sailed +unhampered, undangered over these troubled waters, poor David often +came near to crashing on the rocks. "To hear the fellow talk," said +one angry K.C. in the Library at the Inner Temple, "you'd think he +was a woman himself!" "Egad" said his brother K.C.—yes, he +really <i>did</i> say "Egad," the oath still lingers in the Inns of +Court—"Egad, he looks like one. No hair on his face and I'll lay he +doesn't shave." +</p> +<p> +There were of course other briefs he held, for payment or for love +of justice; young women who had killed their babies (as to these he +was far from sentimental; he only defended where the woman had any +claim to sympathy or mitigation of the unreal death sentence); +breach of promise actions where the woman had been grossly wronged; +affiliation cases in high life—or the nearest to high life that +makes a claim on the man for his fatherhood. He was a deadly +prosecutor in cases where women had been robbed by their male +trustees, or injured in any other way wherein, in those days, the +woman was at a disadvantage and the marriage laws were unjust. +</p> +<p> +One way and another, with the zealous aid and business-like care of +his interests by his clerk, Albert Adams, David must have earned +between 1906 and the autumn of 1908, an average Three hundred a +year. As he paid Adams £150 a year and allowed him certain +perquisites, and lived within his own fixed income (from his annuity +and investments) of £290 a year, this meant a profit of about £500. +This was raised at a leap to £1,500 by the fees and the special gift +he received for defending Lady Shillito. +</p> +<p> +The "Shillito Case," an indictment for murder, was tried at the +winter assize of the North-eastern Circuit, January or February, +1909. I dare say you have forgotten all about it now: Lady Shillito +changed her name, married again (eventually), and was lost in the +crowd—she may even, eleven years afterwards, be reading this novel +at the riper age of forty and be startled out of her well-fed apathy +by the revival of acute memories. +</p> +<p> +There have been not a few similar cases before and since of +comparatively young, beautiful women murdering their elderly, +objectionable husbands in a clever cattish way, and of course +getting off through lack of evidence or with a short term of +imprisonment. (They were always treated in prison far more tenderly +than were Suffragettes, and the average wardress adored them and +obtained for them many little alleviations of their lot before the +Home Secretary gave way and released them.) Nowadays the War and the +pressing necessities of life, the coal famine, the milk famine, the +railway strikes have robbed such cases of all or nearly all their +interest. I could quite believe that women in similar circumstances +continue to murder their elderly husbands, and the doctors and +coroners and relations on "his" side tacitly agree not to raise a +fuss in the presence of much graver subjects of apprehension. +</p> +<p> +I can also understand why these beautiful-women-elderly-husband +cases scarcely starred our Island story prior to the 'fifties of +the last century. It was only when chemical analysis had approached +its present standard of perfection that the presence of the more +subtle poisons could be detected in the stomach and intestines, and +that the young and beautiful wife could be charged with and found +guilty of the deed by the damning evidence of an analytical chemist. +</p> +<p> +It was Rossiter who secured for David the conduct of Lady Shillito's +defence. Arbella <a href="#note-2" name="noteref-2"><small>[2]</small></a> Shillito was his second cousin, a Rossiter by +birth, and would fain have married Michael herself, only that he was +not at that time thinking of marriage, and when his thoughts turned +that way—the very day after, as it were—he met Linda Bennet and +her thousands a year. But he retained a half humorous liking for +this handsome young woman. +</p> +<p> +Arbella, disappointed over Michael—though she was a mere slip of a +girl at the time—next decided that she must marry money. When she +was twenty-one she met Grimthorpe Shillito, an immensely rich man of +Newcastle-on-Tyne, whose foundries poured out big guns and many +other things made of iron and steel combined with acids and brains. +Grimthorpe was a curious-looking person, even at forty; in +appearance a mixture of Julius Caesar, several unpleasant-featured +Doges of Venice, and Voltaire in middle age. His looks were not +entirely his fault and doubtless acquired for him, in his moral +character, a worse definition than he deserved. He had travelled +much in his pursuit of metallurgy and chemistry; at forty he saw +rising before him the prospect of a peerage, due either for his +extraordinary discoveries and inventions in our use of steel, or +easily purchasable out of his immense wealth. What is the good of a +peerage if it ends with your life? He was not without his vanities, +though one of the most cynical men of his cynical period. +</p> +<p> +He arrived therefore at the decision that he would marry some young +and buxom creature of decent birth and fit in appearance to be a +peeress, and decided on Arbella Rossiter. +</p> +<p> +After a gulp or two and several <i>moues</i> behind his back, she +accepted him. A brilliant marriage ceremony followed, conducted by a +Bishop and an Archdeacon. And then Arbella was carried off to live +in a Bluebeard's Castle he possessed on the Northumbrian coast. +</p> +<p> +In the three years following her marriage she gave him two boys, +with which he was content, especially as his own health began to +fail a little just then. At the end of four years of marriage with +this cynical, Italianate tyrant, Arbella got very sick of him and +thought more and more tenderly of a certain subaltern in the Cavalry +whom she had once declined to marry on £500 a year. This subaltern +had returned from the South African war, a Colonel and still +extremely good-looking. They had met again at a garden party and +fallen once more deeply in love. If only her tiresome old Borgia +would die—was the thought that came too often into the mind of +Arbella, now entering the "thirties" of life, and with the least +possible misgiving of her Colonel's constancy if she became +presently "<i>un peu trop mûre</i>." +</p> +<p> +She noticed at this time that Grimthorpe Shillito went on several +occasions to London to consult a specialist. He complained of +indigestion, was rather thin, and balder than ever, and difficult to +please in his food and appetite. +</p> +<p> +This was her opportunity. She would have said, had she been +convicted, that he had driven her to it by his cruelties: that's as +may be.—She consulted the family doctor who attended to the +household of Bluebeard's Castle; suggested that Sir Grimthorpe (they +had just knighted him) might be the better for a strychnine tonic; +she had read somewhere that strychnine did wonders for middle-aged +men who had led rather a rackety life in their early manhood. +</p> +<p> +The family doctor who disliked her and suspected her, as you or I +wouldn't have done, but doctors think of everything, feigned to +agree; and supplied her with little phials of <i>aqua distillata</i> +flavoured with quinine. He himself was puzzled over Sir Grimthorpe's +condition but was a little offended at not being personally +consulted. +</p> +<p> +The fact was that Sir G. had a very poor opinion of his abilities in +diagnosis and being naturally secretive and generally cussed, +preferred consulting a London specialist. He wasn't then Sir +Grimthorpe, the specialist wasn't very certain that it <i>was</i> cancer +on the liver, and amid his multitude of consulters did not, unless +aroused, remember very clearly the case of a Mr. Shillito from +somewhere up in the North. +</p> +<p> +But Shillito pondered gravely over the specialist's carefully +guarded phrases about "growths, possibly malign, but at the same +time—difficult to be sure quite so soon—perhaps harmless, might of +course be merely severe suppressed jaundice." When the pains +began—he hated the idea of operations, and knew that any operation +on the liver only at best staved off the dread, inevitable end for a +year or a few months—When the pains began, he had grown utterly +tired of life; so he compounded a subtle poison—he was a great +chemist and had—only his wife knew not of this—a cabinet which +contained a variety of mineral, vegetable, and acid poisons; and +kept the draught in a secret locker in his bedroom. Meantime +Arbella, who after all was human, was tortured at the sight of his +tortures. She felt she must end it, or her nerves would give way. +She trebled, she quintupled the dose of <i>aqua distillata</i> embittered +with quinine. One night when the night nurse was sleeping ("resting +her eyes," she called it) the wretched man stole from his bed to +the night nursery and kissed both his boys. He then swiftly took the +phial from its hiding place and drank the contents and died in one +ghastly minute. +</p> +<p> +When the night nurse awoke he was crisped in a horrible <i>rigor</i>. On +the night table was the phial with the remains of the draught. She +had noticed in the last day or two Lady Shillito fussing a good deal +about the sick man, pressing on him doses of a colourless medicine. +<i>What if she had stolen in while the nurse was asleep and placed a +finally fatal draught by the bedside?</i> From that she proceeded to +argue (when she had leisure to think it out) that she <i>hadn't</i> been +to sleep, had merely been resting her eyes. And she was now sure +that whilst she had closed those orbs she had heard—as indeed she +had, only it was Sir Grimthorpe himself—some one stealing into the +room. +</p> +<p> +She communicated her suspicions to the doctor. The latter knew his +patient had not died of anything he had prescribed, but concluded +that Lady Shillito, wishing to be through with the business, had +prepared a fulminating dose obtained elsewhere; and insisted on +autopsy with a colleague, to whom he more than hinted his +suspicions. Together they found the strychnine they were looking for—not +very much, but the proportion that was combined by Shillito +with less traceable drugs to make the death process more rapid—and +quite overlooked the signs of cancer in the liver. +</p> +<p> +The outcome was that Lady Shillito at the inquest found herself "in +a very unpleasant position" and was placed under arrest, and later +charged with the murder of her husband. +</p> +<p> +Believing herself guilty she summoned all her resolution to her aid, +admitted nothing, appealed to Michael Rossiter and others for +advice. Thus David was drawn into the business. +</p> +<p> +[But this doesn't sound very credible, you will say. "If the +husband felt he could not face the agony of death by cancer, why +didn't he leave a note saying so, and every one would have +understood and been quite 'nice' about it?" I really can't say. +Perhaps he wished to leave trouble for her behind him; perhaps he +divined the reason why she thought a day nurse unnecessary, and +insisted on giving him his day medicines with her own fair hands. +Perhaps he hoped for an open verdict. Perhaps he wasn't quite right +in his mind. I have told you the story as I remember it and my +memory is not perfect. Personally I've always been a bit sorry for +Grimthorpe. It is quite possible that all those hints as to his +"queerness" were invented by his wife to excuse herself. I only know +that Science benefited greatly from his researches, and that he +bequeathed some priceless collections to both branches of the +British Museum. Some one once told me he had a heart somewhere and +had loved intensely a sister much younger than himself and had only +begun to be "queer" and secretive and bald after her premature +death. I think also that in the last year of his life he was greatly +embittered at not getting the expected peerage; after the trouble +and disagreeableness he had gone through to obtain heirs for this +distinction this poor little attempt at immortality which it is in +the power of a Prime Minister to bestow.] +</p> +<p> +The Grand Jury returned a true bill against Lady Shillito. David had +been studying the case from the morrow of the inquest, that is as +soon as Rossiter had learnt of the coming trouble. The latter though +he regarded Cousin Arbella as a rather amusing minx, an interesting +type in modern psychology (though really her type is as old +as—say—the Hallstadt period) had no wish to see her convicted of +murder. Furthermore he was getting so increasingly interested in +this clever David Williams that he would have liked to make his +fortune by helping him to a sensational success as a pleader, to +one of those cases which if successfully conducted mark out a path +to the Bench. So he insisted that David Williams be briefed for the +defence, and well fee'ed, in order that he might be able to devote +all his time to the investigation of the mystery. David had an +uphill task. He went down to the North in November, 1908, conferred +with Lady Shillito's solicitors, and at great length with the +curiously calm, ironly-resolved Lady Shillito herself. The evidence +was too much against her for him to prevent her being committed for +trial and lodged in reasonably comfortable quarters in Newcastle +jail, or for the Grand Jury to find no true bill of indictment. But +between these stages in the process and the actual trial for murder +in February, 1909, David worked hard and accumulated conclusive +evidence (with Rossiter's help) to prove his client's innocence of +the deed of which she believed herself guilty. To punish her as she +deserved he allowed her to think herself guilty till his defence of +her began. +</p> +<p> +The prospect of a death on the gallows did not perturb Lady Shillito +in the least. She was perfectly certain that if found guilty her +beauty and station in life would avail to have the death penalty +commuted to a term of imprisonment which she would spend in the +Infirmary. Still, that would ruin her life pretty conclusively. She +would issue from prison a broken woman, whom in spite of her +wealth—if she retained any—no impossibly-faithful Colonel would +marry at the age of forty-five or fifty. So she followed the opening +hours of the trial with a dry mouth. +</p> +<p> +With the help of Rossiter and of many and minute researches David +got on the track of the consultation in Harley Street, the warning +given of the possible cancer. He found in Sir Grimthorpe's +laboratory sufficient strychnine to kill an army. He was privately +informed by the family doctor (who didn't want to press matters to +a tragedy) that although he fully believed Arbella capable of the +deed, she certainly had—so far as the doctor's prescriptions were +concerned—obtained nothing from him which could have killed her +husband, even if she had centupled the dose. +</p> +<p> +Lady Shillito appeared in the dock dressed as much as possible like +Mary, Queen of Scots on her trial; and was attended by a hospital +nurse with restoratives and carminatives. The Jury retired for a +quarter of an hour only, and returned a verdict of <i>Not Guilty</i>. The +Court was rent with applause, and the Judge commented very severely +on such a breach of decorum, apparently unknown to him in previous +annals of our courts of justice. Lady Shillito fainted and the nurse +fussed, and the Judge in his private room sent for Mr. Williams and +complimented him handsomely on his magnificent conduct of the case. +"Of course she <i>meant</i> to poison him; but I quite agree with the +Jury, she didn't. He saved her the trouble. Now I suppose she'll +marry again. Well! I pity her next husband. Come and have lunch with +me." +</p> +<p> +And in the course of the meal, His Ludship spoke warmly to Mr. +Williams of the bright prospects that lay before him if he would +drop those foolish Suffragette cases. +</p> +<p> +David returned to London with Rossiter and remained silent all the +way. His companion believed him to be very tired, and refrained from +provoking conversation, but surrounded him with a quiet, fatherly +care. Arrived at King's Cross Rossiter said: "Don't go on to your +chambers. My motor's here. It can take your luggage on with mine to +Portland Place. You can have a wash and a rest and a talk when +you're rested; and after we've dined and talked the motor shall come +round and take you back to Fig Tree Court." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Rossiter was there to greet them, and whilst David went to wash +and rest and prepare himself for dinner, she chirrupped over her +big husband, and asked endless and sometimes pointless questions +about the trial and the verdict. "Did Michael believe she really +<i>had</i> done it? She, for one, could believe anything about a woman +who obviously dyed her hair and improved her eyebrows. (Of course +Michael said he didn't, or the questions, as to why, how, when might +have gone on for hours). Was Mr. Williams's defence of Arbella so +very wonderful as the evening papers said? Why could he not have +gone straight home and rested <i>there</i>? It would have been so much +nicer to have had Mike all to herself on his return, and not have +this tiresome, melancholy young man spending the evening with them +... really <i>some</i> people had <i>no</i> tact ... could <i>not</i> see they were +<i>de trop</i>. Why didn't Mr. Williams marry some nice girl and make a +home for himself? Not well enough off? Rubbish! She had known plenty +young couples marry and live very happily on Two hundred and fifty a +year, and Mr. Williams must surely be earning that? And if he must +always be dining out and spending the evening with other people, why +did he not make himself more 'general?' Not <i>always</i> be absorbed in +her husband. Of course she understood that while Arbella's fate hung +in the balance they had to study the case together and have long +confabulations over poisons in the Lab'rat'ry...!" (This last +detestable word was a great worry to Mrs. Rossiter. Sometimes she +succeeded in suppressing as many vowels as possible; at others she +felt impelled to give them fuller values and call it "labóratorry.") +And so on, for an hour or so till dinner was announced. +</p> +<p> +David sat silent all through this meal, under Mrs. Rossiter's +mixture of mirthless badinage: "We shall have you now proposing to +Lady Shillito after saving her life! I expect her husband won't have +altered his will as she didn't poison him, and she must have had +quite thirty thousand pounds settled on her.... They do say however +she's a great <i>flirt</i>..." Indiscreet questions: "How much will you +make out of this case? You don't know? I thought barristers had all +that marked on their briefs? And didn't she give you 'refreshers,' +as they call them, from time to time? What was it like seeing her in +prison? Was she handcuffed? Or chained? What did she wear when she +was tried?" And inconsequent remarks: "I remember my mamma—she died +when I was only fourteen—used to dream she was being tried for +murder. It distressed her very much because, as she said, she +couldn't have hurt a fly. What do <i>you</i> dream about, Mr. Williams? +Some pretty young lady, I'll be bound. I dream about such <i>funny</i> +things, but I nearly always forget what they were just as I am going +to tell Michael. But I did remember one dream just before Michael +went down to Newcastle to join you ... was it about mermaids? No. It +was about <i>you</i>—wasn't that funny? And you seemed to be dressed as +a mermaid—no, I suppose it must have been a mer<i>man</i>—and you were +trying to follow Michael up the rocks by walking on your tail; and +it seemed to hurt you awfully. Of course I know what it all came +from. Michael had wanted me to read Hans Andersen's fairy +stories—don't you think they're pretty? I do; but sometimes they +are about rather silly things, skewers and lucifer matches ... and I +had spent the afternoon at the Zoo. Michael's a fellow, of course, +and I use his ticket and always feel quite at home there ... and at +the Zoo that day I had seen one of the sea-lions trying to walk on +his tail.... Oh, <i>how</i> I laughed! But what made me associate the +sea-lion with you and mermaids, I cannot say, but then as poor papa +used to say, 'Dreams are funny things'..." +</p> +<p> +David's replies were hardly audible, and to his hostess's pressing +entreaties that he would try this dish or not pass that, he did not +answer at all. He felt, indeed, as though the muscles of his throat +would not let him swallow and if he opened his mouth wide enough to +utter a consecutive speech he would burst out crying. A great +desire—almost unknown to Vivie hitherto—seized him to get away +to some lonely spot and cry and cry, give full vent to some +unprecedented fit of hysteria. He could not look at Rossiter though +he knew that Michael's eyes were resting on his face, because if he +attempted to reply to the earnest gaze by a reassuring smile, the +lips would tremble and the tears would fall. +</p> +<p> +At last when the dessert was reached and the servants—<i>do</i> they +never feel telepathically at such moments that some one person +seated at the table, crumbling bread, wishes them miles away and +loathes their quiet ministrations?—the servants had withdrawn for a +brief respite till they reappeared with coffee, David rose to his +feet and stammered out something about not being well—would they +order the motor and let him go? And as he spoke, and tried to speak +in a level, "society" voice, his aching eyes saw the electric lamps, +the glinting silver, Mrs. Rossiter's pink, foolish face and crisp +little flaxen curls, Rossiter's bearded countenance with its honest, +concerned look all waltzing round and round in a dizzying whirl. He +made the usual vain clutches at unreal supports, and fainted into +Rossiter's arms. +</p> +<p> +The latter carried him with little effort into the cool library and +laid him down on a couch. Mrs. Rossiter followed, full of +exclamations, vain questions, and suggestions of inapplicable or +unsuitable remedies. Rossiter paid little heed to her, and proceeded +to remove David's collar and tie and open his shirt front in order +to place a hand over the heart. Suddenly he looked up and round on +his wife, and said with a peremptoriness which admitted of no +questioning: "Go and see that one of the spare bedrooms is got +ready, a fire lit, and so on. Get this done <i>quickly</i>, and meantime +leave him to me. I have got restoratives here close at hand." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Rossiter awed into silence summoned the housemaid and +parlour-maid and hindered them as much as possible in the task of +getting a room ready. +</p> +<p> +Meantime the sub-conscious David sighed a great deal and presently +wept a great deal in convulsive sobs, and then opened his eyes and +saw the tourbillon of whirling elements settling down into +Rossiter's grave, handsome face—yes, but a gravity somehow +interpenetrated by love, a love not ashamed to show itself—bending +over him with great concern. The secret had been guessed, was known; +and as they held each other with their eyes as though the world were +well lost in this discovery, their lips met in one kiss, and for a +minute Vivie's arms were round Michael's neck, for just one +unforgettable moment, a moment she felt she would cheerfully have +died to have lived through. +</p> +<p> +They were soon unlaced, for sharp little high-heeled footsteps on +the tiled passage and the clinketing of trinkets announced the +return of Mrs. Rossiter. +</p> +<p> +Vivie became David once more, but left behind her the glad tears of +relief that were coursing down David's cheeks. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Rossiter thought this was a very odd way for a barrister to +celebrate his winning a great case at the criminal courts, and +turned away in delicacy from the spectacle of a dishevelled and +obviously lachrymose young man with one arm dangling and the other +thrown negligently over the back of the leather couch. "Mr. +Williams's room is ready, Michael," she said primly. "All right, +dear; thank you. I will help Williams up to bed and have his luggage +sent up. He will be quite well to-morrow if he can get to sleep. You +needn't bother any more, dearie. Go into the drawing-room and I +will join you there presently." +</p> +<p> +Rossiter gave the rather shuddery, shivery, teeth-clacking David an +arm till he saw him into the bedroom and resting on the bedroom +sofa. Then he drew up a chair and said in low but distinct tones:— +</p> +<p> +"Look here. I know you want to make me an explanation. Well! It can +wait. A little more of this strain and you'll be having brain +fever. Sleep if you can, and eat all the breakfast Linda sends you +up in the morning. Get up at eleven to-morrow and if you are fit +then to drive out in my motor, return to your chambers. When you +have calmed down to a normal pulse, write to me all you want to +say. No one shall read it but me ... I'll burn it afterwards or +send it back to you under seal. But at the present time, it may be +easier for both of us if our communications are only written and +not spoken. We have both been tried rather high; and both of us are +human, however high-principled. If you write, register the +letter.... Good-night..." +</p> +<p> +This that follows is probably what Vivie wrote to Michael. He burnt +the long letter when he had finished reading it though he made +excerpts in a pocket-book. But I can more or less correctly surmise +how she would put her case; how she typed it herself in the solitude +of two evenings; how, indeed, her nervous break-down was made the +reason for fending off all clients and denying herself to all +callers. +</p> +<p> +"I am not David Vavasour Williams. I am Vivien Warren, the daughter +of a woman who runs a series of disreputable Private Hotels on the +Continent. I had no avowed father, nor had my mother, who likewise +was illegitimate. She was probably the daughter of a Lieutenant +Warren who was killed in the Crimea, and <i>her</i> mother's name was +Vavasour. My grandmother was probably—I can only deal with +probabilities and possibilities in this undocumented past—a Welsh +woman of Cardiff, and I should not be surprised if I were a sort of +cousin of the man I am personating. +</p> +<p> +"He was the ne'er-do-weel, only son of a Welsh vicar, a pupil of +Praed's, who went out to South Africa and died or was killed in the +war. +</p> +<p> +"You have met my adopted father. He fully believes I am the bad son, +the prodigal son, returned and reformed. He has grown to love me so +much that it really seems to have put new life into him. I have +helped him to get his affairs straight, and I think I may say he has +gained by this substitution of one son for another, even though the +new son is a daughter! I have taken none of his money, other than +small sums he has thrust on me. I have some money of my own, earned +in Honoria's firm, for I was the 'Warren' of her 'Fraser and +Warren.' She has known my secret all along, hasn't quite approved, +but was overborne by me in my resolve to show what a woman—in +disguise, it may be—could do at the Bar. +</p> +<p> +"Michael! I started out twelve years ago—and the dreadful thing is +I am now <i>thirty-four</i> in true truth! to conquer Man, and a man has +conquered me! I wanted to show that woman could compete with man in +all careers, and especially in the Law. So she can—have I not shown +it by what I have done? But it is a drawn battle. I have realized +that if some men are bad—rotten—others, like you—are supremely +good. I love you as I never thought I could love any one. I cannot +trust myself to write down how much I love you: it would read +shamefully and be too much a surrender of my first principle of +self-respect. +</p> +<p> +"I am going to throw up the whole D.V.W. business. It has put us in +a false relation which was exasperating me and puzzling you. +Moreover the disguise was wearing very thin. Only those two loyal +souls, Honoria Fraser and Albert Adams, were cognizant of the +secret, but it was being guessed at and almost guessed right, in +certain quarters. Professional jealousy was on my track. I never +fainted before in my life—so far as I can remember—but I might +have done so elsewhere than in your dear house, after the strain of +such an effort as I made to save that worthless woman—she was your +cousin, which is why I fought for her so hard—How often is not +justice deflected by Love! I might, somewhere else, when +over-strained have had a fit of hysterics; and my disguise would +have been penetrated by eyes less merciful than yours. Then would +have come exposure and its consequences—damaging to You (<i>I</i> should +not have mattered), to my poor old 'father' down in Wales—whom I +sincerely love—to Praddy, to Honoria.... +</p> +<p> +"Let me be thankful to get off so easily! <i>Somme toute</i>, I have had +a glorious time, have seen the world from the man's point of +view—and I can assure you that from his point of view it is a jolly +place to live in—<i>He</i> can walk up and down the Strand and receive +no insult. +</p> +<p> +"Well now, to relieve your anxieties, I will tell you, that after a +brief visit to South Wales to recuperate from the exertions of that +trial, Mr. David Williams the famous young barrister at the Criminal +Bar will go abroad to investigate the White Slave Traffic. Miss +Vivien Warren privately believes—and hopes—that the horrors of +this traffic in British womanhood are greatly exaggerated. The lot +in life of many of these young women is so bad in their native land +that they cannot make it worse by going abroad, no matter in what +avowed career. But Mr. David Williams takes rather a higher line and +is resolved in any case to get at the Truth. Miss Warren, nathless, +has her misgivings anent her old mamma, and would like to know what +that old lady is doing at the present time, and whether she is past +reform. Miss Warren even has her moments of doubt as to the +flawless perfection of her own life: whether the path of duty in +1897 did not rather lie in the direction of a serious attempt to be +a daughter to her wayward mother and reclaim her then, instead of +going off at a tangent as the mannish type of New Woman, to whom +applicable Mathematics are everything and human affections very +little. I suppose the truth, the commonplace truth is, that rather +late in life, Vivien Warren has fallen in love in the old-fashioned +way—How Nature mocks at us!—and now sees things somewhat +differently. At any rate, David and Vivie, fused into one +personality, are going abroad for a protracted period ... going out +of your life, my dearest, for it is better so. Linda has every right +to you and Science is a jealous mistress. Moreover poor, outcast +Vivie has her own bitter pride. She is resolved to show that a woman +<i>can</i> cultivate strength of character and an unflinching sobriety of +conduct, even when born of such doubtful stock as mine, even when +devoid of all religious faith. I know you love me, I glory in the +knowledge, but I know that you likewise are more strongly bound by +principles of right conduct because like myself you have no sham +theology.... +</p> +<p> +"Michael! <i>why</i> are we tortured like this? Why mayn't we love where +we please? Is this discipline necessary to the improvement of the +race? I only know that if we sinned against these human laws and +conventions, your great career in Science—and again, why in +Science? Lightness in love does not seem to affect the career of +orchestral conductors, actors, singers, play-wrights and house +painters—why weren't you one of these, and not a High Priest of the +only real religion? I only know also that if I fell, so many people +would have the satisfaction of saying: 'There! <i>what</i> did I say? +What's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. <i>That's</i> how the +Woman's Movement's goin' to end, you take my word for it! They'll +get a man somewhere, somehow, and then they'll clear out of it.' +</p> +<p> +"I think I said before—I meant to say, at any rate, so as to ease +your mind: I'm all right as regards financial matters. I have a life +annuity and some useful savings. I shall give Bertie Adams a year's +salary; and if you feel, dear friend, you <i>must</i> put forth your hand +to help me, help <i>him</i> instead to get another position. He has a +wife and a young family, and for his class is just about as good a +chap as I have ever met—this is 'David' speaking! If you can do +nothing you may be sure Vivie will, even if she has to borrow +unclean money from her wicked old mother to keep Bertie Adams from +financial anxiety and his pretty young wife and the child they are +so proud of.... +</p> +<p> +"I must finish this gigantic letter somewhere, though I'm not going +to stop writing to you. I couldn't—I should lose all hold on life +if I did. For the purpose of correspondence and finishing up things, +I shall be 'David Williams' for some time longer. You know his +address in Wales? Pontystrad Vicarage, Pontyffynon, Glamorgan, if +you've forgotten it. He'll be there till April, and then begin his +foreign tour and write to you at intervals from the Continent. As to +Vivie, I think she won't return to life and activity till the autumn +and <i>then</i> she'll make things hum. She'll throw all the energy of +frustrated love into the Woman's Cause, and get 'em the Vote +somehow...!" +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +Early in the genesis of the book. I appointed a jury of matrons to +judge each chapter before it went to the Press, and to decide +whether it was suited to the restrictions of the circulating +library, and whether it would cause real distress or perturbation to +three persons whom we chose as representative readers of decent +fiction: Admiral Broadbent, Lady Percy Mountjoye, and old Mrs. +Bridges (Mrs. Bridges was said to have had a heart attack after +reading <span class="sc">the gay-dombeys</span>—I did not wish her to have another). This +jury of broad-minded women of the world decided that Rossiter's +reply to Vivie's very long epistle should not see the light. He +himself would probably—had he known we were discussing his +affairs—have been thankful for this decision; because twelve hours +after he had written it he was heartily ashamed of his momentary +lapse from high principles, ashamed that the woman in the case +should have shown herself truer metal. He resolved, so far as our +poor human resolves are worth anything, to remain inflexibly true to +his devoted Linda and to his career in biological Science. He knew +too well that if he were caught in adultery it would be all over +with the great theories he was working to establish. The Royal +Society would condemn them. Besides, so fine a resolve as Vivie's, +to live on the heights must be respected. +</p> +<p> +At the same time, it is certain that for the next three months he +muddled his experiments, confused his arguments, lost his temper +with a colleague on the Council of the Zoological Society, kicked +the pugs—even caused the most unbearable two of them to be poisoned +by his assistant—and lied in attributing their deaths to other +causes. He promised the weeping Linda a Pom instead; he said "Hell!" +when the macaw interrupted them with raucous screams. He let pass +all sorts of misprints in his article on the Ductless Glands for the +<i>Encyclopaedia Scotica</i>, he was always losing the thread of his +discourse in his lectures at the London Institution and University +College; and he spent too much of his valuable time writing hugely +long letters on all sorts of subjects to David Williams. +</p> +<p> +David—or Vivie—replied much more laconically. In the first place +he—she—had had her say in the one big outpouring from which I +have quoted so freely; in the second she did not wish to stoke up +these fires lest they should become volcanic and break up a happy +home and a great career. She wrote once saying: "If ever you were in +trouble of any kind; if Linda should die before me, for example, I +would come back to you from the ends of the earth and even if I were +legitimately married to the Prince of Monaco; come back and serve +you as a drudge, as a butt for your wit, as a sick nurse. But +meantime, Michael, you must play the game." +</p> +<p> +And so after this three months' frenzy was past, he did. It was not +always easy. Linda's devotion was touching. She perceived—though +she hardly liked admitting it—that her husband missed the society +of "that" Mr. Williams, in whom she, for one, never could see +anything particularly striking, and who was now travelling abroad on +a quest it would be indelicate to particularize, and one that in +<i>her</i> opinion should have been taken up by a far older man, the +father of a grown-up family. She strove to replace Williams as an +intelligent companion in the Library and even in the Laboratory. She +gave up works of charity and espionage in Marylebone and many of her +trips into Society, to sit more often with the dear Professor, and +was a little distressed by his groans which seemed to be quite +unprovoked by her remarks or her actions. However as the months went +by, Rossiter buckled down more to his work, and Mrs. Rossiter +noticed that he engaged a new assistant at £300 a year to take +charge of his enormous correspondence. Mr. Bertie Adams seemed a +nice young man, though also afflicted at times with something that +gave melancholy to his gaze. But he had a good little wife who came +to make a home for him in Marylebone. Mrs. Rossiter being a kindly +woman went to call on her and was entirely taken up with their one +child whom she frequently asked to tea and found much more +interesting than the new Pom. "But it's got such a funny name, +Michael; I mean funny for their station in life. It's a girl and +they call it 'Vivvy,' which is short for Vivien. I told Mrs. Adams +she must have been reading Tennyson's <i>Idylls of the King</i>; but she +said 'No, she wasn't much of a reader: Adams was, and it was some +lady's name in a story that had stuck in his head, and that as her +mother's name was Susan and his was Jane, she hadn't minded.'" +</p> +<hr /> +<a name="note-2"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="foot"> +[<a href="#noteref-2">2</a>] An old Northumbrian variant of Arabella. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XI +</h2> +<h3> + DAVID GOES ABROAD +</h3> +<p> +David Williams had an enthusiastic greeting when he went home to +Pontystrad for the Easter of 1909. It was an early Easter that year, +whether you like it or not; it suits my story better so, because +then David can turn up in Brussels at the end of April, and yet have +attended to a host of necessary things before his departure on a +long absence. +</p> +<p> +He first of all devoted himself to making the old Vicar happy for a +few weeks in a rather blustery, showery March-April. His father was +full of wonderment and exultation over the honourable publicity his +barrister son had attained. "You'll be a Judge, Davy; at any rate a +K.C., before I'm dead! But marry, boy, <i>marry</i>. <i>That's</i> what you +must do now. Marry and give me grandchildren." The burly curate +privately thought David a bit morbid in his passionate devotion to +the Woman's Cause, and this White Slave Traffic all rot. He had +worked sufficiently in the bad towns of the South Welsh coast and +had had an initiation into the lower-living parts of Birmingham and +London to be skeptical about the existence of these poor, deluded +virgins, lured from their humble respectable homes and thrust by +Shakespearean procuresses, bawds, and bullies into an impure life. +If they went to these places abroad it was probably with the hope of +greater gains, better food, and stricter medical attention. However, +he kept most of these thoughts to himself and his wife, the squire's +daughter; who as she somehow thought David <i>ought</i> to have married +<i>her</i>, was a little bit sentimental about him and considered he was +a Galahad. +</p> +<p> +Old Nannie remained as usual wistfully puzzled, half fearing the +explanation of the enigma if it ever came. +</p> +<p> +Returned to London and Fig Tree Court—which he was soon +vacating—David obtained through his and her bankers a passport for +himself and another for Miss Vivien Warren, thirty-four, British +subject, and so forth, travelling on the Continent, a lady of +independent means. He re-arranged all David's and Vivie's money +matters, stored such of Vivie's property and his own as was +indispensable at Honoria Armstrong's house in Kensington, and left a +box containing a complete man's outfit in charge of Bertie Adams; +bade farewell as "David Williams" and "Uncle David" to Honoria and +her two babies, and to the still unkindly-looking Colonel Armstrong +(who very much resented the "uncle" business, which was perhaps why +Honoria out of a wholesome <i>taquinage</i> kept it up); and called in +for a farewell chat with dear old Praddy—beginning to look a bit +shaky and rather too much bossed by his parlour-maid. Honoria had +said as he departed "Do try to run up against Vivie somewhere abroad +and tell her I shan't be happy till she returns and takes up her +abode among us once more. 'Army' is <i>longing</i> to know her." ('Army' +didn't look it.) "Now pettums! Wave handikins to Uncle David. He's +goin' broadies. 'Army' dear, would you ask them to whistle for a +taxi? I know David doesn't want to walk all the way back to the +Temple in those lovely button boots." +</p> +<p> +Praed told him all he wanted to know about the localities of the +Warren Private Hotels; most of all, that at which Vivie's mother +resided in the Rue Royale, Brussels. +</p> +<p> +So at this establishment a well but plainly dressed English lady, +scarcely looking her age (thirty-four) turned up one morning, and +sent in a card to the lady-proprietress, Mme. Varennes. This card +was closely scanned by a heavy-featured Flemish girl who took it +upstairs to an <i>appartement</i> on the first floor. She read: +</p> +<p class="center"> + <i>Miss Vivien Warren</i> +</p> +<p class="noindent"> +and vaguely noted the resemblance of the two names Varennes and +Warren, and the fact that the establishment in which she earned a +lucrative wage was one of the "Warren" Hotels. +</p> +<p> +With very short delay, Vivie was invited to ascend in a lift to the +first floor and was shown in to a gorgeously furnished bedroom +which, through an open door, gave a glimpse of an attractive boudoir +or sitting-room beyond, and beyond that again the plane trees of a +great boulevard breaking into delicate green leaf. A woman of +painted middle age in a <i>descente de lit</i> that in its opulence +matched the hangings and furniture of the room, had been reclining +on a sofa, drinking chocolate and reading a newspaper. She rose +shakily to her feet, when the door closed behind Vivie, tottered +forward to meet her, and exclaimed rather theatrically "My +<i>daughter</i> ... come back to me ... after all these years!" (a few +tears ran down the rouged cheeks). +</p> +<p> +"Steady on, mother," said Vivie, propping her up, and feeling oh! so +clean and pure and fresh and wholesome by contrast with this +worn-out woman of pleasure. "Lie down again on your sofa, go on with +your <i>petit déjeuner</i>—which is surely rather late? There were signs +and appetizing smells of the larger meal being imminent as I passed +through the hotel. Now just lie down until you want to dress—if you +like, I'll help you dress" (swallowing hard to choke down a little +shudder of repulsion). "I'm not in any hurry. I've come to Brussels +to go into matters thoroughly. For the present, I am staying at the +Hotel Grimaud." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Warren was convulsively sobbing and ruining the complexion she +had just made up, before she changed out of her <i>descente de lit</i>: +"Why not stop here, dearie? Don't laugh! There's <i>lots</i> that do and +never suspect for one minute it ain't like any other hotel; though +from all I see and hear, <i>all</i> hotels are pretty much the same +now-a-days, whether they're called by my name or not. Of course a +man might find out pretty quick, but not a woman who wasn't in the +business herself. Why we actually <i>encourage</i> decent women to come +here when we ain't pressed for room. They give the place a better +tone, don't you know. There's two clergyman's sisters come here most +autumns and stop and stop and don't notice anything. They come in +here and chat with me, and once they said they liked foreign +gentlemen better than their own fellow-countrymen: 'their manners +are so <i>affable</i>.' Why it was partly through people like that, that +I got to hear every now and then what <i>you</i> was up to. Oh, I wasn't +taken in long by that David Williams business. Praddy didn't give +you away—to speak of, when I sent you that thousand pounds—Lord, I +was glad you kept it! But what fixed me was your portrait in the +<i>Daily Mirror</i> a couple of years ago as 'the Brilliant young +Advocate, Mr. David Vavasour Williams.' Somehow the 'Vavasour' +seemed to fit in all right, though what you wanted with +my—ahem—maiden name, with what was pore mother's <i>reel</i> name, +before she lived with your grandfather—Well as I say, I soon saw +through the whole bag o' tricks—But <i>what</i> a lark! Beat anythink +<i>I</i> ever did. What have you done with your duds? Gone back to bein' +Vivie once more?—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I'll tell you all about it in good time. But I would +rather not stay here all the same. I've found a quiet hotel near the +station. I will come and see you if you can make it easy for me; but +what I should very much prefer, if you can only get away from this +horrid place, is that you should come and see <i>me</i>. Why shouldn't +you give yourself a fortnight's holiday and go off with me to +Louvain ... or to Spa ... or some other quiet place where we can +talk over everything to our heart's content?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. Warren</i>: "Not a bad idea. Do me a lot of good. I was feeling +awfully down, Vivie, when you came. I wasn't altogether taken aback +at your coming, dearie, 'cos Praddy had given me a kind of a hint +you might turn up. But somehow, though everything goes well in +business—we seldom had so busy a time as during this last +Humanitarian Congress of the Powers—all the diplomats came +here—mostly the old ones, the old and respectable—oh we <i>all</i> like +respectability—yet I never 'ad such low spirits. My gals used to +come in here and find me cryin' as often as not.... 'Comment, +Madame,' they used to say, 'pourquoi pleurez vous? Tout va si bien! +<i>Quelle</i> clientele, et pas chiche'—I suppose you understand French? +However about this trip to the country, look on it as <i>settled</i>. +I'll pack up now and away we go in the afternoon. And not to any of +your measly Hotels or village inns. Why I've got me <i>own</i> country +place and me <i>own</i> auto. Villa de Beau-séjour, a mile or so beyond +the lovely beech woods of Tervueren. Ain't so far from Louvain, so's +I can send you on there one day—Ah! There's some one you'd like to +see in Louvain, if I mistake not! You always was one for findin' out +things, and maybe I'll tell you more, now you've come back to me, +than what I'd a done with you standing up so stiff and proud and me +unfit to take up the hem of your skirt.... How I do ramble. Suppose +it's old age comin' on" (shudders). "About this Villa de Beau-séjour +... It was once a farm house, and even now it's the farm where I get +me eggs and milk and butter an' the fruit and vegetables for this +hotel. <i>He</i> gave it to me—you know whom I mean by '<i>He</i>'? ... don't +do to talk too loud in a place like this.... They say he's pretty +bad just now, not likely to live much longer. I was his mistress +once, years ago—at least I was more a confidante than anything +else. <i>How</i> he used to laugh at my stories! 'Que tu es une +drôlesse,' he used to say. I never used to mince matters and we were +none the worse for that. Bless you, he wasn't as bad as they painted +him, 'long of all this fuss about the blacks. As I say, he gave me +the Villa de Beau-séjour, and used to say if I behaved myself he +might some day make me 'Baronne de Beau-séjour.' How'd you have +liked that, eh? Sort of morganatic Queen? I lay I'd have put some +good management into the runnin' of those places. Aïe! How they used +to swindle 'im, and he believing himself always such a sharp man of +business! When that Vaughan hussy..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Very well. We'll go to Villa Beau-séjour. But don't give +me too many of your reminiscences or I may leave you after all and +go back to England. Whilst I'm with you, you must give up rouge and +patchouli and the kind of conversation that goes with them. I'm out +here trying to do my duty and duty is always unpleasant. I don't +want to be a kill-joy, but don't give me more of that side of your +character than you can help. It—it makes me sick, mother..." +</p> +<p> +[Mrs. Warren—or Madame Varennes—whimpers a little, but soon cheers +up, rings the bell for her maid preparatory to dressing and being +the business woman over her preparations for departure. She notes +the address of Vivie's hotel and promises to call for her there in +the <i>auto</i> at three o'clock. Vivie leaves her, descends the richly +carpeted stairs—the lift is worked by an odiously pretty, little, +plump soubrette dressed as a page boy—and goes out into the street. +Several lounging men stare hard at her, but decide she is too +English, too plainly dressed, and a little too old to neddle with. +This last consideration is apparent to Vivie's intelligence and she +muses on it with a wistful little smile, half humour, half regret. +She will at her leisure write a whole description of the scene to +Michael.] +</p> +<p> +Those who come after us will never realize how delightful was +foreign travel before the War, before that War which installed +damnable Dora in power in all the countries of Europe, especially +France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and Holland. They will not +conceive it possible that the getting of a passport (as a mere means +of rapidly establishing one's identity at bank or post-office) was a +simple transaction done through a banker or a tourist agency, the +enclosing of stamps and the payment of a shilling or two; that there +was no question of <i>visas</i> entailing endless humiliation and +back-breaking delays, waiting about in ante-rooms and empty +apartments of squalid, desolating ugliness situate always in the +most odious parts of a town. But the Foreign Offices of Europe were +agreed on one topic, and this was that having got their feet back on +the necks of the people, their serfs of the glebe should not, save +under circumstances hateful, fatiguing, unhealthy and humiliating, +travel through the lands that once were beautiful and bountiful and +are so no longer. +</p> +<p> +So: Vivie, never having consciously been abroad before (though she +was later to learn she had actually been born in Brussels), began to +experience all the delights of travel in a foreign land. She woke up +the next morning to the country pleasures of Villa Beau-séjour, a +preposterous chateau-villa it might be, but attached to a charming +Flemish farm; with cows and pigs, geese and ducks, plump poultry and +white pigeons, with clumps of poplars and copses of hawthorns and +wild cherry trees which joined the little domain on to the splendid +forest of Tervueren. There were the friendly, super-intelligent big +dogs, like bastard St. Bernards or mastiffs in breed, that drew the +little carts which carried the produce of the farm to the markets +or to Brussels. There were cheery Flemish farm servants and buxom +dairy or poultry women, their wives; none of them particularly aware +that there was anything discreditable about Madame Varennes. They +may have vaguely remembered she had once lived under High +protection, but that, if anything, added to her prestige in their +eyes. She was an English lady who for purposes of business and may +be of <i>la haute politique</i> chose to live in Belgium. She was a kind +mistress and a generous <i>patronne</i>. Vivie as her daughter was +assured of their respect, and by her polite behaviour won their +liking as well. +</p> +<p> +"You know, Viv, old girl," said Mrs. Warren one day, "if you played +your cards all right, this pretty place might be yours after I'd +gone. Why don't yer pick up a decent husband somewhere and drop all +this foolishness about the Suffragettes? He needn't know too much +about me, d'yer see? And if you looked at things sensible-like, +you'd come in for a pot of money some day; and whilst I lived I'd +make you a good allowance—" +</p> +<p> +"It's no use, dear mother"—involuntarily she said "dear": her +heart was hungry for affection, Wales was rapidly passing out of her +sphere, David's business must soon be wound up in that quarter and +where else had she to go? "So long as you keep on with those Hotels +I can't touch a penny. I oughtn't to have kept that thousand, only +Praddy assured me it was 'clean' money." +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. W.</i>: "So it was. I won it at Monte. I don't often gamble now, +I hate losing money. But we'd had a splendid season at Roquebrune +and I sat down one day at the tables, a bit reckless-like. Seemed as +if I couldn't lose. When I got up and left I had won Thirty thousand +francs. So I says to myself: 'This shall go to my little girl: I'll +send it through Praddy and he'll pay it into her bank. Then I shan't +feel anxious about her.'" +</p> +<p> +"Mother! what a strange creature you are! Such a mixture of good and +bad—for I suppose it <i>is</i> bad, I feel somehow it <i>is</i> bad, +trafficking in women's bodies, as they put it sensationally. Towards +me you have always been compact of kindness; you took every +precaution to have me brought up well, out of knowledge of any +impurity; and well and modernly educated. You left me quite free to +marry whom I liked ... but ... but ... you stuck to this horrible +career..." +</p> +<p> +"Well, Vivie. I did. But did you make any great effort to turn me +from it? Besides, <i>is</i> it horrible? I won't promise much for Berlin +and Buda-Pest or even Vienna, because I haven't been in those +directions for ever so long, and the Germans are reg'lar getting out +of hand, they are, working up for something. I dessay if you looked +in at the Warren Hotels in those places you might find lots to say +against 'em. But you couldn't say the places I supervise here and at +Roquebrune are so bad? <i>I</i> won't stop your looking into 'em. The +girls are treated right down well. Looked after if they fall sick +and given every encouragement to marry well. I even call those two +places—I've giv' up me Paris house this ten years—I even call them +my 'marriage markets.' Ah! an' I've given in my time not a few +<i>dots</i> to decent girls that had found a good husband <i>dans la +clientèle</i>. Why they're no more than what you might call hotels a +bit larkier than what other Hotels are. I've never in all my twenty +years of Brussels management had a row with the police.... And as to +all this rot about the White Slave Traffic that you seem so excited +about ... well I'm not saying there's nothin' in it.... Antwerp, +Hamburg, Rotterdam—you'd hear some funny stories there ... but only +if you went as David Williams in your man's kit—My! what a wheeze +that's bin!... And from all they tell me, that place in South +America—Buenos Aires, is a reg'lar Hell. But ... God bless my soul +... there's nothin' to fuss about here. Our young ladies would take +on like anything if you forced them to go away from my care. It's +gettin' near the time when we close our Roquebrune establishment for +the summer, an' the girls'll all be goin' back to their homes in the +mountains and fattenin' up on new milk; still if you go there before +the middle of May you'll see things pretty much as they are in the +season; and what's more you'll see plenty of perfectly respectable +people stoppin' there. Of course the prices are high. But look at +the luxury! What that wicked Bax used to call 'All the Home +Comforts.' He liked 'is joke. I hear he's settlin' down at home with +his old Dutch. She's bin awful good to him, I must say. <i>I</i> couldn't +stand 'im long. I don't often lose me temper but I did with him, +after he got licked by Paul Dombey, and I threw an inkpot at his +head and ain't seen him for a matter of thirteen or fourteen year. +He sold out all his shares in the Warren Hotels when he came a +cropper." +</p> +<p> +"Well, mother, I'll have a look round. I'm truly glad you're quit of +the German and Austrian horrors, though you must bear the blame for +having organized them in the first place. I will presently put on +David Williams's clothes and see what I <i>can</i> see of them. But if +you want me to be a daughter to you, you'll take the first and the +readiest opportunity of removing your name from these—<i>ach</i>!—these +legacies of the Nineteenth century. You'll wind up the Warren +Hotels' Company, and as to the two houses you've got here and at +Roquebrune, you'll turn them now into decent places where no +indecency is tolerated." +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. Warren</i>: "I'll think it over and I don't say as I won't give +in to you. I'm tired of a rackety life and I'm proud of you and ... +and ... (cries) ... ashamed of meself ... ashamed whenever I look at +you. Though I've never bin what I call <i>bad</i>. I've helped many a +lame dog over a stile.... That's partly how you came into +existence—almost the only time I've ever been in love—Many years +ago—why, girl, you must be—getting on for thirty-five—let me see +... (muses). Yes, it was in the winter of '73-74. I'd bin at Ostende +with a young barrister from London ... him I told you about once, +who used to write plays, and we came on to Brussels because he had +some business with the Belgian Government. He left me pretty much to +myself just then, though quite open-handed, don't you know.... One +day I was walking through one of the poorer streets where the people +was very Flemish, and I stood looking up at an old doorway—Dunno' +why—S'pose I thought it picturesque—reminded me of Praddy's +drawin's. And an old woman comes up and says in French, 'Madame est +Anglaise?' In those days I couldn't hardly speak a word o' French, +but I said 'Oui.' Then she wants me to come upstairs but I thought +it was some trap. However as far as I could make out there was a +young Irishman there, she said, lying very sick of a fever and +seemingly had no friends. +</p> +<p> +"Well: I took down the address and the next day I came there with +the concierge of the hotel where we were staying, and under his +protection we went upstairs. My! it was a beastly place—and your +poor father—for he <i>was</i> your father—was tossing about and raving, +with burning cheeks and huge eyes, just like yours. Well! I had +plenty of money just then, so with the help of that concierge we +found a decent lodging—they wasn't so partic'lar then about +infection or they didn't think typhoid infectious—I took him there +in an ambulance, engaged a nurse, and in a fortnight he was +recovering. He turned out to be a seminarist—I think they called +it—from Ireland who was going to be trained for the priesthood at +Louvain—lots of Irish used to come there in those days. And somehow +a fit of naughtiness had overcome him—he was only twenty—and he +thought he'd like to see a bit of the world. So he'd sloped from +his college and had a bit of a spree at Brussels and Ostende. Then +he was took with this fever— +</p> +<p> +"His name was Fergus O'Conor and he always said he was descended +from the real old Irish Kings, and he was some kind of a Fenian. I +mean he used to go on something terrible against the English, and +say he would never rest till they were drove out of Ireland. When he +got well again he was that handsome—well I've never seen any one +like him, unless it's you. I expect when you dress up as David +Williams you're the image of what he was when I fell in love with +him. +</p> +<p> +"And I did. And when me barrister friend—Mr. FitzSimmons—teased me +about it, and wanted me—he having finished his business—to return +with him to London I refused. Bein' a bit free with me speech in +those days I dessay I said 'Go to Hell.' But he only laughed and +left me fifty pounds. +</p> +<p> +"Well, I lived with this young student for a matter of six months. A +lovely time we had, till he began gettin' melancholy—matter of no +money partly. He tried bein' a journalist. +</p> +<p> +"Then the Church got him back. There came about a reg'lar change in +him, and just at the time when <i>you</i> was comin' along. He woke up +one night in a cold sweat and said he was eternally damned. +'Nonsense,' I says, 'it's them crayfish; you ought never to eat that +bisque soup...' +</p> +<p> +"But he meant it. He went back to Louvain—where I'm goin' to take +you in a day or two—and I suppose they made him do all sorts of +penances before they gave him absolution. But he stuck to it. In due +time he became a priest and entered one of them religious houses. +They think a lot of him at Louvain. I've seen him once or twice but +I can't bear to meet his eyes—they're somethin' like yours—make me +feel a reg'lar Jezebel. And as to you? Well, when he left me I +hadn't got much money left; so, before I begged a passage back to +England, I called in at the very hotel where you found me the other +day, and where me an' my barrister friend had been stayin'. I'd got +to know the proprietress a little—real kind-'earted woman she was. +She said to me 'See here. You stop with me and help me in the bureau +and have your baby. I'll look after you. And when you can get about +again, stop on and help me in my business. I reckon you're the type +of woman I've bin looking out for this long while.' And that's how +the first of the Warren Hotels was started and that's where you were +born ... in October, Eighteen—seventy—five—" +</p> +<p> +(Vivie gave a little shudder, but her mother's thoughts were so +intent on the past that she did not perceive it.) +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. Warren</i>: "Dj'ever see yer Aunt Liz?" +</p> +<p> +Vivie told her of the grim experiences already touched on in Chapter +I. +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. Warren</i>: "Well she dropped <i>me</i>—<i>com</i>pletely—from the time +she married that Canon. And I respected her. She was comfortably +off, her past was dead and done with. D'yer think <i>I</i> wanted to +bother 'er? Not I. It depends so much on the way you was born and +brought up. If Liz had been the child of a respectable married +couple that could give her a good start in life, 'probability is +she'd have run straight from the first. Dunno about me. I was always +a bit larky. And yet d'you know, I think if yer father hadn't been a +sort of young god, with his head in the skies, and no reg'lar +income, if he'd a married me and been kind to me ... I should have +been an honest woman all the rest of me life.... +</p> +<p> +"What do <i>you</i> feel about morality? You don't seem to have much +faith in religion, yet you've always taken a high line—and somehow +I'm glad you have—about things that never seemed to me to matter +much. We're given these passions and desires—and my! don't it hurt, +falling in love!—and then the clergy, though they're awful +humbugs, tells us we must deny our cravings..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "In the main the clergy are right in what they preach +though they give the wrong reasons. We must try to regulate our +passions or they will master us, stifle what is really good in us. +My solution of this problem which I am so sick of discussing.... But +let's finish with it while we are about it—my solution is that the +State and the Community should do their utmost to encourage, +subsidize, reward early marriages; and at the same time facilitate +in a reasonable degree divorce. Apply both these remedies and you +would go far to wipe out prostitution, which I think perfectly +horrible—I—I should like to penalize it. Perhaps it is the Irish +ascetic in my constitution. A good many early marriages might be +failures. Well then, at the end of ten years these should be +dissolvable, with proper provision made for the children. I think +many a couple if they knew that after a time and without scandal +their partnership could be dissolved wouldn't, when the time came, +want it. While on the other hand if you made the tie not +everlastingly binding, young people—especially if they hadn't to +trouble about means—would get married without hesitation or delay. +I should not only encourage that, but I should give every woman a +heavy bonus for bringing a living child into the world.... Now let's +talk of something else. When are you going to take me to Louvain?" +</p> + +<hr /> +<p> +They went to Louvain a few days later and Vivie's newly awakened +senses for the beautiful in art revelled in the glorious +architecture, so much of which was afterwards wrecked in the War. +</p> +<p> +Walking beneath the planes in a narrow street between monastic +buildings, they descried a gaunt, stately figure of a Father +Superior of some great Order. "There!" said Mrs. Warren; "that's +him, that's your father." They quickened their pace and were +presently alongside him. He flashed his great, grey eagle eyes for a +contemptuous second on the face of Mrs. Warren, who was all of a +tremble and could not meet the gaze. Vivie, he scarcely glanced at +as he strode towards a doorway which engulfed him, though the eyes +she had inherited would have met his unflinchingly. +</p> + +<hr /> +<p> +David Williams duly visited Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, +Vienna, and Buda-Pest. Much of what he saw disgusted, even revolted, +him, but he found few of his fellow-countrywomen held captive and +crying to be delivered from a life of infamy. On his return to +England in the autumn of 1909, he published the results of his +observations; but they had very little effect on continental public +opinion. +</p> +<p> +However Mrs. Warren in due course turned her two establishments into +hotels that gradually acquired a well-founded character of propriety +and were in time included amongst those recommended to quiet, +studious people by first class tourist agencies. Their names were +changed respectively from Hotel Leopold II to Hotel Edouard-Sept, +from The Homestead, Roquebrune, to Hotel du Royaume-Uni. Mrs. Warren +or Mme. Varennes retired completely from the management, but +arranged to retain for her own use the magnificently furnished +<i>appartement</i> on the first floor of the Hotel Edouard-Sept at +Brussels, where Vivie had seen her in the late spring of 1909. She +still continued to receive a certain income from these two admirably +managed hostelries. +</p> +<p> +Constrained by Vivie she bestowed large donations on charitable and +educational institutions affecting the welfare of women and +established a fund of Ten thousand pounds for the promotion of Woman +Suffrage in Great Britain, which fund was to be at Vivie's +disposal. But even with these sacrifices to <i>bienséance</i> she +remained a lady of considerable fortune. +</p> +<p> +She resisted however all invitations to make her home in England. +"No, dear; I've got used to foreign ways. I hate my own people; +they're such damned hypocrites; and the cooking don't suit my taste, +accustomed to the best." +</p> +<p> +But she gave up brandy except as a very occasional <i>chasse</i> after +the postprandial coffee. She no longer dyed her hair and used very +little rouge and no scent but lavender. Her hair turned a warm white +colour, and dressed à la Pompadour made her look what she probably +was at heart—quite a decent sort. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XII +</h2> +<h3> + VIVIE RETURNS +</h3> +<p> +Honoria Armstrong, faithful in friendship and purpose as few people +are (though she abated never a whit her love for her dear, fierce, +blue-eyed, bristly-moustached, battle-scarred, bullying husband) +prepared for Vivie's return in the autumn of 1909 by securing for +her occupancy a nice little one-storeyed house in a Kensington back +street; one of those houses—I doubt not, now tenanted by +millionaires who don't want a large household, just a roof over +their heads—that remain over from the early nineteenth century, +when Kensington was emerging from a country village into villadom. +The broad, quiet road, named after our late dear Queen, has nothing +but these detached or semi-detached little <i>cottages ornés</i>, +one-storeyed villas with a studio behind, or two-storeyed components +of "terraces," for about a quarter of a mile; and just before the +War, building speculators were wont to pace its pavements with a +hungry gaze directed to left and right buying up in imagination all +this wasted space, pulling down these pretty stucco nests, and +building in their place castles of flats, high into the air. I don't +suppose this district will escape much longer the destruction of its +graceful flowering trees and vivid gardens, its air of an opulent +village; it will match with the rest of Kensingtonia in huge, +handsome buildings and be much sought after by the people who devote +their lives—till they commit suicide—to illicit love and the +Victory Balls at the Albert Hall. But in 1909—would that we were +all back in 1909!—it was as nice a part of London as a busy, +energetic, sober-living spinster, in the movement, yet liking home +retirement and lilac-scented privacy—could desire to inhabit, at +the absurd rental of fifty pounds a year, with comparatively low +rates, and the need for only one hard-working, self-respecting +Suffragette maid, with the monthly assistance of a charwoman of +advanced views. +</p> +<p> +There Vivie took up her abode in November of the year indicated. +Honoria lived not far away, next door but one to the Parrys in +Kensington Square. She—Vivie—was aware that Colonel Armstrong did +not altogether like her, couldn't "place" her, felt she wasn't "one +of us," and therefore despite Honoria's many invitations to run in +and out and not to mind dear old "Army" who was <i>always</i> like that +at first, just as their Chow was—she exercised considerable +discretion about her frequentation of the Armstrong household, +though she generally attended Honoria's Suffrage meetings, held +whenever the Colonel was called away to Aldershot or Hythe. +</p> +<p> +Honoria by this time—the close of 1909—was the mother of four +lovely, healthy, happy children. She would give birth to a fifth the +following June (1910), and then perhaps she would stop. She often +said about this time—touching wood as she did so—"could any woman +be happier?" She was so happy that she believed in God, went +sometimes to St. Mary Abbott's or St. Paul's, Knightsbridge—the +music was so jolly—and gave largely to cheerful charities as well +as to the Suffrage Cause. She would in the approach to Christmas, +1909, look round and survey her happiness: could any one have a more +satisfactory husband? Of course he was a man and had silly mannish +prejudices, but then without them he would not be so lovable. Her +children—two boys and two girls—could you find greater darlings if +you spent a week among the well-bred childern playing round the +Round Pond? Such <i>natural</i> children with really original remarks +and untrained ideas; not artificial Peter Pans who wistfully didn't +want to grow up; not slavish little mimics of the Children's stories +in vogue, pretending to play at Red Indians—when every one knew +that Red Indians nowadays dressed like all the other citizens of the +United States and Canada and sat in Congress and cultivated +political "pulls" or sold patent medicines; or who said "Good +hunting" and other Mowgli shibboleths to mystified relations from +the mid-nineteenth century country towns; nor children who teased +the cat or interfered with the cook or stole jam or did anything +else that was obsolete; or decried Sullivan's music in favour of +Debussy's or of Scarlatini's 17th century <i>tiraliras</i>; or wore +spectacles and had to have their front teeth in gold clamps. Just +clear-eyed, good-tempered, good-looking, roguish and spontaneously +natural and reasonably self-willed children, who adored their +parents and did not openly mock at the Elishas that called on them. +</p> +<p> +Then there were Honoria's friends. I gave a sort of list of them in +Chapter II—which I am told has caused considerable offence, not by +what was put <i>in</i> but to those who were left out. But they needn't +mind: if the protesters were nice people according to my standard, +you may be sure Honoria knew them. But of all her friends none was +dearer and closer—save her husband—than Vivie Warren—pal of pals, +brave comrade of the unflinching eyes. And somehow Vivie (since she +fell in love with Michael Rossiter) was ten times dearer than she +had been before: she was more understanding; she had a brighter eye, +a much greater sense of humour; she was tenderer; she liked children +as she never had done in bygone years, and was soon adopted by the +four children in Kensington Square as "Aunt Vivie" (They also—the +two elder ones—had a vague remembrance of an Uncle David who had +brought them toys and sweetmeats in a dim past). Aunt Vivie and +Mummie used to get up the most amusing Suffrage meetings in the +long, narrow garden behind the house; or they combined forces with +Lady Maud Parry, and spoke in lilting contralto or mezzo-soprano +(with the compliant tenor or baritone of here and there a captive +man) across the two gardens. Or somehow they commandeered the Square +Garden on the pretext of a vast Garden Party, at which every one +talked and laughed at once over their Suffrage views. +</p> +<p> +Yes: Honoria was happy then, as indeed she had been during most of +her life, except when her brother died and her mother died. What did +she lack for happiness? Nothing that this world can give in the +opening twentieth century ... not even a very good pianola or a +motor. I feel somehow it was almost unfair (in my rage at the +inequality of treatment meted out by the Powers Beyond). Shall not +General Sir Petworth Armstrong die in the great débacle of the +world-wide War? I shall see, later. And yet I feel that this nucleus +of pure happiness housed in Kensington Square—or at Petworth +Manor—was to the little world that revolved round the Armstrongs +like a good radiator in a cold house. It warmed many a chilly nature +into fructification; it healed many a scar, it brightened many a +humble life, like that of Bertie Adams's hard-working, washerwoman +mother, or the game-keeper's crippled child at Petworth or the +newest, suburbanest little employé of <i>Fraser and Claridge's</i> huge +establishment in the Brompton Road. It pulled straight the wayward +life of some young subaltern, about to come a cropper, but who after +a talk or two with that jolly Mrs. Armstrong took quite a different +course and made a decent marriage. It conjoined with many of the +social activities for good of one who might have been her twin +sister—Suzanne Feenix—only that Suzanne was twenty years older and +perhaps an inch or two shorter. Dear woman! My remembrance flashes a +kiss to your astral cheek—which in reality I should never have +dared to salute, so great was my awe of Colonel Armstrong's +muscles—as, at any reasonable time before or after the birth of +your last child in June, 1910, you stand in the hall of your sunny, +eighteenth century house, with the gold and green glint of the +Kensington garden behind you: saying with your glad eyes and bonny +mouth "Come to our Suffrage Party? <i>Such</i> a lark! We've got Mrs. +Pankhurst here and the Police daren't raid us; they're so afraid of +'Army.' Of course he's away, but he knows <i>perfectly well</i> what I'm +doing. He's <i>quite</i> given in. Now Michael, you show Sir Harry and +Lady Johnston to the front seats..." +</p> +<p> +(I looked round for the rather gloomy presence of Michael Rossiter, +but it was his little golden-haired god-son she meant.) +</p> +<p> +You shall have your general back safe from the wars, with a wound +that gives only honour, a reasonable number of well-earned +decorations, and a reputation for rather better strategy than +Aldershot generally produces; and he shall live out his wholesome +life alongside yours, still dispensing happiness, even under a +Labour Government: till, as Burton used to wind up his Arabian +Nights love stories, "there came to them the Destroyer of delight +and the Sunderer of societies." +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +Honoria acted towards the Suffrage movement somewhat as in +older-fashioned days of Second Empire laxity well-to-do people +evaded military service under conscription by paying a substitute to +take their place in the fighting line. On account of her husband, +and the children she had just had or was going to have, she did not +throw herself into the physical struggle; but she still continued +out of her brother's ear-marked money to subsidize the cause. Rather +regretfully, she looked on from a motor, a balcony, a front window +or the safe plinth of some huge statue, whilst her comrades, with +less to risk physically and socially, matched their strength of +will, their trained muscles, their agility, astuteness and feminine +charm (seldom without some effect) against the brute force and +imperturbability of the Police. +</p> +<p> +The struggle waxed hot and fierce in the early months of 1910. Vivie +held herself somewhat in the background also, not wishing to strike +publicly and effectively until she was sure for what principle she +endangered her life and liberty. Nevertheless she became a resource +of rising importance to the Suffrage cause. She was known to have +had a clever barrister cousin who for some reasons best known to +himself had of late kept in the background—ill-health, said some; +an unfortunate love affair, said another. But his pamphlet on the +White Slave Traffic on the Continent showed that he was still at +work. Vivie was thought to be fully equal in her knowledge of the +law to her cousin, though not allowed to qualify for the Bar. Case +after case was referred to her with the hope that if she could not +solve it, she might submit it to her cousin's judgment. In this way, +excellent legal advice was forthcoming which drove the Home Office +officials from one quandary to another. +</p> +<p> +But Vivie in the spring of 1910, looking back on nearly twelve +months of womanly life (save for David's summer of continental +travel) decided that she didn't like being a woman, so far as Woman +was dressed in 1910 and for three or four hundred years previously. +</p> +<p> +As "David" this had been more or less her costume: an undershirt +(two, in very cold weather), a pair of pants coming down to the +ankle, and well-fitting woollen socks on the feet. A shirt, +sometimes in day-time all of one piece with its turn-over collar; at +worst with a separate collar and a tie passed through it. Braces +that really braced and held up the nether garment of trousers; a +waistcoat buttoning fairly high up (no pneumonia blouse)—two +waistcoats if she liked, or a dandy slip buttoned innocently inside +the single vest to suggest the white lie of a second inner vest. +Over the waistcoat a coat or jacket. On the head a hat which fitted +the head in thirty seconds (allowing for David's shock of hair). +Lace-up or button boots, with perhaps at most six buttons; gloves +with one button; spats—if David wanted to be very dressy—with +three buttons. On top of all this a warm, easily-fitting overcoat or +a mackintosh. If you were really dressing to kill (as a man) it +might take half an hour; if merely to go about your business and not +be specially remarked for foppishness, twenty minutes. To divest +yourself of all this and get into paijamas and so to bed: ten +minutes. But when Vivie returned to herself and went about the world +of 1909-1910, and merely wished to pass as an inconspicuous, modest +woman she had to spend <i>hours</i> in dressing and undressing, and this +is what she had to wear and waste so much of her time in adjusting +and removing:— +</p> +<p> +Next the skin, merino combinations, unwieldy garments requiring a +contortionist's education to put on without entangling your front +and hind limbs. The "combies" were specially buttoned with an +infinitude of small, scarcely visible buttons, which always wanted +sewing on and replacing, and were peevish about remaining in the +button hole. Often, too, the "combies" (I really can't keep writing +the full name) had to be tied here and there with little white +ribbons which preferred getting into a knot (no wonder the average +woman has a temper!). When the "combies" went to the wash, all these +ribbonlets had to be taken out, specially washed, specially ironed, +and ingeniously threaded back into position. +</p> +<p> +Next to the combinations, proceeding outwards, came the corset, a +most serious affair. This exceedingly expensive instrument of +torture was compounded chiefly of silk (which easily frayed) and +whale-bone. Many good women of the middle class have gone to their +graves for three hundred years believing that Almighty God had +specially created toothless whales of the Family <i>Balænidæ</i> solely +for the purpose of providing women with the only possible ingredient +for a corset; and for three hundred years, brave seamen of the +Dutch, British and Basque nations had gone to a watery grave to +procure for women this indispensable aid to correct clothing. But +these filaments of horny palatal processes are unamiable. Though +sheathed in silk or cotton, they, after the violent movements of a +Suffragette or a charwoman, break through the restraining sheath and +run into the body under the fifth rib, or press forward on to the +thigh. Which is why you often see a woman's face in an omnibus +express severe pain and her lips utter the exclamation "Aïe, Aïe." +Then this confounded corset had to be laced with pink ribbons at the +back and in front and both lacings demanded unusual suppleness of +arms and sense of touch in finger-tips; and when the corset went to +the wash the ribbons had to be drawn out, washed, ironed, and +threaded again. +</p> +<p> +From the front of the corset hung two elastic suspenders as yet +awaiting their prey. But first must be drawn on the silk or +stockinette knickerbockers which in the 1910 woman replaced the +piteously laughable drawers of the Victorian period. Then the +suspenders clutched the rims of the stockings with an arrangement of +nickel and rubber which no <i>man</i> would have tolerated for its +inefficiency but would have thrown back in the face of the shopman +and have been charged with assault. In times of stress, at public +meetings the suspenders would release the stockings from their hold, +and the latter roll about the ankles of the embarrassed pleader for +Woman's Rights ("Who would be free, themselves must strike the +blow," and first of all throttle the modiste, thought Vivie). +</p> +<p> +Then there was the camisole that concealed the corset and had to be +"pinned" in with safety pins. The knickerbockers might not seek the +aid of braces; but they must be kept up by an elastic band. Over +the camisole, in 1910, came a blouse, pernickety and shiftless about +its waist fastening; and finally a hobble skirt, chiefly kept up by +safety pins, and so cut below as to hamper free movement of the +limbs as much as possible. +</p> +<p> +Day-boots often had as many as twenty-one buttons—and, mind you, +not <i>sham</i>, buttons, as I used to think, out of swagger; but every +button demanded entrance into a practicable button hole. Or the +boots themselves were mere shoes with many buttoned spats drawn over +them. All the boots had high heels and the woman walked so as to put +a severe strain on her arched instep in order that she might bring +on by degrees "flat foot" for surgical treatment. +</p> +<p> +Who shall describe the hats of 1910?—and before and since—in all +but the very poorest women? They were enormous; and so were the +hat-boxes; and they could only be held on to the head by running +hatpins through wisps of hair. +</p> +<p> +I will not portray the evening dresses that it sometimes takes a +kindly husband an hour to fasten, with "press-buttons" and hooks and +eyes; and poor Vivie had no husband and depended on her suffragette +maid because at all costs she mustn't look dowdy or the woman's +cause might suffer at Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's receptions. +</p> +<p> +As to night gear: of course Vivie being a free agent slept in +David's paijamas. She had long ago cut the Gordian knots of her +be-ribboned, girdled night gowns in favour of the Indian garment. +But can you wonder after this true recital of the simplest forms of +a decent woman's costume in 1909-1910 and even now (a recital drawn +from a paper on <i>Woman's dress</i> delivered by David on one of the +last occasions in which he appeared at the Debating Society of the +Inner Temple—and checked by my jury of matrons)—can you wonder +that Vivie took very hardly to giving up a man's life in the clothes +of David Williams? How she vowed to herself—fruitlessly, because +now she is one of the best-dressed women in town (in a quiet +way)—that she would one day enfranchise women in their costume as +in their citizenship? This will never be done until the modistes of +Paris, in some great popular uprising, are strangled and burnt on +the Place de la Concorde. +</p> +<p> +At the 1910 (January) Election, Michael Rossiter had been returned +as M.P. for one of the Midland Universities. His Science had +certainly suffered from his suppressed love for Vivie, a passion +which secretly tortured him, yet for which he dared ask no respite. +He thought it was about time that <i>real</i> men of Science entered +Parliament to check the utter mismanagement of public affairs which +had been going on since 1900. He proposed to himself to make a +succession of brilliant speeches (he really was an admirable and +fluent lecturer) on Anthropology, Chemistry—Chemistry ought +to appeal, even to City men because it made such a lot of +money—Ethnology, Hygiene, Geography, Economic Botany, Regional +Zoology, Germ Diseases, Agriculture, etc., etc.; <i>and</i> the absolute +necessity of giving Woman the same electoral privileges as Man. He +was always well inclined that way, but after he realized that David +was Vivie he became almost an embittered Suffragist. +</p> +<p> +The Speaker took care that he had little scope for his Anthropology, +Economic Botany, Chemistry, Hygiene, etc., on Votes of Supply: but +he got in some nasty blows in the Woman's cause, and in fact was so +strangely rancorous that Ministers looked at him evilly and arranged +that he was not placed on the committee of the Conciliation Bill; +that amusing farce with which the Liberal Ministry sought in 1910 to +stave off the Suffrage dilemma. +</p> +<p> +Rossiter and Vivie seldom met except at public receptions. Every now +and again he came to Suffrage meetings when she was going to speak; +and how well she spoke then! How real it all seemed to her! How +handsome she looked (even at 36) and how near she was to tears and a +breakdown; while his eyes burned; and when he got home poor little +Linda was in despair over her poor distraught Michael, who could +find no happiness or contentment in Ten Thousand a year, great fame +as the chief inventor of the Ductless Glands, and the man who had +issued a taxonomic classification of the <i>Bovidae</i> which even +satisfied <i>me</i>. +</p> +<p> +What a cruel force is Love! Or is the cruelty in human disciplinary +laws? Here were two persons eminently suited to be mates, calculated +while still in the prime of life to procreate offspring that would +be a credit to the nation, who asked for nothing more in life than +to lie in each other's arms—after which no doubt they would have +arisen and performed the most wonderful feats in inductive science +or in embroidery or mathematics. And they were inwardly raging, +losing their appetites, sleeping very badly yet eschewing drugs, +pursuing will-of-the-wisps in politics, wasting the best years of +their lives ... from a sense of duty, that sense of duty which has +made the Nordic White man the dominant race on the earth. "We suffer +individually but we gain collectively," Rossiter said to himself. +</p> +<p> +In May, 1910, King Edward died, and all these gladiators, male and +female, willingly declared a Truce in the Suffrage battle, to obtain +a much needed rest in the weary conflict. As soon as political +activities were resumed, the Conciliation Bill by the energies of +the Liberal Whips was talked out (wasn't it?). At any rate it came +to nothing for that Session. Vivie took this as a decision. She +openly declared that the Vote never would be given by the House of +Commons or House of Lords until it was wrung from the Legislature by +a complete dislocation of public affairs, the nearest approach to a +revolution women could bring about without rifles and cannon. +</p> +<p> +Meantime she refused to be duped by Ministers or by amiable +go-betweens. She resolved instead, perhaps for the last time, to +resume the clothes and status of David Williams, go down to Wales, +and stay with her father who was dying by slow degrees. +</p> +<p> +The letters which the curate had written from time to time to D.V. +Williams, Esq., care of Michael Rossiter, Esq., F.R.S., and usually +forwarded on by Bertie Adams, had told David how much the Revd. +Howel Williams had failed since the cold spring of 1909, and how in +the colder spring of 1910 he had once or twice narrowly survived +influenza. In July, 1910, he was dying of heart failure. +Nevertheless the return of David, his well-beloved, brought to him a +flicker of renewed life, a little pink in the cheeks, and some +garrulity. +</p> +<p> +He could hardly bear his darling son out of his sight, except for +the narrowest margin of necessary sleep; and often David slept +sitting up in an arm-chair in the Vicar's bedroom. The Revd. Howel +said nothing more about grandchildren; often—with a finer +sense—spoke to him not as though he were a son, but as a beloved +daughter. At last he died in his sleep one night, holding David's +hand, looking so ineffably happy that the impostor inwardly gloried +in his imposture as in one of the best deeds of his chequered life. +</p> + +<hr /> +<p> +The will, of course, had not been changed, and David inherited all +his "father's" property. Out of it he settled £500 on the +miner's—or rather Jenny's—son who probably <i>was</i> the offspring of +the real David Williams's boyish amour. He provided a handsome +annuity for poor, shaken, old Nannie; and the rest of the money +after paying all expenses he laid out on the endowment of a Village +Hall for games and study, social meetings and political discussions, +together with provision for an annual stipend of a hundred pounds +for the Vicar or curate of the parish who should run this Hall: +which was to be a lasting memorial to the Reverend Howel Vaughan +Williams, so learned in the lore of Wales. +</p> +<p> +Having settled all these matters to his satisfaction, and certainly +to that of the Revd. Cadwalladr Jones (who succeeded as Vicar of +Pontystrad by a wise nudging and monetary pressure on the part of +the late Vicar's son), David returned to London at the close of +1910, took off his clothes and shed his personality. It was bruited +that he had gone abroad to nurse a health that was seriously +impaired through his incredible exertions over the Shillito case. He +left his cousin Vivie free to espouse the Suffrage cause, even unto +the extremest militancy. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XIII +</h2> +<h3> + THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT +</h3> +<p> +The Conciliation Bill which was intended to give the Parliamentary +Vote to a little over one million women had passed its Second +reading on July 12, 1910, by a majority of 110 votes; in spite of +the bitter opposition of the Premier, the Chancellor of the +Exchequer, the Home Secretary, the President of the Board of Trade, +and the Secretary for the Colonies. The Premier's arguments against +it were, firstly, that "Women were Women"—this of course was a +deplorable fact—and that "the balance of power might fall into +their hands without the physical force necessary to impose their +decisions, etc., etc."; and finally "that in Force lay the ultimate +appeal" (rather a dangerous incitement to the sincere militants). +The Chancellor of the Exchequer took up a more subtle attitude than +the undisguised, grumpy hostility of his leader. +</p> +<p> +His arguments at the time reminded me of an episode in East Africa +thirty years ago. A certain independent Chief tolerated the presence +on his territory of a plucky band of missionary pioneers. He did not +care about Christianity but he liked the trade goods the +missionaries brought to purchase food and pay for labour in the +erection of a station. These trade goods they kept in a storehouse +made of wattle and daub. But this temporary building was not proof +against cunning attempts at burglary on the part of the natives. The +missionaries at length went to the Chief (who was clothed +shamelessly in the stolen calicoes) and sought redress. "All +right," said the potentate, who kept a fretful realm in awe, "<i>But</i> +you have no proof it <i>is</i> my people who break in and steal. You just +catch one in the act, and <i>then</i> you'll see what I'll do." +</p> +<p> +So the Oxford and Cambridge athletic missionaries sat up night after +night under some camouflage and at last their patience was rewarded +by the capture of a naked, oily-skinned negro who emerged from a +tunnel he had dug under the store-foundations. Then they bore him +off to the Yao chieftain. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Now</i> we know where we are," said the Chief. "You've proved your +complaint. We'll have him burnt to death, after lunch, in the market +place. I presume you've brought a lunch-basket?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh no!" said the horrified propagandists: "We don't want such a +penalty as <i>that</i>..." +</p> +<p> +"Very good" said the Chief, "then we'll behead him..." "No! No!" +</p> +<p> +"Crucify him?"—"No! No!"—"Peg him down over a Driver Ants' nest?" +"No! No!" +</p> +<p> +"Then, if you don't want <i>any</i> rational punishment, he shall go +free." And free he went. +</p> +<p> +In the same way the Chancellor of the Exchequer of those days was so +hard to please over Suffrage measures that none brought forward was +democratic enough, far-reaching and overwhelming enough to secure +his adhesion. He was therefore forced to torpedo the Conciliation +Bill, to snatch away the half-loaf that was better than no bread at +all. He spoke and voted against these tentative measures of feminine +enfranchisement, with tongue in cheek, no doubt, and hand linked in +that of Lulu Grandcourt whose opposition to any vote being given to +woman and whole attitude towards the sex was so bitter that he had +to be reminded by Lord Aloysius Brinsley (who like his brother +Robert was a convinced Suffragist) that after all he, Lulu +Grandcourt, had deigned to be born of a woman, had even—maybe—been +spanked by one. +</p> +<p> +The Speaker had hinted on the occasion of the second reading of the +Concilition Bill and at a later raising of the same question that +there might arise all sorts of obstacles to wreck the Woman's +Franchise measure in Committee; obstacles that apparently need not +be taken into account as dangerous to any measure affecting male +interests. Therefore many of the M.P.'s timorously voted for the +second reading of the Conciliation Bill in order to stand well with +their Constituencies, yet looked to the Premier to trip it up by +some adroit use of Parliamentary jiu-jitsu. They were not +disappointed in their ideal politician. The Bill after it had passed +its second reading by a large majority was referred to a Committee +of the whole House, which seemingly is fatal to any measure that +seeks to become law. +</p> +<p> +So the stale summer of 1910 wore itself away in recriminations, +hopings against probability that the newer types of Liberal +statesmen were honest men, keepers of promises, not merely—as +Vivie said in one of the many speeches that got her into +trouble—"Bridge-players, first and foremost, golf-players when they +couldn't play bridge, or speculators on the Stock Exchange, +champagne drinkers; and prone to eat at their Lucullus banquets, +public and private, till they sometimes fainted with indigestion." +</p> +<p> +My! But she was bitter in her Hyde Park speeches and at her Albert +Hall meetings against this band of mock-liberals who had seized the +impulse of the country towards reform which had grown up under the +Chamberlain era to instal themselves in power with the financial +backing of great Americo-German-Jewish internationalists, who in +those early years of the Twentieth century were ready to stake their +dollars on the Free Trade British Empire if they might guide its +policy. +</p> +<p> +[Very likely if they had obtained the complete guidance they sought +for they might have staved off this ruinous war by telling Germany +bluntly she must keep her hands off France and Belgium; they might +also have seen to it that the War Office <i>was</i> reformed and the +British army ready to fulfil Lord Haldane's promises; for there is +no doubt they had ability even if they despised the instruments they +worked with.] +</p> +<p> +But as I say, Vivie was a bitter and most effective speaker. She +inflamed to action many a warm-hearted person like myself, like +Rossiter (who got into trouble—though it was hushed up—in +1910-1911 for slapping the face of a Secretary of State who spoke +slightingly of the women Suffragists and their motives). Yet I seem +to be stranded now, with a few others, in my pre-war enthusiasm over +the woman's cause, or, later, my horror at the German treatment of +Belgium. +</p> +<p> +Where are the snows of yester-year; where is the animosity which in +the years between the burking of the Conciliation Bill and the +spring of 1914 grew up between the disinterested Reformers who +wanted Woman enfranchised and the Liberal ministers who fought so +doggedly, so unscrupulously, against such a rational completion of +representative government? The other day I glanced at a newspaper +and saw that Sir Michael and Lady Rossiter had been dining at the +Ritz with the Grandcourts, Princess Belasco, Sir Abel Batterby, the +great Police Surgeon, knighted for his skill and discretion in +forcible feeding, and the George Bounderbys (G.B. was the venomous +Private Secretary of a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and put +him up to most of his anti-suffrage dodges); and meeting Vivien +Rossiter soon afterwards I said, "How <i>could</i> you?" "How could I +what?" "Dine with the people you once hated." "Oh I don't know, it's +all past and done with; we've got the Vote and somehow after those +years in Brussels I seem to have no hates and few loves +left"—However this is anticipating. I only insert this protest +because I may seem to be expressing a bitterness the protagonists +have ceased to feel, a triumph at the victory of their cause which +produces in them merely a yawn. +</p> +<p> +Where is Mrs. Pankhurst? Somehow one thought she would never rest +till she was in the Cabinet. And Christabel? And Annie Kenney? +Married perchance to some permanent under Secretary of State and +viewing "direct action" with growing disapproval. +</p> +<p> +And the Pethick Lawrences? Some one told me the other day that +they'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be forcibly fed. +</p> +<p> +But in November, 1910, we all—we that were whole-hearted reformers, +true Liberals, not wolves in sheep's clothing, took very much to +heart what happened on the 18th of that month, when the Prime +Minister of the time announced that the Conference between the House +of Lords and the House of Commons on the Veto question having broken +down he had advised His Majesty to dissolve Parliament. This meant +that the Conciliation Bill was <i>finally</i> done for; while the +declaration of the Prime Minister as to the future Programme of the +Liberal Party, if it was returned to power, excluded any mention of +a Woman's enfranchisement Bill. +</p> +<p> +On Black Friday, November 18th, Vivie was present at the meeting in +Caxton Hall when Mrs. Pankhurst explained the position to the +Suffragist women assembled there. Her blood was fired by the recital +of their wrongs and she was prominent among the four hundred and +fifty volunteers who came forward to accompany Mrs. Pankhurst, Dr. +Garret Anderson and Susan Knipper-Totes (the two last, infirm old +ladies) when they proposed to march to the Houses of Parliament to +exercise their right of presenting a petition. +</p> +<p> +The women proceeded to Parliament Square in small groups so as to +keep within the letter of the law. Some like Vivie carried banners +with pitiful devices—"Where there's a Bill there's a Way," "Women's +Will Beats Asquith's Skill," and so on.... She wished she had given +more direct attention to these mottoes, but much of this procedure +had been got up on impulse and little preparation made. It was near +to four o'clock on a fine November afternoon when the four hundred +and fifty women began their movement towards Parliament Square. A +red sun was sinking behind the House of Lords, the blue of the misty +buildings and street openings was enhanced by the lemon yellow +lights of the newly-lit lamps. The avenues converging on the Houses +of Parliament were choked with people, and vehicles had to be +diverted from the streets. The men in the watching crowd covered the +pavements and island "refuges," leaving the roadways to the little +groups of struggling women, and the large force—a thousand or +more—of opposing police. +</p> +<p> +It was said at the time that the Government of the day, realizing by +their action or inaction in the House of Commons they had provoked +this movement of Mrs. Pankhurst's, had prepared the policy with +which to meet it. As on the eve of a General Election it might be +awkward if they made many arrests of women—perchance Liberal +women—on their way to the House to present a petition or escort a +deputation, the police should be instructed instead to repel the +Suffragists by force, to give them a taste of that "frightfulness" +which became afterwards so familiar a weapon in the Prussian +armoury. Some said also that the Government looked to the crowd +which was allowed to form unchecked on the pavements, the crowd of +rough men and boys—costers from Lambeth, longshore men from the +barges on the unembanked Westminster riverside, errand boys, +soldiers, sailors, clerks returning home, warehousemen, the tag-rag +and bob-tail generally of London when a row is brewing—looked to +this crowd to catch fire from the brutality of the police +(uniformed and in plain clothes) and really give the women +clamouring for the Vote "what for"; teach them a lesson as to what +the roused male can do when the female passes the limits of domestic +license. A few deaths might result (and did), and many injuries, but +the treatment they received would make such an impression on Mrs. +Pankhurst's followers that they would at last realize the futility +of measuring their puny force against the muscle of man. Force, as +the Premier had just said, must be the decisive factor. +</p> +<p> +But unfortunately for these calculations the large male crowd took +quite a different line. The day had gone by when men and boys were +wont to cry to some expounding Suffragette: "Go home and mind yer +biby." Dimly these toilers and moilers, these loafers and wasters +now understood that women of a courage rarely matched in man were +fighting for the cause of all ill-governed, mal-administered, +swindled, exploited people of either sex. The mass of men, <i>in</i> the +mass, is chivalrous. It admires pluck, patience, and persistency. So +the crowd instead of aiding the police to knock sense into the women +began to take sides with the buffeted, brutalized and bleeding +Suffragettes. +</p> +<p> +Fortunately before the real fighting began, and no doubt as a stroke +of policy on the part of some Police Inspector, Mrs. Pankhurst +convoying the two frail old ladies—Dr. Garret Anderson and Susan +Knipper-Totes—champions of the Vote when Woman Suffrage was outside +practical politics—had reached the steps of the Strangers' entrance +to the House of Commons. From this point of 'vantage a few of the +older leaders of the deputation were able to witness the four or +five hours' struggle in and around Parliament Square, the Abbey, +Parliament Street, Great George Street which made Black Friday one +of the note-worthy days in British history—though, <i>more nostro</i>, +it will be long before it is inserted in school books. +</p> +<p> +Here, while something like panic signalized the Legislative Chamber +and Cabinet ministers scurried in and out like flurried rabbits and +finally took refuge in their private rooms—here was fought out the +decisive battle between physical and moral force over the suffrage +question. The women were so <i>exaltées</i> that they were ready to face +death for their cause. The police were so exasperated that they saw +red and some went mad with sex mania. It was a horrible spectacle in +detail. Men with foam on their moustaches were gripping women by the +breasts, tearing open their clothing, and proceeding to rabid +indecencies. Or, if not sex-mad, they twisted their arms, turned +back their thumbs to dislocation, rained blows with fists on pale +faces, covering them with blood. They tore out golden hair or thin +grey locks with equal disregard. Mounted police were summoned to +overawe the crowd, which by this time whether suffragist and female, +or neutral, non-committal and male, was giving the police on foot a +very nasty time. The four hundred and fifty women of the original +impulse had increased to several thousand. Dusk had long since +deepened into a night lit up with arc lamps and the golden radiance +of great gas-lamp clusters. Flares were lighted to enable the police +to see better what they were doing and who were their assailants. +But the women showed complete indifference to the horses; and the +horses with that exquisite forbearance that the horse can show to +the distraught human, did their utmost not to trample on small feet +and outspread hands. +</p> +<p> +Here and there humanity asserted itself. One policeman—helmetless, +his fair, blond face scratched and bleeding—had in berserkr rage +felled a young woman in the semi-darkness. He bore his senseless +victim into the shelter of some nook or cloister and turned on her +his bull's eye lantern. She was a beautiful creature, in private +life a waitress at a tea shop. Her hat was gone and her hair +streamed over her drooping face and slender shoulders. The policeman +overcome with remorse exclaimed—mentioning the Home Secretary's +name "—— be damned; this ain't the job for a decent man." The +Suffragette revived under his care. He escorted her home, resigned +from the police force, married her and I believe has lived happily +ever afterwards, if he was not killed in the War. +</p> +<p> +Vivie had struggled for about two hours to reach the precincts of +the House, with or without her banner. Probably without, because she +had freely used its staff as a weapon of defence, and her former +skill in fencing stood her in good stead. But at last she was +gripped by two constables, one of them an oldish man and the other a +plain-clothes policeman, whom several spectators had singled out for +his pleasure in needless brutalities. +</p> +<p> +These men proceeded to give her "punishment," and involuntarily she +shrieked with mingled agony of pain and outraged sex-revolt. A man +who had paused irresolutely on the kerb of a street refuge came to +her aid. He dealt the grey-haired constable a blow that sent him +reeling and then seized the plain-clothes man by his coat collar. A +struggle ensued which ended in the intervener being flung with such +violence on the kerb stone that he was temporarily stunned. +Presently he found himself being dragged along with his heels +dangling, while Vivie, described in language which my jury of +matrons will not allow me to repeat, was being propelled alongside +him, her clothes nearly torn off her, to some police station where +they were placed under arrest. As soon as they had recovered breath +and complete consciousness, had wiped the blood from cut heads, +noses, and lips, they looked hard at each other. "Thank you <i>so</i> +much," said Vivie, "it <i>was</i> good of you." "That's enough," said +her defender, "it wanted the voice to make me sure; but somehow I +thought all along it <i>was</i> Vivie. Don't you know me? Frank Gardner!" +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +While waiting for the formalities to be concluded and their +transference to cells in which they were to pass the night, Frank +told Vivie briefly that he had returned from Rhodesia a prosperous +man on a brief holiday leaving his wife and children to await his +return. Hearing there was likely to be an unusual row that evening +over the Suffrage question he had sauntered down from the Strand to +see what was going on and had been haunted by the conviction that he +would meet Vivie in the middle of the conflict. But when he rushed +to her defence his action was instinctive, the impulse of any +red-blooded man to defend a woman that was being brutally +maltreated. +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +The next morning they were haled before the magistrate. Michael +Rossiter was in court as a spectator, feverishly anxious to pay +Vivie's fine or to find bail, or in all and every way to come to her +relief. He seemed rather mystified at the sight of Frank Gardner +arraigned with her. But presently the prosecuting counsel for the +Chief Commissioner of Police arrived and told the astonished +magistrate it was the wish of the Home Secretary that the prisoners +in the dock should all be discharged, Vivie and Frank Gardner among +them. At any rate no evidence would be tendered by the prosecution. +</p> +<p> +So they were released, as also was each fresh batch of prisoners +brought in after them. Vivie went in a cab to her house in the +Victoria Road; Frank back to his hotel. Both had promised to +foregather at Rossiter's house in Portland Place at lunch. +</p> +<p> +Hitherto Vivie had refrained from entering No. 1 Park Crescent. She +had not seen it or Mrs. Rossiter since David's attack of faintness +and hysteria in February, 1909, nearly two years ago. Why she went +now she scarcely knew, logically. It was unwise to renew relations +too closely with Rossiter, who showed his solicitude for her far too +plainly in his face. The introduction to Linda Rossiter in her +female form would be embarrassing and would doubtless set that good +lady questioning and speculating. +</p> +<p> +Yet she felt she must see Rossiter—writing was always dangerous and +inadequate—and reason with him; beg him not to spoil his own +chances in life for her, not lose his head in politics and personal +animosities on her behalf, as he seemed likely to do. Already people +were speaking of him as a parallel to ——, and ——, and —— (you +can fill the blanks for yourself with the names of great men of +science who have become ineffective, quarrelsome, isolated members +of Parliament); saying it was a great loss to Science and no gain to +the legislature. +</p> +<p> +As to Frank Gardner, she was equally eager for a long explanatory +talk with him. Except that her life had inured her to surprises and +unexpected meetings, it was sufficiently amazing that Frank and she, +who had not seen each other or touched hands for thirteen years, +should meet thus in a dangerous scuffle in a dense struggling crowd +outside the Houses of Parliament. She must so arrange matters after +lunch that Frank should not prevent her hour's talk with Rossiter, +yet should have the long explanation he himself deserved. An idea. +She would telephone to Praddy and invite herself and Frank to tea at +his studio after she had left the Rossiters. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Rossiter was used to unexpected guests at lunch. People on +terms of familiarity dropped in, or the Professor detained some +colleague or pupil and made him sit down to the meal which was +always prepared and seated for four. Therefore she was not +particularly taken aback when her husband appeared at five minutes +to one in the little drawing-room and after requesting that the +macaw and the cockatoo might be removed for the nonce to a back +room—as they made sustained conversation impossible, announced that +he expected momently—ah! there was the bell—two persons whose +acquaintance he was sure Linda would like to make. One was Captain +Frank Gardner, who owned a big ranch in Rhodesia, and—er—the +other—oh no! no relation—was Miss Warren.... +</p> +<p> +"What, one of the Warrens of Huddersfield? Well, I never! And where +did you pick her up? Strange she shouldn't have written to me she +was coming up to town! I could—" +</p> +<p> +"No, this is a Miss Vivien Warren—" +</p> +<p> +"Vivien? How curious, why that is the name of the Adams's little +girl—" +</p> +<p> +"A Miss Vivien Warren," went on Rossiter patiently—"a well-known +Suffragist who—" +</p> +<p> +"Oh Michael! <i>Not</i> a Suffragette!" wailed Mrs. Rossiter, imagining +vitriol was about to be thrown over the surviving pug and damage +done generally to the furniture—But at this moment the butler +announced: "Captain Frank Gardner and Miss Warren." +</p> +<p> +Gardner was well enough, a lean soldierly-looking man, brown with +the African sun, with pleasant twinkling blue eyes, a thick +moustache and curly hair, just a little thin on the top. His face +was rather scarred with African adventure and did not show much +special trace of his last night's tussle with the police. There was +a cut at the back of his head where he had fallen on the kerb stone +but that was neatly plastered, and you do not turn your back much on +a hostess, at any rate on first introduction. +</p> +<p> +But Vivie had obviously been in the wars. She had—frankly—a black +eye, a cut and swollen lip, and her ordinarily well-shaped nose was +a trifle swollen and reddened. But her eyes likewise were twinkling, +though the bruised one was bloodshot. +</p> +<p> +"I'm sorry, Mrs. Rossiter, to be introduced to you like this. I +don't know <i>what</i> you will think of me. It's the first time I've +been in a really bad row.... We were trying to get to the House of +Commons, but the police interfered and gave us the full privileges +of a man as regards their fists. Captain Gardner here—who is an old +friend of mine—intervened, or I'm afraid I shouldn't have got off +as cheaply as I did. And your husband kindly came to the police +court to testify to our good character, and then invited us to +lunch." +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. Rossiter</i>: "Why how your voice reminds me of some one who used +to come here a good deal at one time—a Mr. David Williams. I +suppose he isn't any relation?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i> (while Frank Gardner looks a little astonished): "Oh—my +cousin. I knew you knew him. He has often talked to me about you. +I'll tell you about David by and bye, Frank." +</p> +<p> +At this interchange of Christian names Mrs. Rossiter thinks she +understands the situation: they are engaged, have been since last +night's rescue. But what <i>extraordinary</i> people the dear Professor +<i>does</i> pick up! Have <i>they</i> got ductless glands, she wonders? +</p> +<p> +Rossiter who has been fidgeting through this dialogue considers that +lunch is ready, so they proceed to the small dining-room, "the +breakfast-room." Mrs. Rossiter was always very proud of having a +<i>small</i> drawing-room (otherwise, "me boudwor") and a <i>small</i> +dining-room. It prepared the way for greater magnificence at big +parties and also enabled one to be cosier with a few friends. +</p> +<p> +At luncheon: +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. Rossiter</i> to <i>Frank Gardner</i>, archly: "I suppose you've come +home to be married?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Frank</i>: "Oh no! I'm not a bigamist, I've got a wife already and +four children, and jolly glad I shall be to get back to 'em. I can't +stand much of the English climate, after getting so used to South +African sunshine. No. I came on a business trip to England, leaving +my old dear out at the farm near Salisbury, with the kids—we've got +a nice English governess who helps her to look after 'em. A year or +two hence I hope to bring 'em over to see the old country and we may +have to put the eldest to school: children run wild so in South +Africa. As to Miss Warren, she's an old friend of mine and a very +dear one. I hadn't seen her for—for—thirteen years, when the sound +of her voice—She's got one of those voices you never forget—the +sound of her voice came up out of that beastly crowd of gladiators +yesterday, and I found her being hammered by two policemen. I pretty +well laid one out, though I hadn't used my fists for a matter of ten +years. Then I got knocked over myself, I passed a night in a police +cell feeling pretty sick and positively maddened at not being able +to ask any questions. Then at last morning came, I had a wash and +brush up—the police after all aren't bad chaps, and most of 'em +seemed jolly well ashamed of last night's doin's—Then I met Vivie +in Court and your husband too. He took me on trust and I'm awfully +grateful to him. I've got a dear old mater down in Kent—Margate, +don't you know—my dad's still alive, Vivie!—and she'd have been +awfully cut up at hearing her son had been spending the night in a +police cell and was goin' to be fined for rioting, only fortunately +the Home Secretary said we weren't to be punished.... But Professor +Rossiter's coming on the scene was a grand thing. Besides being an +M.P., I needn't tell <i>you</i>, Mrs. Rossiter, he has a world-wide +reputation. Oh, we read your books, sir, out in South Africa, <i>I</i> +can tell you—Well—er—and here we are—and I'm monopolizing the +conversation." +</p> +<p> +Vivie sat opposite her old lover, and near to the man who loved her +now with such ill-concealed passion that his hand trembled for her +very proximity. She felt strangely elated, strangely gay, at times +inclined to laugh as she caught sight of her bruised and puffy +face in an opposite mirror, yet happy in the knowledge that +notwithstanding the thirteen years of separation, her repeated +rejection of his early love, her battered appearance, Frank still +felt tenderly towards her, still remembered the timbre of her voice. +Her mouth was too sore and swollen to make eating very pleasant. She +trifled with her food but she felt young and full of gay adventure. +Mrs. Rossiter a little overwhelmed with all the information Gardner +had poured out, a little irritated also at the dancing light in +Vivie's eyes, turned her questionings on her. +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. Rossiter</i>: "I suppose you are the Miss Warren who speaks so +much. I often see your name in the papers, especially in <i>Votes for +Women</i> that the Professor takes in. Isn't it funny that a man should +care so much about women getting the vote? I'm sure <i>I</i> don't want +it. I'm <i>quite</i> content to exercise <i>my</i> influence through <i>him</i>, +especially now he's in Parliament. But then I have my home to look +after, and I'm <i>much</i> too busy to go out and about and mix myself up +in politics. I'm quite content to leave all that to the menfolk." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Quite so. In your position no doubt I should do the same; +but you see I haven't any menfolk. There is my mother, but she +prefers to live abroad, and as she is comfortably off she can employ +servants to look after her." (This hint of wealth a little reassured +Mrs. Rossiter, who believed most Suffragettes to be adventuresses.) +"So, as I have no ties I prefer to give myself up to the service of +women in general. When they have the vote and other privileges of +men, then of course I can attend to my private interests and +pursuits—mathematical calculations, insurance risks—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. Rossiter</i>: "It is <i>extraordinary</i> how like your voice is to +your cousin's. If I shut my eyes I could think he was back again. +Not," (she added hastily) "that he has not, no doubt, <i>plenty</i> to do +abroad. Do you ever see him now? Why does he not marry and settle +down? One never hears of him now as a barrister. But then he used to +<i>feel</i> his cases too much. The last time he was here he fainted and +had to stay here all night. +</p> +<p> +"And yet he had won his case and got his—what do you say? client? +off—I dare say you remember it? She was my husband's cousin though +we hardly liked to say so at the time: it is so unpleasant having a +murder in the family. Fortunately she was let off; I mean, the jury +said 'not guilty,' though personally I—However that is neither here +nor there, and since then she's married Colonel Kesteven—Won't you +have some pheasant? No? I remember your cousin used to have a very +poor appetite, especially when one of his cases was on. <i>How</i> he +used—excuse my saying so—how he used to tire poor Michael—Mr. +Rossiter! Talk, talk, talk! in the evenings, and I knew the +Professor had his lectures to prepare, but hints were thrown away on +Mr. David." +</p> +<p> +Rossiter broke in: +</p> +<p> +"Now what would you like to do in the afternoon, Miss Warren? And +Gardner? You, by the bye, have the first claim on our hospitality. +You have just arrived from Africa and the only thing we have done +for you, so far, is to drag you into a disgraceful row." +</p> +<p> +<i>Frank</i>: "Well, <i>I</i> should like a glimpse of the Zoo. I'm quite +willing to pay my shilling and give no more trouble, but if Vivie is +going there too we could all walk up together. After that I'm going +to revisit an old acquaintance of mine and Vivie's, Praed the +architect—lives somewhere in Chelsea if I remember right—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "In Hans Place. I don't particularly want to go to the Zoo. +I look so odd I might over-excite the monkeys. I think I should like +to try a restful visit to the Royal Botanic. I'm so fond of their +collection of weird succulent plants—things that look like stones +and suddenly produce superb flowers." +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. Rossiter</i>: "We belong to the Botanic as well as to the Zoo. +<i>I</i> could take you there after lunch." +</p> +<p> +<i>Rossiter</i>: "You forget, dearie, you've got to open that Bazaar in +Marylebone Town Hall—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Linda</i>: "Oh, have I? To be sure. But it's Lady Goring that does the +opening, I'm <i>much</i> too nervous. Still I promised to come. Would +Miss Warren care to come with me?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I should have liked to awfully: I love bazaars; but just +at this moment I'm thinking more of those succulent plants ... and +my battered face." +</p> +<p> +<i>Rossiter</i>: "I'll make up your minds for you. We'll <i>all</i> drive to +the Zoo in Linda's motor. Gardner shall look at the animals and then +find his way to Hans Place. I'll escort Miss Warren to the Botanic, +and then come on and pick you up, Linda, at the Town Hall." +</p> +<p> +That statement seemed to satisfy every one, so after coffee and a +glance round the laboratory and the last experiments, they proceeded +to the Zoo, with at least an hour's daylight at their disposal. +</p> +<p> +Rossiter and Vivie were at last alone within the charmed circle of +the Botanic Gardens. They made their way slowly to the great Palm +House and thence up twisty iron steps to a nook like a tree refuge +in New Guinea, among palm boles and extravagant aroid growths. +</p> +<p> +"Now Michael," said Vivie—despite her bruised face she looked very +elegant in her grey costume, grey hat, and grey suède gloves, and he +had to exercise great self-restraint, remember that he was known by +sight to most of the gardeners and to the ubiquitous secretary, in +order to refrain from crushing her to his side: "Now Michael: I want +a serious talk to you, a talk which will last for another eighteen +months—which is about the time that has elapsed since we had our +last—You're <i>not</i> keeping the pact we made." +</p> +<p> +"What was that?" +</p> +<p> +"Why you promised me that your—your—love—No! I won't misuse that +word—Your friendship for me should not spoil your life, your +career, or make Linda unhappy. Yet it is doing all three. You've +lived in a continual agitation since you got into Parliament, and +now you'll be involved in more electioneering in order to be +returned once more. Meantime your science has come to a dead stop. +And it's so far more important for us than getting the Vote. All +this franchise agitation is on a much lower plane. It amuses and +interests me. It keeps me from thinking too much about you. +Besides, I am naturally rather combative; I secretly enjoy these +rough-and-tumbles with constituted authority. I also really <i>do</i> +think it is a <i>beastly</i> shame, this preference shown for man, in +most of the careers and in the franchise. But don't you worry +<i>yourself</i> unduly about it. If I really thought that you cared so +much about me that it was turning you away from <i>our</i> religion, +scientific research, I'd go over to Brussels to my mother and stay +there. I really would; and I really will if you don't stop following +me about from meeting to meeting and going mad over the Suffrage +question in the House. Is it true that you struck a Cabinet minister +the other day? Mr. ——?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Rossiter</i>: "Yes, it's true, and he asked for it. If I am +unreasonable what are <i>they</i>? ——, ——, <i>and</i> ——? Why have they +such a bitter feeling against your sex? Have they had no mothers, no +sweethearts, no sisters, no wives? If I'd never met you I should +still have been a Suffragist. I think I <i>was</i> one, as a boy, +watching what my mother suffered from my father, and how he collared +all her money—I suppose it was before the Married Woman's Property +Act—and grudged her any for her dress, her little comforts, her +books, or even for proper medical advice. And to hear these Liberal +Cabinet Ministers—<i>Liberal</i>, mind you—talk about women, often with +the filthy phrases of the street—Well: he got a smack on the jaw +and decided to treat the incident as a trifling one ... his private +secretary patched it up somehow, but I expressed no regret.... +</p> +<p> +"Well, darling, I'll try to do as you wish. I'll try to shut you out +of my thoughts and return to my experiments, when I'm not on +platforms or in the House. I think I shall get in again—it's a mere +matter of money, and thanks to Linda that isn't wanting. I'm not +going to withdraw from politics, you bet, however disenchanted I may +be. It's because the decent, honest, educated men withdraw that +legislation and administration are left to the case-hardened rogues +... and the uneducated ... and the cranks. But don't make things +<i>too</i> hard for me. Keep out of prison ... keep off hunger +strikes—If you're going to be man-handled by the police—Ah! <i>why</i> +wasn't <i>I</i> there, instead of in the House? Gardner had all the +luck.... I was glad to hear he was married." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Oh you needn't be jealous of poor Frank. And he'll soon be +back in South Africa. You needn't be jealous of <i>any</i> one. I'm all +yours—in spirit—for all time. Now we must be going: it's getting +dusk and we should be irretrievably ruined if we were locked up in +this dilapidated old palm house. Besides, I'm to meet Frank at +Praddy's studio in order to tell him the history of the last +thirteen years." +</p> +<p> +As they walked away: "You know, Michael, I'm still hoping we may be +friends without being lovers. I wonder whether Linda would get to +like me?" +</p> +<p> +At Praed's studio. Lewis Maitland Praed is looking older. He must be +now—November, 1910—about fifty-eight or fifty-nine. But he has +still a certain elegance, the look of a lesser Leighton about him. +Frank has been there already for half an hour, and the tea-table +has been, so to speak, deflowered. Vivie accepts a cup, a muffin, +and a marron glacé. Then says, "Now, dear Praddy, summon your +mistress, <i>dons l'honnête sens du mot</i>, and have this tea-table +cleared so that we can have a hugely long and uninterrupted talk. I +have got to give Frank a summary of all that I've done in the past +thirteen years. Meanwhile Frank, as your record, I feel convinced, +is so blameless and normal that it could be told before any +parlour-maid, you start off whilst she is taking away the tea, +fiddling with the stove, and prolonging to the uttermost her +services to a master who has become her slave." +</p> +<p> +The parlour-maid enters, and casts more than one searching glance at +Vivie's bruised features, but performs her duties in a workmanlike +manner. +</p> +<p> +<i>Frank</i>: "My story? Oh well, it's a happy one on the whole—very +happy. Soon as the war was over, I got busy in Rhodesia and pitched +on a perfect site for a stock and fruit farm. The B.S.A. Co. was +good to me because I'd known Cecil Rhodes and Dr. Jim; and by +nineteen four I was going well, they'd made me a magistrate, and +some of my mining shares had turned out trumps. Then Westlock came +out as Governor General, and Lady Enid had brought out with her a +jolly nice girl as governess to her children. She was the daughter +of a parson in Hertfordshire near the Brinsley estates. Well, I +won't say—bein' the soul of truth—that I fell in love with +her—straight away—because I don't think I ever fell deep in +love—straight away—with any girl but you, Vivie. But I did feel, +as it was hopeless askin' you to marry me, here was the wife I +wanted. She was good enough to accept me and the Westlocks were +awfully kind and made everything easy. Lady Enid's a perfect +brick—and, by the bye, she's a great Suffragist too. Well: we were +married at Pretoria in 1904, and now we've got four children; a +sturdy young Frank, a golupshous Vivie—oh, I told Muriel +everything, she's the sort of woman you can—And the other two are +called Bertha after my mother and Charlotte after Mrs. Bernard +Shaw. I sent you, Vivie—a newspaper with the announcement of my +marriage—Dj'ever get it?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Never. But I was undergoing a sea-change of my own, just +then, which I will tell you all about presently." +</p> +<p> +<i>Frank</i>: "Well then. I came back to England on a hurried visit. You +remember, Praddy? But you were away in Italy and I couldn't find +Vivie anywhere. I called round at where your office was—Fraser and +Warren—where we parted in 1897—and there was no more Fraser and +Warren. Nobody knew anything about what had become of you. P'raps I +might have found out, but I got a bit huffy, thought you might have +written me a line about my marriage. I did write to Miss Fraser, but +the letter was returned from the Dead Letter office," (<i>Vivie</i>: "She +married Colonel Armstrong.") "Well, there it is! By some devilish +lucky chance I had no sooner got to London from Southhampton, day +before yesterday, than some one told me all about the expected row +between the Suffragettes and the police. Thought I'd go and see for +myself what this meant. No idea before how far the thing had gone, +or what brutes the police could be. Had a sort of notion, don't know +why, that dear old Viv would be in it, up to the neck. Got mixed up +in the crowd and helped a woman or two out of it. Lady Feenix—they +said it was—picked up some and took 'em into her motor. And then I +heard a cry which could only be in Vivie's voice—dear old +Viv—(leans forward with shining eyes to press her hand) and ... +there we are. How're the bruises?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Oh, they ache rather, but it is such <i>joy</i> to have such +friends as you and Praddy and Michael Rossiter, that I don't mind +<i>what</i> I go through..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Frank</i>: "But I say, Viv, about this Rossiter man. He seems awfully +gone on you...?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i> (flushing in the firelight): "Does he? It's only friendship. +I really don't see them often but he came to my assistance once at a +critical time. And now that Praddy's all-powerful parlour-maid's +definitely left us, I will tell you <i>my</i> story." +</p> +<p> +So she does, between five and half-past six, almost without +interruption from the spell-bound Frank—who says it licks any novel +he ever read, and she ought to turn it into a novel—with a happy +ending—or from Praed who is at times a little somnolent. Then at +half-past six, the practical Frank says: +</p> +<p> +"Look here, you chaps, I could go on listening till midnight, but +what's the matter with a bit of dinner? I dare say Praddy's +parlour-maid might turn sour if we asked her at a moment's notice to +find dinner for three. Why not come out and dine with me at the Hans +Crescent Hotel? Close by. I'll get a quiet table and we can finish +our talk there. To-morrow I must go down to Margate to see the dear +old mater, and it may be a week before I'm up again." +</p> +<p> +They adjourn to the hostelry mentioned. +</p> +<p> +Over coffee and cigarettes, Vivie makes this appeal to Frank: "Now +Frank, you know all my story. Tell me first, what really became of +the real David Williams, the young man you met in the hospital and +wrote to me about?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Frank</i>: "'Pon my life I don't know. I never heard one word about +him after I got clear of the hospital myself. You know it fell into +Boer hands during that rising in Cape Colony. I expect the 'real' +David Williams, as you call him, died from neglected wounds or +typhoid—or recovered and took to drink, or went up country and got +knocked on the head by the natives for interfering with their +women—Good riddance of bad rubbish, I expect. What do you want me +to do? I'll swear to anything in reason." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I want you to do this. Run down one day before you go back +to Africa, to South Wales, to Pontystrad—It's not far from +Swansea—And call at the Vicarage on the pretext that you've come to +enquire about David Vavasour Williams whom you once knew in South +Africa. It'll give verisimilitude to my stories. They'll probably +say they haven't seen him for ever so long, but that you can hear of +him through Professor Rossiter. I dare say it's a silly idea of +mine, but what I fear sometimes—is that if the fact comes out that +<i>I</i> was David Williams, some Vaughan or Price or other Williams may +call the old man's will in question and get it put into Chancery, +get the money taken away from poor old Bridget Evanwy and the +village hall which I've endowed. That's all. If it wasn't that I've +disposed of my supposed father's money in the way I think he would +have liked best, I shouldn't care a hang if they found out the trick +I'd played on the Benchers. D'you see?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Frank</i>: "I see." +</p> +<p> +The next day Vivie wisely spent in bed, healing her wounds and +resting her limbs which after the mental excitement was over ached +horribly. Honoria came round and listened, applauded, pitied, +laughed and concurred. +</p> +<p> +But she was well enough on the following Tuesday after Black Friday +to attend another meeting of the W.S.P.U. at Caxton Hall, to hear +one more ambiguous, tricky, many-ways-to-be-interpreted promise of +the then Prime Minister. Mrs. Pankhurst pointing out the vagueness +of these assurances announced her intention then and there of going +round to Downing Street to ask for a more definite wording. Vivie +and many others followed this dauntless lady. Their visit was +unexpected, the police force was small and the Suffragettes had two +of the Cabinet Ministers at their mercy. They contented themselves +by shaking, hustling, frightening but not otherwise injuring their +victims before the latter were rescued and put into taxi-cabs. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0014"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XIV +</h2> +<h3> + MILITANCY +</h3> +<p class="heading"> + The Lilacs,<br /> + Victoria Road, S.W.<br /> + <i>December</i> 31, 1910. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + <span class="sc">Dear Michael</span>,— +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + I'm so glad you got returned all right by your University. I + feared very much your championship of the Woman's Cause + might have told against you. But these newer Universities + are more liberal-minded. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + I am keeping my promise to tell you of any important move I + am making. So this is to inform you, <i>in very strict + confidence</i>, of my latest dodge. For the effective + organization of my particular branch of the W.S.P.U. + activities, I must have an office. "The Lilacs" is far too + small, and besides I shrink from having my little home + raided or too much visited even by confederates. I learned + the other day that the old Fraser and Warren offices on the + top floor of 88-90 Chancery Lane were vacant. The Midland + Insurance Co. that occupied nearly all the building has + cleared out and the block is to be given over to a multitude + of small undertakings. Well: I secured our old rooms! Simply + splendid, with the two safes that Honoria, untold ages ago, + fitted into the walls, and hid so cleverly that if there is + no treachery it would be hard for the police to find them + and raid them. The Midland Insurance Co. did not behave well + to Fraser and Warren, so Beryl Storrington, when she was + clearing out said nothing about the safes, which were not + noticed by the Company. Honoria kept the keys and now hands + them over to me. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + The W.S.P.U. has taken—also under an alias—other offices + on the same side of the way, at No. 94, top storey. We find + we can, by using the fire escape, pass over the intervening + roofs and reach the parapet outside the "partners' room" at + the 88-90 building. I shall once again make use of the + little room next the partners' office as a bedroom or + rather, "tiring" room, where I can if necessary effect + changes of costume. I have taken the new offices in the name + of Mr. Michaelis<a href="#note-3" name="noteref-3"><small>[3]</small></a> for a special reason; and with some + modifications of David's costume I have appeared in person + to assume possession of them. I generally enter No. 94 + dressed as Vivie Warren. All this may sound very silly to + you, like playing at conspiracy. But these precautions seem + to be necessary. The Government is beginning to take + Suffragism seriously, and a whole department at New Scotland + Yard has been organized to cope with our activities. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + One reason I have in writing this letter—a letter I hope + you will burn after you have read and noted its contents—is + to ask you to lend me for a while the services of Bertie + Adams as clerk. Of course I shall insist on paying his + salary whilst I employ him, and indemnifying him for + anything he may suffer in my service—that of the W.S.P.U. I + am fairly well off for money now. Besides the funds the + W.S.P.U. places at my disposal, I have the interest on + mother's Ten Thousand pounds, and she would give me more if + I asked for it. She has quite taken to the idea of spending + her ill-gotten gains on the Enfranchisement of Women! (I am + going over to see her for a week or so, when it is not quite + so cold.) +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + What business am I going specially to undertake in Mr. + Michaelis's office on the top storey of 88-90? I will tell + you. Scotland Yard is getting busy about us, the + Suffragists, trying to find out all it can that is + detrimental to our personal characters, our upbringing, our + progeniture, our businesses and our relations; whether we + had a forger in the family, whether I am the daughter of the + "notorious" Mrs. Warren, whether Mrs. Canon Burstall is + really my aunt and whether she couldn't be brought to use + her private influence on me to keep me quiet, in case it + came out that Kate Warren was her sister, and that she led + Kate into that way of life wherein she earned her shameful + livelihood. I have had one or two covert hints from Aunt Liz + promising to open up relations <i>if</i> only I'll behave myself! + Scotland Yard has already had the sorry triumph of causing + one or two of our most prominent workers to retire from the + ranks because they were not properly married or had been + married after the eldest child was born; or had once "been + in trouble," over some peccadillo, or had had a son or a + sister who though now upright and prosperous had once been + in the clutches of the law. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + Now my idea is to turn the tables on all this. I myself am + impeccable in a real court of equity. My avatar as David + Williams was by way of being a superb adventure. I only + retired from the harmless imposture lest I might compromise + you, and you are so far gone in politics now that the + revelation—if it came about—that you were deceived by me + and by my "father"—would do you no harm. For a number of + reasons I know pretty well that the Benchers would not make + themselves ridiculous by having the story of my successful + entry into their citadel told in open court. I have in fact, + through a devious channel, received the assurance that if I + do not resume this character (of D.V.W.) nothing more will + be said. What, then, have I to fear? My mother <i>s'est bien + rangée</i>. She leads a life of the most respectable. If they + challenge her, she can counter with some of the most piquant + scandals of the last thirty years. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + My own careful study of criminology and the assiduous + searchings of Albert Adams in the same direction; my + mother's anecdotes of the lives of statesmen, + police-magistrates, prosecuting counsel, judges, + press-editors—many of whom have enjoyed her hospitality + abroad—have given me numerous hints in what direction to + pursue my researches. Consequently the office of Mr. + Michaelis will be the Criminal Investigation Department of + the W.S.P.U. I feel instinctively I am touching pitch and + that you will disapprove ... but if we are to fight with + clean hands, <i>que Messieurs les Assassins commencent</i>! If + Scotland Yards drops slander and infamous suggestions as a + weapon we will let our poisoned arrows rust in the armoury. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + How <i>beastly</i> all this is! <i>Why</i> do they drive us to these + extremes? I know already enough to blast the characters of + several among our public men. Yet I know in so doing I + should wreck the life-happiness of faithful wives, believing + sisters or daughters, or bright-faced children. Perhaps I + won't, when it comes to the pinch. But somehow, I think, if + they guess I have this knowledge in my possession, they will + leave David Williams and Kate Warren alone. +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + Sometimes, d'you know, I wake up in the middle of the night + at the Lilacs or in my reconstituted bedroom at 88-90, and + wish I were quit of all this Suffrage business, all this + vain struggle against predominant man—and away with you on + a Pacific Island. Then I realize that we should have large + cockroaches and innumerable sand fleas in our new home, that + we should have broken Linda's heart, have set back the + Suffrage cause as much as Parnell's adultery postponed Home + Rule; and above all that I am already thirty-five and shall + soon be thirty-six and that it wouldn't be very long before + you in comfort-loving middle age sighed for the well-ordered + life of No. 1, Park Crescent, Portland Place! +</p> +<p class="bquote"> + On the whole, I think the most rational line I can take is + to continue resolutely this struggle for the Vote. With the + Vote must come the opening of Parliament to women. I'm not + too old to aspire to be some day Secretary of State for Home + Affairs. Because the General Post Office has already become + interested in my correspondence, and because this is really + a "pivotal" letter I am not trusting it to the post but am + calling with it at No. 1 and handing it personally to your + butler. I look to you to destroy it when you have read its + contents—if you go to that length. +</p> +<p class="closing"> + Yours,<br /> + <span class="sc">Vivie</span>. +</p> +<p> +Rossiter read this letter an hour or so after it had been delivered, +frowned a good deal, made notes in one of his memorandum books; then +tore the sheets of typewriting into four and placed them on the +fire. Having satisfied himself that the flames had caught them, he +went up with a sullen face to dress for dinner: Linda was giving a +New Year's Eve dinner to friends and relations and he had to play +the part of host with assumed heartiness. +</p> +<p> +In the perversity of fate, one piece of the typewritten letter +escaped the burning except along the edge. A puff of air from the +chimney or the opened door, as Linda entered the room, lifted it off +the cinders and deposited it on the hearth. Linda had dressed early +for the party, had felt a little hurt at the locked door of +Michael's dressing-room, and had come with some vague intention into +his study, to see perhaps if the fire was burning brightly: because +to avoid unnecessary journies upstairs they would receive their +guests to-night in the study and thence pass to the dining-room. +But the fire had gone sulky, as fires do sometimes even with +well-behaved chimneys and first-class coal. She noted the charred +portion of paper lying untidily on the hearth, with typewriting on +its upper surface. Picking it up she read inside the scorched +margin: +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<pre> + ria kept the keys and now them over to me. + W.S.P.U. has taken--also under an alias--other of + same side of the way, at No. 94, top storey. We + using the fire-escape, pass over the intervening r + reach the parapet outside the "partners' room" at the + ding. I shall once again make use of the little room + tners' office as a bedroom or rather "tiring" room, w + if necessary effect changes of costume. I have tak + ces in the name of Mr. Michaelis for a special reas + ome modifications of David's costume I have appeared in p + ssume possession of them. I generally enter No. 94 dressed a + Warren. All this may sound very silly to you, like pla +</pre> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +"Warren!" That name stood out clear. Did it mean the suffragette, +Vivien Warren, who had sometimes been here, and in whose adventures +her husband seemed so unbecomingly interested? One of the great +ladies who were Anti-Suffragists and had already decoyed Mrs. +Rossiter within their drawing-rooms had referred with great +disapproval to Miss Warren as the daughter of a most notorious woman +whom their husbands wouldn't hear mentioned because of her shocking +past. And David, David of course must be that tiresome David +Williams, supposed to be a cousin of Vivien Warren, but really +seeming in these allusions to be a disguise in which this bold +female deceived people. And "Mr. Michaelis?" Could that be her own +Michael? The shameless baggage! She choked at the thought. Was it a +conspiracy into which they were luring her husband, already rather +compromised as a man of science by his enthusiasm for the Suffrage +cause? People used to speak of Michael almost with awe, he was so +clever, he made such wonderful discoveries. Now, since he had become +a politician he had many enemies, and several ladies of high title +referred to him contemptuously even in her hearing and cut <i>her</i> +without compunction, though she had Ten thousand a year. She felt +all the same a profound conviction that Michael was the most +honourable of men. Yet why all this mystery? The W.S.P.U.? Those +letters stood for some more than usually malignant Suffrage Society. +She had seen the letters often in "Votes for Women."... +</p> +<p> +Her musings here were stayed by the sound of her husband's steps in +the passage. Hastily she thrust the half sheet of charred paper into +her corsage and brushed off the fragments of the burnt edges from +her laces; then turned and affected to be tidying the writing table +as Michael came in. +</p> +<p> +<i>Rossiter</i>: "Linda! Surely not putting my papers in order—or rather +disorder? I thought you were far too intimate with my likes and +dislikes to do that!... Why, what's the matter?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Linda</i>: "Oh nothing. I was only seeing if they had made up your +fire. I—I—haven't touched anything." +</p> +<p> +(Rossiter looked anxiously at the grate, but was relieved to see +nothing but burnt, shrivelled squares of paper. He poked the fire +fiercely and at any rate demolished the remains of Vivie's letter.) +</p> +<p> +<i>Rossiter</i>: "Yes: it isn't very cheerful. They must brighten it +while we are at dinner; though as we shall go to the drawing-room +afterwards we shan't need a huge fire here. There! It looks better +after that poke. I threw some papers on it to start a flame just +before I went up to dress.... Why dearie! What cold hands and what +flushed cheeks!"... +</p> +<p> +<i>Linda</i>: "Oh Michael! You'll always love me, won't you? I—I know +I'm not clever, not half clever enough for you. But I <i>do</i> try to +help you all I can. I—I—" (Sobs.) +</p> +<p> +<i>Rossiter</i> (really distressed): "<i>Of course</i> I love you! What silly +notion have you got into your head?" (He asks himself anxiously +"Surely all that letter was burnt before she came in?") "Come! Pull +yourself together. Be worthy of that dress. It is such a beauty." +</p> +<p> +<i>Linda</i>: "I thought you'd like it. I remembered your saying that +blue always became me." (Dabs at her eyes with a small lace +handkerchief.) +</p> +<p> +Loud double knocks begin to sound. Dinner guests are soon announced. +Linda and Michael receive them heartily. Rossiter—as many a public +man does and has to do—shoves his vain regrets, remorse, anxiety, +weary longing for the unattainable—somewhere to the back of his +brain, where these feelings will not revive till he lies awake at +three in the morning; and prepares to entertain half-a-dozen hearty +men and buxom women who are easily impressed by a little spoon-fed +science. Linda is soon distracted from the scrap of paper in her +bosom and gives all her attention to her cousins and grown-up school +friends from Bradford and Northallerton who are delighted to see the +New Year in amid the gaieties of London. +</p> +<p> +But before she rings for her maid and undresses that night, she +locks the burnt fragment in a secret drawer of her desk. +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +The Ministry which was returned to power in December, 1910, had to +plan during the first half of 1911 to keep the Suffragists becalmed +with promises and prevent their making any public protest which +might mar the Coronation festivities. So various Conciliation Bills +were allowed to be read to the House of Commons and to reach Second +readings at which they were passed with huge majorities. Then they +came to nothingness by being referred to a Committee of the whole +House. Still a hope of some solution was dangled before the +oft-deluded women, who could hardly believe that British Ministers +of State would be such breakers of promises and tellers of +falsehoods. In November, 1911, there being no reason for further +dissembling, the Government made the announcement that it was +contemplating a Manhood Suffrage Bill, which would override +altogether the petty question as to whether a proportion of women +should or should not enjoy the franchise. This new electoral measure +was to be designed for men only, but—the Government opined—it +might be susceptible of amendment so as to admit women likewise. +</p> +<p> +[Probably the Government had satisfied itself beforehand that, +acting on some unwritten code of Parliamentary procedure, the +Speaker would rule out such an amendment as unconstitutional. At any +rate, this is what he did in 1913.] +</p> +<p> +The wrath of the oft-deluded women flamed out with immediate +resentment when the purport of this trick was discerned. Led by Mrs. +Pethick Lawrence a band of more than a thousand women and men (and +some of the presumed men were, like Vivie, women in men's clothes, +as it enabled them to move about with more agility and also to +escape identification) entered Whitehall and Parliament Street armed +with hammers and stones. They broke all the windows they could in +the fronts of the Government offices and at the residences of +Ministers of State. Vivie found herself shadowed everywhere by +Bertie Adams though she had given him no orders to join the crowd, +indeed had begged him to mind his own business and go home. "This +<i>is</i> my business," he had said curtly, and for once masterfully, and +she gave way. Though Vivie for her own reasons carried no hammer or +stone and as one of the principal organizers of the militant +movement had been requested by the inner Council of the W.S.P.U. to +keep out of prison as long as possible, she could not help cheering +on the boldest and bravest in the mild violence of their protest. To +the angry police she seemed merely an impertinent young man, hardly +worth arresting when they could barely master the two hundred and +twenty-three arch offenders with glass-breaking weapons in their +hands. So a constable contented himself with marching on her feet +with all his weight and thrusting his elbows violently into her +breast. +</p> +<p> +She well-nigh fainted with the pain; in fact would have fallen in +the crowd but for the interposition of Adams who carried her out of +it to the corner of Parliament Street, where he pounced on one of +the many taxis that crawled about the outskirts of the shouting, +swaying crowd, sure of a fare from either police or escaping +Suffragists. Feeling certain that some policeman had not left the +disguised Vivie entirely unobserved—indeed Bertie had half thought +he caught the words above the din: "That's David Williams, that is," +he told the taxi man to drive along the Embankment to the Temple. By +the time they had reached the nearest access on that side of +Fountain Court, Vivie was sufficiently recovered from her semi-swoon +to get out, and leaning heavily on Bertie's arm, limp slowly through +the intricacies of the Temple and out into Fleet Street by +Sergeant's Inn. Then with fresh efforts and further halts they made +their way to 94, Chancery Lane. +</p> +<p> +Some one was sitting up here with one electric light on, ready for +any development connected with W.S.P.U. work that night. To +her—fortunately it was a woman—Bertie handed over his stricken +chief, and then made his way home to his little house in Marylebone +and a questioning and not too satisfied wife. The Suffragette in +charge of the top storey at 94 knew something, fortunately, of first +aid, was deft of hands and full of sympathy. Vivie's—or Mr. +Michaelis's—lace-up boots were carefully removed and the poor +crushed and bleeding toes washed with warm water. The collar was +taken off and the shirt unbuttoned revealing a terrible bruise on +the sternum where the policeman's elbow had struck her—better +however there, though it had nearly broken the breastbone, than on +either side, as such a blow might have given rise to cancer. As it +was, Vivie when she coughed spat blood. +</p> +<p> +A cup of hot bovril and an hour's rest on a long chair and she was +ready, supremely anxious indeed, to try the last adventure: an +excursion across the roofs and up and down fire-escapes on to the +parapet of her own especial dwelling, the old offices of Fraser and +Warren at No. 88-90. The great window of the partners' room opened +to her manipulations—it had been carefully left unbolted before +her departure for Caxton Hall; and aided cautiously and cleverly by +her suffragette helper, Vivie at last found herself—or Mr. +Michaelis did—in the snug little bedroom that knew her chiefly in +her male form. +</p> +<p> +Here she was destined to lie up for several weeks till the feet and +the chest were healed and sound again. Hither by the normal entrance +came a woman suffragette surgeon to heal, and Vivie's woman clerk to +act as secretary; whilst Adams typed away in the outer office on Mr. +Michaelis's business or went on long and mysterious errands. Hither +also came the little maid from the Lilacs, bringing needed changes +of clothes, letters, and messages from Honoria. A stout young man +with a fresh colour went up in the lift at No. 94 to the flat or +office of "Algernon Mainwaring," and then skipped along the winding +way between the chimney stacks and up and down short iron ladders +till he too reached the parapet, entered through the opened +casement, and revealed himself as a great W.S.P.U. leader, costumed +like Vivie as a male, but in reality a buxom young woman only +waiting for the Vote to be won to espouse her young man—shop +steward—and begin a large family of children. From this leader, +Vivie received humbly the strictest injunctions to engage in no more +disabling work for the present, to keep out of police clutches and +the risk of going to prison or of attracting too much police +attention at 88-90 Chancery Lane. "You are our brain-centre at +present. Our offices for show and for raiding by the police have +been at Clifford's Inn and are now in Lincoln's Inn. But the really +precious information we possess is ... well, you know where it is: +walls may have ears ... your time for public testimony hasn't come +yet ... we'll let you know fast enough when it has and <i>you</i> won't +flinch, <i>I'm</i> quite sure..." +</p> +<p> +As a matter of fact, though Vivie's intelligence and inventiveness, +her knowledge of criminal law, of lawyers and of city business, her +wide education, her command of French (improved by the frequent +trips to Brussels—where indeed she deposited securely in her +mother's keeping some of the funds and the more remarkable documents +of the Suffrage cause) and her possession of monetary supplies were +not to be despised: as a figure-head, she was of doubtful value. +There was always that mother in the background. If Vivie was in +court for a suffrage offence of a grave character the prosecuting +Counsel would be sure to rake up the "notorious Mrs. Warren" and +drag in the White Slave Traffic, to bewilder a jury and throw +discredit on the militant side of the Suffrage cause. Of course if +the true story of Vivie were fully known, she would rise triumphant +from such a recital.... Still ... throw plenty of mud and some of +it will stick.... And what <i>was</i> her full, true story? Even in the +pure passion of the fight for liberty among these young and +middle-aged women, the tongue of scandal occasionally wagged in +moments of lassitude, discouragement, undeception. At such times +some weaker sister with a vulgar mind, or a mind with vulgar streaks +in it, might hint at the great interest taken in Vivie by a +distinguished man of science who had become an M.P. and a raging +suffragist. Or indecorum would be hinted in the relations between +this enigmatic woman, so prone seemingly to don male costume, and +the burly clerk who attended her so faithfully and had brought her +home on the night of Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's spirited raid. +</p> +<p> +So much so, that Vivie with a sigh, as soon as she attained +convalescence was fain to send for Bertie and tell him with +unanswerable decision that he must return to his work with Rossiter +and thither she would send from time to time special instructions if +he could help her business in any way. +</p> +<p> +This was done in January, 1912. Vivie's feet were now healed and the +woman surgeon was satisfied that she could walk on them without +displacing the reset bones. The slight fracture in the breastbone +had repaired itself by one of Nature's magic processes. So one day +our battered heroine doffed the invalid garments of Michaelis and +donned those of any well-dressed woman of 1912, including a thick +veil. Thus attired she passed from the parapet to the fire-escape +(recalling the agony these gymnastics had caused her the previous +November), and from the fire-escape to the roof of No. 92 +(continuous with the roof of 94), and past the chimney stacks, into +the top storey of 94, and so on down to the street, where a taxi was +waiting to convey her to the Lilacs. +</p> +<p> +(The W.S.P.U., by the bye, to bluff Scotland Yard had added to the +name of "Algernon Mainwaring, 5th Floor," the qualification of +"Hygienic Corset-maker," as an explanation—possibly—of why so many +women found their way to the top storey of No. 94.) +</p> +<p> +Arrived at the Lilacs, Vivie took up for a brief spell the life of +an ordinary young woman of the well-to-do middle class, seriously +interested in the suffrage question but non-militant. She attended +several of Honoria's or Mrs. Fawcett's suffrage parties or public +meetings and occasionally spoke and spoke well. She also went over +to Brussels twice in 1912 to keep in touch with her mother. Mrs. +Warren had had one or two slight warnings that a life of pleasure +saps the strongest constitution.<a href="#note-4" name="noteref-4"><small>[4]</small></a> She lived now mainly at her +farm, the Villa Beau-séjour, and only occasionally occupied her +<i>appartement</i> in the Rue Royale. She must have been about fifty-nine +in the spring of 1912, and was beginning to "soigner son salut," +that is to say to take stock of her past life, apologize for it to +herself and see how she could atone reasonably for what she had done +wrong. A decade or two earlier she would have turned to religion, +inevitably to that most attractive and logical form, the religion +expounded by the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. She would +have confessed her past, slightly or very considerably <i>gazée</i>, to +some indulgent confessor, have been pardoned, and have presented a +handsome sum to an ecclesiastical charity or work of piety. But she +had survived into a skeptical age and she had conceived an immense +respect for her clever daughter. Vivie should be her spiritual +director; and Vivie's idea put before her at their reconciliation +three years previously had seemed the most practical way of making +amends to Woman for having made money in the past out of the +economic and physiological weakness of women. She had fined herself +Ten Thousand pounds then; and out of her remaining capital of Fifty +or Sixty thousand (all willed with what else she possessed to her +daughter) she would pay over more if Vivie demanded it as further +reparation. Still, she found the frequentation of churches soothing +and gave much and often to the mildly beseeching Little Sisters of +the Poor when they made their rounds in town or suburbs. +</p> +<p> +"What do you think about Religion, Viv old girl?" she said one day +in the Eastertide of 1912, when Vivie was spending a delicious +fortnight at Villa Beau-séjour. +</p> +<p> +"Personally," said Vivie, "I hate all religions, so far as I have +had time to study them. They bind up with undisputed ethics more or +less preposterous theories concerning life and death, the properties +of matter, man, God, the universe, the laws of nature, the food we +should eat, the relations of the sexes, the quality of the weekly +day of rest. Gradually they push indisputable ethics on one side and +are ready to apply torture, death, or social ostracism to the +support of these preposterous theories and explanations of God and +Man. Such theories"—went on Vivie, though her mother's attention +had wandered to some escaped poultry that were scratching +disastrously in seed beds—"Such theories and explanations, mark +you—<i>do</i> listen, mother, since you asked the question..." +</p> +<p> +"I'm listenin', dearie, but you talk like a book and I don't know +what some of your words mean—What's ethics?" +</p> +<p> +"Well 'ethics' means er—er—'morality'; it comes from a Greek word +meaning 'character.'..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. Warren</i>: "You talk like a book—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I do sometimes, when I remember something I've read. But +now I've lost my thread.... What I meant to finish up with was +something like this 'Such theories and explanations were formulated +several hundred, or more than two thousand years ago, in times when +Man's knowledge of himself, of his surroundings, of the earth and +the universe was almost non-existent, yet they are preserved to our +times as sacred revelations, though they are not superior to the +fancies and fetish rites of a savage.' There! All that answer is +quoted from Professor Rossiter's little book (<i>Home University +Library</i>, "The Growth of the Human Mind")." +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. Warren</i>: "Rossiter! Is that the man you're sweet on?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Don't put it so coarsely. There is a great friendship +between us. We belong to a later generation than you. A man and a +woman can be friends now without becoming lovers." +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. Warren</i>: "Go <i>on</i>! Don't humbug me. Men and women's the same +as when I was young. I'm sorry, all the same, dear girl. There are +you, growin' middle-aged and not married to some good-'earted chap +as 'd give you three-four children I could pet in me old age. +Wodjer want to go fallin' in love with some chap as 'as got a wife +already? <i>I</i> know your principles. There's iron in yer blood, same +as there is in that proud priest, your father. I know you'd break +your 'eart sooner 'n have a good time with the professor. My! It +seems to me Love's as bad as Religion for bringin' about sorrer!" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "If you mean that it is answerable for the same intense +happiness and even more intense <i>un</i>happiness, I suppose you're +right. I'm <i>miserable</i>, mother, and it's some relief to me to say +so. If I could become honourably the wife of Michael Rossiter I'm +afraid I should let Suffrage have the go-by. But as I can't, why +this struggle for the vote is the only thing that keeps me going. I +shall fight for it for another ten years, and by that time certain +physiological changes may have taken place in me, and my feelings +towards Rossiter will have calmed down." +</p> +<p> +(Here Mrs. Warren proceeded to call out rather disharmoniously in +Flemish to the poultry woman, and asked why the something-or-other +she let the Houdans spoil the seed beds.) +</p> +<p> +<i>Mrs. Warren</i> resuming: "Well it's clear you're your father's +daughter. 'E'd 'ave gone on—<i>did</i> go on—in just such a way. 'Im +and me were jolly well suited to one another. I'd got to reg'lar +love 'im. I'd 'a bin a true wife to him, and 'ave worked my fingers +to the bone for 'im, and you bet I'd 'ave made a livin' somehow. And +he'd have written some jolly good books and 'ave made lots of money. +But no! This beastly Religion comes in with its scare of Hell fire +and back 'e goes to the priests and 'is prayers and 'is penances. +The last ten years or so 'e's bin filled up with pride. 'Is passions +'ave died down and 'e thinks 'imself an awful swell as the head of +his Order. And they do say as 'e's got 'is fingers in several pies +and is a reg'lar old conspirator, working up the Irish to do +something against England. Yer know since I've made my peace with +you.... <i>Ain't</i> it a rum go, by the bye? Ten or twenty years ago +it'd 'a bin 'my peace with God.' I dunno nothin' about God—can't +see 'im at the end of a telescope, anyways. But I <i>can</i> see you, +Vivie, and there's no one livin' I respect more" (speaks with real +feeling).... "Well, as I was sayin', since I'd set myself right with +you and wound up the business of the hotels I ain't so easy cowed by +'is looks as I used to be. So every now and then it amuses me to run +over in my auto to Louvain and stroll about there and watch 'im as +'e comes out for 'is promenade, pretendin' to be readin' a breviary +or some holy book. I know it riles 'im.... +</p> +<p> +"Well, but for high principles, 'e and I might 'a bin as 'appy as +'appy and 'ad a large family. And there was nothin' to stop 'im +a-marryin' me, if that was all he wanted to feel comfortable about +it. But jus' see. He's had a life that seems to me downright +sterile, and I—well, I ain't been <i>really</i> happy till we made it up +three years ago" (leans over, and kisses Vivie a little +timorously). +</p> +<p> +"Now there's you, burning yourself out 'cos your high principles +won't let you go for once in a way on the spree with this +Rossiter—s'posin' 'e's game, of course.... You've too much pride to +throw yourself at his head. But if he loves you as bad as you loves +'im, why don't you ask him" (instinctively the old ministress of +love speaks here) "ask 'im to take you over to Paris for a trip? +I'll lay 'e 'as to go over now'n again to the Sorbonne or one of +them scientific institutes. <i>She'd</i> never come to 'ear of it. An' +after one or two such honeymoons you'd soon get tired of 'im, +specially now you're gettin' on a bit in years, and may be you'd +settle down quietly after that. Or if you ain't reg'lar set on +<i>'im</i>, why not giv' up this suffrage business and live a bit with me +here? There's plenty of upstanding, decent, Belgian men in good +positions as'd like to have an English wife. <i>They</i> wouldn't look +too shy at my money..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Get thee behind me, Satan! Mother, you oughtn't to make +such propositions. Don't you understand, we must all have a religion +somewhere. Some principle to which we sacrifice ourselves. Rossiter +would be horrified if he could hear you. His mistress is Science, +besides which he is really devoted to his wife and would do nothing +that could hurt her. You don't know England, it's clear. Supposing +for one moment I could consent—and I couldn't—we should be found +out to a certainty, and then Michael's career would be ruined. +</p> +<p> +"My religion, though I sometimes weary of it and sneer at it, is +Women's Rights: women must have precisely the same rights as men, no +disqualification whatever based merely on their being women. Did you +read those disgusting letters in the <i>Times</i> by the surgeon, the +midwifery man, Sir Wrigsby Blane? Declaring that the demand for the +Vote was based on immorality, and pretending that once a month, till +they were fifty, and for several years <i>after</i> they were fifty, +women were not responsible for their actions, because of what he +vaguely called 'physiological processes.' What poisonous rubbish! +You know as well as I do that in most cases it makes little or no +difference; and if it does, what about men? Aren't <i>they</i> at certain +times not their normal selves? When they're full up with wine or +beer or whiskey, when they're courting, when they're pursuing some +illicit love, when after fifty they get a little odd in their ways +through this, that and the other internal trouble or change of +function? What's true of the one sex is equally true of the other. +Most men and women between twenty and sixty jolly well know what +they want, and generally they want something reasonable. We don't +legislate for the freaks, the unbalanced, the abnormal; or if we do +restrict the vote in those cases, let's restrict it for males as +well as females—But don't you see at the same time what a text I +should furnish to this malign creature if I ran away to Paris with +Michael, and made the slightest false step ... even though it had no +bearing on the main argument?..." +</p> +<p> +At this juncture Vivie, whose obsession leads her more and more to +address every one as a public meeting—is interrupted by the smiling +<i>bonne à tout faire</i> who announces that <i>le déjeuner de Madame est +servi</i>, and the two women gathering up books and shawls go in to the +gay little <i>saile-à-manger</i> of the Villa Beau-séjour. +</p> +<p> +On Vivie's return to London, after her Easter holiday, she threw +herself with added zest into the Suffrage struggle. The fortnight of +good feeding, of quiet nights and lazy days under her mother's roof +had done her much good. She was not quite so thin, the dark circles +under her grey eyes had vanished, and she found not only in herself +but even in the most middle-aged of her associates a delightful +spirit of tomboyishness in their swelling revolt against the Liberal +leaders. It was specially during the remainder of 1912 that Vivie +noted the enormous good which the Suffrage movement had done and was +doing to British women. It was producing a splendid camaraderie +between high and low. Heroines like Lady Constance Lytton +mingled as sister with equally heroic charwomen, factory girls, +typewriteresses, waitresses and hospital nurses. Women doctors of +Science, Music, and Medicine came down into the streets and did the +bravest actions to present their rights before a public that now +began to take them seriously. Debutantes, no longer quivering with +fright at entering the Royal Presence, modestly but audibly called +their Sovereign's attention to the injustice of Mr. Asquith's +attitude towards women, while princesses of the Blood Royal had +difficulty in not applauding. Many a tame cat had left the fire-side +and the skirts of an inane old mother (who had plenty of people to +look after her selfish wants) and emerged, dazed at first, into a +world that was unknown to her. Such had thrown away their crochet +hooks, their tatting-shuttles and fashion articles, their Church +almanacs, and Girl's Own Library books, and read and talked of +social, sexual, and industrial problems that have got to be faced +and solved. Colour came into their cheeks, assurance into their +faded manners, sense and sensibility into their talk; and whatever +happened afterwards they were never crammed back again into the +prison of Victorian spinsterhood. They learnt rough cooking, skilled +confectionery, typewriting, bicycling, jiu-jitsu perhaps. "The +maidens came, they talked, they sang, they read; till she not fair +began to gather light, and she that was became her former beauty +treble" sang in prophecy, sixty years before, the greatest of poets +and the poet-prophet of Woman's Emancipation. Many a woman has +directly owed the lengthened, happier, usefuller life that became +hers from 1910-1911-1912 onwards to the Suffrage movement for the +Liberation of Women. +</p> +<p> +The crises of 1912 moreover were not so acute as bitterly to envenom +the struggle in the way that happened during the two following +years. There was always some hope that the Ministry might permit the +passing of an amendment to the Franchise Bill which would in some +degree affirm the principle of Female Suffrage. It is true that a +certain liveliness was maintained by the Suffragettes. The W.S.P.U. +dared not relax in its militancy lest Ministers should think the +struggle waning and Woman already tiring of her claims. The vaunted +Manhood Suffrage Bill had been introduced by an anti-woman-suffrage +Quaker Minister and its Second reading been proposed by an equally +anti-feminist Secretary of State—this was in June-July, 1912; and +no member of the Cabinet had risen to say a word in favour of the +Women's claims. Still, something might be done in Committee, in the +autumn Session—if there were one—or in the following year. There +was a simmering in the Suffragist ranks rather than any alarming +explosion. In March, before Vivie went to Brussels, Mrs. Pankhurst +had carried out a window-smashing raid on Bond Street and Regent +Street and the clubs of Piccadilly, during which among the two +hundred and nineteen arrests there were brought to light as +"revolutionaries" two elderly women surgeons of great distinction +and one female Doctor of Music. In revenge the police had raided the +W.S.P.U. offices at Clifford's Inn, an event long foreseen and +provided against in the neighbouring Chancery Lane. +</p> +<p> +The Irish Nationalist Party had shown its marked hostility to the +enfranchisement of women in any Irish Parliament and so a few +impulsive Irish women had thrown things at Nationalist M.P.'s +without hurting them. Mr. Lansbury had spoken the plain truth to the +Prime Minister in the House of Commons and had been denied access to +that Chamber where Truth is so seldom welcome. +</p> +<p> +In July the slumbering movement towards resisting the payment of +taxes by vote-less women woke up into real activity, and there were +many ludicrous and pathetic scenes organized often by Vivie and +Bertie Adams at which household effects were sold and bought in by +friends to satisfy the claims of a tax-collector. In the autumn +Vivie and others of the W.S.P.U. organized great pilgrimages—the +marches of the Brown Women—from Scotland, Wales, Devon and Norfolk +to London, to some goal in Downing Street or Whitehall, some +door-step which already had every inch of its space covered by +policemen's boots. These were among the pleasantest of the +manifestations and excited great good humour in the populace of town +and country. They were extended picnics of ten days or a fortnight. +The steady tramp of sixteen to twenty miles a day did the women +good; the food <i>en route</i> was abundant and eaten with tremendous +appetite. The pilgrims on arrival in London were a justification in +physical fitness of Woman's claim to equal privileges with Man. +</p> +<p> +Vivie after her Easter holiday took an increasingly active part in +these manifestations of usually good-humoured insurrection. As +Vivien Warren she was not much known to the authorities or to the +populace but she soon became so owing to her striking appearance, +telling voice and gift of oratory. All the arts she had learnt as +David Williams she displayed now in pleading the woman's cause at +the Albert Hall, at Manchester, in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Countess +Feenix took her up, invited her to dinner parties where she found +herself placed next to statesmen in office, who at first morose and +nervous—expecting every moment a personal assault—gradually +thawed when they found her a good conversationalist, a clever woman +of the world, becomingly dressed. After all, she had been a third +wrangler at Cambridge, almost a guarantee that her subsequent life +could not be irregular, according to a man's standard in England of +what an unmarried woman's life should be. She deprecated the +violence of the militants in this phase. +</p> +<p> +But she was Protean. Much of her work, the lawless part of it, was +organized in the shape and dress of Mr. Michaelis. Some of her +letters to the Press were signed Edgar McKenna, Albert Birrell, +Andrew Asquith, Edgmont Harcourt, Felicia Ward, Millicent Curzon, +Judith Pease, Edith Spenser-Churchhill, Marianne Chamberlain, or +Emily Burns; and affected to be pleas for the granting of the +Suffrage emanating from the revolting sons or daughters, aunts, +sisters or wives of great statesmen, prominent for their opposition +to the Women's Cause. The W.S.P.U. had plenty of funds and it did +not cost much getting visiting cards engraved with such names and +supplied with the home address of the great personage whom it was +intended to annoy. One such card as an evidence of good faith would +be attached to the plausibly-worded letter. The <i>Times</i> was seldom +taken in, but great success often attended these audacious +deceptions, especially in the important organs of the provincial +press. Editors and sub-editors seldom took the trouble and the time +to hunt through <i>Who's Who</i>, or a Peerage to identify the writer of +the letter claiming the Vote for Women. No real combination of names +was given, thus forgery was avoided; but the public and the +unsuspecting Editor were left with the impression that the +Premier's, Colonial Secretary's, Home Secretary's, Board of Trade +President's, or prominent anti-suffragist woman's son, daughter, +brother, sister, wife or mother-in-law did not at all agree with the +anti-feminist opinions of its father, mother, brother or husband. +If the politician were foolish enough to answer and protest, he was +generally at a disadvantage; the public thought it a good joke and +no one (in the provinces) believed his disclaimers. +</p> +<p> +Vivie generally heckled ministers on the stump and parliamentary +candidates dressed as a woman of the lower middle class. It would +have been unwise to do so in man's guise, in case there should be a +rough-and-tumble afterwards and her sex be discovered. Although in +order to avoid premature arrest she did not herself take part +in those most ingenious—and from the view of endurance, +heroic—stow-aways of women interrupters in the roofs, attics, +inaccessible organ lofts or music galleries of public halls, she +organized many of these surprises beforehand. It was Vivie to whom +the brilliant idea came of once baffling the police in the rearrest +of either Mrs. Pankhurst or Annie Kenney. Knowing when the police +would come to the building where one or other of these ladies was to +make her sensational re-appearance, she had previously secreted +there forty other women who were dressed and veiled precisely +similarly to the fugitive from justice. Thus, when the force of +constables claimed admittance, forty-one women, virtually +indistinguishable one from the other, ran out into the street, and +the bewildered minions of the law were left lifting their helmets to +scratch puzzled heads and admitting "the wimmen were a bit too much +for us, this time, they were." +</p> +<p> +In her bedroom at 88-90 she kept an equipment of theatrical +disguises; very natural-looking moustaches which could be easily +applied and which remained firmly adhering save under the +application of the right solvent; pairs of tinted spectacles; wigs +of credible appearance; different styles of suiting, different types +of women's dress. She sometimes sat in trains as a handsome, +impressive matron of fifty-five, with a Pompadour confection and a +tortoiseshell <i>face-à-main</i>, conversing with ministers of state or +permanent officials on their way to their country seats, and saying +"<i>Horrid</i> creatures!" if any one referred to the activities of the +Suffragettes. Thus disguised she elicited considerable information +sometimes, though she might really be on her way to organize the +break-up of the statesman's public meeting, the enquiry into +discreditable circumstances which might compel his withdrawal from +public life, or merely the burning down of his shooting box. +</p> +<p> +This life had its risks and perils, but it agreed with her health. +It was exciting and took her mind off Rossiter. +</p> +<p> +Rossiter for his part experienced a slackening in the tension of his +mind during the same year 1912. He was touched by his wife's faint +suspicion of his alienated affection and by her dogged determination +to be sufficient to him as a companion and a helper; and a little +ashamed at his middle-aged—he was forty-seven—infatuation for a +woman who was herself well on in the thirties. There were times when +a rift came in the cloud of his passion for Vivie, when he looked +out dispassionately on the prospect of the rest of his life—he +could hope at most for twenty more years of mental and bodily +activity and energy. Was this all too brief period to be filled up +with a senile renewal of sexual longing! He felt ashamed of the +thoughts that had occupied so much of his mind since he had laid +David Williams on the couch of his library, to find it was Vivie +Warren whose arms were round his neck. He was not sorry this love +for a woman he could not possess had sent him into Parliament. He +was beginning to enjoy himself there. He had found himself, had lost +that craven fear of the Speaker that paralyzes most new members. He +knew when to speak and when to be silent; and when he spoke +unsuspected gifts of biting sarcasm, clever characterization, +convincing scorn of the uneducated minister type came to his aid. +His tongue played round his victims, unequipped as they were with +his vast experience of reality, vaguely discursive, on the surface +as are most lawyers, at a loss for similes and tropes as are most +men of business, or dull of wits as are most of the fine flowers of +the public schools, stultified with the classics and scripture +history. He knew that unless there was some radical change of +government he could not be a minister; but he cared little for that. +He was rich—thanks to his wife—he was recovering his influence and +his European and American reputation as a great discoverer, a deep +thinker. He enjoyed pulverizing the Ministry over their suffrage +insincerities and displaying his contempt of the politician elected +only for his money influence in borough, county, or in the +subscription lists of the Chief Whip. Though his pulses still beat a +little quicker when he held Vivie's hand in his at some reception of +Lady Feenix's or a dinner party at the Gorings—Vivie as the child +of a "fallen" woman had a prescriptive right of entrance to Diana's +circle—he had not the slightest intention of running away with her, +of nipping his career in two, just as he might be scaling the last +heights to the citadel of fame: either as a politician of the new +type, the type of high education, or as one of the giants of +inductive science. Besides in 1912, if I mistake not, Dr. +Smith-Woodward and Mr. Charles Dawson made that discovery of the +remains of an ape-like man in the gravels of mid-Sussex; and the +hounds of Anthropology went off on a new scent at full cry, Rossiter +foremost in the pack. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Rossiter in the same year allowed herself more and more to be +tempted into anti-suffrage discussions at the houses of peers or of +strong-minded, influential ladies who were on the easiest terms with +peers and potentates. She still resented the line her husband +had taken in politics and believed it to be chiefly due to an +inexplicable interest in Vivien Warren who she began to feel was the +same person as "David Williams." +</p> +<p> +If she could only master the "Anti" arguments—they sounded so +convincing from the lips of Miss Violet Markham or Mrs. Humphry Ward +or some suave King's Counsel with the remnants of mutton-chop +whiskers—if she could wean Michael away from that disturbing +nonsense—he could assign "militancy" as the justification of his +change of mind...! All that was asked by Authority, so far as she +could interpret hints from great ladies, was neutrality, the return +of Professor Rossiter to the paths of pure science in which area no +one disputed his eminence. <i>Then</i> he might receive that knighthood +that was long overdue; better still his next lot of discoveries in +anatomy might bring him the peerage he richly deserved and which her +wealth would support. He could then rest on his oars, cease his more +or less nasty investigations; they could take a place in the country +and move from this much too large house which lay almost outside the +limits of Society's London to a really well-appointed flat in +Westminster and have a thoroughly enjoyable old age. +</p> +<p> +Honoria in these times did not see so much of Vivie as before. Her +warrior husband spent a good deal of 1912 at home as he had a +Hounslow command. He had come to realize—some spiteful person had +told him—who Vivie's mother had been, and told Honoria in accents +of finality that the "Aunt Vivie" nonsense must be dropped and Vivie +must not come to the house. At the most, if she <i>must</i> meet her +friend of college days—oh, he was quite willing to believe in her +personal propriety, though there were odd stories in circulation +about her dressing as a man and doing some very rum things for the +W.S.P.U.—still if she <i>must</i> see her, it would have to be in public +places or at her friends, at Lady Feenix's, if she liked. No. He +wasn't attacking the cause of Suffrage. Women could have the vote +and welcome so far as he was concerned: they couldn't be greater +fools than the men, and they were probably less corrupt. He himself +never remembered voting in his life, so Honoria was no worse off +than her husband. But he drew the line in his children's friends at +the daughter of a.... +</p> +<p> +Here Honoria to avoid hearing something she could not forgive put +her plump hand over his bristly mouth. He kissed it and somehow she +couldn't take the high tone she had at first intended. She simply +said "she would see about it" and met the difficulty by giving up +her suffrage parties for a bit and attending Lady Maud's instead; +where you met not only poor Vivie, but—had she been in London and +guaranteed reformed and <i>rangée</i>—you might have met Vivie's mother; +as well as the Duchess of Dulborough—American, and intensely +Suffrage—the charwoman from Little Francis Street, the bookseller's +wife, the "mother of the maids" from Derry and Toms; and that very +clever chemist who had mended Juliet Duff's nose when she fell on +the ice at Princes'—they would both be there. Honoria said nothing +to Vivie and Vivie said nothing to Honoria about the inhibition, but +together with her irrational jealousy of <i>Eoanthropos dawsoni</i> and +irritation at the growing contentedness with things as they were on +the part of Rossiter, it made her a trifle more reckless in her +militancy. +</p> +<p> +And Praddy? How did he fare in these times? Praed felt himself +increasingly out of the picture. He was not far gone in the sixties, +sixty-one, perhaps at most. But out of the movement. In his prime +the people of his set—the cultivated upper middle class, with a few +recruits from the peerage—cared only about Art in some shape or +form—recondite music, the themes of which were never obvious enough +to be hummed, the androgyne poetry of the 'nineties, morbidities +from the Yellow Book, and Scarlet Sins that you disclaimed for +yourself, to avoid unpleasantness with the Criminal Investigation +Department, but freely attributed to people who were not in the +room; the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley and successors in audacity +and ugly indecency who left Beardsley a mere disciple of Raphael +Tuck; also architecture which ignored the housemaid's sink, the +box-room and the fire-escape. +</p> +<p> +The people who still came to his studio because he had the +reputation of being a wit and the husband of his parlour-maid (whom +to her indignation they called Queen Cophetua) cared not a straw +about Art in any shape or form. The women wanted the Vote—few of +them knew why—the men wanted to be aviators, motorists beating the +record in speed on French trial trips, or Apaches in their relations +with the female sex or prize-fighters—Jimmy Wilde had displaced +Oscar, to the advantage of humanity, even Praddy agreed. +</p> +<p> +To Praed however Vivie took the bitterness, the disillusions which +came over her at intervals: +</p> +<p> +"I feel, Praddy, I'm getting older and I seem to be at a loose end. +D'you know I'm on the verge of thirty-seven—and I have no definite +career? I'm rather tired of being a well-meaning adventuress." +</p> +<p> +"Then why," Praddy would reply, "don't you go and live with your +mother?" +</p> +<p> +"Ugh! I couldn't stand for long that life in Belgium or elsewhere +abroad. They seem miles behind us, with all our faults. Mother only +seems to think now of good things to eat and a course of the waters +at Spa in September to neutralize the over-eating of the other +eleven months. There is no political career for women on the +Continent." +</p> +<p> +"Then why not marry and have children? That is a career in itself. +Look at Honoria, how happy she is." +</p> +<p> +"Yes—but there is only one man I could love, and he's married +already." +</p> +<p> +"Pooh! nonsense. There are as many good fish in the sea as ever came +out of it. If you won't do as Beryl did—by the bye isn't she a +swell in these days! And <i>strict</i> with her daughters! She won't let +'em come here, I'm told, because of some silly story some one set +abroad about me! And that humbug, Francis Brimley Storrington—by +the bye he's an A.R.A. now and scarcely has enough talent to design +a dog kennel, yet they've given him the job of the new stables at +Buckingham Palace. Well if you won't share some one else's husband, +pick out a good man for yourself. There must be plenty going—some +retired prize-fighter. They seem all the rage just now, and are +supposed to be awfully gentlemanly out of the ring." +</p> +<p> +"Don't be perverse. You know exactly how I feel. I'm wasting the +prime of my life. I see no clear course marked out before me. +Sometimes I think I would like to explore Central Africa or get up a +Woman's Expedition to the South Pole. Life has seemed so flat since +I gave up being David Williams. Then I lived in a perpetual thrill, +always on my guard. I tire every now and then of my monkey tricks, +and the praise of all these women leaves me cold. I wish I were as +simple minded as most of them are. To them the Vote seems the +beginning of the millennium. They seem to forget that after we've +<i>got</i> the Vote we shall have another fight to be admitted as members +to the House. You may be sure the men will stand out another fifty +years over <i>that</i> surrender. I alternate in my moods between the +reckless fury of an Anarchist and the lassitude of Lord Rosebery. To +think that I was once so elated and conceited about being a Third +Wrangler...!" +</p> +<p> +With the closing months of 1912, however, there was a greater +tenseness, a sharpening of the struggle which once more roused +Vivie to keen interest. When she returned from an autumn visit to +Villa Beau-séjour she found there had been a split between the +"Peths" and the "Panks." The Girondist section of the women +suffragists had separated from those who could see no practical +policy to win the Vote but a regime of Terrorism—mild terrorism, it +is true—somewhat that of the Curate in <i>The Private Secretary</i> who +at last told his persecutors he should <i>really have to give them a +good hard knock</i>. The Peths drew back before the Pankish programme +(mild as this would seem, to us of Bolshevik days and of Irish +insurrection). <i>Votes for Women</i> returned to the control of the +Pethick Lawrences, and the Pankhurst party to which Vivie belonged +were to start a new press organ, <i>The Suffragette</i>. +</p> +<p> +The Panks, it seemed, had a more acute fore-knowledge than the +Peths. The latter had felt they were forcing an open door; that the +Liberal Ministry would eventually squeeze a measure of Female +Suffrage into the long-discussed Franchise Bill; and that too much +militancy was disgusting the general public with the Woman's cause. +The former declared all along that Women were going to be done in +the eye, because all the militancy hitherto had got very little in +man's way, had only excited smiles, and shoulder-shrugs. Ministers +of the Crown in 1912 had compared the hoydenish booby-traps and +bloodless skirmishes of the Suffragettes with the grim fighting, the +murders, burnings, mob-rule of the 1830's, when MEN were agitating +for Reform; or the mutilation of cattle, the assassinations, +dynamite outrages, gun-powder plots, bombs and boycotting of the +long drawn-out Irish agitation for Home Rule. An agitation which was +now resulting in the placing on the Statute Book of a Home Rule +Bill, while another equally deadly agitation—in promise—was being +worked up by Sir Edward Carson, the Duke of This and the Marquis of +That, and a very rising politician, Mr. F.E. Smith, to defeat the +operation of Home Rule for Ireland. In short, if one might believe +the second-rate ministers who were not repudiated by their superiors +in rank, the Vote for Women could only be wrung from the reluctance +of the tyrant man, <i>if</i> the women made life unbearable for the male +section of the community. +</p> +<p> +It was a dangerous suggestion to make, or would have proved so, had +these sneering politicians been provoking men to claim their +constitutional rights: bloodshed would almost certainly have +followed. But the leaders of the militant women ordered (and were +obeyed) that no attacks on life should be part of the Woman's +militant programme. Property might be destroyed, especially such as +did not impoverish the poor; but there were to be no railway +accidents, no sinking of ships, no violent deeds dangerous to life. +At the height and greatest bitterness of militancy no statesman's +life was in danger. +</p> +<p> +The only recklessness about life was in the militant women. They +risked and sometimes lost their lives in carrying out their +protests. They invented the Hunger Strike (the prospect of which as +an inevitable episode ahead of her, filled Vivie with tremulous +dread) to balk the Executive of its idea of turning the prisons of +England into Bastilles for locking up these clamant women who had +become better lawyers than the men who tried them. But think what +the Hunger Strike and its concomitant, Forcible Feeding, meant in +the way of pain and danger to the life of the victim. The Government +were afraid (unless you were an utterly unknown man or woman of the +lower classes) of letting you die in prison; so to force them to +release you, you had first to refuse for four days all food—the +heroic added all drink. Then to prevent your death—and being human +you, the prisoner, must have hoped they were keeping a good look-out +on your growing weakness—the prison doctor must intervene with his +forcible feeding. This was a form of torture the Inquisition would +have been sorry to have overlooked, and one no doubt that the +Bolsheviks have practised with great glee. The patient was strapped +to a chair or couch or had his—usually her—limbs held down by +warders (wardresses) and nurses. A steel or a wooden gag was then +inserted, often with such roughness as to chip or break the teeth, +and through the forced-open mouth a tube was pushed down the throat, +sometimes far enough to hurt the stomach. This produced an +apoplectic condition of choking and nausea, and as the stomach +filled up with liquid food the retching nearly killed the patient. +The windpipe became involved. Food entered the lungs—the tongue was +cut and bruised (Think what a mere pimple on the tongue means to +some of us: it keeps <i>me</i> awake half the night)—the lips were torn. +Worse still—requiring really a pathological essay to which I am not +equal—was feeding by slender pipes through the nose. The far +simpler and painless process <i>per rectum</i> was debarred because it +might have constituted an indecent assault. +</p> +<p> +Was ever Ministry in a greater dilemma? It was too old-fashioned, +too antiquely educated to realize the spirit of its age, the pass at +which we had arrived of conceding to Women the same rights as to +men. Women were ready to die for these rights (not to kill others in +order to attain them). Yet for fear of wounding the national +sentimentality they must not be allowed to die; they must not be +saved from suicide by any action savouring of indecency; so they +must be tortured as prisoners hardly were in the worst days of the +Inquisition or at the worst-conducted public school of the Victorian +era. +</p> +<p> +But Vivie's gradually rising wrath was to be brought by degrees to +boiling-point through the spring of 1913, and to explode at last +over an incident more tragic than any one of the five or six hundred +cases of forcible feeding. +</p> +<p> +Early in 1913, the Speaker intimated that any insertion of a Woman +Suffrage Amendment into the Manhood Franchise Bill would be +inconsistent with some unwritten code of Parliamentary procedure of +which apparently he was the sole guardian and interpreter. Ministers +who had probably prepared this <i>coup</i> months before went about +expressing hypocritical laments at the eccentricities of our +constitution; and the Franchise Act was abandoned. A little later, +frightened at the renewal of arson in town and country, at +interferences with their week-end golf courses, at the destruction +of mails in the letter-boxes, and the slashing of Old Masters at the +National Gallery (purchased at about five times their intrinsic +value by a minister who would not have spent one penny of national +money to encourage native art), the Cabinet let it be known that a +way would be found presently to give Woman Suffrage a clear run. A +private member would be allowed to bring in a Bill for conferring +the franchise on women, and the opinion of the House would be sought +on its merits independently of party issues. The Government Whips +would be withdrawn and members of the Government be left free to +vote as they pleased. +</p> +<p> +It was a fair deduction, however, from what was said at that time +and later, that the strongest possible pressure—arguments <i>ad +hominem</i> and in a sense <i>ad pecuniam</i>—was brought to bear on +Liberals and on Irish Nationalists to vote against the Bill. Had the +Second reading been carried, the Government would have resigned and +a Home Rule Bill for Ireland have been once more postponed. +</p> +<p> +The rejection of Mr. Dickinson's measure by a majority of +forty-seven convinced the Militants that Pharaoh had once more +hardened his heart; and the hopelessness of the Woman's cause at +that juncture inspired one woman with a resolution to give her life +as a protest in the manner most calculated to impress the male mind +of the British public. +</p> +<hr /> +<a name="note-3"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="foot"> +[<a href="#noteref-3">3</a>] Michaelis, I believe, was a Greek merchant +dealing with sponges, emery powder, coral, and other +products of the Mediterranean shores whose acquaintance +Vivie had originally made when interested in the shares of +that Levantine house, Charles Davis and Co. Of Ionian birth +he had become a naturalized British subject, but having +grown wealthy had decided to transfer himself to Athens and +enter political life. He had consented amusedly to Vivie's +adoption of his name for her new tenancy and had given her +an old passport, which you could do in the days that knew +not Dora—she resembling him somewhat in appearance. He was +aware of her Suffragist activities and guessed she might +want it occasionally for eluding the police on trips +abroad.—H.H.J. +</p> +<a name="note-4"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="foot"> +[<a href="#noteref-4">4</a>] Or so the observers say who haven't had a life of +pleasure. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0015"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XV +</h2> +<h3> + IMPRISONMENT +</h3> +<p> +Prior to the Derby day of 1913, Vivie had heard of Emily Wilding +Davison as a Northumbrian woman, distantly related to the Rossiters +and also to the Lady Shillito she had once defended. She came from +Morpeth in Northumberland and had had a very distinguished +University career at Oxford and in London, of which latter +university she was a B.A. The theme of the electoral enfranchisement +of Women had gradually possessed her mind to the exclusion of all +other subjects; she became in fact a fanatic in the cause and a +predestined martyr to it. In 1909 she had received her first +sentence of imprisonment for making a constitutional protest, and to +escape forcible feeding had barricaded her cell. The Visiting +Committee had driven her from this position by directing the warders +to turn a hose pipe on her and knock her senseless with a douche of +cold water; for which irregularity they were afterwards fined and +mulcted in costs. Two years later, for another Suffragist offence +(setting fire to a pillar box after giving warning of her intention) +she went to prison for six months. Here the tortures of forcible +feeding so overcame her reason—it was alleged—that she flung +herself from an upper gallery, believing she would be smashed on the +pavement below and that her death under such circumstances might +call attention to the agony of forcible feeding and the reckless +disregard of consequences which now inspired educated women who were +resolved to obtain the enfranchisement of their sex. But an iron +wire grating eight feet below broke her fall and only cut her face +and hands. The accident or attempted suicide, however, procured the +shortening of her sentence. +</p> +<p> +Vivie and she often met in the early months of 1913, and on the +first day of June she confided to a few of the W.S.P.U. her +intention of making at Epsom a public protest against public +indifference to the cause of the Woman's Franchise. This protest was +to be made in the most striking manner possible at the supreme +moment of the Derby race on the 4th of June. Probably no one to whom +she mentioned the matter thought she contemplated offering up her +own life; at most they must have imagined some speech from the Grand +Stand, some address to Royalty thrown into the Royal pavilion, some +waving of a Suffrage Flag or early-morning placarding of the +bookies' stands. +</p> +<p> +Vivie however had been turning her thoughts to horse-racing as a +field of activity. She was amused and interested at the effect that +had been produced in ministerial circles by her interference with +the game of golf. If now something was done by the militants +seriously to impede the greatest of the sports, the national form of +gambling, the protected form of swindling, the main interest in life +of the working-class, of half the peerage, all the beerage, the +chief lure of the newspapers between October and July, and the +preoccupation of princes, she might awaken the male mind in a very +effectual way to the need for settling the Suffrage question. +</p> +<p> +So she determined also to see the running of the Derby, as a +preliminary to deciding on a plan of campaign. She had become +hardened to pushing and scrouging, so that the struggle to get a +seat in one of the fifty or sixty race trains leaving Waterloo or +Victoria left her comparatively calm. She was dressed as a young man +and had no clothing impediments, and as a young man she was better +able to travel down with racing rascality. In that guise she did +not attract too much attention. Rough play may have been in the mind +of the card-playing, spirit-drinking scoundrels that occupied the +other seats in the compartment, but Vivie in her man's dress created +a certain amount of suspicion and caution. "Look's like a 'tec,'" +one man whispered to another. So the card-playing was not thrust on +her as a round-about form of plunder, and the stories told were more +those derived from the spicy columns of the sporting papers, in +words of double meaning, than the outspoken, stable obscenity +characteristic of the race-course rabble. +</p> +<p> +Vivie arriving early managed to secure a fairly good seat on the +Grand Stand, to which she could have recourse when the crowd on the +race course became too repulsive or too dangerous. She wished as +much as possible to see all aspects of the premier race meeting. +Indeed, meeting a friend of Lady Feenix's, a good-natured young peer +who halted irresolute between four worlds—the philosophic, the +political, the philanthropic, and the sporting, she introduced +herself as "David Williams"—hoping no Bencher was within +hearing—said "Dare say you remember me? Lady Feenix's? Been much +abroad lately—really feel quite strange on an English race course," +and persuaded him to take her round before the great people of the +day were all assembled. She was shown the Royal pavilion being got +ready for the King and Queen, the weighing room of the jockeys, the +paddock and temporary stables of the horses that were to race that +day. Here was a celebrated actress in a magnificent lace dress and +a superb hat, walking up and down on the sun-burnt, trodden turf, in +a devil of a temper. Her horse—for with her lovers' money she kept +a racing stable—had been scratched for the race—I really can't +tell you why, not having been able to study all the <i>minutiæ</i> of +racing. [Talking of that, <i>how</i> annoying it is—or was—when +one cared about things of great moment, to take up an evening +newspaper's last edition and read in large type "Official +Scratchings," with a silly algebraic formula underneath about horses +being withdrawn from some race, when you thought it was a bear fight +in the Cabinet.] Vivie gathered from her guide that to-day would be +rather a special Derby, because it did not often happen that a +King-Emperor was there to see a horse from his own racing stables +running in the classic race. +</p> +<p> +Then, thanking the pleasant soldier-peer for his information, Vivie +(David Williams) left him to his duties as equerry and member of the +Jockey-Club and entered the dense crowd on either side of the race +course. It reminded her just slightly of Frith's Derby Day. There +were the gypsies, the jugglers, the acrobats, the costers with their +provision barrows; the grooms and stable hands; the beggars and +obvious pick-pockets; the low-down harlots—the high-up ones were +already entering the seats of the Grand Stand or sitting on the +four-in-hand coaches or in the open landaulettes and Silent Knights. +But evidently the professional betting men were a new growth since +the mid-nineteenth century. They were just beginning to assemble, +wiping their mouths from the oozings of the last potation; some, the +aristocrats of their calling, like sporting peers in dress and +appearance; others like knock-about actors on the music-hall stage. +The generality were remarkably similar to ordinary city men or to +the hansom-cab drivers of twenty years ago. +</p> +<p> +In the very front of the crowd on the Grand Stand side, leaning with +her elbows on the wooden rail, she descried Emily Davison. Vivie +edged and sidled through the crowd and touched her on the shoulder. +Emily looked up with a start, surprised at seeing the friendly face +of a young man, till she recognized Vivie by her voice. "Dear +Emily," said Vivie, "you look so tired. Aren't you over-trying your +strength? I don't know what you have in hand, but why not postpone +your action till you are quite strong again?" +</p> +<p> +"I shall never be stronger than I am to-day and it can't be +postponed, cost me what it will," was the reply, while the sad eyes +looked away across the course. +</p> +<p> +"Well," said Vivie, "I wanted you to know that I was close by, +prepared to back you up if need be. And there are others of our +Union about the place. That young man over there talking to the +policeman is really A—— K—— though she is supposed to be in +prison. Mrs. Tuke is somewhere about, Mrs. Despard is on the Grand +Stand, and Blanche Smith is selling <i>The Suffragette</i>." +</p> +<p> +"Thank you," said Miss Davison, turning round for an instant, and +pressing Vivie's hand, "Good-bye. I hope what I am going to do will +be effectual." +</p> +<p> +Vivie did not like to prolong the talk in case it should attract +attention. Individual action was encouraged under the W.S.P.U., and +when a member wished to do something on her own, her comrades did +not fuss with advice. So Vivie returned to the Grand Stand. +</p> +<p> +Presently there was the stir occasioned by the arrival of the Royal +personages. Vivie noted with a little dismay that while she was +wearing a Homburg hat all the men near her wore the black and +glistening topper which has become—or had, for the tyranny of +custom has lifted a little since the War—the conventional head-gear +in which to approach both God and the King. There was a great +raising of these glistening hats, there were grave bows or smiling +acknowledgments from the pavilion. Then every one sat down and the +second event was run. +</p> +<p> +Still Emily Wilding Davison made no sign. Vivie could just descry +her, still in the front of the crowd, still gazing out over the +course, pressed by the crowd against the broad white rail. +</p> + +<hr /> +<p> +The race of the day had begun. The row of snickering, plunging, +rearing, and curvetting horses had dissolved, as in a kaleidoscope, +into a bunch, and a pear-shaped formation with two or three horses +streaming ahead as the stem of the pear. Then the stem became +separated from the pear-shaped mass by its superior speed, and again +this vertical line of horses formed up once more horizontally, +leaving the mass still farther behind. Then the horses seen from the +Grand Stand disappeared—and after a minute reappeared—three, four, +five—and the bunch of them, swerving round Tattenham Corner and +thundering down the incline towards the winning post.... The King's +horse seemed to be leading, another few seconds would have brought +it or one of its rivals past the winning post, when ... a slender +figure, a woman, darted with equal swiftness from the barrier to the +middle of the course, leapt to the neck of the King's horse, and in +an instant, the horse was down, kneeling on a crumpled woman, and +the jockey was flying through the air to descend on hands and knees +practically unhurt. The other horses rushed by, miraculously +avoiding the prostrate figures. Some horse passed the winning post, +a head in front of some other, but no one seemed to care. The race +was fouled. Vivie noted thirty seconds—approximately—of amazed, +horrified silence. Then a roar of mingled anger, horror, enquiry +went up from the crowd of many thousands. "It's the Suffragettes" +shouted some one. And up to then Vivie had not thought of connecting +this unprecedented act with the purposed protest of Emily Wilding +Davison. She sprang to her feet, and shouting to all who might have +tried to stop her "I'm a friend of the lady. I am a doctor"—she +didn't care what lie she told—she was soon authoritatively pushing +through the ring of police constables who like warrior ants had +surrounded the victims of the protest—the shivering, trembling +horse, now on its legs, the pitifully crushed, unconscious +woman—her hat hanging to the tresses of her hair by a dislodged +hat-pin, her thin face stained with blood from surface punctures. +The jockey was being carried from the course, still unconscious, but +not badly hurt. +</p> +<p> +A great surgeon happening to be at Epsom Race course on a friend's +drag, had hurried to offer his services. He was examining the +unconscious woman and striving very gently to straighten and +disentangle her crooked body. Presently there was a respectful stir +in the privileged ring, and Vivie was conscious by the raising of +hats that the King stood amongst them looking down on the woman who +had offered up her life before his eyes to enforce the Woman's +appeal. He put his enquiries and offered his suggestions in a low +voice, but Vivie withdrew, less with the fear that her right to be +there and her connection with the tragedy might be questioned, as +from some instinctive modesty. The occasion was too momentous for +the presence of a supernumerary. Emily Wilding Davison should have +her audience of her Sovereign without spectators. +</p> +<p> +Returning with a blanched face to the seething crowd, and presently +to the Grand Stand, Vivie's mood altered from awe to anger. The +"bookies" were beside themselves with fury. She noted the more +frequent of the nouns and adjectives they applied to the dying woman +for having spoilt the Derby of 1913, but although she went to the +trouble, in framing her indictment of the Turf, of writing down +these phrases, my jury of matrons opposes itself to their appearance +here, though I am all for realism and completeness of statement. +After conversing briefly and in a lowered voice with such +Suffragettes as gathered round her, so that this one could carry the +news to town and that one his to communicate with Miss Davison's +relations, Vivie—recklessly calling herself to any police +questioner, "David Williams" and eliciting "Yes, sir, I have seen +you once or twice in the courts," reached once more the Grand Stand +with its knots of shocked, puzzled, indignant, cynical, consternated +men and women. Most of them spoke in low tones; but one—a blond Jew +of middle age—was raving in uncontrolled anger, careless of what he +said or of who heard him. He was short of stature with protruding +bloodshot eyes, an undulating nose, slightly prognathous muzzle and +full lips, and a harsh red moustache which enhanced the prognathism. +His silk hat tilted back showed a great bald forehead, in which +angry, bluish veins stood out like swollen earth worms. "Those +Suffragettes!" he was shouting or rather shrieking in a nasal whine, +"if I had <i>my</i> way, I'd lay 'em out along the course and have 'em +—— by ——. The ——'s!" +</p> +<p> +The shocked auditory around him drew away. Vivie gathered he was +Mr. —— well, perhaps I had better not give his name,<a href="#note-5" name="noteref-5"><small>[5]</small></a> even +in a disguised form. He had had a chequered career in South +America—Mexico oil, Peruvian rubber, Buenos Aires railways, and a +corner in Argentine beef—but had become exceedingly rich, a fortune +perhaps of twenty millions. He had given five times more than any +other aspirant in benefactions to charities and to the party chest +of the dominant Party, but the authorities dared not reward him with +a baronetcy because of the stories of his early life which had to be +fought out in libel cases with Baxendale Strangeways and others. But +he had won through these libel cases, and now devoted his vast +wealth to improving our breed of horses by racing at Newmarket, +Epsom, Doncaster, Gatwick, Sandown and Brighton. Racing had, in +fact, become to him what Auction Bridge was to the Society gamblers +of those days, only instead of losing and winning tens and hundreds +of pounds, his fluctuations in gains and losses were in thousands, +generally with a summing up on the right side of the annual account. +But whether on the Turf, at the billiard table, or in the stock +market he was or had become a bad loser. He lost his temper at the +same time. On this occasion Miss Davison's suicide or martyrdom +would leave him perhaps on the wrong side in making up his day's +book to the extent of fifteen hundred pounds. Viewed in the right +proportion it would be equivalent to our—you and me—having given a +florin to a newspaper boy as the train was moving, instead of a +penny. But no doubt her unfortunate impulse had spoiled the day for +him in other ways, upset schemes that were bound up with the winning +of the King's horse. Yet his outburst and the shocking language he +applied to the Suffrage movement made history: for they fixed on him +Vivie's attention when she was looking out for some one or something +on whom to avenge the loss of a comrade. +</p> +<p> +She forthwith set out for London and wrote up the dossier of Mr. +——. In the secret list of buildings which were to be destroyed by +fire or bombs, with as little risk as possible to human or animal +life, she noted down the racing stables, trainers' houses and +palaces of Mr. —— at Newmarket, Epsom, the Devil's Dyke, and the +neighbourhood of Doncaster. +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +Rossiter and Vivie met for the first time for a year at Emily +Davison's funeral. Rossiter had been profoundly moved at her +self-sacrifice; she was moreover a Northumbrian and a distant +kinswoman. Perhaps, also, he felt that he had of late been a little +lukewarm over the Suffrage agitation. His motor-brougham, +containing with himself the very unwilling Mrs. Rossiter, followed +in the procession of six thousand persons which escorted the coffin +across London from Victoria station to King's Cross. A halt was made +outside a church in Bloomsbury where a funeral service was read. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Rossiter thought the whole thing profoundly improper. In the +first place the young woman had committed suicide, which of itself +was a crime and disentitled you to Christian burial; in the second +she had died in a way greatly to inconvenience persons in the +highest society; in the third she had always understood that racing +was a perfectly proper pastime for gentlemen; and in the fourth this +incident, touching Michael through his relationship with the +deceased, would bring him again in contact with that Vivie +Warren—<i>there</i> she was and there was <i>he</i>, in close converse—and +make a knighthood from a nearly relenting Government well-nigh +impossible. Rossiter, after the service, had begged Vivie to come +back to tea with them in Park Crescent and give Mrs. Rossiter and +himself a full account of what took place at Epsom. Vivie had +declined. She had not even spoken to the angry little woman, who had +refused to attend the service and had sat fuming all through the +half hour in her electric brougham, wishing she had the courage and +determination to order the chauffeur to turn round and run her home, +leaving the Professor to follow in a taxi. But perhaps if she did +that, he would go off somewhere with that Warren woman. +</p> +<p> +Michael presently re-entered the carriage and in silence they +returned to Portland Place. +</p> +<p> +The next day his wife meeting one of her Anti-Suffrage friends said: +</p> +<p> +"Er—supposing—er—you had got to know something about these +dreadful militant women, something which might help the police, yet +didn't want to get <i>too</i> much mixed up with it yourself, and +<i>certainly</i> not bring your husband into it—the Professor +<i>thoroughly</i> disapproves of militancy, even though he may have +foolish ideas about the Vote—er—what would you do?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, what is it?" +</p> +<p> +"It's part of a letter." +</p> +<p> +"Well, I should just send it to the Criminal Investigation +Department, New Scotland Yard, and tell them under what +circumstances it came into your possession. You needn't even give +your name or address. They'll soon know whether it's any use or +not." So Mrs. Rossiter took from her desk that scrap of partly burnt +paper with the typewritten words on it which she had picked out of +the grate two and a half years before, and posted it to the Criminal +Investigation Department, with the intimation that this fragment had +come into the possession of the sender some time ago, and seemed to +refer to a militant Suffragist who called herself "Vivie Warren" or +"David Williams," and perhaps it might be of some assistance to the +authorities in tracking down these dangerous women who now stuck at +nothing. She posted the letter with her own hands in the North West +district. Park Crescent, Portland Place, she always reflected, was +still in the <i>Western</i> district, though it lay perilously near the +North West border line, beyond which Lady Jeune had once written, no +one in Society thought of living. This was a dictum that at one time +had occasioned Mrs. Rossiter considerable perturbation. It was +alarming to think that by crossing the Marylebone Road or migrating +to Cambridge Terrace you had passed out of Society. +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +It took the police a deuce of a time—two months—to make use +effectively of the information contained in Mrs. Rossiter's scrap of +burnt paper; though the statement of their anonymous correspondent +that Vivie Warren and David Williams were probably the same person +helped to locate Mr. Michaelis's office. It was soon ascertained +that Miss Vivien Warren, well known as a sort of Society speaker on +Suffrage, lived at the Lilacs in Victoria Road, Kensington. But when +a plain-clothes policeman called at Victoria Road he was only told +by the Suffragette caretaker (whose mother now usually lived with +her to console her for her mistress's frequent absences) that Miss +Warren was away just then, had recently been much away from home, +probably abroad where her mother lived. (Here the enquirer +registered a mental note: Miss Warren has a mother living abroad: +could it be <i>the</i> Mrs. Warren?). Polite and respectful calls on Lady +Feenix, Lady Maud Parry, and Mrs. Armstrong—Vivie's known +associates—elicted no information, till on leaving the last-named +lady's house in Kensington Square the detective heard Colonel +Armstrong come in from the garden and call out "Ho-nō-ria." +"'—ria," he said to himself, "'-ria kept the keys, and +now—' Honoria. What was her name before she married Colonel +Armstrong?—why—" He soon found out—"Fraser." "Wasn't there once a +firm, <i>Fraser and Warren</i>, which set up to be some new dodge for +establishing women in a city career?—Accountancy? Stockbroking? +Where did <i>Fraser and Warren</i> have their office? Fifth floor of +Midland Insurance office in Chancery Lane. What was that building +now called? No. 88-90." Done. +</p> +<p> +These two sentences run over a period of—what did I say? Two +months?—in their deductions and guesses and consultation of +out-of-date telephone directories. But on one day in September, +1913, two plain-clothes policemen made their way up to the fifth +floor of 88-90 Chancery Lane and found the outer door of Mr. +Michaelis's office locked and a notice board on it saying "Absent +till Monday." Not deterred by this, they forced open the door—to +the thrilling interest of a spectacled typewriteress, who had no +business on that landing at all, but she usually made assignations +there with the lift man. And on the writing table in the outer +office they found a note addressed to Miss Annie Kenney, which said +inside: "Dear Annie. If you should chance to look in between your +many imprisonments and find me out, you will know I am away on the +Firm's business, livening up the racing establishments of the Right +Honble Sir —— ——, Bart. Bart. No one knows anything about this +at No. 94." +</p> +<p> +(This note was purely unnecessary—a bit of swagger perhaps, lest +Miss Kenney should think Vivie never did anything dangerous, but +only planned dangerous escapades for others. Like the long letter of +Vivie to Michael Rossiter, written on the last day of December, +1910, which he had imperfectly destroyed, it was a reminder of that +all-too-true saying: "Litera scripta manet.") +</p> +<p> +If the outer door of Michaelis's office was locked how could Miss +Kenney be expected to call and find this note awaiting her? Why, +<i>here</i> came in the "No. 94" of the scrap of paper. There was an +over-the-roofs communication between the block of 88-90 and House +No. 94. The policemen in fact found that the large casement of the +partners' room was only pulled to, so that it was easily opened from +the outside. From the parapet they passed to the fire-escapes and +through the labyrinth of chimney stacks to a similar window leading +into the top storey of 94, the office of Mr. Algernon Mainwaring, +Hygienic Corset-maker. This office at the time of their unexpected +entry was fairly full of Suffragettes planning all sorts of direful +things. So the plain-clothes policemen had a rare haul that day and +certainly had Mrs. Rossiter to thank for rising to be Inspectors and +receiving some modest Order of later days. It was about the worst +blow the W.S.P.U. had; before the outbreak of War turned suddenly +the revolting women into the stanchest patriots and the right hands +of muddling ministers. For in addition to many a rich find in No. 94 +and a dozen captives caught red-handed in making mock of the +Authorities, the plain-clothes policemen made themselves thoroughly +at home in Mr. Michaelis's quarters till the following Monday. And +when in the fore-noon of that day, Mr. Michaelis entered his rooms, +puzzled and perturbed at finding the outer door ajar, he was +promptly arrested on a multiform charge of arson ... and on being +conveyed to a police station and searched he was found to be Miss +Vivien Warren. +</p> +<p> +At intervals in the summer and early autumn of 1913 the male section +of the public had been horrified and scandalized at the destruction +going on in racing establishments, particularly those of Sir George +Crofts and of a well-known South American millionaire, whose +distinguished services to British commerce and immense donations to +Hospitals and Homes would probably be rewarded by a grateful +government. If these outrages were not stopped, horse-racing and +race-horse breeding must come to a stand-still; and we leave our +readers to realize what <i>that</i> would mean! There would be no horses +for the plough or the gig, or the artillery gun-carriage; +no—er—fox-hunting, and without fox-hunting and steeple-chasing and +point-to-point races you could have no cavalry and without cavalry +you could have no army. If we neglected blood stock we would deal +the farmer a deadly blow, we should—er— +</p> +<p> +You know the sort of argument? Reduced to its essentials it is +simply this:—That a few rich people are fond of gambling and fond +of the excitement that is concentrated in the few minutes of the +horse race. Some others, not so rich, believe that by combining +horse-racing with a certain amount of cunning and bold cheating +they can make a great deal of money. A few speculators have invested +funds in spaces of open turf, and turn these spaces into race +courses. Having no alternative, no safer method of gambling offered +them, and being as fond of gambling as other peoples of the world, +the men of the labouring classes and a few of their women, the +publicans and their frequenters, army officers, farmers, and women +of uncertain virtue stake their money on horses they have never +seen, who may not even exist, and thus keep the industry going. And +the chevaliers of this "industry," the go-betweens, the parasites of +this sport, are the twelve thousand professional book-makers and +racing touts. +</p> +<p> +Somehow the Turf has during the last hundred years, together with +its allies the Distillers and Brewers, the Licensed Victuallers and +the Press that is supported by these agencies, acquired such a hold +over the Government Departments, the Labour Party, the Conservative +Party, and Liberal politicians who are descended from county +families, that it has more interest with those who govern us than +the Church, the Nonconformist Conscience, the County Palatine of +Lancaster or any other body of corporate opinion. So that when in +September, 1913, representatives of the Turf (and no doubt of the +Trade Unions) went to the Home Secretary in reference to the burning +and bombing of racing stables, trainers' houses, Grand Stands and +the residences of racing potentates, and said "Look here! This has +GOT TO STOP," the Home Secretary and the Cabinet knew they were up +against no ordinary crisis. At the same time Sir Edward Carson, the +Marquis of Londonderry, the Duke of Abercorn, Mr. F.E. Smith and +nearly a third of the Colonels in the British Army of Ulster descent +were actively organizing armed resistance to any measure of Home +Rule; while Keltiberian Ireland was setting up the Irish Volunteers +to start a Home Rule insurrection. You can therefore imagine for +yourselves the mental irritability of members of the Liberal Cabinet +in the autumn of the sinister year 1913. I have been told that there +were days at the House of Commons during the Autumn Session of that +year when the leading ministers would just shut themselves up in +their Private Rooms and scream on end for a quarter of an hour.... +Of course an exaggeration, a sorry jest. +</p> +<p> +In retrospect one feels almost sorry for them: the Great War must +have come almost as a relief. Not one of them was what you would +call a bad man. Some of them suffered over forcible feeding and the +Cat and Mouse Act as acutely as does the loving father or mother who +says to the recently spanked child, "You <i>know</i>, dear, it hurts <i>me</i> +almost as much as it hurts <i>you</i>." If one met them out at dinner +parties, or in an express train which they could not stop by pulling +the communication cord, and sympathized with their dilemma, they +would ask plaintively <i>what</i> they could do. They could not yield to +violence and anarchy; yet they could not let women die in prison. +</p> +<p> +Of course the answer was this, but it was one they waved aside: +"Dissolve Parliament and go to the Country on the one question of +Votes for Women. If the Country returns a great majority favourable +to that concession, you must bring in a Bill for eliminating the sex +distinction in the suffrage. If on the other hand, the Country votes +against the reform, then you must leave it to the women to make a +male electorate change its mind. And meantime if men and women, to +enforce some principle, rioted and were sent to prison for it, and +then started to abstain from food and drink, why they must please +themselves and die if they wanted to." +</p> +<p> +But this was just what the Liberal Ministry of those days would not +do; at all costs they must stick to office, emoluments, patronage, +the bestowal of honours, and the control of foreign policy. They +clung to power, in fact, at all costs; even inconsistency with the +bedrock principle of Liberalism: no Taxation without Representation. +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +It was decided in the innermost arcana of the Home Office that an +example should be made of Vivie. They had evidently in her got hold +of something far more dangerous than a Pankhurst or a Pethick +Lawrence, a Constance Lytton or an Emily Davison. The very probable +story—though the Benchers were loth to take it up—that she had +actually in man's garb passed for the Bar and pleaded successfully +before juries, appalled some of the lawyer-ministers by its +revolutionary audacity. They might not be able to punish her on that +count or on several others of the misdemeanours imputed to her; but +they had got her, for sure, on Arson; and on the arson not of +suburban churches, which occurred sometimes at Peckham or in the +suburbs of Birmingham and made people laugh a little in the trains +coming up to town and say there were far too many churches, seemed +to them; <i>but</i> the burning down of racing establishments. <i>That</i> was +Bolshevism, indeed, they would have said, had they been able to +project their minds five years ahead. Being only in 1913 they called +Vivie by the enfeebled term of Anarchist, the word applied by +<i>Punch</i> to Mr. John Burns in 1888 for wishing to address the Public +in Trafalgar Square. +</p> +<p> +So it was arranged that Vivie's trial should take place in October +at the Old Bailey and that a judge should try her who was quite +certain he had never stayed at a Warren Hotel; who would be careful +to keep great names out of court; and restrain counsel from dragging +anything in to the simple and provable charge of arson which might +give Miss Warren a chance to say something those beastly newspapers +would get hold of. +</p> +<p> +I am not going to give you the full story of Vivie's trial. I have +got so much else to say about her, before I can leave her in a quiet +backwater of middle age, that this must be a story which has gaps to +be filled up by the reader's imagination. You can, besides, read for +yourself elsewhere—for this is a thinly veiled chronicle of real +events—how she was charged, and how the magistrate refused bail +though it was offered in large amounts by Rossiter and Praed, the +latter with Mrs. Warren's purse behind him. How she was first lodged +in Brixton Prison and at length appeared in the dock at the Old +Bailey before a Court that might have been set for a Cinematograph. +There was a judge with a full-bottomed wig, a scarlet and ermine +vesture, there was a jury of prosperous shopkeepers, retired half +pay officers, a hotelkeeper or two, a journalist, an architect, and +a builder. A very celebrated King's Counsel prosecuted—the Cabinet +thus said to the Racing World "We've done <i>all</i> we can"—and Vivie +defended herself with the aid of a clever solicitor whom Bertie +Adams had found for her. +</p> +<p> +From the very moment of her arrest, Bertie Adams had refused—even +though they took away his salary—to think of anything but Vivie's +trial and how she might issue from it triumphant. He must have lost +a stone in weight. He was ready to give evidence himself, though he +was really quite unconcerned with the offences for which Vivie was +on trial; prepared to swear to anything; to swear he arranged the +conflagrations; that Miss Warren had really been in London when +witness had seen her purchasing explosives at Newmarket (both +stories were equally untrue). Bertie Adams only asked to be allowed +to perjure himself to the tune of Five Years' penal servitude if +that would set Vivie free. Yet at a word or a look from her he +became manageable. +</p> +<p> +The Attorney General of course began something like this. "I am +very anxious to impress on you," he said, addressing the jury, "that +from the moment we begin to deal with the facts of this case, all +questions of whether a woman is entitled to the Parliamentary +franchise, whether she should have the same right of franchise as a +man are matters which in no sense are involved in the trial of this +issue. All you have to decide is whether the prisoner in the dock +committed or procured and assisted others to commit the very serious +acts of arson of which she is accused..." +</p> +<p> +Nevertheless he or the hounds he kept in leash, the lesser counsel, +sought subtly to prejudice the jury's mind against Vivie by dragging +in her parentage and the eccentricities of her own career. As +thus:— +</p> +<p> +<i>Counsel for the prosecution</i>: "We have in you the mainspring of +this rebellious movement..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Have you?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Counsel</i>: "Are you not the daughter of the notorious Mrs. Warren?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "My mother's name certainly is Warren. For what is she +notorious?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Counsel</i>: "Well—er—for being associated abroad with—er—a +certain type of hotel synonymous with a disorderly house—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Indeed? Have you tried them? My mother has managed the +hotels of an English Company abroad till she retired altogether from +the management some years ago. It was a Company in which Sir George +Crofts—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Judge</i>, interposing: "We need not go into that—I think the Counsel +for the prosecution is not entitled to ask such questions." +</p> +<p> +<i>Counsel</i>: "I submit, Me Lud, that it is germane to my case that the +prisoner's upbringing might have—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I am quite willing to give you all the information I +possess as to my upbringing. My mother who has resided mainly at +Brussels for many years preferred that I should be educated in +England. I was placed at well-known boarding schools till I was old +enough to enter Newnham. I passed as a Third Wrangler at Cambridge +and then joined the firm of Fraser and Warren. As you seem so +interested in my relations, I might inform you that I have not many. +My mother's sister, Mrs. Burstall, the widow of Canon Burstall, +resides at Winchester; my grandfather, Lieutenant Warren, was killed +in the Crimea—or more likely died of neglected wounds owing to the +shamefully misconducted, man-conducted Army Medical Service of those +days. My mother in early days was better known as Miss Kate +Vavasour. She was the intimate friend of a celebrated barrister +who—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Judge</i>, intervening: "We have had enough of this discursive +evidence which really does not bear on the case at all. I must ask +the prosecuting counsel to keep to the point and not waste the time +of the court." +</p> +<p> +<i>Prosecuting Counsel</i> (who has meantime received three or four +energetic notes from his leader, begging him to remember his +instructions and not to be an ass): "Very good M'Lud." (To Vivie) +"Do you know Mr. David Vavasour Williams, a barrister?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I have heard of him." +</p> +<p> +<i>Counsel</i>: "Have you spoken of him as your cousin?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I may have done. He is closely related to me." +</p> +<p> +<i>Counsel</i>: "I put it to you that <i>you</i> are David Williams, or at any +rate that you have posed as being that person." +</p> +<p> +<i>Judge</i>, interposing with a weary air: "<i>Who</i> is David Williams?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Counsel</i>: "Well—er—a member of the Bar—well known in the +criminal courts—Shillito case—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Judge</i>: "Really? I had not heard of him. Proceed." +</p> +<p> +<i>Counsel</i> (to Vivie): "You heard my questions?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I have never posed as being other than what I am, a woman +much interested in claiming the Parliamentary Franchise for Women; +and I do not see what these questions have to do with my indictment, +which is a charge of arson. You introduce all manner of irrelevant +matter—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Counsel</i>: "You decline to answer my questions?" +</p> +<p> +(Vivie turns her head away.) +</p> +<p> +<i>Judge</i>, to Counsel: "I do not quite see the bearing of your +enquiries." +</p> +<p> +<i>Counsel</i>: "Why, Me Lud, it is common talk that prisoner is the +well-known barrister, David Vavasour Williams; that in this disguise +and as a pretended man she passed the necessary examinations and was +called to the Bar, and—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Judge</i>: "But what bearing has this on the present charge, which is +one of Arson?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Counsel</i>: "I was endeavouring by my examination to show that the +prisoner has often and successfully passed as a man, and that the +evidence of witnesses who affirmed that they only saw <i>a young man</i> +at or near the scene of these incendiary fires, that a young man, +supposed to have set the stables alight, once dashed in and rescued +two horses which had been overlooked, might well have been the +prisoner who is alleged to have committed most of these crimes in +man's apparel—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Judge</i>: "I see." (To Vivie) "Are you David Vavasour Williams?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Obviously not, my Lord. My name is Vivien Warren and my +sex is feminine." +</p> +<p> +<i>Judge</i>, to Counsel: "Well, proceed with your examination—" (But +here the Leader of the prosecution takes up the rôle and brushes his +junior on one side). +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +Vivie of course was convicted. The case was plain from the start, as +to her guilt in having organized and carried out the destruction of +several great Racing establishments or buildings connected with +racing. There had been no loss of life, but great damage to +property—perhaps two or three hundred thousand pounds, and a +serious interruption in the racing fixtures of the late summer and +early autumn. The jury took note that on one occasion the prisoner +in the guise of a young man had personally carried out the rescue of +two endangered horses; and added a faintly-worded recommendation to +mercy, seeing that the incentive to the crimes was political +passion. +</p> +<p> +But the judge put this on one side. In passing sentence he said: "It +is my duty, Vivien Warren, to inflict what in my opinion is a +suitable and adequate sentence for the crime of which you have been +most properly convicted. I must point out to you that whatever may +have been your motives, your deeds have been truly wicked because +they have exposed hard-working people who had done you no wrong to +the danger of being burnt, maimed or killed, or at the least to the +loss of employment. You have destroyed property of great value +belonging to persons in no way concerned with the granting or +withholding of the rights you claim for women. In addition, you have +for some time past been luring other people—young men and young +women—to the committal of crime as your assistants or associates. I +cannot regard your case as having any political justification or +standing, or as being susceptible of any mitigation by the +recommendation of the jury. The least sentence I can pass upon you +is a sentence of Three years' penal servitude." +</p> +<p> +Vivie took the blow without flinching and merely bowed to the judge. +There was the usual "sensation in Court." Women's voices were heard +saying "Shame!" "Shame!" "Three cheers for Vivie Warren," and a +slightly ironical "Three cheers for David Whatyoumay-callem +Williams." The judge uttered the usual unavailing threats of prison +for those who profaned the majesty of the Court; Honoria, Rossiter, +Praed (in tears), Bertie Adams, looking white and ill, all the noted +Suffragists who were out of prison for the time being and could +obtain admittance to the Court, crowded round Vivie before the +wardresses led her away from the dock, assuring her they would move +Heaven and Earth, first to get the sentence mitigated, and secondly +to have her removed to the First Division. +</p> +<p> +But on both points the Government proved adamant. An interview +between Rossiter and the Home Secretary nearly ended in a personal +assault. All the officials concerned refused to see Honoria, who +almost had a serious quarrel with her husband, the latter averring +that Vivien Warren had only got what she asked for. Vivien was +therefore taken to Holloway to serve her sentence as a common felon. +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +"Didn't she hunger-strike to force the Authorities to accord her +better prison treatment?" She did. But she was very soon, and with +extra business-like brutality, forcibly fed; and that and the +previous starvation made her so ill that she spent weeks in +hospital. Here it was very plainly hinted to her that between +hunger-striking and forcible feeding she might very soon die; and +that in her case the Government were prepared to stand the racket. +Moreover she heard by some intended channel about this time that +scores of imprisoned suffragists were hunger-striking to secure her +better treatment and were endangering if not their lives at any rate +their future health and validity. So she conveyed them an earnest +message—and was granted facilities to do so—imploring them to do +nothing more on her account; adding that she was resolved to go +through with her imprisonment; it might teach her valuable lessons. +</p> +<p> +The Governor of the prison fortunately was a humane and reasonable +man—unlike some of the Home Office or Scotland Yard officials. He +read the newspapers and reviews of the day and was aware who Vivie +Warren was. He probably made no unfair difference in her case from +any other, but so far as he could mould and bend the prison +discipline and rules it was his practice not to use a razor for +stone-chipping or a cold-chisel for shaving. He therefore put Vivie +to tasks co-ordinated with her ability and the deftness of her +hands—such as book-binding. She had of course to wear prison +dress—a thing of no importance in her eyes—and her cell was like +all the cells in that and other British prisons previous to the +newest reforms—dark, rather damp, cruelly cold in winter, and +disagreeable in smell; badly ventilated and oppressively ugly. But +it was at any rate clean. She had not the cockroaches, bugs, fleas +and lice that the earliest Suffragists of 1908 had to complain of. +Five years of outspoken protests on the part of educated, +delicate-minded women had wrought great reforms in our prisons—the +need for which till then was not apparent to the perceptions of +Visiting Magistrates. +</p> +<p> +The food was better, the wardresses were less harsh, the chaplains a +little more endurable, though still the worst feature in the prison +personnel, with their unreasoning Bibliolatry, their contemptuous +patronage, their lack of Christian pity—Christ had never spoken to +<i>them</i>, Vivie often thought—their snobbishness. The chaplain of her +imprisonment became quite chummy when he learnt that she had been a +Third Wrangler at Cambridge, knew Lady Feenix, and had lived in +Kensington prior to committing the offences for which she was +imprisoned. However this helped to alleviate her dreary seclusion +from the world as he occasionally dropped fragments of news as to +what was going on outside, and he got her books through the prison +library that were not evangelical pap. +</p> +<p> +One day when she had been in prison two months she had a great +surprise—a visit from her mother. Strictly speaking this was only +to last fifteen minutes, but the wardress who had conceived a liking +for her intimated that she wouldn't look too closely at her watch. +Honoria came too—with Mrs. Warren—but after kissing her friend and +leaving some beautiful flowers (which the wardress took away at once +with pretended sternness and brought back in a vase after the +visitors had left) Honoria with glistening eyes and a smile that was +all tremulous sweetness, intimated that Mrs. Warren had so much to +say that she, Honoria, was not going to stay more than that <i>one</i> +minute. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Warren had indeed so much to impart in the precious half hour +that it was one long gabbled monologue. +</p> +<p> +"When I heard you'd got into trouble, my darling, I <i>was</i> put about. +Some'ow I'd never thought of your being pinched and acshally sent to +prison. It was in the Belgian papers, and a German friend of +mine—Oh! quite proper I assure you! He's a Secretary of their +legation at Brussels and ages ago he used to be one of my clients +when the Hotel had a different name. Well, he was full of it. +'Madam,' 'e said, 'your English women are splendid. They're going to +bring about a revolt, you'll see, and that, an' your Ulster movement +'ll give you a lot of trouble next year.' +</p> +<p> +"Well: I wrote at once to Praddy, givin' him an order on my London +agents, 'case he should want cash for your defence. I offered to +come over meself, but he replied that for the present I'd better +keep away. Soon as I heard you was sent to prison I come over and +went straight to Praddy. My! He <i>was</i> good. He made me put up with +him, knowin' I wanted to live quiet and keep away from the old set. +'There's my parlour-maid,' 'e says, 'sort of housekeeper to +me—good sort too, but wants a bit of yumourin.' You'll fix it up +with her,' he says. And I jolly soon did. I give her to begin with +a good tip, an' I said: 'Look 'ere, my gal—she's forty-five I +should think—Every one's in trouble <i>some</i> time or other in their +lives, and <i>I'm</i> in trouble now, if you like. And the day's come,' I +said, 'when all women ought to stick by one another.' 'Pears she's +always had the highest opinion of you; very different, you was, from +<i>some</i> of 'er master's friends. I says 'Right-o; then <i>now</i> we know +where we are.' +</p> +<p> +"Praddy soon got into touch with the authorities, but for some +reason they wouldn't pass on a letter or let me come and see you, +till to-day. But here I am, and here I'm goin' to stay—with +Praddy—till they lets you out. I'm told that if you be'ave yourself +they'll let me send you a passel of food, once a week. Think of +that! My! won't I find some goodies, and paté de foie gras. I'll +come here once a month, as often as they'll let me, till I gets you +out. 'N after that, we'll leave this 'orrid, 'yprocritical old +country and live 'appily at my Villa, or travel a bit. Fortunately +I've plenty of money. Bein' over here I've bin rearranging my +investments a bit. Fact is, I 'ad a bit of a scare this autumn. They +say in Belgium, War is comin'. Talkin' to this same German—He's +always pumpin' me about the Suffragettes so I occasionally put a +question or so to 'im, 'e knowing 'what's, what' in the money +market—'e says to me just before I come over, 'What's your English +proverb, Madame Varennes, about 'avin' all your eggs in one basket? +Is all your money in English and Belgian securities?' I says +'Chiefly Belgian and German and Austrian, and some I've giv' to me +daughter to do as she likes with.' 'Well' 'e says, 'friend speakin' +to friend, you've giv' me several good tips this autumn,' he says. +'Now I'll give you one in return. Sell out your Austrian +investments—there's goin' to be a big war in the Balkans next year +and as like as not <i>we</i> shall be here in Belgium. Sell out most of +yer Belgian stock and put all your money into German funds. They'll +be safe there, come what may.' I thanked 'im; but I haven't quite +done what he suggested. I'm takin' all my money out of Austrian +things and all but Ten thousand out of Belgian funds. I'm leavin' my +German stock as it was, but I'm puttin' Forty thousand pounds—I've +got Sixty thousand altogether—all yours some day—into Canadian +Pacifics and Royal Mail—people 'll always want steamships—and New +Zealand Five per cents. I don't like the look of things in old +England nor yet on the Continent. Now me time's up. Keep up your +heart, old girl; it'll soon be over, specially if you don't play the +fool and rile the prison people or start that silly hunger strike +and ruin your digestion. G—good-bye; and G-God b-bless you, my +darlin'" added Mrs. Warren relapsing into tears and the conventional +prayer, of common humanity, which always hopes there <i>may</i> be a +pitiful Deity, somewhere in Cosmos. +</p> +<p> +Going out into the corridor, she attempted to press a sovereign into +the wardress's hard palm. The latter indignantly repudiated the gift +and said if Mrs. Warren tried on such a thing again, her visits +would be stopped. But her indignation was very brief. She was +carrying Honoria's flowers at the time, and as she put them on the +slab in Vivie's cell, she remarked that say what you liked, there +was nothing to come up to a mother, give her a mother rather than a +man any day. +</p> +<p> +On other occasions Bertie Adams came with Mrs. Warren; even +Professor Rossiter, who also went to see Vivie's mother at Praed's, +and conceived a whimsical liking for the unrepentant, outspoken old +lady. +</p> +<p> +Vivie's health gradually recovered from the effects of the forcible +feeding; the prison fare, supplemented by the weekly parcels, suited +her digestion; the peace of the prison life and the regular work at +interesting trades soothed her nerves. She enjoyed the respite from +the worries of her complicated toilettes, the perplexity of what to +wear and how to wear it; in short, she was finding a spell of prison +life quite bearable, except for the cold and the attentions of the +chaplain. She gathered from the fortnightly letter which her +industry and good conduct allowed her to receive, and to answer, +that unwearied efforts were being made by her friends outside to +shorten her sentence. Mrs. Warren through Bertie Adams had found out +the cases where jockeys and stable lads had lost their effects in +the fires or explosions which had followed Vivie's visits to their +employers' premises, and had made good their losses. As to their +employers, they had all been heavily insured, and recovered the +value of their buildings; and as to the insurance companies <i>they</i> +had all been so enriched by Mr. Lloyd George's legislation that the +one-or-two hundred thousand pounds they had lost, through Vivie's +revenge for the seemingly-fruitless death of Emily Wilding Davison, +was a bagatelle not worth bothering about. But all attempts to get +the Home Office to reconsider Miss Warren's case or to shorten her +imprisonment (except by the abridgment that could be earned in the +prison itself) were unavailing. So long as the Cabinet held Vivie +under lock and key, the Suffrage movement—they foolishly +believed—was hamstrung. +</p> +<p> +So the months went by, and Vivie almost lost count of time and +almost became content to wait. Till War was declared on August 4th, +1914. A few days afterwards followed the amnesty to Suffragist +prisoners. From this the Home Office strove at first to exclude +Vivien Warren on the plea that her crime was an ordinary crime and +admitted of no political justification; but at this the wrath of +Rossiter and the indignation of the W.S.P.U. became so alarming that +the agitated Secretary of State—not at all sure how we were going +to come out of the War—gave way, and an order was signed for +Vivie's release on the 11th of August; on the understanding that she +would immediately proceed abroad; an understanding to which she +would not subscribe but which in her slowly-formed hatred of the +British Government she resolved to carry out. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Warren, assured by Praed and Rossiter that Vivie's release was +a mere matter of a few days, had left for Brussels on the 5th of +August. If—as was then hoped—the French and Belgian armies would +suffice to keep the Germans at bay on the frontier of Belgium, she +would prefer to resume her life there in the Villa de Beau-séjour. +If however Belgium was going to be invaded it was better she should +secure her property as far as possible, transfer her funds, and make +her way somehow to a safe part of France. Vivie would join her as +soon as she could leave the prison. +</p> +<hr /> +<a name="note-5"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="foot"> +[<a href="#noteref-5">5</a>] He died in 1917. My jury of matrons has excised his +phrases. + +</p> +<a name="2HCH0016"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XVI +</h2> +<h3> + BRUSSELS AND THE WAR: 1914 +</h3> +<p> +The Lilacs in Victoria Road had been disposed of—through +Honoria—as soon as possible, after the sentence of Three years' +imprisonment had been pronounced on Vivie; and the faithful +Suffragette maid had passed into Honoria's employ at Petworth, a +fact that was not fully understood by Colonel Armstrong until he had +become General Armstrong and perfectly indifferent to the Suffrage +agitation which had by that time attained its end. So when Vivie had +come out of prison and had promised to write to all the wardresses +and to meet them some day on non-professional ground; had found +Rossiter waiting for her in his motor and Honoria in hers; had +thanked them both for their never-to-be-forgotten kindness, and had +insisted on walking away in her rather creased and rumpled clothes +of the previous year with Bertie Adams; she sought the hospitality +of Praddy at Hans Place. The parlour-maid received her sumptuously, +and Praddy's eyes watered with senile tears. +</p> +<p> +But Vivie would have no melancholy. "Oh Praddy! If you only knew. +It's worth going to prison to know the joy of coming out of it! I'm +so happy at thinking this is my last day in England for ever so +long. When the War is over, I think I shall settle in Switzerland +with mother—or perhaps all three of us—you with us, I mean—in +Italy. We'll only come back here when the Women have got the Vote. +Now to-night you shall take me to the theatre—or rather I'll take +<i>you</i>. I've thought it all out beforehand, and Bertie Adams has +secured the seats. It's <i>The Chocolate Soldier</i> at the Adelphi, the +only war piece they had ready; there are two stalls for us and +Bertie and his wife are going to the Dress Circle. My Cook's ticket +is taken for Brussels and I leave to-morrow by the Ostende route." +</p> +<p> +"To-morrow" was the 12th of August, and Dora was not yet in being to +interpose every possible obstacle in the way of the civilian +traveller. Down to the Battle of the Marne in September, 1914, very +little difficulty was made about crossing the Channel, especially +off the main Dover-Calais route. +</p> +<p> +So in the radiant noon of that August day Vivie looked her last on +the brown-white promontories, cliffs and grey castle of Dover, +scarcely troubling about any anticipations one way or the other, and +certainly having no prevision she would not recross the Channel for +four years and four months, and not see Dover again for five or six +years. +</p> +<p> +British war vessels were off the port and inside it. But there was +not much excitement or crowding on the Ostende steamer or any of +those sensational precautions against being torpedoed or mined, +which soon afterwards oppressed the spirits of cross-Channel +passengers. Vessels arriving from Belgium were full of passengers of +the superior refugee class, American and British tourists, or +wealthy people who though they preferred living abroad had begun to +think that the Continent just now was not very healthy and England +the securest refuge for those who wished to be comfortable. +</p> +<p> +Vivie being a good sailor and economical by nature, never thought of +securing a cabin for the four or five hours' sea-journey. She sat on +the upper deck with her scanty luggage round her. A nice-looking +young man who had a cabin the door of which he locked, was walking +up and down on the level deck and scrutinizing her discreetly. And +when at last they worked their way backwards into Ostende—the +harbour was full of vessels, chiefly mine-dredgers and torpedo +boats—she noticed the obsequiousness of the steamer people and how +he left the ship before any one else. +</p> +<p> +She followed soon afterwards, having little encumbrances in the way +of luggage; but she observed that he just showed a glimpse of some +paper and was allowed to walk straight through the Douane with +unexamined luggage, and so, on to the Brussels train. +</p> +<p> +But she herself had little difficulty. She put her hand luggage—she +had no other—into a first-class compartment, and having an hour and +a half to wait walked out to look at Ostende. +</p> +<p> +Summer tourists were still there; the Casino was full of people, the +shops were doing an active trade; the restaurants were crowded with +English, Americans, Belgians taking tea, chocolate, or liqueurs at +little tables and creating a babel of talk. Newspapers were being +sold everywhere by ragamuffin boys who shouted their head-lines in +French, Flemish, and quite understandable English. A fort or two at +Liége had fallen, but it was of no consequence. General Léman could +hold out indefinitely, and the mere fact that German soldiers had +entered the town of Liége counted for nothing. Belgium had virtually +won the war by holding up the immense German army. France was +overrunning Alsace, Russia was invading East Prussia and also +sending uncountable thousands of soldiers, via Archangel, to +England, whence they were being despatched to Calais for the relief +of Belgium. +</p> +<p> +"It looks," thought Vivie, after glancing at the <i>Indépendance +Belge</i>, "As though Belgium were going to be extremely interesting +during the next few weeks; I may be privileged to witness—from a +safe distance—another Waterloo." +</p> +<p> +Then she returned to the train which in her absence had been so +crowded with soldiers and civilian passengers that she had great +difficulty in finding her place and seating herself. The young man +whom she had seen pacing the deck of the steamer approached her and +said: "There is more room in my compartment; in fact I have +selfishly got one all to myself. Won't you share it?" +</p> +<p> +She thanked him and moved in there with her suit case and rugs. +When the train had started and she had parried one or two polite +enquiries as to place and ventilation, she said: "I think I ought to +tell you who I am, in case you would not like to be seen speaking to +me—I imagine you are in diplomacy, as I noticed you went through +with a Red passport.—I am Vivien Warren, just out of prison, and an +outlaw, more or less." +</p> +<p> +"'The outlaws of to-day are the in-laws of to-morrow,' as the +English barrister said when he married the Boer general's daughter. +I have thought I recognized you. I have heard you speak at Lady +Maud's and also at Lady Feenix's Suffrage parties. My name is Hawk. +I suppose you've been in prison for some Suffrage offence? So has my +aunt, for the matter of that." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Yes, but in her case they only sentenced her to the First +Division; whereas <i>I</i> have been doing nine months' hard." +</p> +<p> +<i>Hawk</i>: "What was your crime?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I admit nothing, it is always wisest. But I was accused of +burning down Mr. ——'s racing stables—and other things..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Hawk</i>: "<i>That</i> beast. Well, I suppose it was very wrong. Can't +quite make up my mind about militancy, one way or the other. But +here we are up against the biggest war in history, and such +peccadilloes as yours sink into insignificance. By the bye, my aunt +was amnestied and so I suppose were you?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Yes, but not so handsomely. I was requested to go away +from England for a time, so here I am, about to join my mother in +Brussels—or in a little country place near Brussels." +</p> +<p> +<i>Hawk</i>: "Well, I've been Secretary of Legation there. I'm just going +back to—to—well I'm just going back." +</p> +<p> +At Bruges they were told that the train would not leave for Ghent +and Brussels for another two hours—some mobilization delay; so Hawk +proposed they should go and see the Memlings and then have some +dinner. +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +"Don't you think they're perfectly wonderful?"—<i>àpropos</i> of the +pictures in the Hospital of St. Jean. +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "It depends on what you mean by 'wonderful.' If you admire +the fidelity of the reproduction in colour and texture of the +Flemish costumes of the fifteenth century, I agree with you. It is +also interesting to see the revelations of their domestic +architecture and furniture of that time, and the types of domestic +dog, cow and horse. But if you admire them as being true pictures of +life in Palestine in the time of Christ, or in the Rhineland of the +fifth century, then I think they—like most Old Masters—are +perfectly rotten. And have you ever remarked another thing about all +paintings prior to the seventeenth century: how <i>plain</i>, how <i>ugly</i> +all the people are? You never see a single good-looking man or +woman. Do let's go and have that dinner you spoke of. I've got a +prison appetite." +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +At Ghent another delay and a few uneasy rumours. The Court was said +to be removing from Brussels and establishing itself at Antwerp. The +train at last drew into the main station at Brussels half an hour +after midnight. Vivie's mother was nowhere to be seen. She had +evidently gone back to the Villa Beau-séjour while she could. It was +too late for any tram in the direction of Tervueren. There were no +taxis owing to the drivers being called up. Leaving most of her +luggage at the cloak-room—it took her about three-quarters of an +hour even to approach the receiving counter—Vivie walked across to +the <i>Palace Hotel</i> and asked the night porter to get her a room. But +every room was occupied, they said—Americans, British, wealthy war +refugees from southern Belgium, military officers of the Allies. The +only concession made to her—for the porter could hold out little +hope of any neighbouring hotel having an empty room—was to allow +her to sit and sleep in one of the comfortable basket chairs in the +long atrium. At six o'clock a compassionate waiter who knew the name +of Mrs. Warren gave her daughter some coffee and milk and a +<i>brioche</i>. At seven she managed to get her luggage taken to one of +the trams at the corner of the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique. The +train service to Tervueren was suspended—and at the Porte de Namur +she would be transferred to the No. 45 tram which would take her out +to Tervueren. +</p> +<p> +Even at an early hour Brussels seemed crowded and as the tram passed +along the handsome boulevards the shops were being opened and +tourists were on their way to Waterloo in brakes. Every one seemed +to think in mid-August, 1914, that Germany was destined to receive +her <i>coup-de-grâce</i> on the field of Waterloo. It would be so +appropriate. And no one—at any rate of those who spoke their +thoughts aloud—seemed to consider that Brussels was menaced. +</p> +<p> +Leaving her luggage at the tram terminus, Vivie sped on foot through +forest roads, where the dew still glistened, to the Villa +Beau-séjour. Mrs. Warren was not yet dressed, but was rapturous in +her greeting. Her chauffeur had been called up, so the auto could +not go out, but a farm cart would be sent for the luggage. +</p> +<p> +"I believe, mother, I'm going to enjoy myself enormously," said +Vivie as she sat in the verandah in the morning sunshine, making a +delicious <i>petit déjeuner</i> out of fresh rolls, the butter of the +farm, a few slices of sausage, and a big cup of frothing chocolate +topped with whipped cream. The scene that spread before her was +idyllic, from a bucolic point of view. The beech woods of Tervueren +shut out any horizon of town activity; black and white cows were +being driven out to pasture, a flock of geese with necks raised +vertically waggled sedately along their own chosen path, a little +disturbed and querulous over the arrival of a stranger; turkey hens +and their half-grown poults and a swelling, strutting turkey cock, a +peacock that had already lost nearly all his tail and therefore +declined combat with the turkey and was, moreover, an isolated +bachelor; guinea-fowls scratching and running about alternately; and +plump cocks and hens of mixed breed covered most of the ground in +the adjacent farm yard and the turf of an apple orchard, where the +fruit was already reddening under the August sun. Pigeons circled +against the sky with the distinct musical notes struck out by their +wings, or cooed and cooed round the dove cots. The dairy women of +the farm laughed and sang and called out to one another in Flemish +and Wallon rough chaff about their men-folk who were called to the +Colours. There was nothing suggestive here of any coming tragedy. +</p> +<p> +This was the morning of the 13th of August. For three more days +Vivie lived deliriously, isolated from the world. She took new books +to the shade of the forest, and a rug on which she could repose, and +read there with avidity, read also all the newspapers her mother had +brought over from England, tried to master the events which had so +rapidly and irresistibly plunged Europe into War. Were the Germans +to blame, she asked herself? Of course they were, technically, in +invading Belgium and in forcing this war on France. But were they +not being surrounded by a hostile Alliance? Was not this hostility +on the part of Servia towards Austria stimulated by Russia in order +to forestal the Central Powers by a Russian occupation of +Constantinople? Why should the Russian Empire be allowed to stretch +for nine millions of square miles over half Asia, much of Persia, +and now claim to control the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor? If +England might claim a large section of Persia as her sphere of +influence, and Egypt likewise and a fourth part of Africa, much of +Arabia, and Cyprus in the Mediterranean, why might not Germany and +Austria expect to have their little spheres of influence in the +Balkans, in Asia Minor, in Mesopotamia? We had helped France to +Morocco and Italy to Tripoli; why should we bother about Servia? It +might be unkind, but then were we not unkind towards her father's +country, Ireland? Were we very tender towards national independence +in Egypt, in Persia? +</p> +<p> +Yet this brutal invasion of France, this unprovoked attack on Liège +were ugly things. France had shown no disposition to egg Servia on +against Austria, and Sir Edward Grey in the last days of June—she +now learnt for the first time, for she had seen no newspapers in +prison, where it is part of the dehumanizing policy of the Home +Office to prevent their entry, or the dissemination of any +information about current events—Sir Edward Grey had clearly shown +Great Britain did not approve of Servian intrigues in Bosnia. Well: +let the best man win. Germany was just as likely to give the Vote to +her women as was Britain. The Germans were first in Music and in +Science. She for her part didn't wish to become a German subject, +but once the War was over she would willingly naturalize herself +Belgian or Swiss. +</p> +<p> +And the War must soon be over. Europe as a whole could not allow +this devastation of resources. America would intervene. Already the +Germans realized their gigantic blunder in starting the attack. +Their men were said to be—she read—much less brave than people had +expected. The mighty German Armies had been held up for ten days by +a puny Belgian force and the forts of Liège and Namur. There would +presently be an armistice and Germany would have to make peace with +perhaps the cession to France of Metz as a <i>solatium</i>, while Germany +was given a little bit more of Africa, and Austria got nothing.... +</p> +<p> +Meantime the Villa Beau-séjour seemed after Holloway Prison a +paradise upon earth. Why quarrel with her fate? Why not drop +politics and take up philosophy? She felt herself capable of writing +a Universal History which would be far truer if more cynical than +any previous attempt to show civilized man the route he had followed +and the martyrdom he had undergone. +</p> +<p> +On the 17th of August she took the tram into Brussels. It seemed +however as if it would never get there, and when she reached the +Porte de Namur she was too impatient to wait for the connection. She +could not find any gendarme, but at a superior-looking flower-shop +she obtained the address of the British Legation. +</p> +<p> +She asked at the lodge for Mr. Hawk; but there was only a Belgian +coachman in charge, and he told her the Minister and his staff had +followed the Court to Antwerp. Mr. Hawk had only left that morning. +"What a nuisance," said Vivie to herself. "I might have found out +from him whether there is any truth in the rumours that are flying +about Tervueren." +</p> +<p> +These rumours were to the effect that the Germans had captured all +the forts of Liège and their brave defender, General Léman; that +they were in Namur and were advancing on Louvain. "I wonder what we +had better do?" pondered Vivie. +</p> +<p> +In her bewilderment she took the bold step of calling at the Hotel +de Ville, gave her name and nationality, and asked the advice of +the municipal employé who saw her as to what course she and her +mother had better pursue: leave Tervueren and seek a lodging in +Brussels; or retreat as far as Ghent or Bruges or even Holland? The +clerk reassured her. The Germans had certainly occupied the +south-east of Belgium, but dared not push as far to the west and +north as Brussels. They risked otherwise being nipped between the +Belgian army of Antwerp and the British force marching on Mons.... +He directed her attention to the last <i>communiqué</i> of the Ministry +of War: "La situation n'a jamais été meilleure. Bruxelles, à l'abri +d'un coup de main, est défendue par vingt mille gardes civiques +armés d'un excellent fusil," etc. +</p> +<p> +Vivie returned therefore a trifle reassured. At the same time she +and her mother spent some hours in packing up and posting valuable +securities to London, via Ostende, in packing for deposit in the +strong rooms of a Brussels bank Mrs. Warren's jewellery and plate. +The tram service from Tervueren had ceased to run. So they induced a +neighbour to drive them into Brussels in a chaise: a slow and +wearisome journey under a broiling sun. Arrived in Brussels they +found the town in consternation. Placarded on the walls was a notice +signed by the Burgomaster—the celebrated Adolphe Max—informing the +Bruxellois that in spite of the resistances of the Belgian army it +was to be feared the enemy might soon be in occupation of Brussels. +In such an event he adjured the citizens to avoid all panic, to give +no legitimate cause of offence to the Germans, to renounce any idea +of resorting to arms! The Germans on their part were bound +by the laws of war to respect private property, the lives of +non-combatants, the honour of women, and the exercise of religion. +</p> +<p> +Vivie and her mother found the banks closed and likewise the railway +station. They now had but one thought: to get back as quickly as +possible to Villa Beau-séjour, and fortunately for their dry-mouthed +impatience their farmer friend was of the same mind. Along the +Tervueren road they met numbers of peasant refugees in carts and on +foot, driving cattle, geese or pigs towards the capital; urging on +the tugging dogs with small carts and barrows loaded with personal +effects, trade-goods, farm produce, or crying children. All of them +had a distraught, haggard appearance and were constantly looking +behind them. From the east, indeed, came the distant sounds of +explosions and intermittent rifle firing. Mrs. Warren was blanched +with fear, her cheeks a dull peach colour. She questioned the people +in French and Flemish, but they only answered vaguely in raucous +voices: "Les Allemands!" "De Duitscher." +</p> +<p> +One old woman, however, had flung herself down by the roadside, +while her patient dog lay between the shafts of the little cart till +she should be pleased to go on. She was more communicative and told +Mrs. Warren a tale too horrible to be believed, about husband, son, +son-in-law all killed, daughter violated and killed too, cottage in +flames, livestock driven off. Recovering from her exhaustion she +rose and shook herself. "I've no business to be here. I should be +with <i>them</i>. I was just packing this cart for the market when it +happened. Why did I go away? Oh for shame! I'll go back—to +<i>them</i>..." And forthwith she turned the dog round and trudged the +same way they were going. +</p> +<p> +At last they came opposite the courtyard of the Villa and saw the +lawn and gravel sweep full of helmeted soldiers in green-grey +uniform, their bodies hung with equipment—bags, great-coats, +rolled-up blankets, trench spades, cartridge bandoliers. Vivie +jumped down quickly, said to her mother in a low firm voice: "Leave +everything to me. Say as little as possible." Then to the farmer: +"Nous vous remercions infiniment. Vous aurez mille choses à faire +chez vous, je n'en doute. Nous réglerons notre compte tout-à +l'heure.... Pour le moment, adieu." She clutched the handbags of +valuables, slung them somehow on her left arm, while with her other +she piloted the nearly swooning Mrs. Warren into the court. +</p> +<p> +They were at once stopped by a non-commissioned officer who asked +them in abrupt, scarcely understandable German what they wanted. +Vivie guessing his meaning said in English—she scarcely knew any +German: "This is our house. We have been absent in Brussels. We want +to see the officer in command." The soldier knew no English, but +likewise guessed at their meaning. He ordered them to wait where +they were. Presently he came out of the Villa and said the Herr +Oberst would see them. Vivie led her mother into the gay little +hall—how pleasant and cool it had looked in the early morning! It +was now full of surly-looking soldiers. Without hesitating she took +a chair from one soldier and placed her mother in it. "You rest +there a moment, dearest, while I go in and see the officer in +command." The corporal she had first spoken with beckoned her into +the pretty sitting-room at the back where they had had their early +breakfast that morning. +</p> +<p> +Here she saw seated at a table consulting plans of Brussels and +other papers a tall, handsome man of early middle age, who might +indeed have passed for a young man, had he not looked very tired and +care-worn and exhibited a bald patch at the back of his head, +rendered the more apparent because the brown-gold curls round it +were dank with perspiration. He rose to his feet, clicked his heels +together and saluted. "An English young lady, I am told, rather ... +a ... surprise ... on ... the ... outskirts ... of Brussels..." (His +English was excellent, if rather staccato and spaced.) "It ... is +... not ... usual ... for ... Englishwomen ... to ... be owners ... +of chateaux ... in Belgium. But I ... hear ... it ... is ... your +mother ... who is the owner ... from long time, and you are her +daughter newly arrived from England? Nicht wahr? Sie verstehen nicht +Deutsch, gnädiges Fraulein?" +</p> +<p> +"No," said Vivie, "I don't speak much German, and fortunately you +speak such perfect English that it is not necessary." +</p> +<p> +"I have stayed some time in England," was the reply; "I was once +military attaché in London. Both your voice and your face seem—what +should one say? Familiar to me. Are you of London?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I suppose I may say I am a Londoner, though I believe I was +born in Brussels. But I don't want to beat about the bush: there is +so much to be said and explained, and all this time I am very +anxious about my mother. She is in the hall outside—feels a little +faint I think with shock—might she—might I?"— +</p> +<p> +"But my dear Miss—?" +</p> +<p> +"Miss Warren—" +</p> +<p> +"My dear Miss Warren, of course. We are enemies—pour le moment—but +we Germans are not monsters. ("What about those peasants' stories?" +said Vivie to herself.) Your lady mother must come in here and take +that fauteuil. Then we can talk better at our ease." +</p> +<p> +Vivie got up and brought her mother in. +</p> +<p> +"Now you shall tell me everything—is it not so? Better to be quite +frank. À la guerre comme à la guerre. First, you are English?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes. My mother is Mrs. Warren, I am her daughter, Vivien Warren. My +mother has lived many years in Belgium, though also in other places, +in Germany, Austria and France. Of late, however, she has lived +entirely here. This place belongs to her." +</p> +<p> +"And you?" +</p> +<p> +"I? I have just been released from prison in London, Holloway +Prison..." +</p> +<p> +"My dear young lady! You are surely joking—what do you say? You +pull my leg? But no; I see! You have been Suffragette. Aha! <i>I</i> +understand you are <i>the</i> Miss Warren, the Miss Warren who make the +English Government afraid, nicht wahr? You set fire to Houses of +Parliament..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i> (interrupting): "No, no! Only to some racing stables..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Oberst</i>: "I understand. But you are rebel?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I hate the present British Government—the most +hypocritical, the most..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Oberst</i>: "But we are in agreement, you and I! This is splendid. But +now we must be praktisch. We are at war, though we hope here for a +peaceful occupation of Belgium. You will see how the Flämisch—Ah, +you say the Fleming?—the Flemish part of Belgium will receive us +with such pleasure. It is only with the Wälsch, the Wallon part we +disagree.... But there is so much for me to do—we must talk of all +these things some other time. Let us begin our business. I must +first introduce myself. I am Oberst Gottlieb von Giesselin of the +Saxon Army. (He rose, clicked heels, bowed, and sat down.) I see you +have three heavy bags you look at often. What is it?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i> (taking courage): "It is my mother's jewellery and some +plate. She fears—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Von G.</i>: "I understand! We have a dr-r-eadful reputation, we poor +Germans! The French stuff you up with lies. But we are better than +you think. You shall take them in two—three days to Brussels when +things are quiet, and put them in some bank. Here I fear I must +stay. I must intrude myself on your hospitality. But better for you +perhaps if I stay here at present. I will put a few of my men in +your—your—buildings. Most of them shall go with their officers to +Tervueren for billet." (Turning to Mrs. Warren.) "Madam, you must +cheer up. I foresee your daughter and I will be great friends. Let +us now look through the rooms and see what disposition we can make. +I think I will have to take this room for my writing, for my work. I +see you have telephone here. <i>Gut</i>!" +</p> +<p> +Leaving Mrs. Warren still seated, but a little less stertorous in +breathing, a little reassured, Vivie and Oberst von Giesselin then +went over the Villa, apportioning the rooms. The Colonel and his +orderly would be lodged in two of the bedrooms. Vivie and her mother +would share Mrs. Warren's large bedroom and retain the salon for +their exclusive occupation. They would use the dining-room in common +with their guest. +</p> +<p> +Vivie looking out of the windows occasionally, as they passed from +room to room, saw the remainder of the soldiery strolling off to be +lodged at their nearest neighbour's, the farmer who had driven them +in to Brussels that morning. There were perhaps thirty, accompanying +a young lieutenant. How would he find room for them, poor man? They +were more fortunate in being asked only to lodge six or seven in +addition to the Colonel's orderly and soldier-clerk. Before sunset, +the Villa Beau-séjour was clear of soldiers, except the few that had +gone to the barn and the outhouses. The morning room had been fitted +up with a typewriter at which the military clerk sat tapping. The +Colonel's personal luggage had been placed in his bedroom. A soldier +was even sweeping up all traces of the invasion of armed men and +making everything tidy. It all seemed like a horrid dream that was +going to end up happily after all. Presently Vivie would wake up +completely and there would even be no Oberst, no orderly; only the +peaceful life of the farm that was going on yesterday. Here a sound +of angry voices interrupted her musings. The cows returning by +themselves from the pasture were being intercepted by soldiers who +were trying to secure them. Vivie in her indignation ran out and +ordered the soldiers off, in English. To her surprise they obeyed +silently, but as they sauntered away to their quarters she was +saddened at seeing them carrying the bodies of most of the turkeys +and fowls and even the corpse of the poor tailless peacock. They had +waited for sundown to rob the hen-roosts. +</p> +<p> +Very much disillusioned she ran to the morning room and burst in on +the Colonel's dictation to his clerk. "Excuse me, but if you don't +keep your soldiers in better order you will have very little to eat +whilst you are here. They are killing and carrying off all our +poultry." +</p> +<p> +The Colonel flushed a little at the peremptory way in which she +spoke, but without replying went out and shouted a lot of orders in +German. His orderly summoned soldiers from the barn and together +they drove the cows into the cow-sheds. All the Flemish servants +having disappeared in a panic, the Germans had to milk the cows that +evening; and Vivie, assisted by the orderly, cooked the evening +meal in the kitchen. He was, like his Colonel, a Saxon, a +pleasant-featured, domesticated man, who explained civilly in the +Thuringian dialect—though to Vivie there could be no discrimination +between varieties of High German—that the Sachsen folk were "Eines +gütes leute" and that all would go smoothly in time. +</p> +<p> +Nevertheless the next morning when she could take stock she found +nearly all the poultry except the pigeons had disappeared; and most +of the apples, ripe and unripe, had vanished from the orchard trees. +The female servants of the farm, however, came back; and finding no +violence was offered took up their work again. Two days afterwards, +von Giesselin sent Vivie into Brussels in his motor, with his +orderly to escort her, so that she might deposit her valuables at a +bank. She found Brussels, suburbs and city alike, swarming with +grey-uniformed soldiers, most of whom looked tired and despondent. +Those who were on the march, thinking Vivie must be the wife of some +German officer of high rank, struck up a dismal chant from dry +throats with a refrain of "Gloria, Viktoria, Hoch! Deutschland, +Hoch!" At the bank the Belgian officials received her with +deference. Apart from being the daughter of the well-to-do Mrs. +Warren, she was English, and seemed to impose respect even on the +Germans. They took over her valuables, made out a receipt, and +cashed a fairly large cheque in ready money. Vivie then ventured to +ask the bank clerk who had seen to her business if he had any news. +Looking cautiously round, he said the rumours going through the town +were that the Queen of Holland, enraged that her Prince Consort +should have facilitated the crossing of Limburg by German armies, +had shot him dead with a revolver; that the Crown Prince of Germany, +despairing of a successful end of the War, had committed suicide at +his father's feet; that the American Consul General in Brussels—to +whom, by the bye, Vivie ought to report herself and her mother, in +order to come under his protection—had notified General Sixt von +Arnim, commanding the army in Brussels, that, <i>unless he vacated the +Belgian capital immediately</i>, England would bombard Hamburg and the +United States would declare war on the Kaiser. Alluring stories like +these flitted through despairing Brussels during the first two +months of German occupation, though Vivie, in her solitude at +Tervueren, seldom heard them. +</p> +<p> +After her business at the bank she walked about the town. No one +took any notice of her or annoyed her in any way. The restaurants +seemed crowded with Belgians as well as Germans, and the Belgians +did not seem to have lost their appetites. The Palace Hotel had +become a German officers' club. On all the public buildings the +German Imperial flag hung alongside the Belgian. Only a few of the +trams were running. Yet you could still buy, without much difficulty +at the kiosques, Belgian and even French and British newspapers. +From these she gathered that the German forces were in imminent +peril between the Belgian Antwerp army on the north and the British +army advancing from the south; and that in the plains of Alsace the +French had given the first public exhibition of the new "Turpin" +explosive. The results had been <i>foudroyant</i> ... and simple. +Complete regiments of German soldiers had been destroyed in <i>one +minute</i>. It seemed curious, she thought, that with such an arm as +this the French command did not at once come irresistibly to the +rescue of Brussels.... +</p> +<p> +However, it was four o'clock, and there was her friend the enemy's +automobile drawn up outside the bank, awaiting her. She got in, and +the soldier chauffeur whirled her away to the Villa Beau-séjour, +beyond Tervueren. +</p> +<p> +On her return she found her mother prostrate with bad news. Their +nearest neighbour, Farmer Oudekens who had driven them into Brussels +the preceding day had been executed in his own orchard only an hour +ago. It seemed that the lieutenant in charge of the soldiers +billeted there had disappeared in the night, leaving his uniform and +watch and chain behind him. The farmer's story was that in the night +the lieutenant had appeared in his room with a revolver and had +threatened to shoot him unless he produced a suit of civilian +clothes. Thus coerced he had given him his eldest son's Sunday +clothes left behind when the said son went off to join the Belgian +army. The lieutenant, grateful for the assistance, had given him as +a present his watch and chain. +</p> +<p> +On the other hand the German non-commissioned officers insisted +their lieutenant had been made away with in the night. The farmer's +allegation that he had deserted (as in fact he had) only enhanced +his crime. The finding of the court after a very summary trial was +"guilty," and despite the frantic appeals of the wife, reinforced +later on by Mrs. Warren, the farmer had been taken out and shot. +</p> +<p> +The evening meal consequently was one of strained relations. Colonel +von Giesselin came to supper punctually and was very spruce in +appearance. But he was gravely polite and uncommunicative. And after +dessert the two ladies asked permission to retire. They lay long +awake afterwards, debating in whispers what terror might be in store +for them. Mrs. Warren cried a good deal and lamented futilely her +indolent languor of a few days previously. <i>Why</i> had she not, while +there was yet time, cleared out of Brussels, gone to Holland, and +thence regained England with Vivie, and from England the south of +France? Vivie, more stoical, pointed out it was no use crying over +lost opportunities. Here they were, and they must sharpen their wits +to get away at the first opportunity. Perhaps the American Consul +might help them? +</p> +<p> +The next morning, however, their guest, who had insensibly turned +host, told Vivie the tram service to Brussels, like the train +service, was suspended indefinitely, and that he feared they must +resign themselves to staying where they were. Under his protection +they had nothing to fear. He was sorry the soldiers had helped +themselves so freely to the livestock; but everything had now +settled down. Henceforth they would be sure of something to eat, as +he himself had got to be fed. And all he asked of them was their +agreeable society. +</p> +<p> +Two months went by of this strange life. Two months, in which Vivie +only saw German newspapers—which she read with the aid of von +Giesselin. Their contents filled her with despair. They made very +little of the Marne rebuff, much of the capture of Antwerp and +Ostende, and the occupation of all Belgium (as they put it). Vivie +noted that the German Emperor's heart had bled for the punishment +inflicted on Louvain. (She wondered how that strange personality, +her father, had fared in the destruction of monastic buildings.) But +she had then no true idea of what had taken place, and the +far-reaching harm this crime had done to the German reputation. She +noted that the German Press expressed disappointment that the cause +of Germany, the crusade against Albion, had received no support from +the Irish Nationalists, or from the "revolting" women, the +Suffragettes, who had been so cruelly maltreated by the +administration of Asquith and Sir Grey. +</p> +<p> +This point was discussed by the Colonel, but Vivie found herself +speaking as a patriot. How <i>could</i> the Germans expect British women +to turn against their own country in its hour of danger? +</p> +<p> +"Then you would not," said von Giesselin, "consent to write some +letters to your friends, if I said I could have them sent safely to +their destination?—only letters," he added hastily, seeing her +nostrils quiver and a look come into her eyes—"to ask your Suffrage +friends to bring pressure to bear on their Government to bring this +d-r-r-eadful War to a just peace. That is all we ask." But Vivie +said "with all her own private grudge against the present ministry +she felt <i>au fond</i> she was <i>British</i>; she must range herself in time +of war with her own people." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Warren went much farther. She was not very voluble nowadays. +The German occupation of her villa had given her a mental and +physical shock from which she never recovered. She often sat quite +silent and rather huddled at meal times and looked the old woman +now. In such a conversation as this she roused herself and her voice +took an aggressive tone. "My daughter write to her friends to ask +them to obstruct the government at such a time as this? <i>Never!</i> I'd +disown her if she did, I'd repudiate her! She may have had her own +turn-up with 'em. I was quite with her there. But that, so to +speak, was only a domestic quarrel. We're British all through, and +don't you forget it—sir—(she added deprecatingly): British <i>all +through</i> and we're goin' to beat Germany yet, <i>you'll</i> see. The +British navy never <i>has</i> been licked nor won't be, this time." +</p> +<p> +Colonel von Giesselin did not insist. He seemed depressed himself at +times, and far from elated at the victories announced in his own +newspapers. He would in the dreary autumn evenings show them the +photographs of his wife—a sweet-looking woman—and his two +solid-looking, handsome children, and talk with rapture of his home +life. Why, indeed, was there this War! His heart like his Emperor's +bled for these unhappy Belgians. But it was all due to the +Macchiavellian policy of "Sir Grey and Asquiss." If Germany had not +felt herself surrounded and barred from all future expansion of +trade and influence she would not have felt forced to attack France +and invade Belgium. Why, see! All the time they were talking, +barbarous Russia, egged on by England, was ravaging East Prussia! +</p> +<p> +Then, in other moods, he would lament the war and the policy of +Prussia. How he had loved England in the days when he was military +attaché there. He had once wanted to marry an Englishwoman, a Miss +Fraser, a so handsome daughter of a Court Physician. +</p> +<p> +"Why, that must have been Honoria, my former partner," said Vivie, +finding an intense joy in this link of memory. And she told much of +her history to the sentimental Colonel, who was conceiving for her a +sincere friendship and camaraderie. They opened up other veins of +memory, talked of Lady Feenix, of the musical parties at the Parrys, +of Emily Daymond's playing, of this, that and the other hostess, of +such-and-such an actress or singer. +</p> +<p> +The Colonel of course was often absent all day on military duties. +He advised Vivie strongly on such occasions not to go far from Mrs. +Warren's little domain. "I am obliged to remind you, dear young +lady, that you and your mother are my prisoners in a sense. Many bad +things are going on—things we cannot help in war—outside this +quiet place..." +</p> +<p> +In November, however, there was a change of scene, which in many +ways came to Vivie and her mother with a sense of great relief. +Colonel von Giesselin told them one morning he had been appointed +Secretary to the German Governor of Brussels, and must reside in the +town not far from the Rue de la Loi. He proposed that the ladies +should move into Brussels likewise; in fact he delicately insisted +on it. Their pleasant relations could thus continue—perhaps—who +knows?—to the end of this War, "to that peace which will make us +friends once more?" It would in any case be most unsafe if, without +his protection, they continued to reside at this secluded farm, on +the edge of the great woods. In fact it could not be thought of, and +another officer was coming here in his place with a considerable +suite. Eventually compensation would be paid to Mrs. Warren for any +damage done to her property. +</p> +<p> +The two women readily agreed. In the curtailment of their movements +and the absence of normal means of communication their life at Villa +Beau-séjour was belying its name. Their supply of money was coming +to an end; attempts must be made to regularize that position by +drawing on Mrs. Warren's German investments and the capital she +still had in Belgian stock—if that were negotiable at all. +</p> +<p> +Where should they go? Mrs. Warren still had some lien on the Hotel +Édouard-Sept (the name, out of deference to the Germans, had been +changed to Hotel Impérial). With the influence of the Government +Secretary behind her she might turn out some of its occupants and +regain the use of the old "appartement." This would accommodate +Vivie too. And there was no reason why their friend should not place +his own lodging and office at the same hotel, which was situated +conveniently on the Rue Royale not far from the Governor's residence +in the Rue de la Loi. +</p> +<p> +So this plan was carried out. And in December, 1914, Mrs. Warren had +some brief flicker of happiness once more, and even Vivie felt the +nightmare had lifted a little. It was life again. Residence at the +Villa Beau-séjour had almost seemed an entombment of the living. +Here, in the heart of Brussels, at any rate, you got some news every +day, even if much of it was false. The food supply was more certain, +there were 700,000 people all about you. True, the streets were very +badly lit at night and fuel was scarce and dear. But you were in +contact with people. +</p> +<p> +In January, Vivie tried to get into touch with the American +Legation, not only to send news of their condition to England but to +ascertain whether permission might not be obtained for them to leave +Belgium for Holland. But this last plea was said by the American +representative to be unsustainable. For various reasons, the German +Government would not permit it, and he was afraid neither Vivie nor +her mother would get enough backing from the British authorities to +strengthen the American demand. She must stop on in Brussels till +the War came to an end. +</p> +<p> +"But how are we to live?" asked Vivie, with a catch in her throat. +"Our supply of Belgian money is coming to an end. My mother has +considerable funds invested in England. These she can't touch. She +has other sums in German securities, but soon after the War they +stopped sending her the interest on the plea that she was an +'enemy.' As to the money we have in Belgium, the bank in Brussels +can tell me nothing. What are we to do?" The rather cold-mannered +American diplomatist—it was one of the Secretaries of Legation and +he knew all about Mrs. Warren's past, and regarded Vivie as an +outlaw—said he would try to communicate with her friends in England +and see if through the American Relief organization, funds could be +transmitted for their maintenance. She gave him the addresses of +Rossiter, Praed, and her mother's London bankers. +</p> +<p> +Vivie now tried to settle down to a life of usefulness. To increase +their resources she gave lessons in English to Belgians and even to +German officers. She offered herself to various groups of Belgian +ladies who had taken up such charities as the Germans permitted. She +also asked to be taken on as a Red Cross helper. But in all these +directions she had many snubs to meet and little encouragement. +Scandal had been busy with her name—the unhappy reputation of her +mother, the peculiar circumstances under which she had left England, +the two or three months shut up at Tervueren with Colonel von +Giesselin, and the very protection he now accorded her and her +mother at the Hotel Impérial. She felt herself looked upon almost as +a pariah, except among the poor of Brussels in the Quartier des +Marolles. Here she was only regarded as a kind Englishwoman, +unwearied in her efforts to alleviate suffering, mental and bodily. +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +And meantime, silence, a wall of silence as regarded +England—England which she was beginning to look upon as the +paradise from which she had been chased. Not a word had come through +from Rossiter, from Honoria, Bertie Adams, or any of her Suffrage +friends. I can supply briefly what she did not know. +</p> +<p> +Rossiter at the very outbreak of War had offered his services as one +deeply versed in anatomy and in physiology to the Army Medical +Service, and especially to a great person at the War Office; but had +been told quite cavalierly that they had no need of him. As he +persisted, he had been asked—in the hope that it might get rid of +him—to go over to the United States in company with a writer of +comic stories, a retired actor and a music-hall singer, and lecture +on the causes of the War in the hope of bringing America in. This he +had declined to do, and being rich and happening to know personally +General Armstrong (Honoria's husband) he had been allowed to +accompany him to the vicinity of the front and there put his +theories of grafting flesh and bone to the test; with the ultimate +results that his work became of enormous beneficial importance and +he was given rank in the R.A.M.C. Honoria, racked with anxiety about +her dear "Army," and very sad as to Vivie's disappearance, slaved at +War work as much as her children's demands on her permitted; or even +put her children on one side to help the sick and wounded. Vivie's +Suffrage friends forgot she had ever existed and turned their +attention to propaganda, to recruiting for the Voluntary Army which +our ministers still hoped might suffice to win the War, to the +making of munitions, or aeroplane parts, to land work and to any +other work which might help their country in its need. +</p> +<p> +And Bertie Adams? +</p> +<p> +When he realized that his beloved and revered Miss Warren was shut +off from escape in Belgium, could not be heard of, could not be got +at and rescued, he went nearly off his nut.... He reviewed during a +succession of sleepless nights what course he might best pursue. His +age was about thirty-two. He might of course enlist in the army. But +though very patriotic, his allegiance lay first at the feet of Vivie +Warren. If he entered the army, he might be sent anywhere but to the +Belgian frontier; and even if he got near Belgium he could not dart +off to rescue Vivie without becoming a deserter. So he came speedily +to the conclusion that the most promising career he could adopt, +having regard to his position in life and lack of resources, was to +volunteer for foreign service under the Y.M.C.A., and express the +strongest possible wish to be employed as near Belgium as was +practicable. So that by the end of September, 1914, Bertie was +serving out cocoa and biscuits, writing paper and cigarettes, hot +coffee and sausages and cups of bovril to exhausted or resting +soldiers in the huts of the Y.M.C.A., near Ypres. Alternating with +these services, he was, like other Y.M.C.A. men in the same district +and at the same time, acting as stretcher bearer to bring in the +wounded, as amateur chaplain with the dying, as amateur surgeon with +the wounded, as secretary to some distraught officer in high command +whose clerks had all been killed; and in any other capacity if +called upon. But always with the stedfast hope and purpose that he +might somehow reach and rescue Vivie Warren. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0017"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XVII +</h2> +<h3> + THE GERMANS IN BRUSSELS: 1915-1916 +</h3> +<p> +In the early spring of 1915, Vivie, anxious not to see her mother in +utter penury, and despairing of any effective assistance from the +Americans (very much prejudiced against her for the reasons already +mentioned), took her mother's German and Belgian securities of a +face value amounting to about £18,000 and sold them at her Belgian +bank for a hundred thousand francs (£4,000) in Belgian or German +bank notes. She consulted no one, except her mother. Who was there +to consult? She did not like to confide too much to Colonel von +Giesselin, a little too prone in any case to "protect" them. But as +she argued with Mrs. Warren, what else were they to do in their +cruel situation? If the Allies were eventually victorious, Mrs. +Warren could return to England. There at least she had in safe +investments £40,000, ample for the remainder of their lives. If +Germany lost the War, the German securities nominally worth two +hundred thousand marks might become simply waste paper; even now +they were only computed by the bank at a purchase value of about one +fifth what they had stood at before the War. If Germany were +victorious or agreed to a compromise peace, her mother's shares in +Belgian companies might be unsaleable. Better to secure now a lump +sum of four thousand pounds in bank notes that would be legal +currency, at any rate as long as the German occupation lasted. And +as one never knew what might happen, it was safer still to have all +this money (equivalent to a hundred thousand francs), in their own +keeping. They could live even in war time, on such a sum as this +for four, perhaps five years, as they would be very economical and +Vivie would try to earn all she could by teaching. It was useless to +hope they would be able to return to Villa Beau-séjour so long as +the German occupation lasted, or during that time receive a penny in +compensation for the sequestration of the property. +</p> +<p> +The notes for the hundred thousand francs therefore were carefully +concealed in Mrs. Warren's bedroom at the Hotel Impérial and Vivie +for a few months afterwards felt slightly easier in her mind as to +the immediate future; for, as a further resource, there were also +the jewels and plate at the bank. +</p> +<p> +They dared hope for nothing from Villa Beau-séjour. Von Giesselin, +after more entreaty than Vivie cared to make, had allowed them with +a special pass and his orderly as escort to go in a military motor +to the Villa in the month of April in order that they might bring +away the rest of their clothes and personal effects of an easily +transportable nature. But the visit was a heart-breaking +disappointment. Their reception was surly; the place was little else +than a barrack of disorderly soldiers and insolent officers. Any +search for clothes or books was a mockery. Nothing was to be found +in the chests of drawers that belonged to them; only stale food and +unnameable horrors or military equipment articles. The garden was +trampled out of recognition. There had been a beautiful vine in the +greenhouse. It was still there, but the first foliage of spring hung +withered and russet coloured. The soldiers, grinning when Vivie +noticed this, pointed to the base of the far spreading branches. It +had been sawn through, and much of the glass of the greenhouse +deliberately smashed. +</p> +<p> +On their way back, Mrs. Warren, who was constantly in tears, +descried waiting by the side of the road the widow of their +farmer-neighbour, Madame Oudekens. She asked the orderly that they +might stop and greet her. She approached. Mrs. Warren got out of the +car so that she might more privately talk to her in Flemish. Since +her husband's execution, the woman said, she had had to become the +mistress of the sergeant-major who resided with her as the only +means, seemingly, of saving her one remaining young son from exile +in Germany and her daughters from unbearably brutal treatment; +though she added, "As to their virtue, <i>that</i> has long since +vanished; all I ask is that they be not half-killed whenever the +soldiers get drunk. Oh Madame! If you could only say a word to that +Colonel with whom you are living?" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Warren dared not translate this last sentence to Vivie, for +fear her daughter forced her at all costs to leave the Hotel +Impérial. Where, if she did, were they to go? +</p> +<p> +The winter of 1914 had witnessed an appalling degree of +frightfulness in eastern Belgium, the Wallon or French-speaking part +of the country more especially. The Germans seemed to bear a special +grudge against this region, regarding it as doggedly opposed to +absorption into a Greater Germany; whereas they hoped the Flemish +half of the country would receive them as fellow Teutons and even as +deliverers from their former French oppressors. Thousands of old men +and youths, of women and children in the provinces south of the +Meuse had been shot in cold blood; village after village had been +burnt. Scenes of nearly equal horror had taken place between +Brussels and Antwerp, especially around Malines. Von Bissing's +arrival as Governor General was soon signalized by those dreaded Red +Placards on the walls of Brussels, announcing the verdicts of +courts-martial, the condemnation to death of men and women who had +contravened some military regulation. +</p> +<p> +Yet in spite of this, life went on in Brussels once more—by von +Bissing's stern command—as though the country were not under the +heel of the invader. The theatres opened their doors; the cinemas +had continuous performances; there was Grand Opera; there were +exhibitions of toys, or pictures, and charitable bazaars. Ten days +after the fall of Antwerp <i>char-à-bancs</i> packed with Belgians drove +out of Brussels to visit the scenes of the battles and those +shattered forts, so fatuously deemed impregnable, so feeble in their +resistance to German artillery. +</p> +<p> +Vivie, even had she wished to do so, could not have joined the +sight-seers. As the subjects of an enemy power she and her mother +had had early in January to register themselves at the Kommandantur +and were there warned that without a special passport they might not +pass beyond the limits of Brussels and its suburbs. Except in the +matter of the farewell visit to the farm at Tervueren, Vivie was +reluctant to ask for any such favour from von Giesselin, though she +was curious to see the condition of Louvain and to ascertain whether +her father still inhabited the monastic house of his order—she had +an idea that he was away in Germany in connection with his schemes +for raising the Irish against the British Government. Von Giesselin +however was becoming sentimentally inclined towards her and she saw +no more of him than was necessary to maintain polite relations. Frau +von Giesselin, for various reasons of health or children, could not +join him at Brussels as so many German wives had done with other of +the high functionaries (to the great embitterment of Brussels +society); and there were times when von Giesselin's protestations of +his loneliness alarmed her. +</p> +<p> +The King of Saxony had paid a visit to Brussels in the late autumn +of 1914 and had invited this Colonel of his Army to a fastuous +banquet given at the Palace Hotel. The King—whom the still defiant +Brussels Press, especially that unkillable <i>La Libre Belgique</i>, +reminded ironically of his domestic infelicity, by enquiring +whether he had brought Signor Toselli to conduct his orchestra—was +gratified that a subject of his should be performing the important +duties of Secretary to the Brussels Government, and his notice of +von Giesselin gave the latter considerable prestige, for a time; an +influence which he certainly exercised as far as he was able in +softening the edicts and the intolerable desire to annoy and +exasperate on the part of the Prussian Governors of province and +kingdom. He even interceded at times for unfortunate British or +French subjects, stranded in Brussels, and sometimes asked Vivie +about fellow-countrymen who sought this intervention. +</p> +<p> +This caused her complicated annoyances. Seeing there was some hope +in interesting her in their cases, these English governesses, +tutors, clerks, tailors' assistants and cutters, music-hall singers, +grooms appealed to Vivie to support their petitions. They paid her +or her mother a kind of base court, on the tacit assumption that +she—Vivie—had placed Colonel von Giesselin under special +obligations. If in rare instances, out of sheer pity, she took up a +case and von Giesselin granted the petition or had it done in a +higher quarter, his action was clearly a personal favour to her; and +the very petitioners went away, with the ingratitude common in such +cases, and spread the news of Vivie's privileged position at the +Hotel Impérial. It was not surprising therefore that in the small +circles of influential British or American people in Brussels she +was viewed with suspicion or contempt. She supported this odious +position at the Hotel Impérial as long as possible, in the hope that +Colonel von Giesselin when he had realized the impossibility of +using herself or her mother in any kind of intrigue against the +British Government would do what the American Consul General +professed himself unable or unwilling to do: obtain for them +passports to proceed to Holland. +</p> +<p> +Von Giesselin, from December, 1914, took up among other duties that +of Press Censor and officer in charge of Publicity. After the +occupation of Brussels and the fall of Antwerp, the "patriotic" +Belgian Press had withdrawn itself to France and England or had +stopped publication. Its newspapers had been invited to continue +their functions as organs of news-distribution and public opinion, +but of course under the German Censorate and martial law. As one +editor said to a polite German official: "If I were to continue the +publication of my paper under such conditions, my staff and I would +all be shot in a week." +</p> +<p> +But the large towns of Belgium could not be left without a Press. +Public Opinion must be guided, and might very well be guided in a +direction favourable to German policy. The German Government had +already introduced the German hour into Belgian time, the German +coinage, the German police system, and German music; but it had no +intention, seemingly, of forcing the German speech on the old +dominions of the House of Burgundy. On the contrary, in their tenure +of Belgium or of North-east France, the Germans seemed desirous of +showing how well they wrote the French language, how ready they were +under a German regime to give it a new literature. Whether or not +they enlisted a few recreants, or made use of Alsatians or +Lorrainers to help them, it is never-the-less remarkable how free as +a rule their written and printed French was from mistakes or German +idioms; though their spoken French always remained Alsatian. It +suffered from that extraordinary misplacement and exchange in the +upper and lower consonants which has distinguished the German +people—that nation of great philologists—since the death of the +Roman Empire. German officers still said "Barton, die fous brie," +instead of "Pardon, je vous prie" (if they were polite), but they +were quite able to contribute <i>articles de fond</i> to a pretended +national Belgian press. Besides there was a sufficiency of Belgian +"Sans-Patries" ready to come to their assistance: Belgian nationals +of German-Jewish or Dutch-Jewish descent, who in the present +generation had become Catholic Christians as it ranged them with the +best people. They were worthy and wealthy Belgian citizens, but +presumably would not have deeply regretted a change in the political +destinies of Belgium, provided international finance was not +adversely affected. There were also a few Belgian Socialists—a few, +but enough—who took posts under the German provisional government, +on the plea that until you could be purely socialistic it did not +matter under what flag you drew your salary. +</p> +<p> +Von Giesselin was most benevolently intentioned, in reality a +kind-hearted man, a sentimentalist. Not quite prepared to go to the +stake himself in place of any other victim of Prussian cruelty, but +ready to make some effort to soften hardships and reduce sentences. +(There were others like him—Saxon, Thuringian, Hanoverian, +Württembergisch—or the German occupation of Belgium might have +ended in a vast Sicilian Vespers, a boiling-over of a maddened +people reckless at last of whether they died or not, so long as they +slew their oppressors.) He hoped through the pieces played at the +theatres and through his censored, subsidized press to bring the +Belgians round to a reasonable frame of mind, to a toleration of +existence under the German Empire. But his efforts brought down on +him the unsparing ridicule of the Parisian-minded Bruxellois. They +were prompt to detect his attempts to modify the text of French +operettas so that these, while delighting the lovers of light music, +need not at the same time excite a military spirit or convey the +least allusion of an impertinent or contemptuous kind towards the +Central Powers. Thus the couplets +</p> +<p class="verse"> + "Dans le service de l'Autriche<br /> + Le militaire n'est pas riche" +</p> +<p class="noindent"> +were changed to +</p> +<p class="verse"> + "Dans le service de la Suisse<br /> + Le militaire n'est pas riche." +</p> +<p class="noindent"> +These passionate lines of a political exile: +</p> +<p class="verse"> + "A l'étranger un pacte impie<br /> + Vendait mon sang, liait ma foi,<br /> + Mais à present, o ma patrie<br /> + Je pourrai done mourir pour toi!" +</p> +<p class="noindent"> +were rendered harmless as +</p> +<p class="verse"> + "A l'étranger, en réverie<br /> + Chaque jour je pleurais sur toi<br /> + Mais à present, o ma patrie<br /> + Je penserai sans cesse à toi!" +</p> +<p> +The pleasure he took in recasting this doggerel—calling in Vivie to +help him as presumably a good scholar in French—got on her nerves, +and she was hard put to it to keep her temper. +</p> +<p> +Sometimes he proposed that she should take a hand, even become a +salaried subordinate; compose articles for his subsidized paper, +"<i>L'Ami de l'Ordre</i>" (nicknamed "L'Ami de L'Ordure" by the +Belgians), "<i>La Belgique</i>," "<i>Le Bruxellois</i>," "<i>Vers la Paix</i>." +He would allow her a very free hand, so long as she did not attack +the Germans or their allies or put in any false news about military +or naval successes of the foes of Central Europe. She might, for +instance, dilate on the cruel manner in which the Woman Suffragists +had been persecuted in England; give a description of forcible +feeding or of police ferocity on Black Friday. +</p> +<p> +Vivie declined any such propositions. "I have told you already, and +often," she said, "I am deeply grateful for all you have done for +my mother and me. We might have been in a far more uncomfortable +position but for your kindness. But I cannot in any way associate +myself with the German policy here. I cannot pretend for a moment to +condone what you do in this country. If I were a Belgian woman I +should probably have been shot long ago for assassinating some +Prussian official—I can hardly see von Bissing pass in his +automobile, as it is, without wishing I had a bomb. But there it is. +It is no business of mine. As I can't get away, as you won't let us +go out of the country—Switzerland, Holland—and as I don't want to +go mad by brooding, find something for me to do that will occupy my +thoughts: and yet not implicate me with the Germans. Can't I go and +help every day in your hospitals? If you'll continue your kindness +to mother—and believe me"—she broke off—"I <i>do</i> appreciate what +you have done for us. I shall <i>never</i> forget I have met <i>one true +German gentleman</i>—if you'll continue to be as kind as before, you +will simply give instructions that mother is in no way disturbed or +annoyed. There are Germans staying here who are odious beyond +belief. If they meet my mother outside her room they ask her +insulting questions—whether she can give them the addresses +of—of—light women ... you know the sort of thing. I have always +been outspoken with you. All I ask is that mother shall be allowed +to stay in her own room while I am out, and have her meals served +there. But the hotel people are beginning to make a fuss about the +trouble, the lack of waiters. A word from you—And then if my mind +was at ease about her I could go out and do some good with the poor +people. They are getting very restive in the Marolles quarter—the +shocking bad bread, the lack of fuel—Most of all I should like to +help in the hospitals. My own countrywomen will not have me in +theirs. They suspect me of being a spy in German pay. Besides, your +von Bissing has ordered now that all Belgian, British, and French +wounded shall be taken to the German Red Cross. Well: if you want +to be kind, give me an introduction there. Surely it would be bare +humanity on your part to let an Englishwoman be with some of those +poor lads who are sorely wounded, dying perhaps"—she broke +down—"The other day I followed two of the motor ambulances along +the Boulevard d'Anspach. Blood dripped from them as they passed, and +I could hear some English boy trying to sing 'Tipperary—'" +</p> +<p> +"My <i>tear</i> Miss Warren—I will try to do all that you want—You will +not do <i>anything I</i> want, but never mind. I will show you that +Germans can be generous. I will speak about your mother. I am sorry +that there are bad-mannered Germans in the hotel. There are +some—what-you-call 'bounders'—among us, as there are with you. It +is to be regretted. As to our Red Cross hospitals, I know of a +person who can make things easy for you. I will write a letter to my +cousin—like me she is a Saxon and comes from Leipzig—Minna von +Stachelberg. She is but a few months widow, widow of a Saxon +officer, Graf von Stachelberg who was killed at Namur. Oh! it was +very sad; they were but six months married. Afterwards she came here +to work in our Red Cross—I think now she is in charge of a ward..." +</p> +<p> +So Vivie found a few months' reprieve from acute sorrow and bitter +humiliation. Gräfin von Stachelberg was as kind in her way as her +cousin the Colonel, but much less sentimental. In fact she was of +that type of New German woman, taken all too little into account by +our Press at the time of the War. There were many like her of the +upper middle class, the professorial class, the lesser nobility to +be found not only in Leipzig but in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfort, +Halle, Bonn, München, Hannover, Bremen, Jena, Stuttgart, +Cologne—nice to look at, extremely modern in education and good +manners, tasteful in dress, speaking English marvellously well, +highly accomplished in music or with some other art, advocates of +the enfranchisement of women. The War came just too soon. Had Heaven +struck down that epilept Emperor and a few of his ministers, had +time been given for the New German Woman to assert herself in +politics, there would have been no invasion of Belgium, no +maltreatment of Servia. Germany would have ranged herself with the +Western powers and Western culture. +</p> +<p> +Minna von Stachelberg read her cousin's note and received the worn +and anxious-looking Vivie like a sister ... like a comrade, she +said, in the War for the Vote ... "which we will resume, my dear, as +soon as this dreadful Man's war is over, only we won't fight with +the same weapons." +</p> +<p> +But though kind, she was not gushing and she soon told Vivie that in +nursing she was a novice and had much to learn. She introduced her +to the German and Belgian surgeons, and then put her to a series of +entirely menial tasks from which she was to work her way up by +degrees. But if any English soldier were there and wanted sympathy, +she should be called in to his ward ... From that interview Vivie +returned almost happy. +</p> +<p> +In the hot summer months she would sometimes be allowed to accompany +Red Cross surgeons and nurses to the station, when convoys of +wounded were expected, if there was likelihood that British soldiers +would be amongst them. These would cheer up at the sound of her +pleasant voice speaking their tongue. Yet she would witness on such +occasions incongruous incidents of German brutality. Once there came +out of the train an English and a French soldier, great friends +evidently. They were only slightly wounded and the English soldier +stretched his limbs cautiously to relieve himself of cramp. At that +moment a German soldier on leave came up and spat in his face. The +Frenchman felled the German with a resounding box on the ear. +Alarums! Excursions! A German officer rushed up to enquire while the +Frenchman was struggling with two colossal German military policemen +and the Englishman was striving to free him. Vivie explained to the +officer what had occurred. He bowed and saluted: seized the +soldier-spitter by the collar and kicked him so frightfully that +Vivie had to implore him to cease. +</p> +<p> +Moreover the Red Placards of von Bissing were of increasing +frequency. As a rule Vivie only heard what other people said of +them, and that wasn't very much, for German spies were everywhere, +inviting you to follow them to the dreaded Kommandantur in the Rue +de la Loi—a scene of as much in the way of horror and mental +anguish as the Conciergerie of Paris in the days of the Red Terror. +But some cheek-blanching rumour she had heard on a certain Monday in +October caused her to look next day on her way home at a fresh Red +Placard which had been posted up in a public place. The daylight had +almost faded, but there was a gas lamp which made the notice +legible. It ran: +</p> +<p class="center"> + CONDAMNATIONS +</p> +<p class="bquote2"> + Par jugement du 9 Octobre, 1915, le tribunal de campagne a + prononcé les condamnations suivantes pour trahison commise + pendant l'état de guerre (pour avoir fait passer des recrues + à l'ennemi): +</p> +<p class="bquote2"> + 1° Philippe <span class="sc">Baucq</span>, architecte à Bruxelles; +</p> +<p class="bquote2"> + 2° Louise <span class="sc">Thuliez</span>, professeur à Lille; +</p> +<p class="bquote2"> + 3° Edith <span class="sc">Cavell</span>, directrice d'un institut médical à + Bruxelles; +</p> +<p class="bquote2"> + 4° Louis <span class="sc">Severin</span>, pharmacien à Bruxelles;<br /> +</p> +<p class="bquote2"> + 5° Comtesse <span class="sc">Jeanne de Belleville</span>, à Montignies. +</p> +<p class="center"> + À LA PEINE DE MORT +</p> + + +<hr /> +<p> +Vivie then went on to read with eyes that could hardly take in the +words a list of other names of men and women condemned to long terms +of hard labour for the same offence—assisting young Belgians to +leave the Belgium that was under German occupation. And further, +the information that of the five condemned to death, <i>Philip Bauck</i> +and <i>Edith Cavell</i> had already been <i>executed</i>. +</p> + +<hr /> +<p> +The monsters! Oh that von Bissing. How gladly she would die if she +might first have the pleasure of killing him! That pompous old man +of seventy-one with the blotched face, who had issued orders that +wherever he passed in his magnificent motor he was to be saluted +with Eastern servility, who boasted of his "tender heart," so that +he issued placards about this time punishing severely all who split +the tongues of finches to make them sing better. Edith Cavell—she +did not pause to consider the fate of patriotic Belgian women—but +Edith Cavell, directress of a nursing home in Brussels, known far +and wide for her goodness of heart. She had held aloof from Vivie, +but was that to be wondered at when there was so much to make her +suspect—living, seemingly, under the protection of a German +official? But the very German nurses and doctors at the Red Cross +hospital had spoken of her having given free treatment in her Home +to Germans who needed immediate operations, and for whom there was +no room in the military hospitals—And for such a trivial offence as +<i>that</i>—and to kill her before there could be any appeal for +reconsideration or clemency. Oh <i>what</i> a nation! She would tend +their sick and wounded no more. +</p> +<p> +She hurried on up the ascent of the Boulevard of the Botanic Garden +on her way to the Rue Royale. She burst into von Giesselin's office. +He was not there. A clerk looking at her rather closely said that +the Herr Oberst was packing, was going away. Vivie scarcely took in +the meaning of his German phrases. She waited there, her eyes +ablaze, feeling she must tell her former friend and protector what +she thought of his people before she renounced any further +relations with him. +</p> +<p> +Presently he entered, his usually rather florid face pale with +intense sorrow or worry, his manner preoccupied. She burst out: +"<i>Have</i> you seen the Red Placard they have just put up?" +</p> +<p> +"What about?" he said wearily. +</p> +<p> +"The assassination by your Government of Edith Cavell, a crime for +which England—yes, and America—will <i>never</i> forgive you.... From +this moment I—" +</p> +<p> +"But have you not heard what has happened to <i>me</i>? I am <i>dismissed</i> +from my post as Secretary, I am ordered to rejoin my regiment in +Lorraine—It is very sad about your Miss Cavell. I knew nothing of +it till this morning when I received my own dismissal—And <i>oh</i> my +dear Miss, I fear we shall never meet again." +</p> +<p> +"Why are they sending you away?" asked Vivie drily, compelled to +interest herself in his affairs since they so closely affected her +own and her mother's. +</p> +<p> +"Because of this," said von Giesselin, nearly in tears, pulling from +a small portfolio a press cutting. "Do you remember a fortnight ago +I told you some one, some Belgian had written a beautiful poem and +sent it to me for one of our newspapers? I showed it to you at the +time and you said—you said 'it was well enough, but it did not seem +to have much point.'" Vivie did remember having glanced very +perfunctorily at some effusion in typewriting which had seemed +unobjectionable piffle. She hadn't cared two straws whether he +accepted it or not, only did not want to be too markedly +indifferent. Now she took it up and still read it through +uncomprehendingly, her thoughts absent with the fate of Miss Cavell. +"Well! what is all the fuss about? I still see nothing in it. It is +just simply the ordinary sentimental flip-flap that a French +versifier can turn out by the yard." +</p> +<p> +"It is <i>far</i> worse than that! It is a horrible—what the French +call 'acrostiche,' a deadly insult to our people. And I never saw +it, the Editor never saw it, and you, even, never guessed its real +meaning! <a href="#note-6" name="noteref-6"><small>[6]</small></a> The original, as you say, was in typewriting, and at the +bottom was the name and address of a very well-known homme de +lettres: and the words: 'Offert à la rédaction de l'Ami de L'Ordre.' +He say now, <i>never never</i> did he send it. It was a forgery. When we +came to understand what it meant all the blame fall on me. I am sent +back to the Army—I shall be killed before Verdun, so good-bye dear +Miss—We have been good friends. Oh this War: this d-r-r-eadful +War—It has spoilt everything. Now we can never be friends with +England again." +</p> +<p> +He gave way to much emotion. Vivie, though still dazed with the +reverberating horror of Edith Cavell's execution, tried to regain +her mind balance and thank him for the kindness he had shown them. +But it was now necessary to see her mother who might also be +undergoing a shock. As she walked up to their bedroom she reflected +that the departure of von Giesselin would have to be followed by +their own exile to some other lodging. They would share in his +disgrace. +</p> +<p> +The next morning in fact the Belgian manager of the hotel with many +regrets gave them a month's warning. The hotel would be required for +some undefined need of the German Government and he had been told no +one could be lodged there who was not furnished with a permit from +the Kommandantur. +</p> +<p> +For three weeks Vivie sought in vain for rooms. Every suitable place +was either full or else for reasons not given they were refused. She +was reduced to eating humble pie, to writing once more to Gräfin von +Stachelberg and imparting the dilemma in which they were placed. Did +this kind lady know where a lodging could be obtained? She herself +could put up with any discomfort, but her mother was ill. If she +could help them, Vivie would humbly beg her pardon for her angry +letter of three weeks ago and resume her hospital work. Minna von +Stachelberg made haste to reply that there were some things better +not discussed in writing: if Vivie could come and see her at six one +evening, when she had a slight remission from work— +</p> +<p> +Vivie went. Out of hearing, Gräfin von Stachelberg—who, however, to +facilitate intercourse, begged Vivie to call her "Minna,"—"We may +all be dead, my dear, before long of blood-poisoning, bombs from +your aeroplanes, a rising against us in the Marolles quarter—" said +very plainly what she thought of Edith Cavell's execution. "It makes +me think of Talleyrand—was it not?—who said 'It is a blunder; +worse than a crime' ... these terrible old generals, they know +nothing of the world outside Germany." As to her cousin, Gottlieb +von Giesselin—"Really dear, if in this time of horrors one <i>dare</i> +laugh at anything, I feel—oh it is too funny, but also, too +'schokking,' as we suppose all English women say. Yet of course I am +sad about him, because he is a good, kind man, and I know his wife +will be very very unhappy when she hears—And it means he will die, +for certain. He must risk his life to—to—regain his position, and +he will be shot before Verdun in one of those dreadful assaults." +Then she told Vivie where she might find rooms, where at any rate +she could use her name as a reference. Also: "Stay away at present +and look after your mother. When she is quite comfortably settled, +come back and work with me—here—it is at any rate the only way in +which you can see and help your countrymen." +</p> +<p> +One day in November when their notice at the hotel was nearly +expired, Vivie proposed an expedition to her mother. They would walk +slowly—because Mrs. Warren now got easily out of breath—up to the +Jardin Bontanique; Vivie would leave her there in the Palm House. It +was warm; it was little frequented; there were seats and the +Belgians in charge knew Mrs. Warren of old time. Vivie would then go +on along the inner Boulevards by tram and look at some rooms +recommended by Minna von Stachelberg in the Quartier St. Gilles. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Warren did as she was told. Vivie left her seated in one of the +long series of glass houses overlooking Brussels from a terrace, +wherein are assembled many glories of the tropics: palms, dracaenas, +yuccas, aloes, tree-ferns, cycads, screw-pines, and bananas: +promising to be back in an hour's time. +</p> +<p> +Somehow as she sat there it seemed to Mrs. Warren it was going for +her to be the last hour of fully conscious life—fully conscious and +yet a curious mingling in it of the past and present. She had sat +here in the middle of the 'seventies with Vivie's father, the young +Irish seminarist, her lover for six months. He had a vague interest +in botany, and during his convalescence after his typhoid fever, +when she was still his nurse, not yet his mistress, she used to +bring him here to rest and to enjoy the aspect of these ferns and +palms. What a strange variety of men she had known. Some she had +loved, more or less; some she had exploited frankly. Some—like +George Crofts and Baxendale Strangeways—she had feared, though in +her manner she had tried to conceal her dread of their violence. +Well! she had taken a lot of money off the rich, but she had never +plundered the poor. Her greatest conquest—and that when she was a +woman of forty—was the monarch of this very country which now lay +crushed under the Kaiser's heel. For a few months he had taken a +whimsical liking to her handsome face, well-preserved figure, and +amusing cockney talk. But he had employed her rather as the mistress +of his menus plaisirs, as his recruiting agent. He had rewarded her +handsomely. Now it was all in the dust: her beautiful Villa +Beau-séjour a befouled barrack for German soldiers. She herself a +homeless woman, repudiated by the respectable British and Americans +more or less interned in this unhappy city. +</p> +<p> +Not much more than a year ago she had been one of the most respected +persons in Brussels, with a large income derived from safe +investments. Now all she had for certain was something over three +thousand pounds in bank notes that might turn out next month to be +worthless paper. And was she certain even of them? Had Vivie before +they left the hotel remembered to put some, at least, of this +precious sum on her person? Suppose, whilst they were out, looking +for a fresh dwelling place, the hotel servants or the police raided +her bedroom and found the little hoard of notes? This imagined +danger made her want to cry. They were so friendless now, she in +particular felt so completely deserted. Had she deserved this +punishment by Fate? Was there after all a God who minded much about +the sex foolishnesses and punished you for irregularities—for +having lovers in your youth, for selling your virtue and inducing +other women to sell theirs? Was she going to die soon and was there +a hereafter?' She burst out crying in an abandonment of grief. +</p> +<p> +An elderly gardener who had been snipping and sweeping in the next +house came up and vaguely recognized her as a well-known +Bruxelloise, a good-natured lady, a foreigner who, strange to say, +spoke Flemish. "Ach," he said, looking out where he thought lay the +source of her tears, at the dim view of beautiful Brussels through +the steamy glass, "Onze arme, oude Brüssel." Mrs. Warren wept +unrestrainedly. "Madame is ill?" he enquired. Mrs. Warren +nodded—she felt indeed very ill and giddy. He left her and returned +shortly with a small glass of Schnapps. "If Madame is faint—?" She +sipped the cordial and presently felt better. Then they talked of +old times. Madame had kept the Hotel Leopold II in the Rue +Royale? Ah, <i>now</i> he placed her. A <i>superb</i> establishment, always +well-spoken of. Her self-respect returned a little. "Yes," she said, +"never a complaint! I looked after those girls like a mother, indeed +I did. Many a one married well from there." The gardener +corroborated her statement, and added that her <i>clientèle</i> had been +of the most chic. He had a private florist's business of his own and +he had been privileged often to send bouquets to the pensionnaires +of Madame. But Madame was not alone surely in these sad times. Had +he not seen her come here with a handsome English lady who was said +to have been—to have been—fortunately—<i>au mieux</i> with one of the +German officials? +</p> +<p> +"<i>That</i> was my daughter," Mrs. Warren informed him with pride.... +"She is a lady who has taken a high degree at an English University. +She has been an important person in the English feminist movement. +When this dreadful war is over, I and my daughter will—" +</p> +<p> +At this juncture Vivie entered. "<i>Mother</i>, I hope you haven't +missed me, haven't been unwell?" she said, looking rather +questioningly at the little glass of Schnapps, only half of which +had been drunk. +</p> +<p> +"Well yes, dear, I have. <i>Terrible</i> low spirits and all swimmy-like. +Thought I was going to faint. But this man here has been so kind +"—her tears flowed afresh—"We've bin talking of old times; he used +to know me before—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Quite so. But I think, dear, we had better be going back. +I want to talk to you about the new rooms I've seen. Are you equal +to walking? If not perhaps this kind man would try to get us a +cab...?" +</p> +<p> +But Mrs. Warren said it was no distance, only round the corner, and +she could well walk. When they got back she would go and lie down. +Vivie, reading her mother's thoughts, pressed a five-franc note into +the gardener's not reluctant palm, and they regained the Rue Royale. +</p> +<p> +But just as they were passing through the revolving door of the +Hotel Impérial, a German who had been installed as manager came up +with two soldiers and said explosively: "Heraus! Foutez-nous le +camp! Aout you go! Don't show your face here again!" +</p> +<p> +"But," said Vivie, "our notice doesn't expire till the end of this +week...!" +</p> +<p> +"Das macht nichts. The rooms are wanted and I won't have you on the +premises. Off you go, or these soldiers shall take you both round to +the Kommandantur." +</p> +<p> +"But our luggage? <i>Surely</i> you will let me go up to our room and +pack it—and take it away? We..." +</p> +<p> +"Your luggage has been packed and is in the corridor. If you send +round for it, it shall be delivered to your messenger. But you are +not to stop on the premises another minute. You understand?" he +almost shrieked. +</p> +<p> +"But—" +</p> +<p> +For answer, the soldiers took them by the shoulders and whirled +them through the revolving door on to the pavement, where a crowd +began to collect, as it does in peace or war if you cough twice or +sneeze three times in Brussels. "Englische Hure! Englische +Küpplerin," shouted the soldiers as they retreated and locked the +revolving door. Mrs. Warren turned purple and swayed. Vivie caught +her round the waist with her strong arm.... Thus was Mrs. Warren +ejected from the once homely inn which she had converted by her +energy, management and capital into the second most magnificent +hostelry of Brussels; thus was Vivie expelled from the place of her +birth.... +</p> +<p> +Hearing the shouting and seeing the crowd a Belgian gendarme came +up. To him Vivie said, "Si vous êtes Chrétien et pas Allemand—" +"Prenez garde, Madame," he said warningly—"Vous m'aiderez à porter +ma mère à quelqu' endroit ou elle peut se remettre..." +</p> +<p> +He assisted her to carry the inert old woman across the street and a +short distance along the opposite pavement. Here, there was a +pleasant, modest-looking tea-shop with the name of Walcker over the +front, and embedded in the plate glass were the words "Tea Rooms." +These of course dated from long before the war, when the best +Chinese tea was only four francs the demi-kilo and the fashion for +afternoon tea had become established in Brussels. Vivie and her +mother had often entered Walcker's shop in happier days for a cup of +tea and delicious forms of home-made pastry. Besides the cakes, +which in pre-war times were of an excellence rarely equalled, they +had been drawn to the pleasant-looking serving woman. She was so +English in appearance, though she only spoke French and Flemish. +Behind the shop was a cosy little room where the more intimate +clients were served with tea; a room with a look-out into a little +square of garden. Thither Mrs. Warren was carried or supported. She +regained consciousness slightly as she was placed on a chair, +opened her eyes, and said "Thank you, my dears." Then her head fell +over to one side and she was dead—seemingly.... +</p> +<p> +The <i>agent de police</i> went away to fetch a doctor and to disperse +the crowd of <i>ketjes</i> <a href="#note-7" name="noteref-7"><small>[7]</small></a> and loafers which had transferred itself +from the hotel to the tea-shop. The shop woman, who was one of those +angels of kindness that turn up unexpectedly in the paths of unhappy +people, called in a stout serving wench from the kitchen, and the +three of them carried Mrs. Warren out of the inner tea-room into the +back premises and a spare bedroom. Here she was laid on the bed, +partially undressed and all available and likely restoratives +applied. +</p> +<p> +The doctor when he came pronounced her dead, thought it was probably +an effusion of blood on the brain but couldn't be certain till he +had made an autopsy. +</p> +<p> +"What <i>am</i> I to do?" said Vivie thinking aloud.... +</p> +<p> +"Why, stay here till all the formalities are over and you can find +rooms elsewhere," said Mme. Trouessart, the owner-servant of the +tea-shop. "I have another spare room. For the moment my locataires +are gone. I know you both very well by sight, you were clients of +ours in the happy days before the War. Madame votre mère was, I +think, the gérante of the Hotel Édouard-Sept when I first came to +manage here. Since then, you have often drunk my tea. Je me nomme +'Trouessart' c'est le nom de mon mari qui est ... qui est—Vous +pouvez diviner où il est, où est à present tout Belge loyal qui peut +servir. Le nom Walcker? C'était le nom de nom père, et de plus est, +c'était un nom Anglais transformé un peu en Flamand. Mon +arrière-grand-père etait soldat Anglais. Il se battait à Waterloo. +For me, I spik no English—or ver' leetle." +</p> +<p> +She went on to explain, whilst the doctors occupied themselves with +their gruesome task, and Vivie was being persuaded to take some +nourishment, that her great grandfather had been a soldier servant +who had married a Belgian woman and settled down on the site of this +very shop a hundred years ago. He and his wife had even then +made a specialty of tea for English tourists. She, his great +grand-daughter, had after her marriage to Monsieur Trouessart +carried on the business under the old name—Walker, made to look +Flemish as Walcker. +</p> +<p> +Vivie when left alone suddenly thought of the money question. She +remembered then that before going out to look for rooms she had +transferred half the notes from their hiding-place to an inner +pocket. They were still there. But what about her luggage and her +mother's, and the remainder of the money? In her distress she wrote +to Gräfin von Stachelberg. Minna came over from her hospital at half +past six in the evening. By that time the doctor had given the +necessary certificate of the cause of death, and an undertaker had +come on the scene to make his preparations. +</p> +<p> +Minna went over to the Hotel Impérial with Vivie. Appearing in her +Red Cross uniform, she was admitted, announced herself as the Gräfin +von Stachelberg, and demanded to know what justification the manager +could offer for his extraordinary brutality towards these English +ladies, the result of which had been the death of the elder lady. +The manager replied that inasmuch as the All Highest himself was to +arrive that very evening to take up his abode at the Hotel Impérial, +the hotel premises had been requisitioned, etc., etc. He still +refused absolutely to allow Vivie to proceed to her room and look +for her money. She might perhaps be allowed to do so when the +Emperor was gone. As to her luggage he would have it sent over to +the tea-shop. (The money, it might be noted, she never recovered. +There were many things also missing from her mother's trunks and no +satisfaction was ever obtained.) +</p> +<p> +So there was Vivie, one dismal, rainy November evening in 1915; +homeless, her mother lying dead in a room of this tea-shop, and in +her own pocket only a matter of thirty thousand francs to provide +for her till the War was over. A thousand pounds in fluctuating +value was all that was left of a nominal twenty thousand of the year +before. +</p> +<p> +But the financial aspect of the case for the time being did not +concern her. The death of her mother had been a stunning shock, and +when she crossed over to the hotel—what irony, by the bye, to think +she had been born there thirty-nine years ago, in the old inn that +had preceded the twice rebuilt hotel!—when she crossed the street +with Minna, it had been with blazing, tearless eyes and the desire +to take the hotel manager and his minions by the coat collar, fling +<i>them</i> into the street, and assert her right to go up to her room. +But now her violence was spent and she was a broken, weeping woman +as she sat all night by the bedside of her dead mother, holding the +cold hand, imprinting kisses on the dead face which was now that of +a saintly person with nothing of the reprobate in its lineaments. +</p> + +<hr /> +<p> +The burial for various reasons had to take place in the Cemetery of +St. Josse-ten-Noode, near the shuddery National Shooting Range where +Edith Cavell and numerous Belgian patriots had recently been +executed. Minna von Stachelberg left her hospital, with some one +else in charge, and insisted on accompanying Vivie to the interment. +This might have been purely "laïc"; not on account of any harsh +dislike to the religious ceremony on Vivie's part; only due to the +fact that she knew no priest or pastor. But there appeared at the +grave-side to make a very suitable and touching discourse and to +utter one or two heartfelt prayers, a Belgian Baptist minister, a +relation of Mme. Trouessart. +</p> +<p> +Waterloo left many curious things behind it. Not only a tea-shop or +two; but a Nonconformist nucleus, that intermarried, as Sergeant +Walker or Walcker had done, with Belgian women and left descendants +who in the third generation—and by inherent vigour, thrift, +matrimony and conversion—had built up quite a numerous +congregation, which even grew large enough and rich enough to +maintain a mission of its own in Congoland. Kind Mme. Trouessart +(née Walcker), distressed and unusually moved at the sad +circumstances of Mrs. Warren's death, had called in her uncle the +Baptist pastor (who also in some unexplained way seemed to hold a +brief for the Salvation Army). He prayed silently by the death-bed +which, under the circumstances, was more tactful than open +intercession. He helped greatly over all the formalities of the +funeral, and he took upon himself the arrangement of the ceremony, +so that everything was done decorously, and certainly to the +satisfaction of the Belgians, who attended. Such people would be +large-minded in religion—you might be Protestant, if you were not +Catholic, or you might be Jewish; but a funeral without some outward +sign of faith and hope would have puzzled and distressed them. +</p> +<p> +To Vivie's great surprise, there was a considerable attendance at +the ceremony. She had expected no more than the company of Minna—an +unprofessing but real Christian, if ever there were one, and the +equally Christian if equally hedonist Mme. Trouessart. But there +came in addition quite a number of shopkeepers from the Rue Royale, +the Rues de Schaerbeek, du Marais, de Lione, and de l'Association, +with whom Mrs. Warren had dealt in years gone by. "C'etait une dame +<i>très</i> convenable," said one purveyor, and the others agreed. "Elle +me paya écus sonnants," said another, "et toujours sans +marchander." There was even present a more distinguished +acquaintance of the past: a long-retired Commissaire de Police of +the Quartier in which Mrs. Warren's hotel was situated. +</p> +<p> +He appeared in the tightly-buttoned frock-coat of civil life, with a +minute disc of some civic decoration in his button hole, and an +incredibly tall chimney-pot hat. He came to render his <i>respectueux +hommages</i> to the maîtresse-femme who had conducted her business +within the four corners of the law, "sans avoir maille à partir avec +la police des mœurs." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Warren at least died with the reputation of one who promptly +paid her bills; and the whole <i>assistance</i>, as it walked slowly back +to Brussels, recalled many a deed of kindness and jovial charity on +the part of the dead Englishwoman. +</p> + +<hr /> +<p> +Vivie, on sizing up her affairs, got Monsieur Walcker, the Baptist +pasteur, to convey a letter to the American Consulate General. +Walcker was used to such missions as these, of which the German +Government was more or less cognizant. The Germans, among their many +contradictory features, had a great respect for religion, a great +tolerance as to its forms. They not only appreciated the difference +between Jews and Christians, Catholics and Lutherans, but between +the Church of England and the various Free Churches of Britain and +America. The many people whom they sentenced to death must all have +their appropriate religious consolation before facing the firing +party. Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists were all provided for; +there was a Church of England chaplain for the avowed Anglicans; but +what was to be done for the Free Churches and Nonconformist sects of +the Anglo-Saxons? They were not represented by any captive pastor; +so in default this much respected Monsieur Walcker, the Belgian +Baptist, was called in to minister to the Nonconformist mind in its +last agony. He therefore held a quasi-official position and was +often entrusted with missions which would have been dealt with +punitorily on the part of any one else. Consequently he was able to +deliver Vivie's communication to the American Consul-General with +some probability of its being sent on. It contained no further +appeal to American intervention than this: that the Consul-General +would try to convey to England the news of her mother's death to +such-and-such solicitors, and to Lewis Maitland Praed A.R.A. in Hans +Place. +</p> +<p> +She went to the Brussels bank a fortnight after her mother's death +whilst still availing herself of the hospitality of Madame +Trouessart: to withdraw the jewellery and plate which she had +deposited there on her mother's account. But there she found herself +confronted with the red tape of the Latin which is more formidable, +even, than that of the land of Dora at the present day. These +deposited articles were held on the order of Mrs. Warren; they could +not be given up till her will was proved and letters of +administration had been granted. So <i>that</i> small resource in funds +was withheld, at any rate till some time after peace had been +declared. However she had a thousand pounds (in notes) between her +and penury, and the friendship of Minna von Stachelberg. She would +resume her evening lessons in English—Madame Trouessart had found +her several pupils—and she would lodge—as they kindly invited her +to do—with the Baptist pastor and his wife in the Rue Haute. And +she would help Minna at the hospital, and hope to be rewarded with +the opportunity of bringing comfort and consolation to the wounded +British prisoners. +</p> +<p> +Thus, with no unbearable misery, she passed the year 1916. There +were short commons in the way of food, and the cold was sometimes +cruel. But Madame Walcker was a wonderful cook and could make soup +from a sausage skewer, and heaped <i>édredons</i> on Vivie's bed. Vivie +sighed a little over the Blue Placards which announced endless +German victories by land and sea; and she gasped over the dreadful +Red Placards with their lists of victims sentenced to death by the +military courts. She ground her teeth over the announcement of +Gabrielle Petit's condemnation, and behind the shut door of Minna's +small sitting-room—and she only shut the door not to compromise +Minna—she raved over the judicial murder of this Belgian heroine, +who was shot, as was Edith Cavell, for nothing more than assisting +young Belgians to escape from German-occupied Belgium. +</p> +<p> +She witnessed the air-raids of the Allies, when only comforting +papers were dropped on Brussels city, but bombs on the German +aerodromes outside; and she also saw the Germans turn their guns +from the aeroplanes—which soared high out of their reach or skimmed +below range—on to thickly-inhabited streets of the poorer quarters, +to teach them to cheer the air-craft of the Allies! +</p> +<p> +She beheld—or she was told of—many acts of rapine, considered +cruelty and unreasoning ferocity on the part of German officials or +soldiers; yet saw or heard of acts and episodes of unlooked-for +kindness, forbearance and sympathy from the same hated people. Von +Giesselin, after all, was a not uncommon type; and as to Minna von +Stachelberg, she was a saint of the New Religion, the Service of +Man. +</p> +<hr /> +<a name="note-6"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="foot"> +[<a href="#noteref-6">6</a>] I have obtained a copy and give it here as it had an +almost historical importance in the events of the German occupation. +But the reader must interpret its meaning for himself. +</p> +<p class="center"> + <span class="sc">la guerre</span> +</p> +<p class="fverse"> + Ma sœur, vous souvient-il qu'aux jours de notre enfance,<br /> + En lisant les hauts fails de l'histoire de France,<br /> + Remplis d'admiration pour nos frères Gaulois,<br /> + Des généraux fameux nous vantions les exploits? +</p> +<p class="fverse"> + En nos âmes d'enfants, les seuls noms des victoires<br /> + Prenaient un sens mystique evocateur de gloires;<br /> + On ne rêvait qu'assauts et combats; a nos yeux<br /> + Un général vainqueur etait l'égal des dieux.<br /> +</p> +<p class="fverse"> + Rien ne semblait ternir l'éclat de ces conquétes.<br /> + Les batailles prenaient des allures de fêtes<br /> + Et nous ne songions pas qu'aux hurrahs triomphants<br /> + Se mêlaient les sanglots des mères, des enfants. +</p> +<p class="fverse"> + Ah! nous la connaissons, hélas, l'horrible guerre:<br /> + Le fléau qui punit les crimes de la terre,<br /> + Le mot qui fait trembler les mères à genoux<br /> + Et qui seme le deuil et la mort parmi nous! +</p> +<p class="fverse"> + Mais ou sqnt les lauriers que réserve l'Histoire<br /> + A celui qui demain forcera la Victoire?<br /> + Nul ne les cueillira: les lauriers sont flétris<br /> + Seul un cypres s'élève aux torubes de nos fils. +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<a name="note-7"><!--Note--></a> +<p class="foot"> +[<a href="#noteref-7">7</a>] Street urchins of Brussels. How they harassed the +Germans and maddened them by mimicking their military manœuvres! +</p> +<a name="2HCH0018"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XVIII +</h2> +<h3> + THE BOMB IN PORTLAND PLACE +</h3> +<p> +Mrs. Rossiter said to herself in 1915 that she had scarcely known a +happy day, or even hour, since the War began. In the first place +Michael had again shown violence of temper with ministers of state +over the release from prison of "that" Miss Warren—"a convict doing +a sentence of hard labour." And then, when he had got her released, +and gone himself with their beautiful new motor—whatever <i>could</i> +the chauffeur have thought?—to meet her at the prison gates, +<i>there</i> he was, afterwards, worrying himself over the War: not +content as she was, as most of her friends were, as the newspapers +were, to leave it all to Lord Kitchener and Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward +Grey, and even Mr. Lloyd George—though the latter had made some +rather foolish and exaggerated speeches about Alcohol. Michael, if +he went on like this, would <i>never</i> get his knighthood! +</p> +<p> +Then when Michael had at last, thanks to General Armstrong, found +his right place and was accomplishing marvels—the papers said—as a +"mender of the maimed"—here was she left alone in Portland Place +with hardly any one to speak to, and all her acquaintances—she now +realized they were scarcely her friends—too much occupied with war +work to spend an afternoon in discussing nothing very important over +a sumptuous tea, still served by a butler and footman. +</p> +<p> +Presently, too, the butler left to join the Professor in France and +the footman enlisted, and the tea had to be served by a <i>distraite</i> +parlour-maid, with her eye on a munitions factory—so that she +might be "in it"—and her heart in the keeping of the footman, who, +since he had gone into khaki, was irresistible. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Rossiter of course said, in 1914, that she would take up war +work. She subscribed most handsomely to the Soldiers' and Sailors' +Families' Association, to the Red Cross, to the Prince of Wales's +Fund (one of the unsolved war-time mysteries ... what's become of +it?), to the Cigarette Fund, the 1914 Christmas Plum Pudding Fund, +the Blue Cross, the Purple Cross, the Green Cross funds; to the +outstandingly good work at St. Dunstan's and at Petersham—(I am +glad she gave a Hundred pounds each to <i>them</i>); and to the +French, Belgian, Russian, Italian, Serbian, Portuguese and Japanese +Flag Days and to Our Own Day; besides enriching a number of +semi-fraudulent war charities which had alluring titles. +</p> +<p> +But if, from paying handsomely to all these praise-worthy endeavours +to mitigate the horrors of war, she proceeded to render personal +service, she became the despair of the paid organizers and +business-like workers. She couldn't add and she couldn't subtract or +divide with any certainty of a correct result; she couldn't spell +the more difficult words or remember the right letters to put after +distinguished persons' names when she addressed envelopes in her +large, childish handwriting; she couldn't be trusted to make +enquiries or to detect fraudulent appeals. She lost receipts and +never grasped the importance of vouchers; she forgot to fill up +counterfoils, or if reminded filled them up "from memory" so that +they didn't tally; she signed her name, if there was any choice of +blank spaces, in quite the wrong place. +</p> +<p> +So, invariably, tactful secretaries or assistant secretaries were +told off to explain to her—ever so nicely—that "she was no +business woman" (this, to the daughter of wholesale manufacturers, +sounded rather flattering), and that though she was invaluable as a +"name," as a patroness, or one of eighteen Vice Presidents, she was +of no use whatever as a worker. +</p> +<p> +She had no country house to place at the disposal of the Government +as a convalescent home. Michael after a few experiments forbade her +offering any hospitality at No. 1 Park Crescent to invalid officers. +Such as were entrusted to her in the spring of 1915 soon found that +she was—as they phrased it—"a pompous little, middle-class fool," +wielding no authority. They larked in the laboratory with Red Cross +nurses, broke specimens, and did very unkind and noisy things ... +besides smoking in both the large <i>and</i> the small dining-rooms. So, +after the summer of 1915, she lived very much alone, except that she +had the Adams children from Marylebone to spend the day with her +occasionally. +</p> +<p> +Poor Mrs. Adams, though a valiant worker, was very downcast and +unhappy. She confided to Mrs. Rossiter that although she dearly +loved her Bert—"and a better husband I defy you to find"—he never +seemed all hers. "Always so wrapped up in that Miss Warren or 'er +cousin the barrister." And no sooner had war broken out than off he +was to France, as a kind of missionary, she believed—the Young +Men's Christian Something or other; "though before the War he didn't +seem particular stuck on religion, and it was all she could do to +get him sometimes to church on a Sunday morning. Oh yes: she got 'er +money all right; and she couldn't say too much of Mr. and Mrs. +Rossiter's kindness. There was Bert, not doin' a stroke of work for +the Professor, and yet his pay going on all the same. Indeed she was +putting money by, because Bert was kep' out there, and all found." +</p> +<p> +However his two pretty children were some consolation to Mrs. +Rossiter, whom they considered as a very grand lady and one that was +lavishly kind. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Rossiter tried sometimes in 1915 having working parties in her +house or in the studio; and if she could attract workers gave them +such elaborate lunches and plethoric teas that very little work was +done, especially as she herself loved a long, aimless gossip about +the Royal Family or whether Lord Kitchener had ever <i>really</i> been in +love. Or she tried, since she was a poor worker herself—her only +jersey and muffler were really finished by her maid—reading aloud +to the knitters or stitchers, preferably from the works of Miss +Charlotte Yonge or some similar novelist of a later date. But that +was found to be too disturbing to their sense of the ludicrous. For +she read very stiltedly, with a strange exotic accent for the love +passages or the death scenes. As Lady Victoria Freebooter said, she +would have been <i>priceless</i> at a music-hall matinée which was +raising funds for war charities, if only she could have been induced +to read passages from Miss Yonge in <i>that</i> voice for a quarter of an +hour. Even the Queen would have had to laugh. +</p> +<p> +But as that could not be brought off, it was decided that working +parties at her house led to too much giddiness from suppressed +giggles or torpor from too much food. So she relapsed once more into +loneliness. Unfortunately air-raids were now becoming events of +occasional fright and anxiety in London, and this deterred Cousin +Sophie from Darlington, Cousin Matty from Leeds, Joseph's wife from +Northallerton or old, married schoolfellows from other northern or +midland towns coming to partake of her fastuous hospitality. Also, +they all seemed to be busy, either over their absent husbands' +business, or their sons', or because they were plunged in war work +themselves. "And really, in these times, I couldn't stand Linda for +more than five minutes," one of them said. +</p> +<p> +As to the air-raids, she was not greatly alarmed at them. Of course +it was very uncomfortable having London so dark at night, but then +she only went out in the afternoon, and never in the evening. And +the Germans seemed to be content and discriminating enough not to +bomb what she called "the resi<i>den</i>tial" parts of London. The +nearest to Portland Place of their attentions was Hampstead or +Bloomsbury. "We are protected, my dear, by the open spaces of +Regent's Park. They wouldn't like to waste their bombs on poor me!" +</p> +<p> +However her maid didn't altogether like the off chance of the +Germans or our air-craft guns making a mistake and trespassing on +the residential parts of London, so she persuaded her mistress to +spend part of the winter of 1915-16 at Bournemouth. Here she was not +happy and far lonelier even than in London. She did not like to send +all that way for the Adams children, she had a parlour suite all to +herself at the hotel, and was timid about making acquaintances +outside, since everybody now-a-days wanted you to subscribe to +something, and it was so disagreeable having to say "no." She was +not a great walker so she could not enjoy the Talbot woods; the sea +made her feel sad, remembering that Michael was the other side and +the submarines increasingly active: in short, air-raids or no +air-raids, she returned home in March, and her maid, who had been +with her ten years, gave her warning. +</p> +<p> +But then she had an inspiration! She engaged Mrs. Albert Adams to +take her place, and although the parlour-maid at this took offence +and cut the painter of domestic service, went off to the munitions +till Sergeant Frederick Summers should get leave to come home and +marry her; and they were obliged to engage another parlour-maid in +her place at double the wages: Mrs. Rossiter had done a very wise +thing. "Bert" had been home for three weeks in the preceding +February, and the recently bereaved Mrs. Adams had united her tears +with Mrs. Rossiter's on the misery of the War which separated +attached husbands and wives. It now alleviated the sorrows of both +that they should be together as mistress and maid. The cook—a most +important factor—had always liked Bertie and adored his "sweet, +pretty little children." "If you'll let 'em sleep in the spare room +on the fourth floor, next their mother, and play in the day-time in +the servants' 'all, they'll be no manner of difficulty <i>nor</i> bother +to me and the maids. We shall love to 'ave 'em, the darlin's. And +they'll serve to cheer you up a bit ma'am till the Professor comes +back." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Adams was a very capable person who hated dust and grime. The +big house wanted some such intervention, as since the butler's +departure it had become rather slovenly, save in the portions +occupied by Mrs. Rossiter. Charwomen were got in, and spring +cleanings on a gigantic scale took place, so that when Rossiter did +return he thought it had never looked so nice, or his Linda been so +cheery and companionable. +</p> +<p> +But before this happy confirmation of her wisdom in engaging Nance +Adams as maid and factotum, Mrs. Rossiter had several waves of doubt +and distress to breast. There was the Suffrage question. Once +converted by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Miss Violet Markham, Sir Almroth +Wright—whose <i>prénom</i> she could not pronounce—the late Lord +Cromer, and the impressive Lord Curzon, to the perils of the Woman's +Vote, Mrs. Rossiter was hard to move from her uncompromising +opposition to the enfranchisement of her sex. Some adroit champion +of the Wrong had employed the argument that <i>once</i> Women got the +vote, <i>the Divorce Laws would be greatly enlarged</i>. This would be +part of the scheme of the wild women to get themselves all married; +that and <i>the legalisation of Polygamy</i> which would follow the Vote +<i>as surely as the night the day</i>. Linda had an undefined terror that +her Michael might take advantage of such licentiousness to depose +her, like the Empress Josephine was put aside in favour of a +child-producing rival; or if polygamy came into force, that Miss +Warren might lawfully share the Professor's affections. +</p> +<p> +She was therefore greatly perturbed in the course of 1916 at the +sudden throwing up of the sponge by the Anti-suffragists. However, +there it was. The long struggle drew to a victorious close. Example +as well as precept pointed to what women could do and were worth; +sound arguments followed the inconveniences of militancy, and the +men were convinced. Or rather, the men in the mass and the fighting, +working men had for some time been convinced, but the great +statesmen who had so obstinately opposed the measures were now +weakening at the knees before the results of their own mismanagement +in the conduct of the War. +</p> +<p> +A further perplexity and anxiety for Mrs. Rossiter arose over the +German spy mania. She had been to one of Lady Towcester's afternoon +parties "to keep up our spirits." Lady Towcester collected for at +least six different charities and funds, and Mrs. Rossiter was a +generous subscriber to all six. Touching the wood of the central +tea-table, she had remarked to Lady Victoria and Lady Helen +Freebooter how fortunate they (who lived within the prescribed area +defined by Lady Jeune) had been in so far escaping air-raids. +</p> +<p> +"But don't you know why?" said Lady Victoria. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Rossiter didn't. +</p> +<p> +"Because in Manchester Square, in Cavendish—Grosvenor—Hanover +Squares, in Portland Place—a few doors off your own house—in +Harley Street and Wigmore Street: there are special friends of the +Kaiser living. They <i>may</i> call themselves by English names, they may +even be ex-cabinet-ministers; but they are working for the Kaiser, +all the same. And <i>he</i> wouldn't be such a fool as to have them +bombed, would he?" +</p> +<p> +"Especially as it is well known that there <i>is a wireless +installation</i> on a house in Portland Place which communicates with +a similar installation in the Harz Mountains," added Lady Helen. +</p> +<p> +This was a half-reassuring, half-terrifying statement. It was +comfortable to know that you lived under the Kaiser's wing—Mrs. +Rossiter hoped the aim of the aeronauts was accurate, and their +knowledge of London topography good. At the same time it was +alarming to feel that you might be involved in that final blow up of +the villains which must bring such scoundreldom to a close. But if +Lady Vera and Lady Helen knew all this for a fact, why not tell the +Police? "What would be the good? They'd deny everything and we +should only be sued for libel." +</p> +<p> +However to form some conception of how English home life was +undermined with plots, she was advised to go and see Mr. Dennis +Eadie in <i>The Man That Stayed at Home</i>. She did, taking Mrs. Adams +with her to the Dress Circle for a matinée. Both were very much +impressed, and on their return expected the fireplaces to open all +of a piece and reveal German spies with masked faces and pistols, +standing in the chimney. +</p> +<p> +At last these and other nightmares were dispelled by the arrival of +Rossiter on leave of absence in the autumn of 1916. He had the rank +of Colonel in the R.A.M.C., and wore the khaki uniform—Mrs. +Rossiter proudly thought—of a General. He had shaved off his beard +and trimmed his moustache and looked particularly soldierly. The +butler who came with him though not precisely a soldier but a sort +of N.C.O. in a medical corps, also looked quite martial, and had so +much to say for himself that Mrs. Rossiter felt he could never +become a butler again. But he did all the same, and a most efficient +one though a little breezy in manner. +</p> +<p> +Linda now entered on an aftermath of matrimonial happiness. Rossiter +was to take quite a long leave so that he could pursue the most +important researches in curative surgery—bone grafting and the +like; not only in his own laboratory but at the College of Surgeons +and the Zoological Gardens Prosectorium. With only occasional +week-ends at home he had been away from London since September, +1914; had known great hardships, the life of the trenches and the +bomb-proof shelter, stewed tea and bad tinned milk, rum and water, +bully beef, plum and apple jam, good bread, it is true, but shocking +margarine for butter. He had slept for weeks together on an old sofa +more or less dressed, kept warm by his great-coat and two Army +blankets of woven porcupine quills (seemingly) the ends of which +tickled his nose and scratched his face. He had been very cold and +sweatingly hot, furiously hungry with no meal to satisfy his healthy +appetite, madly thirsty and no long drink attainable; unable to +sleep for three nights at a time owing to the noise of the +bombardment; surfeited with horrible smells; sickened with butchery; +shocked at his own failures to retrieve life, yet encouraged by an +isolated victory, here and there, over death and disablement. So the +never-before-appreciated comfort of his Park Crescent home filled +him with intense gratitude to Linda. +</p> +<p> +Had he known, he owed some of his acknowledgment to Mrs. Adams; who +had worked both hard and tactfully in her undefined position of +lady's-maid-housekeeper-companion. But naturally he didn't know, +though he praised his wife warmly for her charity of soul in taking +pity on the poor little woman and her two children. He could only +give the slightest news about Bertie, but said he was a sort of +jack-of-all-trades for the Y.M.C.A. As to Vivie—"that Miss +Warren"—he answered his wife's questions neither with the glowering +taciturnity nor suspicious loquacity of former times. "Miss Warren? +Vivie? I fancy she's still at Brussels, but there is no chance of +finding out. There is a story that her mother is dead. P'raps now +they'll let her come away. She must be jolly well sick of Brussels +by now. When I last heard of Adams he was still hoping to get into +touch with her. I hope he won't take any risks. She's a clever woman +and I dare say can take care of herself. I hope we shall all meet +again when the War is over." +</p> +<p> +He seemed very pleased to hear of the new Conciliation Bill, the +general agreement all round on the Suffrage question and the +enlargement of the electorate. He had always told Linda it was bound +to come. "And after it has come, dearie, you mark my words: things +will go on pretty much as before." But his real, intense, absorbing +interest lay in the new experiments he was about to make in bone +grafting and cartilage replacing, and the functions of the pituitary +body and the interstitial glands. To carry these out adequately the +Zoological Society had accumulated troops of monkeys and baboons. At +a certain depôt in Camden Town dogs were kept for his purposes. And +the vaults and upper floors of the Royal College of Surgeons were at +Rossiter's disposal, with Professor Keith to co-operate. Never had +his house in Portland Place—to be accurate the Park Crescent end +thereof—seemed so conveniently situated, or its studio-laboratory +so well designed. "Air-raids? Pooh! Just about one chance in a +million we should be struck. Besides: can't think of that, when so +much is at stake. That's a fine phrase, 'Menders of the Maimed.' +Just what we want to be! No more artificial limbs if we can help you +to grow your own new legs and arms—perhaps. At any rate, mend up +those that are a hopeless mash. Grand work! Only bright thing in the +War. Now dear, are you ready with that lymph?" +</p> +<p> +And she was. Never had Linda been so happy. She overcame her disgust +at the sight of blood, at monkeys, dogs, and humans under +anæsthetics, at yellow fat, gleaming sinew, and blood-stained bone. +She was careful as a washer-up. The services of Mrs. Adams were +enlisted, and she was more deft even than her mistress; and the +butler, who was by this time a regular hospital dresser, greatly +admired her pretty arms when they were bared to the elbow, and her +flushed cheeks when she took a humble part in some tantalizing +adjustment. +</p> +<p> +"I'm some use to you after all," Linda would say when they retired +from the studio for a rest and she made the tea. "Some <i>use</i>? I +should think so!" said Rossiter (whether truly or not). And he +reproached himself that twenty years ago he had not trained and +developed her to help him in his work, to be a real companion in his +studies. +</p> +<p> +He was really fond of her through the winter of 1916. And so jovial +and lover-like, so boyish in his fun, so like the typical Tommy home +from the trenches. When he was overjoyed at the success of some +uncovered and peeped-at experiment, he would sing, "When <i>I</i> get me +civvies on again, an' it's Home Sweet Home once more"; and ask for +the ideal cottage "with rowses round the door—And a nice warm +bottle in me nice warm bed, An' a nice soft pillow for me nice soft +'ead..." Mrs. Rossiter began to think there was a good side to the +War, after all. It made some men more conscious of their home +comforts and less exigent for intellectuality in their home +companions. +</p> +<p> +They went out very little into Society. Rossiter held that war-time +parties were scandalous. He poohpoohed the idea that immodest +dancing with frisky matrons or abandoned spinsters was necessary +to restore the shell-shocked nerves of temporary captains, +locally-ranked majors, or the recently-joined subaltern. He was far +too busy for twaddly tea-fights and carping at hard-worked generals +who were doing their best and a good best too. He and Linda did dine +occasionally with Honoria, but the latter felt she could not let +herself go about Vivie in the presence of Mrs. Rossiter and seemed +a little cold in manner. +</p> +<p> +Ordinarily, after working hard all day while the daylight lasted +they much preferred an evening of complete solitude. Rossiter's new +robustness of taste included love of a gramophone. Money being no +consideration with them, they acquired a tip-top one with +superlative records; not so much the baaing, bellowing and shrieking +of fashionable singers, but orchestral performances, heart-melting +duets between violin and piano (<i>what</i> human voice ever came up to a +good violin or violoncello?), racy comic songs, inspiriting two +steps, xylophone symphonies, and dreamy, sensuous waltzes. This +gramophone Linda learnt to work; and while Michael read voraciously +the works of Hunter, Hugh Owen Thomas, Stromeyer, Duchenne, Goodsir, +Wolff, and Redfern on bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, +periosteum and osteogenesis—or, more often, Keith's compact and +lucid analysis of their experiments and conclusions—Linda let loose +in the scented air of a log fire these varied melodies which attuned +the mind to extraordinary perceptibility. +</p> +<p> +The little Adamses were allowed to steal in and listen, on condition +they never uttered a word to break the spell of Colonel Rossiter's +thoughts. +</p> +<p> +I think also Rossiter felt his wife had been unjustly snubbed by the +great ladies and the off-hand, harum-scarum young war-workers; so he +flatly declined to have any of them messing around his studio or +initiated into his research work. It was intimated that the Rossiter +Thursday afternoons of long ago would not be resumed until after the +peace. Linda therefore derived much consolation and satisfaction for +past injuries to her pride when Lady Vera—or Victoria—Freebooter +called one day just before Christmas and said "Oh—er—mother's let +our house till February and thinks we'd better—I mean the Marrybone +Guild of war-workers—meet at <i>your</i> house instead"; and she, +Linda, had the opportunity of replying: "Oh, I'm sorry, <i>but</i> It's +<span class="sc">quite</span> impossible. The Professor—I mean, Colonel Rossiter—and I are +so <i>very</i> busy ... we are seeing <i>no</i> one just now. Indeed we've +enlisted all the servants to help the Colonel in his work, so I +can't even offer you a cup of tea.... I must <i>rush</i> back at once.... +You'll excuse me?" +</p> +<p> +"That Rossiter woman is quite off her head with grandeur," said Lady +Vera to Lady Helen. "I expect Uncle Algy has let out that her +husband is in the New Year's honours." +</p> +<p> +And so he was. But Uncle Algy, though he might have babbled to his +nieces, had not written a word to the Rossiters. So they just +enjoyed Christmas—too much, they thought, more than any Christmas +before—in the simple satisfaction of being Colonel and Mrs. +Rossiter, all in all to each other, but rendered additionally happy +by making those about them happy. The little Adamses staggered under +their presents and had a Christmas Tree to which they were allowed +to ask their two grannies—Mrs. Laidly from Fig Tree Court and Mrs. +Adams from the Kilburn Laundry—and numerous little friends from +Marylebone, who had been washed and curled and crimped and adjured +not to disgrace their parents, <i>or</i> father—in the trenches—would +be told "as sure as I stand here." +</p> +<p> +(The little Adamses were also warned that if they <i>ever</i> again were +heard calling Mrs. Rossiter "Gran'ma," they'd—but the threat was +too awful to be uttered, especially as their mother at this time was +always on the verge of tears, either at getting no news of Bert or +at the unforgettable kindness of Bert's employer.) +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Rossiter, quite unaware that she was soon to be a Dame, gave +Christmas entertainments at St. Dunstan's, at the Marylebone +Workhouse, and to all the wounded soldiers in the parish. And on +December 31, 1916, Michael received a note from the Prime Minister +to say that His Majesty, in recognition of his exceptional services +in curative surgery at the front, had been pleased to bestow on him +a Knight Commandership of the Bath. "So that, Linda, you can call +yourself Lady Rossiter, and you will have to get some new cards +printed for both of us." +</p> +<p> +Linda didn't feel quite that ecstasy over her title that she had +expected in her day-dreams. She was getting a little frightened at +her happiness. Generations of Puritan forefathers and mothers had +left some influence of Calvinism on her mentality. She was brought +up to believe in a jealous God, whose Providence when you felt too +happy on earth just landed you in some unexpected disaster to fit +you for the Kingdom of Heaven—a Kingdom which all healthy human +beings shrink from entering with the terror of the unknown and a +certain homeliness of disposition which is humbly content with this +cosy planet and a corporeal existence. +</p> +<p> +However it was very nice to leave cards of calling on Lady +Towcester—even though she was out of town on account of +air-raids—and on others, inscribed: "Lady Rossiter, Colonel Sir +Michael Rossiter, Sir Michael and Lady Rossiter;" and to see printed +foolscap envelopes for Michael arrive from the War Office and lie on +the hall table, addressed: Colonel Sir Michael Rossiter K.C.B. etc., +etc., etc., etc. +</p> +<p> +And later on, in January or February, for some very good reason, Sir +Michael and Lady Rossiter were received in audience by the King and +Queen at Buckingham Palace. The King had already watched Sir Michael +at work in his laboratory just behind the French front; so they two, +as Linda timidly glanced at them, had no lack of subjects for +conversation. But the Queen! Linda had thought she could <i>never</i> +have talked to a Queen without swooning, and indeed had arrived +primed with much sal volatile. Yet there, as in some realistic +dream, she was led on to talk about her war charities and Sir +Michael's experiments without trembling, and found herself able to +listen with intelligence to the Queen's practical suggestions about +war work and the application of relief funds in crowded districts. +"<i>We actually compared notes!</i>" said a flushed and triumphant Linda +to her Michael, as they drove away through the blue twilight of St. +James's Park. +</p> +<p> +And so far from being puffed up by this, people said they had always +thought Lady Rossiter was kind, but they really before had never +imagined there was so much in her. She was even allowed to preside +as Vice President, in the absence of Lady Towcester; and got through +it quite creditably—kind hearts being more than coronets—and made +a little speech to which cook and Nance Adams called out "Hear, +<i>Hear</i>!" and roused quite a hearty response. +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +Of course it was an awful wrench when Michael had to return to +France. But he would be back in the autumn, and meantime she must +remember she was a soldier's wife. So the summer was got through +with cheerfulness, especially as she was now treated with much more +regard in the different committees whereof she was Vice President. +On these committees she met Honoria Armstrong, and the longing to +renew the old friendship and talk about Michael's superlative +qualities to one who had long known them, took her over to +Kensington Square, impulsively. Honoria perceived the need +instinctively. The coldness engendered by Linda's silly +Anti-suffragism disappeared. They both talked by the hour together +of their respective husbands and their outstanding virtues and +charming weaknesses. The Armstrong children took to calling her Aunt +Linda—Michael and Petworth, after all, were brothers-in-arms and +friends from youth. Lady Rossiter was delighted, and lavished +presents on them, till Honoria reminded her it was war-time and +extravagance in all things was reprehensible, even in British-made +toys. +</p> +<p> +They discussed the Vote, soon to be theirs, and how it should be +exercised. From that—by some instinct—Honoria passed on to a talk +about Vivien Warren ... a selective talk. She said nothing about +David Williams, but enlarged on Vivie's absolute "straightness," +especially towards other women; her business capacities, her +restoration of her mother to the ranks of the respectable; till at +last it seemed as though the burning down of racing stables was a +meritorious act ... "ridding England of an evil that good might +come." And there was poor Vivie, locked up in Brussels, if indeed +she were still living. +</p> +<p> +Linda felt shocked at her own treachery to the Woman's Cause in +having betrayed that poor, well-meaning Miss Warren to the police. +Never could she confess this to Lady Armstrong (Sir Petworth had +just been knighted for a great success in battle), tell her about +the fragment of letter she had forwarded anonymously to Scotland +Yard. Perhaps she might some day tell Michael, when he returned. In +any case she would say at the next opportunity that as soon as Miss +Warren reappeared in England, he might ask her to the house as often +as he liked—even to stay with them if she were in want of a home. +</p> +<p> +She said as much to Michael when he came back in September, 1917, to +make some further investigations into bone grafting. He seemed +genuinely pleased at her broad-mindedness, and said it would indeed +be delightful when the War was over—and it <i>surely</i> must be over +soon—now Mr. Lloyd George and Clemenceau and President Wilson had +taken it in hand—it would indeed be delightful to form a circle of +close friends who had all been interested in the Woman's Movement. +As to Vivie ... if she were not dead ... he should advise her to go +in for Parliament. +</p> +<p> +He had had no news of her since ever so long; what was worse, he +had now very great misgivings about Bertie Adams. During the autumn +of 1916 he had disappeared in the direction of La Bassée. There were +stories of his having joined some American Relief Expedition at +Lille—a most dangerous thing to do; insensate, if it were not a mad +attempt to get through to Brussels in disguise to rescue Miss +Warren. No one in the Y.M.C.A. believed for a moment that he had +done anything dishonourable. Most likely he had been killed—as so +many Y.M.C.A. people were just then, assisting to bring in the +wounded or going up to the trenches with supplies. Mrs. Adams had +better be prepared, cautiously, for a bereavement. Rossiter himself +was very sad about it. He had missed Bertie's services much these +last three years. He had never known a better worker—turn his hand +to anything—Such a good indexer, for example. +</p> +<p> +Linda wondered whether <i>she</i> could do any indexing? Three years ago +Michael would have replied: "<i>You?</i> Nonsense, my dear. You'd only +make a muddle of it. Much better stick to your housekeeping" (which +as a matter of fact was done in those days by cook, butler and +parlour-maid). But now he said, thoughtfully: +</p> +<p> +"Well—I don't know—perhaps you might. There's no reason you +shouldn't try." +</p> +<p> +And Linda began trying. +</p> +<p> +But she also worked regularly in the laboratory now, calling it at +his suggestion the lab, and stumbling no more over the word. She +wore a neat overall with tight sleeves and her hair plainly dressed +under a little white, pleated cap. She never now caught anything +with her sleeve and switched it off the table; she never let +anything drop, and was a most judicious duster and wiper-up. +</p> +<p> +Rossiter in this autumn of 1917 was extremely interested in certain +crucial experiments he was making with spiculum in sponge-cells; +with scleroblasts, "mason-cells," osteoblasts, and "consciousness" +in bone-cells. Most of the glass jars in which these experiments +were going on (those of the sponges in sea-water) required daylight +for their progress. There was no place for their storage more +suitable than that portion of his studio-laboratory which was above +ground; and the situation of his house in regard to air attacks, +bombs, shrapnel seemed to him far more favourable than the upper +rooms at the College of Surgeons. That great building was often +endangered because of its proximity to the Strand and Fleet Street; +and the Strand and Fleet Street, being regarded by the Germans as +arteries of Empire, were frequently attacked by German air-craft. +</p> +<p> +But in Rossiter's studio there was an under-ground annex as +continuation of the house cellars; and the household was instructed +that if, in Rossiter's absence, official warnings of an air-raid +were given, certain jars were to be lifted carefully off the shelves +and brought either into the library or taken down below in case, +through shrapnel or through the vibration of neighbouring +explosions, the glass of the studio roof was broken. +</p> +<p> +One day in October, 1917, the German air fleet made a determined +attack on London. It was intended this time to belie the stories of +the heart of the Western district being exempted from punishment +because Lady So-and-so lived there and had lent her house in East +Anglia to the Empress and her children in 1912, or because Sir +Somebody-else was really an arch spy of the Germans and had to go on +residing in London. So the aeroplanes this time began distributing +their explosives very carefully over the residential area between +Regent's Park and Pall Mall, the Tottenham Court Road and +Selfridge's. +</p> +<p> +Lady Rossiter in her overall was disturbed at her indexing by the +clamour of an approaching daylight raid; by the maroons, the +clanging of bells, the hooters, the gunfire; and finally by the not +very distant sounds of exploding bombs. She called and rang for the +servants, and then rushed from the library into the studio to +commence removing the more important of the jars to a place of +greater safety. She had seized two of them, one under each arm, and +was making for the library door, when there came the most awful +crash she had ever heard, and resounding bangs which seemed to echo +indefinitely in her ears.... +</p> +<p> +Rossiter was working in the Prosectorium at the Zoo when the +daylight air-raid began. It seemed to be coming across the middle of +London; so, hastily doffing his overall, he left the Gardens and +walked rapidly towards Portland Place. He had hardly got past the +fountain presented by Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy in wasted +benevolence, than he heard the deafening report of the bomb which +had wrecked his studio, reduced it to a tangle of iron girders and +stanchions, strewn its floor with brick rubble and thick dust, and +left his wife a human wreck, lying unconscious with a broken spine, +surrounded by splinters of glass, broken jars, porcelain trays, and +nasty-looking fragments of sponge and vertebrate anatomy. With an +almost paralyzing premonition of disaster he ran as quickly as +possible towards Park Crescent. The Marylebone Road was strewn with +glass, and a policeman—every one else had taken shelter—was +ringing and knocking at his front door to ascertain the damage and +possible loss of life. Michael let both of them in with his +latch-key. In the hall the butler was lying prone, stunned by a +small statue which had been flung at him by the capricious violence +of the explosion. All the mirrors were shivered and most of the +pictures were down. At the entrance to the library cook was +standing, all of a tremble. The two little Adamses rushed up to him: +"Oh Sir Michael! Mummie is dead and Gran'ma is awfully hurted." +</p> +<p> +But Mummie—Mrs. Adams—was not dead; neither was the expensive +parlour-maid. Both had fainted or been stunned by the explosion on +their way to help their mistress. Both lay inanimate on the library +floor. The library glass door was shivered to dangerous jagged +splinters, but the iron framework—"Curse it"—remained a tangled, +maddening obstacle to his further progress. He could see through the +splinters of thick glass something that looked like Linda, lying on +her back—and—something that looked like blood. The policeman who +followed him was strong and adroit. Together they detached the glass +splinters and wrenched open the framework, with space enough, at any +rate, to pass through without the rending of clothes into the +studio. +</p> +<p> +Linda Rossiter was regaining consciousness for just a few more +minutes of sentient life. She was aware there had been a dreadful +accident to some one; perhaps to herself. But she fully believed she +had first of all saved the precious jars. No doubt they had put her +to bed, and as there was something warm (her blood, poor thing) +round her body, they must have packed her with hot water bottles. +Some idea of Michael's no doubt. How <i>kind</i> he was! +</p> +<p> +She would soon get right, with him to look after her. She opened +her eyes to meet his, as he bent over her, and said with the ghost +of an arch smile: "I—have been—of some use—to you, haven't—I? +... (then the voice faltered and trailed away) ... I ... +saved—your—specimens—" +</p> +<a name="2HCH0019"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XIX +</h2> +<h3> + BERTIE ADAMS +</h3> +<p> +One day, early in April, 1917, Vivie was standing in a corridor of +the Hôpital de St. Pierre talking to Minna von Stachelberg. She had +just come from the railway station, where in common with the few +British and Americans who remained in Brussels she had been to take +a respectful and grateful farewell of the American Minister and his +wife, who were leaving Belgium for Holland, prior to the American +declaration of war. American diplomacy had done little for her or +her mother, but it had been the shield, the salvation, the only hope +of Belgium. Moreover, the break-off of diplomatic relations +initiated the certain hope of a happier future. American +intervention in the war <i>must</i> lead to Peace and Freedom. Germany +<i>must</i> now be beaten and Belgium set free. +</p> +<p> +So she had contributed her mite to the fund which purchased spring +flowers—hothouse-grown, for this April was a villainous +prolongation of winter—with which to strew the approach to the +station and fill the reserve compartment of the train. +</p> +<p> +As Vivie was nearing the end of her description—and Minna was +hoping it <i>was</i> the end, as she wanted to get back to her +patients—two German policemen marched up to Vivie, clicked their +heels, saluted, and said in German, "Mademoiselle Varennes, nicht +wahr? Be good enough to accompany us to the Kommandantur." +</p> +<p> +At this dread summons, Vivie turned pale, and Minna dismayed began +to ask questions. The Polizei answered that they had none to +give.... Might she accompany her friend? She might not. Then +followed a ride in a military motor, with the two silent policemen. +</p> +<p> +They arrived outside the Kommandantur.... More clanking, clicking, +and gruff conversation in German. She got out, in response to a +tight pressure on her arm, a grip in fact, and accompanied her grim +guide through halls and corridors, and at last entered a severely +furnished office, a kind of magistrate's court, and was confronted +with—Bertie Adams! A whiskered, bearded, moustached, shabbily +dressed (in a quasi-military uniform) Bertie Adams: lean, and +hollow-eyed, but with the love-light in his eyes. He turned on her +such a look of dog-like fealty, of happy recognition that although, +by instinct and for his safety, she was about to deny all knowledge +of him, she could not force her eyes or tongue to tell the lie. +</p> +<p> +"Oh miss, oh my dear Miss Warren! <i>How</i> I have hungered and thirsted +for a sight of you all these months and years! To see you once more +is worth all and more I've gone through to get here. They may shoot +me now, if they've got the heart—Not that I've done anything to +deserve it—I've simply had one object in view: To come here and +help you." +</p> +<p> +He looked around as if instinctively to claim the sympathy of the +policemen. To say he met with none would be to make them out more +inhuman than they were. But as all this speech was in English they +understood but little of what he had said. They guessed he loved the +woman to whom he spake, but he may have been pleading with her not +to give him away, to palliate his acts of espionage. +</p> +<p> +Vivie replied: +</p> +<p> +"<i>Dear</i> Bertie! You can't be gladder to see me than I am you. I +greet you with all my heart. But you must be aware that in coming +here like this you—" her words stuck in her throat—she knew not +what to say lest she might incriminate him farther— +</p> +<p> +A police officer broke in on her embarrassment and said in German: +"Es ist genug—You recognize him, Madame? He was arrested this +morning at the Hotel Impérial, enquiring for you. Meantime, you also +are under arrest. Please follow that officer." +</p> +<p> +"May I communicate with my friends?" said Vivie, with a dry tongue +in a dry mouth. +</p> +<p> +"Who are your friends?" +</p> +<p> +"Gräfin von Stachelberg, at the Hôpital de St. Pierre; le Pasteur +Walcker, Rue Haute, 33—" +</p> +<p> +"I will let them know that you are arrested on a charge of high +treason—in league with an English spy," he hissed. +</p> +<p> +Then Vivie was pushed out of the room and Bertie was seized by two +policemen— +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +They did not meet again for three days. It was a Saturday, and a +police agent came into the improvised cell where Vivie was +confined—who had never taken off her clothes since her arrest and +had passed three days of such mental distress as she had never +known, unable to sleep on the bug-infested pallet, unable to eat a +morsel of the filthy food—and invited her to follow him. "By the +grace of the military governor of the prison of Saint-Gilles"—he +said this in French as she understood German imperfectly—"you are +permitted to proceed there to take farewell of your English friend, +the prisoner A-dams, who has been condemned to death." +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +Bertie had been tried by court-martial in the Senate, on the Friday. +He followed all the proceedings in a dazed condition. Everything was +carried on in German, but the parts that most concerned him were +grotesquely translated by a ferocious-looking interpreter, who +likewise turned Bertie's stupid, involved, self-condemnatory answers +into German—no doubt very incorrectly. Bertie however protested, +over and over again, that Miss Warren knew <i>nothing</i> of his +projects, and that his only object in posing as an American and +travelling with false passports was to rescue Miss Warren from +Brussels and enable her to pass into Holland, "or get out of the +country <i>some</i> 'ow." As to the Emperor, and taking his life—"why +lor' bless you, <i>I</i> don't want to take <i>any one's</i> life. I 'ate war, +more than ever after all I've seen of it. Upon my honour, gentlemen, +all I want is Miss Warren." Here one member of the court made a +facetious remark in German to a colleague who sniggered, while, with +his insolent light blue eyes, he surveyed Bertie's honest, earnest +face, thin and hollowed with privations and fatigue.... +</p> +<p> +He was perfunctorily defended by a languid Belgian barrister, tired +of the invidious rôle of mechanical pleading for the lives of +prisoners, especially where, as in this case, they were foredoomed, +and eloquence was waste of breath, and even got you disliked by the +impatient ogres, thirsty for the blood of an English man or +woman.... "Du reste," he said to a colleague, "agissait-il d'un +Belge, mon cher, tu sais que l'on se sentirait forcé à risquer le +déplaisir de ces ogres: tandis que, pour un pauvre bougre +d'Anglais...? Et qu'ont-ils fait pour nous, les Anglais? Nous avons +tâché de leur boucher le trou à Liège—et—il—nous—ont—abandonné. +Enfin—allons boire un coup—" +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +Verdict: as translated by the ferocious interpreter:— +</p> +<p> +"Ze Court faind you Geeltee. You are condemned to Dess, and you will +be shot on Monday." +</p> +<p> +In the prison of Saint-Gilles—as I believe elsewhere in +Belgium—though there might be a military governor in control who +was a German, the general direction remained in the hands of the +Belgian staff which was there when the German occupation began. +These Belgian directors and their subordinates were as kind and +humane to the prisoners under their charge as the Germans were the +reverse. Everything was done at Saint-Gilles to alleviate the mental +agony of the condemned-to-death. The German courts tried to prolong +and enhance the agony as much as possible, by sentencing the +prisoners three days, six days, a week before the time of execution +(though for fear of a reprieve this sentence was not immediately +published) and letting them know that they had just so many days or +hours to live: consequently most of them wasted away in prison with +mind-agony, inability to sleep or eat; and even opiates or +soporifics administered surreptitiously by the Belgian prison +doctors were but slight alleviations. +</p> +<p> +Bertie when first placed in his cell at Saint-Gilles asked for pen, +ink, and paper. They were supplied to him. He was allowed to keep on +the electric light all night, and he distracted his mind—with some +dreadful intervals of horror at his fate—by trying to set forth on +paper for Vivie to read an explanation and an account of his +adventures. He intended to wind up with an appeal for his wife and +children. +</p> +<p> +Vivie never quite knew how Bertie had managed to cross the War zone +from France into Belgium, and reach Brussels without being arrested. +When they met in prison they had so little time to discuss such +details, in face of the one awful fact that he was there, and was in +all probability going to die in two days. But from this incomplete, +tear-stained scribble that he left behind and from the answers he +gave to her few questions, she gathered that the story of his quest +was something like this:— +</p> +<p> +He had planned an attempt to reach her in Brussels or wherever she +might be, from the autumn of 1914 onwards. The most practicable way +of doing so seemed to be to pass as an American engaged in Belgian +relief work, in the distribution of food. Direct attempts to be +enrolled for such work proved fruitless, only caused suspicion; so +he lay low. In course of time he made the acquaintance of one of +those American agents of Mr. Hoover—a tousle-haired, hatless, +happy-go-lucky, lawless individual, who made mock of laws, rules, +precedents, and regulations. He concealed under a dry, taciturn, +unemotional manner an intense hatred of the Germans. But he was +either himself of enormous wealth or he had access to unlimited +national funds. He spent money like water to carry out his relief +work and was lavishly generous to German soldiers or civilians if +thereby he might save time and set aside impediments. He took a +strong liking to Bertie, though he showed it little outwardly. The +latter probably in his naïveté and directness unveiled his full +purpose to this gum-chewing, grey-eyed American. When the news of +Mrs. Warren's death had reached Bertie through a circuitous +course—Praed-Honoria-Rossiter—he had modified his scheme and at +the same time had become still more ardent about carrying it into +execution. In fact he felt that Mrs. Warren's death was opportune, +as with her still living and impossible to include in a flight, +Vivie would probably have refused to come away. +</p> +<p> +Therefore in the summer of 1916, he asked his American friend to +obtain two American passports, one for himself and one for "his +wife, Mrs. Violet Adams." Mr. Praed had sent him a credit for Five +hundred pounds in case he could get it conveyed to Vivie. Bertie +turned the credit into American bank notes. This money would help +him to reach Brussels and once there, if Vivie would consent to pass +as his wife, he might convey her out of Belgium into Holland, as two +Americans working under the Relief Committee. +</p> +<p> +It had been excessively difficult and dangerous crossing the War +zone and getting into occupied Belgium. There was some hint in his +talk of an Alsatian spy who helped him at this stage, one of those +"sanspatries" who spied impartially for both sides and sold any one +they could sell (Fortunately after the Armistice most of these +Judases were caught and shot). The spy had probably at first +blackmailed him when he was in Belgium—which is why of the Five +hundred pounds in dollar notes there only remained about a third in +his possession when he reached Brussels—and then denounced him to +the authorities, for a reward. +</p> +<p> +But his main misfortune lay in the long delay before he reached +Brussels. During that time, the entire American diplomatic and +consular staff was leaving Belgium; and the Emperor was arriving +more or less secretly in Brussels (it was said in the hope that a +personal talk with Brand Whitlock might stave off the American +declaration of war). +</p> +<p> +Bertie on his arrival dared not to go to the American legation for +fear of being found out and disavowed. So he had asked his way in +very "English" French, and wearing the semi-military uniform of an +American Relief officer—to the Hotel "Edward-Sett," where he +supposed Vivie would be or could be heard of. When he reached the +Hotel Impérial and asked for "Miss Warren," he had been at once +arrested. Indeed probably his steps had been followed all the way +from the railway station to the door of the hotel by a plain-clothes +German policeman. The Germans were convinced just then that many +Englishmen and some American cranks were out to assassinate the +Kaiser. They took Bertie's appearance at the door of the Hotel +Impérial as a proof of his intention. They considered him to have +been caught red-handed, especially as he had a revolver concealed on +his person and was obviously travelling with false passports. +</p> +<p> +"Ah, Bertie," said Vivie, when they first met in his cell at +Saint-Gilles prison. "If <i>only</i> I had not led you into this! I am +mad with myself..." +</p> +<p> +"Are you, miss? But 'oo could 'a foreseen this war would come along! +We thought all we 'ad to fight was the Police and the 'Ome Office to +get the Vote. And <i>then</i>, you'd 'a bin able to come out into the +open and practise as a barrister—and me, again, as your clerk. It +was our damned Government that made you go abroad and get locked up +'ere. And once I realized you couldn't get away, thinks I to meself, +<i>I'll</i> find a way..." +</p> +<p> +It was here that Vivie began questioning him as to how he had +reached Brussels from the War zone; and as, towards the end of his +story—some of which he said she would find he had written down in +case they wouldn't let him see her—the reference to the Emperor +came in, she sprang up and tried the door of the cell. It was +fastened without, but a face covered the small, square opening +through which prisoners were watched; and a rough voice asked her +what she wanted. It was the German police agent or spy, who, perched +on a stool outside, next this small window, was there to listen to +all they said. As they naturally spoke in English and the rough +creature only knew "God-dam," and a few unrepeatable words, he was +not much the wiser for his vigil. +</p> +<p> +"I want—I <i>must</i> see the Director," said Vivie. +</p> +<p> +Presently the Director came. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, sir," said Vivie, "give me paper and an envelope, I <i>implore</i> +you. There is pen and ink here and I will write a letter to the +Emperor, a petition. I will tell him briefly the true story of this +poor young man; and <i>then</i>, if you will only forward it he may grant +a reprieve." +</p> +<p> +The Director said he would do his best. After all, you never knew; +and the Kaiser, though he said he hated them always, had a greater +regard for the English than for any other nation. As he glanced +from Vivie and her face of agonized appeal to the steadfast gaze +which Bertie fixed on her, as on some fairy godmother, his own eyes +filled with tears—as indeed they did many, many times over the +tragic scenes of the German Terror. +</p> +<p> +Another request. Could Vivie see or communicate with Gräfin von +Stachelberg?—with Pasteur Walcker? +</p> +<p> +Here the police agent intervened—"Nothing of the kind! You're not +going to hold a salon here. Far too many concessions already. Much +more fuss and trouble, and I shall take you back to the Kommandantur +and report. Write your letter to the All Highest, who may deign to +receive it. As to Pastor Walcker, he shall come to-morrow, Sunday, +to prepare the Englishman for his death, on Monday—" +</p> +<p> +Vivie wrote her letter—probably in very incoherent language. It was +handed to the German police agent. He smiled sardonically as he took +it in his horny hand with its dirty broken nails. The Governor +General disliked these appeals to the All Highest. Indeed, in most +cases executions that were intended to take place were only +announced at the same time as the condemnation, to obviate the worry +of these appeals. Besides, he knew the Emperor had left that morning +for Charleville, after having bestowed several decorations on the +police officials who told him they had just frustrated an English +plot for his assassination. +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +Vivie and Bertie were at length alone, for the police agent was +bored, couldn't understand their talk, and gave himself an afternoon +off. In this prison of Saint-Gilles, the cells were in many ways +superior to those of English prisons. They were well lit through a +long window, not so high up but that by standing on a chair you +could look out on the prison garden. Through this window the rays of +the sun could penetrate into and light up the cell. There was no +unpleasant smell—one of the horrors of Holloway. The floor was a +polished parquet. The bed was comfortable. There was a table, even a +book-shelf. The toilet arrangements were in no way repulsive or +obvious. +</p> +<p> +Vivie insisted on Bertie lying down on the bed; she would sit on the +chair by his side. He must be so exhausted.... +</p> +<p> +"And what about <i>you</i>, miss? I'll lay you ain't slept these last +three nights. <i>What</i> a mess I've made of the 'ole thing!" +</p> +<p> +"Bertie! <i>Why</i> did you do this? <i>Why</i> did you risk your life to come +here; <i>oh why, oh why</i>?" wailed Vivie. +</p> +<p> +"Because I loved you, because I've always loved you, better'n any +one else on earth—since I was a boy of fourteen and you spoke so +kind to me and encouraged me to get on and improve myself; and giv' +me books, and encouraged me about me cricket. I suppose I'm going to +die, so I ain't got any shame about tellin' you all this. Though if +I thought I was goin' to live, I'd cut my tongue out sooner'n offend +you—Oh,"—he gave a kind of groan—"When the news come about Mrs. +Warren bein' dead an' you p'raps without money and at the mercy of +these Germans ... well!—all I wonder at is I didn't steal an +airyplane, and come in that. I tell you I had to exercise great +self-control to stay week after week fiddling with the food +distribution and pretendin' to be an American.... +</p> +<p> +"Well! There it is! We must all die sooner or later. It's a wonder I +ain't dead already. I've bin in some tight places since I come out +for the Y.M.C.A.... +</p> +<p> +"And talkin' about the Y.M.C.A., miss, I do <i>beg</i> of you, if you get +out of this—an' I'm sure you will—they'll never kill <i>you</i>," said +Bertie adoringly, looking up at the grave, beautiful face that bent +over him—"I do <i>beg</i> of you to make matters right with the +Y.M.C.A. I ain't taken away one penny of their money—I served 'em +faithfully up to the last day before I saw my chance of hooking it +across the lines—They must think me dead—and so must poor Nance, +my wife. For I haven't dared to write to any one since I've bin in +Belgium. But I did send her a line 'fore I started, sayin', 'Don't +be surprised if you get no letter from me for some time. I'll turn +up all right, you bet your boots—' +</p> +<p> +"That may 'ave kept 'er 'opin'. An' soon you'll be able to let 'er +know. Who can say? <i>I</i> dunno! But Peace, you'd think, must come +soon—Seems like our poor old world is comin' to an end, don't it? +<i>What</i> times we've 'ad—if you don't mind me puttin' it like that! I +remember when I had to be awful careful always to say 'Sir' to you, +and 'Mr. David' or 'Mr. Williams'"—and a roguish look, a gleam of +merriment came into Bertie's eyes, and he laughed a laugh that was +half sob. "If you was to write your life, no one 'ud believe it, +miss. It licks any novel I ever read—and I've read a tidy few, +looking after the Y.M.C.A. libraries.... +</p> +<p> +"My! But you was wonderful as a pleader in the courts! I used +sometimes to reg'lar cry when I heard you takin' up the case of some +poor girl as 'ad bin deserted by 'er feller, and killed 'er baby. +'Tricks of the trade,' says some other barrister's clerk, sneerin' +because you wasn't 'is boss. An' then I'd punch 'is 'ead.... An' I +don't reckon myself a soft-'earted feller as a rule.... Reklect that +Shillito Case—?" +</p> +<p> +"<i>Don't</i>, Bertie! <i>Don't</i> say such things in praise of me. I'm not +<i>worth</i> such love. I'm just an arrogant, vain, quarrelsome woman.... +Look how many people I've deceived, what little good I've really +done in the world—" +</p> +<p> +"Rub—bish! You done good wherever you went ... to my pore +mother—wonder, by the bye, what <i>she</i> thinks and 'ow <i>she's</i> +gettin' on? Sons are awful ungrateful and forgettin'. What with +you—and Nance—and the little 'uns, I ain't scarcely give a thought +to poor mother. But you'll let her know, won't you, miss?... +</p> +<p> +"Think 'ow good you was to your old father down in Wales, 'im as you +called your father—an' 'oo's to say 'e wasn't? You never know.... +Miss Warren! what a pity it is you never married. There's lots was +sweet on you, I'll bet. Yet I remember I used to 'ate the idea of +your doin' so, and was glad you dressed up as a man, an' took 'em +all in.... I may tell you all, miss, now I'm goin' to die, day after +to-morrow. My poor Nance! She see there was some one that always +occupied my mind, and she used to get jealous-like, at times. But +never did I let on it was you. Why I wouldn't even 'av said it to +myself—I respected you more than—than—" +</p> +<p> +And Bertie, at a loss for a parallel, ceased speaking for a time, +and gulped down the sobs that were mastering him. +</p> +<p> +Then, after this pause—"I haven't a word to say against Nance. No +one could 'a bin a better wife. I know, miss, if you get away from +here you'll look after her and my kids? I ain't bin much of a father +to 'em lately. P'raps this is a punishment for neglecting my home +duties—As they used to say to you when you was Suffragin'." He gave +a bitter laugh—"Two such <i>nice</i> kids.... I ain't seen 'em since +last February twelve-month ... more'n a year ago ... I got a bit of +leave then.... There's little Vivie—the one we called after you.... +She's growin' up so pretty ... and Bert! 'E'll be a bigger and a +better man than me, some day. 'E's started in life with better +chances. I 'ope 'e'll be a cricketer. There's no game comes up to +cricket, in my opinion..." +</p> +<p> +At this juncture, the Belgian Directeur of the jail opened the door +and asked Vivie to follow him, telling Bertie she would return in +the afternoon. At the same time, a warder escorting two good conduct +prisoners who did the food distribution proceeded to place quite an +appetizing meal in Bertie's cell. "Dear miss," said the Directeur in +French, "You are so wise, I know, you will do what I wish...?" +</p> +<p> +(Vivie bowed.) +</p> +<p> +"I shall not send you back to the Kommandantur. I will take that on +myself. But I must regard you while here as my prisoner"—he smiled +sadly—"Come with me. I will give you a nice cell where you shall +eat and sleep, and—yes—and my wife shall come and see you..." +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +In the evening of that day, Vivie was led back to Bertie's cell. +There she found kind Pasteur Walcker. In some way he had heard of +Bertie's condemnation—perhaps seen it posted up on a Red +Placard—and in his quiet assumption that whatever he did was right, +had not waited for an official summons but had presented himself at +the prison of Saint-Gilles and asked to see the Directeur. He +constituted himself Bertie's spiritual director from that time +onwards.... He spoke very little English but he was there more to +sympathize than to preach— +</p> +<p> +"Ce n'est pas, chère Mamselle que je suis venu le troubler sur les +questions de réligion. J'ai voulu le rassurer—et vous aussi—que +j'ai déjà mis en train tous les precédés possibles, et que je +connais, pour obtenir sa grace.... But," he went on, "I have spoken +to the prison doctor and begged him meantime to give the poor young +man an injection or a dose of something to make him sleep a little +while..." +</p> +<p> +Then he withdrew. +</p> +<p> +The daylight turned pink and faded to grey whilst Vivie sat by the +bed holding the left hand of the sleeping man. Exhausted with +emotion, she dropped off to sleep herself, slid off the chair on to +the parquet, laid her head on the angle of his pillow and slept +likewise.... +</p> +<p> +The electric light suddenly shone out from a globe in the angle of +the wall which served two cells. She awoke; Bertie awoke. He was +still happy in some opiate dream and his eyes in his haggard face +looked at her with a sleepy, happy affection. Loth to awaken him to +reality she kissed him on the cheek and withdrew from the cell—for +the Directeur, out of delicacy, had withdrawn and left the door +ajar. She rejoined him in the corridor and he led her to her own +quarters for the night; where, worn out with sorrow and fatigue, she +undressed and slept dreamlessly. +</p> +<p> +But the hour of the awakening on that wintry Sunday morning! It was +snowing intermittently and the sky, seen from the high window, was +lead-coloured. Owing to the scarcity of fuel, the cell was unwarmed. +She dressed hurriedly, feeling still untidy and dishevelled when she +had finished. Her breakfast, and with it a little packet of white +powder from the prison doctor, to be taken with the breakfast. She +swallowed it. If it were poison sent by the German Government, what +matter? But it was in reality some drug which took the edge off +sorrow. +</p> +<p> +Bertie had evidently been given a similar dose. They spent the +morning and the afternoon of that Sunday together, almost happily. +With intervals of dreamy silence, they talked of old times. Neither +would have been surprised had the cell walls dissolved as in a +transformation scene and they had been able to step out into the +Fountain Court of the Temple or into the cheerful traffic of +Chancery Lane. +</p> +<p> +When however she returned to his cell after her evening meal, his +mood had changed; the effect of the drug had passed. He had moods of +despair and wild crying. No response had come, no answer to Vivie's +appeal, no result from Monsieur Walcker's activities. Bertie +reproached himself for cowardice ... then the doctor came in. "An +injection in the arm? So! He will sleep now till morning. Espérons +toujours! Et vous, ma pauvre Mademoiselle. Vous êtes excédée. +Permettez que je vous fasse la meme piqure?" +</p> +<p> +But she thanked him and said she wanted all her wits about her, +though she promised "se maîtriser"—to keep calm. +</p> +<p> +What a night! Her ears had a sense of hearing that was +preternaturally acute. The most distant step in the corridors was +audible. Was it a reprieve? One such sound multiplied itself into +the footsteps of two men walking, coming ever nearer—nearer—nearer +till they stopped outside her cell door. With a clank it was opened. +She sprang up. Fortunately she had not undressed. "You've brought a +reprieve?" she gasped. But the Directeur and Monsieur Walcker only +stood with downcast faces. "It will soon be morning," the Directeur +said. "There is no hope of a reprieve. He is to be executed at seven +at the Tir National. All we have secured for you is permission to +accompany him to the end. But if you think <i>that</i> too painful, too +great a strain, I would suggest that you—" +</p> +<p> +"Nothing could overstrain me," said Vivie, "or rather I don't care +if anything kills me. I will go with him and stay with him, till the +very last moment, stay with him till he is buried if you permit!" +</p> +<p> +She made some hasty toilette, more because she wanted to look a fit +companion for him, and not a wretched derelict. They summoned her, +proffering a cup of acorn coffee, which she waved aside. The bitter +cold air of the snowy April morning braced her. She entered the +shuttered, armoured prison taxi in which Bertie and a soldier were +placed already. Bertie had his arms tied, but not too painfully. He +was shivering with the cold, but as he said, "<i>Not</i> afraid, miss. +It'll come out allright, some'ow. That Mr. Walcker, 'e done me a lot +of good. At any rate I'll show how an Englishman can die. 'Sides 'e +says reprieves sometimes comes at the last moment. They takes a +pleasure in tantalizin' you. And the doctor put somethin' in me cup +of coffee, sort of keeps me spirits up." +</p> +<p> +But for Vivie, that drive was an unforgettable agony. They went +through suburbs where the roads had been unrepaired or torn up by +shrapnel. The snow lay in places so thickly that it nearly stopped +the motor. Still, it came to an end at last. The door on one side +was wrenched open; she was pulled out rather unceremoniously; then, +the pinioned Bertie, who was handed over to a guard; and the soldier +escort after him, who took his place promptly by his side. Vivie had +just time to note the ugly red-brick exterior of the main +building of the Tir National. It reminded her vaguely of some +hastily-constructed Exhibition at Earl's Court or Olympia. Then she +was pushed inside a swinging door, into a freezing corridor; where +the Prison Directeur and Monsieur Walcker were standing—irresolute, +weeping.... +</p> +<p> +"Where is Bertie?" she asked. +</p> +<p> +"He is being prepared for the shooting party," they answered. "It +will soon be over ... dear dear lady ... try to be calm—" +</p> +<p> +"I will be as calm as you like," she said, "I will behave with the +utmost correctitude or whatever you call it, if you—if they—the +soldiers—the officer—will let me see him—as you promised—up to +the last, the very last. But by God—if there <i>is</i> a God—if you or +they prevent me, I'll—" +</p> +<p> +Inexplicably, sheer mind-force prevailed, without the need for +formulating the threat the poor grief-maddened woman might have +uttered—she moved unresisted to a swing door which opened on to a +kind of verandah. Here was drawn up the firing party, and in front +of them, fifteen feet away on snow-sodden, trampled grass, stood +Bertie. He caught sight of Vivie passing in, behind the firing +party, and standing beyond them at the verandah rail. He +straightened himself; ducked his head aside from the handkerchief +with which they were going to bandage his eyes, and shouted "Take +away your blasted handkerchief! <i>I</i> ain't afraid o' the guns. If +you'll let me look at HER, I'll stand as quiet as quiet." +</p> +<p> +The officer in command of the firing party shrugged his shoulders. +The soldier escort desisted from his attempts to blindfold the +Englishman and stood aside, out of range. Bertie fixed his glowing +eyes on the woman he had loved from his youth up, the rifles rang +out with a reverberating bellow, and he fell out of her sight, +screened by the soldiers, a crumpled body over which they threw a +sheet. +</p> +<p> +What happened then to Vivie? I suppose you expect the time-worn +trick of the weary novelist, anxious to put his pen down and go to +his tea: "Then she seemed swallowed up in a cloud of blackness and +knew no more"—till it was convenient to the narrator to begin a +fresh chapter. But with me it must be the relentless truth and +nothing but the truth, in all its aspects. Vivie was deafened, +nearly stunned by the frightful noise of the volley in a confined +space. Next, she was being unceremoniously pushed out of the +verandah, into the corridor, and so out into the snow-covered space +in front of the brick building; whilst the officer was examining the +dead body of the fallen man, ready to give the <i>coup-de-grâce</i>, if +he were not dead. But he was. Vivie was next conscious that she had +the most dreadful, blinding headache she had ever known, and with it +felt an irresistible nausea. The prison Directeur was taking her +hand and saying: "Mademoiselle: it is my duty to inform you that you +are no longer under arrest. You are free to return to your lodging." +Minna von Stachelberg had come from somewhere and was taking her +right arm, to lead her Brussels-ward; and Pasteur Walcker was +ranging himself alongside to be her escort. Unable to reply to any +of them, she strode forward by herself to where under the snow lay +an ill-kept grass plot, and there was violently sick. The +anæsthetics and soporifics of the last two days were having their +usual aftermath. After that came on a shuddering faintness and a +rigor of shivers, under which her teeth clacked. Some doctor came +forward with a little brandy. She put the glass to her lips, then +pushed it aside, took Pasteur Walcker's proffered arm, and walked +towards the tram terminus. +</p> +<p> +Then they were in the tram, going towards the heart of Brussels. How +commonplace! Fat frowsy market women got in—or got out—with their +baskets; clerks entered with portfolios—don't they call them +"serviettes"?—under their arms; German policemen, Belgian +gendarmes, German soldiers, a priest with his breviary came and went +as though this Monday morning were like any other. Vivie walked +quite firmly and staidly from the tram halt to the Walckers' house +in the Rue Haute. There she was met by Madame Walcker, who at a sign +from her husband took her upstairs, silently undressed her and put +her to bed with a hot water bottle and a cup of some hot drink which +tasted a little of coffee. +</p> +<p> +After that Vivie passed three days of great sickness and nausea, a +furred tongue, and positively no appetite. Finally she arose a week +after the execution and looked at herself in the mirror. She was +terribly haggard, she looked at least fifty-five—"They must have +taken me for his mother or his aunt; never for his sweetheart," she +commented bitterly to herself. And her brown-gold hair was now +distinctly a cinder grey. +</p> +<p> +The next day she went back to work at the hospital. +</p> +<p> +To Minna, she said: "I can <i>never, never, never</i> forget your +kindness and sympathy. 'Sister' seems an insufficient name to call +you by. Whatever happens, unless you cast me off, we shall be +friends.... I dare say I even owe my life to you, if it is worth +anything. But it is. I want to live—now—I want to live to be +revenged. I want to live to help Bertie's"—her voice still shook +over the name—"Bertie's wife and children. I expect but for you I +should have been tried already in the Senate for complicity with ... +Bertie ... and found guilty and shot..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Minna</i>: "I won't go so far as to say you are right. But I certainly +<i>was</i> alarmed about you, when you were arrested. Of course I knew +nothing—<i>nothing</i>—about that poor young man till just before his +execution when Pastor Walcker came to me. Even then I could do +nothing, and I understood so badly what had happened. But about you: +I said to myself, if I do not do <i>something</i>, you can perhaps be +sentenced to imprisonment ... and I <i>did</i> bestir myself, you can +bet!" (Minna liked to show she knew a slangy phrase or two.) "So I +telegraphed to the Emperor, I besieged von Bissing at the Ministère +des Sciences et des Arts; wrote to him, telegraphed to him, +telephoned to him, sat in his anterooms, neglected my hospital work +entirely from Friday to Monday— +</p> +<p> +"I expect as a matter of fact they found nothing in that poor +young's man's papers to implicate you. They just wanted—the +brutes—to give you a good fright ... and I dare say ... such is the +military mind—even wished you to see him shot. +</p> +<p> +"By the bye, I suppose you have heard that von Bissing is very ill? +Dying, perhaps—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "I <i>hope</i> so. I am <i>so</i> glad. I hope it's a painful +illness and that he'll die and find there really <i>is</i> a Hell, and an +uncommonly hot one!" +</p> +<div style="height: 1em;"><br /></div> +<p> +It must not be supposed from the frequent quotations from Countess +von Stachelberg's condemnations of German cruelties that she was an +unpatriotic woman, repudiating, apostatizing from her own country. +On the contrary: she held—mistakenly or not—that Germany had been +the victim of secret diplomacy, had been encircled by a ring fence +of enemies, refused the economic guarantees she required, and the +colonial expansion she desired. Minna disliked the Slavs, did not +believe in them, save as musicians, singers, painters, dancers, +and actors. She believed Germany had a great civilizing, +culture-spreading mission in South-east Europe; and that the germs +of this war lay in the policy of Chamberlain, the protectionism of +the United States, the revengeful spirit and colonial selfishness of +France. +</p> +<p> +But she shuddered over the German cruelties in Belgium and France. +The horrors of War were a revelation to her and she was henceforth a +Pacifist before all things. "<i>Your</i> old statesmen and <i>our</i> old or +middle-aged generals, my dear, are alike to blame. But you and I +know where the <i>real</i> mischief lies. We are mis-ruled by an +All-Man Government. <i>I</i>, certainly, don't want the other extreme, +an All-Woman Government. What we want, and must have, is a +Man-and-Woman—a Married—Government. <i>Then</i> we shall settle our +differences without going to war." +</p> +<p> +Vivie agreed with her, cordially. +</p> +<p> +She—Vivie—I really ought to begin calling her "Vivien": she is +forty-one by now—in resuming her duties at the Hôpital de St. +Pierre found no repugnance in tending wounded German soldiers—the +officers she did shrink from—She realized that the soldiers were +but the slaves of the officer class, of Kaiserdom. Her reward for +this degree of Christianity was to have a batch of wounded English +boys or men to look after. She saw again Bertie Adams in many of +them, especially in the sergeants and corporals. They, in turn, +thought her a very handsome, stately lady, but rather maudlin at +times. "So easy to set 'er off a-cryin' as though 'er 'eart would +break, poor thing.... And I says 'why ma'am, the pain's <i>nuthin</i>', +nuthin' to what it use ter be.' 'Spec' she lost some son in the war. +Wonder 'ow she came to be 'ere? Ain't the Germans afraid of 'er!"... +</p> +<p> +They were. The mental agony she had been through had etherialized +her face, added to its look of age and gravity, but imparted +likewise a sort of "awfulness." She exhaled an aura of righteous +authority. She had been through the furnace, and foolishness and +petulance had been burnt out of her ... though, thank goodness, she +retained some sense of humour. She had probably never been so +handsome from the painter's point of view, though one could not +imagine a young man falling in love with her now. +</p> +<p> +Her personality was first definitely noted by the Bruxellois the day +that von Bissing's funeral cortège passed through the streets of +Brussels on its way to Germany. Vivien Warren was sufficiently +restored to health then to stand on the steps of some monument and +cry "Vive la Belgique! À bas les tyrans!" The policemen and the +spies looked another way and affected deafness. They had orders not +to arrest her unless she actually resorted to firearms or other +lethal weapons. +</p> +<p> +It was said that her appeal for Bertie Adams did reach the Emperor, +two days too late; that he pished and pshawed over von Bissing's +cruel precipitancy. "Englishmen," he muttered to his entourage, +"don't assassinate. The Irish do. But <i>how</i> I'm going to make peace +with England, <i>I</i> don't know...!" +</p> +<p> +(His Hell on Earth must have been that few people admired the +English character more than he did, and yet, unprovoked, he had +blundered into war with England.) +</p> +<p> +However, though it was too late to save "this lunatic Adams," he +gave orders that Vivie was to be let alone. He even, through Gräfin +von Stachelberg, transmitted to her his regrets that she and her +mother had been treated so cavalierly at the Hotel Impérial. It was +not through any orders of his. +</p> +<p> +So: Vivie became quite a power in Brussels during that last anxious +year and a half of waiting, between May, 1917, and November, 1918. +German soldiers, still limping from their wounds, saluted her in the +street, remembering her kindness in hospital, and the letters she +unweariedly wrote at their dictation to their wives and +families—for she had become quite a scholar in German. The scanty +remains of the British Colony and the great ladies among the +patriotic Belgians now realized how false were the stories that had +circulated about her in the first year of the War; and extended to +her their friendship. And the Spanish Minister who had taken the +place of the American as protector of British subjects, invited her +to all the fêtes he gave for Belgian charities and Red Cross funds. +Through his Legation she endeavoured to send information to the +Y.M.C.A. and to Bertie's widow that Albert Adams of the Y.M.C.A. +"had died in Brussels from the consequences of the War." +</p> +<p> +I dare say in the autumn of 1917, if Vivien Warren had applied +through the Spanish Minister for a passport to leave Belgium for +some neutral country, it would have been accorded to her: the German +authorities would have been thankful to see her no more. She +reminded them of one of the cruellest acts of their administration. +But she preferred to stay for the historical revenge of seeing the +Germans driven out of Belgium, and Belgian independence restored. +And she could not go lest Bertie's grave should be forgotten. In +common with Edith Cavell, Gabrielle Petit, Philippe Bauck, and the +other forty or fifty victims of von Bissing's "Terror," he had been +buried in the grassy slopes of the amphitheatre of the Rifle range, +near where he had been executed. Every Sunday, wet or fine, Vivien +went there with fresh flowers. She had marked the actual grave with +a small wooden cross bearing his name, till the time should come +when she could have his remains transferred to English soil. +</p> +<p> +One day, as she was leaving the hospital in the autumn of 1917, a +shabby man pushed into her hand a soiled, way-worn copy of the +<i>Times</i>, a fortnight old. "Three francs," he whispered. She paid +him. It was no uncommon thing for her or one of her English or +Belgian acquaintances to buy the <i>Times</i> or some other English daily +at a price ranging from one franc to ten, and then pass it round the +friendly circle of subscribers who apportioned the cost. On this +occasion she opened her <i>Times</i> in the tram, going home, and glanced +at its columns. In any one but "Mees Varennes" in these days of +1917, 1918, this would have been a punishable offence; but in her +case no spy or policeman noted the infringement of regulations about +the enemy press. On one of the pages she read the account of a bad +air-raid on Portland Place, and a reference—with a short obituary +notice elsewhere—to the death of one of the victims of the German +bombs. This was "Linda, Lady Rossiter, the dearly loved wife of Sir +Michael Rossiter, whose discoveries in the way of bone grafting and +other forms of curative surgery had been among the outstanding +achievements in etc., etc." +</p> +<p> +"Dear me!" said Vivien to herself, as the tram coursed on beyond her +usual stopping place and the conductor obstinately looked the other +way, "I'm glad she lived to be <i>Lady</i> Rossiter. It must have given +her such pleasure. Poor thing! And to think the knowledge that he's +a widower hardly stirs my pulses one extra beat. And how I <i>loved</i> +that man, seven years, six years, five years ago! Hullo! Where am I? +Miles from the Rue Haute! Conducteur! Arrêtez, s'il vous plaît." +</p> +<a name="2HCH0020"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XX +</h2> +<h3> + AFTER THE ARMISTICE +</h3> +<p> +The Bruxellois felt very disheartened in the closing months of 1917. +The Russian revolution had brought about the collapse of Russia as +an enemy of Germany; and the Germans were enabled to transport most +of their troops on the Russian frontier to the west and to the +Italian frontier. Italy had lost half Venetia and enormous +quantities of guns in the breach of her defences at Caporetto. It +seemed indeed at any moment, when the ice and snow of that dreadful +winter of 1917-18 melted, as though Italy would share the fate of +Rumania. Though the British army had had a grand success with their +Tanks, they had, ere 1917 ended, lost nearly all the ground gained +round Cambrai. Besides, the submarine menace was imperilling the +British food supplies and connections with America. As to the United +States: was their intervention going to be more than money loans and +supplies of material? Would they really supply the fighting men, the +one thing at this crisis necessary to defeat Germany? +</p> +<p> +Belgium had been divided administratively into two distinct +portions, north and south of the Meuse. North of the Meuse she was +to be a Dutch-speaking country either part of Germany eventually, or +given to Holland to compensate her for her very benevolent +neutrality towards Germany during the War. A handful of Flemish +adventurers appeared at Brussels to form the Council of Flanders, +and sickened the Bruxellois by their lavish praise of the German +administration and servile concurrence with all German measures. +</p> +<p> +The events of the spring of 1918 accentuated the despair in the +Belgian capital. When the Germans broke through the defences of the +new lines which ran through Picardy and Champagne, reached the +vicinity of Amiens, retook Soissons, and recrossed the Marne, it +seemed as though Belgian independence had been lost; the utmost she +could hope for would be the self-government of a German province. +</p> +<p> +But Vivie was not among the pessimists. She discerned a smouldering +discontent among the German soldiers, even when Germany seemed near +to a sweeping victory over France and Britain. +</p> +<p> +The brutality of the soldiers, their deliberate, nasty dirtiness +during the first two years of the War seemed due rather to their +officers' orders than to an anti-human disposition of their own. +Many of the soldiers in Belgium, in Brussels, turned round—so to +speak—and conceived a horror of what they had done, of what they +had been told to do. Men who on the instigation of their +officers—and these last, especially the Prussians, seemed fiends +incarnate—had offered violence to young Belgian women, ended by +offering to marry them, even showed themselves kind husbands, only +too willing to become domesticated, groaning at having to leave +their temporary homes and return to the terrible fighting on the +Yser or in France. +</p> +<p> +There were, for example, the soldiers stationed at the Villa +Beau-séjour and at the Oudekens' farm. Vivie had a growing desire to +find out what had happened to her mother's property. One day, late +in February, 1918, when there was a premature breath and feeling of +Spring in the air, she called on her friend—as he had become—the +Directeur of the Prison of Saint-Gilles, and asked him—since she +herself could not deign to ask any favour or concession of the +German authorities—to obtain for her a permit to proceed to +Tervueren, the railway service between Brussels and that place +having been reopened. She walked over—with what reminiscences the +roads and paths were filled—to the Villa, and showing her pass was +received, not uncivilly, by the sergeant-major in charge. +Fortunately the officers had all gone, voting it very dull, with +Brussels so near and yet so far. After their departure the +sergeant-major and his reduced guard of men had begun to make the +place more homelike. The usual German thrift had shown itself. They +had reassembled the remains of Mrs. Warren's herd of cows. These had +calves and were giving milk. There were once more the beginnings of +a poultry yard. The rooms had been cleaned at any rate of their +unspeakable filth, though the dilapidations and the ruined furniture +made tears of vexation stand in Vivie's eyes. However she kept her +temper and told the sergeant that it was <i>her</i> property now; that +she intended to reclaim it at the end of the War, and that if he saw +to it that the place was handed back to her with no further damage, +she would take care that he was duly rewarded; and as an instalment +she gave him a good tip. He replied with a laugh and a shrug "That +may well come about." ("Das könnte wohl geschehen.") +</p> +<p> +He had already heard of the Engländerin whom the Kommandantur was +afraid to touch, and opened his heart to her; even offering to +prepare her a little meal in her own <i>salle à manger</i>. With what +strange sensations she sat down to it. The sergeant as he brought in +the <i>œufs au plat</i> said the soldiers were already sick of the +War. Most wanted to go back to Germany, but a few were so much in +love with Belgium that they hoped they might be allowed to settle +down there; especially those who spoke Platt-deutsch, to whom +Flemish came so easy. +</p> +<p> +From Villa Beau-séjour, Vivien Warren passed on to the Oudekens' +farm, wondering what she would see—Some fresh horror? But on the +contrary, Mme. Oudekens looked years younger; indeed when Vivien +first stood outside the house door, she had heard really hearty +laughter coming from the orchard where the farmer's widow was +pinning up clothes to dry. Yet it was here that the woman's husband +had been shot and buried, as the result of a field-court's sentence. +</p> +<p> +But when she answered Vivien's questions, after plying her with +innumerable enquiries, she admitted with a blush that Heinrich, the +German sergeant, with whom she had first cohabited by constraint, +had recently married her at the Mairie, though the Curé had refused +to perform the religious service. Heinrich was now invariably kind +and worked hard on the farm. He hoped by diligently supplying the +officers' messes in Brussels with poultry and vegetables that he and +his assistants—two corporals—might be overlooked and not sent back +into the fighting ranks. As to her daughters, after a few months of +promiscuity—a terrible time that Mme. Oudekens wanted to +forget—they had been assigned to the two corporals as their +exclusive property. They were both of them about to become mothers, +and if no one interfered, as soon as this accursed War was over +their men would marry them. "But," said Vivie, "suppose your husband +and these corporals are married already, in Germany?" "Qu'est-ce-que +ça fait?" said Mme. Oudekens. "C'est si loin." By making these +little concessions she had already saved her youngest son from +deportation to Germany. +</p> +<p> +The enormous demands for food in Brussels, which in 1918 had a +floating population of over a million and where the Germans were +turning large dogs into pemmican, had tripled the value of all +productive farms so near the capital as those round Tervueren, +especially now the railway service was reopened. Many of the +peasants were making huge fortunes in complicity with some German +soldier-partner. +</p> +<p> +In Brussels itself, soldiers often sided with the people against the +odious "polizei," the intolerable German spies and police agents. +Conflicts would sometimes occur in the trams and the streets when +the German police endeavoured to arrest citizens for reading the +<i>Times</i> or <i>La Libre Belgique</i>, or for saying disrespectful things +about the Emperor. +</p> +<p> +The tremendous rush of the German offensive onward to the Marne, +Somme, and Ypres salient in March-June, 1918, was received by the +shifting garrison of Brussels with little enthusiasm. Would it not +tend to prolong the War? The German advance into France was +spectacular, but it was paid for by an appalling death-roll. The +hospitals at Brussels were filled to overflowing with wounded and +dying men. The Austrians who were brought from the Italian front to +replenish the depleted battalions, quarrelled openly with the +Prussians, and in some cases had to be surrounded in a barrack +square and shot down. +</p> +<p> +The first real check to the German Army in its second march on +Paris—that which followed its crossing of the Marne near +Dormans—was prophetically greeted by the Bruxellois as the turning +of the tide. The Emperor had gone thither from the Hotel Impérial in +order to witness and follow the culminating march on Paris. But Foch +now struck with his reserves, and the head of the tortoise was +nipped off. The driving back of the Germans over the Marne coincided +with the Belgian National Fête of July 21. Not since 1914 had this +fête been openly observed. But on this day in 1918, the German +police made no protest when a huge crowd celebrated the fête day in +every church and every street. Vivien herself, smiling and laughing +as she had not done since Bertie's death, attended the service in +Sainte-Gudule and joined in singing <i>La Brabançonne</i> in place of +<i>Te Deum, laudamus</i>. In the streets and houses of Brussels every +piano, every gramophone was enrolled to play the <i>Marseillaise</i>, +<i>Vers l'Avenir</i>, and <i>La Brabançonne</i>, the Belgian national anthem +(uninspiring words and dreary tune). From this date onwards—July +21—the German <i>débacle</i> proceeded, with scarcely one day's +intermission, with never a German regain of lost ground. +</p> +<p> +When the Americans had retaken St. Mihiel on September 14, then did +Belgians boldly predict that their King would be back in Brussels by +Christmas. But their prophecies were outstripped by events. Already, +in the beginning of October, the accredited German Press in Belgium +was adjuring the Belgians not to be impatient, but to let them +evacuate Belgium quietly. At the end of October, Minna von +Stachelberg told Vivien that she and the other units of the German +Red Cross had received instructions to leave and hand over their +charges to the Belgian doctors and nurses. The two women took an +affectionate farewell of each other, vowing they would meet +again—somewhere—when the War was over. British wounded now began +to cease coming into Brussels, so Vivie was free to attend to her +own affairs. +</p> +<p> +Enormous quantities of German plunder were streaming out of Belgium +by train, by motor, in military lorries, in carts and waggons. +Nearly all this belonged to the officers, and the already-rebellious +soldiers broke out in protestations. "Why should they who had done +all the fighting have none of the loot?" So they won over the +Belgian engine-drivers—delighted to see this quarrel between the +hyenas—and held up the trains in the suburban stations north of +Brussels. There were pitched battles which ended always in the +soldiers' victory. +</p> +<p> +The soldiers then would hold auctions and markets of the plunder +captured in the trains and lorries. They were in a hurry to get a +little money to take back with them to Germany. Vivie, who had laid +her plans now as to what to do after the German evacuation of +Brussels, attended these auctions. She was nearly always civilly +treated, because so many German soldiers had known her as a friend +in hospital and told other soldiers. At one such sale she bought a +serviceable motor-car for 750 francs; at another drums of petrol. +</p> +<p> +She had provided herself with funds by going to her mother's bank +and reopening the question of the deposited jewels and plate. Now +that the victory of the Allies seemed certain, the bank manager was +more inclined to make things easy for her. He had the jewels and +plate valued—roughly—at £3,000; and although he would not +surrender them till the will could be proved and she could show +letters of administration, he consented on behalf of the bank to +make her a loan of 30,000 francs. +</p> +<p> +On November 10th, a German soldier who followed Vivien about with +humble fidelity since she had cured him of a bad whitlow—and also +because, as he said, it was a joy to speak English once more—for he +had been a waiter at the Savoy Hotel—came to her in the Boulevard +d'Anspach and said "The Red flag, lady, he fly from Kommandantur. +With us I think it is Kaput." This was what Vivien had been waiting +for. Asking the man to follow her, she first stopped outside a shop +of military equipment, and after a brief inspection of its goods +entered and purchased a short, not too flexible riding-whip, with a +heavy handle. Then as the trams were densely crowded, she walked at +a rapid pace—glancing round ever and again to see that her German +soldier was following—up the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique and +along the Rue Royale until she came to the Hotel Impérial. Here she +halted for a minute to have the soldier close behind her; then gave +the revolving door a turn and found herself and him in the marble +hall once built for Mrs. Warren's florid taste. "Call the Manager," +she said—trying not to pant—to two Belgian servants who came up, +a porter and a lift man. The Manager—he who had ejected her and her +mother in 1915—was fortunately a little while in appearing. He was +really packing up with energy so as to depart with all the plunder +he could transport before the way of escape was closed. This little +delay enabled Vivien to get her breath and resume an impressive +calm. +</p> +<p> +"Well: what you want?" the Manager said insolently, recollecting +her. +</p> +<p> +"This first," she said, seizing him suddenly by his coat collar. +</p> +<p> +"I want—to—give—you—the—soundest—thrashing you have ever +had..." +</p> +<p> +And before he could offer any effective resistance she had lashed +him well with the riding <i>cravache</i> about the shoulders, hands, back +and face. He wrenched himself free and crouched ready for a counter +attack. But the Belgian servants intervened and tripped him up; and +the German soldier—the ex-waiter from the Savoy—said that Madame +was by nature so kind that there must be some good reason for this +chastisement. +</p> +<p> +"There is," she replied, now she had got her breath and was inwardly +feeling ashamed at her resort to such violent methods. +</p> +<p> +"Three years ago, this creature turned my mother and myself out of +this hotel with such violence that my mother died of it a few +minutes afterwards. He stole our money and much of our property. I +have inherited from my mother, to whom this hotel once belonged, a +right over certain rooms which she used to occupy. I resume that +right from to-day. I shall go to them now. As to this wretch, throw +him out on to the pavement. He can afterwards send for his luggage, +and what really is his he shall have." +</p> +<p> +Her orders were executed. +</p> +<p> +She then sent a message to Mme. Walcker and to the kind tea-shop +woman, Mme. Trouessart, close by, explaining what she had done and +why. "I shall take control of this hotel in the name of the Belgian +Company that owns it, a Company in which, through my mother, I +possess shares. I shall stay here till responsible persons take it +over and I shall resume possession of the <i>appartement</i> that +belonged to my mother." Meantime, would Madame Trouessart engage a +few stout wenches to eke out the scanty hotel staff, most of which +being German had already commenced its flight back to the fatherland +with all the plunder it could carry off. The soldier-ex-hotel-waiter +was provisionally engaged to remain, as long as the Belgian +Government allowed him, and three stalwart British soldiers, until +the day before prisoners-of-war, were enlisted in her service and +armed with revolvers to repel any ordinary act of brigandage. +</p> +<p> +By the end of November she had the Hotel Édouard-Sept—with the +old name restored—running smoothly and ready for the new +guests—British, French officers and civilians who would follow +the King of the Belgians on his return to his capital. The +re-established Belgian authorities soon put her into possession of +the Villa Beau-séjour. The German sergeant-major here had kept faith +with her, and in return for handing over everything intact, +including the herd of cows, received a <i>douceur</i> which amply +rewarded him for this belated honesty before he, too, set his face +towards Germany with the rest of the evacuating army. The motor-car +she had bought enabled her to fetch supplies of food from farm to +hotel and to perform many little services to Belgians who were +returning to their old homes. Madame Trouessart, not as yet having +any stock of tea with which to reopen her tea-shop to the first +incoming of curious tourists, agreed to live with Miss Warren at the +hotel and act as her deputy, if affairs took her away from Brussels. +</p> +<p> +It was at the Hotel Édouard-Sept, the place where she had been +born, that Rossiter met her when he arrived in Brussels after the +Armistice. She felt a little tremulous when his card was sent up to +her, and kept him waiting quite five minutes while she saw that her +hair was tidy and estimated before the glass the extent to which it +had gone grey. She had let it grow of late years—the days of David +Williams and Mr. Michaelis seemed very remote—and spent some time +and consideration in arranging it. Her costume was workmanlike and +that of an hotel manageress in the morning; yet distinctly set off +her figure and suited her character of an able-bodied, intellectual +woman. +</p> + +<hr /> +<p> +"Vivie!" +</p> +<p> +"Michael!" +</p> +<p> +"My <i>dear</i>! You're handsomer than ever!" +</p> +<p> +"Michael! Your khaki uniform becomes you; and I'm <i>so</i> glad you've +got rid of that beard. <i>Now</i> we can see your well-shaped chin. But +still: we mustn't stand here, paying one another compliments, though +this meeting is <i>too</i> wonderful: I never thought I should see you +again. Let's come to realities. I suppose the real heart-felt +question at the back of your mind is: <i>can</i> I let you have a room? I +can, but not a bath-room suite; they're all taken..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Michael</i>: "Nonsense! I'm going to be put up at the Palace Hotel. +Jenkins—you remember the butler of old time?—Jenkins, and my +batman, a refined brigand, a polished robber, have already been +there and commandeered something.... +</p> +<p> +"No. I came here, firstly to find out if you were living; secondly +to ask you to marry me" ... (a pause) ... "and thirdly to find out +what happened to Bertie Adams. A message came through the Spanish +Legation here, a year and a half ago, to the effect that he had died +at Brussels from the consequences of the War. However, unless you +can tell me at once this is all a mistake, we can go into his +affairs later. My first question is—Oh! Bother all this cackle.... +<i>Will</i> you marry me?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "Dear, brave Bertie, whom I shall everlastingly mourn, was +shot here in Brussels by the abominable Germans, as a spy, on April +8th, 1917. He was of course no more a spy than you are or I am. The +poor devoted fool—I rage still, because I shall never be worth such +folly, such selfless devotion—got into Belgium with false +passports—American: in the hope of rescuing me. He came and +enquired here—my last address in his remembrance—and came by sheer +bad luck just as the Kaiser was about to arrive. They jumped to the +conclusion that—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Rossiter</i>: "<i>Awfully, cruelly</i> sad. But you can give me the details +of it later on. You must have a long, long story of your own to tell +which ought to be of poignant interest. But ... will you marry me? I +suppose you know dear Linda died—was killed by a bomb in a German +air-raid last year—October, 1917. I really felt <i>heart-broken</i> +about it, but I know now I am only doing what she would have wished. +She came at last to talk about you <i>quite</i> differently, <i>quite</i> +understanding—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "That's what all widowers say. They always declare the dead +wife begged them to marry again, and even designated her successor. +Poor Linda! Yes, I read an account of it in a copy of the <i>Times</i>; +but I couldn't of course communicate with you to say how <i>truly, +truly</i> sorry I was. I am glad to know she spoke nicely of me. Did +she really? Or have you only made it up?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Michael</i>: "<i>Of course</i> I haven't. She really did. Do you know, she +and I quite altered after the War began? She lost all her old +silliness and inefficiency—or at any rate only retained enough of +the old childishness to make her endearing. And I really grew to +love her. I quite forgot you. Yes: I admit it.... +</p> +<p> +"But somehow, after she was dead the old feeling for you came back +... and without any disloyalty to Linda. I felt in a way—I know it +is an absurd thing for a man of science to say, for we have still no +proof—I felt somehow as though she lived still. That's why I don't +want to get rid of the Park Crescent house. Her presence seems to +linger there. But I also knew—instinctively—that she would like us +to come together.... She..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Waiter</i> (knocking at door and slightly opening it): "Madame! Le +Général Tompkins veut vous voir. Il ajoute qu'il n'est pas habitué à +attendre. Il y a aussi M'sieur Émile Vandervelde, qui arrive +instamment et qui n'a pas d'installation..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Rossiter</i>: "Damn! Let me go and settle with 'em. Tompkins! I never +heard such cheek—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivien</i>: "Not at all. You forget I am Manageress." (To Waiter) +"Entrez done! Dîtes au Général que je serai à sa disposition dans +trois minutes; et montrez-lui ce que nous avons en fait de chambres. +Tous les appartements avec bain sont pris. Casez M'sieur Vandervelde +quelque part. Du reste, je descendrai."... (Waiter goes out) ... +"Michael! It is impossible to have a sentimental conversation here, +and at this hour—Eleven o'clock on a busy morning. If you want an +answer to your second question, now you've seen me, meet me outside +the Palm House of the Jardin Botanique, at 3 p.m. I'll get off +somehow for an hour just then. Don't forget! It's close by +here—along the Rue Royale. Be absolutely punctual, or else I shall +think that having <i>seen</i> me, seen how changed I am, you have altered +your mind. I shall <i>quite</i> understand; only I <i>may</i> come back at +five minutes past three and accept General Tompkins. Acquaintances +ripen quickly in Brussels." +</p> + +<hr /> +<p> +In the Palm House—or rather one of its many compartments; 3.5 p.m., +on a beautiful afternoon in early December. The sun is sinking over +outspread Brussels in a pink and yellow haze radiating from the +good-humoured-looking, orange orb. There are no other visitors to +the Palm House, at any rate not to this compartment, except the +superintending gardener—the same that cheered the last hours of +Mrs. Warren. He recognizes Vivien and salutes her gravely. Seeing +that she is accompanied by a gentleman in khaki he discreetly +withdraws out of hearing and tidies up a tree fern. Vivien and +Michael seat themselves on two green iron chairs under the fronds +and in front of grey stems. +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "This is a favourite place of mine for assignations. I +can't think why it is so little appreciated by young Brussels. These +palm houses are much more beautiful than anything at Kew; they are +in the heart of Brussels, over which, as you see, you have a +wonderful view. It was much more frequented when the Germans were +here. With all their brutality they did not injure this unequalled +collection of Tropical plants. They made the Palm House an allowance +of coal and coke in winter while we poor human beings went without. +I used often to come in here on a winter's day to get warm and to +forget my sorrows.... +</p> +<p> +"Look at that superb Raphia—<i>what</i> fronds! And that Phoenix +spinosa—and that Aralia—" +</p> +<p> +<i>Rossiter</i>: "Bother the Aralia. I haven't come here for a Botany +lesson. Besides, it isn't an Aralia; it's a Gomphocarpus.... Vivie! +<i>Will</i> you marry me?" +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i>: "My dear Michael: I was forty-three last October." +</p> +<p> +<i>Michael</i>: "I was <i>fifty-three</i> last November, the day the Armistice +was signed. But I feel more like thirty-three. Life in camp has +quite rejuvenated me..." +</p> +<p> +<i>Vivie</i> (continuing): ... "And my hair is cinder grey—an +unfortunate transition colour. And if the gardener were not looking +I should say: 'Feel my elbows ... Dreadfully bony! And my face has +become..." She turns her face towards him. He sees tears trembling +on the lower lashes of her grey eyes, but something has come into +the features, some irradiation of love—is it the light of the +sunset?—which imparts a tender youthfulness to the curvature of +cheek, lips and chin. Her face, indeed, might be of any age: it held +the undying beauty of a goddess, in whom knowledge has sweetened to +tenderness and divinity has dissolved in a need for compassion; and +the youthful assurance of a happy woman whose wish at last is +won.... +</p> +<p> +For a minute she looks at him without finishing her sentence. Then +she sits up straighter and says explicitly: "Yes, I will." +</p> + +<hr /> +<p> +The gardener managed an occasional peep at them, sitting hand in +hand. He wished the idyll to last as long as the clear daylight, but +the hour for closing was four o'clock—"Il n'y avait pas à nier." +Either they were husband and wife, reunited, after years of +war-severance; or they were mature lovers, and probably of the most +respectable. In either case, the necessary hint that ecstasies must +transfer themselves at sunset from the glass houses of the Jardin +Botanique to the outer air was best conveyed on this occasion by a +discreet gift of flowers. Accordingly he went on to where exotic +lilies were blooming, picked a few blossoms, returned, came with +soft padding steps up to Vivie, offered them with a bow and "Mes +félicitations <i>sincères</i>, Madame." Vivie laughed and took the +lilies; Rossiter of course gave him a ten-franc note. And they +sauntered slowly back to the hotel. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_0023"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + L'ENVOI +</h2> +<p> +I am reproached by such Art Critics as deign to notice my pictures +with "finishing my foregrounds over much,"—filling them with +superabundant detail, making the primroses more important than the +snow-peaks. And by my publishers with forgetting the price of paper +and the cost of printing. My jury of matrons thinks I don't know +where to leave off and that I might very well close this book on the +answer that Mrs. Warren's daughter gave to Sir Michael Rossiter's +proposal of marriage in the Palm House at Brussels. "The reader," +they say, "can very well fill in the rest of the story for himself +or herself. It is hardly likely that Vivie will cry off at the last +moment, or Michael reconsider the plunge into a second marriage. Why +therefore waste print and paper and our eyesight in describing the +marriage ceremony, the inevitable visit to Honoria, and what Vivie +did with the property she inherited from her mother?" +</p> +<p> +No doubt they are all right. Yet I am distrustful of my readers' +judgment and imagination. I feel both want guiding, and I doubt +their knowledge of the world and goodness of heart being equal to +mine, except in rare cases. +</p> +<p> +So I throw out these indications to influence the sequels they may +plan to this story. +</p> +<p> +I think that Michael and Vivie were married at the British Legation +in Brussels between Christmas and the New Year of 1918-1919; before +that Legation was erected into an Embassy; and that the marriage +officer was kind, genial Mr. Hawk when he returned to Brussels from +The Hague and proceeded to get the Legation into working order. I am +sure Mr. Hawk entered into the spirit of the thing and gave an +informal breakfast afterwards in the Rue de Spa to which Mons. and +Mme. Walcker, Mons. and Mme. Trouessart, and the Directeur of the +prison of Saint-Gilles and his wife were invited. I think the head +gardener of the Jardin Botanique who had charge of the Tropical +houses cribbed from the collections some of the most magnificent +blooms, and presented them to Vivie on the morning of her marriage; +and that afterwards she laid the bouquet on her mother's newly +finished tomb in the cemetery of St. Josse-ten-Noode, where, the +weather being singularly mild for the time of year, the flowers +lasted fresh and blooming for several days. +</p> +<p> +I am sure she and Michael then crossed the road and passed on to the +building of the Tir National; entered it and stood for a moment in +the verandah from which Vivie had seen Bertie Adams executed; and +passed on over the tussocky grass to the graves of Bertie Adams and +Edith Cavell, where they did silent homage to the dead. I believe a +few days afterwards they visited the Senate where the victims of von +Bissing's "Terror" had been tried, browbeaten, insulted, mocked. And +the functionary who showed them over this superb national palace is +certain to have included in his exposition the once splendid +carpets which the German officers prior to their evacuation of the +Senate—all but the legislative chamber of which was used as a +barracks for rough soldiery—had sprayed and barred, streaked and +splodged with printing ink. He would also have pointed out the +three-hundred-year-old tapestries they had ripped from the walls and +the historical portraits they had slashed, and would again have +emphasized the fact that in all these senseless devastations the +officers were far worse than the men. +</p> +<p> +Also I am certain that Michael and Vivie made a pilgrimage to the +prison of Saint-Gilles, and stood silently in the cell where Bertie +Adams and Vivie had spent those terrible days of suspense and +despair between April 6 and April 8, 1917; and that when they +entered that other compartment of the prison where Edith Cavell had +passed her last days before her execution, they listened with +sympathetic reverence to the recital by the Directeur of verses from +"l'Hymne d'Édith Cavell"—as it is now called—no other than the sad +old poem of human sorrow, <i>Abide with me</i>; and that they appreciated +to the full the warmth of Belgian feeling which has turned the cell +of Edith Cavell into a Chapelle Ardente in perpetuity. +</p> +<p> +I think they returned to England in January, 1919, so that Michael +might get back quickly to his work of mending the maimed, now +transferred to English hospitals; and so that Vivie—always a +practical woman—should prove her mother's will, secure her heritage +and have it in hand as a fund from which to promote all the +happiness she could. I doubt whether she will give much of it to +"causes" rather than cases and to politics in preference to persons. +I think she was awfully disgusted when she was back in the England +of to-day not to find Mrs. Fawcett Prime Ministress and First Lady +of the Treasury, Annie Kenney at the Board of Trade and Christabel +Pankhurst running the Ministry of Health. It was disheartening after +the long struggle for the Woman's Vote and the equality of the sexes +in opportunity to find the same old men-muddlers in charge of all +public affairs and departments of state, and the only woman on the +benches of the House of Commons a millionaire peeress never before +identified with the struggle for the Woman's Cause. +</p> +<p> +However I think her disenchantment did not diminish the rapture at +finding herself once more in the intimacy of Honoria Armstrong. Sir +Petworth, when he ran over on leave from the Army of Occupation, +thought her enormously improved, though he had the tact not to say +so. He frankly made the <i>amende honorable</i> for his suspicions and +churlishness of the past, and himself—I think—insisted on his +frank and friendly children calling her "Aunt Vivie." I am equally +sure that Vivie was not long in London before she appeared at dear +old Praddy's studio, beautifully gowned and looking years younger +than forty-three; and I shouldn't wonder but that her presence once +more in his circle will give his frame a fillip so that he may cheat +Death over a few more annual outbreaks of influenza. I am convinced +that he has left all his money, after providing a handsome annuity +for the parlour-maid, to Vivie, knowing that in her hands, far +more—and far more quickly than in those that direct princely and +public charities—will his funds reach the students and the +poverty-stricken artists whom he wants to benefit. +</p> +<p> +I think that after spending the first five months of 1919 in London, +getting No. 1 Park Crescent tidy again and fully repaired (because +Michael wished to pursue more thoroughly than ever his biological +researches), Vivie and Michael went off to spend their real +honeymoon in the Occupied Territory of the Rhineland, in that +never-to-be forgotten June, memorable for its splendid sunshine and +the beauty of its flowers and foliage. I think they did this +expressly (under the guise of a visit to General Armstrong), so that +Vivie and Minna von Stachelberg—now Minna Schultz—might foregather +at Bonn. Minna had married again, an officer of no family but of +means and of fine physique whom she had nursed in Brussels. His left +arm had been shattered, but the skill of the Belgian surgeons and +her devoted nursing had saved it from being amputated. She had +wished however to have him examined by some great exponent of +curative surgery at Bonn University, and the conjunction of the +celebrated Sir Michael Rossiter—who in his discussions of anatomy +with the Bonn professors forgot there had ever been a war between +Britain and Germany—was most opportune. +</p> +<p> +I think however that Sir Michael said this was all humbug on Minna's +part, and that all she wanted—her husband, Major Schultz, looking +the picture of health—was to meet once more her well-beloved Vivie. +At any rate I am sure they met in the Rhineland in a propitious +month when you could be out of doors all day and all night; and that +Minna said some time or other how happy she was in her second +marriage, and that however heartily she disliked militarism and +condemned War, soldiers made the nicest husbands. I think before she +and Vivie parted to go their several ways, they determined to work +for the building up of an Anglo-German reconciliation, and for the +advocacy in both countries of a Man-and-Woman Government. +</p> +<p> +I think, nevertheless, that Vivie being a sound business woman and +possessing a strong sense of justice on the lines of an eye for an +eye, will claim at least Five Thousand pounds from the German +Government for the devastations and thefts at the Villa Beau-séjour; +and that having got it and having disposed of her mother's jewellery +and plate for £3,500, she will present the Villa Beau-séjour +property and an endowment of £8,000 to the Town of Brussels, as an +educational orphanage for the children of Belgian soldiers who have +died in the War, where they may receive a practical education in +agriculture and poultry farming. +</p> +<p> +I fancy she gave a Thousand pounds to Pasteur Walcker's Congo +Mission; and transferred to Mme. Trouessart all her shares in and +rights over the Hotel Édouard-Sept. +</p> +<p> +I also picture to myself the Rossiters having a motor tour of pure +pleasure and delight of the eyes in South Wales in September, 1919. +</p> +<p> +I imagine their going to Pontystrad and surprising the Vicar and +Vicaress and puzzling them by purposely-diffuse stories of Vivie's +cousin the late David Vavasour Williams, intended to convey the +idea, without telling unnecessary fibs, that David died abroad +during the War, but that Vivie in his memory and that of his dear +old father intends to continue a strong personal interest in the +Village Hall and its educational aims. I also picture Vivie going +alone to Mrs. Evanwy's rose-entwined cottage. The old lady is now +rather shaky and does not walk far from her little garden with its +box bower and garden seat. I can foreshadow Vivie dispelling some of +the mystery about David Williams and being embraced by the old +Nannie with warm affection and the hearty assurances that she had +guessed the secret from the very first but had been so drawn to the +false David Williams and so sure of his honest purposes that nothing +would have induced her to undeceive the old Vicar. I can even +imagine the old lady ere—years hence—paralysis strikes her +down—telling Vivie so much gossip about the Welsh Vavasours that +Vivie becomes positively certain her mother came from that stock and +that she really was first cousin to the boy she personated for the +laudable purpose of showing how well a woman could practise at the +Bar. +</p> +<p> +I like to think also that by the present year of grace—1920—the +Rossiters will have become convinced that No. 1 Park Crescent, even +with the Zoo and the Royal Botanic Gardens close by and the +ornamental garden of Regent's Park in between, does not satisfy all +their needs and ambitions: that they will have resolved even before +this year began—to supplement it by a home in the country for +week-ends, for summer visits, and finally for rest in their old age. +That for this purpose they will acquire some ideal Grange or Priory, +or ample farmstead near Petworth and the Armstrongs' home, over +against the South Downs, and near the river Rother; that it shall be +in no mere suburb of Petworth but in a stately little village with +its own character and history going back to Roman times and a church +with a Saxon body and a Norman chancel. And that in the ideal +churchyard of this enviable church with ancient yews and 18th +century tomb-stones, and old, old benches in the sunshine for the +grandfathers and loafers of the village to sit on and smoke of a +Sabbath morning, a place shall be found for the bones of Bertie +Adams; reverently brought over from the grassy amphitheatre of the +Tir National to repose in this churchyard of West Sussex which looks +out over one of the finest cricket pitches in the county. If, then, +there is any lien between the mouldering fragments of our bodies and +the inexplicable personality which has been generated in the living +brain, the former office boy of <i>Fraser and Warren</i> will know that +he is always present in the memory of Vivien Rossiter, that she has +placed the few physical fragments still representing him in such a +setting as would have delighted his honest, simple nature in his +lifetime. He would also know that his children are now hers and her +husband's; that his Nance very rightly married the excellent butler, +Jenkins, with whom he had discussed many a cricket score; and that +Love, after all, is stronger than Death. +</p> +<p class="center"> +THE END +</p> + + +<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Mrs. Warren's Daughter, by Sir Harry Johnston + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. WARREN'S DAUGHTER *** + +***** This file should be named 15380-h.htm or 15380-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/3/8/15380/ + +Produced by Janet Kegg and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/15380.txt b/15380.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2b9f4a9 --- /dev/null +++ b/15380.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13365 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Warren's Daughter, by Sir Harry Johnston + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mrs. Warren's Daughter + A Story of the Woman's Movement + +Author: Sir Harry Johnston + +Release Date: March 16, 2005 [EBook #15380] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. WARREN'S DAUGHTER *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Kegg and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + + + + + + +MRS. WARREN'S DAUGHTER + +A Story of the Woman's Movement + +By + +SIR HARRY JOHNSTON + +New York +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY +1920 + + + TO + + MY JURY OF MATRONS: + + WINIFRED JOHNSTON ELLA HEPWORTH-DIXON + CATHERINE WELLS ANGELA MOND + BEATRICE SANDS MARGARET POWYS + ANNETTE HENDERSON FLORENCE FELLOWES + MARY LEVY RAY ROCKMAN-BRAHAM + FLORENCE TRAVERS MAUD PARRY + + + THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED, + IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT--IN THE MAIN--IT HAS + THEIR SYMPATHY AND APPROVAL. + + H. H. JOHNSTON + + POLING, + _March, 1920_ + + + + +PREFACE + + +The earlier part of Vivien Warren's life and that of her mother, +Catherine Warren, was told by Mr. George Bernard Shaw in his play, +"Mrs. Warren's Profession," published first in 1898. + +(_Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant_: 1. _Unpleasant_. Constable and +Co., 6th Edition.) + +I have his permission to continue the story from 1898 onwards. To +understand my sequel it is not necessary to have read the play which +so brilliantly placed the Warren problem before us. But as most +persons of average good education have found Mr. Shaw's comedies +necessary to their mental furnishing, their understanding of +contemporary life, it is probable that all who would be drawn to +this book are already acquainted with the story of Mrs. Warren, and +will be interested in learning what happened after that story was +laid down by Mr. Shaw in 1897. I would in addition placate hostile +or peevish reviewers by reminding them of the continuity of human +histories; of biographies, real--though a little disguised by the +sauce of fiction--and unreal--because entitled _Life and Letters, by +His Widow_. The best novel or life-story ever written does not +commence with its opening page. The real commencement goes back to +the Stone ages or at any rate to the antecedent circumstances which +led up to the crisis or the formation of the characters portrayed. +Mr. Pickwick had a father, a grandfather; a mother in a mob-cap; in +the eighteenth century. It is permissible to speculate on their +stories and dispositions. Neither does a novel or a biography end +with the final page of its convenient instalment. + +When you lay down the book which describes the pathetic failure of +Lord Randolph Churchill, you do so with curiosity as to what will +become of Winston. With a pre-knowledge of the Pickwick Club, one +may usefully employ the imagination in tracing out the possible +careers of Sam Weller's chubby little boys; grown into old men, and +themselves, perchance, leaving progeny that may have married into +the peerage from the Turf, or have entered the War Cabinet at the +beckoning of Mr. Lloyd George. + +I know of descendants of Madame de Brinvilliers in England who have +helped to found the Y.W.C.A.; and collateral offshoots from the +Charlotte Corday stock who are sternly opposed to the assassination +of statesmen-journalists. + +So, I have taken on myself the continuation of the story outlined +twenty-three years ago by Mr. Shaw in its late Victorian stage. _He_ +had a prior claim to do so; just as he might have shown us the +life--but not the letters, for she was illiterate--of Catherine +Warren's mother, the frier of fish and letter of lodgings on Tower +Hill in the 'forties and 'fifties of the last century; and of the +young Lieutenant Warren of the Tower garrison who lodged and +cohabited with her at intervals between 1850 and 1854, when he went +out to the Crimea and there died of frost-bite and neglected wounds. +Mr. Shaw has waived such claims, having, as Vivie's grandmother +would have said, "other fish to fry." But for this I should not have +ventured to take up the tale, as I hold an author while he lives has +a prescriptive right to his creations. I shall feel no bitterness in +Nirvana if, after my death, another continues the story of Vivie or +of her friends and collateral relations, under circumstances which I +shall not live to see. + +In justice to Mr. Shaw I should state that the present book is +entirely my own, and that though he has not renounced a polite +interest in Vivie he is in no way responsible for her career and +behaviour. He may even be annoyed at both. + + H. H. JOHNSTON. + + + + + CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR + I VIVIE AND NORIE + II HONORIA AND HER FRIENDS + III DAVID VAVASOUR WILLIAMS + IV PONTYSTRAD + V READING FOR THE BAR + VI THE ROSSITERS + VII HONORIA AGAIN + VIII THE BRITISH CHURCH + IX DAVID IS CALLED TO THE BAR + X THE SHILLITO CASE + XI DAVID GOES ABROAD + XII VIVIE RETURNS + XIII THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT + XIV MILITANCY + XV IMPRISONMENT + XVI BRUSSELS AND THE WAR: 1914 + XVII THE GERMANS IN BRUSSELS: 1915-1916 + XVIII THE BOMB IN PORTLAND PLACE + XIX BERTIE ADAMS + XX AFTER THE ARMISTICE + L'ENVOI + + + + +MRS. WARREN'S DAUGHTER + + + + +CHAPTER I + +VIVIE AND NORIE + + +The date when this story begins is a Saturday afternoon in June, +1900, about 3 p.m. The scene is the western room of a suite of +offices on the fifth floor of a house in Chancery Lane, the offices +of _Fraser and Warren_, Consultant Actuaries and Accountants. There +is a long window facing west, the central part of which is open, +affording a passage out on to a parapet. Through this window, and +still better from the parapet outside, may be seen the picturesque +spires and turrets of the Law Courts, a glimpse here and there of +the mellow, red-brick, white-windowed houses of New Square, the +tree-tops of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the hint beyond a steepled +and chimneyed horizon of the wooded heights of Highgate. All this +outlook is flooded with the brilliant sunshine of June, scarcely +dimmed by the city smoke and fumes. + +In the room itself there are on each of the tables vases of flowers +and a bunch of dark red roses on the top of the many pigeon-holed +bureau at which Vivien Warren is seated. The walls are mainly +covered with book-shelves well filled with consultative works on +many diverse subjects. There is another series of shelves crowded +with neat, green, tin boxes containing the papers of clients. A dark +green-and-purple portiere partly conceals the entry into a washing +place which is further fitted with a gas stove for cooking and +cupboards for crockery and provisions. At the opposite end of the +room is a door which opens into a small bedroom. The fireplace in +the main room is fitted with the best and least smelly kind of gas +stove obtainable in 1900. + +There are two square tables covered with piles of documents neatly +tied with green tape and ranged round the central vase of flowers; a +heavy, squat earthenware vase not easily knocked over; and there is +a second bureau with pigeon-holes and a roll top, similar to the one +at which Vivien Warren is seated. This is for the senior partner, +Honoria Fraser. Between the bureaus there is plenty of space for +access to the long west window and consequently to the parapet which +can be used like a balcony. Two small arm-chairs in green leather on +either side of the fireplace, two office chairs at the tables and a +revolving chair at each bureau complete the furniture of the +partners' room of _Fraser and Warren_ as you would have seen it +twenty years ago. + +The rest of their offices consisted of a landing from which a lift +and a staircase descended, a waiting-room for clients, pleasantly +furnished, a room in which two female clerks worked, and off this a +small room tenanted by an office boy. You may also add in +imagination an excellent lavatory for the clerks, two telephones +(one in the partners' room), hidden safes, wall-maps; and you must +visualize everything as pleasing in colour--green, white, and +purple--flooded with light; clean, tidy, and admirably adapted for +business in the City. + +Vivien Warren, as already mentioned, was, as the curtain goes up, +seated at her bureau, reading a letter. The letter was headed "Camp +Hospital, Colesberg, Cape Colony, May 2, 1900"; and ran thus:-- + + DEAREST VIVIE,-- + + Here I am still, but my leg is mending fast. The enteric was + the worse trouble. That is over and done with, though I am + the colour of a pig-skin saddle. My leg won't let me frisk + just yet, but otherwise I feel as strong as a horse. + + When I was bowled over three months ago and the enteric got + hold of me, on top of the bullet through my thigh, I lost my + self-control and asked the people here to cable to you to + come and nurse me. It was silly perhaps--the nursing here is + quite efficient--and if any one was to have come out on my + account it ought to have been the poor old mater, who wanted + to very much. But somehow I could only think of _you_. I + wanted you more than I'd ever done before. I hoped somehow + your heart might be touched and you might come out and nurse + me, and then out of pity marry me. Won't you do so? Owing to + my stiff leg I dare say I shall be invalided out of the Army + and get a small wound pension. And I've a project which will + make lots of money--up in Rhodesia--a tip I've had from a + man in the know. I'm going to take up some land near + Salisbury. Ripping country and climate and all that. It + would suit you down to the ground. You could put all that + Warren business behind you, forget it all, drop the name, + start a new career as Mrs. Frank Gardner, and find an + eternally devoted husband in the man that signs this letter. + + I've been out here long enough to be up to all the ropes, + and I'd already made a bit of money in Rhodesia before the + war broke out and I got a commission. At any rate I've + enough to start on as a married man, enough to give you a + decent outfit and your passage out here and have a honeymoon + before we start work on our future home. Darling Vivie! Do + think about it. You'd never regret it. I'm a very different + Frank to the silly ass you knew in the old Haslemere days. + Now here's a five pound note to cover the cost of a full + cable to say "yes," and when you'll be ready to start. When + I get your answer--somehow I feel it'll _be_ "yes"--I'll + send you a draft on a London bank to pay for a suitable + trousseau and your passage from London to Cape Town, and _of + course_ I'll come and meet you there, where we can be + married. I shan't sleep properly till I get your "yes." + + Your ever loving and always faithful + FRANK. + + P.S. There's a poor fellow here in the same ward dying--I + should say--of necrosis of the jaw--Vavasour Williams is his + name or a part of his name. His father was at Cambridge with + my old man, and--isn't it rum?--he was a pupil of + _Praddy's_!! He mucked his school and 'varsity career, + thought next he'd like to be an architect or a scene + painter. My dad recommended Praddy as a master. He worked in + the Praed studio, but got the chuck over some foolery. Then + as he couldn't face his poor old Governor, he enlisted in + the Bechuanaland Border police, came out to South Africa and + got let in for this show. The doctors and nurses give him + about a month and he doesn't know it. He can't talk much + owing to his jaw being tied up--usually he writes me + messages, all about going home and being a good boy, turning + over a new leaf, and so on. I suppose the last person you + ever see nowadays is the Revd. Sam Gardner? You know they + howked him out of Woodcote? He got "preferment" as he calls + it, and a cure of souls at Margate. Rather rough on the dear + old mater--bless her, _always_--She so liked the Hindhead + country. But if you run up against Praddy you might let him + know and he might get into touch with Vavasour Williams's + people--twig?--F.G. + +Vivie rose to her feet half-way through this letter and finished it +standing by the window. + +She was tall--say, five feet eight; about twenty-five years of age; +with a well-developed, athletic figure, set off by a smart, +tailor-made gown of grey cloth. Yet although she might be called a +handsome woman she would easily have passed for a good-looking young +man of twenty, had she been wearing male costume. + +Her brown-gold hair was disposed of with the least ostentation +possible and with no fluffiness. Her eyebrows were too well +furnished for femininity and nearly met when she frowned--a too +frequent practice, as was the belligerent look from her steely grey +eyes with their beautiful Irish setting of long dark lashes. She had +a straight nose and firm rounded chin, a rather determined look +about the mouth--lower lip too much drawn in as if from perpetual +self-repression. But all this severity disappeared when she smiled +and showed her faultless teeth. The complexion was clear though a +little tanned from deliberate exposure in athletics. Altogether a +woman that might have been described as "jolly good-looking," if it +had not been that whenever any man looked at her something hostile +and forbidding came into the countenance, and the eyebrows formed an +angry bar of hazel-brown above the dark-lashed eyes. But her "young +man" look won for her many a feminine friendship which she +impatiently repelled; for sentimentality disgusted her. + +The door of the partners' room opened and in walked Honoria Fraser. +She was probably three years older than Vivie and likewise a +well-favoured woman, a little more matronly in appearance, somewhat +after the style of a married actress who really loves her husband +and has preserved her own looks wonderfully, though no one would +take her for less than twenty-eight. + +At the sight of her, Vivie lost her frown and tossed the letter on +to the bureau. + +Honoria Fraser had been lunching with friends in Portland Place. + +_Honoria_: "What a swotter you are! I _thought_ I should find you +here. I suppose the staff departed punctually at One? I've come +back expressly from the Michael Rossiters to carry you off to +them--or rather to Kew. They're going to have tea with the +Thiselton-Dyers and then revel in azaleas and roses. I shall go out +and charter a hansom and we'll drive down ... it'll be some +compensation for your having worked extra hard whilst I've been +away.... + +"I met such a delightful man at the Rossiters'!" (slightly flushing) +"Don't look at me so reproachfully! There _are_ delightful men--a +few--in existence. This one has been wounded in South Africa and +he's so good-looking, though the back of his head is scarred and +he'll always walk with a limp.... Now then! Why do you look so +solemn? Put on your hat..." + +_Vivie_: "I look solemn because I'm just considering a proposal of +marriage--or rather, the fewest words in which I can refuse it. I +don't think I want to go to Kew at all ... much sooner we had tea +together, here, on the roof..." + +_Norie_: "I suppose it's Frank Gardner again, as I see his +handwriting on that envelope. Well I'm sorry about Kew--I should +have enjoyed it..." + +_Vivie_ (bitterly): "I expect it's that 'delightful man' that +attracts you." + +_Norie_: "Nonsense! I'm vowed to virginity, like you are ... I +really don't care if I never see Major Armstrong again ... though he +certainly _is_ rather a darling ... very good-looking ... and, d'you +know, he's almost a Pro-Boer, though the Boers ambushed him.... Says +this war's a beastly mistake.... + +"Well: I'll have tea here instead, if you like, and we can talk +business, which we haven't done for a fortnight. I must get out of +the way of paying visits in the country. They make one so +discontented with the City afterwards. I've had a feeling lately I +should like to have been a farmer.... Too much of the work of the +firm has been thrown on you.... But there's lots and lots I want to +talk over. I abandon Kew, willingly, and as to Major Armstrong.... +However he can always find my address if he cares to..." + +_Vivie_ (sits down in one of the arm chairs and Norie takes the +other): "Oh don't pity me. I love hard work and work which interests +me. And as to working for _you_, you know there's nothing I +wouldn't..." + +_Norie_: "Oh stow that!... You've been a full-fledged partner for a +year and ought to be getting callous or suspicious ... I _did_ take +some money out of the petty cash yesterday. I must remember to put +it down. I took quite a lot ... for theatre tickets ... and you may +be suspecting Bertie Adams ... we can't call this an Adamless Eden, +can we? I wonder why we keep an office boy and not an office girl? I +suppose such things will soon be coming into being. We've women +clerks and typewriteresses ... Adams, I notice, is growing, and he +has the trace of a moustache and is already devoted to you ... +dog-like..." + +_Vivie_: "He's still more devoted to cricket, fortunately; and as +soon as Rose and Lilian had gone he was off too.... Only, I fancy, +he discards Regent's Park now in favour of Hendon or Herne Hill..." + +_Norie_: "Now, about Frank Gardner..." + +_Vivie_: "Yes, that cablegram.... Let's frame it and send it off as +soon as we can; then get tea ready. Talking of tea: I was just +thinking before Frank's letter came how much good you'd done me--in +many other ways than setting me up in business." + +_Norie_: "Shut up!..." + +_Vivie_: "How, when we first worked together, I used to think it +necessary to imitate men by drinking an occasional whiskey and +soda--though I loathe spirits--and smoking a cigar--ugh!--And how +you drew me back to tea and a self-respecting womanliness--China +tea, of course, and cigarettes. Why _should_ we have wanted to be +like men?... much better to be the New Woman.... + +"As to Frank's cablegram..." (Goes to bureau, tries over several +drafts of message, consults Postal Guide as to cable rates _per_ +word, and reads aloud) ... "How's this? 'Captain Frank Gardner Camp +Hospital Colesberg Cape Colony. Sorry must say no Best wishes +recovery writing. Vivie.' That'll cost just Two pounds and out of +the balance I shall buy a good parcel of books to send him, and some +strawberries and cakes for our tea." (Therewith she puts on hat +carefully--for she is always very particular, in a young-gentlemanly +way, about her appearance--goes out to send off cablegram from +Chancery Lane post-office, buy strawberries and cakes from Fleet +Street shops, and so back to the office by four o'clock. Meantime +Norie is reading through some of the recent correspondence on the +file.) + +_Vivie_ (on her return): "Pouf! It _was_ hot in Fleet Street! I'm +sorry for poor Frankie, because he seems so to have set his heart on +marrying me. But I do hope he will take this answer as _final_." + +_Norie_: "I suppose you are not refusing him for the same old +reason--that vague suggestion that he might be your half-brother?" + +_Vivie_: "Oh _no_! Besides I pretty well know for a fact he isn't, +he simply couldn't be. I'm absolutely sure my father wasn't Sam +Gardner, any more than George Crofts was. I believe it was a young +Irish seminarist, some student for the priesthood whom my mother met +in Belgium the year before I was born. If I ever find out more I +will tell you. _You_ haven't seen 'Soapy Sam,' the Vicar of +Woodcote, or that beast, George Crofts; but if you _had_, you'd be +as sure as I am that neither of them was _my_ father--thank +goodness! As to Frank--yes--for a short time I _was_ fond of +him--till I learnt about my mother's 'profession.' It was rather a +silly sort of fondness. He was two years younger than I; I suppose +my feeling for him was half motherly ... I neither encouraged him +nor did I repel him. I think I was experimenting ... I rather wanted +to know what it felt like to be kissed by a man. Frank was a nice +creature, so far as a man can be. But all those horrid revelations +that broke up our summer stay at Haslemere four years ago--when I +ran away to you--gave me an utter disgust for marriage. And what a +life mine would have been if I had married him then; or after he +went out to South Africa! _Ghastly_! Want of money would have made +us hate one another and Frank would have been sure to become +patronizing. Because I was without a father in the legitimate way he +would have thought he was conferring a great honour on me by +marrying me, and would probably have expected me to drudge for him +while he idled his time away.... Oh, when I think what a life I have +led here, with you, full of interesting work and bright prospects, +free from money anxieties--dearest, dearest Norie--I can't thank you +enough. No, I'm not going to be sentimental--the New Woman is never +that. I'm going to get the tea ready; and after we've had tea on the +balcony we really must go into business matters. Your being away so +much the last fortnight, things have accumulated that I did not like +to decide for myself..." + +_Norie_ (speaking rather louder as Vivie is now busy in the +adjoining roomlet, boiling the kettle on the gas stove and preparing +the tea): "Yes. And I've got _lots_ to talk over with you. All sorts +of plans have come into my head. I don't know whether I have been +eating anything more than usually brain stimulating--everything has +a physical basis--but I have come back from this scattered holiday +full of new ideas." + +Presently they are seated on camp-stools sipping tea, eating +strawberries and cakes, under the striped sun-blind. + +_Norie_ continues: "Do you remember Beryl Clarges at Newnham?" + +_Vivie_: "Yes--the pretty girl--short, curly hair, brown eyes, +rather full lips, good at mathematics--hockey ... purposely shocked +you by her outspokenness--well?" + +_Norie_: "Well, she's had a baby ... a month ago ... awful rumpus +with her people ... Father's Dean Clarges ... Norwich or Ely, I +forget which ... They've put her in a Nursing Home in Seymour +Street. Mother wears a lace mantilla and cries softly. Beryl went +wrong, as they call it, with an architect." + +_Vivie_: "Pass your cup ... Don't take _all_ the strawberries +(_Norie_: "Sorry! Absence of mind--I've left you three fat ones") +Architect? Strange! I always thought all architects were like +Praddy--had no passions except for bricks and mortar and chiselled +stone and twirligig iron grilles ... perhaps just a thrill over a +nude statue. Why, till you told me this I'd as soon have trusted my +daughter--if I had one--with an architect as with a Colonel of +Engineers--You know! The kind that believes in the identity of the +Ten Lost Tribes with the British and is a True Protestant! Poor +Beryl! But how? what? when? why?" + +_Norie_: "I think it began at Cambridge--the acquaintance did ... +Later, it developed into a passion. He had already one wife in +Sussex somewhere and four children. He took a flat for her in +Town--a studio--because Berry had given up mathematics and was going +in for sculpture; and there, whenever he could get away from +Storrington or some such place and from his City office, he used to +visit Beryl. This had been going on for three years. But last +February she had to break it to her mother that she was six months +gone. The other wife knows all about it but refuses to divorce the +naughty architect, and at the same time has cut off supplies--What +_cowards_ men are and how _little_ women stand by women! And then +it's a poor deanery and Beryl has five younger brothers that have +got to be educated. Her sculpture was little more than commissions +executed for her architect's building and I expect that resource +will now disappear ... I half think I shall bring her in here, when +she is well again. She's got a very good head-piece and you know we +are expanding our business ... She'd make a good House Agent ... She +writes sometimes for _Country Life_..." + +_Vivie_: "Ye-es.... But you can't provide for many more of our +college-mates. Any more gone wrong?" + +_Norie_: "It depends how you qualify 'wrong.' I really don't see +that it is 'wronger' for a young woman to yield to 'storge' and have +a baby out of wedlock than for a man to engender that baby. Society +doesn't damn the man, unless he is a Cabinet Minister or a Cleric; +but it does its best to ruin the woman ... unless she's an actress +or a singer. If a woman likes to go through all the misery of +pregnancy and the pangs of delivery on her own account and without +being legally tied up with a man, why can't she? Beryl, at any rate, +is quite unashamed, and says she shall have as many children as her +earnings support ... that it will be great fun choosing their +sires--more variety in their types.... Is _she_ the New Woman, I +wonder?" + +_Vivie_: "Well the whole thing bores me ... I suppose I am +embittered and disgusted. I'm sick of all this sexual nonsense.... +Yes, after all, I approve of the marriage tie: it takes away the +romance of love, and it's that romance which is usually so +time-wasting and so dangerous. It conceals often a host of horrors +... But I'm a sort of neuter. All I want in life is hard work ... a +cause to fight for.... Revenge ... revenge on Man. God! How I hate +men; how I despise them! We can do anything they can if we train and +educate. I have taken to your business because it is one of the +crafty paths we can follow to creep into Man's fastnesses of the +Law, the Stock-Market, the Banks and Actuarial work..." + +_Norie_: "My dear! You have quite a platform manner already. I +predict you will soon be addressing audiences of rebellious +women.... But I am more the Booker Washington of my sex. I want +women to work--even at quite humble things--before they insist on +equal rights with man. At any rate I want to help them to make an +honest livelihood without depending on some one man.... Business +seems to be good, eh? If the first half of this year is equalled by +the second, I should think there would be a profit to be divided of +quite a thousand pounds?" + +_Vivie_: "Quite. Of course we are regular pirates. None of the +actuarial or accountancy corporations will admit women, so we can't +pass exams and call ourselves chartered actuaries or incorporated +accountants. But if women clients choose to consult us there is no +law to prevent them, or to make our giving advice illegal. So we +advise and estimate and do accounts and calculate probabilities. +Then although we can't call ourselves Solicitors we can--or at any +rate we do--give legal advice. We can't figure on the Stock +Exchange, but we can advise clients about their investments and buy +and sell stock and real estate (By the bye I want you to give me +your opinion on the tithe question, the liability on that Kent fruit +farm). We are consulted on contracts ... I'm going to start a women +authors' branch, and perhaps a tourist agency. Some day we will have +a women's publishing business, we'll set up a women's printing +press, a paper mill.... Of course as you know I am working hard on +law ... not only to understand men's roguery in every direction, but +so that if necessary I can add pleading in the courts to some other +woman's solicitor work. That's going to be my first struggle with +Man: to claim admittance to the Bar.... If we can once breach that +rampart the Vote must inevitably follow. Oh _how_ we have been dumb +before our shearers! The rottenness of Man's law.... The perjury, +corruption, waste of time, special pleading that go on in our male +courts of _in_justice, the verdicts of male juries!" + +_Norie_: "Just so. But can't you find a little time to be social? +Why be so morose? For instance, why not come and be introduced to +Michael Rossiter? He's a dear--amazingly clever--a kind of +prophet--Your one confidant, Stead, thinks a lot of him." + +_Vivie_: "_Dear_ Norie--I can't. I swore two years ago I would drop +Society and run no risk of being found out as 'Mrs. Warren's +daughter.' That beast George Crofts revenged himself because I +wouldn't marry him by letting it be known here and there that I +_was_ the daughter of the 'notorious Mrs. Warren'; whereupon several +of the people I liked--you remember?--dropped me--the Burne-Joneses, +the Lacrevys. Or if it wasn't Crofts some other swine did. But for +the fact that it would upset our style as a firm I could change my +name: call myself something quite different.... + +"D'you know, I've sometimes thought I'd cut my hair short and dress +in men's clothes, and go out into the world as a man ... my voice is +almost a tenor--_Such_ a lark! I'd get admitted to the Bar. But the +nuisance about that would be the references. I'm an outlaw, you see, +through no fault of mine.... I couldn't give _you_ as a reference, +and I don't know any man who would be generous enough to take the +risk of participating in the fraud.... unless it were Praed--good +old Praddy. I'm sure it's been done now and again. They call Judge +FitzSimmons 'an old woman.' Well, d'you know, I believe he _is_ ... +a wise old woman." + +_Norie_: "Well: bide a wee, till our firm is doing a roaring +business: I can pretend then to take in a male partner, p'raps. +Rose and Lilian are very hard-working and we can't afford to lose +them yet. If you appeared one morning dressed as a young man they +might throw up their jobs and go elsewhere..." + +_Vivie_: "You may be quite sure I won't let _you_ down. Moreover I +haven't the money for any vagaries yet, though I have an instinct +that it is coming. You know those Charles Davis shares I bought at +5_s._ 3_d._? Well, they rose to 29_s._ whilst you were away; so I +sold out. We had three hundred, and that, less commissions, made +about L350 profit; the boldest coup we have had yet. And all because +I spotted that new find of emery powder in Tripoli, saw it in a +Consular Report.... + +"I want to be rich and therefore powerful, Norie! Then people will +forget fast enough about my shameful parentage." + +_Norie_: "How _is_ she? Do you ever hear from or of her now?" + +_Vivie_: "I haven't heard _from_ her for two years, since I left her +letters unanswered. But I hear _of_ her every now and again. No. Not +through Crofts. I suppose you know--if you take any interest in that +wretch--that since he married the American quakeress he took his +name off the _Warren Hotels Company_ and sold out much of his +interest. He is now living in great respectability, breeding race +horses. They even say he has given up whiskey. He has got a son and +has endowed six cots in a Children's hospital. No. I think it must +be _mother_ who has notices posted to me, probably through that +scoundrel, Bax Strangeways ... generally in the _London Argus_ and +the _Vie-de-Paris_--cracking up the Warren Hotels in Brussels, +Berlin, Buda-Pest and Roquebrune. _What_ a comedy!... + +"There's my Aunt Liz at Winchester--Mrs. Canon Burstall--won't know +me--I'm too compromising. But I'm sure her money-bags have been +filled at one time--perhaps are still--out of the profits on +mother's 'Hotels.'..." + +_Norie_: "I didn't remember your aunt was married ... or rather I +suppose I did, but thought she was a widow, real or _soi-disant_..." + +_Vivie_: "So she is, after four years of happy married life! My +'uncle' Canon Burstall--Oh what a screaming joke the whole thing +is!... I doubt if he was aware he had a niece.... Don't you remember +he was killed in the Alps last autumn?..." + +_Norie_: "I remember your going down to see your aunt after you +broke off relations with your mother in--in--1897...?" + +_Vivie_: "Yes. I wanted to see how the land lay and not judge any +one unfairly. Besides I--I--didn't like being dependent entirely on +you--at that time--for support: and Praed was in Italy. I knew that +Aunt Liz, like mother, was illegitimate--and guessed she had once +made her living in the higher walks of prostitution--she was a +stockbroker's mistress at one time--. But she had married and +settled down at Winchester ... She met her Canon--the Alpine +traveller ... in Switzerland. I felt if she took no money from +mother's 'houses,' I could perhaps make a home with her, or at any +rate have _some_ kith and kin to go to. She had no children.... +But--I must have told you all this years ago?--she almost pushed me +out of her house for fear I should stay till the Canon came in from +the afternoon service; denied everything; threatened me as though I +was a blackmailer; almost looked as if she could have killed me and +buried me in the garden of the Canonry.... + +"I've examined the business of the _Warren Hotels Ltd._ since then, +but it's a private company, and all its doings are so cleverly +concealed.... Aunt Liz doesn't figure amongst the shareholders any +more than Crofts does. That horrid Bax holds most of the shares now, +and mother the rest.... Yet Aunt Liz must be rich and she certainly +didn't get it from the Canon, who only left a net personality of +under L4,000.... I read his will at Somerset House.... She has had +her portrait in the _Queen_ because she gave a large subscription to +the underpinning of Winchester Cathedral and the restoration of +Wolvesey as a clergy house.... Mother must be very rich, I should +judge, from certain indications. I expect _she_ will retire from the +'Hotels,' some day, wipe out the past, and buy a new present with +her money.... She'll have _her_ portrait in the _Queen_ some day as +a Vice-President of the Girls' Friendly Society!... And yet she's +such a gambler and a rake that she _may_ get pinched over the White +Slave traffic.... I was on tenterhooks over that Lewissohn case the +other day, fearing every moment to see mother's name mixed up with +it, or else an allusion to her 'Hotels.' But I fancy she has been +wise enough--indeed I should guess that Aunt Liz had long ago warned +her to leave England alone as a recruiting ground and to collect her +chambermaids, waitresses, musicians, typists from the Continent +only--Austria, Alsace, Bohemia, Belgium, Italy, the Rhineland, +Paris, Russia, Poland. Knowing what we British people are, can't you +almost predict the _bias_ of Aunt Liz's mind? How she would solace +herself that her dividends were not derived from the prostitution of +English girls but only of 'foreigners'?..." + +_Norie_: "You seem to have studied the geography of the business +pretty thoroughly!..." + +_Vivie_ (bitterly): "Yes. I have talked it over with Stead from time +to time. I believe he has only spared mother and the Warren Hotels +out of consideration for me ... He wants me to change my surname and +give myself a chance..." + +_Norie_: "I see" (pausing). "Of course it is rather an idea, as you +refuse to disguise yourself by marriage. You'd change your name and +then listen with equanimity to fulminations against the Warren +Hotels. But there would be an awkwardness in the firm. We oughtn't +to change our title just as we are getting a good clientele.... I +must think ... If only we could pretend you'd been left some +property--but that sort of lie is soon found out!--and had to change +your name to--to--to. Oh well, we could soon think of some name +beginning with a W--Walters, Waddilove--Waddilove is a delicious +name in cold weather, suggesting cotton-wool or a warm duvet--or +Wilson--or Wilberforce. But I'm afraid the staff--Rose Mullet and +Lily Steynes and the amorous Bertie Adams--would think it odd, put +two and two together, and guess right. Warren, after all, is such a +common name. And we've got so used to our three helpers, we could +hardly turn them off, and take on new people whom perhaps we +couldn't trust.... We must think it over.... + +"Now I must go back to Queen Anne's Mansions and sit a little while +with Mummy. Come and dine with us? There'll only be us three ... no +horrid man to fall in love with you.... You needn't put on a low +dress ... and we'll go to the dress circle at some play afterwards." + +_Vivie_: "But those papers on my desk? I must have your opinion for +or against..." + +_Norie_: "All right. It's half-past five. I'll give them half an +hour's study whilst you wash up the tea things and titivate. Then +we'll take a hansom to Quansions: the Underground is so grimy." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +HONORIA AND HER FRIENDS + + +The story of Honoria Fraser was something like this: partly +guesswork, I admit. Although I know her well I can only put her past +together by deductions based on a few admitted facts, one or two +letters and occasional unfinished sentences, interrupted by +people coming in. Is it not _always_ thus with our friends and +acquaintances? I long to know all about them from their birth +(including date and place of birth and parentage) onwards; what the +father's profession was and why on earth he married the mother +(after I saw the daguerreotype portrait), and how they became +possessed of so much money, and why she went back to live with _her_ +mother between the birth of her second child and the near advent of +her third. But in how very few cases do we know their whole story, +do we even care to know more than is sufficient for our purpose in +issuing or accepting invitations? There are the Dombeys--the Gorings +as they're now called, who live near us. I've seen the tombstone of +Lucilla Smith in Goring churchyard, but I don't know _for a fact_ +that Lord Goring was the father of Lucilla's son (who was killed in +the war). I guess he was, from this and that, from what Mrs. Legg +told me, and what I overheard at the Sterns'. If he wasn't, then he +has only himself to thank for the wrong assumption: I mean, from his +goings-on. + +Then again, the Clementses, who live at the Grange. I feel +instinctively they are _nice_ people, but I haven't the least idea +who _she_ was and how _he_ made his money, though from his acreage +and his motors I am entitled to assume he has a large income. She +seems to know a lot about Spain; but I don't feel encouraged to ask +her: "Was your father in the wine trade? Is _that_ why you know +Xeres so well?" Clements himself has in his study an enlarged +photograph of a handsome woman with a kind of mourning wreath round +the frame--beautifully carved. Is it the portrait of a former wife? +Or of a sister who committed suicide? Or was it merely bought in +Venice for the sake of the carving? Perhaps I shall know some +day--if it matters. In a moment of expansion during the Railway +Strike, Mrs. Clements will say: "_That_ was poor Walter's first. She +died of acute dyspepsia, poor thing, on their marriage tour, and was +buried at Venice. Don't ever allude to it because he feels it so +dreadfully." And my curiosity will have been rewarded for its long +and patient restraint. Clements' little finger on his left hand is +mutilated. I have never asked why--a lawn-mowing machine? Or a bite +from some passionate mistress in a buried past? I note silently that +he disapproves of palmistry-- + +But about Honoria Fraser, to whom I was introduced by Mr. George +Bernard Shaw twenty years ago: She was born in 1872, as _Who's Who_ +will tell you; also that she was the daughter and eldest child of a +famous physician (Sir Meldrum Fraser) who wrought some marvellous +cures in the 'sixties, 'seventies and 'eighties, chiefly by dieting +and psycho-therapy. (He got his knighthood in the first jubilee year +for reducing to reasonable proportions the figure of good-hearted, +thoroughly kindly, and much loved Princess Mary of Oxford.) +He--Honoria's father--was married to a beautiful woman, a relation +of Bessie Rayner Parkes, with inherited advanced views on the Rights +and Position of Woman. Lady Fraser was, indeed, an early type of +Suffragist and also wrote some poetry which was far from bad. They +had two children: Honoria, born, as I say, in 1872; and John (John +Stuart Mill Fraser was his full name--too great a burden to be +borne) four years later than Honoria, who was devoted to him, +idolized him, as did his mother and father. Honoria went to Bedford +College and Newnham; John to one of the two most famous of our +public schools (I need not be more precise), with Cambridge in view +afterwards. + +But in the case of John a tragedy occurred. He had risen to be head +of the school; statesmen with little affectation applauded him on +speech days. He had been brilliant as a batsman, was a champion +swimmer, and _facile princeps_ in the ineptitudes of the classics; +and showed a dazzling originality in other studies scarcely within +the school curriculum. Further he was growing out of boy gawkiness +into a handsome youth of an Apolline mould, when, on the morning of +his eighteenth birthday, he was found dead in his bed, with a bottle +of cyanide of potassium on the bed-table to explain why. + +All else was wrapt in mystery ... at any rate it was a mystery I +have no wish to lay bare. The death and the inquest verdict, +"Suicide while of unsound mind, due to overstudy," broke his +father's heart and his mother's: in the metaphorical meaning of +course, because the heart is an unemotional pump and it is the brain +and the nerve centres that suffer from our emotions. Sir Meldrum +Fraser died a year after his son. He left a fortune of eighty +thousand pounds. Half of this went at once to Honoria and the other +half to the life-use of Lady Fraser with a reversion to her +daughter. + +Honoria after her father's death left Cambridge and moved her mother +from Harley Street to Queen Anne's Mansions so that with her +shattered nerves and loss of interest in life she might have no +household worries, or at any rate nothing worse than remonstrating +with the still-room maids on the twice-boiled water brought in for +the making of tea; or with the culinary department over the +monotonous character of the savouries or the tepid ice creams which +dissolved so rapidly into fruit-juice when they were served after a +house-dinner.[1] Honoria herself, mistress of a clear two thousand +pounds a year, and more in prospect, carried out plans formed while +still at Newnham after her brother's death. She, like Vivien Warren, +her three-years-younger friend and college-mate, was a great +mathematician--a thing I never could be and a status I am incapable +of understanding; consequently one I view at first with the deepest +respect. I am quite astonished when I meet a male or female +mathematician and find they require food as I do, are less quick at +adding up bridge scores, lose rather than win at Goodwood, and write +down the "down" train instead of the "up" in their memorabilia. But +there it is. They have only to apply sines and co-sines, tangents +and logarithms to a stock exchange quotation for me to grovel before +their superior wisdom and consult them at every turn in life. + + [Footnote 1: This, of course, was twenty, years ago.--H.H.J.] + +Honoria had resolved to turn her great acquirements in Algebra and +the Higher Mathematics to practical purposes. Being the ignoramus +that I am--in this direction--I cannot say how it was to be done; +but both she and Vivie had grasped the possibilities which lay +before exceptionally well-educated women on the Stock Exchange, in +the Provision markets, in the Law, in Insurance calculations, and +generally in steering other and weaker women through the +difficulties and pitfalls of our age; when in nine cases out of +thirteen (Honoria worked out the ratio) women of large or moderate +means have only dishonest male proficients to guide them. + +Moreover Honoria's purpose was two-fold. She wished to help women in +their business affairs, but she also wanted to find careers for +women. She, like Vivien Warren, was a nascent suffragist--perhaps a +born suffragist, a reasoned one; because the ferment had been in her +mother, and her grandmother was a friend of Lydia Becker and a +cousin of Mrs. Belloc. John's death had been a horrible numbing +shock to Honoria, and she felt hardly in her right mind for three +months afterwards. Then on reflection it left some tarnish on her +family, even if the memory of the dear dead boy, the too brilliant +boy, softened from the poignancy of utter disappointment into a +tender sorrow and an infinite pity and forgiveness. + +But the tragedy turned her thoughts from marriage to some mission of +well-doing. She determined to devote that proportion of her +inheritance which would have been John's share to this end: the +liberation and redemption of women. + +She was no "anti-man," like Vivie. She liked men, if truth were +told, a tiny wee bit more than women. But she wished in the moods +that followed her brother's death in 1894 to be a mother by +adoption, a refuge for the fallen, the bewildered, the unstrung. She +helped young men back into the path of respectability and +wage-earning as well as young women. She was even, when opportunity +offered, a matchmaker. + +Being heiress eventually to L4,000 a year (a large income in pre-war +days) and of attractive appearance, she had no lack of suitors, even +though she thought modern dancing inane, and had little skill at +ball-games. I have indicated her appearance by some few phrases +already; but to enable you to visualize her more definitely I might +be more precise. She was a tall woman rather than large built, like +the young Juno when first wooed by Jove. Where she departed from the +Junonian type she turned towards Venus rather than Minerva; in spite +of being a mathematician. You meet with her sisters in physical +beauty among the Americans of Pennsylvania, where, to a stock mainly +Anglo-Saxon, is added a delicious strain of Gallic race; or you see +her again among the Cape Dutch women who have had French Huguenot +great grandparents. It is perhaps rather impertinent continuing +this analysis of her charm, seeing that she lives and flourishes +more than ever, twenty years after the opening of my story; not very +different in outward appearance at 48, as Lady Armstrong--for of +course, as you guess already, she married Major--afterwards Sir +Petworth--Armstrong--than she was at twenty-eight, the partner, +friend and helper of Vivien Warren. + +Being in comfortable circumstances, highly educated, handsome, +attractive, with a mezzo-soprano voice of rare beauty and great +skill as a piano-forte accompanyist, she had not only suitors who +took her rejection without bitterness, but hosts of friends. She +knew all the nice London people of her day: Lady Feenix, who in some +ways resembled her, Diana Dombey, who did not _quite_ approve of +her, being a little uncertain yet about welcoming the New Woman, all +the Ritchies, married and unmarried, Lady Brownlow, the Duchess of +Bedford (Adeline), the Michael Fosters, most of the Stracheys (she +liked the ones I liked), the Hubert Parrys, the Ripons (how she +admired Lady Ripon, as who did not!), Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, Miss +Lena Ashwell, the Bernard Shaws, the Wilfred Meynells, the H.G. +Wellses, the Sidney Webbs; and--leaving uninstanced a number of +other delightful, warm-blooded, pleasant-voiced, natural-mannered +people--the Rossiters. + +Or at least, Michael Rossiter. For although you could tolerate for +his sake Mrs. Rossiter, and even find her a source of quiet +amusement, you could hardly say you liked her--not in the way you +could say it of most of the men and women I have specified. Michael +Rossiter, who comes into this story, ought really if there were a +discriminating wide-awake, up-to-date Providence--which there is +not--to have met Honoria when she was twenty. (At nineteen such a +woman is still immature; and moreover until she was twenty, Honoria +had not mastered the Binomial Theorem.) Had he married her at that +period he would himself have been about twenty-seven which is quite +soon enough for a great man of science to marry and procreate +geniuses. But as a matter of fact, when he came down to Cambridge +in--? 1892--to deliver a course of Vacation lectures on embryology, +he was already two years married to Linda Bennet, an heiress, the +daughter and niece (her parents died when she was young and she +lived with an uncle and aunt) of very rich manufacturers at Leeds. + +So, though his eye, quick to discern beauty, and his brain tentacles +ready to detect intelligence combined with a lovely nature, soon +singled out Honoria Fraser, amongst a host of less attractive +girl-graduates, he had no more thought of falling in love with her +than with a princess of the blood-royal. He might, long since, +within a month of his marriage have found out his Linda to be a +pretty little simpleton with a brain incapable of taking in any more +than it had learnt at a Scarborough finishing school; but he was too +instinctive a gentleman to indulge in any flirtation, any deviation +whatever from mental or physical monogamy. For he remembered always +that it was his wife's money which had enabled him to pursue his +great researches without the heart-breaking delays, limitations and +insufficiencies involved in Government or Royal Society grants; and +that Linda had not only endowed him with all her worldly goods--all +but those he had insisted in putting into settlement--but that she +had given him all her heart and confidence as well. + +Still, he liked Honoria. She was eager to learn much else beyond the +hard-grained muses of the square and cube; she was the daughter of a +prosperous and boldly experimental physician, whose wife was a +champion of women's rights. So he pressed Honoria to come with her +mother and make the acquaintance of himself and Linda in Portland +Place. + +Why was Michael Rossiter wedded to Linda Bennet when he was no more +than twenty-five, and she just past her coming of age? Because fresh +from Edinburgh and Cambridge and with a reputation for unusual +intuition in Biology and Chemistry he had come to be Science master +at a great College in the North, and thus meeting Linda at the +Philosophical Institute of Leeds had caused her to fall in love with +him whilst he lectured on the Cainozoic fauna of Yorkshire. He was +himself a Northumbrian of borderland stock: something of the Dane +and Angle, the Pict and Briton with a dash of the Gypsy folk: a +blend which makes the Northumbrian people so much more productive of +manly beauty, intellectual vivacity, bold originality than the +slow-witted, bulky, crafty Saxons of Yorkshire or the under-sized, +rugged-featured Britons of Lancashire. + +Linda fell in love all in one evening with his fiery eyes, black +beard, the Northumbrian burr of his pronunciation, and the daring of +his utterances, though she could scarcely grasp one of his +hypotheses. Her uncle and aunt being narrowly pietistic she was +bored to death with the Old Testament, and Rossiter's scarcely +concealed contempt for the Mosaic story of creation captured her +intellect; while the physical attraction she felt was that which the +tall, handsome, resolute brunet has for the blue-eyed fluffy little +blonde. She openly made love to him over the tea and coffee served +at the "soiree" which followed the lecture. Her slow-witted guardian +had no objection to offer; and there were not wanting go-betweens to +urge on Rossiter with stories of her wealth and the expanding value +of her financial interests. He wanted to marry; he was touched by +her ill-concealed passion, found her pretty and appealingly +childlike. So, after a short wooing, he married her and her five +thousand pounds a year, and settled down in Park Crescent, Portland +Place, so as to be near the Zoo and Tudell's dissecting rooms, to +have the Royal Botanic gardens within three minutes' walk, and the +opportunity of turning a large studio in the rear of his house into +a well-equipped chemical and dissecting laboratory. One of his close +pursuits at that time was the analysis of the Thyroid gland and its +functions, its over or under development in British statesmen, +dramatic authors and East End immigrants. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +DAVID VAVASOUR WILLIAMS + + +It is in the spring of 1901. A fine warm evening, but at eight +o'clock the dusk is already on the verge of darkness as Honoria +emerges from the lift at her Chancery Lane Office (near the corner +of Carey Street), puts her latch-key into the door of the partners' +room, and finds herself confronting the silhouette of a young man +against the western glow of the big window. + +_Norie_ (inwardly rather frightened): "Hullo! Who are _you_ and what +are you doing here?" + +_Vivie_ (mimicking a considerate, cringing burglar): "Sorry to +startle you, lidy, but I don't mean no 'arm. I'll go quiet. Me +name's D.V. Williams..." + +_Norie_: "You absurd creature! But you shouldn't play such pranks on +these respectable premises. You gave me a _horrid_ start, and I +realized for the first time that I've got a heart. I really must sit +down and pant." + +_Vivie_: "I am sorry, dearest. I had not the slightest notion +you would be letting yourself into the office at this hour--8 +o'clock--and I was just returning from my crammers..." + +_Norie_: "I came for those Cranston papers. Mother is ill. I may +have to sit up with her after Violet Hunt goes, so I thought I would +come here, fetch the bundle of papers and plans, and go through them +in the silent watches of the night, _if_ mother sleeps. But do you +mean to say you have already started this masquerade?" + +_Vivie_: "I do. You see Christabel Pankhurst has been turned down +as a barrister. They won't let her qualify for the Bar, because +she's a woman, so they certainly won't let _me_ with my pedigree; +just as, merely because we are women, they won't let us become +Chartered Actuaries or Incorporated Accountants. After we had that +long talk last June I got a set of men's clothes together, a regular +man's outfit. The suit doesn't fit over well but I am rectifying +that by degrees. I went to a general outfitter in Cornhill and told +a cock-and-bull story--as it was an affair of ready cash they didn't +stop to question me about it. I said something about a sea-faring +brother, just my height, a trifle stouter in build--lost all his kit +at sea--been in hospital--now in convalescent home--how I wanted to +save him all the fatigue possible--wouldn't want more than +reach-me-downs at present, etc., etc. They rather flummoxed me at +first by offering a merchant service uniform, but somehow I got over +that, though this serge suit has rather a sea-faring cut. I got so +unnecessarily explanatory with the shopman that he began to pay me +compliments, said my brother must be a good-looking young chap if he +was at all like me. However, I got away with the things in a cab, +and told the cab to drive to St. Paul's station, and on the way +re-directed him here. + +"Last autumn I began practising at night-time after all our +familiars had left these premises. Purposely I did not tell you +because I feared your greater caution and instinctive respectability +might discourage me. Otherwise, nobody's spotted me, so far. I'd +intended breaking it to you any day now, because I've gone too far +to draw back, for weal or woe. But either we have been rushed with +business, or you've been anxious about Lady Fraser--How is she?" +(Norie interpolates "Very poorly.") "So truly sorry!--I was +generally just about to tell you when Rose or Lilian--tiresome +things!--would begin most assiduously passing in and out with +papers. Even now I mustn't keep you, with your mother so ill..." + +_Norie_ (looking at her wrist-watch): "Violet has very kindly +promised to stay with mother till ten.... I can give you an hour, +though I must take a few minutes off that for the firm's business as +I haven't been here much for three days..." (They talk business for +twenty minutes, during which Norie says: "It's really _rather_ odd, +how those clothes change you! I feel vaguely compromised with a +handsome young man bending over me, his cheek almost touching +mine!"--and Vivie retorts "Oh, _don't_ be an ass!") + +_Norie_: "So you really _are_ going to take the plunge?" + +_Vivie_: "I really _am_. As soon as it suits your convenience, Vivie +Warren will retire from your firm and go abroad. You must either +replace her by Beryl Clarges or allow Mr. Vavasour Williams" +(Honoria interpolates: "_Ridiculous_ name! How did you think of +it?") "to come and assist in the day-time or after office hours. You +can say to the winds that he is Vivie's first cousin, remarkably +like her in some respects.... Rose Mullet is engaged to be married +and is only--she told me yesterday with many blushes--staying on to +oblige us. Lilian Steynes said the other day that if we were making +any changes in the office, much as she liked her work here, her +mother having died she thought it was her duty to go and live with +her maternal aunt in the country. The aunt thinks she can get her a +post as a brewery clerk at Aylesbury, and she is longing to breed +Aylesbury ducks in her spare time.--There is Bertie Adams, it's +true. There's something so staunch about him and he is so useful +that he and Praed and Stead are the three exceptions I make in my +general hatred of mankind..." + +_Norie_: "He will be very much cut up at your going--or seeming to +go." + +_Vivie_: "Just so. I think I shall write him a farewell note, +saying it's only for a time: I mean, that I may return later +on--dormant partnership--nothing really changed, don't you know? But +that as Rose and Lilian are going, Mrs.--what does she call herself, +Claridge?"--(Norie interpolates: "Yes, that was her idea: she +doesn't want to blazon the name of Clarges as the symbol of Free +Love, 'cos of the dear old Dean; yet Claridge will not be too much +of a surrender and is sure to invoke respectability, because of the +Hotel")--"Mrs. Claridge, then, is coming in my stead--He's to help +her all he can--and my cousin, who is reading for the Bar, will also +look in when you are very busy. I shall, of course, see about +rooms in one of the Inns of Court--the Temple perhaps. I have +been stealthily watching Fig Tree Court. I _think_ I can get +chambers there--a man is turning out next month--got a Colonial +appointment--I've put my new name down at the lodge and I shall have +to rack my brains for references--you will do for one--or perhaps +not--however that I can work out later. Of course I won't take the +final plunge till I have secured the rooms. Meantime I will use my +bedroom here but promise you I will be awfully prudent..." + +_Norie_: "I couldn't possibly have Beryl 'living in,' with a child +hanging about the place; so I think if you _do_ go I shall turn your +bedroom into an apartment which Beryl and I can use for toilet +purposes but where we can range out on book-shelves a whole lot of +our books. Just now they are most inconveniently stored away in +boxes. It's rather tiresome about Beryl. I believe she's going to +have _another_ child. At any rate she says it may be four months +before she can come to work here regularly. I asked her about it the +other day, because if mother gets worse I may be hindered about +coming to the office, and I didn't want you to get overworked,--so I +said to Beryl.... That reminds me, she referred to the coming child +and added that its father was a policeman. Quite a nice creature in +his private life. Of course she's only kidding. I expect it's the +architect all the time. You know how she delighted in shocking us at +Newnham. I wish she hadn't this kink about her. P'raps I'm getting +old-fashioned already--You used to call me 'the Girondist.' But if +the New Woman _is_ to go on the loose and be unmoral like the +rabbits, won't the cause suffer from middle-class opposition?" + +_Vivie_: "Perhaps. But it may gain instead the sympathies of the +lower and the upper classes. Why do you bother about Beryl? I agree +with you in disliking all this sexuality..." + +_Norie_: "Does one _ever_ quite know why one likes people? There is +_something_ about Beryl that gets over me; and she _is_ a worker. +You know how she grappled with that Norfolk estate business?" + +_Vivie_: "Well, it's fortunate she and I have not met since Newnham +days. You must tip her the story that I am going away for a +time--abroad--and that a young--young, because I look a mere boy, +dressed up in men's clothes--a young cousin of mine, learned in the +law, is going to drop in occasionally and do some of the work..." + +_Norie_: "I'm afraid I'm rather weak-willed. I _ought_ to stop this +prank before it has gone too far, just as I ought to discourage +Beryl's babies. Your schemes sound so stagey. Off the stage +you never take people in with such flimsy stories and weak +disguises--you'll tie yourself up into knots and finally get sent to +prison.... However.... I can't help being rather tickled by your +idea. It's vilely unjust, men closing two-thirds of the respectable +careers to women, to bachelor women above all..." (A pause, and the +two women look out on a blue London dotted with lemon-coloured, +straw-coloured, mauve-tinted lights, with one cold white radiance +hanging over the invisible Piccadilly Circus)--"Well, go ahead! +Follow your star! I can be confident of one thing, you won't do +anything mean or disgraceful. Deceiving Man while his vile laws and +restrictions remain in force is no crime. Be prudent, so far as +compromising our poor little firm here is concerned, because if you +bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave we shall lose a +valuable source of income. Besides: any public scandal just now in +which I was mixed up might kill my mother. Want any money?" + +_Vivie_: "You generous darling! _Never, never_ shall I forget your +kindness and your trust in me. You have at any rate saved one soul +alive." (Honoria deprecates gratitude.) "No, I don't want +money--yet. You made me take and bank L700 last January over that +Rio de Palmas coup--heaps more than my share. Altogether I've got +about L1,000 on deposit at the C. and C. bank, the Temple Bar +branch. I've many gruesome faults, but I _am_ thrifty. I think I can +win through to the Bar on that. Of course, if afterwards briefs +don't come in--" + +_Norie_: "Well, there'll always be the partnership which will go on +unaltered. I shall pretend you are only away for a time and your +share shall be regularly paid in to your bank. Of course I shall +meet Mr. Vavasour Williams now and again and I can tell him things +and consult with him. If we think Beryl, after she is installed here +as head clerk--of course I shan't make her a partner for _years_ and +_years_--not at all if she remains flighty--if we think she is +unsuspicious, and Bertie Adams likewise, and the new clerks and the +housekeeper and her husband, there is no reason why you should not +come here fairly often and put in as much work as you can on our +business." + +_Vivie_: "Yes. Of course I must be careful of one predicament. I +have studied the regulations about being admitted to the English +Bar. They are very quaint and medieval or early Georgian. You +mayn't be a Chartered Accountant or Actuary--the Lord alone knows +why! I suppose some Lord Chancellor was done in the eye in +Elizabeth's reign by an actuary and laid down that law. Equally you +mayn't be a clergyman. As to that we needn't distress ourselves. +It's rather piteous about the prohibiting Accountants, because as +women we are not allowed to qualify in _any_ capacity as Accountants +or Actuaries; and work here is only permissible by our not +pretending to belong to any recognized body like the Institute of +Actuaries. So that in coming to work for you I must not seem to be +in any way doing the business of Accountants or Actuaries. Indeed it +might be awkward for my scheme if I was too openly associated with +Fraser and Warren. + +"I already think of myself as Williams--I shall pose of course as a +Welshman. My appearance _is_ rather Welsh, don't you think? It's the +Irish blood that makes me look Keltic--I'm sure my father was an +Irish student for the priesthood at Louvain, and certain scraps of +information I got out of mother make me believe that _her_ mother +was a pretty Welsh girl from Cardiff, brought over to London Town by +some ship's captain and stranded there, on Tower Hill. + +"However, I have still the whole scheme to work out and when I'm +ready to start on it--which will be very soon--I'll let you know. +Now, though I'd love to discuss all the other details, I mustn't +forget your mother will be wanting you--I wish _I_ had a mother to +tend--I wonder" (wistfully) "whether I was too hard on mine? + +"D'you mind posting these letters as you go out? I shall change back +to Vivie Warren in a dressing gown, give myself a light supper, and +then put in two hours studying Latin and Norman French. Good night, +dearest!" + +Two months after this conversation Vivie decided to pay a call on +an old friend of her mother's, Lewis Maitland Praed, if you want his +full name, a well-known architect, and one of the few male friends +of Catherine Warren who had not also been her lover. Why, he never +quite knew himself. When he first met her she was the boon +companion, the mistress--more or less, and unattached--of a young +barrister, a college friend of Praed's. Kate Warren at that time +called herself Kitty Vavasour; and on the strength of having done a +turn or two on the music halls considered herself an actress with a +right to a professional name. It was in this guise that the "Revd." +Samuel Gardner met her and had that six months' infatuation for her +which afterwards caused him so much disquietude; though it preceded +the taking of his ordination vows by quite a year, and his marriage +to his wife--much too good for him--in 1874. [The Revd. Sam, you may +remember, was the father of the scapegrace Frank who nearly captured +Vivie's young affections and had written from South Africa proposing +marriage at the opening of this story.] + +Kate Vavasour in 1872 was an exceedingly pretty girl of nineteen or +twenty; showily dressed, and quick with her tongue. She was +good-natured and jolly, and though Praed himself was the essence of +refinement there was something about her reckless mirth and joy in +life--the immense relief of having passed from the sordid life of a +barmaid to this quasi-ladyhood--that enlisted his sympathies. Though +she was always somebody else's mistress until she developed +her special talent as a manageress of high-class houses of +accommodation, "private hotels" on the Continent, chiefly frequented +by English and American _roues_--Praed kept an eye on her career, +and occasionally rendered her, with some cynicism, unobtrusive +friendly services in disentangling her affairs when complications +threatened. He was an art student in those days of the 'seventies, +possessed of about four hundred a year, beginning to go through the +aesthetic phase, and not decided whether he would emerge a painter +of pictures or an architect of grandiose or fantastic buildings. To +his studio Miss Kitty Vavasour or Miss Kate Warren would often come +and pose for the head and shoulders, or for some draped caryatid +wanted for an ambitious porch in an imaginary millionaire's house in +Kensington Palace Gardens. When in 1897, Vivie had learnt about her +mother's "profession," she had flung off violently from all her +mother's "friends," except "Praddy." She even continued to call him +by this nickname, long ago bestowed on him by her mother. At distant +intervals she would pay him a visit at his house and studio near +Hans Place; when Honoria's advice and assistance did not meet the +case of some grave perplexity. + +So one afternoon in June, 1901, she came to his little dwelling with +its large studio, and asked to have a long talk to him, whilst his +parlour-maid--he was still a bachelor--denied him to other callers. +They had tea together and Vivie plunged as quickly as possible into +her problem. + +"You know, Praddy dear, I want to be a Barrister. But as a female +they will never call me to the Bar. So I'm going to send Vivien +Warren off for a long absence abroad--the few who think about me +will probably conclude that money has carried the day and that I've +gone to help my mother in her business--and in her absence Mr. +Vavasour Williams will take up the running. David V. Williams--don't +interrupt me--will study for the Bar, eat through his terms--six +dinners a year, isn't it?--pass his examinations, and be called to +the English Bar in about three years from now. Didn't you once have +a pupil called Vavasour Williams?" + +_Praed_: "What, David, the Welsh boy? Yes. His name reminded me of +your mother in one of her stages. David Vavasour Williams. I took +him on in--let me see? I think it was in 1895 or early 1896. But how +did you hear about him?" + +_Vivie_: "Never mind, or never mind for the moment. Tell me some +more about him." + +_Praed_: "Well to sum him up briefly he was what school boys and +subalterns would call 'a rotter.' Not without an almost mordid +cleverness; but the Welsh strain in him which in the father turned +to emotional religion--the father was Vicar or Rector of +Pontystrad--came out in the boy in unhealthy fancies. He had almost +the talent of Aubrey Beardsley. But I didn't think he had a good +influence over my other pupils, so before I planned that Italian +journey--on which you refused to accompany me--I advised him to +leave my tuition--I wasn't modern enough, I said. I also advised him +to make up his mind whether he wanted to be a sane architect--he +despised questions of housemaids' closets and sanitation and lifts +and hot-water supply--or a scene painter. I think he might have had +a great career at Drury Lane over fairy palaces or millionaire +dwellings. But I turned him out of my studio, though I put the fact +less brutally before his father--said I should be absent a long +while in Italy and that I feared the boy was too undisciplined. +Afterwards I think he went into some South African police force..." + +_Vivie_: "He did, and died last year in a South African hospital. +Had he--er--er--many relations, I mean did he come of well-known +people?" + +_Praed_: "I fancy not. His father was just a dreamy old Welsh +clergyman always seeing visions and believing himself a descendant +of the Druids, Sam Gardner told me; and his mother had either died +long ago or had run away from her husband, I forget which. In a way, +I'm sorry David's dead. He had a sort of weird talent and wild good +looks. By the way, he wasn't altogether unlike _you_." + +_Vivie_: "Thank you for the double-edged compliment. However what +you say is very interesting. Well now, my idea is that David +Vavasour Williams did _not_ die in a military hospital; he recovered +and returned, firmly resolved to lead a new life.--Is his father +living by the bye? Did he believe his son was dead?" + +_Praed_: "Couldn't tell you, I'm sure. I never took any further +interest in him, and until you mentioned it--I don't know on whose +authority--I didn't know he was dead. On the whole a good riddance +for his people, I should say, especially if he died on the field of +honour. But what lunatic idea has entered your mind with regard to +this poor waster?" + +_Vivie_: "Why my idea, as I say, is that D.V.W. got cured of his +necrosis of the jaw--I suppose it is not invariably deadly?--came +home with a much improved morale, studied hard, and became a +barrister, thinking it morally a superior calling to architecture +and scene painting. In short, I shall be from this day forth +Vavasour Williams, law-student! Would it be safe, d'you think, in +that capacity to go down and see his old father?" + +_Praed_: "_Vivie_! I _did_ think you were a sober-minded young +woman who would steer clear of--of--crime: for this impersonation +would be a punishable offence..." + +_Vivie_: "_Crime_? _What_ nonsense! I should consider I was +justified in a Court of Equity if I burnt down or blew up the Law +Courts or one of the Inns or broke the windows of the Chartered +Institute of Actuaries or the Incorporated Law Society. All these +institutions and many others bar the way to honourable and lucrative +careers for educated women, and a male parliament gives us no +redress, and a male press laughs at us for our feeble attempts to +claim common rights with men. Instead of proceeding to such violence +I am merely resorting to a very harmless guile in getting round the +absurd restrictions imposed by the benchers of the Inns of Court, +namely that all who claim a call to the Bar should not be +_accountants_, _actuaries_, _clergymen_ or _women_. I am going to +give up the accountancy business--or rather, the law has never +allowed either Honoria or me to become chartered accountants, so +there is nothing to give up. To avoid any misapprehension she is +going to change the title on our note paper and brass plate to +'General Inquiry Agents.' That will be sufficiently non-committal. +Well then, as to sex disqualification, a few weeks hence I shall +become David Vavasour Williams, and I presume he was a male? You +don't have to pass a medical examination for the Bar, do you?" + +_Praed_: "Really, Vivie, you are _unnecessarily_ coarse..." + +_Vivie_: "I don't care if I am, poor outlaw that I am! Every avenue +to an honest and ambitious career seems closed to me, either because +I am a woman or--in women's careers--the few that there are--because +I am Kate Warren's daughter. _I_ am not to blame for my mother's +misdeeds, yet I am being punished for them. That beast of a friend +of yours--that filthy swine, George Crofts--set it about after I +refused to marry him that I was 'Mrs. Warren's Daughter,' and the +few nice people I knew from Cambridge days dropped me, all except +Honoria and her mother." + +_Praed_: "Well, _I_ haven't dropped you. _I'll_ always stick by +you" (observes that Vivie is trying to keep back her tears). +"Vivie--_darling_--what do you want me to do? Why not marry me and +spend half my income, take the shelter of my name--I'm an A.R.A. +now--You needn't do more than keep house for me.... I'm rather +a valetudinarian--dare say I shan't trouble you long--we +could have a jolly good time before I went off with a heart +attack--travel--study--write books together--" + +_Vivie_ (recovering herself): "Thanks, dear Praddy; you are a brick +and I really--in a way--have quite got to love you. Except an office +boy in Chancery Lane and W.T. Stead, I don't know any other decent +man. But I'm not going to marry any one. I'm going to become +Vavasour Williams--the name is rotten, but you must take what you +can get. Williams is a quiet young man who only desires to be left +alone to earn his living respectably at the Bar, and see there if he +cannot redress the balance in the favour of women. But there is +something you _could_ do for me, and it is for that I came to see +you to-day--by the bye, we have both let our tea grow cold, but _for +goodness' sake_ don't order any more on my account, or else your +parlour-maid will be coming in and out and will see that I've been +crying and you look flushed. What I wanted to ask was this--it's +really very simple--_If Mr. Vavasour Williams, aged twenty-four, +late in South Africa, once your pupil in architecture_ or scene +painting or whatever it was--_gives you as a reference to character, +you are to say the best you can of him_. And, by the bye, he will be +calling to see you very shortly and you could lend further +verisimilitude to your story by renewing acquaintance with him. You +will find him very much improved. In every way he will do you +credit. And what is more, if you don't repel him, he will come and +see you much oftener than his cousin--I'm not ashamed to adopt her +as a cousin--Vivie Warren could have done. Because Vivie, with her +deplorable parentage, had your good name to think of, and visited +you very seldom; whereas there could be raised _no_ objection from +your parlour-maid if Mr. D.V. Williams came rather often to chat +with you and ask your advice. Think it over, dear friend--Good-bye." + +Early in July, Norie and Vivie were standing at the open west +window in their partners' room at the office, trying to get a little +fresh air. The staff had just gone its several ways to the suburbs, +glad to have three hours of daylight before it for cricket and +tennis. Confident therefore of not being overheard, Vivie began: +"I've got those rooms in Fig Tree Court. I shall soon be ready to +move my things in. I'll leave some of poor Vivie Warren's effects +behind if you don't mind, in case she comes back some day. Do you +think you can rub along if I take my departure next week? I want to +give myself a fortnight's bicycle holiday in Wales--as D.V. +Williams--a kind of honeymoon with Fate, before I settle down as a +law student. After I come back I can devote much of the summer +recess to our affairs, either openly or after office hours. You +could then take a holiday, in August. You badly need one. What about +Beryl?" + +_Norie_: "Beryl is well over her accouchement and is confident of +being able to start work here on August 1.... It's a boy this time. +I haven't seen it, so I can't say whether it resembles a policeman +more than an architect. Besides babies up till the age of six months +only resemble macrocephalic idiots.... I shall be _wary_ with +Beryl--haven't committed myself--ourselves to any engagement beyond +six months. She's amazingly clever, but I should say quite +heartless. Two babies in three years, and both illegitimate--the +real Mrs. Architect very much upset, no doubt, Mr. Architect getting +wilder and wilder in his work through trying to maintain two +establishments--they say he left out all the sanitation in Sir Peter +Robinson's new house and let the builders rush up the walls without +damp courses--and it's killing her father, the Dean. It's not as +though she hid herself away, but she goes out so much! They are +talking of turning her out of her club because of the things she +says before the waitresses..." + +_Vivie_: "What things?" + +_Norie_: "Why, about its being very healthy to have babies when +you're between the ages of twenty and thirty; and how with this +twilight sleep business she doesn't mind how often; that it's fifty +times more interesting than breeding dogs and cats or guinea-pigs; +and she's surprised more single women don't take it up. I think she +must be detraquee.... I have a faint hope that by taking her in hand +and interesting her in our work--which _entre nous deux_--is turning +out to be very profitable--I may sober her and regularize her. No +doubt in 1950 most women will talk as she does to-day, but the +advance is too abrupt. It not only robs _her_ parents of all +happiness, but it upsets _my_ mother. She now wrings her hands over +her own past and fears that by working so strenuously for the +emancipation of women she has assisted to breach the dam--Can't you +imagine the way the old cats of both sexes go on at her?--the dam +which held up female virtue, and that Society now will be drowned in +a flood of Free Love..." + +_Vivie_: "Well! We'll give her a six months' trial here, and see if +our mix-up of advice in Law, Banking, Estate management, +Stock-and-share dealing, Divorce, Private Enquiries, probate, etc., +does not prove _much_ more interesting than an illicit connection +with a hare-brained architect.... If she proves impossible you'll +pack her off and Vivie shall return and D.V. Williams go abroad.... +Don't you think there is something that ought to win over Providence +in that happily chosen name? _D.V._ Williams? And my mother once +actually called herself 'Vavasour.' + +"Well, then, barring accidents and the unforeseen, it's agreed I go +on my holiday next Saturday, to return never no more--perhaps--?--" + +_Norie_ (with a sigh): "Yes!" + +_Vivie_: "How's your mother?" + +_Norie_: "Oh, as to her, I'm glad to say '_much_ better.' When I +can get away, after the new clerks and Beryl are installed and +everything is going smoothly, I shall take her to Switzerland, to a +deliciously quiet spot I know and nobody else knows up the +Goeschenenthal. The Continent won't be so hot for travelling if we +don't start till the end of August..." + +_Vivie:_ "_Then_, dearest ... in case you don't come to the office +any more this week, I'll say good-bye--for--for some time..." + +(They grip hands, they hesitate, then kiss each other on the cheek, +a very rare gesture on either's part--and separate with tears in +their eyes.) + + +The following Monday morning, Bertie Adams, combining in his +adolescent person the functions of office boy, junior clerk, and +general factotum, entered the outer office of Fraser and Warren and +found this letter on his desk:-- + + Fraser and Warren Midland Insurance Chambers, + General Inquiry Agents 88-90, Chancery Lane, W.C. + July 12, 1901. + + DEAR BERTIE-- + + I want to prepare you for something. If you had been an + ordinary Office boy, I should not have bothered about you or + confided to you anything concerning the Firm. But you are by + now almost a clerk, and from the day I joined Miss Fraser in + this business, you have helped me more than you know--helped + me not only in my work, but to understand that there _can_ + be good, true, decent-minded, trustworthy ... you won't like + it if I say "boys" ... young men. + + I am going away for a considerable time, I cannot say how + long--probably abroad. But Miss Fraser thinks I can still + help in the work of her firm, so I remain a partner. A + cousin of mine, Mr. D.V. Williams, may come in occasionally + to help Miss Fraser. I shall ask him to keep an eye on you. + Miss Rose Mullet and Miss Steynes are likewise leaving the + service of the firm. I dare say you know Miss Mullet is + getting married and how Miss Steynes is going to live at + Aylesbury. Two other ladies are coming in their place, and + much of my own work will be undertaken by a Mrs. Claridge, + whom you will shortly see. + + It is rather sad this change in what has been such a happy + association of busy people, nobody treading on any one + else's toes; but there it is! "The old order changeth, + giving place to the new ... lest one good custom should + corrupt the world"--you will read in the Tennyson I gave you + last Christmas. Let's hope it won't be when I return: + "Change and Decay in all around I see" ... as the rather + dismal hymn has it. + + Sometimes change is a good thing. You serve a noble mistress + in Miss Fraser and I am sure you realize the importance of + her work. It may mean so much for women's careers in the + next generation. I shan't quite lose touch with you. I dare + say Miss Fraser, even if I am far away, will write to me + from time to time and give me news of the office and tell me + how you get on. Don't be ashamed of being ambitious: keep up + your studies. Why don't you--but perhaps you do?--join + evening classes at the Polytechnic?--or at this new London + School of Economics which is close at hand? Make up your + mind to be Lord Chancellor some day ... even if it only + carries you as far as the silk gown of a Q.C. I suppose I + ought now to write "K.C." A few years ago we all thought the + State would go to pieces when Victoria died. Yet you see we + are jogging along pretty well under King Edward. In the same + way, you will soon get so used to the new Head Clerk, Mrs. + Claridge, that you will wonder what on earth you saw to + admire in + + VIVIEN WARREN. + +This letter came like a cricket ball between the eyes to Bertie +Adams. His adored Miss Warren going away and no clear prospect of +her return--her farewell almost like the last words on a death-bed.... +He bowed his head over his folded arms on his office desk, and +gave way to gruff sobs and the brimming over of tear and nose glands +which is the grotesque accompaniment of human sorrow. + +He forgot for a while that he was a young man of nineteen with an +unmistakable moustache and the status of a cricket eleven captain. +He was quite the boy again and his feeling for Vivien Warren, which +earlier he had hardly dared to characterize, out of his intense +respect for her, became once more just filial affection. + +His good mother was a washerwoman-widow, in whom Honoria Fraser had +interested herself in her Harley Street girlhood. Bertie was the +eldest of six, and his father had been a coal porter who broke his +back tumbling down a cellar when a little "on." Bertie--he now +figured as Mr. Albert Adams in the cricket lists--was a well-grown +youth, rather blunt-featured, but with honest hazel eyes, +fresh-coloured, shock-haired. Vivie had once derided him for trying +to woo his frontal hair into a flattened curl with much pomade ... +he now only sleeked his curly hair with water. You might even have +called him "common." He was of the type that went out to the War +from 1914 to 1918, and won it, despite the many mistakes of our +flurried strategicians: the type that so long as it lasts unspoilt +will make England the predominant partner, and Great Britain the +predominant nation; the type out of which are made the bluejacket +and petty officer, the police sergeant, the engine driver, the +railway guard, solicitor's clerk, merchant service mate, engineer, +air-pilot, chauffeur, army non-commissioned officer, head gardener, +head game-keeper, farm-bailiff, head printer; the trustworthy +manservant, the commissionaire of a City Office; and which in other +avatars ran the British World on an average annual income of L150 +before the War. When women of a similar educated lower middle class +come into full equality with men in opportunity, they should marry +the Bertie Adamses of their acquaintance and not the stockbrokers, +butchers, drapers, bookies, professional cricketers or pugilists. +They would then become the mothers of the salvation-generation of +the British people which will found and rule Utopia. + +However, Bertie Adams was quite unconscious of all these +possibilities, and thought of himself modestly, rather cheaply. +Swallowing the fourth or fifth sob, he rose from his crouching over +the desk, wiped his face with a wet towel, smoothed his hair, put +straight his turn-over collar and smart tie, and went to his work +with glowing eyes and cheeks; resolved to show Miss Warren that she +had not thought too highly of him. + +Nevertheless, when Miss Mullet arrived and giggled over the details +of her trousseau and Lily Steynes discussed the advertisements of +Aylesbury ducks in the current _Exchange and Mart_, he was reserved +and rather sarcastic with them both. He intimated later that he had +long been aware of the coming displacements; but he said not a word +of Vivie's letter. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +PONTYSTRAD + + +On a morning in mid-July, 1901, Mr. D.V. Williams bicycled to +Paddington Station from New Square, Lincoln's Inn. The brown canvas +case fitted to the frame of his male bicycle contained a change of +clothes, a suit of paijamas, a safety razor, tooth-brush, hair-brush +and comb. He himself was wearing a well-cut dark grey suit--Norfolk +jacket, knickerbockers and thick stockings. + +Having had his bicycle labelled "Swansea," he entered a first-class +compartment of the South Wales express. Though not lavish on his +expenditure he was travelling first because he still felt a little +uneasy in the presence of men--mostly men of the rougher type. +Perhaps there was a second class in those days; there may be still. +But I have a distinct impression that Mr. Vavasour Williams, law +student, travelled "first" on this occasion: for this was how +he met a person of whom his friend, Honoria Fraser, had often +spoken--Michael Rossiter. + +He did not of course--till after they had passed Swindon--know the +name of his travelling companion. Five minutes before the train left +Paddington there entered his compartment of the corridor carriage a +tall man with a short, curly black beard and nice eyes--eyes like +agates in colour. There was a touch of grey about the temples, +otherwise the head hair, when he changed from a hard felt hat to a +soft travelling cap, showed as dark as the beard and moustache. His +frame was strong, muscular and loosely built, and he had clever, +nervous hands with fingers somewhat spatulate. His clothes did not +much suggest the tourist--they seemed more like a too well-worn town +morning suit of dark blue serge; as though he had left home in an +absent-minded mood intent on some hurriedly conceived plan. He cast +one or two quick glances at David; once, indeed, as they got out +into full daylight, away from tunnels and high walls, letting his +glance lengthen into a searching look. Then he busied himself with a +number of scientific periodicals he had brought to read in the +train. + +Impelled, he knew not why, to provoke conversation, David asked +(quite needlessly), "This _is_ the South Wales express, I mean the +Swansea train, is it not?" + +Blackbeard was struck with the unusualness of the voice--a very +pleasant one to come from the lips of a man--and replied: "It is; at +least I got in under that impression as I am intending to go to +Swansea; but in any case the ticket inspector is sure to come along +the corridor presently and we'll make sure then. We stop at Swindon, +I think, so if we've made a mistake we can rectify it there." + +Then after a pause he resumed: "I think you said you were going to +Swansea? Might I ask if you are bound on the same errand as I am? I +mean, are you one of Boyd Dawkins's party to examine the new cave on +the Gower coast?" + +_D.V.W._: "Oh no--I--I am going inland from Swansea to--to have a +bicycling tour. I'm going to a place on the river--I don't know how +to pronounce it--at least I've forgotten. The river's name is spelt +Llwchwr." + +_Blackbeard_: "You should change your mind and turn south--come and +see these extraordinary caves. Are you interested in palaeontology?" +(David hesitates) "What careless people call 'prehistoric animals' +or 'prehistoric man.' They have been ridiculously misled by comic +artists in _Punch_ who imagine a few thousand years of Prehistory +would take us back to the Cretaceous period; really four or five +million years before Man came into existence, when this country and +most other lands swarmed with preposterous reptiles that had become +extinct long before the age of mammals. However, I don't suppose +this interests you. I only spoke because I thought you might be one +of Boyd Dawkins's pupils ... or one of mine." + +_David_: "On the contrary, I am very, very much interested in the +subject, but I am afraid it has lain rather outside my line of +studies so far--p'raps I will turn south when I have seen something +of the part of Glamorgan I am going to. I'm really Welsh in origin, +but I know Wales imperfectly because I left it when I was quite +young" ("This'll be good practice," Vivie's brain voice was saying +to herself) ... "I've returned recently from South Africa." + +_Blackbeard_: "What were you doing there?" + +_David_: "I--I--was in the army ... at least in a police force ... I +got wounded, had to go into hospital--necrosis of the jaw ... I came +home when I got well..." + +_Blackbeard_: _"Necrosis of the jaw!_ That was a bad thing. But you +seem to have got over it very well. I can't see any scar from where +I am..." + +_David_: "Oh no. It was only a _slight_ touch and I dare say I +exaggerate ... I've left the Army however and now I'm reading +Law..." + +Blackbeard thinks at this point that he has gone far enough in +cross-examination and returns to his periodicals and pamphlets. But +there's something he likes--a wistfulness--in the young man's face, +and he can't quite detach his mind to the presence of palaeolithic +man in South Wales. At Swindon they both get out--there was still +lingering the practice of taking lunch there--have a hasty lunch +together and more talk, and share a bottle of claret. + +On returning to their compartment, Rossiter offers David a cigar but +the young man prefers smoking a cigarette. By this time they have +exchanged names. D.V.W. however is reticent about the South African +War--says it was all too horrible for words, and should never have +taken place and he can't bear to think about it and was knocked out +quite early in the day. Now all he asks is peace and quiet and the +opportunity of studying law in London so that he may become some day +a barrister. Rossiter says--after more talk, "Pity you're going in +for the Bar--we've too many lawyers already. You should take up +Science"--and as far as the Severn Tunnel discourses illuminatingly +on biology, mineralogy, astronomy, chemistry as David-Vivien had +never heard them treated previously. In the Severn Tunnel the noise +of the train silences both professor and listener, who willingly +takes up the position of pupil. Between Newport and Neath, David +thinks he has never met any one so interesting. It has been his +first real induction into the greatest of all books: the Book of the +Earth itself. Rossiter on his part feels indefinably attracted by +this young expatriated Welshman. David does not say much, but what +he does contribute to the conversation shows him a quick thinker and +a person of trained intelligence. Yet somehow the professor of +Biology in the University of London--and many other things +beside--F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.L.S., Gold Medallist of this and that +Academy and University abroad--does not "see" him as a soldier or a +non-commissioned officer in the British Army: law-student is a more +likely qualification. However as they near Swansea, Michael Rossiter +gives Mr. D.V. Williams his card (D.V.W. regrets he cannot +reciprocate but says he has hardly settled down yet to any address) +and--though as a rule he is taciturn in trains and cautious about +making acquaintances--expresses the hope he will call at 1, Park +Crescent some afternoon--"My wife and I are generally at home on +Thursdays"--when all are back in town for the autumn. They separate +at Swansea station. + + +David spends the night at Swansea, employing some of his time there +by enquiring at the Terminus Hotel as to the roads that lead up the +valley of the Llwchwr, what sort of a place is Pontystrad ("the +bridge by the meadow"), whether any one knows the clergyman of that +parish, Mr.... er ... Howel Vaughan Williams. The "boots" or one of +the "bootses," it appears, comes from the neighbourhood of +Pontystrad and knows the reverend gentleman by sight--a nice old +gentleman--has heard that he's aged much of late years since his son +ran away and disappeared out in Africa. His sight was getting bad, +Boots understood, and he could not see to do all the reading and +writing he was once so great at. + +After a rather wakeful night, during which D.V. Williams is more +disturbed by his thoughts and schemes than by the continual noises +of the trains passing into and out of Swansea, he rises early and +drafts a telegram:-- + + + Revd. Howel Williams, Vicarage, Pontystrad, Glamorgan. Hope + return home this evening. All is well. + + DAVID. + +Then pays his bill and tries to mount his bicycle the wrong way to +the great amusement of the Boots; then remembers the right way and +rides off, with the confidence of one long accustomed to bicycling, +through the crowded traffic of Swansea in the direction of Llwchwr. + +It was a very hot ride through a very lovely country, now largely +spoilt by mining and metallurgy, along a road that was constantly +climbing up steeply to descend abruptly. David of course could have +travelled by rail to the Pontyffynon station and thence have ridden +back three miles to Pontystrad. But he wished purposely to bicycle +the whole way from Swansea and take in with the eye the land of his +fathers. He was postponing as long as possible the test of meeting +his father, the father of the young n'eer-do-weel who had been lying +for months in a South African field hospital the year before. He +halted for a cup of tea at Llandeilotalybont ... Wales has many +place names like this ... and being there not many miles from +Pontystrad was able to glean more recent and more circumstantial +information about the man he proposed to greet as "father." + +At half-past six that evening, having perspired and dried, perspired +and dried, strained a tendon and acquired a headache, he halted +before the gate of the Vicarage garden at Pontystrad, having been +followed thither to his secret annoyance by quite a troop of village +boys of whom he had imprudently asked the way. As they talked Welsh +he could not tell what they were saying, but conjectured that his +telegram had arrived and that he was expected. + +Standing under the porch of the house was an old man with a long +white beard like a Druid in spectacles shading his eyes and +expectant... + +A bicycle might prove an incumbrance in the ensuing interview, so +David hastily propped his against a fuchsia hedge and hurried +forward to meet the old man, who extended hands to envelop him, not +trusting to his eyes. An old, rosy-cheeked woman in a sunbonnet came +up behind the old man, shrieked out "Master David!" and only waited +with twitching fingers for her own onslaught till the father had +first embraced his prodigal son. This was done at least three times, +accompanied with tears, blessings, prayers, the uplifting of poor +filmy eyes to a cloudless Heaven--"Diolch i Dduw!"--ejaculations as +to the wonder of it--"Rhyfeddol yw yn eiholl ffyrdd"--God's +Providence--His ways are past finding out! "Ni ellir olrain ei +Ragluniaeth!"--"My own dear boy! Fy machgen annwyli!" + +Then the old woman took her turn: "Master David! Eh, but you're +changed, mun!"--then a lot of Welsh exclamations, which until the +Welsh can agree to spell their tongue phonetically I shall not +insert--"Five years since you left us! Eh, and I never thought to +see you no more. Some said you wass dead, others that you wass taken +prisoner by the Wild Boars. But here you are, and welcome--indeed--" +Then Master David between the embraces was scanned, a little more +critically than by the purblind father, but with distinct approval. + +At last David stood apart in the stone-flagged hall of the Vicarage. +His abundant hair was rumpled, his face was stained by other +people's tears, his collar, tie, dress disordered, and his heart +touched. It was a rare experience in his twenty-four years of +life--he guessed that should be his age--to find himself really +taken on trust, really desired and loved. Honoria's friendship +was a pure and precious thing, but in its very purity carefully +restrained. Praddy's kindness, and the office boy's worship had both +been gratifying to Vivie's self-esteem, but both had to be kept at +bay. Somehow the love of a father and of an old nurse were of a +different category to these other contacts. + +All these thoughts passed through David's brain in thirty seconds. +He shook himself, straightened himself, smiled adequately, and tried +to live up to the situation. + +"Dear father! And dear ... Nannie! (A bold but successful +deduction). How sweet of you both--greeting me like this. I've come +home a very different David to the one that left you--what was it? +Five--six years ago?--to go to Mr. Praed's studio. I've learnt a lot +in the interval. But I'm so sick of the past, I don't want to talk +about it more than I can help, and I've been in very queer health +since I got ill--and--wounded--in--South Africa. My memory has gone +for many things--I'm afraid I've forgotten all my Welsh, Nannie, but +it'll soon come back, that is, if I may stay here a bit." +(Exclamations from father and nurse: "This is your _home_, +Davy-bach!") "I'm not going to stay too long this time because I've +got my living to earn in London.... + +"Did you never hear anything about me from ... South Africa ... or +the War Office--or--your old college chum, Mr. Gardner?" + +"I heard--my own dear boy--" said the Revd. Howel, again taking him +in his arms in a renewed spasm of affection. "I heard you were +wounded and very ill in the camp hospital at Colesberg. It was a +nursing sister, I think, who sent me the information. I wrote +several times to the War Office, my letters were acknowledged, that +was all. Then Sam Gardner wrote to me from Margate and said his son +had been in the same hospital with you. Later on I saw in a Bristol +paper that this hospital--Colesberg--had fallen into the hands of +the Boers and the Cape insurgents. Then I said to myself 'My poor +boy's been taken prisoner' and as time went on, 'My poor boy's dead, +or he would have written to me.'" + +Here the Revd. Howel stopped to wipe his eyes and blow his nose. +David touched through his armour of cynicism, said--Nannie retiring +to prepare the evening meal--"Father dear, though I don't want to +refer too often to the past, I behaved disgracefully some time ago +and the Colonies seemed my only chance of setting myself right. I +did manage to get away from the Boers, but I had not the courage to +present myself before you till I had done something to regain your +good opinion. I have got now good employment in London and I'm even +reading up Law. We will talk of that by and bye but I tell you +now--from my heart--I am a different David to the one you knew, and +you shall never regret taking me back." + +Both father and son were crying now, for emotion especially in Wales +is catching. But the father laughed through his tears; and +incoherently thanked God for the return of the prodigal--a fine +upstanding lad--whole and sound. "No taint about _you_, Davy, _I'll_ +be bound. Why your voice alone shows you've been a clean liver. It's +music in my ears, and if I could see as well as I can hear I'd wager +you're a handsome lad and have lost much of your foolishness. Davy, +lad" (lowering his voice) "you've no cause to be anxious about +Jenny. She--she--had a boy, but we got her married to a miner--I +made it right with him. She has another child now, but they're being +brought up together. We won't refer to it again. She lives twenty +miles from here, at Gower--and ... and ... there's an end of it.... + +"Now you won't run away back to London till you're obliged? Where's +your luggage? At Pontyffynon?" + +"No," said David, a little non-plussed at evidences of his dissolute +past and this unexpected fatherhood assumed on his account. "I +haven't more luggage than what is contained in my bicycle bag. But +don't let that concern you. I'll go over to Swansea one day or some +nearer town and buy what may be necessary, and I'll stay with you +all my holidays, tell you all my plans, and even after I go back to +London I'll always come down here when I can get away. For the +present I'm going simply to enjoy myself for the first time in my +life. The last four years we'll look on as a horrid dream. What a +paradise you live in." His eye ranged over the two-storeyed, +soundly-built stone house facing south, with mountains behind and +the western sun throwing shafts of warm yellow green over the lawn +and the flower beds; over clumps of elms in the middle, southern +distance, that might have been planted by the Romans (who loved this +part of Wales). Bees, butterflies and swallows were in the air; the +distant lowing of kine, the scent of the roses, the clatter in the +kitchen where Nannie aided by another female servant was preparing +supper, even the barking of a watch dog; aware that something +unusual was going on, completed the impression of the blissful +countryside. "What a paradise you live in! How _could_ I have left +it?" + +"Ay, dear lad; I doubt not it looks strange and new to you since +you've been in South Africa and London. But it'll soon seem homelike +enough. And now you'll like to see your room, and have a wash before +supper. Tom, the gardener, shall take in your bicycle and give it a +rub over. I've still got the old one here in the coach-house which +you left behind. Tom's new, since you left. He's not so clever with +the bees as your old friend Evan was, but he's a steadier lad. I +fear me Evan led you into some of your scrapes. The fault was partly +mine. I shouldn't have let you run wild so much, but I was so +wrapped up in my studies--Well, well!" + +David was careful to play his part sufficiently to say when shown +into his old bedroom, "Just the same, father; scarcely a bit +altered--but isn't the bed moved--to another place?" + +"You're right, my boy--Ah! your memory can't be as bad as you +pretend. Yes, we moved it there, Bridget and I, because the +Archdeacon came once to stay and complained of the draught from the +window." + +"The deuce he did!" said David. "Well, _I_ shan't complain of +anything." + +His father left him and he then proceeded to lay out the small +store of things he had brought in his bicycle bag, giving special +prominence to the shaving tackle. He had just finished a summary +toilet when there was a tap on the door, and, suppressing an +exclamation of impatience--for he dearly wanted time and solitude +for collected thought--he admitted Bridget. + +"Well, Nannie," he said, "come for a gossip?" + +"Yess. I can hardly bear to take my eyes off you, for you've +changed, you _have_ changed. And yet, I don't know? You don't look +much older than you wass when you went off to London to be an +architect. Your cheek--" (lifting her hand and stroking it, while +David tried hard not to wince) "Your cheek's as soft and smooth as +it was then, as any young girl's. Wherever you've been, the world +has not treated you very bad. No one would have dreamt you'd been +all the way to South Africa to them Wild Boars. But some men wear +wonderful well. I suppose your father giv' you a bit of a shock? +He's much older looking; and he wassn't suffering, to speak of, from +his sight when you went away. And now he can hardly see to read even +with his new spectol. Old Doctor Murgatroyd can't do nothing for +him--Advises him to go to see some Bristol or London eye-doctor. But +after you seemed to disappear in Africa he had no heart for trying +to get his sight back. He'd sit for hours doing nothing but think +and talk, all about old Welsh times, or Bible times. Of course he +knows hiss services by heart; hiss only job wass with the +Lessons.... But you see, he'd often only have me and the girl and +Tom in church. There's a new preacher up at Little Bethel that's +drawn all the village folk to hear him. But your father'll be a +different man now--you see, he'll be like a boy again. And if you +could stay long enough, you might take him to Bristol--or Clifton I +think it wass--to see if they could do anything about his eyes.... + +"The past's the past and we aren't going to say no more about it, +and now you've turned over a new leaf--somehow I _can't_ feel you're +the same person--don't go worrying yourself about that slut Jenny. +_She's_ all right. After your baby was born at her mother's, she +went into service at Llanelly and there she met a miner who's at +work on the new coal mine in Gower. He wasn't a bad sort of chap and +when he'd heard her story he said for a matter of twenty pound he'd +marry her and take over her baby. So your father paid the twenty +pounds, and if she'll only keep straight she'll be none the worse +for what's happened. I always said it wass my fault. It wass the +year I had to go away to my sister, and your father had to go to St. +David's, and after all, if it hadn't 'a-been you, it 'd 'a-been +young Evan. Why there's bin some girls in the village have had two +and even three babies before they settled down and got married. Now +we must dish up supper. I've given you lots and lots of pancakes and +the cream and honey you wass always so fond of--you bad boy--" She +ventured a kiss on the smooth cheek of her nursling and heavily +descended the stairs. + + +David had a very bad night, because to please his old nurse he had +eaten too many of her pancakes with cream and honey. In fact, he had +at last to tip-toe down through a sleeping house cautiously to let +himself out and relieve his feelings by pacing the verandah till the +nausea passed off. After that he lay long awake trying to size up +the situation. He got his thoughts at last into some such shape as +this:-- + +"It's clear I was a regular young rake before I was sent up to +London to be Praddy's pupil. Apparently I seduced the housemaid or +kitchenmaid--my father's establishment seems to consist of Nannie +who is housekeeper and cook, and a maid who does housework and +helps in the kitchen--and this unfortunate girl who fell a prey to +my solicitations--or more likely misled me--afterwards gave birth to +a child attributed either to my fatherhood or the gardener's. But +the matter has been hushed up by a payment of twenty pounds and the +girl is now married and respectable and ought to give no further +trouble. I suppose that was a climax of naughtiness on my part and +the main reason why I was sent away. The two people who matter most +have received me without doubt or question, but the one to be +wary about is the old nurse, whose very affection makes her +inconveniently inquisitive. _Mem._ get up and lock my door, or else +she may come in with hot water or something in the morning and take +me by surprise. + +"The original David is evidently dead and well out of the way. There +can be no harm in my taking his place, at any rate for a few years: +it may give the old man new life and genuine happiness, for I shall +play my part as a good son, and certainly shall cost him nothing. +I'll begin by taking him to an oculist and finding out what is wrong +with his eyes.... Probably only cataract. It may be possible to +effect a cure and he can then finish his book on the history of +Glamorganshire from earliest times. Must remember, by the bye, that +the Welsh change most of the old _m's_ into _f's_ and that this +country is called Forganwg, with the _w_ pronounced like _oo_, and +the _f_ like _v_. Must learn some Welsh. What a nuisance. But +nothing is worth doing if it isn't done well. If I can keep this +deception up this would be a jolly place to come to for occasional +holidays, and I simply couldn't have a better reference to +respectability, sex and station with the benchers of Lincoln's Inn +than 'my father,' the Revd. Howel Williams, Vicar of Pontystrad. +They'll probably want a second or a third reference. Can I rely on +Praddy? Is it possible I might work up my acquaintance with that +professor whom I met in the train? I'll see. Perhaps I could attend +classes of his if he lectures in London." + +Then the plotting David fell asleep at last and woke to hear the +loud tapping on his door at eight o'clock, of Bridget, rather +surprised to find the door locked, but entering (when he had garbed +himself in his Norfolk jacket and opened the door), with hot water +for shaving and a cup of tea. + +It was a hot July morning, and while he dressed, the southern breeze +came in through the open window scented by the roses and the lemon +verbena growing against the wall. His father was pacing up and down +the hall and the verandah restlessly awaiting him, fearing lest the +whole episode of the day before might not have been one of his +waking dreams. His failing sight made reading almost a torture and +writing more a matter of feeling than visual perception. Time +therefore hung wearisomely on his hands; Bridget was not a good +reader, besides being too busy a housekeeper to have time for it. +Had David really returned to him? Would he sometimes read aloud and +sometimes write his letters, or even the finish of his History? Too +good to be true! + +But there was David coming down the stairs, greeting him with tender +affection. "Read and write for you, father? Of course! But before I +go back to London--and unfortunately I _must_ go back early in +August--I'm going to take you to see an oculist--Bristol or Clifton +perhaps--and get your sight restored." + +After breakfast, however, the father decided he must take David +round the village, to see and be seen. David was not very anxious to +go, but as the Revd. Howel looked disappointed he gave in. + +It had to be got over some time or other. So they first visited the +church, a building in the form of a cross, with an imposing +battlemented tower. Here David asked to inspect the registers and +found therein (while the old gentleman silently prayed or sat in +mute thankfulness in a sunny corner)--the record of his father's +marriage to Mary Vavasour twenty-six years before (Mary was +twenty-three and the Revd. Howel forty at the time) and of his own +baptism two years afterwards. + +Then issuing from the church, father and son walked through the +village, the father pointing out the changes for better or worse +that had taken place in four years, and not noticing the vagueness +of his son's memories of either persons or features in the +landscape. The village, like most Welsh villages, was of +white-washed cottages, slate-roofed, but it was embowered with that +luxuriance of foliage and flowers which makes Glamorganshire--out of +sight of the coal-mining--seem an earthly paradise. Every now and +then the Revd. Howel would nudge his son and say: "That man who +spoke was old Goronwy, as big a scoundrel now as he was five years +ago," or he would introduce David to a villager of whom he thought +more favourably. If she were a young woman she generally smirked and +looked sideways; if a man he grunted out a Welsh greeting or only +gave a nod of surly recognition. Several professed fluent +recognition but some said in Welsh "he wasn't a bit like the Mr. +David _they_ had known." Whereupon the Revd. Howel laughed and said: +"Wait till you have been out to South Africa fighting for your king +and country and see if _that_ doesn't change _you_!" + +The visit to the Clifton oculist resulted in a great success. The +oculist after two or three days' preparation in a nursing home +performed the operation and advised David then to leave his father +for a few days (promising if any unfavourable symptoms supervened he +would telegraph) so that he might pass the time in sleep as much as +possible, and with no mental stimulation. During this interval David +transferred himself and his bicycle to Swansea, and thence visited +the Gower caves where he ran up against Rossiter once more and +spent delightful hours being inducted into palaeontology by Rossiter +and his companions. Then back to--by contrast--boresome Clifton +(except for its Zoological Gardens). After another week his father +was well enough to be escorted home. In another fortnight he might +be able to use his eyes, and soon after that would be able to read +and write--in moderation. + +But David could not wait to see his intervention crowned with +complete success. He must keep faith with Honoria who would be +wanting a long holiday in Switzerland; and their joint business must +not suffer by his absence from London. There were, indeed, times +when the peace and comfort and beauty of Pontystrad got hold of him +and he asked himself: "Why not settle down here for the rest of his +life, put aside other ambitions, attempt no more than this initial +fraud, leave the hateful world wherein women had only three chances +to men's seven." Then there would arise once more fierce ambition, +the resolve to avenge Vivien Warren for her handicaps, the desire to +keep tryst with Honoria and to enjoy more of Rossiter's society. +Besides, he ran a constant risk of discovery under the affectionate +but puzzled inspection of the old nurse. In her mind, residence +amongst the "Wild Boars," service in an army, travel and adventure +generally during an absence of five years, as well as emergence from +adolescence into manhood, accounted for much change in physical +appearance, but not sufficiently for the extraordinary change in +_morale_: the contrast between the vicious, untidy, selfish, +insolent boy that had gone off to London with ill-concealed glee in +1896 and this grave-mannered, polite, considerate, pleasant-voiced +young man who had already managed to find good employment in London +before he revealed himself anew to his delighted father. + +These doubts David read in Nannie's mind. But he would not give +them time and chance to become more precise and formulated. +Gradually she would become used to the seeming miracle. In the +meantime he would return to London, and if his father's recovery was +complete he would not revisit "home" till Christmas. As soon as he +was able to write, his father would forward him the copy of his +birth-certificate, and he would likewise answer in the sense agreed +upon any letters of reference or enquiry: would state the +apprenticeship to architecture with Praed A.R.A., and then the +impulse to go out to South Africa, the slight wound--David insisted +it was slight, a fuss about nothing, because he had enquired about +necrosis of the jaw and realized that even if he had recovered it +would have left indisputable marks on face and throat. In fact there +were so many complications involved in an escape from the Boers, +only to be justified under the code of honour prevailing in war +time, that he would rather his father said little or nothing about +South Africa but left him to explain all that. A point of view +readily grasped by the Revd. Howel, who to get such a son back would +even have not thought too badly of desertion--and the negative +letters of the War Office said nothing of that. + +So early in September, after the most varied, anxious, successful +six weeks in his life--so far--David Vavasour Williams returned to +Fig Tree Court, Inner Temple. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +READING FOR THE BAR + + +It had been a hot, windless day in London, in early September. +Though summer was in full swing in the country without a hint of +autumn, the foliage in the squares and gardens of the Inns of Court +was already seared and a little shrivelled. The privet hedges were +almost black green; and the mould in the dismal borders that they +screened looked as though it had never known rain or hose water and +as if it could no more grow bright-tinted flowers than the asbestos +of a gas stove which it resembled in consistency and colour. It was +now an evening, ending one of those days which are peculiarly +disheartening to a Londoner returned from a long stay in the depths +of the country--a country which has hills and streams, ferny +hollows, groups of birches, knolls surmounted with pines, meadows of +lush, emerald-green grass, full-foliaged elms, twisted oaks, +orchards hung with reddening apples, red winding lanes between +unchecked hedges, blue mountains in the far distance, and the +glimpse of a river or of ponds large enough to be called a mere or +even a lake. The exhausted London to which David Williams had +returned a few days previously had lost a few thousands of its +West-end and City population--just, in fact, most of its interesting +if unlikable folk, its people who mattered, its insolent spoilt +darlings whom you liked to recognize in the Carlton atrium, in Hyde +Park, in a box at the theatre: yet the frowsy, worthy millions were +there all the same. The air of its then smelly streets was used up +and had the ammoniac strench of the stable. It was a weary London. +The London actors had not returned from Cornwall and Switzerland. +Provincial companies enjoyed--a little anxiously owing to uncertain +receipts at the box office--a brief license on the boards of famous +play-houses. The newspapers had exhausted the stunt of the silly +season and were at their flattest and most yawn-provoking. The South +African War had reached its dreariest stage.... + +Bertie Adams on this close September evening had out-stayed the +other employes of _Fraser and Warren_ in their fifth floor office at +No. 88-90 Chancery Lane. He had remained after office hours to do a +little work, a little "self-improvement"; and he was just about to +close the outer office and leave the key with the housekeeper, when +the lift came surging up and out of it stepped a young man in a +summer suit and a bowler hat who, to Bertie's astonishment, not only +dashed straight at the door of the partners' room, but opened its +Yale lock with a latch-key as though long accustomed to do so. "But, +sir!..." exclaimed the junior clerk (his promotion to that rank had +tacitly dated from Vivie Warren's departure). "It's all right," said +the stranger. "I'm Mr. David Williams and I've come to draw up some +notes for Mrs. Claridge. I dare say Miss Fraser has told you I +should work in the office every now and then whilst my cousin--Miss +Warren, you know--is away. You needn't wait, though you can close +the outer office before you go; and, by the bye, you might fetch me +_Who's Who_ for the present year." All this was said a little +breathlessly. + +Bertie brought the volume, then only half the size of its present +bulk, because it lacked our new nobility and gave no heed to your +favourite recreation. D.V. Williams stood in the yellow light of the +west window, reading a letter... "Cousin? No! Twin brother, +perhaps; but had she one?..." mused Bertie... and then, that +never-to-be-forgotten voice ... "Here's 'Oo's Oo--er--Hoo's Hoo, I +mean.... Miss..." He only added the last word as by some +sub-conscious instinct. + +"_Mister_ Williams," said Vivien-David-Warren Williams, facing him +with resolute eyes. "Be quite clear about that, Adams; _David +Vavasour Williams_, Miss Warren's cousin." + +"Indeed I will be, Miss ... Mister ... er ... Sir..." said the +transfigured Bertie (his brain voice saying over and over again in +ecstasy ... "_I_ tumble to it! _I_ tumble to it!"). And then again +"_Indeed_ I will, Mr. Williams. I'm a bit stupidlike this evenin' +... readin' too much.... May I stay and help you, Sir? I'm pretty +quick on the typewriter, Miss Warren may have told you ... Sir ... +and I ain't--I mean--_I am not_--half bad with me shorthand.... You +know--I mean, _she_ would know I'd joined them evenin' classes..." + +"Thank you, Adams; but if you have joined the evening classes you +oughtn't to interrupt your attendance there. I can _quite_ manage +here alone and you need not be afraid: I shall leave everything +properly closed. You could give up the key of the outer office as +you go out. You may often find me at work here after office hours, +but that need not disturb you ... and I need hardly say, after all +Miss Fraser and Miss Warren have told me about you, I rely on you to +be at all times thoroughly discreet and not likely to discuss the +work of this firm or my share in it with any one?"... + +"Indeed you may ... Mr. Williams ... indeed you may.... Oh! I'm so +happy.... Good-night ... Sir!" + +And Adams's heart was too full for attendance at a lecture on Roman +law. He went off instead to the play. He himself belonged now to the +world of romance. He knew of things--and wild horses and red-hot +tweezers should not tear the knowledge from him, or make him +formulate his deductions--he knew of things as amazing, as prodigal +of developments as anything in the problem play enacted beyond the +pit and the stalls; he was the younger brother of Herbert Waring and +the comrade of Jessie Joseph: at that moment deceiving the sleuth +hounds of Stage law by parading in her fiance's evening dress and +going to prison for his sake. + +Beryl Claridge had taken up much of Vivie Warren's work on the 1st +of August in that year, while Honoria Fraser was touring in +Switzerland. Miss Mullet and Miss Steynes were replaced (Steynes +staying on a little later to initiate the new-comers) by two young +women so commonplace yet such efficient machines that their names +are not worth hunting up or inventing. If I have to refer to them I +will call them Miss A. and Miss B. + +Beryl Claridge was closely scanned by Bertie Adams, and frequently +compared in his mind with the absent and idealized Vivie. He decided +that although she was shrewd and clever and very good-looking, he +did not like her. She smoked too many cigarettes for 1901. She had +her curly hair "bobbed" (though the term was not invented then). She +put up her feet too high and too often; so much so that the +scandalized Bertie saw she wore black knickerbockers and no +petticoats under her smart "tailor-made." She snapped your head off, +was short, sharp and insolent, joked too much with the spectacled +women clerks (who became her willing slaves); then would ask Bertie +about his best girl and tell him he'd got jolly good teeth, a good +biceps and quite a nice beginning of a moustache. + +But she was a worker: no doubt of that! Of course, in the dead +season there were not many clients to shock or to win over by her +nonchalant manners, only a few women who required advice as to +houses, stocks, and shares, law, or private enquiries as to the +good faith of husbands or fiances. Such as found their way up in the +lift were a little disappointed at seeing Beryl in Vivie's chair or +at not being received by their old friend Honoria Fraser. But Beryl +was too good a business woman to put them off with any license of +speech or manners. For the rest she spent August and early September +in "mugging up" the firm's business. Although deep down in her +curious little heart, under all her affectation of hardness and +insolent disdain of public or family opinion she firmly loved her +architect and the children she had borne him, she desired quite as +passionately to be self-supporting, to earn a sufficient income of +her own, to be dependent on no one. She might have her passing +caprices and her loose and flippant mode of talking, but she wasn't +going to be a failure, a cadger, a parasite, a "fallen" woman. She +fully realized that in England no woman _has_ fallen who is +self-supporting, whose income meets her expenses and who pays her +way. Given those guarantees, all else that she does which is not +actually criminal is eventually put down to mere eccentricity. + +So Honoria's offer and Honoria's business provided her with a most +welcome opening. She realized the opportunities that lay before this +Woman's Office for General Inquiries, established in the closing +years of the nineteenth century--this business that before Woman's +enfranchisement nibbled discreetly at the careers and the openings +for profit-making hitherto rigidly reserved for Man. She wasn't +going to let Honoria down. Honoria, she realized, was in herself +equivalent to many thousands of pounds in capital. Her reputation +was flawless. She was known to and esteemed by a host of women of +the upper middle class. Her Cambridge reputation for learning, her +eventual inheritance of eighty thousand pounds were unexpressed +reasons for many a woman of good standing preferring to confide her +affairs to the judgment of _Fraser and Warren_, in preference to +dealing with male legal advisers, male land agents, men on the Stock +Exchange, men in house property business. + +So Beryl became in most respects a source of strength to Honoria +Fraser, deprived for a time of the overt co-operation of her junior +partner. + +Beryl in the first few weeks of her stay evinced small interest in +the departure of Vivien Warren and her reasons for going abroad. She +had a scheme of her own in which her architect would take a +prominent part, for providing women--authoresses, actresses, or the +wives of the newly enriched--with week-end cottages; the desire for +which was born with the Twentieth century and fostered by the +invention of motors and bicycles. Cases before the firm for opinions +on intricate legal problems Beryl was advised to place before the +consideration of one of Honoria's friends, a law student, Mr. D.V. +Williams, who would shortly be back from his holiday and who had +agreed to look in at the office from time to time and go through +such papers as were set aside for him to read. Beryl had +remarked--without any intention behind it--on seeing some of his +notes initialled V.W. that it was rum he should have the same +initials as that Vivie girl whom she remembered at Newnham ... who +was "so silent and standoffish and easily shocked." But she noticed +later that when Mr. Williams got to work his initials were really +three and not two--D.V.W. One thing with the other: her departure +from the office at the regular closing hour--five--so that she might +see her babies before they were put to bed; Williams's habit of +coming to work after six; kept them from meeting till the October of +1901. When they did meet after Honoria's return from Switzerland, +Beryl scanned the law student critically; decided he was rather +nice-looking but very pre-occupied; perhaps engaged to some girl +whose parents objected; rather mysterious, _quand meme_; she had +heard some one say this Mr. David Williams was a cousin or something +of Vivie Warren ... what if he were in love with Vivie and she had +gone away because she had some fad or other about not wanting to +marry? Well! All this could be looked into some other time, if it +were worth bothering about at all. Or could Williams be spoony on +Honoria? After her money? He was much younger--evidently--but young +men adored ripe women, and young girls idolized elderly soldiers. +_C'etait a voir_ (Beryl ever since she had been to Paris on a stolen +honeymoon with the architect liked saying things to herself in +French). + +Towards the end of October, David received at Fig Tree Court a +letter from his father in Glamorganshire. + + Pontystrad Vicarage, + _October_ 20, 1901. + + MY DEAR SON,-- + + The improvement in my sight continues. I can now read a + little every day, by daylight, without pain or fatigue, and + write letters. I feel I owe you a long one; but I shall + write a portion each day and not try my eyes unduly. + + I am glad to know you are now settled down in chambers at + Fig Tree Court in the Temple and have begun your studies for + the Bar. You could not have taken up a finer profession. + What seems to me so wonderful is that you should be able to + earn your living at the same time and be no charge on me. I + accept your assurances that you need no support; but never + forget, my dear Son, that if you _do_, I am ready and + willing to help. You sowed your wild oats--perhaps we both + exaggerated the sins of the wild years--at any rate you have + made a noble reparation. What a splendid school the Colonies + must be! What a difference between the David who left me + five years ago for Mr. Praed's studio and the David who + returned to me last summer! I can never be sufficiently + thankful to Almighty God for the change He has wrought in + you! No lip religion, but a change of heart. I presume you + explained everything to the Colonial Office after you got + back to London and that you are now free to take up a civil + career? The people out there never sent me any further + information; but the other day one of my letters to you + (written after I had received the sad news) returned to me, + with the information that the hospital you were in had been + captured by the Boers and that you could not be traced. I + enclose it. You can now finish up the story yourself and let + the authorities know how you got away and returned home. + + The other day that impudent baggage Jenny Gorlais came and + asked to see me ... she said her husband was out of work and + refused to give her enough money to provide for all her + children, that he had advised her to apply to _you_ for the + maintenance of _your_ son! Relying on what you had told me I + sent for Bridget and we both told her we had made every + enquiry and now refused absolutely to believe in her stories + of five years ago--that we were sure you were _not_ the + father of her eldest child. Bridget, for example, believed + the postman was its father. Jenny burst into tears, and as + she did not persist in her claim my heart was moved, and I + gave her ten shillings, but told her _pretty plainly_ that + if she ever made such a claim again I should go to the + police. You should have heard Bridget defending you! _Such_ + a champion. If you want a witness to character for your + references you should call _her_! She is loud in your + praise. + + _October_ 22. + + There is one thing I want to tell you; and it is easier to + write it than say it. Your mother did not die when you were + three years old--much worse: she left me--ran away with an + engineer who was tracing out the branch railway. He seemed a + nice young fellow and I had him often up at the Vicarage, + and _that_ was the way he repaid my hospitality! He wrote to + me a year afterwards asking me to divorce her. As though a + Clergyman of the Church of England could do such a thing! I + had offered to take her back--not then--it would have been a + mockery--but by putting advertisements into the South Wales + papers. But after her paramour's letter--which I did not + answer--I never heard any more about her.... + +["Damn it all," said David to himself at this juncture of the +letter--he was training himself to swear in a moderate, gentlemanly +way--"Damn it all! Whatever I do, it seems I _cannot_ come from +altogether respectable stock."...] + + You grew up therefore without a mother's care, though good + Bridget did her best. When you were a child I fear I rather + neglected you. I was so disappointed and embittered that I + sought consolation in the legends of our beloved country and + in Scriptural exegesis. You were rather a naughty boy at + Swansea Grammar School and somewhat of a scamp at Malvern + College--Well! we won't go over all that again. I quite + understand your reticence about the past. Once again I think + the blame was mine as much as yours. I ought to have + interested myself more in your pursuits and games ... what a + pity, by the bye, that you seem to have lost your gift of + drawing and painting! I do remember how at one time we were + drawn together over the old Welsh legends and the very + clever drawings you made of national heroes and + heroines--they seemed to come on you as quite a surprise + when I took them out of the old portfolio. + + But about your mother--for it is necessary you should know + all I can tell you in case you have to answer questions as + to your parentage. Your mother's name was, as you know, Mary + Vavasour. It is a common name in South Wales though it seems + to be Norman French. She came to our Pontystrad school as a + teacher in 1873. Her father was something to do with mining + at Merthyr. I fell in love with her--she had a sweet + face--and married her in 1874. You were born two years + afterwards. Bridget had been my housekeeper before I was + married and I asked her to stay on lest your mother should + be inexperienced at first in the domestic arts. They never + got on well together and when Mary had recovered from her + confinement and seemed disposed to take up housekeeping I + sent away poor Bridget reluctantly and only took her back + after your mother's flight. Bridget was a second mother to + you as you know, though I fear you never showed her much + affection till these later days. + + + _October_ 23. + + My eyes seem to be improving instead of getting tired with + the new delights of reading and writing. I owe all this to + you and to the clever oculist at Clifton. Dr. Murgatroyd + from Pontyffynon looked in here the other day, to ask about + your return. He seemed almost to grudge me my restored sight + because I had got it from other people's advice. Said _he_ + could have advised an operation only he never believed my + heart would stand it. When I told him they had mixed the + anaesthetic with oxygen he became quite angry--and exclaimed + against these new-fangled notions. But I must not use up my + new found energy writing about him. I want to finish my + letter in a business-like fashion so that you may know all + that is necessary to be known about yourself and your + position. You may have at any moment to answer questions + before you get called to the Bar, and with your defective + memory--I am glad to hear things in the past are becoming + clearer to you--I am sure with God's grace you will wholly + recover soon from the effects of your wound and your + illness--What was I writing? I meant to say that you ought + to know the main facts about your family and your position. + + I was an only son. Your grandfather was a prosperous farmer + and auctioneer. You have distant cousins, Vaughans and + Williamses, and some others living at Shrewsbury named + Price. I have written to none of them about your return + because they never evinced any interest in me or my + concerns. Your mother's people, her Vavasour relations at + Cardiff--did not seem to me to be very respectable, though + her father was a well-educated man for his position. He + died--I heard--in a mine accident. + + I am not poorly off for a Welsh clergyman. My mother--a + Price of Ystrwy--wanted me to go into the Church and + prevailed on your grandfather to send me first to Malvern + and next to Cambridge. It was at Cambridge that I met your + comrade's father--Sam Gardner, I mean. He was rather wild in + his college days and to tell you the truth, I never cared to + keep up with him much--he had such very rowdy friends. My + mother died while I was at Cambridge and in his later years + your grandfather married again--his housekeeper--and rather + muddled his affairs, because at one time he was quite well + off. + + After I was ordained he purchased for me the advowson of + this living. All that came to me from his estate, however, + was a sum of about eleven thousand pounds. This used to + bring me in about five hundred pounds a year, and in + addition to that was the fluctuating two hundred and fifty + pounds income from my benefice. I took about three thousand + pounds out of my capital to pay the debts you ran up, to + article you to Mr. Praed; and, I must admit, to get my + "Tales from Taliessin" and "Legends of the Welsh Saints" + privately printed at Cardiff. I am afraid I wasted much good + money on the desire to see my Cymraeg studies in print. + + Well: there I am! with about eight or nine thousand pounds + to leave. I have not altered my will--leaving it all to you, + subject to an annuity of L50 a year to your faithful Nannie. + I was projecting an alteration in case of your death, when + you most happily returned. I may live another ten years yet. + You have put new life into me. One charge, however, I was + going to have laid on you; while you were with me I could + not bear to speak of these matters. If at any time after I'm + gone you should come across your unhappy mother and find her + in distressed circumstances, I bid you provide for her, but + how much, I leave entirely to your judgment. Meantime, here + I am with an income of nearly L700 a year. I live very + simply, as you see, but I give away a good deal in local + charity. The people are getting better wages now; in any + case they are usually most ungrateful. I feel I should be + happier if I diverted some of this alms-giving to you. You + must find this preparatory life very expensive. You must let + me send you twenty-five pounds every half-year for pocket + money. Here is a cheque on the South Wales Bank for the + first instalment. And remember, if you are in _any_ + difficulty about your career that a little money can get + over do not hesitate to apply to me. + + Your loving father, + HOWEL VAUGHAN WILLIAMS. + + P.S. I have taken five days to write this but see how steady + the handwriting is. It is a pleasure to me to look on my own + handwriting again. And I feel I owe it all to you! I also + forgot in the body of the letter to tell you one curious + thing. You know we are here on the borders of an interesting + vein of limestone which runs all round the coal beds. I dare + say you remember as a boy of fifteen or so spraining your + ankle in Griffith's Hole? Well Griffith's Hole turns out to + be the entrance into a wonderful cave in the limestone. + Hither came the other day a party of scientific men who + think that majestic first chapter of Genesis to be a + Babylonian legend! It appears they discovered or thought + they discovered the remains of Ancient man in Griffith's + Hole. I invited them to tea at the Vicarage and amongst them + was a very learned gentleman quite as wise as but less + aggressive than the others. He was known as "Professor + Rossiter"; and commenting on the similarity of my name with + that of a "very agreeable young gentleman" whom he had + recently seen in Gower, it turned out that you were an + acquaintance of his. He thinks it a great pity that you are + reading for the Bar and wishes you had taken up Science + instead. At any rate he hopes you will go and see him in + London one day--No. 1 Park Crescent. Portland Place. + + H. V. W. + +Several times in reading this letter the tears stood in David's +eyes. So much trust and kindness made him momentarily sorry at the +double life he was leading. If it were possible to establish the +death of the wastrel he was personating he would perhaps allow his +"father" to live on in this new-found happiness; but if the real +D.V.W. were alive some effort must be made to help him out of the +slough--perhaps to bring him back. He would try to find out through +Frank Gardner. + +Some time before Vivie Warren had taken her departure, she had left +behind in Honoria Fraser's temporary care a Power of Attorney duly +executed in favour of David Vavasour Williams; and reciprocally +D.V.W. had executed another in favour of Vivien Warren. Both these +documents lay securely in the little safe that David had had fitted +into the wall of his sitting-room in Fig Tree Court. Also David had +opened an account in his own name after he got back from Wales, at +the Temple Bar Branch of the C. &. C. Bank. Into this he now paid +the cheque for twenty-five pounds which his father had sent as +pocket money. + +A few days afterwards, Vivie Warren reappeared--in spirit--and +indited a letter to Frank Gardner's agents in Cape Town. She was +careful to give no address at the head of the letter and to post it +at Victoria Station. In it she said she was starting on a tour +abroad, but asked him to do what he could to trace the boy who had +lain so grievously ill in the hospital at Colesberg. Had he +recovered after the Boers had taken Colesberg? As a rumour had +reached her that he had, and had even returned to England. She +wanted to know, and if they ever met again would tell him why. +Meanwhile if he got any news would he address it to _her_, care of +Honoria Fraser, Queen Anne's Mansions, St. James's Park; as her own +address would be quite uncertain for the present. Or it would do +quite as well if he wrote to Praddy; but _not_ to his father, which +might only needlessly agitate the old clergyman down in Wales, whom +Vivie by an unexpected chance had come to know. + +The first result of this letter a year later was a statement of +Frank's belief, almost certainty, that his acquaintance of the +hospital _had_ died and been buried while the Boers held possession +of Colesberg; and that indeed was the utmost that was ever learnt +about the end of the ill-fated son of Howel Vaughan Williams and +Mary his wife, who were wedded in sunshine and with fair prospects +of happiness in the early summer of 1874. + +The new-born David Vavasour Williams having by November settled all +these details, having arranged to pay the very modest rent of +fifty-five pounds for his three rooms at Fig Tree Court, and +twenty-five pounds a year to the housekeeper who was to "do" for him +and another gentleman on the same floor--a gentleman who was most +anxious to be chummy with the new tenant of the opposite chambers +but whose advances were firmly though civilly kept at bay--having +likewise passed his preliminary examination (since he could not avow +that inside his clothes he was a third wrangler), having satisfied +his two "godfathers" of the Bar that he was a fit person to +recommend to the Benchers; having arranged to read with a barrister +in chambers, and settled all other preliminaries of importance: +decided that he would pay an afternoon call on the Rossiters in +Portland Place and see how the land lay there. + +Already a strange exhilaration was spreading over David's mind. Life +was not twice but ten times more interesting than it had appeared to +the prejudiced eyes of Vivien Warren. It was as though she--he--had +passed through some magic door, gone through the looking-glass and +was contemplating the same world as the one Vivie had known +for--shall we say fifteen?--years, but a world which viewed from a +different standpoint was quite changed in proportions, in colour, in +the conjunction of events. It was a world in which everything was +made smooth and easy before the semblance of manhood. What a joy to +be rid of skirts and petticoats! To be able to run after and leap on +to an omnibus, to wear the same hat day after day just stuck on top +of her curly head. Not, perhaps, to change her clothes, between her +uprising and her retirement to bed, unless she were going out to +dine. No simpering. No need to ask favours. No compliments. It is +true she felt awkward in the presence of women, not quite the same, +even with Honoria. But with men. What a difference! She felt she had +never really known men before. At first the frank speech, the +expletives, the smoking-room stories made her a little uncomfortable +and occasionally called forth an irrepressible blush. But this was +not to her disadvantage. It made her seem younger, and created a +good impression on her tutors and acquaintances. "A nice modest boy, +fresh from the country--pity to lead him astray--won't preserve his +innocence long--" was the vaguely defined impression, contact with +her--him, I mean--made on most decent male minds. Many a lad comes +up from the country to commence his career in London who knew far +less than the unfortunate Vivie had been compelled to know of the +shady side of life; who is compelled to lead a somewhat retired life +by straitness of means; whose determination towards probity and +regularity of life is respected by the men of law among whom he +finds himself. + +But David having decided--he did not quite know why--to pursue his +acquaintance with Professor Rossiter; having written to ask if he +might do so (as a matter of fact he frequently saw Rossiter walking +across the gardens of New Square to go to the museum of the Royal +College of Surgeons: he recollected him immediately but Rossiter did +not reciprocate, being absent-minded); and having received a card +from "Linda Rossiter" to say they would be at home throughout the +winter on Thursdays, between 4 and 6: went on one of those Thursdays +and made definite progress with the great friendship of his life. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE ROSSITERS + + +The Rossiters' house in Park Crescent was at the northern end of +Portland Place, and its high-walled garden--the stables that were +afterwards to become a garage--and Michael Rossiter's long, +glass-roofed studio-laboratory--abutted on one of those quiet, +deadly-respectable streets at the back that are called after Devon +or Dorset place names. + +The house is now a good deal altered and differently numbered, a +portion of it having been destroyed in one of the 1917 air-raids, +when the Marylebone Road was strewn with its broken glass for twenty +yards. But in the winter of 1901-2 and onwards till 1914 it was a +noted centre of social intercourse between Society and Science. The +Rossiters were well enough off--he made quite two thousand a year +out of his professorial work and his books, and her income which was +L5,000 when she first married had risen to L9,000 after they had +been married ten years; through the increase in value of Leeds town +property. Mrs. Rossiter had had two children, but were both dead, +her facile tears were dried, she satisfied her maternal instinct by +the keeping of three pug dogs which her husband secretly detested. +She also had a scarlet-and-blue macaw and two cockatoos and a +Persian cat; but these last her husband liked or tolerated for their +colour or their biological interest; only, as in the case of the +dogs, he objected (though seldom angrily, out of consideration for +his wife's feelings) to their being so messily and inopportunely +fed. + +Linda Rossiter was liable to lose her pets as she had lost her two +children by alternating days of forgetfulness with weeks of lavish +over-attention. But as she readily gave way to tears on the least +remonstrance, Michael in the course of eleven years of married life +remonstrated as little as possible. A clever, tactful parlour-maid +and two good housemaids, a manservant who was devoted to the +"professor" and a taxidermist who assisted him in his experiments +did the rest in keeping the big house tolerably tidy and +presentable. Rossiter himself was too intent on the stars, the gases +of decomposition, the hidden processes of life, miscegenation in +star-fish, microbic diseases in man, beasts, birds and bees, the +glands of the throat, the suprarenal capsules and the chemical +origin of life to care much for aesthetics, for furniture and house +decoration. He was the third son of an impoverished Northumbrian +squire who on his part cared only for the more barbarous +field-sports, and when he could take his mind off them believed that +at some time and place unspecified Almighty God had dictated the +English bible word for word, had established the English Church and +had scrupulously prescribed the functions and limitations of woman. +His wife--Michael Rossiter's tenderly-loved mother--had died from a +neglected prolapsus of the womb, and the old rambling house in +Northumberland situated in superb scenery, had in its furniture +grown more and more hideous to the eye as early and mid-Victorian +fashions and ideals receded and modern taste shook itself free from +what was tawdry, fluffy, stuffy, floppy, messy, cheaply imitative, +fringed and tasselled and secretive. + +Michael himself from sheer detestation of the surroundings under +which he had grown to manhood favoured the uncovered, the naked wood +or stone or slate, the bare floor, the wooden settee or +cane-bottomed chair, the massive side-board, the bare mantelpiece +and distempered wall. On the whole, their house in Portland Place +satisfied tolerably well the advanced taste in domestic scenery of +1901. But your eye was caught at once by the additions made by Mrs. +Rossiter. Linda conceived it was her womanly mission to lighten the +severity of Michael's choice in furniture and decorations. She +introduced rickety and expensive screens that were easily knocked +over; photographs in frames which toppled at a breath; covers on +every flat surface that could be covered--occasional tables, tops of +grand pianos. If she did not put frills round piano legs, she placed +tasselled poufs about the drawing-room that every short-sighted +visitor fell over, and used large bows of slightly discoloured +ribbon to mask unneeded brackets. In the reception rooms +food-bestrewn parrot stands were left where they ought never to be +seen; and there were gilt-wired parrot cages; baskets for the pugs +lined with soiled shawls; absurd ornaments, china cats with +exaggerated necks, alabaster figures of stereotyped female beauty +and flowerpot stands of ornate bamboo. She loved portieres, and she +would fain have mitigated the bareness of the panelled or +distempered walls; only that here her husband was firm. She +unconsciously mocked the few well-chosen, well-placed pictures on +the walls (which she itched to cover with a "flock" paper) by +placing in the same room on bamboo easels that matched the +be-ribboned flower-stands pastel, crayon, or _gouache_ studies of +the worst possible taste. + +Michael's library alone was free from her improvements, though it +was sometimes littered with her work-bags or her work. She had long +ago developed the dreadful mistake that it "helped" Michael at his +work if she brought hers (perfectly futile as a rule) there too. "I +just sit silently in his room, my dear, and stitch or knit something +for poor people in Marrybone--I'm told you mayn't say Mary-le-bone. +I feel it _helps_ Michael to know I'm there, but of course I don't +interrupt him at his _work_." + +As a matter of fact she did, confoundedly. But fortunately she soon +grew sleepy or restless. She would yawn, as she believed "prettily," +but certainly noisily; or she would wonder "how time was going," and +of course her twenty-guinea watch never went, or if it was going was +seldom within one hour of the actual time. Or she would sneeze six +times in succession--little cat-like sneezes that were infinitely +disturbing to a brain on the point of grasping the solution of a +problem. Throughout the winter months she had a little cough. Oh no, +you needn't think I'm preparing the way for decease through +phthisis--it was one of those "kiffy" coughs due in the main to +acidity--too many sweet things in her diet, too little exercise. She +_thought_ she coughed with the greatest discretion but to the jarred +nerves of her husband a few hearty bellows or an asthmatic wheeze +would have been preferable to the fidgety, marmoset-like sounds that +came from under a lace handkerchief. Sometimes he would raise his +eyes to speak sharply; but at the sight of the mild gaze that met +his, the perfect belief that she was a soothing presence in this +room of hard thinking and close writing--this superb room with its +unrivalled library that he owed to the use of her wealth, his angry +look would soften and he would return smile for smile. + +Linda though a trifle fretful on occasion, especially with servants, +a little petulant and huffy with a sense of her own dignity and +importance as a rich woman, was completely happy in her marriage. +She had never regretted it for one hour, never swerved from the +conviction that she and Michael were a perfect match--he, tall, +stalwart, black-haired and strong; she "petite"--she loved the +French adjective ever since it had been applied to her at +Scarborough by a sycophantic governess--petite--she would repeat, +blonde, plump, or better still "potelee" (the governess had later +suggested, when she came to tea and hoped to be asked to stay) +_potelee_, blue-eyed and pink-cheeked. Dresden china and all the +stale similes applied to a type of little woman of whom the modern +world has grown intolerant. + +It was therefore into this _milieu_ that David found himself +introduced one Thursday at the end of November, 1901. He had walked +the short distance from Great Portland Street station. It was a fine +day with a red sunset, and a lemon-coloured, thin moon-crescent +above the sunset. The trees and bushes of Park Crescent were a +background of dull blue haze. The surface of the broad roads was dry +and polished, so his neat, patent-leather boots would still be fit +for drawing-room carpets. + +A footman in a very plain livery--here Michael was firm--opened the +massive door. David passed between some statuary of too frank a +style for Linda's modest taste and was taken over by a butler of +severe aspect who announced him into the great drawing-room as Mr. +David Williams. + +He recognized Rossiter at once, standing up with a tea-cup and +saucer, and presumed that a fluffy, much be-furbelowed little lady +at the main tea-table was Mrs. Rossiter, since she wore no hat. +There was besides a rather alarming concourse of men and women of +the world as he kept his eyes firmly fixed on Mrs. Rossiter for his +immediate goal. + +Rossiter met him half-way, shook hands cordially and introduced him +to his wife who bowed with one of her "sweet" looks. For the moment +David did not interest her. She was much more interested in trying +to give an impression of profundity to Lady Feenix who was +commenting on the professor's discoveries of the strange properties +of the thyroid gland. A few introductions were effected--Lady +Towcester, Lady Flower, Miss Knipper-Totes, Lady Dombey, Mr. +Lacrevy, Professor Ray Lankester, Mr. and Mrs. Gosse--and naturally +for the most part David only half caught their names while they, +without masking their indifference, closed their ears to his ("Some +student or other from his classes, I suppose--rather nicely dressed, +rather too good-looking for a young man"); and Rossiter, who had +been interrupted first by Mrs. Rossiter asking him to observe that +Lady Dombey had nothing on her plate, and secondly by David's +entrance, resumed his discourse. Goodness knew that he didn't _want_ +to discourse on these occasions, but Society expected it of him. +There were quite twenty--twenty-two--people present and most of +them--all the women--wanted to go away and say four hours +afterwards: + +"We were (I was) at the Rossiters this afternoon, and the Professor +was fascinating" ("great," "profoundly interesting," "shocking, my +dear," "scandalous," "disturbing," "illuminating," "more-than-usually- +enthralling-only-she-_would_-keep-interrupting-why-_is_-she-such-a-fool?") +according to the idiosyncrasy of the diner-out. "He talked to us +about the thyroid gland--I don't believe poor Bob's got one, between +ourselves--and how if you enlarged it or reduced it you'd adjust +people's characters to suit the needs of Society; and all about +chimpanzi's blood--I believe he _vivisects_ half through the night +in that studio behind the house--being the same as ours; and then +Ray Lankester and Chalmers Mitchell argued about the caeca--caecums, +you know--something to do with appendicitis--of the mammalia, and +altogether we had a high old time--I _always_ learn something on +their Thursdays." + +Well: Rossiter resumed his description of an experiment he was +making--quite an everyday one, of course, for there were at least +three men present to whom he wasn't going to give away clues +prematurely. An experiment on the motor biallaxis of dormice. + +[Mrs. Rossiter had six months previously bought a dormouse in a cage +at a bazaar, and after idolizing it for a week had forgotten all +about it. Her husband had rescued it half starved; his assistant had +fed it up in the laboratory, and they had tried a few experiments on +it with painless drugs with astonishing results.] + +The recital really was interesting and entirely outside the +priggishness of Science, but it was marred in consecutiveness and +simplicity by Mrs. Rossiter's interruptions. "Michael dear, Lady +Dombey's cup!" Or: "Mike, could you cut that cake and hand it +round?" Or, if she didn't interrupt her husband she started stories +and side-issues of her own in a voice that was quite distinctly +heard, about a new stitch in crochet she had seen in the _Queen_, or +her inspection of the East Marrybone soup kitchen. + +However when all had taken as much tea and cakes and _marrons +glaces_ as they cared for--David was so shy that he had only one cup +of tea and one piece of tea-cake--the large group broke up into five +smaller ones. The few gradually converged, and dropping all nonsense +discussed biology like good 'uns, David listening eager-eyed and +enthralled at the marvels just beginning to peep out of the +dissecting and vivisecting rooms and chemical laboratories in the +opening years of the Twentieth century. Then one by one they all +departed; but as David was going too Rossiter detained him by a +kindly pressure on the arm--a contact which sent a half-pleasant, +half-disagreeable thrill through his nerves. + +"Don't hurry away unless you really _are_ pressed for time. I want +to show you some of my specimens and the place where I work." + +David followed him--after taking his leave of Mrs. Rossiter who +accepted his polite sentences--a little stammered--with a slightly +pompous acquiescence--followed him to the library and then through a +curtained door down some steps into a great studio-laboratory, +provided (behind screens) with washing places, and full of +mysteries, with cupboards and shelves and further rooms beyond and a +smell of chloride of lime combined with alcoholic preservatives and +undefined chemicals. After a tour round this domain in which David +was only slightly interested--for lack of the right education +and imagination--so far he--or--she had only the mind of a +mathematician--Rossiter led him back into the library, drew out +chairs, indicated cigarettes--even whiskey and soda if he wanted +it--David declined--and then began to say what was at the back of +his mind:-- + +"We met first in the train, the South Wales Express, you remember? I +fancy you told me then that you had been in South Africa, in this +bungled war, and had been either wounded or ill in some way. In fact +you went so far as to say you had had 'necrosis of the jaw,' a thing +I politely doubted because whatever it was it has left no +perceptible scar. Of course it's damned impertinent of me to +cross-examine you at all, or to ask _why_ you went to and why you +left South Africa. But I don't mind confessing you inspire me with a +good deal of interest. + +"Now the other day--as you know--I made the acquaintance of your +father in Wales--at Pontystrad. I told him I had shown a young +fellow some of those Gower caves and how his name was--like your +father's, 'Williams.' Of course we soon came to an understanding. +Then your father spoke of you in _high_ praise. What a delightful +nature was yours, how considerate and kind you were--don't blush, +though I admit it becomes you--Well you can pretty well guess how he +went on. But what interested me particularly was his next +admission: how different you were as a lad--rather more than the +ordinary wild oats--eh? And how completely an absence in South +Africa had changed you. You must forgive my cheek in dissecting your +character like this. My excuse is that you yourself had rather +vaguely referred to some wound or blood poisoning or operation, on +the jaw or the throat. Not to beat about the bush any more, the idea +came into my mind that _if_ in some way the knife or the enemy's +bullet had interfered with your thyroid gland--Twig what I mean? I +mean, that if your old man has not been exaggerating and that the +difference between the naughty boy whom he sent up to London +in--what was it? 1896?--and the perfectly behaved, good sort of chap +that you are _now_ is no more than what usually happens when young +men lose their cubbishness, _why_--_why_--do you take me?--I ask +myself whether the change had come about through some interference +with the thyroid gland. Do you understand? And I thought, seeing how +intensely interesting this research has become, you might have told +me more about it. Just what _did_ happen to you; where you were +wounded, who attended to you, what operation was performed on the +throat--only the rum thing is there seems to be no scar--well: now +_you_ help me out, that is unless you feel more inclined to say, +'What the _hell_ does it matter to _you_?'"... + +David by this time has grown scarlet with embarrassment and +confusion. But he endeavoured to meet the situation. + +"My character _has_ changed during the last five years, and +especially so since I came back from South Africa. But I am quite +sure it was not due to any operation, on the throat or anywhere +else. I really don't know _why_ I told you that silly falsehood in +the train--about necrosis of the jaw. The fact is that when I was in +hospital--at--Colesberg, a friend of mine in the same ward used--to +chaff me--and say I was going to have necrosis. I had got knocked +over one day--by--the--wind of a shell and thought I was done for, +but it really was next to nothing. P'raps I had a dose of fever on +top. At any rate they kept me in hospital, and one morning the +doctors disappeared and the Boers marched in and when I got well +enough I managed to escape and get away to--er--Cape Town and so +returned--with some money--my friend Frank Gardner lent me." (At +this stage the sick-at-heart Vivie was saying to herself, "_What_ an +account I'm laying up for Frank to honour when he comes back--if he +_does_ come back.") "I don't know _why_ I tell you all this, except +that I ought never to have misled you at the start. But _if_ you are +a kind and good man"--David's voice broke here--"You will forget all +about it and not upset my father, I can _assure_ you I haven't done +_anything_ really wrong. I haven't deserted--some day--perhaps--I +can tell you all about it. But at present all that South African +episode is just a horrid dream--I was more sinned against than +sinning" (tears were rather in the voice at this stage). "I want to +forget all about it--and settle down and vex my father no more. I +want to read for the Bar--a soldier's life is the very _opposite_ to +what I should choose if I were a free agent. But you will trust me, +won't you? You will believe me when I say I've done _nothing_ wrong, +nothing that you, if you knew all the facts, would call wrong...?" + +Speech here trailed off into emotion. Despite the severest +self-restraint the bosom rose and fell. A few tears trickled down +the smooth cheeks--it was an ingratiating boy on the verge of +manhood that Rossiter saw before him. He hastened to say: + +"My _dear_ chap! Don't say another word, unless you like to +blackguard me for my impertinence in putting these questions. I +_quite_ understand. We'll consider the whole thing erased from our +memories. Go on studying for the Bar with all your might, if you +must take up so barren a profession and won't become my pupil in +biology--Great openings, I can tell you, coming now in that +direction." (A pause.) + +"But if it's of any interest to you, just come here as often as you +like in your spare time--either to tea with Mrs. Rossiter or to see +me at work on my experiments. I've taken a great liking to you, if +you'll allow me to say so. I think there's good stuff in you. A +young man reading for the Bar in London is none the worse for a few +friends. He must often feel pretty lonely on a Sunday, for example. +And he may also--now I'm going to be impertinent and paternal +again--he may also pick up undesirable acquaintances, male--and +female. Don't you get feeling lonely, with your home far away in +Wales. Consider yourself free of this place at any rate, and my wife +and I can introduce you to some other people you might like to know. +I might introduce you to Mark Stansfield the Q.C. Do you know any +one in London, by the bye?" + +"Oh yes," said David, smiling with all but one tear dried on a still +coloured cheek. "I know Honoria Fraser--I know Mr. Praed the +architect--" + +"The A.R.A.? Of course; you or your father said you had +been his pupil. H'm. Praed. Yes, I visualize him. Rather a +dilettante--whimsical--I didn't like what I heard of him at one +time. However it's no affair of mine. And Honoria Fraser! She's +simply one of the best women I know. It's curious she wasn't +here--At least I didn't see her--this afternoon. She's a friend of +my wife's. I knew her when she was at Newnham. She had a great +friend--what was it? Violet? No, Vera? Vivien--yes that was it, +_Vivien_ Warren. Of course! Why that business she started for women +in the City somewhere is called _Fraser and Warren_. She was always +wanting to bring this Vivien Warren here. Said she had such a pretty +colouring. I own I rather like to see a pretty woman. But she didn't +come" (pulls at his pipe and thrusts another cigarette on David). +"Went abroad. Seemed rather morose. Some one who came with Honoria +said she had a bad mother, and Honoria very rightly shut him up. By +the bye, _where_ and _how_ did you come to meet Honoria first?" + +(David was on the point of saying--he was so unstrung--"Why we were +at Newnham together." Then resolved to tell another whopper--Indeed +I am told there is a fascination in certain circumstances about +lying--and replied): "Vivien Warren was my cousin. She was a +Vavasour on her mother's side--from South Wales--and my mother was a +Vavasour too--" And as the disguised Vivie said this, some inkling +came into her mind that there _was_ a real relationship between +Catharine Warren _nee_ Vavasour and the Mary Vavasour who was +David's mother. A spasm of joy flashed through her at the +possibility of her story being in some slight degree true. + +"I see," said Rossiter, satisfied, and feeling now that the +interview had lasted long enough and that there would be just time +to glance at his assistant's afternoon work before he dressed for +dinner.... + +"Well, old chap. Good-bye for the present. Come often and see us and +look upon me--I must be fifteen years older than you are--What, +_twenty-four_? Impossible! You don't look a day older than +twenty--in fact, if you hadn't told me you'd been in South +Africa--However as I was saying, look on me as _in loco parentis_ +while you _are_ in London. I'll show you the way out into the hall. +Shall they call you a cab? No? You're quite right. It's a splendid +night for January. Where do you live? Here, write it down in my +address book.... '7 Fig Tree Court, Temple'--What a jolly address! +Are there fig trees in the Temple ... still? P'raps descended from +cuttings or layers the poor Templars brought from the Holy Land." + + +David returned to Fig Tree Court and his studies of criminology. But +his body and mind thrilled with the experiences of the afternoon; +and the musty records in works of repellent binding and close, +unsympathetic print of nineteenth century forgery, poisoning, +assaults-on-the-person, and cruelty-to-children cases for once +failed to hold his close attention. He sat all through the evening +after a supper of bread and cheese and ginger beer in his snug, +small room, furnished principally with well-filled book-shelves. The +room had a glowing fire and a green-shaded reading lamp. He sat +staring beyond his law books at visions, waking dreams that came and +went. The dangers of exposure that opened before him were in these +dreams, but there were other mind-pictures that filled his life with +a glow of colour. How different from the drab horizons that +encircled poor Vivie Warren less than a year ago! Poor Vivie, whom +even FitzJohn's Avenue at Hampstead had rejected, who had long since +been dropped--no doubt on account of rumours concerning her +mother--by the few acquaintances she had made at Cambridge, who had +parents living in South Kensington, Bayswater, and Bloomsbury. Here +was Portland Place receiving her in her guise as David Williams with +open arms. Men and women looked at her kindly, interestedly, and she +could look back at them without that protective frown. At night she +could walk about the town, go to the theatre, stroll along the +Embankment and attract no man's offensive attentions. She could +enter where she liked for a meal, a cup of tea, frequent the museum +of the Royal College of Surgeons when she would without waiting for +a "ladies" day; stop to look at a street fight, cause no sour looks +if she entered a smoking compartment on the train, mingle with the +man-world unquestioned, unhindered, unnoticed, exciting at most a +pleasant off-hand camaraderie due to her youth and good looks. + +Should she go on with the bold adventure? A thousand times yes! +David should break no law in Vivie's code of honour, do real wrong +to no one; but Vivie should see the life best worth living in London +from a man's standpoint. + +David however must be armed at every point and have his course +clearly marked out before his contemplation. He must steep himself +in the geography of South Africa--Why not get Rossiter to propose +him as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society? That _would_ be a +lark because they wouldn't admit women as members: they had refused +Honoria Fraser. David must read up--somewhere--the history of the +South African War as far as it went. He had better find out +something about the Bechuanaland Police Force; how as a member of +such a force he could have drifted as far south as the vicinity of +Colesberg; how thereabouts he could have got sick enough--he +certainly would say nothing more about a wound--to have been put +into hospital. He must find out how he could have escaped from the +Boers and come back to England without getting into difficulties +with the military or the Colonial Office or whoever had any kind of +control over the members of the Bechuanaland Border Police.... + +But the whole South African episode had better be dropped. Rossiter, +after his appeal, would set himself to forget and ignore it. It must +be damped down in the poor old father's mind as of relative +unimportance--after all, his father was a recluse who did not have +many visitors ... by the bye, he must remember to write on the +morrow and explain why he could not come down for Christmas or the +New Year ... would promise a good long visit in the Easter holidays +instead--Must remember that resolution to learn up some Welsh. What +a nuisance it was that you couldn't buy anywhere in London or in +South Wales any book about modern conversation in Welsh. The sort of +Welsh you learnt in the old-fashioned books, which were all that +could be got, was Biblical language--Some one had told David that if +you went into Smithfield Market in the early morning you might meet +the Welsh farmers and stock-drivers who had come up from Wales +during the night and who held forth in the Cymric tongue over their +beasts. But probably their language was such as would shock +Nannie.... Supposing Frank Gardner did come to England? In that case +it might be safer to confide in Frank. He was harum-scarum, but he +was chivalrous and he pitied Vivie. Besides he was a prime +appreciator of a lark. Should she even tell Rossiter? No, of +_course_ not. That was just one of the advantages of being "David." +As "David" she could form a sincere and inspiring friendship with +Rossiter which would be utterly beyond her reach as "Vivie." How +pale beside the comradeship of Honoria now appeared the hand-grips, +the hearty male free-masonry of a man like Rossiter. How ungrateful +however even to make such an admission to herself.... + +At present the only people who knew of her prank and guessed or knew +her purpose were Honoria and Bertie Adams. Honoria! what a noble +woman, what a true friend. Somehow, now she was David, she saw +Honoria in a different light. Poor Norie! She too had her wistful +leanings, her sorrows and disappointments. What a good thing it +would be if her mother decided to die--of course she would, could, +never say any such thing to Norie--to die and set free Honoria to +marry Major Petworth Armstrong! She felt Norie still hankered after +him, but perhaps kept him at bay partly because of her mother's +molluscous clingings--No! she wouldn't even sneer at Lady Fraser. +Lady Fraser had been one of the early champions of Woman's rights. +Very likely it was a dread of Vivie's sneers and disappointment that +had mainly kept back Norie from accepting Major Armstrong's +advances. Well, when next they met she--Vivie--or better still +David--would set that right. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +HONORIA AGAIN + + + 7, Fig Tree Court, Temple. + _March_ 20, 1902. + + + DEAR HONORIA,-- + + I am going down to spend Easter with my people in South + Wales. Before I leave I should so very much like a long talk + with you where we can talk freely and undisturbed. That is + impossible at the Office for a hundred reasons, especially + now that Beryl Claridge has taken to working early in her + new-found zeal, while Bertie Adams deems it his duty to stay + late. I am--really, truly--grieved to hear that your mother + is so ill again. I would not ask to meet her--even if she + was well enough to receive people--because she does not know + me and when one is as ill as she is, the introduction to a + stranger is a horrid jar. But if you _could_ fit in say an + hour's detachment from her side--is it "bed-side" or is she + able to get up?--and could receive me in your own + sitting-room, why then we could have that full and free talk + I should like on your affairs and on mine and on the joint + affairs of _Fraser and Warren_. + + Yours sincerely, + D. V. W. + + + DEAR DAVID,-- + + Come by all means. The wish for a talk is fully reciprocated + on my side. Mother generally tries to sleep in the afternoon + between three and six, and a Nurse is then with her. + + Yours sincerely, + H. F. + +"Mr. David Williams wishes to see you, Miss," said a waiter, +meeting Honoria on a Thursday afternoon, as she was emerging into +their tiny hall from her mother's room. + +"Show him up, please.... Ah _there_ you are, _David_. We must both +talk rather low as mother is easily waked. Come into my study; +fortunately it is at the other end of the flat." + + * * * * * + +They reach the study, and Honoria closes the door softly but firmly +behind them. + +"We never do kiss as a rule, having long ago given up such a messy +form of greeting; but certainly we wouldn't under these +circumstances lest we could be seen from the opposite windows and +thought to be 'engaged'; but though I may seem a little frigid in +greeting you, it is only because of the clothes you are +wearing'--You understand, don't you--?" + +"Quite, dearest. We cannot be too careful. Besides we long ago +agreed to be modern and sanitary in our manners." + +"Won't you smoke?" + +"Well, perhaps it would be more restful," said David, "more manly; +but as a matter of fact of late I have been rather 'off' smoking. It +is very wasteful, and as far as I am concerned it never produced +much effect--either way--on the nerves. Still, it gives one a nice +manly flavour. I always liked the smell of a smoking-room.... And +your mother: how is she?" + +"Very bad, I fear. The doctor tells me she can't last much longer, +and hypocritical as the phrase sounds I couldn't wish her to, unless +these pains can be mitigated, and this dreadful distress in +breathing.... I wonder if some day _I_ shall be like that, and if +behind my back a daughter will be saying she couldn't wish me to +live much longer, unless, etc. I shall miss her _frightfully_, if +she does die.... Armstrong has been more than kind. He has got a +woman's heart for tenderness. He thinks every day of some fresh +palliative until the doctors quite dislike him. Fortunately his +kindness gives mother a fleeting gleam of pleasure. She wants me to +marry him--I don't know, I'm sure.... Whilst she's so bad I don't +feel I could take any interest in love-making--and I suppose we +_should_ make love in a perfunctory way--We're all of us so bound by +conventions. We try to feel dismal at funerals, when often the +weather is radiant and the ride down to Brookwood most exhilarating. +And love-making is supposed to go with marriage ... heigh-ho! What +should you say if I _did_ marry--Major Armstrong...? Did you ever +hear of such a ridiculous name as Petworth? I should have to call +him 'Pet' and every one would think I had gone sentimental in middle +age. How _can_ parents be so unthinking about Christian names? He +can't see the thing as I do; it is almost the only subject on which +he is 'huffy.' _You_ are the other, about which more anon. He says +the Petworth property meant _everything_ to the Armstrongs, to _his_ +branch of the Armstrongs. But for that, they might have been any +other kind of Armstrong--it always kept him straight at school and +in the army, he says, to remember he was an Armstrong of Petworth. +They have held that poor little property (_I_ call it) alongside the +Egmonts and the Leconfields for three hundred years, though they've +been miserably poor. His second name is James--Petworth James +Armstrong. But he loathes being called 'Jimmy.' + +"Of course, dear, I've no illusions. I'm not bad to look at--indeed +I sometimes quite admire my figure when I see myself after my bath +in the cheval glass--but I'm pretty well sure that one of the +factors in Pet's admiration for me was my income. Mother, it seems, +has a little of her own, from one of her aunts, and if the poor +darling is taken--though it is simply horrid considering that +_if_--only that she has talked so freely to Army--I think I like +'Army' far better than 'Pet'--Well I mean she's been trying to tell +him ever since he first came to call that when she is gone I shall +have, all told, in my own right, Five thousand a year. So I took the +first opportunity of letting _him_ know that Two thousand a year of +that would be held in reserve for the work of the firm and for the +Woman's Cause generally.... Look here, I won't babble on much +longer.... I know you're dying to make _me_ confidences.... We'll +ring for tea to be sent in here, and whilst the waiter is coming and +going--Don't they take _such_ a time about it, when they're _de +trop_?--we'll talk of ordinary things that can be shouted from the +_house tops_. + +"I haven't been to the Office for three days. Does everything seem +to be going on all right?" + +_David_: "Quite all right. Bertie Adams tries dumbly to express in +his eyes his determination to see the firm and me through all our +troubles and adventures. I wish I could convey a discreet hint to +him not to be so _blatantly_ discreet. If there were a Sherlock +Holmes about the place he would spot at once that Adams and I shared +a secret.... But about Beryl--" (Enter waiter....) + +_Honoria_ (to waiter): "Oh--er--tea for two please. Remember it must +be China and the still-room maids _must_ see that the water has been +fresh-boiled. And buttered toast--or if you've got muffins...? You +have? Well, then muffins; and of course jam and cake. And--would you +mind--you always try, I know--bringing the things in very +quietly--here--? Because Lady Fraser is so easily waked..." + +(The Swiss waiter goes out, firmly convinced that Honoria's anxiety +for her lady mother is really due to the desire that the mother +should not interrupt a flirtation and a clandestine tea.) + +_Honoria_: "Well, about Beryl?" + +_David_: "Beryl, I should say, is going to become a great woman of +business. But for that, and--I think--a curious streak of fidelity +to her vacillating architect ('How happy could I be with either,' +don't you know, _he_ seems to feel--just now they say he is living +steadily at Storrington with his wife No. 1, who is ill, poor +thing) ... but for that and this, I think Beryl would enjoy a +flirtation with me. She can't quite make me out, and my unwavering +severity of manner. Her cross-questioning sometimes is maddening--or +it might become so, but that with both of us--you and me--retiring +so much into the background she has to lead such a strenuous life +and see one after the other the more important clients. Of +course--here's the tea..." + +(Brief interval during which the waiter does much unnecessary laying +out of the tea until Honoria says: "Don't let me keep you. I know +you are busy at this time. I will ring if we want anything.") David +continues: "Of course I come in for my share of the work after six. +On one point Beryl is firm; she doesn't mind coming at nine or at +eight or at half-past seven in the morning, but she _must_ be back +in Chelsea by half-past five to see her babies, wash them and put +them to bed. She has a tiny little house, she tells me, near +Trafalgar Square, and fortunately she's got an excellent and devoted +nurse, one of those rare treasures that questions nothing and is +only interested in the business in hand. She and a cook-general make +up the establishment. Before Mrs. Architect No. 1 became ill, Mr. +Architect used to visit her there pretty regularly, and is assumed +to be Mr. Claridge.... Well: to finish up about Beryl: I think +you--we--can trust her. She may be odd in her notions of morality, +but in finance or business she's as honest--as--a man." + +"My dear Vivie--I mean David--what a strange thing for _you_ to +say! I suppose it is part of your make-up--goes with the clothes and +that turn-over collar, and the little safety pin through the tie--?" + +_David_: "No, I said it deliberately. Men are mostly hateful things, +but I think in business they're more dependable than women--think +more about telling a lie or letting any one down. The point for you +to seize on is this--if you haven't noticed it already: that Beryl +has become an uncommonly good business woman. And what's more, my +dear, you've improved _her_ just as you improved _me_" (Honoria +deprecates this with a gesture, as she sits looking into the fire). +"Beryl's talk is getting ever so much less reckless. And she takes +jolly good care not to scandalize a client. She finds Adams--she +tells me--so severe at the least jest or personality that she only +talks to him now on business matters, and finds him a great +stand-by; and the other day she told Miss A.--as you call the senior +clerk--she ought to be ashamed of herself, bringing in a copy of the +_Vie Parisienne_. The way she settled Mrs. Gordon's affairs--you +remember, No. 3875 you catalogued the case--was masterly; and Mrs. +G. has insisted on paying 5 per cent. commission on the recovered +property. And it was Beryl who found out that leakage in the +'Variegated Tea Rooms' statement of accounts. I hadn't spotted it. +No. I think we needn't be anxious about Beryl, especially whilst I +am in Wales and you are giving yourself up--as you ought to do--to +your mother. But it's coming to _this_, Honoria--" (Enter waiter. +David says "Oh, damn," half audibly. Waiter is confirmed in his +suspicions, but as he likes Honoria immensely resolves to say +nothing about them in the Steward's room. She is such a kind young +lady. He explains he has come to take the tea things away, and +Honoria replies "Capital idea! Now, David, you'll be able to have +the whole table for your accounts!").... "It's coming to _this_, +Honoria," says David, clearing his throat, "that you will soon be +wanting not to be bothered any more with the affairs of _Fraser and +Warren_, and after I really get into the Law business I too shall +require to detach myself. Let us therefore be thankful that Beryl is +shaping so well. I rather think this summer you will have to get +more office accommodation and give her some more responsible women +to help her.... _Now_ finish what you were saying about Major +Armstrong." + +_Honoria_: "Of _course_ I shall marry him some day. I suppose I felt +that the day after I first met him. But it amuses me to be under no +illusion. I am sure this is what happened two years ago--or whenever +it was he came back wounded from your favourite haunt, South Africa. +Michael Rossiter--who likes 'Army' enormously--I think they were at +school or college together--said to Linda, his wife: 'Here's +Armstrong. One of the best. Wants to marry. Wife must have a little +money, otherwise he'll have to go on letting Petworth Manor. And +here's Honoria Fraser, one of the finest women I've ever met. +Getting a little long in the tooth--or will be soon. Let's bring 'em +together and make a match of it.' + +"So we are each convoked for a luncheon, with a projected +adjournment to Kew--which _you_ spoilt--and there it is. But joking +apart, 'Army' is a dear and I am sure by now he wants me even more +than my money--and I certainly want him. I'm rising thirty and I +long for children and don't want 'em to come to me too late in +life." + +_David_: "You said he didn't like _me_..." + +_Honoria_: "Oh that was half nonsense. When we all met last Sunday +at the Rossiters he became very jealous and suspicious. Asked who +was that whipper-snapper--I said you neither whipped nor snapped, +especially if kindly treated. He said then who was that Madonna +young man--a phrase it appears he'd picked up from Lord Cromer, +who used to apply it to every new arrival from the Foreign +Office--Armstrong was once his military secretary. I was surprised +to hear he thought you womanish--I spoke of your fencing, +riding,--was just going to add 'hockey,' and 'croquet': then +remembered they might be thought feminine pastimes, so referred to +your swimming. Military men always respect a good swimmer; I fancy +because many of them funk the water.... I was just going on to +explain that you were a cousin of a great friend of mine and helped +me in my business, when a commissionaire came from Quansions in a +hansom to say that mother was feeling very bad again. 'Army' and I +went back in the hansom, but I was crying a little and being a +gentleman he did not press his suit..." + +Enter Lady Fraser's nurse on tiptoe. Says in a very hushed voice +"Major Armstrong has called, Miss Fraser. He came to ask about Lady +Fraser. I said if anything she was a bit better and had had a good +sleep. He then asked if he might see you." + +_Honoria_: "Certainly. Would you mind showing him in here? It will +save my ringing for the waiter." + +Enter Major Armstrong. At the sight of David he flushes and looks +fierce. + +_Honoria_: "So glad you've come, dear Major. I hear mother has had a +good nap. I must go to her presently. You know David Vavasour +Williams?--Davy! You really _must_ leave out your second name! It +gets so fatiguing having to say it every time I introduce you." + +Armstrong bows stiffly and David, standing with one well-shaped foot +in a neat boot on the curb of the fireplace, looks up and returns +the bow. + +_Honoria_: "This won't do. You are two of my dearest friends, and +yet you hardly greet one another. I always determined from the age +of fifteen onwards I would never pass my life as men and women in a +novel do--letting misunderstandings creep on and on where fifty +words might settle them. _Army!_ You've often asked me to marry +you--or at least so I've understood your broken sentences. I never +refused you in so many words. Now I say distinctly 'Yes'--if you'll +have me. Only, you know quite well I can't actually marry you whilst +mother lies so ill..." + +Major Armstrong, very red in the face, in a mixture of exultation, +sympathy and annoyance that the affairs of his heart are being +discussed before a whipper-snapper stranger--says: "_Honoria!_ Do +you _mean_ it? Oh..." + +_Honoria_: "Of course I mean it! And if I drew back you could now +have a breach-of-promise-of-marriage action, with David as an +important witness. D.V.W.--who by the bye is a cousin of my +_greatest friend_--my friend for life, whether you like her--as you +ought to do--or not--Vivie Warren.... David is reading for the Bar; +and besides being your witness to what I have just said, might--if +you deferred your action long enough--be your Counsel.... Now look +here," (with a catch in the voice) "you two dear things. My nerves +are all to bits.... I haven't slept properly for nights and nights. +David, dear, if you _must_ talk any more business before you go down +to Wales, you must come and see me to-morrow.... Darling mother! I +can't _bear_ the thought you may not live to see my happiness." +(David discreetly withdraws without a formal good-bye, and as he +goes out and the firelight flickers up, sees Armstrong take Honoria +in his arms.) + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE BRITISH CHURCH + + +David had read hard all through Hilary term with Mr. Stansfield of +the Inner Temple; he had passed examinations brilliantly; he had +solved knotty problems in the legal line for _Fraser and Warren_, +and as already related he had begun to go out into Society. Indeed, +starting from the Rossiters' Thursdays and Praed's studio suppers, +he was being taken up by persons of influence who were pleased to +find him witty, possessed of a charming voice, of quiet but +unassailable manners. Opinions differed as to his good looks. Some +women proclaimed him as adorable, rather Sphynx-like, you know, but +quite fascinating with his well-marked eye-brows, his dark and curly +lashes, the rich warm tints of his complexion, the unfathomable grey +eyes and short upper lip with the down of adolescence upon it. Other +women without assigning any reason admitted he did not produce any +effect on their sensibility--they disliked law students, they said, +even if they were of a literary turn; they also disliked curates and +shopwalkers and sidesmen ... and Sunday-school teachers. Give them +_manly_ men; avowed soldiers and sailors, riders to hounds, +sportsmen, big game hunters, game-keepers, chauffeurs--the +chauffeur was becoming a new factor in Society, Bernard Shaw's +"superman"--prize-fighters, meat-salesmen--then you knew where you +were. + +Similarly men were divided in their judgment of him. Some liked him +very much, they couldn't quite say why. Others spoke of him +contemptuously, like Major Armstrong had done. This was due partly +to certain women being inclined to run after him--and therefore to +jealousy on behalf of the professional lady-killer of the +military species--and partly to a vague feeling that he was +enigmatic--Sphynx-like, as some women said. He was too silent +sometimes, especially if the conversation amongst men tended towards +racy stories; he was sarcastic and nimble-witted when he did speak. +And he was not easily bullied. If he encountered an insolent person, +he gave full effect to his five feet eight inches, the look from his +grey eyes was unwavering as though he tacitly accepted the +challenge, there was an invisible rapier hanging from his left hip, +a poise of the body which expressed dauntless courage. + +Honoria's stories of his skill in fencing, riding, swimming, +ball-games, helped him here. They were perfectly true or +sufficiently true--_mutatis mutandis_--and when put to the test +stood the test. David indeed found it well during this first season +in Town to hire a hack and ride a little in the Park--it only added +one way and another about fifty pounds to his outlay and impressed +certain of the Benchers who were beginning to turn an eye on him. +One elderly judge--also a Park rider--developed an almost +inconvenient interest in him; asked him to dinner, introduced him to +his daughters, and wanted to know a deal too much as to his position +and prospects. + +On the whole, it was a distinct relief from a public position, from +this increasing number of town acquaintances, this broader and +broader track strewn with cunning pitfalls, to lock up his rooms and +go off to Wales for the Easter holidays. Easter was late that +year--or it has to be for the purpose of my story--and David was +fortunate in the weather and the temperature. If West Glamorganshire +had looked richly, grandiosely beautiful in full summer, it had an +exquisite, if quite different charm in early spring, in April. The +great trees were spangled with emerald leaf-buds; the cherries, tame +and wild, the black-thorn, the plums and pears in orchards and on +old, old, grey walls, were in full blossom of virgin white. The +apple trees in course of time showed pink buds. The gardens +were full of wall-flowers--the inhabited country smelt of +wall-flowers--purple flags, narcissi, hyacinths. The woodland was +exquisitely strewn with primroses. In the glades rose innumerable +spears of purple half-opened bluebells; the eye ranged over an +anemone-dotted sward in this direction; over clusters of smalt-blue +dog violets in another. Ladies'-smocks and cowslips made every +meadow delicious; and the banks of the lowland streams were +gorgeously gilded with king-cups. The mountains on fine days were +blue and purple in the far distance; pale green and grey in the +foreground. Under the April showers and sun-shafts they became +tragic, enchanted, horrific, paradisiac. Even the mining towns were +bearable--in the spring sunshine. If man had left no effort untried +to pile hideosity on hideosity, flat ugliness on nauseous squalor, +he had not been able to affect the arch of the heavens in its lucid +blue, all smokes and vapours driven away by the spring winds; he had +not been able to neutralize the vast views visible from the miners' +sordid, one-storeyed dwellings, the panorama of hill and plain, of +glistening water, towering peaks, and larch forests of emerald green +amid the blue-Scotch pines and the black-green yews. + +David in previous letters, looking into his father's budget, had +shown him he could afford to keep a pony and a pony cart. This +therefore was waiting for him at the little station with the +gardener to drive. But in a week, David, already a good horseman, +had learnt to drive under the gardener's teaching, and then was able +to take his delighted father out for whole-day trips to revel in the +beauties of the scenery. + +They would have with them a wicker basket containing an ample lunch +prepared by the generous hands of Bridget. They would stop at +some spot on a mountain pass; tether the pony, sit on a plaid +shawl thrown over a boulder, and feast their eyes on green +mountain-shoulders reared against the pale blue sky; or gaze across +ravines not unworthy of Switzerland. Or they would put up pony and +cart at some village inn, explore old battlemented churches and +churchyards with seventeenth and eighteenth century headstones, so +far more tasteful and seemly than the hideous death memorials of the +nineteenth century. And ever and again the old father, looking more +and more like a Druid, would recite that charming Spring song, the +104th Psalm; or fragments of Welsh poetry sounding very good in +Welsh--as no doubt Greek poetry does in properly pronounced Greek, +but being singularly bald and vague in its references to earth, sea, +sky and flora when translated into plain English. + +David expressed some such opinions which rather scandalized his +father who had grown up in the conventional school of unbounded, +unreasoning reverence for the Hebrew, Greek and Keltic classics. +From that they passed to the great problems, the undeterminable +problems of the Universe; the awful littleness of men--mere lice, +perhaps, on the scurfy body of a shrinking, dying planet of a +fifth-rate sun, one of a billion other suns. The Revd. Howel like +most of the Christian clergy of all times of course never looked at +the midnight sky or gave any thought to the terrors and mysteries of +astronomy, a science so modern, in fact, that it only came into real +existence two or three hundred years ago; and is even now only taken +seriously by about ten thousand people in Europe and America. Where, +in this measureless universe--which indeed might only be one of +several universes--was God to be found? A God that had been upset by +the dietary of a small desert tribe, who fussed over burnt +sacrifices and the fat of rams at one time; at another objected to +censuses; at another and a later date wanted a human sacrifice to +placate his wrath; or who had washed out the world's fauna and flora +in a flood which had left no geological evidence to attest its +having taken place. "Did you ever think about the Dinosaurs, +father?" said David at the end of some such tirade--an outburst of +free-thinking which in earlier years might have upset that father to +wrath and angry protest, but which now for some reason only left him +dazed and absent-minded. (It was the Colonies that had done it, he +thought, and the studio talk of that dilettante architect. By and +bye, David would distinguish himself at the Bar, marry and settle +down, and resume the orthodox outlook of the English--or as he liked +to call it--the British Church.) + +"The Dinosaurs, my boy? No. What were they?" + +_David_: "The real Dragons, the Dragons of the prime, that swarmed +over England and Wales and Scotland, and Europe, Asia, and North +America--and I dare say Africa too. One of the most stupendous facts +of what you call 'creation,' though perhaps only one amongst many +skin diseases that have afflicted the planet--Well the Dinosaurs +went on developing and evolving and perfecting--so Rossiter +says--for three million years or so--Then they were scrap-heaped. +What a waste of creative energy!..." + +_Father_: "Ah it's Rossiter who puts all these ideas into your head, +is it?" + +_David_ (flushing); "Oh dear no! I used to think about them at (is +about to say 'Newnham,' but substitutes 'Malvern')--at Malvern--" + +_Father_ (drily): "I'm glad to hear you thought about +something--serious--at any rate--then, in the midst of your scrapes +and truancies--but go on, dear boy. It's a delight to me to hear you +speak. It reminds me--I mean your voice does--of your poor mother. +You know I loved her very tenderly, David, and though it is all past +and done with I believe I should forgive her _now_, if she only came +back to me. I'm sometimes _so_ lonely, boy. I wish you'd marry and +settle down here--there's lots of room for you--some nice girl--and +give me grandchildren before I die. But I suppose I must be patient +and wait first for your call to the Bar. What a dreary long time it +all takes! Why can't they, with one so clever, shorten the term of +probation? Or why wait for that to marry? I could give you an +allowance. As soon as you were called you could then follow the +South Wales circuit--well, go on about your Dinosaurs. I seem to +remember Professor Owen invented them--but _he_ never wavered in his +faith and was the great opponent of that rash man, Darwin. Oh, _I_ +remember now the old controversies--what a stalwart was the Bishop +of Winchester! They couldn't bear him at their Scientific +meetings--there was one at Bath, if I recollect right, and he put +them all to the right-about. What about your Dinosaurs? I'm not +denying their existence; it's only the estimates of time that are so +ridiculous. God made them and destroyed them in the great Flood, of +which their fossil remains are the evidence--" + +David however would desist from pursuing such futile arguments; feel +surprised, indeed, at his own outbreaks, except that he hated +insincerity. However new and disturbing to his father were these +flashes of the New Learning, in his outward conduct he was orthodox +and extremely well-behaved. The spiritual exercises of the Revd. +Howel had become jejune, and limited very much by his failing sight. +The recovery after the operation had come too late in life to bring +about any expansion of public or private devotions. Family prayers +were reduced to the recital from memory of an exhortation, a +confession, and an absolution, followed by the Lord's Prayer and a +benediction. Services in the church were limited to Morning and +Evening prayers, with Communion on the first Sunday in the month, +and a sermon following Morning prayer. There was no one to play the +organ if the schoolmistress failed to turn up--as she often did. +David however scrupulously turned the normal congregation of +five--Bridget, the maid of the time-being, the gardener-groom, the +sexton, and a baker-church-warden--into six by his unvarying +attendance. In the course of half his stay the rumour of his being +present and of his good looks and great spiritual improvement +attracted quite a considerable congregation, chiefly of young women +and a few sheepish youths; so that his father was at one and the +same time exhilarated and embarrassed. Was this to be a Church +revival? If so, he readily pardoned David his theories on the +Dinosaurs and his doubts as to the unvarying evidence of Divine +Wisdom in the story of Creation. + +If any other consideration than a deep affection for this dear old +man and repentance for his unwise ebullitions of Free Thought had +guided David in the matter it was an utter detestation of the +services and the influence of the Calvinist Chapel in the village, +the Little Bethel, presided over by Pastor Prytherch, a fanatical +blacksmith, who alternated spells of secret drunkenness and episodes +of animalism by orgies of self-abasement, during which he--in +half-confessing his own lapses--attributed freely and unrebukedly +the same vices to the male half of his overflowing congregation. +These out-pourings--"Pechadur truenus wyf i! Arglwydd madden i +mi!"--extempore prayers, psalms chanted with a swaying of the body, +hymns sung uproariously, scripture read with an accompaniment of +groans, hysteric laughter, and interjections of assent, and a +rambling discourse--lasting fully an hour, were in the Welsh +language; and David on his three or four visits--and it can be +imagined what a sensation _they_ caused! The Vicar's son--himself +perhaps about to confess his sins!--understood very little of the +subject matter, save from the extravagant gestures of the +participants. But he soon made up his mind that religion for +religion, that expressed by the English--"Well, father, you are +right--the 'British'"--Church in Wales was many hundred times +superior in reasonableness and stability to the negroid ebullitions +of the Calvinists. As a matter of fact they were scarcely more +followers of the reformer Calvin than they were of Ignatius Loyola; +it was just a symptomatic outbreak of some prehistoric Iberian, +Silurian form of worship, something deeply planted in the soil of +Wales, something far older than Druidism, something contemporary +with the beliefs of Neolithic days. + +Eighteen years ago, much of Wales was as enslaved by whiskey as are +still Keltic Scotland, Keltiberian Ireland, Lancashire, London and +wicked little Kent. It was only saved from going under completely by +decennial religious revivals, which for three months or so were +followed by total abstinence and a fierce-eyed continence. + +Just about this time--during David's extended spring holiday in +Wales (he had brought many law books down with him to read)--there +had begun one of the newspaper-made-famous Revivals. It was led by a +young prophet--a football half-back or whatever they are called, +though I, who prefer thoroughness, would, if I played football, +offer up the whole of my back to bear the brunt--who saw visions of +Teutonically-conceived angels with wings, who heard "voices," was in +constant communication with the Redeemer of Mankind and on familiar +terms with God, had a lovely tenor voice and moved emotional men and +hysterical, love-sick women to tears, even to bellowings by his +prayers and songs. He had for some weeks been confined in publicity +to half-contemptuous paragraphs in the South Wales Press. Then the +_Daily Chronicle_ took him up. Their well-known, emotional-article +writer, Mr. Sigsbee, saw "copy" in him, and--to do him justice (for +there I agreed with him)--a chance to pierce the armour of the +hand-in-glove-with-Government distillers, so went down to Wales to +write him up. For three weeks he became more interesting than a +Cabinet Minister. Indeed Cabinet Ministers or those who aspired to +become such at the next turn of the wheel truckled to him. Some were +afraid he might become a small Messiah and lead Wales into open +revolt; others that he might smash the whiskey trade and impair the +revenue. Mr. Lloyd George going to address a pro-Boer meeting at +Aberystwith (was it?) encountered him at a railway junction, +attended by a court of ex-footballers and reformed roysterers, and +said in the hearing of a reporter "I must fight with the Sword of +the Flesh; but you fight with the Sword of the Spirit"--whatever +that may have meant--and I do not pretend to complete accuracy of +remembrance--I only know I felt very angry with the whole movement +at the time, because it delayed indefinitely the _Daily Chronicle's_ +review of my new book. Well this Evan--in all such movements an Evan +is inevitable--Evan Gwyllim Jones--with the black eyes, abundant +black hair, beautiful features (he was a handsome lad) and glorious +voice, addressed meetings in the open air and in every available +building of four walls. Thousands withdrew their names from +foot-ballery, nigh on Two Millions must have taken the pledge--and +not merely an anti-whiskey pledge but a fierce renunciation of the +most diluted alcohol as well; and approximately two hundred and +fifty thousand confessed their sins of unchastity and swore to be +reborn Galahads for the rest of their lives. It was a spiritual +Spring-cleaning, as drastic and as overdone as are the domestic +upheavals known by that name. But it did a vast deal of good, all +the same, to South Wales; and though it was a seventh wave, the tide +of temperance, thrift, cleanliness, bodily and spiritual, has risen +to a higher level of average in the beautiful romantic Principality +ever since. Evan Gwyllim Jones, however, overdid it. He had to +retire from the world to a Home--some said even to a Mental +Hospital. Six months afterwards he emerged, cured of his "voices," +much plumper, and--perhaps--poor soul--shorn of some of his +illusions and ideals; but he married a grocer's widow of Cardiff, +and the _Daily Chronicle_ mentioned him no more. + +The infection of his meetings however penetrated to the agricultural +district in which Pontystrad was situated. Five villages went +completely off their heads. The blacksmith-pastor had to be put +under temporary restraint. Quite decent-looking, unsuspected folk +confessed to far worse sins than they had ever committed. There +arose an aristocracy of outcasts. Three inns where little worse than +bad beer was sold were gutted, respectable farmers' wives drank +Eau-de-Cologne instead of spirits, several over-due marriages took +place, there were a number of premature births, and the membership +of the football clubs was disastrously reduced. Such excitement was +generated that little work was done, and the illegitimate birth rate +of west Glamorganshire--always high--for the opening months of 1903 +became even higher. + +David was enlisted by the employers of labour, the farmers, +chemical works, mining and smelting-works managers, squires, and +postmasters to restore order. He preached against the Revivalists. +Not with any lack of sympathy, any apology for the real ills which +they denounced. He spoke with emphasis against the loosening of +morality, recommended early marriage, and above all _education_; +denounced the consumption of alcohol so strenuously and convincedly +that then and there as he spoke he resolved himself henceforth to +abstain from anything stronger than lager beer or the lighter +French and German wines. But he threw cold water resolutely on the +fantastical nonsense that accompanied these emotional outbursts of +so-called religion; invited his hearers to study--at any rate +elementarily--astronomy and biology; did not run down football but +advised a moderate interest only being taken in such futile sports; +recommended volunteering and an acquaintance with rifles as far +preferable, seeing that we always stood in danger of a European war +or of a drastic revival of insolent conservatism. + +Then he made his appeal to the women. He spoke of the dangers of +this hysteria; the need there was for level-headed house-keeping +women in our councils; how they should first qualify for and then +demand the suffrage, having already attained the civic vote. (Here +some of the employers of labour disapproved, plucked at his arm or +hem of his reefer jacket, and one squire lumbered off the platform.) +But he held on, warming with a theme that hitherto had hardly +interested him. His speeches were above the heads of his peasant +audiences; but they were a more sensitive harp to play on than the +average Anglo-Saxon audience. Many women wept, only decorously, as +he outlined their influence in a reformed village, a purified +Principality. The men applauded frantically because, despite some +prudent reserves, there seemed to be a promise of revolt in his +suggestions. David felt the electric thrill of the orator in harmony +with his audience; who for that reason will strive for further +triumphs, more resounding perorations. He introduced scraps of +Welsh--all his auto-intoxicated brain could remember (How physically +true was that taunt of Dizzy's--"Inebriated with the exuberance of +his own verbosity!"). + +And the delighted audience shouted back "You're the man we want! +Into Parliament you shall go, Davy-bach" and much else. So David +restored the five villages to sobriety in life and faith, yet left +them with a new enthusiasm kindled. Before he departed on his return +to London and the grind of his profession, he had effected another +change. Because he had spoken as he had spoken and touched the +hearts of emotional people, they came trickling back to his father's +church, to the "British" Church, as David now called it. Little +Bethel was empty, and the pastor-blacksmith not yet out of the +asylum at Swansea. The Revd. Howel Williams trod on air. His sermons +became terribly long and involved, but that was no drawback in the +minds of his Welsh auditory; though it made his son swear inwardly +and reconciled him to the approaching return to Fig Tree Court. The +old Druid felt inspired to convince the hundred people present that +the Church they had returned to _was_ the Church of their fathers, +not only back to Roman times, when Glamorganshire was basking in an +Italian civilization, but further still. He showed how the Druids +were rather to be described as Ante-Christian than Anti--with an +_i_; and played ponderously on this quip. In Druidism, he +observed--I am sure I cannot think why, but it was his hobby--you +had a remarkable foreshadowing of Christianity; the idea of the +human sacrifice, the Atonement, the Communion of Saints, the mystic +Vine, which he clumsily identified with the mistletoe, and what not +else. He read portions of his privately-published _Tales of +Taliessin_. In short such happiness radiated from his pink-cheeked +face and recovered eyes that David regretted in no wise his own +lapses into conventional, stereotyped religion. The Church of +Britain might be stiff and stomachered, as the offspring of +Elizabeth, but it was stately, it was respectable--as outwardly was +the great virgin Queen--and it was easy to live with. Only he +counselled his father to do two things: never to preach for more +than half-an-hour--even if it meant keeping a small American clock +going inside the pulpit-ledge; and to obtain a curate, so that the +new enthusiasm might not cool and his father verging on seventy, +might not overstrain himself. He pointed out that by letting off +most of the glebe land and pretermitting David's "pocket-money" he +might secure a young and energetic Welsh-speaking curate, the +remainder of whose living-wage would--he felt sure--be found out of +the diocesan funds of St. David's bishopric. + +The Revd. Howel let him have his way (This was after David had +returned to Fig Tree Court) and by the following June a stalwart +young curate was lodged in the village and took over the bulk of the +progressive church work from the fumbling hands of the dear old +Vicar. He was a thoroughly good sort, this curate, troubled by no +possible doubts whatever, a fervent tee-totaller, a half-back or +whole back--I forget which--at football, a good boxer, and an +unwearied organizer. Little Bethel was sold and eventually turned +into a seed-merchant's repository and drying-room. The curate in +course of time married the squire's daughter and I dare say long +afterwards succeeded the Revd. Howel Vaughan Williams when the +latter died--but that date is still far ahead of my story. At any +rate--isn't it _droll_ how these things come about?--David's action +in this matter, undertaken he hardly knew why--did much to fetter +Mr. Lloyd George's subsequent attempts to disestablish the British +Church in Wales. + +What did Bridget think of all this, of the spiritual evolution of +her nursling, of his identity with the vicious, shifty, idle youth +whose uncanny gift of design seemed to have been completely lost +after his stay in South Africa? David Vavasour Williams had left +home to the relief of his father and the whole village, if even to +the half-pitying regret of his old nurse, in 1896. He had spent a +year or more in Mr. Praed's studio studying to be an architect or a +scene painter. Then somehow or other he did not get on with Mr. +Praed and he enlisted impulsively in a South African Police force +(in the Army, it seemed to Bridget). He had somehow become involved +in a war with a South African people, called by Bridget "the Wild +Boars"; he is wounded or ill in hospital; is little heard of, almost +presumed dead. Throughout all these five years he scarcely ever +writes to his forgiving father; maintains latterly a sulky silence. +Then, suddenly in the summer of 1901, returns; preceded only by a +telegram but apparently vouched for by this Mr. Praed; and announces +himself as having forgotten his Welsh and most of the events of his +youth, but having acquired a changed heart, and an anxiety to make +up for past ill-behaviour by a present good conduct which seems +almost miraculous. + +Well: miracles were easily believed in by Bridget. Perhaps his +father's prayers had been answered. Providence sometimes meted out +an overwhelming boon to really good people. David was certainly a +Vavasour, if there was nothing Williamsy about his looks.... His +mother, in Mrs. Bridget Evanwy's private opinion, had been a +hussy.... Was David his father's son? Hadn't she once caught Mrs. +Howel Williams kissing a young stranger behind a holly bush and +wasn't that why Bridget had really been sent away? She had returned +to take charge of the pretty, motherless little boy when she herself +was a widow disappointed of children, and the child was only three. +Would she ever turn against her nursling now, above all, when he was +showing himself such a son to his old father? Not she. He might be +who and what he would. He was giving another ten years of renewed +life to the dear old Druid and the continuance of a comfortable home +to his old Nannie. + +They talked a great deal up at Little Bethel of a "change of +heart." Perhaps such things really took place, though Bridget Evanwy +from a shrewd appraisement of the Welsh nature doubted it. She would +like to, but couldn't quite believe that an angel from heaven had +taken possession of David's body and come here to play a divine +part; because David sometimes talked so strangely--seemed not only +to doubt the existence of a heavenly host, but even of Something +beyond, so awful in Bridget's mind that she hardly liked to define +it in words, though in her own Welsh tongue it was so earthily +styled "the Big Man." + +However, at all costs, she would stand by David ... and without +quite knowing why, she decided that on all future visits she herself +would "do out" his room, would attend to him exclusively. The "girl" +was a chatterer, albeit she looked upon Mr. David with eyes of awe +and a most respectful admiration, while David on his part scarcely +bestowed on her a glance. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +DAVID IS CALLED TO THE BAR + + +1902 was the year of King Edward's break-down in health but of his +ultimate Coronation; it was the year in which Mr. Arthur Balfour +became premier; it was the year in which motors became really +well-known, familiar objects in the London streets, and hansoms (I +think) had to adopt taximeter clocks on the eve of their +displacement by taxi-cabs. It was likewise the year in which the +South African War was finally wound up and the star of Joseph +Chamberlain paled to its setting, and Mrs. Pankhurst and her +daughter Christabel founded the Women's Social and Political Union +at Manchester. + +In 1903, the Fiscal controversy absorbed much of public attention, +the War Office was once more reformed, women's skirts still swept +the pavement and encumbered the ball-room, a Peeress wrote +to the _Times_ to complain of Modern Manners, Surrey beat +Something-or-other at the Oval, and modern Cricket was voted dull. + +In 1904, the Russo-Japanese War was concluded, and _Fraser and +Warren_ received a year's notice from the Midland Insurance Co. that +they must vacate their premises on the fifth floor of Nos. 88-90 +Chancery Lane. The business of _F. and W._ had grown so considerable +that, as the affairs of the Midland Insurance Co. had slackened, it +became intolerable to hear the lift going up and down to the fifth +floor all through the day. The housekeeper also thought it odd that +a well-dressed young gentleman should steal in and up, day after +day, after office hours to work apparently alone in _Fraser and +Warren's_ partners' room. _Fraser and Warren_ over the hand of its +junior partner, Mrs. Claridge, accepted the notice. Their business +had quite overgrown these inconveniently situated offices and a move +to the West End was projected. Mrs. Claridge's scheme for week-end +cottages had been enormously successful and had put much money not +only into the coffers of _Fraser and Warren_ but into the banking +account of that clever architect, Francis Brimley Storrington. + +[I find I made an absurd mistake earlier in this book in charging +the too amorous architect with a home at "Storrington." His home +really was in a midland garden city which he had designed, but his +name--a not uncommon one--was Storrington.] + +In the autumn of 1902, poor Lady Fraser died. In January, 1903, +Honoria married the impatient Colonel Armstrong. In January, 1904, +she had her first baby--a boy. + +At the close of 1904 Beryl Claridge made proposals to Honoria Fraser +relative to a change in the constitution of _Fraser and Warren_. +Honoria was to have an interest still as a sleeping partner in the +concern and some voice in its management and policy. But she was to +take no active share of the office work and "Warren" was to pass out +of it altogether. Beryl pointed out it was rather a farce when the +middle partner--she herself had been made the junior partner a year +before--was perpetually and mysteriously absent, year after year, +engaged seemingly on work of her own abroad. Her architect +semi-husband moreover, who if not in the firm was doing an +increasing share of its business, wanted to know _more_ about Vivien +Warren. "Was she or was she not the daughter of the 'notorious' Mrs. +Warren; because if so..." He took of course a highly virtuous line. +Like so many other people he compounded for the sins he was +inclined to by being severe towards the misdoings of others. _His_ +case--he would say to Beryl when they were together at Chelsea--was +_sui generis_, quite exceptional, they were really in a way +perfectly good people--_Tout savoir c'est tout pardonner, etc._; +whereas the _things_ that were _said_ about Mrs. Warren!... And +though Vivien was nothing nearer sin than being her daughter, still +if it were known or known more widely that _she_ was the Warren in +_Fraser and Warren_, why the wives of the wealthier clergy, for +example, and a number of Quakeresses would withdraw their affairs +from the firm's management. Whereas if only his little Berry could +become the boss, _he_ knew where to get "big money" to put behind +the Firm's dealings. The idea was all right; an association for the +special management on thoroughly honest lines of women's affairs. +They'd better get rid of that hulking young clerk, Bertie Adams, and +staff the entire concern with capable women. He himself would always +remain in the background, giving them ideas from time to time, and +if any were taken up merely being paid his fees and commissions. + +David Vavasour Williams, privately consulted by Norie, put forward +no objection. He disliked Beryl and was increasingly shy of his +rather clandestine work on the fifth floor of the Midland Insurance +Chambers; besides, if and when he were called to the Bar, he would +have to cease all connection with _Fraser and Warren_. The consent +of Vivie was obtained through the Power of Attorney she had left +behind. A new deed of partnership was drawn up. Honoria insisted +that Vivien Warren must be bought out for Three Thousand pounds, +which amount was put temporarily to the banking account of David +Vavasour Williams; she herself received another Three Thousand and a +small percentage of the future profits and a share in the direction +of affairs of THE WOMEN'S CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATION (_Fraser and +Claridge_) so long as she left a capital of Five Thousand pounds at +their disposal. + +So in 1905 David with Three Thousand pounds purchased an annuity of +L210 a year for Vivien Warren. That investment would save Vivie from +becoming at any time penniless and dependent, and consequently would +subserve the same purpose for her cousin and agent, David V. +Williams. + +Going to the C. and C. Bank, Temple Bar branch, to take stock of +Vivie's affairs, he found a Thousand pounds had been paid in to her +current account. Ascertaining the name of the payee to be L.M. +Praed, he hurried off at the first opportunity to Praed's studio. +Praed was entertaining a large party of young men and women to tea +and the exhibition of some wild futurist drawings and a few rather +striking designs for stage scenery and book covers. David had +perforce to keep his questions bottled up and take part in the +rather vapid conversation that was going on between young men with +_glabre_ faces and high-pitched voices and women with rather wild +eyes. + +[It struck David about this time that women were getting a little +out of hand, strained, over-inclined to laugh mirthless laughter, +greedy for sensuality, sensation, sincerity, sweetmeats. Something. +Even if they satisfied some fleeting passion or jealousy by +marrying, they soon wanted to be de-married, separated, divorced, to +don male costume, to go on the amateur stage and act Salome parts on +Sunday afternoons that most ladies of the real Stage had refused; +while the men that went about with them in these troops from +restaurant to restaurant, studio to studio, music hall to cafe +chantant, Brighton to Monte Carlo, Sandown to Goodwood, were shifty, +too well-dressed, too near neutrality in sex, without defined +professions, known by nicknames only, spend-thrifts, spongers, +bankrupts, and collectors of needless bric-a-brac.] + +However this mob at last quitted Praddy's premises and he and David +were left alone. + +Praed yawned, and almost intentionally knocked over an easel with a +semi-obscene drawing on it of a Sphynx with swelling breasts +embracing a lean young man against his will. + +_David_: "Praddy! why do you tolerate such people and why prostitute +your studio to such unwholesome art?" + +_Praed_: "My dear David! This is _indeed_ Satan rebuking sin. Why +there are three designs here--one I've just knocked over--beastly, +wasn't it?--that _you _ left with me when you went off at a tangent +to South Africa.... Really, we ought to have _some_ continuity you +know.... + +"But I agree with you.... I'm sick of the whole business of this +Nouvel Art and L'Art Nouveau, about Aubrey Beardsley and the +disgusting 'nineties generally--But what _will_ you? If Miss Vivie +Warren had condescended to accept me as a husband she might have +brought a wholesome atmosphere into my life and swept away all +this ... inspired me perhaps with some final ambition for the little +that remains of my stock of energy.... Heigh-ho! Well: what is the +quarrel now? The life I lead, the people who come here?" + +_David_: "No. I hardly came about that; though dear old Praddy, I +wish I had time to look after you ... Perhaps later.... No: what I +came to ask was: what _did_ you mean the other day by paying in a +Thousand Pounds to Vivie Warren's account at her bank? She's not in +want of money so far as I know, and you can't be so very rich, even +though you design three millionaire's houses a year. Who gave you +the money to pay in to my--to Vivie's account?" + +_Praed_: "Well, when Vivie herself comes to ask me, p'raps I'll +tell; but I can't see how it concerns _you_. Why not stop and +dine--a l'imprevu, but I dare say my housekeeper can rake something +together or it may not be too late to send out for a pate. We can +then talk of other things. When are you going to get your call?" + +_David_: "Sorry, dear old chap, but I can't stay to dinner. I'm not +going anywhere else but I've got some papers I _must_ study before I +go to bed. But I'll stop another half-hour at any rate. Don't ring +for lights or turn up the electric lamps. I would sooner sit in the +dark studio and put my question. Who has given me that thousand +pounds?" + +_Praed_: "That's _my_ business: _I_ haven't! I shan't give or lend +Vivie a penny till she consents to marry me. As to the rest, take it +and be thankful. You're not certain to get any more and I happen to +know it had what you would call a 'clean origin.'" + +_David_: "You mean it didn't come from those 'Hotels'?" + +_Praed_: "Well, at any rate not directly. Don't be a romantic ass, a +tiresome fool, and give me any trouble about it. A certain person I +imagine must have heard that _Fraser and Warren_ had been wound up +and couldn't bear the thought of your being hard up in consequence +... doesn't know you got a share of the purchase-money..." + + * * * * * + +David decided at any rate for the present to accept the addition to +his capital--you can perhaps push principle _too_ far; or, once you +plunge into affairs, you cease to be quite so high-souled. At any +rate nothing in David's middle-class mind was so horrible as penury +and the impotence that comes with it. How many months or years would +lie ahead of him before fees could be gained and a professional +income be earned? Besides he wanted to take Bertie Adams into his +service as a Clerk. A barrister must have a clerk, and David in his +peculiar circumstances could only engage one acquainted more or +less with his secret. + +So Bertie Adams fulfilled the ambition he had cherished for three +years--he felt all along it was coming true. And when David was +called to the Bar--which he was with all the stately ceremonial of a +Call night at the Inner Temple in the Easter term of 1905, more +elbow room was acquired at Fig Tree Court, and Bertie Adams was +installed there as clerk to Mr. David Vavasour Williams, who had +residential chambers on the third floor, and a fair-sized Office and +small private room on the second floor. Bertie's mother had "washed" +for both Honoria and Vivie in their respective dwellings for years, +and for David after he came to live at Fig Tree Court. A substantial +douceur to the "housekeeper" had facilitated this, for in the part +of the Temple where lies Fig Tree Court the residents do not call +their ministrants "laundresses," but "housekeepers." Curiously +enough the accounts were always tendered to the absent Vivie Warren, +but Mrs. Adams noted no discrepancy in their being paid by her son +or in an unmarried lady living in the Temple under the name of David +Williams. + +Installed as clerk and advised by his employer to court one of the +fair daughters of the housekeeper (Mrs. Laidly) with a view to +marriage and settling down in premises hard-by, Bertie Adams (who +like David had spent his time well between 1901 and 1905 and was now +an accomplished and serviceable barrister's clerk) soon set to work +to chum up with other clerks in this clerical hive and get for his +master small briefs, small chances for defending undefended cases in +which hapless women were concerned. + +But before we deal with the career of David at the Bar, which of +course did not properly commence--even as a brilliant junior--till +the early months of 1906, let us glance at the way in which he had +passed the intervening space of time between his return from Wales +in May, 1902, and the spending of his Long Vacation of 1905 as an +Esquire by the Common Law of England called to the Bar, and entitled +to wear a becoming grey wig and gown. + +He had begun in 1900 by studying Latin, Norman French--so greatly +drawn on in law terms--and English History. In the summer of 1901, +by one of those subterfuges winked at then, he had obtained two +rooms, sublet to him by a member of the Inn, in Fig Tree Court, +Inner Temple. In the autumn of that year, having made sure of his +parentage and his finance, he had approached the necessary +authorities with a view to his being admitted a member of the Inner +Temple, which meant filling up a form of declaration that he, David +Vavasour Williams, of Pontystrad, Glamorgan, a British subject, aged +twenty-four, son of the Revd. Howel Vaughan Williams, Clerk in Holy +Orders, of Pontystrad in the County of Glamorgan, was desirous of +being admitted a Student of the Honourable Society of the Inner +Temple for the purpose of being called to the Bar or of practising +under the Bar; and that he would not either directly or indirectly +apply for or take out any certificate to practise directly or +indirectly as a Pleader, Conveyancer or Draftsman in Equity without +the special permission of the Masters of the Bench of the said +Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. + +Further, David declared with less assurance but perhaps within the +four corners of the bare truth that he had not acted directly or +indirectly in the capacity of a Solicitor, Attorney-at-law, Writer +to the Signet or in about thirteen other specified legal positions; +that he was not a Chartered, Incorporated or Professional Accountant +("A good job we changed the device of the Firm," he thought), a Land +Agent, a Surveyor, Patent Agent, Consulting Engineer, or even as a +clerk to any such officer. Which made him rather shivery about what +he _had_ been doing for _Fraser and Warren_, but there was little +risk that any one would find out--And finally he declared that he +was not in Trade or an undischarged bankrupt. + +The next and most difficult step was to obtain two separate +Certificates from two separate barristers each of five years' +standing, to the effect that he was what he stated himself to be. +This required much thinking out, and was one of the reasons why he +did not go down as promised and spend his Christmas and New Year +with his father. + +Instead he wrote to Pontystrad explaining how important it was he +should get admitted as a Student in time to commence work in Hilary +term. Did his father know any such luminary of the law or any two +such luminaries? His father regretted that he only knew of one such +barrister of over five years' standing: the distinguished son of an +old Cambridge chum. To him he wrote, venturing to recall himself, +the more eagerly since this son of an old friend was himself a +Welshman and already distinguished by his having entered Parliament, +served with the Welsh Party, written a book on Welsh history, and +married a lady of considerable wealth. + +Next David applied to Rossiter with the result--as we have +seen--that he got an introduction to Mr. Stansfield. So he obtained +from Mr. Price and Mr. Stansfield the two certificates to the effect +that "David Vavasour Williams has been introduced to me by letter of +introduction from the Revd. Howel Williams" (or "Professor Michael +Rossiter, F.R.S.") "and has been seen by me; and that I, Mark +Stansfield, Barrister-at-law, King's Counsel" (or "John Price, +Barrister-at-law, Member of Parliament") "believe the said David +Vavasour Williams to be a gentleman of respectability and a proper +person to be admitted a Student of the Honourable Society of the +Inner Temple with a view to being called to the Bar." + +Copies of the letters of introduction accompanied the two +certificates. These of course were not obtained without several +visits to the unsuspicious guarantors; or at least one to Mr. Price +in Paper Buildings, for whom it was enough that David claimed to be +Welsh and showed a very keen interest in the Welsh tongue and its +Indo-German affinities, and three or four to Mr. Mark Stansfield, +K.C., one of the nicest, kindliest and most learned persons David +had ever met, whom he grieved deeply at deceiving. Stansfield had a +high opinion of Rossiter. The fact that he recommended David was +quite sufficient to secure his "guarantee." But apart from that, he +felt himself greatly drawn towards this rather shy, grave, +nice-looking young fellow with the steady eyes and the keen +intelligence. He had him to dine and to lunch; drew him out--as far +as David thought it prudent to go--and was surprised David had never +been to a University ("Only to Malvern--and then I studied with an +architect in London--Who? Mr. Praed, A.R.A.--but then I travelled +for a bit, and after that I felt more than ever I wanted to go in +for the Bar"--said David, with a charming smile which lit up his +young face ordinarily so staid). Stansfield consented that David +should come and read with him, and in many ways facilitated his +progress so materially and so kindly that more than once the +compunctious young Welshman thought of discarding the impersonation; +and might have done so had not this most estimable Stansfield died +of pneumonia in the last year of David's studenthood. + +Of course the preliminary examination was easily and quickly passed. +David translated his bit of Caesar's commentaries, answered +brilliantly the questions about Alfred the Great, the Anglo-Norman +kings, the Constitutions of Clarendon, Magna Charta and Mortmain, +Henry the Eighth and the Reformation, the Civil War and +Protectorate of Cromwell, the Bill of Rights and the Holy Alliance. +He paid his fees and his "caution" money; he ate the requisite six +dinners--or more, as he found them excellent and convenient--in each +term, attended all the lectures that interested him, and passed the +subsidiary examinations on them with fair or even high credit; and +finally got through his "Call-to-the-Bar" examination with tolerable +success; at any rate he passed. A friend of the deceased +Stansfield--whose death was always one of the scars in Vivie's +memory--introduced him to one of the Masters of the Bench who signed +his "call" papers. He once more made a declaration to the effect +that he was not a person in Holy Orders, that he was not a +Solicitor, Attorney-at-law, Writer to the Signet, etc., etc., a +Chartered, Incorporated or Professional Accountant; and again that +if called to the Bar, he would never become a member of the abhorred +professions over and over again enumerated; and was duly warned that +without special permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner +Temple he might not practise "under the Bar"--whatever that may mean +(I dare say it is some low-down procedure, only allowed in times of +scarcity). Then after having his name "screened" for twelve days in +all the Halls of the four Inns, and going in fear and trembling that +some one might turn up and object, he finally received his call to +the Bar on April 22 (if April 22 in that year was on a Sunday, then +on the following Monday) and was "called" at the Term Dinner where +he took wine with the Masters. He remembered seeing present at the +great table on the dais, besides the usual red-faced generals and +whiskered admirals, simpering statesmen, and his dearly loved +friend, Michael Rossiter--representing Science,--a more sinister +face. This was the well-known philanthropist and race-horse breeder, +Sir George Crofts, Bart., M.P. for a Norfolk borough. Their eyes +met, curiously interlocked for a moment. Sir George wondered to +himself where the dooce he had seen that, type of face before, those +grey eyes with the dark lashes. "Gad! he reminds me of Kitty Warren! +Well, I'll be damned" (he was eventually) "I wonder whether the old +gal had a son as well as that spitfire Vivie?!" + +Michael whispered a word or two to one of the Masters, and David was +presently summoned to attend the Benchers and their distinguished +guests in the inner chamber to which they withdrew for wine and +dessert. Rossiter made room for him, and he had to drink a glass of +port with the Benchers. Every one was very gracious. Rossiter said: +"I was a sort of godfather to him, don't you know. David! you must +do me credit and make haste to take silk and become a Judge." Crofts +moved from where he sat next to a Bishop. ("Damn it all! I like +bein' respectable, but why _will_ they always put me next a Bishop +or an Archdeacon? It spoils all my best stories.") He came +over--dragging his chair--to Rossiter and said "I say! Will you +introduce me to our young friend here?" He was duly introduced. +"H'm, Williams? _That_ doesn't tell me much. But somehow your face +reminds me awfully of--of--some one I used to know. J'ever have a +sister?" "No," said David. + +Crofts, he noticed, had aged very much in the intervening eight +years. He must now be no more than--58? But he had become very stout +and obviously suffered from blood pressure without knowing it. He +moved away a little, and David heard him talking to a Master about +Lady Crofts, who had come up to London for the season and how they +were both very anxious about his boy--"Yes, he had two children, a +boy and a girl, bless 'em--The boy had been ill with measles and +wasn't makin' quite the quick recovery they expected. What an +anxiety children were, weren't they? Though we wouldn't be without +'em, would we?" The Bencher assented out of civility, though as a +matter of fact he was an old bachelor and detested children or +anything younger than twenty-one. + +David after his call was presented with a bill to pay of L99. 10_s._ +His father hearing of this, insisted on sending him a cheque for +L150 out of his savings, adding he should be deeply hurt if it was +not accepted and no more said about it. How soon was David coming +down to see South Wales once more gloriously clothed with spring? + + +[Much of this review of the years between 1901 and 1905, many of +these sweet remembrances are being taken from Vivie's brain as she +lies on a hard bed in 1913, musing over the past days when, despite +occasional frights and anxieties, she was transcendently happy. Oh +"Sorrow's Crown of Sorrow, the remembering happier days!" She +recalled the articles she used to write from the Common Room or +Library of the Inn; how well they were received and paid for by the +editors of daily and weekly journals; what a lark they were, when +for instance she would raise a debate in the _Saturday Review_: +"Should Women be admitted to the Bar?" Or an appeal in the _Daily +News_ to do away with the Disabilities of Women. How poor +Stansfield, before he died, said he had never met any young fellow +with a tenderer heart for women, and advised him to marry whilst he +still had youth and fire. She remembered David's social success at +the great houses in the West End. How he might have gone out into +Society and shone more, much more, only he had to consider prudence +and expense; the curious women who fell in love with him, and whom +he had gently, tactfully to keep at arm's length. She remembered the +eager discussions in the Temple Debating Society, or at the "Moots" +of Gray's Inn, her successes there as an orator and a close +reasoner; how boy students formed ardent friendships for her and +prophesied her future success in Parliament, would have her promise +to take them into the Cabinet which David was to form when an +electorate swept him into power and sent the antiquated old rotters +of that day into the limbo of deserved occlusion. + +She saw and heard once more the amused delight of Honoria Armstrong +over her success, and the latent jealousy of the uxorious Colonel +Armstrong if she came too often to see Honoria in Sloane Street: And +she remembered--Oh God! _How_ she remembered--the close association +in those three priceless years with her "godfather" Michael +Rossiter; Rossiter who shaped her mind--it would never take a +different turn--who was patient with her stupidity and petulance; an +elder brother, a robust yet tactful chaffer; a banisher of too much +sensibility, a constant encouragement to effort and success. +Rossiter, she knew, with her woman's instinct, was innocently in +love with her, but believed all the time he was satisfying his +craving for a son to train, a disciple who might succeed him: for he +still believed that David when he had been called to the Bar and had +flirted awhile with Themis, would yet turn his great and growing +abilities to the service of Science. + +And Mrs. Rossiter in those times: Vivie smiled at the thought of her +undefined jealousy. She was anxious to be civil to a young man of +whom Michael thought so highly. She sympathized with his regret that +they had no children, but why could he not take up with one of her +cousin Bennet's boys from Manchester, or Sophy's son from +Northallerton, or one of his own brother's or sister's children? How +on earth did he become acquainted with this young man from South +Wales? But she was determined not to be separated in any way from +her husband, and so she sat with them as often and as long as she +could in the library. The studio-laboratory she could not stand with +its horrid smell of chemicals; she also dreaded vaguely that +vivisection went on there--Michael of course had a license, though +he was far too tender-hearted to torture sentient creatures. Still +he did odd things with frogs and rats and goats and monkeys; and her +dread was that she might one day burst in on one of these sacrifices +to science and see a transformed Michael, blood-stained, wielding a +knife and dangerous if interrupted in his pursuit of a discovery. + +But as the long talks and conferences of the two friends--really not +so far separated in age as one of them thought--generally took place +in the library, she assisted at a large proportion of them. Rossiter +would not have had it otherwise, though to David she was at times +excessively irksome. Her husband had long viewed her as a lay figure +on these occasions. He rarely replied to her flat remarks, her +inconsequent platitudes, her yawns and quite transparent signals +that it was time for the visitor to go. Sometimes David took her +hints and left: he had no business to make himself a bore to any +one. Sometimes however Michael at last roused to consciousness of +the fretful little presence would say "What? Sweety? _You_ still up. +Trot off to bed, my poppet, or you'll lose the roses in your +cheeks." + +The roses in Mrs. Rossiter's cheeks at that time were beginning to +be a trifle eczematous and of a fixed quality. Nevertheless, though +she tossed her head a little as she took up her "work" and swished +out of the great heavy door--which David opened--she was pleased to +think that Michael cared for her complexion and was solicitous about +her rest. + +And Vivie's eyes swam a little as she thought about the death of +Mark Stansfield, and the genuine tears that flowed down the cheeks +of his pupils when they learnt one raw February morning from the +housekeeper of his chambers that he had died at daybreak. "A better +man never lived" they agreed. And they were right. + +And she smiled again as she thought of some amongst those pupils, +the young dogs of those days, the lovers of actresses of the minor +order--ballet girls, it might have been; of the larks that went on +sometimes within and without the staid precincts of the Temple. +Harmless larks they were; but such as she had to withdraw from +discreetly. She played lawn tennis with them, she fenced +surprisingly well; but she had refused to join the "Devil's +Own"--the Inns of Court Volunteers, for prudent reasons; and though +it had leaked out that she was a good swimmer--that tiresome +impulsive Honoria had spread it abroad--she resolutely declined to +give proofs of her prowess in swimming baths. Her associates were +not so young as the undergraduates she had met in Newnham days: they +were an average ten years older. Their language at times made David +blush, but they had more discretion and reserve than the University +student, and they respected his desire to withdraw himself into +himself occasionally, and to abstain from their noisier amusements +without questioning his camaraderie. + +At this point in her smiling reminiscences, the wardress clanged +open the door and slammed down a mug of cocoa and a slab of brown +bread; and rapped out some orders in such a martinet utterance that +they were difficult to understand. (Don't be alarmed! She isn't +about to be executed for having deceived the Benchers of the Inner +Temple in 1905; she is only in prison for a suffragist offence).] + + +I can't wind up this chapter somehow without more or less finishing +the story of Beryl Claridge. She has been a source of anxiety to my +wife--who has read these chapters one by one as they left my +typewriter. "Was it wise to bring her in?" "Well, but my dear, she +was rather a common type of the New Woman in the early nineteen +hundreds." "Yes--but--" + +Of course the latent anxiety was that she might end up respectably. +And so she did. In 1906, the first Mrs. Storrington died at Ware +(Ware was where the architect husband had his legitimate home). She +had long been ill, increasingly ill of some terrible form of anaemia +which had followed the birth of her fourth child. She slowly faded +away, poor thing; and about the time David was returning from a +triumphant Christmas and New Year at Pontystrad--the Curate and his +young wife had made a most delightful partie carree and David had +kissed the very slightly protesting Bridget under the native +mistletoe--Mrs. Storrington breathed her last, while her faithless +yet long forgiven Francis knelt by her bedside in agonies of +unavailing grief. + +Well: she died and was buried, and her four children, ranging from +nine to sixteen, sobbed very much and mourned for darling Mummie +without the slightest suspicion ("'twas better so," she had always +thought) that Dad had poisoned her wells of happiness ever since he +took up with that minx at Cambridge in the very year in which +long-legged Claribel was born. A few months after the poor lady was +consigned (under a really lovely cenotaph designed by her husband) +to Ware Churchyard--no, it was to Ware cemetery; Dad introduced them +all to a very sprightly and good-looking widow, Mrs. Claridge, who +had also been bereaved years ago and left with two perfect ducks of +children, four and five years old, to whom Claribel took +instinctively (the elder ones sniffed a little, disliking "kids"). + +Then about Christmas time, 1906, Dad told them that Mrs. Claridge +was going to make him happy by coming to tend his motherless +children; was going to be his wife. Francis, the eldest, stomped +about the garden at Ware and swore he would go back to Rugby during +the holidays; Elspeth, the gaunt girl of fourteen and Agnes, a +dreamy and endearing child, cried themselves to sleep in each +other's arms. Claribel, however, quite approved. And whether they +liked it or not, in January, 1907, the marriage took place--at the +Registrar's--and Beryl came to live for a short time at Ware, +bringing ducksome Margery and adorable Podge. In less than a month +Beryl had won over all her step-children, except Francis, who held +out till Easter, but was reduced to allegiance by the hampers she +sent to him at Rugby--; in three months they had all moved to a much +sweller house on the Chelsea Embankment. Father--Beryl voted "Dad" a +little lower-middle class--Father had somehow become connected with +some great business establishment of which Mother was the head. +Together they were making pots of money. Francis would go to +Sandhurst, Elspeth to a finishing school in Paris (her ambition), +and the others would spend the fine months of the year rollicking +with Margery and Podge on the Sussex coast. + +In 1907, also, they became aware that their new mother was not alone +in the world. A stately lady whose eyes seemed once to have done a +deal of weeping (they were destined alas! to do much more, for three +of her gallant, handsome sons were killed in the War, and _that_ +finally killed the poor old Dean of Thetford), who wore a graceful +Spanish mantilla of black lace when in draughty places, came to see +them after they had moved to Garden Corner on the Chelsea +Embankment. She turned out to be the mother of Mrs. Beryl and was +quite inclined to be their grandmother as well as Margery's and +Podge's. But her husband the Dean was--it appeared--too great an +invalid to come up to town. + +The second Mrs. Storrington, who was a woman of boundless energy, +could work all day with secretaries, and could dance all night, gave +brilliant parties in the season at her large Chelsea house. But she +never invited to them Mr. David Vavasour Williams, that rising young +barrister who had become so famous as a pleader of the causes of +friendless women. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE SHILLITO CASE + + +In the autumn of 1905, increase among women of the idea of full +citizenship made rapid strides. There was a feeling in the air that +Balfour must soon resign or go to the country, that a Liberal +Ministry would succeed to power, and that being Liberal it could +scarcely, in reason or with any logic, refuse to enlarge the +franchise to the advantage of the female half of the community. +These idealizers of the Liberal Party, which had really definitely +ceased to be Liberal in 1894, had a rude awakening. Annie Kenney and +Christabel Pankhurst dared to act as if they were men, and asked Sir +Edward Grey at his Manchester meeting in October, 1905, if a Liberal +Administration would give Votes to Women, should it be placed in +power at the next Election. Answer they had none, from the platform; +but the male audience rose in their hundreds, struck these audacious +hussies in the face, scratched and slapped them (this was the role +of the boys), and hustled them out into the street, bleeding and +dishevelled. Here for attempting to explain the causes of their +expulsion they were arrested by the police, and the following +morning were sent to prison, having declined to pay the fines +illegally imposed on them. + +This incident made a great impression on the newspaper-reading +public, because at that time the Press boycott on the Woman Suffrage +movement had not set in. It gave David much to think about, and he +found Honoria Fraser and several of his men and women friends had +joined the Woman Suffrage movement and were determined that the new +Liberal Government should not shirk the issue; an issue on which +many members of Parliament had been returned as acquiescent in the +principle. On that account they had received the whole-hearted +support of many, women owing allegiance to the Liberal Party. + +At first of course the new Government was too busy in allotting the +loaves and fishes of Office and in handing out the peerages, +baronetcies, knighthoods, Governorships, private secretaryships, and +promotions among the civil servants which had--not to put too fine a +point on it--been purchased by large and small contributions to the +Party Chest. + +[Such a procedure seems to be inseparable from our present Party +system. In this respect the Conservatives are no better than the +Liberals; and it is always possible that in a different way the +Labour Party when It comes into power will be similarly inclined to +reward those who have furnished the sinews of war. The House of +Commons in the last Act which revised the conditions of elections of +members of Parliament was careful to leave open many avenues along +which Money might attain to the heart of things.] + +But at length all such matters were settled, and the Cabinet was +free to face the steady demand of the women leaders of the +Suffrage movement; a demand that at any rate _some_ measure of +enfranchisement should be granted to the women of the British Isles +without delay. + +We all know how this demand was received by the leading men of the +Liberal Party and by the more prominent Liberals among their +supporters in the House; with evasions, silences, sneers, angry +refusals, hasty promises given to-day (when Ministers were +frightened) and broken to-morrow; with a whole series of +discreditable tongue-in-the-cheek tricks of Parliamentary +procedure; till at last the onlooker must have wondered at and felt +grateful for our British phlegm; surprised that so little actual +harm was done (except to the bodies of the Suffragists), that no +Home Secretary or Police Inspector or magistrate, no flippant +talker-out of would-be-serious Franchise Bills was assassinated, +trounced, tarred and feathered, kidnapped, nose-tweaked, or even +mud-bespattered. (I am reproducing here the growing comprehension of +the problem as it shaped in Vivie's mind, under the hat and +waistcoat of David Williams.) + +Honoria, faithful to her old resolve, continued to devote the +greater part of the Two Thousand a year she had set aside for the +Woman's Cause to financing the new Suffrage movement; and +incidentally she brought grist to David's mill by recommending him +as Counsel to many women in distress, arrested Suffragists. In 1906, +1907 and 1908 he made himself increasingly famous by his pleadings +in court on behalf of women who with dauntless courage and at the +cost of much bodily pain and even at the risk of death had forcibly +called attention to this grave defect in the British polity, the +withholding of the ordinary rights of tax-paying citizens from adult +women. + +Where the Suffragist was poor he asked no fee, or a small fee was +paid by some Suffragist Association. But he gained much renown over +his advocacy; he became quite a well-known personality outside as +well as inside the Law Courts and Police-stations by 1908. His +pleadings were sometimes so moving, so passionate that--_teste_ +Mrs. Pankhurst--"burly policemen in court had tears trickling down +their faces" as he described the courage, the flawless private +lives, the selfless devotion to a noble cause of these women +agitating for the rights of their sex--rich and poor, old and young. +Juries flinched from the verdict which some bitter-faced judge +enjoined; magistrates swerved from executing the secret orders of +the Home Office; policemen--again--for they are most of them decent +fellows--resigned their positions in the Force, sooner than carry +out the draconian policy of the Home Secretary. + +But of course concurrently he lost many a friend and friendship in +the Inns of Court. There were even growls that he should be +disbarred--after this espousal of the Suffrage cause had been made +manifest for three years. He might have been, but that he had other +compeers, below and above his abilities and position; advocates like +Lord Robert Brinsley, the famous son of the Marquis of Wiltshire. If +Williams was to be disbarred, why they would have to take the same +course with a Brinsley who also defended women law-breakers, +fighting for their constitutional rights. And of course such a +procedure as _that_ was unthinkable. Yet where a Brinsley sailed +unhampered, undangered over these troubled waters, poor David often +came near to crashing on the rocks. "To hear the fellow talk," said +one angry K.C. in the Library at the Inner Temple, "you'd think he +was a woman himself!" "Egad" said his brother K.C.--yes, he +really _did_ say "Egad," the oath still lingers in the Inns of +Court--"Egad, he looks like one. No hair on his face and I'll lay he +doesn't shave." + +There were of course other briefs he held, for payment or for love +of justice; young women who had killed their babies (as to these he +was far from sentimental; he only defended where the woman had any +claim to sympathy or mitigation of the unreal death sentence); +breach of promise actions where the woman had been grossly wronged; +affiliation cases in high life--or the nearest to high life that +makes a claim on the man for his fatherhood. He was a deadly +prosecutor in cases where women had been robbed by their male +trustees, or injured in any other way wherein, in those days, the +woman was at a disadvantage and the marriage laws were unjust. + +One way and another, with the zealous aid and business-like care of +his interests by his clerk, Albert Adams, David must have earned +between 1906 and the autumn of 1908, an average Three hundred a +year. As he paid Adams L150 a year and allowed him certain +perquisites, and lived within his own fixed income (from his annuity +and investments) of L290 a year, this meant a profit of about L500. +This was raised at a leap to L1,500 by the fees and the special gift +he received for defending Lady Shillito. + +The "Shillito Case," an indictment for murder, was tried at the +winter assize of the North-eastern Circuit, January or February, +1909. I dare say you have forgotten all about it now: Lady Shillito +changed her name, married again (eventually), and was lost in the +crowd--she may even, eleven years afterwards, be reading this novel +at the riper age of forty and be startled out of her well-fed apathy +by the revival of acute memories. + +There have been not a few similar cases before and since of +comparatively young, beautiful women murdering their elderly, +objectionable husbands in a clever cattish way, and of course +getting off through lack of evidence or with a short term of +imprisonment. (They were always treated in prison far more tenderly +than were Suffragettes, and the average wardress adored them and +obtained for them many little alleviations of their lot before the +Home Secretary gave way and released them.) Nowadays the War and the +pressing necessities of life, the coal famine, the milk famine, the +railway strikes have robbed such cases of all or nearly all their +interest. I could quite believe that women in similar circumstances +continue to murder their elderly husbands, and the doctors and +coroners and relations on "his" side tacitly agree not to raise a +fuss in the presence of much graver subjects of apprehension. + +I can also understand why these beautiful-women-elderly-husband +cases scarcely starred our Island story prior to the 'fifties of +the last century. It was only when chemical analysis had approached +its present standard of perfection that the presence of the more +subtle poisons could be detected in the stomach and intestines, and +that the young and beautiful wife could be charged with and found +guilty of the deed by the damning evidence of an analytical chemist. + +It was Rossiter who secured for David the conduct of Lady Shillito's +defence. Arbella[1] Shillito was his second cousin, a Rossiter by +birth, and would fain have married Michael herself, only that he was +not at that time thinking of marriage, and when his thoughts turned +that way--the very day after, as it were--he met Linda Bennet and +her thousands a year. But he retained a half humorous liking for +this handsome young woman. + + [Footnote 1: An old Northumbrian variant of Arabella.] + +Arbella, disappointed over Michael--though she was a mere slip of a +girl at the time--next decided that she must marry money. When she +was twenty-one she met Grimthorpe Shillito, an immensely rich man of +Newcastle-on-Tyne, whose foundries poured out big guns and many +other things made of iron and steel combined with acids and brains. +Grimthorpe was a curious-looking person, even at forty; in +appearance a mixture of Julius Caesar, several unpleasant-featured +Doges of Venice, and Voltaire in middle age. His looks were not +entirely his fault and doubtless acquired for him, in his moral +character, a worse definition than he deserved. He had travelled +much in his pursuit of metallurgy and chemistry; at forty he saw +rising before him the prospect of a peerage, due either for his +extraordinary discoveries and inventions in our use of steel, or +easily purchasable out of his immense wealth. What is the good of a +peerage if it ends with your life? He was not without his vanities, +though one of the most cynical men of his cynical period. + +He arrived therefore at the decision that he would marry some young +and buxom creature of decent birth and fit in appearance to be a +peeress, and decided on Arbella Rossiter. + +After a gulp or two and several _moues_ behind his back, she +accepted him. A brilliant marriage ceremony followed, conducted by a +Bishop and an Archdeacon. And then Arbella was carried off to live +in a Bluebeard's Castle he possessed on the Northumbrian coast. + +In the three years following her marriage she gave him two boys, +with which he was content, especially as his own health began to +fail a little just then. At the end of four years of marriage with +this cynical, Italianate tyrant, Arbella got very sick of him and +thought more and more tenderly of a certain subaltern in the Cavalry +whom she had once declined to marry on L500 a year. This subaltern +had returned from the South African war, a Colonel and still +extremely good-looking. They had met again at a garden party and +fallen once more deeply in love. If only her tiresome old Borgia +would die--was the thought that came too often into the mind of +Arbella, now entering the "thirties" of life, and with the least +possible misgiving of her Colonel's constancy if she became +presently "_un peu trop mure_." + +She noticed at this time that Grimthorpe Shillito went on several +occasions to London to consult a specialist. He complained of +indigestion, was rather thin, and balder than ever, and difficult to +please in his food and appetite. + +This was her opportunity. She would have said, had she been +convicted, that he had driven her to it by his cruelties: that's as +may be.--She consulted the family doctor who attended to the +household of Bluebeard's Castle; suggested that Sir Grimthorpe (they +had just knighted him) might be the better for a strychnine tonic; +she had read somewhere that strychnine did wonders for middle-aged +men who had led rather a rackety life in their early manhood. + +The family doctor who disliked her and suspected her, as you or I +wouldn't have done, but doctors think of everything, feigned to +agree; and supplied her with little phials of _aqua distillata_ +flavoured with quinine. He himself was puzzled over Sir Grimthorpe's +condition but was a little offended at not being personally +consulted. + +The fact was that Sir G. had a very poor opinion of his abilities in +diagnosis and being naturally secretive and generally cussed, +preferred consulting a London specialist. He wasn't then Sir +Grimthorpe, the specialist wasn't very certain that it _was_ cancer +on the liver, and amid his multitude of consulters did not, unless +aroused, remember very clearly the case of a Mr. Shillito from +somewhere up in the North. + +But Shillito pondered gravely over the specialist's carefully +guarded phrases about "growths, possibly malign, but at the same +time--difficult to be sure quite so soon--perhaps harmless, might of +course be merely severe suppressed jaundice." When the pains +began--he hated the idea of operations, and knew that any operation +on the liver only at best staved off the dread, inevitable end for a +year or a few months--When the pains began, he had grown utterly +tired of life; so he compounded a subtle poison--he was a great +chemist and had--only his wife knew not of this--a cabinet which +contained a variety of mineral, vegetable, and acid poisons; and +kept the draught in a secret locker in his bedroom. Meantime +Arbella, who after all was human, was tortured at the sight of his +tortures. She felt she must end it, or her nerves would give way. +She trebled, she quintupled the dose of _aqua distillata_ embittered +with quinine. One night when the night nurse was sleeping ("resting +her eyes," she called it) the wretched man stole from his bed to +the night nursery and kissed both his boys. He then swiftly took the +phial from its hiding place and drank the contents and died in one +ghastly minute. + +When the night nurse awoke he was crisped in a horrible _rigor_. On +the night table was the phial with the remains of the draught. She +had noticed in the last day or two Lady Shillito fussing a good deal +about the sick man, pressing on him doses of a colourless medicine. +_What if she had stolen in while the nurse was asleep and placed a +finally fatal draught by the bedside?_ From that she proceeded to +argue (when she had leisure to think it out) that she _hadn't_ been +to sleep, had merely been resting her eyes. And she was now sure +that whilst she had closed those orbs she had heard--as indeed she +had, only it was Sir Grimthorpe himself--some one stealing into the +room. + +She communicated her suspicions to the doctor. The latter knew his +patient had not died of anything he had prescribed, but concluded +that Lady Shillito, wishing to be through with the business, had +prepared a fulminating dose obtained elsewhere; and insisted on +autopsy with a colleague, to whom he more than hinted his +suspicions. Together they found the strychnine they were looking for--not +very much, but the proportion that was combined by Shillito +with less traceable drugs to make the death process more rapid--and +quite overlooked the signs of cancer in the liver. + +The outcome was that Lady Shillito at the inquest found herself "in +a very unpleasant position" and was placed under arrest, and later +charged with the murder of her husband. + +Believing herself guilty she summoned all her resolution to her aid, +admitted nothing, appealed to Michael Rossiter and others for +advice. Thus David was drawn into the business. + +[But this doesn't sound very credible, you will say. "If the +husband felt he could not face the agony of death by cancer, why +didn't he leave a note saying so, and every one would have +understood and been quite 'nice' about it?" I really can't say. +Perhaps he wished to leave trouble for her behind him; perhaps he +divined the reason why she thought a day nurse unnecessary, and +insisted on giving him his day medicines with her own fair hands. +Perhaps he hoped for an open verdict. Perhaps he wasn't quite right +in his mind. I have told you the story as I remember it and my +memory is not perfect. Personally I've always been a bit sorry for +Grimthorpe. It is quite possible that all those hints as to his +"queerness" were invented by his wife to excuse herself. I only know +that Science benefited greatly from his researches, and that he +bequeathed some priceless collections to both branches of the +British Museum. Some one once told me he had a heart somewhere and +had loved intensely a sister much younger than himself and had only +begun to be "queer" and secretive and bald after her premature +death. I think also that in the last year of his life he was greatly +embittered at not getting the expected peerage; after the trouble +and disagreeableness he had gone through to obtain heirs for this +distinction this poor little attempt at immortality which it is in +the power of a Prime Minister to bestow.] + +The Grand Jury returned a true bill against Lady Shillito. David had +been studying the case from the morrow of the inquest, that is as +soon as Rossiter had learnt of the coming trouble. The latter though +he regarded Cousin Arbella as a rather amusing minx, an interesting +type in modern psychology (though really her type is as old +as--say--the Hallstadt period) had no wish to see her convicted of +murder. Furthermore he was getting so increasingly interested in +this clever David Williams that he would have liked to make his +fortune by helping him to a sensational success as a pleader, to +one of those cases which if successfully conducted mark out a path +to the Bench. So he insisted that David Williams be briefed for the +defence, and well fee'ed, in order that he might be able to devote +all his time to the investigation of the mystery. David had an +uphill task. He went down to the North in November, 1908, conferred +with Lady Shillito's solicitors, and at great length with the +curiously calm, ironly-resolved Lady Shillito herself. The evidence +was too much against her for him to prevent her being committed for +trial and lodged in reasonably comfortable quarters in Newcastle +jail, or for the Grand Jury to find no true bill of indictment. But +between these stages in the process and the actual trial for murder +in February, 1909, David worked hard and accumulated conclusive +evidence (with Rossiter's help) to prove his client's innocence of +the deed of which she believed herself guilty. To punish her as she +deserved he allowed her to think herself guilty till his defence of +her began. + +The prospect of a death on the gallows did not perturb Lady Shillito +in the least. She was perfectly certain that if found guilty her +beauty and station in life would avail to have the death penalty +commuted to a term of imprisonment which she would spend in the +Infirmary. Still, that would ruin her life pretty conclusively. She +would issue from prison a broken woman, whom in spite of her +wealth--if she retained any--no impossibly-faithful Colonel would +marry at the age of forty-five or fifty. So she followed the opening +hours of the trial with a dry mouth. + +With the help of Rossiter and of many and minute researches David +got on the track of the consultation in Harley Street, the warning +given of the possible cancer. He found in Sir Grimthorpe's +laboratory sufficient strychnine to kill an army. He was privately +informed by the family doctor (who didn't want to press matters to +a tragedy) that although he fully believed Arbella capable of the +deed, she certainly had--so far as the doctor's prescriptions were +concerned--obtained nothing from him which could have killed her +husband, even if she had centupled the dose. + +Lady Shillito appeared in the dock dressed as much as possible like +Mary, Queen of Scots on her trial; and was attended by a hospital +nurse with restoratives and carminatives. The Jury retired for a +quarter of an hour only, and returned a verdict of _Not Guilty_. The +Court was rent with applause, and the Judge commented very severely +on such a breach of decorum, apparently unknown to him in previous +annals of our courts of justice. Lady Shillito fainted and the nurse +fussed, and the Judge in his private room sent for Mr. Williams and +complimented him handsomely on his magnificent conduct of the case. +"Of course she _meant_ to poison him; but I quite agree with the +Jury, she didn't. He saved her the trouble. Now I suppose she'll +marry again. Well! I pity her next husband. Come and have lunch with +me." + +And in the course of the meal, His Ludship spoke warmly to Mr. +Williams of the bright prospects that lay before him if he would +drop those foolish Suffragette cases. + +David returned to London with Rossiter and remained silent all the +way. His companion believed him to be very tired, and refrained from +provoking conversation, but surrounded him with a quiet, fatherly +care. Arrived at King's Cross Rossiter said: "Don't go on to your +chambers. My motor's here. It can take your luggage on with mine to +Portland Place. You can have a wash and a rest and a talk when +you're rested; and after we've dined and talked the motor shall come +round and take you back to Fig Tree Court." + +Mrs. Rossiter was there to greet them, and whilst David went to wash +and rest and prepare himself for dinner, she chirrupped over her +big husband, and asked endless and sometimes pointless questions +about the trial and the verdict. "Did Michael believe she really +_had_ done it? She, for one, could believe anything about a woman +who obviously dyed her hair and improved her eyebrows. (Of course +Michael said he didn't, or the questions, as to why, how, when might +have gone on for hours). Was Mr. Williams's defence of Arbella so +very wonderful as the evening papers said? Why could he not have +gone straight home and rested _there_? It would have been so much +nicer to have had Mike all to herself on his return, and not have +this tiresome, melancholy young man spending the evening with them +... really _some_ people had _no_ tact ... could _not_ see they were +_de trop_. Why didn't Mr. Williams marry some nice girl and make a +home for himself? Not well enough off? Rubbish! She had known plenty +young couples marry and live very happily on Two hundred and fifty a +year, and Mr. Williams must surely be earning that? And if he must +always be dining out and spending the evening with other people, why +did he not make himself more 'general?' Not _always_ be absorbed in +her husband. Of course she understood that while Arbella's fate hung +in the balance they had to study the case together and have long +confabulations over poisons in the Lab'rat'ry...!" (This last +detestable word was a great worry to Mrs. Rossiter. Sometimes she +succeeded in suppressing as many vowels as possible; at others she +felt impelled to give them fuller values and call it "laboratorry.") +And so on, for an hour or so till dinner was announced. + +David sat silent all through this meal, under Mrs. Rossiter's +mixture of mirthless badinage: "We shall have you now proposing to +Lady Shillito after saving her life! I expect her husband won't have +altered his will as she didn't poison him, and she must have had +quite thirty thousand pounds settled on her.... They do say however +she's a great _flirt_..." Indiscreet questions: "How much will you +make out of this case? You don't know? I thought barristers had all +that marked on their briefs? And didn't she give you 'refreshers,' +as they call them, from time to time? What was it like seeing her in +prison? Was she handcuffed? Or chained? What did she wear when she +was tried?" And inconsequent remarks: "I remember my mamma--she died +when I was only fourteen--used to dream she was being tried for +murder. It distressed her very much because, as she said, she +couldn't have hurt a fly. What do _you_ dream about, Mr. Williams? +Some pretty young lady, I'll be bound. I dream about such _funny_ +things, but I nearly always forget what they were just as I am going +to tell Michael. But I did remember one dream just before Michael +went down to Newcastle to join you ... was it about mermaids? No. It +was about _you_--wasn't that funny? And you seemed to be dressed as +a mermaid--no, I suppose it must have been a mer_man_--and you were +trying to follow Michael up the rocks by walking on your tail; and +it seemed to hurt you awfully. Of course I know what it all came +from. Michael had wanted me to read Hans Andersen's fairy +stories--don't you think they're pretty? I do; but sometimes they +are about rather silly things, skewers and lucifer matches ... and I +had spent the afternoon at the Zoo. Michael's a fellow, of course, +and I use his ticket and always feel quite at home there ... and at +the Zoo that day I had seen one of the sea-lions trying to walk on +his tail.... Oh, _how_ I laughed! But what made me associate the +sea-lion with you and mermaids, I cannot say, but then as poor papa +used to say, 'Dreams are funny things'..." + +David's replies were hardly audible, and to his hostess's pressing +entreaties that he would try this dish or not pass that, he did not +answer at all. He felt, indeed, as though the muscles of his throat +would not let him swallow and if he opened his mouth wide enough to +utter a consecutive speech he would burst out crying. A great +desire--almost unknown to Vivie hitherto--seized him to get away +to some lonely spot and cry and cry, give full vent to some +unprecedented fit of hysteria. He could not look at Rossiter though +he knew that Michael's eyes were resting on his face, because if he +attempted to reply to the earnest gaze by a reassuring smile, the +lips would tremble and the tears would fall. + +At last when the dessert was reached and the servants--_do_ they +never feel telepathically at such moments that some one person +seated at the table, crumbling bread, wishes them miles away and +loathes their quiet ministrations?--the servants had withdrawn for a +brief respite till they reappeared with coffee, David rose to his +feet and stammered out something about not being well--would they +order the motor and let him go? And as he spoke, and tried to speak +in a level, "society" voice, his aching eyes saw the electric lamps, +the glinting silver, Mrs. Rossiter's pink, foolish face and crisp +little flaxen curls, Rossiter's bearded countenance with its honest, +concerned look all waltzing round and round in a dizzying whirl. He +made the usual vain clutches at unreal supports, and fainted into +Rossiter's arms. + +The latter carried him with little effort into the cool library and +laid him down on a couch. Mrs. Rossiter followed, full of +exclamations, vain questions, and suggestions of inapplicable or +unsuitable remedies. Rossiter paid little heed to her, and proceeded +to remove David's collar and tie and open his shirt front in order +to place a hand over the heart. Suddenly he looked up and round on +his wife, and said with a peremptoriness which admitted of no +questioning: "Go and see that one of the spare bedrooms is got +ready, a fire lit, and so on. Get this done _quickly_, and meantime +leave him to me. I have got restoratives here close at hand." + +Mrs. Rossiter awed into silence summoned the housemaid and +parlour-maid and hindered them as much as possible in the task of +getting a room ready. + +Meantime the sub-conscious David sighed a great deal and presently +wept a great deal in convulsive sobs, and then opened his eyes and +saw the tourbillon of whirling elements settling down into +Rossiter's grave, handsome face--yes, but a gravity somehow +interpenetrated by love, a love not ashamed to show itself--bending +over him with great concern. The secret had been guessed, was known; +and as they held each other with their eyes as though the world were +well lost in this discovery, their lips met in one kiss, and for a +minute Vivie's arms were round Michael's neck, for just one +unforgettable moment, a moment she felt she would cheerfully have +died to have lived through. + +They were soon unlaced, for sharp little high-heeled footsteps on +the tiled passage and the clinketing of trinkets announced the +return of Mrs. Rossiter. + +Vivie became David once more, but left behind her the glad tears of +relief that were coursing down David's cheeks. + +Mrs. Rossiter thought this was a very odd way for a barrister to +celebrate his winning a great case at the criminal courts, and +turned away in delicacy from the spectacle of a dishevelled and +obviously lachrymose young man with one arm dangling and the other +thrown negligently over the back of the leather couch. "Mr. +Williams's room is ready, Michael," she said primly. "All right, +dear; thank you. I will help Williams up to bed and have his luggage +sent up. He will be quite well to-morrow if he can get to sleep. You +needn't bother any more, dearie. Go into the drawing-room and I +will join you there presently." + +Rossiter gave the rather shuddery, shivery, teeth-clacking David an +arm till he saw him into the bedroom and resting on the bedroom +sofa. Then he drew up a chair and said in low but distinct tones:-- + +"Look here. I know you want to make me an explanation. Well! It can +wait. A little more of this strain and you'll be having brain +fever. Sleep if you can, and eat all the breakfast Linda sends you +up in the morning. Get up at eleven to-morrow and if you are fit +then to drive out in my motor, return to your chambers. When you +have calmed down to a normal pulse, write to me all you want to +say. No one shall read it but me ... I'll burn it afterwards or +send it back to you under seal. But at the present time, it may be +easier for both of us if our communications are only written and +not spoken. We have both been tried rather high; and both of us are +human, however high-principled. If you write, register the +letter.... Good-night..." + +This that follows is probably what Vivie wrote to Michael. He burnt +the long letter when he had finished reading it though he made +excerpts in a pocket-book. But I can more or less correctly surmise +how she would put her case; how she typed it herself in the solitude +of two evenings; how, indeed, her nervous break-down was made the +reason for fending off all clients and denying herself to all +callers. + +"I am not David Vavasour Williams. I am Vivien Warren, the daughter +of a woman who runs a series of disreputable Private Hotels on the +Continent. I had no avowed father, nor had my mother, who likewise +was illegitimate. She was probably the daughter of a Lieutenant +Warren who was killed in the Crimea, and _her_ mother's name was +Vavasour. My grandmother was probably--I can only deal with +probabilities and possibilities in this undocumented past--a Welsh +woman of Cardiff, and I should not be surprised if I were a sort of +cousin of the man I am personating. + +"He was the ne'er-do-weel, only son of a Welsh vicar, a pupil of +Praed's, who went out to South Africa and died or was killed in the +war. + +"You have met my adopted father. He fully believes I am the bad son, +the prodigal son, returned and reformed. He has grown to love me so +much that it really seems to have put new life into him. I have +helped him to get his affairs straight, and I think I may say he has +gained by this substitution of one son for another, even though the +new son is a daughter! I have taken none of his money, other than +small sums he has thrust on me. I have some money of my own, earned +in Honoria's firm, for I was the 'Warren' of her 'Fraser and +Warren.' She has known my secret all along, hasn't quite approved, +but was overborne by me in my resolve to show what a woman--in +disguise, it may be--could do at the Bar. + +"Michael! I started out twelve years ago--and the dreadful thing is +I am now _thirty-four_ in true truth! to conquer Man, and a man has +conquered me! I wanted to show that woman could compete with man in +all careers, and especially in the Law. So she can--have I not shown +it by what I have done? But it is a drawn battle. I have realized +that if some men are bad--rotten--others, like you--are supremely +good. I love you as I never thought I could love any one. I cannot +trust myself to write down how much I love you: it would read +shamefully and be too much a surrender of my first principle of +self-respect. + +"I am going to throw up the whole D.V.W. business. It has put us in +a false relation which was exasperating me and puzzling you. +Moreover the disguise was wearing very thin. Only those two loyal +souls, Honoria Fraser and Albert Adams, were cognizant of the +secret, but it was being guessed at and almost guessed right, in +certain quarters. Professional jealousy was on my track. I never +fainted before in my life--so far as I can remember--but I might +have done so elsewhere than in your dear house, after the strain of +such an effort as I made to save that worthless woman--she was your +cousin, which is why I fought for her so hard--How often is not +justice deflected by Love! I might, somewhere else, when +over-strained have had a fit of hysterics; and my disguise would +have been penetrated by eyes less merciful than yours. Then would +have come exposure and its consequences--damaging to You (_I_ should +not have mattered), to my poor old 'father' down in Wales--whom I +sincerely love--to Praddy, to Honoria.... + +"Let me be thankful to get off so easily! _Somme toute_, I have had +a glorious time, have seen the world from the man's point of +view--and I can assure you that from his point of view it is a jolly +place to live in--_He_ can walk up and down the Strand and receive +no insult. + +"Well now, to relieve your anxieties, I will tell you, that after a +brief visit to South Wales to recuperate from the exertions of that +trial, Mr. David Williams the famous young barrister at the Criminal +Bar will go abroad to investigate the White Slave Traffic. Miss +Vivien Warren privately believes--and hopes--that the horrors of +this traffic in British womanhood are greatly exaggerated. The lot +in life of many of these young women is so bad in their native land +that they cannot make it worse by going abroad, no matter in what +avowed career. But Mr. David Williams takes rather a higher line and +is resolved in any case to get at the Truth. Miss Warren, nathless, +has her misgivings anent her old mamma, and would like to know what +that old lady is doing at the present time, and whether she is past +reform. Miss Warren even has her moments of doubt as to the +flawless perfection of her own life: whether the path of duty in +1897 did not rather lie in the direction of a serious attempt to be +a daughter to her wayward mother and reclaim her then, instead of +going off at a tangent as the mannish type of New Woman, to whom +applicable Mathematics are everything and human affections very +little. I suppose the truth, the commonplace truth is, that rather +late in life, Vivien Warren has fallen in love in the old-fashioned +way--How Nature mocks at us!--and now sees things somewhat +differently. At any rate, David and Vivie, fused into one +personality, are going abroad for a protracted period ... going out +of your life, my dearest, for it is better so. Linda has every right +to you and Science is a jealous mistress. Moreover poor, outcast +Vivie has her own bitter pride. She is resolved to show that a woman +_can_ cultivate strength of character and an unflinching sobriety of +conduct, even when born of such doubtful stock as mine, even when +devoid of all religious faith. I know you love me, I glory in the +knowledge, but I know that you likewise are more strongly bound by +principles of right conduct because like myself you have no sham +theology.... + +"Michael! _why_ are we tortured like this? Why mayn't we love where +we please? Is this discipline necessary to the improvement of the +race? I only know that if we sinned against these human laws and +conventions, your great career in Science--and again, why in +Science? Lightness in love does not seem to affect the career of +orchestral conductors, actors, singers, play-wrights and house +painters--why weren't you one of these, and not a High Priest of the +only real religion? I only know also that if I fell, so many people +would have the satisfaction of saying: 'There! _what_ did I say? +What's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. _That's_ how the +Woman's Movement's goin' to end, you take my word for it! They'll +get a man somewhere, somehow, and then they'll clear out of it.' + +"I think I said before--I meant to say, at any rate, so as to ease +your mind: I'm all right as regards financial matters. I have a life +annuity and some useful savings. I shall give Bertie Adams a year's +salary; and if you feel, dear friend, you _must_ put forth your hand +to help me, help _him_ instead to get another position. He has a +wife and a young family, and for his class is just about as good a +chap as I have ever met--this is 'David' speaking! If you can do +nothing you may be sure Vivie will, even if she has to borrow +unclean money from her wicked old mother to keep Bertie Adams from +financial anxiety and his pretty young wife and the child they are +so proud of.... + +"I must finish this gigantic letter somewhere, though I'm not going +to stop writing to you. I couldn't--I should lose all hold on life +if I did. For the purpose of correspondence and finishing up things, +I shall be 'David Williams' for some time longer. You know his +address in Wales? Pontystrad Vicarage, Pontyffynon, Glamorgan, if +you've forgotten it. He'll be there till April, and then begin his +foreign tour and write to you at intervals from the Continent. As to +Vivie, I think she won't return to life and activity till the autumn +and _then_ she'll make things hum. She'll throw all the energy of +frustrated love into the Woman's Cause, and get 'em the Vote +somehow...!" + + +Early in the genesis of the book. I appointed a jury of matrons to +judge each chapter before it went to the Press, and to decide +whether it was suited to the restrictions of the circulating +library, and whether it would cause real distress or perturbation to +three persons whom we chose as representative readers of decent +fiction: Admiral Broadbent, Lady Percy Mountjoye, and old Mrs. +Bridges (Mrs. Bridges was said to have had a heart attack after +reading THE GAY-DOMBEYS--I did not wish her to have another). This +jury of broad-minded women of the world decided that Rossiter's +reply to Vivie's very long epistle should not see the light. He +himself would probably--had he known we were discussing his +affairs--have been thankful for this decision; because twelve hours +after he had written it he was heartily ashamed of his momentary +lapse from high principles, ashamed that the woman in the case +should have shown herself truer metal. He resolved, so far as our +poor human resolves are worth anything, to remain inflexibly true to +his devoted Linda and to his career in biological Science. He knew +too well that if he were caught in adultery it would be all over +with the great theories he was working to establish. The Royal +Society would condemn them. Besides, so fine a resolve as Vivie's, +to live on the heights must be respected. + +At the same time, it is certain that for the next three months he +muddled his experiments, confused his arguments, lost his temper +with a colleague on the Council of the Zoological Society, kicked +the pugs--even caused the most unbearable two of them to be poisoned +by his assistant--and lied in attributing their deaths to other +causes. He promised the weeping Linda a Pom instead; he said "Hell!" +when the macaw interrupted them with raucous screams. He let pass +all sorts of misprints in his article on the Ductless Glands for the +_Encyclopaedia Scotica_, he was always losing the thread of his +discourse in his lectures at the London Institution and University +College; and he spent too much of his valuable time writing hugely +long letters on all sorts of subjects to David Williams. + +David--or Vivie--replied much more laconically. In the first place +he--she--had had her say in the one big outpouring from which I +have quoted so freely; in the second she did not wish to stoke up +these fires lest they should become volcanic and break up a happy +home and a great career. She wrote once saying: "If ever you were in +trouble of any kind; if Linda should die before me, for example, I +would come back to you from the ends of the earth and even if I were +legitimately married to the Prince of Monaco; come back and serve +you as a drudge, as a butt for your wit, as a sick nurse. But +meantime, Michael, you must play the game." + +And so after this three months' frenzy was past, he did. It was not +always easy. Linda's devotion was touching. She perceived--though +she hardly liked admitting it--that her husband missed the society +of "that" Mr. Williams, in whom she, for one, never could see +anything particularly striking, and who was now travelling abroad on +a quest it would be indelicate to particularize, and one that in +_her_ opinion should have been taken up by a far older man, the +father of a grown-up family. She strove to replace Williams as an +intelligent companion in the Library and even in the Laboratory. She +gave up works of charity and espionage in Marylebone and many of her +trips into Society, to sit more often with the dear Professor, and +was a little distressed by his groans which seemed to be quite +unprovoked by her remarks or her actions. However as the months went +by, Rossiter buckled down more to his work, and Mrs. Rossiter +noticed that he engaged a new assistant at L300 a year to take +charge of his enormous correspondence. Mr. Bertie Adams seemed a +nice young man, though also afflicted at times with something that +gave melancholy to his gaze. But he had a good little wife who came +to make a home for him in Marylebone. Mrs. Rossiter being a kindly +woman went to call on her and was entirely taken up with their one +child whom she frequently asked to tea and found much more +interesting than the new Pom. "But it's got such a funny name, +Michael; I mean funny for their station in life. It's a girl and +they call it 'Vivvy,' which is short for Vivien. I told Mrs. Adams +she must have been reading Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_; but she +said 'No, she wasn't much of a reader: Adams was, and it was some +lady's name in a story that had stuck in his head, and that as her +mother's name was Susan and his was Jane, she hadn't minded.'" + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +DAVID GOES ABROAD + + +David Williams had an enthusiastic greeting when he went home to +Pontystrad for the Easter of 1909. It was an early Easter that year, +whether you like it or not; it suits my story better so, because +then David can turn up in Brussels at the end of April, and yet have +attended to a host of necessary things before his departure on a +long absence. + +He first of all devoted himself to making the old Vicar happy for a +few weeks in a rather blustery, showery March-April. His father was +full of wonderment and exultation over the honourable publicity his +barrister son had attained. "You'll be a Judge, Davy; at any rate a +K.C., before I'm dead! But marry, boy, _marry_. _That's_ what you +must do now. Marry and give me grandchildren." The burly curate +privately thought David a bit morbid in his passionate devotion to +the Woman's Cause, and this White Slave Traffic all rot. He had +worked sufficiently in the bad towns of the South Welsh coast and +had had an initiation into the lower-living parts of Birmingham and +London to be skeptical about the existence of these poor, deluded +virgins, lured from their humble respectable homes and thrust by +Shakespearean procuresses, bawds, and bullies into an impure life. +If they went to these places abroad it was probably with the hope of +greater gains, better food, and stricter medical attention. However, +he kept most of these thoughts to himself and his wife, the squire's +daughter; who as she somehow thought David _ought_ to have married +_her_, was a little bit sentimental about him and considered he was +a Galahad. + +Old Nannie remained as usual wistfully puzzled, half fearing the +explanation of the enigma if it ever came. + +Returned to London and Fig Tree Court--which he was soon +vacating--David obtained through his and her bankers a passport for +himself and another for Miss Vivien Warren, thirty-four, British +subject, and so forth, travelling on the Continent, a lady of +independent means. He re-arranged all David's and Vivie's money +matters, stored such of Vivie's property and his own as was +indispensable at Honoria Armstrong's house in Kensington, and left a +box containing a complete man's outfit in charge of Bertie Adams; +bade farewell as "David Williams" and "Uncle David" to Honoria and +her two babies, and to the still unkindly-looking Colonel Armstrong +(who very much resented the "uncle" business, which was perhaps why +Honoria out of a wholesome _taquinage_ kept it up); and called in +for a farewell chat with dear old Praddy--beginning to look a bit +shaky and rather too much bossed by his parlour-maid. Honoria had +said as he departed "Do try to run up against Vivie somewhere abroad +and tell her I shan't be happy till she returns and takes up her +abode among us once more. 'Army' is _longing_ to know her." ('Army' +didn't look it.) "Now pettums! Wave handikins to Uncle David. He's +goin' broadies. 'Army' dear, would you ask them to whistle for a +taxi? I know David doesn't want to walk all the way back to the +Temple in those lovely button boots." + +Praed told him all he wanted to know about the localities of the +Warren Private Hotels; most of all, that at which Vivie's mother +resided in the Rue Royale, Brussels. + +So at this establishment a well but plainly dressed English lady, +scarcely looking her age (thirty-four) turned up one morning, and +sent in a card to the lady-proprietress, Mme. Varennes. This card +was closely scanned by a heavy-featured Flemish girl who took it +upstairs to an _appartement_ on the first floor. She read: + + _Miss Vivien Warren_ + +and vaguely noted the resemblance of the two names Varennes and +Warren, and the fact that the establishment in which she earned a +lucrative wage was one of the "Warren" Hotels. + +With very short delay, Vivie was invited to ascend in a lift to the +first floor and was shown in to a gorgeously furnished bedroom +which, through an open door, gave a glimpse of an attractive boudoir +or sitting-room beyond, and beyond that again the plane trees of a +great boulevard breaking into delicate green leaf. A woman of +painted middle age in a _descente de lit_ that in its opulence +matched the hangings and furniture of the room, had been reclining +on a sofa, drinking chocolate and reading a newspaper. She rose +shakily to her feet, when the door closed behind Vivie, tottered +forward to meet her, and exclaimed rather theatrically "My +_daughter_ ... come back to me ... after all these years!" (a few +tears ran down the rouged cheeks). + +"Steady on, mother," said Vivie, propping her up, and feeling oh! so +clean and pure and fresh and wholesome by contrast with this +worn-out woman of pleasure. "Lie down again on your sofa, go on with +your _petit dejeuner_--which is surely rather late? There were signs +and appetizing smells of the larger meal being imminent as I passed +through the hotel. Now just lie down until you want to dress--if you +like, I'll help you dress" (swallowing hard to choke down a little +shudder of repulsion). "I'm not in any hurry. I've come to Brussels +to go into matters thoroughly. For the present, I am staying at the +Hotel Grimaud." + +Mrs. Warren was convulsively sobbing and ruining the complexion she +had just made up, before she changed out of her _descente de lit_: +"Why not stop here, dearie? Don't laugh! There's _lots_ that do and +never suspect for one minute it ain't like any other hotel; though +from all I see and hear, _all_ hotels are pretty much the same +now-a-days, whether they're called by my name or not. Of course a +man might find out pretty quick, but not a woman who wasn't in the +business herself. Why we actually _encourage_ decent women to come +here when we ain't pressed for room. They give the place a better +tone, don't you know. There's two clergyman's sisters come here most +autumns and stop and stop and don't notice anything. They come in +here and chat with me, and once they said they liked foreign +gentlemen better than their own fellow-countrymen: 'their manners +are so _affable_.' Why it was partly through people like that, that +I got to hear every now and then what _you_ was up to. Oh, I wasn't +taken in long by that David Williams business. Praddy didn't give +you away--to speak of, when I sent you that thousand pounds--Lord, I +was glad you kept it! But what fixed me was your portrait in the +_Daily Mirror_ a couple of years ago as 'the Brilliant young +Advocate, Mr. David Vavasour Williams.' Somehow the 'Vavasour' +seemed to fit in all right, though what you wanted with +my--ahem--maiden name, with what was pore mother's _reel_ name, +before she lived with your grandfather--Well as I say, I soon saw +through the whole bag o' tricks--But _what_ a lark! Beat anythink +_I_ ever did. What have you done with your duds? Gone back to bein' +Vivie once more?--" + +_Vivie_: "I'll tell you all about it in good time. But I would +rather not stay here all the same. I've found a quiet hotel near the +station. I will come and see you if you can make it easy for me; but +what I should very much prefer, if you can only get away from this +horrid place, is that you should come and see _me_. Why shouldn't +you give yourself a fortnight's holiday and go off with me to +Louvain ... or to Spa ... or some other quiet place where we can +talk over everything to our heart's content?" + +_Mrs. Warren_: "Not a bad idea. Do me a lot of good. I was feeling +awfully down, Vivie, when you came. I wasn't altogether taken aback +at your coming, dearie, 'cos Praddy had given me a kind of a hint +you might turn up. But somehow, though everything goes well in +business--we seldom had so busy a time as during this last +Humanitarian Congress of the Powers--all the diplomats came +here--mostly the old ones, the old and respectable--oh we _all_ like +respectability--yet I never 'ad such low spirits. My gals used to +come in here and find me cryin' as often as not.... 'Comment, +Madame,' they used to say, 'pourquoi pleurez vous? Tout va si bien! +_Quelle_ clientele, et pas chiche'--I suppose you understand French? +However about this trip to the country, look on it as _settled_. +I'll pack up now and away we go in the afternoon. And not to any of +your measly Hotels or village inns. Why I've got me _own_ country +place and me _own_ auto. Villa de Beau-sejour, a mile or so beyond +the lovely beech woods of Tervueren. Ain't so far from Louvain, so's +I can send you on there one day--Ah! There's some one you'd like to +see in Louvain, if I mistake not! You always was one for findin' out +things, and maybe I'll tell you more, now you've come back to me, +than what I'd a done with you standing up so stiff and proud and me +unfit to take up the hem of your skirt.... How I do ramble. Suppose +it's old age comin' on" (shudders). "About this Villa de Beau-sejour +... It was once a farm house, and even now it's the farm where I get +me eggs and milk and butter an' the fruit and vegetables for this +hotel. _He_ gave it to me--you know whom I mean by '_He_'? ... don't +do to talk too loud in a place like this.... They say he's pretty +bad just now, not likely to live much longer. I was his mistress +once, years ago--at least I was more a confidante than anything +else. _How_ he used to laugh at my stories! 'Que tu es une +drolesse,' he used to say. I never used to mince matters and we were +none the worse for that. Bless you, he wasn't as bad as they painted +him, 'long of all this fuss about the blacks. As I say, he gave me +the Villa de Beau-sejour, and used to say if I behaved myself he +might some day make me 'Baronne de Beau-sejour.' How'd you have +liked that, eh? Sort of morganatic Queen? I lay I'd have put some +good management into the runnin' of those places. Aie! How they used +to swindle 'im, and he believing himself always such a sharp man of +business! When that Vaughan hussy..." + +_Vivie_: "Very well. We'll go to Villa Beau-sejour. But don't give +me too many of your reminiscences or I may leave you after all and +go back to England. Whilst I'm with you, you must give up rouge and +patchouli and the kind of conversation that goes with them. I'm out +here trying to do my duty and duty is always unpleasant. I don't +want to be a kill-joy, but don't give me more of that side of your +character than you can help. It--it makes me sick, mother..." + +[Mrs. Warren--or Madame Varennes--whimpers a little, but soon cheers +up, rings the bell for her maid preparatory to dressing and being +the business woman over her preparations for departure. She notes +the address of Vivie's hotel and promises to call for her there in +the _auto_ at three o'clock. Vivie leaves her, descends the richly +carpeted stairs--the lift is worked by an odiously pretty, little, +plump soubrette dressed as a page boy--and goes out into the street. +Several lounging men stare hard at her, but decide she is too +English, too plainly dressed, and a little too old to neddle with. +This last consideration is apparent to Vivie's intelligence and she +muses on it with a wistful little smile, half humour, half regret. +She will at her leisure write a whole description of the scene to +Michael.] + +Those who come after us will never realize how delightful was +foreign travel before the War, before that War which installed +damnable Dora in power in all the countries of Europe, especially +France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and Holland. They will not +conceive it possible that the getting of a passport (as a mere means +of rapidly establishing one's identity at bank or post-office) was a +simple transaction done through a banker or a tourist agency, the +enclosing of stamps and the payment of a shilling or two; that there +was no question of _visas_ entailing endless humiliation and +back-breaking delays, waiting about in ante-rooms and empty +apartments of squalid, desolating ugliness situate always in the +most odious parts of a town. But the Foreign Offices of Europe were +agreed on one topic, and this was that having got their feet back on +the necks of the people, their serfs of the glebe should not, save +under circumstances hateful, fatiguing, unhealthy and humiliating, +travel through the lands that once were beautiful and bountiful and +are so no longer. + +So: Vivie, never having consciously been abroad before (though she +was later to learn she had actually been born in Brussels), began to +experience all the delights of travel in a foreign land. She woke up +the next morning to the country pleasures of Villa Beau-sejour, a +preposterous chateau-villa it might be, but attached to a charming +Flemish farm; with cows and pigs, geese and ducks, plump poultry and +white pigeons, with clumps of poplars and copses of hawthorns and +wild cherry trees which joined the little domain on to the splendid +forest of Tervueren. There were the friendly, super-intelligent big +dogs, like bastard St. Bernards or mastiffs in breed, that drew the +little carts which carried the produce of the farm to the markets +or to Brussels. There were cheery Flemish farm servants and buxom +dairy or poultry women, their wives; none of them particularly aware +that there was anything discreditable about Madame Varennes. They +may have vaguely remembered she had once lived under High +protection, but that, if anything, added to her prestige in their +eyes. She was an English lady who for purposes of business and may +be of _la haute politique_ chose to live in Belgium. She was a kind +mistress and a generous _patronne_. Vivie as her daughter was +assured of their respect, and by her polite behaviour won their +liking as well. + +"You know, Viv, old girl," said Mrs. Warren one day, "if you played +your cards all right, this pretty place might be yours after I'd +gone. Why don't yer pick up a decent husband somewhere and drop all +this foolishness about the Suffragettes? He needn't know too much +about me, d'yer see? And if you looked at things sensible-like, +you'd come in for a pot of money some day; and whilst I lived I'd +make you a good allowance--" + +"It's no use, dear mother"--involuntarily she said "dear": her +heart was hungry for affection, Wales was rapidly passing out of her +sphere, David's business must soon be wound up in that quarter and +where else had she to go? "So long as you keep on with those Hotels +I can't touch a penny. I oughtn't to have kept that thousand, only +Praddy assured me it was 'clean' money." + +_Mrs. W._: "So it was. I won it at Monte. I don't often gamble now, +I hate losing money. But we'd had a splendid season at Roquebrune +and I sat down one day at the tables, a bit reckless-like. Seemed as +if I couldn't lose. When I got up and left I had won Thirty thousand +francs. So I says to myself: 'This shall go to my little girl: I'll +send it through Praddy and he'll pay it into her bank. Then I shan't +feel anxious about her.'" + +"Mother! what a strange creature you are! Such a mixture of good and +bad--for I suppose it _is_ bad, I feel somehow it _is_ bad, +trafficking in women's bodies, as they put it sensationally. Towards +me you have always been compact of kindness; you took every +precaution to have me brought up well, out of knowledge of any +impurity; and well and modernly educated. You left me quite free to +marry whom I liked ... but ... but ... you stuck to this horrible +career..." + +"Well, Vivie. I did. But did you make any great effort to turn me +from it? Besides, _is_ it horrible? I won't promise much for Berlin +and Buda-Pest or even Vienna, because I haven't been in those +directions for ever so long, and the Germans are reg'lar getting out +of hand, they are, working up for something. I dessay if you looked +in at the Warren Hotels in those places you might find lots to say +against 'em. But you couldn't say the places I supervise here and at +Roquebrune are so bad? _I_ won't stop your looking into 'em. The +girls are treated right down well. Looked after if they fall sick +and given every encouragement to marry well. I even call those two +places--I've giv' up me Paris house this ten years--I even call them +my 'marriage markets.' Ah! an' I've given in my time not a few +_dots_ to decent girls that had found a good husband _dans la +clientele_. Why they're no more than what you might call hotels a +bit larkier than what other Hotels are. I've never in all my twenty +years of Brussels management had a row with the police.... And as to +all this rot about the White Slave Traffic that you seem so excited +about ... well I'm not saying there's nothin' in it.... Antwerp, +Hamburg, Rotterdam--you'd hear some funny stories there ... but only +if you went as David Williams in your man's kit--My! what a wheeze +that's bin!... And from all they tell me, that place in South +America--Buenos Aires, is a reg'lar Hell. But ... God bless my soul +... there's nothin' to fuss about here. Our young ladies would take +on like anything if you forced them to go away from my care. It's +gettin' near the time when we close our Roquebrune establishment for +the summer, an' the girls'll all be goin' back to their homes in the +mountains and fattenin' up on new milk; still if you go there before +the middle of May you'll see things pretty much as they are in the +season; and what's more you'll see plenty of perfectly respectable +people stoppin' there. Of course the prices are high. But look at +the luxury! What that wicked Bax used to call 'All the Home +Comforts.' He liked 'is joke. I hear he's settlin' down at home with +his old Dutch. She's bin awful good to him, I must say. _I_ couldn't +stand 'im long. I don't often lose me temper but I did with him, +after he got licked by Paul Dombey, and I threw an inkpot at his +head and ain't seen him for a matter of thirteen or fourteen year. +He sold out all his shares in the Warren Hotels when he came a +cropper." + +"Well, mother, I'll have a look round. I'm truly glad you're quit of +the German and Austrian horrors, though you must bear the blame for +having organized them in the first place. I will presently put on +David Williams's clothes and see what I _can_ see of them. But if +you want me to be a daughter to you, you'll take the first and the +readiest opportunity of removing your name from these--_ach_!--these +legacies of the Nineteenth century. You'll wind up the Warren +Hotels' Company, and as to the two houses you've got here and at +Roquebrune, you'll turn them now into decent places where no +indecency is tolerated." + +_Mrs. Warren_: "I'll think it over and I don't say as I won't give +in to you. I'm tired of a rackety life and I'm proud of you and ... +and ... (cries) ... ashamed of meself ... ashamed whenever I look at +you. Though I've never bin what I call _bad_. I've helped many a +lame dog over a stile.... That's partly how you came into +existence--almost the only time I've ever been in love--Many years +ago--why, girl, you must be--getting on for thirty-five--let me see +... (muses). Yes, it was in the winter of '73-74. I'd bin at Ostende +with a young barrister from London ... him I told you about once, +who used to write plays, and we came on to Brussels because he had +some business with the Belgian Government. He left me pretty much to +myself just then, though quite open-handed, don't you know.... One +day I was walking through one of the poorer streets where the people +was very Flemish, and I stood looking up at an old doorway--Dunno' +why--S'pose I thought it picturesque--reminded me of Praddy's +drawin's. And an old woman comes up and says in French, 'Madame est +Anglaise?' In those days I couldn't hardly speak a word o' French, +but I said 'Oui.' Then she wants me to come upstairs but I thought +it was some trap. However as far as I could make out there was a +young Irishman there, she said, lying very sick of a fever and +seemingly had no friends. + +"Well: I took down the address and the next day I came there with +the concierge of the hotel where we were staying, and under his +protection we went upstairs. My! it was a beastly place--and your +poor father--for he _was_ your father--was tossing about and raving, +with burning cheeks and huge eyes, just like yours. Well! I had +plenty of money just then, so with the help of that concierge we +found a decent lodging--they wasn't so partic'lar then about +infection or they didn't think typhoid infectious--I took him there +in an ambulance, engaged a nurse, and in a fortnight he was +recovering. He turned out to be a seminarist--I think they called +it--from Ireland who was going to be trained for the priesthood at +Louvain--lots of Irish used to come there in those days. And somehow +a fit of naughtiness had overcome him--he was only twenty--and he +thought he'd like to see a bit of the world. So he'd sloped from +his college and had a bit of a spree at Brussels and Ostende. Then +he was took with this fever-- + +"His name was Fergus O'Conor and he always said he was descended +from the real old Irish Kings, and he was some kind of a Fenian. I +mean he used to go on something terrible against the English, and +say he would never rest till they were drove out of Ireland. When he +got well again he was that handsome--well I've never seen any one +like him, unless it's you. I expect when you dress up as David +Williams you're the image of what he was when I fell in love with +him. + +"And I did. And when me barrister friend--Mr. FitzSimmons--teased me +about it, and wanted me--he having finished his business--to return +with him to London I refused. Bein' a bit free with me speech in +those days I dessay I said 'Go to Hell.' But he only laughed and +left me fifty pounds. + +"Well, I lived with this young student for a matter of six months. A +lovely time we had, till he began gettin' melancholy--matter of no +money partly. He tried bein' a journalist. + +"Then the Church got him back. There came about a reg'lar change in +him, and just at the time when _you_ was comin' along. He woke up +one night in a cold sweat and said he was eternally damned. +'Nonsense,' I says, 'it's them crayfish; you ought never to eat that +bisque soup...' + +"But he meant it. He went back to Louvain--where I'm goin' to take +you in a day or two--and I suppose they made him do all sorts of +penances before they gave him absolution. But he stuck to it. In due +time he became a priest and entered one of them religious houses. +They think a lot of him at Louvain. I've seen him once or twice but +I can't bear to meet his eyes--they're somethin' like yours--make me +feel a reg'lar Jezebel. And as to you? Well, when he left me I +hadn't got much money left; so, before I begged a passage back to +England, I called in at the very hotel where you found me the other +day, and where me an' my barrister friend had been stayin'. I'd got +to know the proprietress a little--real kind-'earted woman she was. +She said to me 'See here. You stop with me and help me in the bureau +and have your baby. I'll look after you. And when you can get about +again, stop on and help me in my business. I reckon you're the type +of woman I've bin looking out for this long while.' And that's how +the first of the Warren Hotels was started and that's where you were +born ... in October, Eighteen--seventy--five--" + +(Vivie gave a little shudder, but her mother's thoughts were so +intent on the past that she did not perceive it.) + +_Mrs. Warren_: "Dj'ever see yer Aunt Liz?" + +Vivie told her of the grim experiences already touched on in Chapter +I. + +_Mrs. Warren_: "Well she dropped _me_--_com_pletely--from the time +she married that Canon. And I respected her. She was comfortably +off, her past was dead and done with. D'yer think _I_ wanted to +bother 'er? Not I. It depends so much on the way you was born and +brought up. If Liz had been the child of a respectable married +couple that could give her a good start in life, 'probability is +she'd have run straight from the first. Dunno about me. I was always +a bit larky. And yet d'you know, I think if yer father hadn't been a +sort of young god, with his head in the skies, and no reg'lar +income, if he'd a married me and been kind to me ... I should have +been an honest woman all the rest of me life.... + +"What do _you_ feel about morality? You don't seem to have much +faith in religion, yet you've always taken a high line--and somehow +I'm glad you have--about things that never seemed to me to matter +much. We're given these passions and desires--and my! don't it hurt, +falling in love!--and then the clergy, though they're awful +humbugs, tells us we must deny our cravings..." + +_Vivie_: "In the main the clergy are right in what they preach +though they give the wrong reasons. We must try to regulate our +passions or they will master us, stifle what is really good in us. +My solution of this problem which I am so sick of discussing.... But +let's finish with it while we are about it--my solution is that the +State and the Community should do their utmost to encourage, +subsidize, reward early marriages; and at the same time facilitate +in a reasonable degree divorce. Apply both these remedies and you +would go far to wipe out prostitution, which I think perfectly +horrible--I--I should like to penalize it. Perhaps it is the Irish +ascetic in my constitution. A good many early marriages might be +failures. Well then, at the end of ten years these should be +dissolvable, with proper provision made for the children. I think +many a couple if they knew that after a time and without scandal +their partnership could be dissolved wouldn't, when the time came, +want it. While on the other hand if you made the tie not +everlastingly binding, young people--especially if they hadn't to +trouble about means--would get married without hesitation or delay. +I should not only encourage that, but I should give every woman a +heavy bonus for bringing a living child into the world.... Now let's +talk of something else. When are you going to take me to Louvain?" + + * * * * * + +They went to Louvain a few days later and Vivie's newly awakened +senses for the beautiful in art revelled in the glorious +architecture, so much of which was afterwards wrecked in the War. + +Walking beneath the planes in a narrow street between monastic +buildings, they descried a gaunt, stately figure of a Father +Superior of some great Order. "There!" said Mrs. Warren; "that's +him, that's your father." They quickened their pace and were +presently alongside him. He flashed his great, grey eagle eyes for a +contemptuous second on the face of Mrs. Warren, who was all of a +tremble and could not meet the gaze. Vivie, he scarcely glanced at +as he strode towards a doorway which engulfed him, though the eyes +she had inherited would have met his unflinchingly. + + * * * * * + +David Williams duly visited Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, +Vienna, and Buda-Pest. Much of what he saw disgusted, even revolted, +him, but he found few of his fellow-countrywomen held captive and +crying to be delivered from a life of infamy. On his return to +England in the autumn of 1909, he published the results of his +observations; but they had very little effect on continental public +opinion. + +However Mrs. Warren in due course turned her two establishments into +hotels that gradually acquired a well-founded character of propriety +and were in time included amongst those recommended to quiet, +studious people by first class tourist agencies. Their names were +changed respectively from Hotel Leopold II to Hotel Edouard-Sept, +from The Homestead, Roquebrune, to Hotel du Royaume-Uni. Mrs. Warren +or Mme. Varennes retired completely from the management, but +arranged to retain for her own use the magnificently furnished +_appartement_ on the first floor of the Hotel Edouard-Sept at +Brussels, where Vivie had seen her in the late spring of 1909. She +still continued to receive a certain income from these two admirably +managed hostelries. + +Constrained by Vivie she bestowed large donations on charitable and +educational institutions affecting the welfare of women and +established a fund of Ten thousand pounds for the promotion of Woman +Suffrage in Great Britain, which fund was to be at Vivie's +disposal. But even with these sacrifices to _bienseance_ she +remained a lady of considerable fortune. + +She resisted however all invitations to make her home in England. +"No, dear; I've got used to foreign ways. I hate my own people; +they're such damned hypocrites; and the cooking don't suit my taste, +accustomed to the best." + +But she gave up brandy except as a very occasional _chasse_ after +the postprandial coffee. She no longer dyed her hair and used very +little rouge and no scent but lavender. Her hair turned a warm white +colour, and dressed a la Pompadour made her look what she probably +was at heart--quite a decent sort. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +VIVIE RETURNS + + +Honoria Armstrong, faithful in friendship and purpose as few people +are (though she abated never a whit her love for her dear, fierce, +blue-eyed, bristly-moustached, battle-scarred, bullying husband) +prepared for Vivie's return in the autumn of 1909 by securing for +her occupancy a nice little one-storeyed house in a Kensington back +street; one of those houses--I doubt not, now tenanted by +millionaires who don't want a large household, just a roof over +their heads--that remain over from the early nineteenth century, +when Kensington was emerging from a country village into villadom. +The broad, quiet road, named after our late dear Queen, has nothing +but these detached or semi-detached little _cottages ornes_, +one-storeyed villas with a studio behind, or two-storeyed components +of "terraces," for about a quarter of a mile; and just before the +War, building speculators were wont to pace its pavements with a +hungry gaze directed to left and right buying up in imagination all +this wasted space, pulling down these pretty stucco nests, and +building in their place castles of flats, high into the air. I don't +suppose this district will escape much longer the destruction of its +graceful flowering trees and vivid gardens, its air of an opulent +village; it will match with the rest of Kensingtonia in huge, +handsome buildings and be much sought after by the people who devote +their lives--till they commit suicide--to illicit love and the +Victory Balls at the Albert Hall. But in 1909--would that we were +all back in 1909!--it was as nice a part of London as a busy, +energetic, sober-living spinster, in the movement, yet liking home +retirement and lilac-scented privacy--could desire to inhabit, at +the absurd rental of fifty pounds a year, with comparatively low +rates, and the need for only one hard-working, self-respecting +Suffragette maid, with the monthly assistance of a charwoman of +advanced views. + +There Vivie took up her abode in November of the year indicated. +Honoria lived not far away, next door but one to the Parrys in +Kensington Square. She--Vivie--was aware that Colonel Armstrong did +not altogether like her, couldn't "place" her, felt she wasn't "one +of us," and therefore despite Honoria's many invitations to run in +and out and not to mind dear old "Army" who was _always_ like that +at first, just as their Chow was--she exercised considerable +discretion about her frequentation of the Armstrong household, +though she generally attended Honoria's Suffrage meetings, held +whenever the Colonel was called away to Aldershot or Hythe. + +Honoria by this time--the close of 1909--was the mother of four +lovely, healthy, happy children. She would give birth to a fifth the +following June (1910), and then perhaps she would stop. She often +said about this time--touching wood as she did so--"could any woman +be happier?" She was so happy that she believed in God, went +sometimes to St. Mary Abbott's or St. Paul's, Knightsbridge--the +music was so jolly--and gave largely to cheerful charities as well +as to the Suffrage Cause. She would in the approach to Christmas, +1909, look round and survey her happiness: could any one have a more +satisfactory husband? Of course he was a man and had silly mannish +prejudices, but then without them he would not be so lovable. Her +children--two boys and two girls--could you find greater darlings if +you spent a week among the well-bred childern playing round the +Round Pond? Such _natural_ children with really original remarks +and untrained ideas; not artificial Peter Pans who wistfully didn't +want to grow up; not slavish little mimics of the Children's stories +in vogue, pretending to play at Red Indians--when every one knew +that Red Indians nowadays dressed like all the other citizens of the +United States and Canada and sat in Congress and cultivated +political "pulls" or sold patent medicines; or who said "Good +hunting" and other Mowgli shibboleths to mystified relations from +the mid-nineteenth century country towns; nor children who teased +the cat or interfered with the cook or stole jam or did anything +else that was obsolete; or decried Sullivan's music in favour of +Debussy's or of Scarlatini's 17th century _tiraliras_; or wore +spectacles and had to have their front teeth in gold clamps. Just +clear-eyed, good-tempered, good-looking, roguish and spontaneously +natural and reasonably self-willed children, who adored their +parents and did not openly mock at the Elishas that called on them. + +Then there were Honoria's friends. I gave a sort of list of them in +Chapter II--which I am told has caused considerable offence, not by +what was put _in_ but to those who were left out. But they needn't +mind: if the protesters were nice people according to my standard, +you may be sure Honoria knew them. But of all her friends none was +dearer and closer--save her husband--than Vivie Warren--pal of pals, +brave comrade of the unflinching eyes. And somehow Vivie (since she +fell in love with Michael Rossiter) was ten times dearer than she +had been before: she was more understanding; she had a brighter eye, +a much greater sense of humour; she was tenderer; she liked children +as she never had done in bygone years, and was soon adopted by the +four children in Kensington Square as "Aunt Vivie" (They also--the +two elder ones--had a vague remembrance of an Uncle David who had +brought them toys and sweetmeats in a dim past). Aunt Vivie and +Mummie used to get up the most amusing Suffrage meetings in the +long, narrow garden behind the house; or they combined forces with +Lady Maud Parry, and spoke in lilting contralto or mezzo-soprano +(with the compliant tenor or baritone of here and there a captive +man) across the two gardens. Or somehow they commandeered the Square +Garden on the pretext of a vast Garden Party, at which every one +talked and laughed at once over their Suffrage views. + +Yes: Honoria was happy then, as indeed she had been during most of +her life, except when her brother died and her mother died. What did +she lack for happiness? Nothing that this world can give in the +opening twentieth century ... not even a very good pianola or a +motor. I feel somehow it was almost unfair (in my rage at the +inequality of treatment meted out by the Powers Beyond). Shall not +General Sir Petworth Armstrong die in the great debacle of the +world-wide War? I shall see, later. And yet I feel that this nucleus +of pure happiness housed in Kensington Square--or at Petworth +Manor--was to the little world that revolved round the Armstrongs +like a good radiator in a cold house. It warmed many a chilly nature +into fructification; it healed many a scar, it brightened many a +humble life, like that of Bertie Adams's hard-working, washerwoman +mother, or the game-keeper's crippled child at Petworth or the +newest, suburbanest little employe of _Fraser and Claridge's_ huge +establishment in the Brompton Road. It pulled straight the wayward +life of some young subaltern, about to come a cropper, but who after +a talk or two with that jolly Mrs. Armstrong took quite a different +course and made a decent marriage. It conjoined with many of the +social activities for good of one who might have been her twin +sister--Suzanne Feenix--only that Suzanne was twenty years older and +perhaps an inch or two shorter. Dear woman! My remembrance flashes a +kiss to your astral cheek--which in reality I should never have +dared to salute, so great was my awe of Colonel Armstrong's +muscles--as, at any reasonable time before or after the birth of +your last child in June, 1910, you stand in the hall of your sunny, +eighteenth century house, with the gold and green glint of the +Kensington garden behind you: saying with your glad eyes and bonny +mouth "Come to our Suffrage Party? _Such_ a lark! We've got Mrs. +Pankhurst here and the Police daren't raid us; they're so afraid of +'Army.' Of course he's away, but he knows _perfectly well_ what I'm +doing. He's _quite_ given in. Now Michael, you show Sir Harry and +Lady Johnston to the front seats..." + +(I looked round for the rather gloomy presence of Michael Rossiter, +but it was his little golden-haired god-son she meant.) + +You shall have your general back safe from the wars, with a wound +that gives only honour, a reasonable number of well-earned +decorations, and a reputation for rather better strategy than +Aldershot generally produces; and he shall live out his wholesome +life alongside yours, still dispensing happiness, even under a +Labour Government: till, as Burton used to wind up his Arabian +Nights love stories, "there came to them the Destroyer of delight +and the Sunderer of societies." + + +Honoria acted towards the Suffrage movement somewhat as in +older-fashioned days of Second Empire laxity well-to-do people +evaded military service under conscription by paying a substitute to +take their place in the fighting line. On account of her husband, +and the children she had just had or was going to have, she did not +throw herself into the physical struggle; but she still continued +out of her brother's ear-marked money to subsidize the cause. Rather +regretfully, she looked on from a motor, a balcony, a front window +or the safe plinth of some huge statue, whilst her comrades, with +less to risk physically and socially, matched their strength of +will, their trained muscles, their agility, astuteness and feminine +charm (seldom without some effect) against the brute force and +imperturbability of the Police. + +The struggle waxed hot and fierce in the early months of 1910. Vivie +held herself somewhat in the background also, not wishing to strike +publicly and effectively until she was sure for what principle she +endangered her life and liberty. Nevertheless she became a resource +of rising importance to the Suffrage cause. She was known to have +had a clever barrister cousin who for some reasons best known to +himself had of late kept in the background--ill-health, said some; +an unfortunate love affair, said another. But his pamphlet on the +White Slave Traffic on the Continent showed that he was still at +work. Vivie was thought to be fully equal in her knowledge of the +law to her cousin, though not allowed to qualify for the Bar. Case +after case was referred to her with the hope that if she could not +solve it, she might submit it to her cousin's judgment. In this way, +excellent legal advice was forthcoming which drove the Home Office +officials from one quandary to another. + +But Vivie in the spring of 1910, looking back on nearly twelve +months of womanly life (save for David's summer of continental +travel) decided that she didn't like being a woman, so far as Woman +was dressed in 1910 and for three or four hundred years previously. + +As "David" this had been more or less her costume: an undershirt +(two, in very cold weather), a pair of pants coming down to the +ankle, and well-fitting woollen socks on the feet. A shirt, +sometimes in day-time all of one piece with its turn-over collar; at +worst with a separate collar and a tie passed through it. Braces +that really braced and held up the nether garment of trousers; a +waistcoat buttoning fairly high up (no pneumonia blouse)--two +waistcoats if she liked, or a dandy slip buttoned innocently inside +the single vest to suggest the white lie of a second inner vest. +Over the waistcoat a coat or jacket. On the head a hat which fitted +the head in thirty seconds (allowing for David's shock of hair). +Lace-up or button boots, with perhaps at most six buttons; gloves +with one button; spats--if David wanted to be very dressy--with +three buttons. On top of all this a warm, easily-fitting overcoat or +a mackintosh. If you were really dressing to kill (as a man) it +might take half an hour; if merely to go about your business and not +be specially remarked for foppishness, twenty minutes. To divest +yourself of all this and get into paijamas and so to bed: ten +minutes. But when Vivie returned to herself and went about the world +of 1909-1910, and merely wished to pass as an inconspicuous, modest +woman she had to spend _hours_ in dressing and undressing, and this +is what she had to wear and waste so much of her time in adjusting +and removing:-- + +Next the skin, merino combinations, unwieldy garments requiring a +contortionist's education to put on without entangling your front +and hind limbs. The "combies" were specially buttoned with an +infinitude of small, scarcely visible buttons, which always wanted +sewing on and replacing, and were peevish about remaining in the +button hole. Often, too, the "combies" (I really can't keep writing +the full name) had to be tied here and there with little white +ribbons which preferred getting into a knot (no wonder the average +woman has a temper!). When the "combies" went to the wash, all these +ribbonlets had to be taken out, specially washed, specially ironed, +and ingeniously threaded back into position. + +Next to the combinations, proceeding outwards, came the corset, a +most serious affair. This exceedingly expensive instrument of +torture was compounded chiefly of silk (which easily frayed) and +whale-bone. Many good women of the middle class have gone to their +graves for three hundred years believing that Almighty God had +specially created toothless whales of the Family _Balaenidae_ solely +for the purpose of providing women with the only possible ingredient +for a corset; and for three hundred years, brave seamen of the +Dutch, British and Basque nations had gone to a watery grave to +procure for women this indispensable aid to correct clothing. But +these filaments of horny palatal processes are unamiable. Though +sheathed in silk or cotton, they, after the violent movements of a +Suffragette or a charwoman, break through the restraining sheath and +run into the body under the fifth rib, or press forward on to the +thigh. Which is why you often see a woman's face in an omnibus +express severe pain and her lips utter the exclamation "Aie, Aie." +Then this confounded corset had to be laced with pink ribbons at the +back and in front and both lacings demanded unusual suppleness of +arms and sense of touch in finger-tips; and when the corset went to +the wash the ribbons had to be drawn out, washed, ironed, and +threaded again. + +From the front of the corset hung two elastic suspenders as yet +awaiting their prey. But first must be drawn on the silk or +stockinette knickerbockers which in the 1910 woman replaced the +piteously laughable drawers of the Victorian period. Then the +suspenders clutched the rims of the stockings with an arrangement of +nickel and rubber which no _man_ would have tolerated for its +inefficiency but would have thrown back in the face of the shopman +and have been charged with assault. In times of stress, at public +meetings the suspenders would release the stockings from their hold, +and the latter roll about the ankles of the embarrassed pleader for +Woman's Rights ("Who would be free, themselves must strike the +blow," and first of all throttle the modiste, thought Vivie). + +Then there was the camisole that concealed the corset and had to be +"pinned" in with safety pins. The knickerbockers might not seek the +aid of braces; but they must be kept up by an elastic band. Over +the camisole, in 1910, came a blouse, pernickety and shiftless about +its waist fastening; and finally a hobble skirt, chiefly kept up by +safety pins, and so cut below as to hamper free movement of the +limbs as much as possible. + +Day-boots often had as many as twenty-one buttons--and, mind you, +not _sham_, buttons, as I used to think, out of swagger; but every +button demanded entrance into a practicable button hole. Or the +boots themselves were mere shoes with many buttoned spats drawn over +them. All the boots had high heels and the woman walked so as to put +a severe strain on her arched instep in order that she might bring +on by degrees "flat foot" for surgical treatment. + +Who shall describe the hats of 1910?--and before and since--in all +but the very poorest women? They were enormous; and so were the +hat-boxes; and they could only be held on to the head by running +hatpins through wisps of hair. + +I will not portray the evening dresses that it sometimes takes a +kindly husband an hour to fasten, with "press-buttons" and hooks and +eyes; and poor Vivie had no husband and depended on her suffragette +maid because at all costs she mustn't look dowdy or the woman's +cause might suffer at Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's receptions. + +As to night gear: of course Vivie being a free agent slept in +David's paijamas. She had long ago cut the Gordian knots of her +be-ribboned, girdled night gowns in favour of the Indian garment. +But can you wonder after this true recital of the simplest forms of +a decent woman's costume in 1909-1910 and even now (a recital drawn +from a paper on _Woman's dress_ delivered by David on one of the +last occasions in which he appeared at the Debating Society of the +Inner Temple--and checked by my jury of matrons)--can you wonder +that Vivie took very hardly to giving up a man's life in the clothes +of David Williams? How she vowed to herself--fruitlessly, because +now she is one of the best-dressed women in town (in a quiet +way)--that she would one day enfranchise women in their costume as +in their citizenship? This will never be done until the modistes of +Paris, in some great popular uprising, are strangled and burnt on +the Place de la Concorde. + +At the 1910 (January) Election, Michael Rossiter had been returned +as M.P. for one of the Midland Universities. His Science had +certainly suffered from his suppressed love for Vivie, a passion +which secretly tortured him, yet for which he dared ask no respite. +He thought it was about time that _real_ men of Science entered +Parliament to check the utter mismanagement of public affairs which +had been going on since 1900. He proposed to himself to make a +succession of brilliant speeches (he really was an admirable and +fluent lecturer) on Anthropology, Chemistry--Chemistry ought +to appeal, even to City men because it made such a lot of +money--Ethnology, Hygiene, Geography, Economic Botany, Regional +Zoology, Germ Diseases, Agriculture, etc., etc.; _and_ the absolute +necessity of giving Woman the same electoral privileges as Man. He +was always well inclined that way, but after he realized that David +was Vivie he became almost an embittered Suffragist. + +The Speaker took care that he had little scope for his Anthropology, +Economic Botany, Chemistry, Hygiene, etc., on Votes of Supply: but +he got in some nasty blows in the Woman's cause, and in fact was so +strangely rancorous that Ministers looked at him evilly and arranged +that he was not placed on the committee of the Conciliation Bill; +that amusing farce with which the Liberal Ministry sought in 1910 to +stave off the Suffrage dilemma. + +Rossiter and Vivie seldom met except at public receptions. Every now +and again he came to Suffrage meetings when she was going to speak; +and how well she spoke then! How real it all seemed to her! How +handsome she looked (even at 36) and how near she was to tears and a +breakdown; while his eyes burned; and when he got home poor little +Linda was in despair over her poor distraught Michael, who could +find no happiness or contentment in Ten Thousand a year, great fame +as the chief inventor of the Ductless Glands, and the man who had +issued a taxonomic classification of the _Bovidae_ which even +satisfied _me_. + +What a cruel force is Love! Or is the cruelty in human disciplinary +laws? Here were two persons eminently suited to be mates, calculated +while still in the prime of life to procreate offspring that would +be a credit to the nation, who asked for nothing more in life than +to lie in each other's arms--after which no doubt they would have +arisen and performed the most wonderful feats in inductive science +or in embroidery or mathematics. And they were inwardly raging, +losing their appetites, sleeping very badly yet eschewing drugs, +pursuing will-of-the-wisps in politics, wasting the best years of +their lives ... from a sense of duty, that sense of duty which has +made the Nordic White man the dominant race on the earth. "We suffer +individually but we gain collectively," Rossiter said to himself. + +In May, 1910, King Edward died, and all these gladiators, male and +female, willingly declared a Truce in the Suffrage battle, to obtain +a much needed rest in the weary conflict. As soon as political +activities were resumed, the Conciliation Bill by the energies of +the Liberal Whips was talked out (wasn't it?). At any rate it came +to nothing for that Session. Vivie took this as a decision. She +openly declared that the Vote never would be given by the House of +Commons or House of Lords until it was wrung from the Legislature by +a complete dislocation of public affairs, the nearest approach to a +revolution women could bring about without rifles and cannon. + +Meantime she refused to be duped by Ministers or by amiable +go-betweens. She resolved instead, perhaps for the last time, to +resume the clothes and status of David Williams, go down to Wales, +and stay with her father who was dying by slow degrees. + +The letters which the curate had written from time to time to D.V. +Williams, Esq., care of Michael Rossiter, Esq., F.R.S., and usually +forwarded on by Bertie Adams, had told David how much the Revd. +Howel Williams had failed since the cold spring of 1909, and how in +the colder spring of 1910 he had once or twice narrowly survived +influenza. In July, 1910, he was dying of heart failure. +Nevertheless the return of David, his well-beloved, brought to him a +flicker of renewed life, a little pink in the cheeks, and some +garrulity. + +He could hardly bear his darling son out of his sight, except for +the narrowest margin of necessary sleep; and often David slept +sitting up in an arm-chair in the Vicar's bedroom. The Revd. Howel +said nothing more about grandchildren; often--with a finer +sense--spoke to him not as though he were a son, but as a beloved +daughter. At last he died in his sleep one night, holding David's +hand, looking so ineffably happy that the impostor inwardly gloried +in his imposture as in one of the best deeds of his chequered life. + + * * * * * + +The will, of course, had not been changed, and David inherited all +his "father's" property. Out of it he settled L500 on the +miner's--or rather Jenny's--son who probably _was_ the offspring of +the real David Williams's boyish amour. He provided a handsome +annuity for poor, shaken, old Nannie; and the rest of the money +after paying all expenses he laid out on the endowment of a Village +Hall for games and study, social meetings and political discussions, +together with provision for an annual stipend of a hundred pounds +for the Vicar or curate of the parish who should run this Hall: +which was to be a lasting memorial to the Reverend Howel Vaughan +Williams, so learned in the lore of Wales. + +Having settled all these matters to his satisfaction, and certainly +to that of the Revd. Cadwalladr Jones (who succeeded as Vicar of +Pontystrad by a wise nudging and monetary pressure on the part of +the late Vicar's son), David returned to London at the close of +1910, took off his clothes and shed his personality. It was bruited +that he had gone abroad to nurse a health that was seriously +impaired through his incredible exertions over the Shillito case. He +left his cousin Vivie free to espouse the Suffrage cause, even unto +the extremest militancy. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT + + +The Conciliation Bill which was intended to give the Parliamentary +Vote to a little over one million women had passed its Second +reading on July 12, 1910, by a majority of 110 votes; in spite of +the bitter opposition of the Premier, the Chancellor of the +Exchequer, the Home Secretary, the President of the Board of Trade, +and the Secretary for the Colonies. The Premier's arguments against +it were, firstly, that "Women were Women"--this of course was a +deplorable fact--and that "the balance of power might fall into +their hands without the physical force necessary to impose their +decisions, etc., etc."; and finally "that in Force lay the ultimate +appeal" (rather a dangerous incitement to the sincere militants). +The Chancellor of the Exchequer took up a more subtle attitude than +the undisguised, grumpy hostility of his leader. + +His arguments at the time reminded me of an episode in East Africa +thirty years ago. A certain independent Chief tolerated the presence +on his territory of a plucky band of missionary pioneers. He did not +care about Christianity but he liked the trade goods the +missionaries brought to purchase food and pay for labour in the +erection of a station. These trade goods they kept in a storehouse +made of wattle and daub. But this temporary building was not proof +against cunning attempts at burglary on the part of the natives. The +missionaries at length went to the Chief (who was clothed +shamelessly in the stolen calicoes) and sought redress. "All +right," said the potentate, who kept a fretful realm in awe, "_But_ +you have no proof it _is_ my people who break in and steal. You just +catch one in the act, and _then_ you'll see what I'll do." + +So the Oxford and Cambridge athletic missionaries sat up night after +night under some camouflage and at last their patience was rewarded +by the capture of a naked, oily-skinned negro who emerged from a +tunnel he had dug under the store-foundations. Then they bore him +off to the Yao chieftain. + +"_Now_ we know where we are," said the Chief. "You've proved your +complaint. We'll have him burnt to death, after lunch, in the market +place. I presume you've brought a lunch-basket?" + +"Oh no!" said the horrified propagandists: "We don't want such a +penalty as _that_..." + +"Very good" said the Chief, "then we'll behead him..." "No! No!" + +"Crucify him?"--"No! No!"--"Peg him down over a Driver Ants' nest?" +"No! No!" + +"Then, if you don't want _any_ rational punishment, he shall go +free." And free he went. + +In the same way the Chancellor of the Exchequer of those days was so +hard to please over Suffrage measures that none brought forward was +democratic enough, far-reaching and overwhelming enough to secure +his adhesion. He was therefore forced to torpedo the Conciliation +Bill, to snatch away the half-loaf that was better than no bread at +all. He spoke and voted against these tentative measures of feminine +enfranchisement, with tongue in cheek, no doubt, and hand linked in +that of Lulu Grandcourt whose opposition to any vote being given to +woman and whole attitude towards the sex was so bitter that he had +to be reminded by Lord Aloysius Brinsley (who like his brother +Robert was a convinced Suffragist) that after all he, Lulu +Grandcourt, had deigned to be born of a woman, had even--maybe--been +spanked by one. + +The Speaker had hinted on the occasion of the second reading of the +Concilition Bill and at a later raising of the same question that +there might arise all sorts of obstacles to wreck the Woman's +Franchise measure in Committee; obstacles that apparently need not +be taken into account as dangerous to any measure affecting male +interests. Therefore many of the M.P.'s timorously voted for the +second reading of the Conciliation Bill in order to stand well with +their Constituencies, yet looked to the Premier to trip it up by +some adroit use of Parliamentary jiu-jitsu. They were not +disappointed in their ideal politician. The Bill after it had passed +its second reading by a large majority was referred to a Committee +of the whole House, which seemingly is fatal to any measure that +seeks to become law. + +So the stale summer of 1910 wore itself away in recriminations, +hopings against probability that the newer types of Liberal +statesmen were honest men, keepers of promises, not merely--as +Vivie said in one of the many speeches that got her into +trouble--"Bridge-players, first and foremost, golf-players when they +couldn't play bridge, or speculators on the Stock Exchange, +champagne drinkers; and prone to eat at their Lucullus banquets, +public and private, till they sometimes fainted with indigestion." + +My! But she was bitter in her Hyde Park speeches and at her Albert +Hall meetings against this band of mock-liberals who had seized the +impulse of the country towards reform which had grown up under the +Chamberlain era to instal themselves in power with the financial +backing of great Americo-German-Jewish internationalists, who in +those early years of the Twentieth century were ready to stake their +dollars on the Free Trade British Empire if they might guide its +policy. + +[Very likely if they had obtained the complete guidance they sought +for they might have staved off this ruinous war by telling Germany +bluntly she must keep her hands off France and Belgium; they might +also have seen to it that the War Office _was_ reformed and the +British army ready to fulfil Lord Haldane's promises; for there is +no doubt they had ability even if they despised the instruments they +worked with.] + +But as I say, Vivie was a bitter and most effective speaker. She +inflamed to action many a warm-hearted person like myself, like +Rossiter (who got into trouble--though it was hushed up--in +1910-1911 for slapping the face of a Secretary of State who spoke +slightingly of the women Suffragists and their motives). Yet I seem +to be stranded now, with a few others, in my pre-war enthusiasm over +the woman's cause, or, later, my horror at the German treatment of +Belgium. + +Where are the snows of yester-year; where is the animosity which in +the years between the burking of the Conciliation Bill and the +spring of 1914 grew up between the disinterested Reformers who +wanted Woman enfranchised and the Liberal ministers who fought so +doggedly, so unscrupulously, against such a rational completion of +representative government? The other day I glanced at a newspaper +and saw that Sir Michael and Lady Rossiter had been dining at the +Ritz with the Grandcourts, Princess Belasco, Sir Abel Batterby, the +great Police Surgeon, knighted for his skill and discretion in +forcible feeding, and the George Bounderbys (G.B. was the venomous +Private Secretary of a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and put +him up to most of his anti-suffrage dodges); and meeting Vivien +Rossiter soon afterwards I said, "How _could_ you?" "How could I +what?" "Dine with the people you once hated." "Oh I don't know, it's +all past and done with; we've got the Vote and somehow after those +years in Brussels I seem to have no hates and few loves +left"--However this is anticipating. I only insert this protest +because I may seem to be expressing a bitterness the protagonists +have ceased to feel, a triumph at the victory of their cause which +produces in them merely a yawn. + +Where is Mrs. Pankhurst? Somehow one thought she would never rest +till she was in the Cabinet. And Christabel? And Annie Kenney? +Married perchance to some permanent under Secretary of State and +viewing "direct action" with growing disapproval. + +And the Pethick Lawrences? Some one told me the other day that +they'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be forcibly fed. + +But in November, 1910, we all--we that were whole-hearted reformers, +true Liberals, not wolves in sheep's clothing, took very much to +heart what happened on the 18th of that month, when the Prime +Minister of the time announced that the Conference between the House +of Lords and the House of Commons on the Veto question having broken +down he had advised His Majesty to dissolve Parliament. This meant +that the Conciliation Bill was _finally_ done for; while the +declaration of the Prime Minister as to the future Programme of the +Liberal Party, if it was returned to power, excluded any mention of +a Woman's enfranchisement Bill. + +On Black Friday, November 18th, Vivie was present at the meeting in +Caxton Hall when Mrs. Pankhurst explained the position to the +Suffragist women assembled there. Her blood was fired by the recital +of their wrongs and she was prominent among the four hundred and +fifty volunteers who came forward to accompany Mrs. Pankhurst, Dr. +Garret Anderson and Susan Knipper-Totes (the two last, infirm old +ladies) when they proposed to march to the Houses of Parliament to +exercise their right of presenting a petition. + +The women proceeded to Parliament Square in small groups so as to +keep within the letter of the law. Some like Vivie carried banners +with pitiful devices--"Where there's a Bill there's a Way," "Women's +Will Beats Asquith's Skill," and so on.... She wished she had given +more direct attention to these mottoes, but much of this procedure +had been got up on impulse and little preparation made. It was near +to four o'clock on a fine November afternoon when the four hundred +and fifty women began their movement towards Parliament Square. A +red sun was sinking behind the House of Lords, the blue of the misty +buildings and street openings was enhanced by the lemon yellow +lights of the newly-lit lamps. The avenues converging on the Houses +of Parliament were choked with people, and vehicles had to be +diverted from the streets. The men in the watching crowd covered the +pavements and island "refuges," leaving the roadways to the little +groups of struggling women, and the large force--a thousand or +more--of opposing police. + +It was said at the time that the Government of the day, realizing by +their action or inaction in the House of Commons they had provoked +this movement of Mrs. Pankhurst's, had prepared the policy with +which to meet it. As on the eve of a General Election it might be +awkward if they made many arrests of women--perchance Liberal +women--on their way to the House to present a petition or escort a +deputation, the police should be instructed instead to repel the +Suffragists by force, to give them a taste of that "frightfulness" +which became afterwards so familiar a weapon in the Prussian +armoury. Some said also that the Government looked to the crowd +which was allowed to form unchecked on the pavements, the crowd of +rough men and boys--costers from Lambeth, longshore men from the +barges on the unembanked Westminster riverside, errand boys, +soldiers, sailors, clerks returning home, warehousemen, the tag-rag +and bob-tail generally of London when a row is brewing--looked to +this crowd to catch fire from the brutality of the police +(uniformed and in plain clothes) and really give the women +clamouring for the Vote "what for"; teach them a lesson as to what +the roused male can do when the female passes the limits of domestic +license. A few deaths might result (and did), and many injuries, but +the treatment they received would make such an impression on Mrs. +Pankhurst's followers that they would at last realize the futility +of measuring their puny force against the muscle of man. Force, as +the Premier had just said, must be the decisive factor. + +But unfortunately for these calculations the large male crowd took +quite a different line. The day had gone by when men and boys were +wont to cry to some expounding Suffragette: "Go home and mind yer +biby." Dimly these toilers and moilers, these loafers and wasters +now understood that women of a courage rarely matched in man were +fighting for the cause of all ill-governed, mal-administered, +swindled, exploited people of either sex. The mass of men, _in_ the +mass, is chivalrous. It admires pluck, patience, and persistency. So +the crowd instead of aiding the police to knock sense into the women +began to take sides with the buffeted, brutalized and bleeding +Suffragettes. + +Fortunately before the real fighting began, and no doubt as a stroke +of policy on the part of some Police Inspector, Mrs. Pankhurst +convoying the two frail old ladies--Dr. Garret Anderson and Susan +Knipper-Totes--champions of the Vote when Woman Suffrage was outside +practical politics--had reached the steps of the Strangers' entrance +to the House of Commons. From this point of 'vantage a few of the +older leaders of the deputation were able to witness the four or +five hours' struggle in and around Parliament Square, the Abbey, +Parliament Street, Great George Street which made Black Friday one +of the note-worthy days in British history--though, _more nostro_, +it will be long before it is inserted in school books. + +Here, while something like panic signalized the Legislative Chamber +and Cabinet ministers scurried in and out like flurried rabbits and +finally took refuge in their private rooms--here was fought out the +decisive battle between physical and moral force over the suffrage +question. The women were so _exaltees_ that they were ready to face +death for their cause. The police were so exasperated that they saw +red and some went mad with sex mania. It was a horrible spectacle in +detail. Men with foam on their moustaches were gripping women by the +breasts, tearing open their clothing, and proceeding to rabid +indecencies. Or, if not sex-mad, they twisted their arms, turned +back their thumbs to dislocation, rained blows with fists on pale +faces, covering them with blood. They tore out golden hair or thin +grey locks with equal disregard. Mounted police were summoned to +overawe the crowd, which by this time whether suffragist and female, +or neutral, non-committal and male, was giving the police on foot a +very nasty time. The four hundred and fifty women of the original +impulse had increased to several thousand. Dusk had long since +deepened into a night lit up with arc lamps and the golden radiance +of great gas-lamp clusters. Flares were lighted to enable the police +to see better what they were doing and who were their assailants. +But the women showed complete indifference to the horses; and the +horses with that exquisite forbearance that the horse can show to +the distraught human, did their utmost not to trample on small feet +and outspread hands. + +Here and there humanity asserted itself. One policeman--helmetless, +his fair, blond face scratched and bleeding--had in berserkr rage +felled a young woman in the semi-darkness. He bore his senseless +victim into the shelter of some nook or cloister and turned on her +his bull's eye lantern. She was a beautiful creature, in private +life a waitress at a tea shop. Her hat was gone and her hair +streamed over her drooping face and slender shoulders. The policeman +overcome with remorse exclaimed--mentioning the Home Secretary's +name "---- be damned; this ain't the job for a decent man." The +Suffragette revived under his care. He escorted her home, resigned +from the police force, married her and I believe has lived happily +ever afterwards, if he was not killed in the War. + +Vivie had struggled for about two hours to reach the precincts of +the House, with or without her banner. Probably without, because she +had freely used its staff as a weapon of defence, and her former +skill in fencing stood her in good stead. But at last she was +gripped by two constables, one of them an oldish man and the other a +plain-clothes policeman, whom several spectators had singled out for +his pleasure in needless brutalities. + +These men proceeded to give her "punishment," and involuntarily she +shrieked with mingled agony of pain and outraged sex-revolt. A man +who had paused irresolutely on the kerb of a street refuge came to +her aid. He dealt the grey-haired constable a blow that sent him +reeling and then seized the plain-clothes man by his coat collar. A +struggle ensued which ended in the intervener being flung with such +violence on the kerb stone that he was temporarily stunned. +Presently he found himself being dragged along with his heels +dangling, while Vivie, described in language which my jury of +matrons will not allow me to repeat, was being propelled alongside +him, her clothes nearly torn off her, to some police station where +they were placed under arrest. As soon as they had recovered breath +and complete consciousness, had wiped the blood from cut heads, +noses, and lips, they looked hard at each other. "Thank you _so_ +much," said Vivie, "it _was_ good of you." "That's enough," said +her defender, "it wanted the voice to make me sure; but somehow I +thought all along it _was_ Vivie. Don't you know me? Frank Gardner!" + + +While waiting for the formalities to be concluded and their +transference to cells in which they were to pass the night, Frank +told Vivie briefly that he had returned from Rhodesia a prosperous +man on a brief holiday leaving his wife and children to await his +return. Hearing there was likely to be an unusual row that evening +over the Suffrage question he had sauntered down from the Strand to +see what was going on and had been haunted by the conviction that he +would meet Vivie in the middle of the conflict. But when he rushed +to her defence his action was instinctive, the impulse of any +red-blooded man to defend a woman that was being brutally +maltreated. + + +The next morning they were haled before the magistrate. Michael +Rossiter was in court as a spectator, feverishly anxious to pay +Vivie's fine or to find bail, or in all and every way to come to her +relief. He seemed rather mystified at the sight of Frank Gardner +arraigned with her. But presently the prosecuting counsel for the +Chief Commissioner of Police arrived and told the astonished +magistrate it was the wish of the Home Secretary that the prisoners +in the dock should all be discharged, Vivie and Frank Gardner among +them. At any rate no evidence would be tendered by the prosecution. + +So they were released, as also was each fresh batch of prisoners +brought in after them. Vivie went in a cab to her house in the +Victoria Road; Frank back to his hotel. Both had promised to +foregather at Rossiter's house in Portland Place at lunch. + +Hitherto Vivie had refrained from entering No. 1 Park Crescent. She +had not seen it or Mrs. Rossiter since David's attack of faintness +and hysteria in February, 1909, nearly two years ago. Why she went +now she scarcely knew, logically. It was unwise to renew relations +too closely with Rossiter, who showed his solicitude for her far too +plainly in his face. The introduction to Linda Rossiter in her +female form would be embarrassing and would doubtless set that good +lady questioning and speculating. + +Yet she felt she must see Rossiter--writing was always dangerous and +inadequate--and reason with him; beg him not to spoil his own +chances in life for her, not lose his head in politics and personal +animosities on her behalf, as he seemed likely to do. Already people +were speaking of him as a parallel to ----, and ----, and ---- (you +can fill the blanks for yourself with the names of great men of +science who have become ineffective, quarrelsome, isolated members +of Parliament); saying it was a great loss to Science and no gain to +the legislature. + +As to Frank Gardner, she was equally eager for a long explanatory +talk with him. Except that her life had inured her to surprises and +unexpected meetings, it was sufficiently amazing that Frank and she, +who had not seen each other or touched hands for thirteen years, +should meet thus in a dangerous scuffle in a dense struggling crowd +outside the Houses of Parliament. She must so arrange matters after +lunch that Frank should not prevent her hour's talk with Rossiter, +yet should have the long explanation he himself deserved. An idea. +She would telephone to Praddy and invite herself and Frank to tea at +his studio after she had left the Rossiters. + +Mrs. Rossiter was used to unexpected guests at lunch. People on +terms of familiarity dropped in, or the Professor detained some +colleague or pupil and made him sit down to the meal which was +always prepared and seated for four. Therefore she was not +particularly taken aback when her husband appeared at five minutes +to one in the little drawing-room and after requesting that the +macaw and the cockatoo might be removed for the nonce to a back +room--as they made sustained conversation impossible, announced that +he expected momently--ah! there was the bell--two persons whose +acquaintance he was sure Linda would like to make. One was Captain +Frank Gardner, who owned a big ranch in Rhodesia, and--er--the +other--oh no! no relation--was Miss Warren.... + +"What, one of the Warrens of Huddersfield? Well, I never! And where +did you pick her up? Strange she shouldn't have written to me she +was coming up to town! I could--" + +"No, this is a Miss Vivien Warren--" + +"Vivien? How curious, why that is the name of the Adams's little +girl--" + +"A Miss Vivien Warren," went on Rossiter patiently--"a well-known +Suffragist who--" + +"Oh Michael! _Not_ a Suffragette!" wailed Mrs. Rossiter, imagining +vitriol was about to be thrown over the surviving pug and damage +done generally to the furniture--But at this moment the butler +announced: "Captain Frank Gardner and Miss Warren." + +Gardner was well enough, a lean soldierly-looking man, brown with +the African sun, with pleasant twinkling blue eyes, a thick +moustache and curly hair, just a little thin on the top. His face +was rather scarred with African adventure and did not show much +special trace of his last night's tussle with the police. There was +a cut at the back of his head where he had fallen on the kerb stone +but that was neatly plastered, and you do not turn your back much on +a hostess, at any rate on first introduction. + +But Vivie had obviously been in the wars. She had--frankly--a black +eye, a cut and swollen lip, and her ordinarily well-shaped nose was +a trifle swollen and reddened. But her eyes likewise were twinkling, +though the bruised one was bloodshot. + +"I'm sorry, Mrs. Rossiter, to be introduced to you like this. I +don't know _what_ you will think of me. It's the first time I've +been in a really bad row.... We were trying to get to the House of +Commons, but the police interfered and gave us the full privileges +of a man as regards their fists. Captain Gardner here--who is an old +friend of mine--intervened, or I'm afraid I shouldn't have got off +as cheaply as I did. And your husband kindly came to the police +court to testify to our good character, and then invited us to +lunch." + +_Mrs. Rossiter_: "Why how your voice reminds me of some one who used +to come here a good deal at one time--a Mr. David Williams. I +suppose he isn't any relation?" + +_Vivie_ (while Frank Gardner looks a little astonished): "Oh--my +cousin. I knew you knew him. He has often talked to me about you. +I'll tell you about David by and bye, Frank." + +At this interchange of Christian names Mrs. Rossiter thinks she +understands the situation: they are engaged, have been since last +night's rescue. But what _extraordinary_ people the dear Professor +_does_ pick up! Have _they_ got ductless glands, she wonders? + +Rossiter who has been fidgeting through this dialogue considers that +lunch is ready, so they proceed to the small dining-room, "the +breakfast-room." Mrs. Rossiter was always very proud of having a +_small_ drawing-room (otherwise, "me boudwor") and a _small_ +dining-room. It prepared the way for greater magnificence at big +parties and also enabled one to be cosier with a few friends. + +At luncheon: + +_Mrs. Rossiter_ to _Frank Gardner_, archly: "I suppose you've come +home to be married?" + +_Frank_: "Oh no! I'm not a bigamist, I've got a wife already and +four children, and jolly glad I shall be to get back to 'em. I can't +stand much of the English climate, after getting so used to South +African sunshine. No. I came on a business trip to England, leaving +my old dear out at the farm near Salisbury, with the kids--we've got +a nice English governess who helps her to look after 'em. A year or +two hence I hope to bring 'em over to see the old country and we may +have to put the eldest to school: children run wild so in South +Africa. As to Miss Warren, she's an old friend of mine and a very +dear one. I hadn't seen her for--for--thirteen years, when the sound +of her voice--She's got one of those voices you never forget--the +sound of her voice came up out of that beastly crowd of gladiators +yesterday, and I found her being hammered by two policemen. I pretty +well laid one out, though I hadn't used my fists for a matter of ten +years. Then I got knocked over myself, I passed a night in a police +cell feeling pretty sick and positively maddened at not being able +to ask any questions. Then at last morning came, I had a wash and +brush up--the police after all aren't bad chaps, and most of 'em +seemed jolly well ashamed of last night's doin's--Then I met Vivie +in Court and your husband too. He took me on trust and I'm awfully +grateful to him. I've got a dear old mater down in Kent--Margate, +don't you know--my dad's still alive, Vivie!--and she'd have been +awfully cut up at hearing her son had been spending the night in a +police cell and was goin' to be fined for rioting, only fortunately +the Home Secretary said we weren't to be punished.... But Professor +Rossiter's coming on the scene was a grand thing. Besides being an +M.P., I needn't tell _you_, Mrs. Rossiter, he has a world-wide +reputation. Oh, we read your books, sir, out in South Africa, _I_ +can tell you--Well--er--and here we are--and I'm monopolizing the +conversation." + +Vivie sat opposite her old lover, and near to the man who loved her +now with such ill-concealed passion that his hand trembled for her +very proximity. She felt strangely elated, strangely gay, at times +inclined to laugh as she caught sight of her bruised and puffy +face in an opposite mirror, yet happy in the knowledge that +notwithstanding the thirteen years of separation, her repeated +rejection of his early love, her battered appearance, Frank still +felt tenderly towards her, still remembered the timbre of her voice. +Her mouth was too sore and swollen to make eating very pleasant. She +trifled with her food but she felt young and full of gay adventure. +Mrs. Rossiter a little overwhelmed with all the information Gardner +had poured out, a little irritated also at the dancing light in +Vivie's eyes, turned her questionings on her. + +_Mrs. Rossiter_: "I suppose you are the Miss Warren who speaks so +much. I often see your name in the papers, especially in _Votes for +Women_ that the Professor takes in. Isn't it funny that a man should +care so much about women getting the vote? I'm sure _I_ don't want +it. I'm _quite_ content to exercise _my_ influence through _him_, +especially now he's in Parliament. But then I have my home to look +after, and I'm _much_ too busy to go out and about and mix myself up +in politics. I'm quite content to leave all that to the menfolk." + +_Vivie_: "Quite so. In your position no doubt I should do the same; +but you see I haven't any menfolk. There is my mother, but she +prefers to live abroad, and as she is comfortably off she can employ +servants to look after her." (This hint of wealth a little reassured +Mrs. Rossiter, who believed most Suffragettes to be adventuresses.) +"So, as I have no ties I prefer to give myself up to the service of +women in general. When they have the vote and other privileges of +men, then of course I can attend to my private interests and +pursuits--mathematical calculations, insurance risks--" + +_Mrs. Rossiter_: "It is _extraordinary_ how like your voice is to +your cousin's. If I shut my eyes I could think he was back again. +Not," (she added hastily) "that he has not, no doubt, _plenty_ to do +abroad. Do you ever see him now? Why does he not marry and settle +down? One never hears of him now as a barrister. But then he used to +_feel_ his cases too much. The last time he was here he fainted and +had to stay here all night. + +"And yet he had won his case and got his--what do you say? client? +off--I dare say you remember it? She was my husband's cousin though +we hardly liked to say so at the time: it is so unpleasant having a +murder in the family. Fortunately she was let off; I mean, the jury +said 'not guilty,' though personally I--However that is neither here +nor there, and since then she's married Colonel Kesteven--Won't you +have some pheasant? No? I remember your cousin used to have a very +poor appetite, especially when one of his cases was on. _How_ he +used--excuse my saying so--how he used to tire poor Michael--Mr. +Rossiter! Talk, talk, talk! in the evenings, and I knew the +Professor had his lectures to prepare, but hints were thrown away on +Mr. David." + +Rossiter broke in: + +"Now what would you like to do in the afternoon, Miss Warren? And +Gardner? You, by the bye, have the first claim on our hospitality. +You have just arrived from Africa and the only thing we have done +for you, so far, is to drag you into a disgraceful row." + +_Frank_: "Well, _I_ should like a glimpse of the Zoo. I'm quite +willing to pay my shilling and give no more trouble, but if Vivie is +going there too we could all walk up together. After that I'm going +to revisit an old acquaintance of mine and Vivie's, Praed the +architect--lives somewhere in Chelsea if I remember right--" + +_Vivie_: "In Hans Place. I don't particularly want to go to the Zoo. +I look so odd I might over-excite the monkeys. I think I should like +to try a restful visit to the Royal Botanic. I'm so fond of their +collection of weird succulent plants--things that look like stones +and suddenly produce superb flowers." + +_Mrs. Rossiter_: "We belong to the Botanic as well as to the Zoo. +_I_ could take you there after lunch." + +_Rossiter_: "You forget, dearie, you've got to open that Bazaar in +Marylebone Town Hall--" + +_Linda_: "Oh, have I? To be sure. But it's Lady Goring that does the +opening, I'm _much_ too nervous. Still I promised to come. Would +Miss Warren care to come with me?" + +_Vivie_: "I should have liked to awfully: I love bazaars; but just +at this moment I'm thinking more of those succulent plants ... and +my battered face." + +_Rossiter_: "I'll make up your minds for you. We'll _all_ drive to +the Zoo in Linda's motor. Gardner shall look at the animals and then +find his way to Hans Place. I'll escort Miss Warren to the Botanic, +and then come on and pick you up, Linda, at the Town Hall." + +That statement seemed to satisfy every one, so after coffee and a +glance round the laboratory and the last experiments, they proceeded +to the Zoo, with at least an hour's daylight at their disposal. + +Rossiter and Vivie were at last alone within the charmed circle of +the Botanic Gardens. They made their way slowly to the great Palm +House and thence up twisty iron steps to a nook like a tree refuge +in New Guinea, among palm boles and extravagant aroid growths. + +"Now Michael," said Vivie--despite her bruised face she looked very +elegant in her grey costume, grey hat, and grey suede gloves, and he +had to exercise great self-restraint, remember that he was known by +sight to most of the gardeners and to the ubiquitous secretary, in +order to refrain from crushing her to his side: "Now Michael: I want +a serious talk to you, a talk which will last for another eighteen +months--which is about the time that has elapsed since we had our +last--You're _not_ keeping the pact we made." + +"What was that?" + +"Why you promised me that your--your--love--No! I won't misuse that +word--Your friendship for me should not spoil your life, your +career, or make Linda unhappy. Yet it is doing all three. You've +lived in a continual agitation since you got into Parliament, and +now you'll be involved in more electioneering in order to be +returned once more. Meantime your science has come to a dead stop. +And it's so far more important for us than getting the Vote. All +this franchise agitation is on a much lower plane. It amuses and +interests me. It keeps me from thinking too much about you. +Besides, I am naturally rather combative; I secretly enjoy these +rough-and-tumbles with constituted authority. I also really _do_ +think it is a _beastly_ shame, this preference shown for man, in +most of the careers and in the franchise. But don't you worry +_yourself_ unduly about it. If I really thought that you cared so +much about me that it was turning you away from _our_ religion, +scientific research, I'd go over to Brussels to my mother and stay +there. I really would; and I really will if you don't stop following +me about from meeting to meeting and going mad over the Suffrage +question in the House. Is it true that you struck a Cabinet minister +the other day? Mr. ----?" + +_Rossiter_: "Yes, it's true, and he asked for it. If I am +unreasonable what are _they_? ----, ----, _and_ ----? Why have they +such a bitter feeling against your sex? Have they had no mothers, no +sweethearts, no sisters, no wives? If I'd never met you I should +still have been a Suffragist. I think I _was_ one, as a boy, +watching what my mother suffered from my father, and how he collared +all her money--I suppose it was before the Married Woman's Property +Act--and grudged her any for her dress, her little comforts, her +books, or even for proper medical advice. And to hear these Liberal +Cabinet Ministers--_Liberal_, mind you--talk about women, often with +the filthy phrases of the street--Well: he got a smack on the jaw +and decided to treat the incident as a trifling one ... his private +secretary patched it up somehow, but I expressed no regret.... + +"Well, darling, I'll try to do as you wish. I'll try to shut you out +of my thoughts and return to my experiments, when I'm not on +platforms or in the House. I think I shall get in again--it's a mere +matter of money, and thanks to Linda that isn't wanting. I'm not +going to withdraw from politics, you bet, however disenchanted I may +be. It's because the decent, honest, educated men withdraw that +legislation and administration are left to the case-hardened rogues +... and the uneducated ... and the cranks. But don't make things +_too_ hard for me. Keep out of prison ... keep off hunger +strikes--If you're going to be man-handled by the police--Ah! _why_ +wasn't _I_ there, instead of in the House? Gardner had all the +luck.... I was glad to hear he was married." + +_Vivie_: "Oh you needn't be jealous of poor Frank. And he'll soon be +back in South Africa. You needn't be jealous of _any_ one. I'm all +yours--in spirit--for all time. Now we must be going: it's getting +dusk and we should be irretrievably ruined if we were locked up in +this dilapidated old palm house. Besides, I'm to meet Frank at +Praddy's studio in order to tell him the history of the last +thirteen years." + +As they walked away: "You know, Michael, I'm still hoping we may be +friends without being lovers. I wonder whether Linda would get to +like me?" + +At Praed's studio. Lewis Maitland Praed is looking older. He must be +now--November, 1910--about fifty-eight or fifty-nine. But he has +still a certain elegance, the look of a lesser Leighton about him. +Frank has been there already for half an hour, and the tea-table +has been, so to speak, deflowered. Vivie accepts a cup, a muffin, +and a marron glace. Then says, "Now, dear Praddy, summon your +mistress, _dons l'honnete sens du mot_, and have this tea-table +cleared so that we can have a hugely long and uninterrupted talk. I +have got to give Frank a summary of all that I've done in the past +thirteen years. Meanwhile Frank, as your record, I feel convinced, +is so blameless and normal that it could be told before any +parlour-maid, you start off whilst she is taking away the tea, +fiddling with the stove, and prolonging to the uttermost her +services to a master who has become her slave." + +The parlour-maid enters, and casts more than one searching glance at +Vivie's bruised features, but performs her duties in a workmanlike +manner. + +_Frank_: "My story? Oh well, it's a happy one on the whole--very +happy. Soon as the war was over, I got busy in Rhodesia and pitched +on a perfect site for a stock and fruit farm. The B.S.A. Co. was +good to me because I'd known Cecil Rhodes and Dr. Jim; and by +nineteen four I was going well, they'd made me a magistrate, and +some of my mining shares had turned out trumps. Then Westlock came +out as Governor General, and Lady Enid had brought out with her a +jolly nice girl as governess to her children. She was the daughter +of a parson in Hertfordshire near the Brinsley estates. Well, I +won't say--bein' the soul of truth--that I fell in love with +her--straight away--because I don't think I ever fell deep in +love--straight away--with any girl but you, Vivie. But I did feel, +as it was hopeless askin' you to marry me, here was the wife I +wanted. She was good enough to accept me and the Westlocks were +awfully kind and made everything easy. Lady Enid's a perfect +brick--and, by the bye, she's a great Suffragist too. Well: we were +married at Pretoria in 1904, and now we've got four children; a +sturdy young Frank, a golupshous Vivie--oh, I told Muriel +everything, she's the sort of woman you can--And the other two are +called Bertha after my mother and Charlotte after Mrs. Bernard +Shaw. I sent you, Vivie--a newspaper with the announcement of my +marriage--Dj'ever get it?" + +_Vivie_: "Never. But I was undergoing a sea-change of my own, just +then, which I will tell you all about presently." + +_Frank_: "Well then. I came back to England on a hurried visit. You +remember, Praddy? But you were away in Italy and I couldn't find +Vivie anywhere. I called round at where your office was--Fraser and +Warren--where we parted in 1897--and there was no more Fraser and +Warren. Nobody knew anything about what had become of you. P'raps I +might have found out, but I got a bit huffy, thought you might have +written me a line about my marriage. I did write to Miss Fraser, but +the letter was returned from the Dead Letter office," (_Vivie_: "She +married Colonel Armstrong.") "Well, there it is! By some devilish +lucky chance I had no sooner got to London from Southhampton, day +before yesterday, than some one told me all about the expected row +between the Suffragettes and the police. Thought I'd go and see for +myself what this meant. No idea before how far the thing had gone, +or what brutes the police could be. Had a sort of notion, don't know +why, that dear old Viv would be in it, up to the neck. Got mixed up +in the crowd and helped a woman or two out of it. Lady Feenix--they +said it was--picked up some and took 'em into her motor. And then I +heard a cry which could only be in Vivie's voice--dear old +Viv--(leans forward with shining eyes to press her hand) and ... +there we are. How're the bruises?" + +_Vivie_: "Oh, they ache rather, but it is such _joy_ to have such +friends as you and Praddy and Michael Rossiter, that I don't mind +_what_ I go through..." + +_Frank_: "But I say, Viv, about this Rossiter man. He seems awfully +gone on you...?" + +_Vivie_ (flushing in the firelight): "Does he? It's only friendship. +I really don't see them often but he came to my assistance once at a +critical time. And now that Praddy's all-powerful parlour-maid's +definitely left us, I will tell you _my_ story." + +So she does, between five and half-past six, almost without +interruption from the spell-bound Frank--who says it licks any novel +he ever read, and she ought to turn it into a novel--with a happy +ending--or from Praed who is at times a little somnolent. Then at +half-past six, the practical Frank says: + +"Look here, you chaps, I could go on listening till midnight, but +what's the matter with a bit of dinner? I dare say Praddy's +parlour-maid might turn sour if we asked her at a moment's notice to +find dinner for three. Why not come out and dine with me at the Hans +Crescent Hotel? Close by. I'll get a quiet table and we can finish +our talk there. To-morrow I must go down to Margate to see the dear +old mater, and it may be a week before I'm up again." + +They adjourn to the hostelry mentioned. + +Over coffee and cigarettes, Vivie makes this appeal to Frank: "Now +Frank, you know all my story. Tell me first, what really became of +the real David Williams, the young man you met in the hospital and +wrote to me about?" + +_Frank_: "'Pon my life I don't know. I never heard one word about +him after I got clear of the hospital myself. You know it fell into +Boer hands during that rising in Cape Colony. I expect the 'real' +David Williams, as you call him, died from neglected wounds or +typhoid--or recovered and took to drink, or went up country and got +knocked on the head by the natives for interfering with their +women--Good riddance of bad rubbish, I expect. What do you want me +to do? I'll swear to anything in reason." + +_Vivie_: "I want you to do this. Run down one day before you go back +to Africa, to South Wales, to Pontystrad--It's not far from +Swansea--And call at the Vicarage on the pretext that you've come to +enquire about David Vavasour Williams whom you once knew in South +Africa. It'll give verisimilitude to my stories. They'll probably +say they haven't seen him for ever so long, but that you can hear of +him through Professor Rossiter. I dare say it's a silly idea of +mine, but what I fear sometimes--is that if the fact comes out that +_I_ was David Williams, some Vaughan or Price or other Williams may +call the old man's will in question and get it put into Chancery, +get the money taken away from poor old Bridget Evanwy and the +village hall which I've endowed. That's all. If it wasn't that I've +disposed of my supposed father's money in the way I think he would +have liked best, I shouldn't care a hang if they found out the trick +I'd played on the Benchers. D'you see?" + +_Frank_: "I see." + +The next day Vivie wisely spent in bed, healing her wounds and +resting her limbs which after the mental excitement was over ached +horribly. Honoria came round and listened, applauded, pitied, +laughed and concurred. + +But she was well enough on the following Tuesday after Black Friday +to attend another meeting of the W.S.P.U. at Caxton Hall, to hear +one more ambiguous, tricky, many-ways-to-be-interpreted promise of +the then Prime Minister. Mrs. Pankhurst pointing out the vagueness +of these assurances announced her intention then and there of going +round to Downing Street to ask for a more definite wording. Vivie +and many others followed this dauntless lady. Their visit was +unexpected, the police force was small and the Suffragettes had two +of the Cabinet Ministers at their mercy. They contented themselves +by shaking, hustling, frightening but not otherwise injuring their +victims before the latter were rescued and put into taxi-cabs. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +MILITANCY + + + The Lilacs, + Victoria Road, S.W. + _December_ 31, 1910. + + DEAR MICHAEL,-- + + I'm so glad you got returned all right by your University. I + feared very much your championship of the Woman's Cause + might have told against you. But these newer Universities + are more liberal-minded. + + I am keeping my promise to tell you of any important move I + am making. So this is to inform you, _in very strict + confidence_, of my latest dodge. For the effective + organization of my particular branch of the W.S.P.U. + activities, I must have an office. "The Lilacs" is far too + small, and besides I shrink from having my little home + raided or too much visited even by confederates. I learned + the other day that the old Fraser and Warren offices on the + top floor of 88-90 Chancery Lane were vacant. The Midland + Insurance Co. that occupied nearly all the building has + cleared out and the block is to be given over to a multitude + of small undertakings. Well: I secured our old rooms! Simply + splendid, with the two safes that Honoria, untold ages ago, + fitted into the walls, and hid so cleverly that if there is + no treachery it would be hard for the police to find them + and raid them. The Midland Insurance Co. did not behave well + to Fraser and Warren, so Beryl Storrington, when she was + clearing out said nothing about the safes, which were not + noticed by the Company. Honoria kept the keys and now hands + them over to me. + + The W.S.P.U. has taken--also under an alias--other offices + on the same side of the way, at No. 94, top storey. We find + we can, by using the fire escape, pass over the intervening + roofs and reach the parapet outside the "partners' room" at + the 88-90 building. I shall once again make use of the + little room next the partners' office as a bedroom or + rather, "tiring" room, where I can if necessary effect + changes of costume. I have taken the new offices in the name + of Mr. Michaelis[1] for a special reason; and with some + modifications of David's costume I have appeared in person + to assume possession of them. I generally enter No. 94 + dressed as Vivie Warren. All this may sound very silly to + you, like playing at conspiracy. But these precautions seem + to be necessary. The Government is beginning to take + Suffragism seriously, and a whole department at New Scotland + Yard has been organized to cope with our activities. + + [Footnote 1: Michaelis, I believe, was a Greek merchant + dealing with sponges, emery powder, coral, and other + products of the Mediterranean shores whose acquaintance + Vivie had originally made when interested in the shares of + that Levantine house, Charles Davis and Co. Of Ionian birth + he had become a naturalized British subject, but having + grown wealthy had decided to transfer himself to Athens and + enter political life. He had consented amusedly to Vivie's + adoption of his name for her new tenancy and had given her + an old passport, which you could do in the days that knew + not Dora--she resembling him somewhat in appearance. He was + aware of her Suffragist activities and guessed she might + want it occasionally for eluding the police on trips + abroad.--H.H.J.] + + One reason I have in writing this letter--a letter I hope + you will burn after you have read and noted its contents--is + to ask you to lend me for a while the services of Bertie + Adams as clerk. Of course I shall insist on paying his + salary whilst I employ him, and indemnifying him for + anything he may suffer in my service--that of the W.S.P.U. I + am fairly well off for money now. Besides the funds the + W.S.P.U. places at my disposal, I have the interest on + mother's Ten Thousand pounds, and she would give me more if + I asked for it. She has quite taken to the idea of spending + her ill-gotten gains on the Enfranchisement of Women! (I am + going over to see her for a week or so, when it is not quite + so cold.) + + What business am I going specially to undertake in Mr. + Michaelis's office on the top storey of 88-90? I will tell + you. Scotland Yard is getting busy about us, the + Suffragists, trying to find out all it can that is + detrimental to our personal characters, our upbringing, our + progeniture, our businesses and our relations; whether we + had a forger in the family, whether I am the daughter of the + "notorious" Mrs. Warren, whether Mrs. Canon Burstall is + really my aunt and whether she couldn't be brought to use + her private influence on me to keep me quiet, in case it + came out that Kate Warren was her sister, and that she led + Kate into that way of life wherein she earned her shameful + livelihood. I have had one or two covert hints from Aunt Liz + promising to open up relations _if_ only I'll behave myself! + Scotland Yard has already had the sorry triumph of causing + one or two of our most prominent workers to retire from the + ranks because they were not properly married or had been + married after the eldest child was born; or had once "been + in trouble," over some peccadillo, or had had a son or a + sister who though now upright and prosperous had once been + in the clutches of the law. + + Now my idea is to turn the tables on all this. I myself am + impeccable in a real court of equity. My avatar as David + Williams was by way of being a superb adventure. I only + retired from the harmless imposture lest I might compromise + you, and you are so far gone in politics now that the + revelation--if it came about--that you were deceived by me + and by my "father"--would do you no harm. For a number of + reasons I know pretty well that the Benchers would not make + themselves ridiculous by having the story of my successful + entry into their citadel told in open court. I have in fact, + through a devious channel, received the assurance that if I + do not resume this character (of D.V.W.) nothing more will + be said. What, then, have I to fear? My mother _s'est bien + rangee_. She leads a life of the most respectable. If they + challenge her, she can counter with some of the most piquant + scandals of the last thirty years. + + My own careful study of criminology and the assiduous + searchings of Albert Adams in the same direction; my + mother's anecdotes of the lives of statesmen, + police-magistrates, prosecuting counsel, judges, + press-editors--many of whom have enjoyed her hospitality + abroad--have given me numerous hints in what direction to + pursue my researches. Consequently the office of Mr. + Michaelis will be the Criminal Investigation Department of + the W.S.P.U. I feel instinctively I am touching pitch and + that you will disapprove ... but if we are to fight with + clean hands, _que Messieurs les Assassins commencent_! If + Scotland Yards drops slander and infamous suggestions as a + weapon we will let our poisoned arrows rust in the armoury. + + How _beastly_ all this is! _Why_ do they drive us to these + extremes? I know already enough to blast the characters of + several among our public men. Yet I know in so doing I + should wreck the life-happiness of faithful wives, believing + sisters or daughters, or bright-faced children. Perhaps I + won't, when it comes to the pinch. But somehow, I think, if + they guess I have this knowledge in my possession, they will + leave David Williams and Kate Warren alone. + + Sometimes, d'you know, I wake up in the middle of the night + at the Lilacs or in my reconstituted bedroom at 88-90, and + wish I were quit of all this Suffrage business, all this + vain struggle against predominant man--and away with you on + a Pacific Island. Then I realize that we should have large + cockroaches and innumerable sand fleas in our new home, that + we should have broken Linda's heart, have set back the + Suffrage cause as much as Parnell's adultery postponed Home + Rule; and above all that I am already thirty-five and shall + soon be thirty-six and that it wouldn't be very long before + you in comfort-loving middle age sighed for the well-ordered + life of No. 1, Park Crescent, Portland Place! + + On the whole, I think the most rational line I can take is + to continue resolutely this struggle for the Vote. With the + Vote must come the opening of Parliament to women. I'm not + too old to aspire to be some day Secretary of State for Home + Affairs. Because the General Post Office has already become + interested in my correspondence, and because this is really + a "pivotal" letter I am not trusting it to the post but am + calling with it at No. 1 and handing it personally to your + butler. I look to you to destroy it when you have read its + contents--if you go to that length. + + Yours, + VIVIE. + +Rossiter read this letter an hour or so after it had been delivered, +frowned a good deal, made notes in one of his memorandum books; then +tore the sheets of typewriting into four and placed them on the +fire. Having satisfied himself that the flames had caught them, he +went up with a sullen face to dress for dinner: Linda was giving a +New Year's Eve dinner to friends and relations and he had to play +the part of host with assumed heartiness. + +In the perversity of fate, one piece of the typewritten letter +escaped the burning except along the edge. A puff of air from the +chimney or the opened door, as Linda entered the room, lifted it off +the cinders and deposited it on the hearth. Linda had dressed early +for the party, had felt a little hurt at the locked door of +Michael's dressing-room, and had come with some vague intention into +his study, to see perhaps if the fire was burning brightly: because +to avoid unnecessary journies upstairs they would receive their +guests to-night in the study and thence pass to the dining-room. +But the fire had gone sulky, as fires do sometimes even with +well-behaved chimneys and first-class coal. She noted the charred +portion of paper lying untidily on the hearth, with typewriting on +its upper surface. Picking it up she read inside the scorched +margin: + + + ria kept the keys and now them over to me. + W.S.P.U. has taken--also under an alias--other of + same side of the way, at No. 94, top storey. We + using the fire-escape, pass over the intervening r + reach the parapet outside the "partners' room" at the + ding. I shall once again make use of the little room + tners' office as a bedroom or rather "tiring" room, w + if necessary effect changes of costume. I have tak + ces in the name of Mr. Michaelis for a special reas + ome modifications of David's costume I have appeared in p + ssume possession of them. I generally enter No. 94 dressed a + Warren. All this may sound very silly to you, like pla + + +"Warren!" That name stood out clear. Did it mean the suffragette, +Vivien Warren, who had sometimes been here, and in whose adventures +her husband seemed so unbecomingly interested? One of the great +ladies who were Anti-Suffragists and had already decoyed Mrs. +Rossiter within their drawing-rooms had referred with great +disapproval to Miss Warren as the daughter of a most notorious woman +whom their husbands wouldn't hear mentioned because of her shocking +past. And David, David of course must be that tiresome David +Williams, supposed to be a cousin of Vivien Warren, but really +seeming in these allusions to be a disguise in which this bold +female deceived people. And "Mr. Michaelis?" Could that be her own +Michael? The shameless baggage! She choked at the thought. Was it a +conspiracy into which they were luring her husband, already rather +compromised as a man of science by his enthusiasm for the Suffrage +cause? People used to speak of Michael almost with awe, he was so +clever, he made such wonderful discoveries. Now, since he had become +a politician he had many enemies, and several ladies of high title +referred to him contemptuously even in her hearing and cut _her_ +without compunction, though she had Ten thousand a year. She felt +all the same a profound conviction that Michael was the most +honourable of men. Yet why all this mystery? The W.S.P.U.? Those +letters stood for some more than usually malignant Suffrage Society. +She had seen the letters often in "Votes for Women."... + +Her musings here were stayed by the sound of her husband's steps in +the passage. Hastily she thrust the half sheet of charred paper into +her corsage and brushed off the fragments of the burnt edges from +her laces; then turned and affected to be tidying the writing table +as Michael came in. + +_Rossiter_: "Linda! Surely not putting my papers in order--or rather +disorder? I thought you were far too intimate with my likes and +dislikes to do that!... Why, what's the matter?" + +_Linda_: "Oh nothing. I was only seeing if they had made up your +fire. I--I--haven't touched anything." + +(Rossiter looked anxiously at the grate, but was relieved to see +nothing but burnt, shrivelled squares of paper. He poked the fire +fiercely and at any rate demolished the remains of Vivie's letter.) + +_Rossiter_: "Yes: it isn't very cheerful. They must brighten it +while we are at dinner; though as we shall go to the drawing-room +afterwards we shan't need a huge fire here. There! It looks better +after that poke. I threw some papers on it to start a flame just +before I went up to dress.... Why dearie! What cold hands and what +flushed cheeks!"... + +_Linda_: "Oh Michael! You'll always love me, won't you? I--I know +I'm not clever, not half clever enough for you. But I _do_ try to +help you all I can. I--I--" (Sobs.) + +_Rossiter_ (really distressed): "_Of course_ I love you! What silly +notion have you got into your head?" (He asks himself anxiously +"Surely all that letter was burnt before she came in?") "Come! Pull +yourself together. Be worthy of that dress. It is such a beauty." + +_Linda_: "I thought you'd like it. I remembered your saying that +blue always became me." (Dabs at her eyes with a small lace +handkerchief.) + +Loud double knocks begin to sound. Dinner guests are soon announced. +Linda and Michael receive them heartily. Rossiter--as many a public +man does and has to do--shoves his vain regrets, remorse, anxiety, +weary longing for the unattainable--somewhere to the back of his +brain, where these feelings will not revive till he lies awake at +three in the morning; and prepares to entertain half-a-dozen hearty +men and buxom women who are easily impressed by a little spoon-fed +science. Linda is soon distracted from the scrap of paper in her +bosom and gives all her attention to her cousins and grown-up school +friends from Bradford and Northallerton who are delighted to see the +New Year in amid the gaieties of London. + +But before she rings for her maid and undresses that night, she +locks the burnt fragment in a secret drawer of her desk. + + +The Ministry which was returned to power in December, 1910, had to +plan during the first half of 1911 to keep the Suffragists becalmed +with promises and prevent their making any public protest which +might mar the Coronation festivities. So various Conciliation Bills +were allowed to be read to the House of Commons and to reach Second +readings at which they were passed with huge majorities. Then they +came to nothingness by being referred to a Committee of the whole +House. Still a hope of some solution was dangled before the +oft-deluded women, who could hardly believe that British Ministers +of State would be such breakers of promises and tellers of +falsehoods. In November, 1911, there being no reason for further +dissembling, the Government made the announcement that it was +contemplating a Manhood Suffrage Bill, which would override +altogether the petty question as to whether a proportion of women +should or should not enjoy the franchise. This new electoral measure +was to be designed for men only, but--the Government opined--it +might be susceptible of amendment so as to admit women likewise. + +[Probably the Government had satisfied itself beforehand that, +acting on some unwritten code of Parliamentary procedure, the +Speaker would rule out such an amendment as unconstitutional. At any +rate, this is what he did in 1913.] + +The wrath of the oft-deluded women flamed out with immediate +resentment when the purport of this trick was discerned. Led by Mrs. +Pethick Lawrence a band of more than a thousand women and men (and +some of the presumed men were, like Vivie, women in men's clothes, +as it enabled them to move about with more agility and also to +escape identification) entered Whitehall and Parliament Street armed +with hammers and stones. They broke all the windows they could in +the fronts of the Government offices and at the residences of +Ministers of State. Vivie found herself shadowed everywhere by +Bertie Adams though she had given him no orders to join the crowd, +indeed had begged him to mind his own business and go home. "This +_is_ my business," he had said curtly, and for once masterfully, and +she gave way. Though Vivie for her own reasons carried no hammer or +stone and as one of the principal organizers of the militant +movement had been requested by the inner Council of the W.S.P.U. to +keep out of prison as long as possible, she could not help cheering +on the boldest and bravest in the mild violence of their protest. To +the angry police she seemed merely an impertinent young man, hardly +worth arresting when they could barely master the two hundred and +twenty-three arch offenders with glass-breaking weapons in their +hands. So a constable contented himself with marching on her feet +with all his weight and thrusting his elbows violently into her +breast. + +She well-nigh fainted with the pain; in fact would have fallen in +the crowd but for the interposition of Adams who carried her out of +it to the corner of Parliament Street, where he pounced on one of +the many taxis that crawled about the outskirts of the shouting, +swaying crowd, sure of a fare from either police or escaping +Suffragists. Feeling certain that some policeman had not left the +disguised Vivie entirely unobserved--indeed Bertie had half thought +he caught the words above the din: "That's David Williams, that is," +he told the taxi man to drive along the Embankment to the Temple. By +the time they had reached the nearest access on that side of +Fountain Court, Vivie was sufficiently recovered from her semi-swoon +to get out, and leaning heavily on Bertie's arm, limp slowly through +the intricacies of the Temple and out into Fleet Street by +Sergeant's Inn. Then with fresh efforts and further halts they made +their way to 94, Chancery Lane. + +Some one was sitting up here with one electric light on, ready for +any development connected with W.S.P.U. work that night. To +her--fortunately it was a woman--Bertie handed over his stricken +chief, and then made his way home to his little house in Marylebone +and a questioning and not too satisfied wife. The Suffragette in +charge of the top storey at 94 knew something, fortunately, of first +aid, was deft of hands and full of sympathy. Vivie's--or Mr. +Michaelis's--lace-up boots were carefully removed and the poor +crushed and bleeding toes washed with warm water. The collar was +taken off and the shirt unbuttoned revealing a terrible bruise on +the sternum where the policeman's elbow had struck her--better +however there, though it had nearly broken the breastbone, than on +either side, as such a blow might have given rise to cancer. As it +was, Vivie when she coughed spat blood. + +A cup of hot bovril and an hour's rest on a long chair and she was +ready, supremely anxious indeed, to try the last adventure: an +excursion across the roofs and up and down fire-escapes on to the +parapet of her own especial dwelling, the old offices of Fraser and +Warren at No. 88-90. The great window of the partners' room opened +to her manipulations--it had been carefully left unbolted before +her departure for Caxton Hall; and aided cautiously and cleverly by +her suffragette helper, Vivie at last found herself--or Mr. +Michaelis did--in the snug little bedroom that knew her chiefly in +her male form. + +Here she was destined to lie up for several weeks till the feet and +the chest were healed and sound again. Hither by the normal entrance +came a woman suffragette surgeon to heal, and Vivie's woman clerk to +act as secretary; whilst Adams typed away in the outer office on Mr. +Michaelis's business or went on long and mysterious errands. Hither +also came the little maid from the Lilacs, bringing needed changes +of clothes, letters, and messages from Honoria. A stout young man +with a fresh colour went up in the lift at No. 94 to the flat or +office of "Algernon Mainwaring," and then skipped along the winding +way between the chimney stacks and up and down short iron ladders +till he too reached the parapet, entered through the opened +casement, and revealed himself as a great W.S.P.U. leader, costumed +like Vivie as a male, but in reality a buxom young woman only +waiting for the Vote to be won to espouse her young man--shop +steward--and begin a large family of children. From this leader, +Vivie received humbly the strictest injunctions to engage in no more +disabling work for the present, to keep out of police clutches and +the risk of going to prison or of attracting too much police +attention at 88-90 Chancery Lane. "You are our brain-centre at +present. Our offices for show and for raiding by the police have +been at Clifford's Inn and are now in Lincoln's Inn. But the really +precious information we possess is ... well, you know where it is: +walls may have ears ... your time for public testimony hasn't come +yet ... we'll let you know fast enough when it has and _you_ won't +flinch, _I'm_ quite sure..." + +As a matter of fact, though Vivie's intelligence and inventiveness, +her knowledge of criminal law, of lawyers and of city business, her +wide education, her command of French (improved by the frequent +trips to Brussels--where indeed she deposited securely in her +mother's keeping some of the funds and the more remarkable documents +of the Suffrage cause) and her possession of monetary supplies were +not to be despised: as a figure-head, she was of doubtful value. +There was always that mother in the background. If Vivie was in +court for a suffrage offence of a grave character the prosecuting +Counsel would be sure to rake up the "notorious Mrs. Warren" and +drag in the White Slave Traffic, to bewilder a jury and throw +discredit on the militant side of the Suffrage cause. Of course if +the true story of Vivie were fully known, she would rise triumphant +from such a recital.... Still ... throw plenty of mud and some of +it will stick.... And what _was_ her full, true story? Even in the +pure passion of the fight for liberty among these young and +middle-aged women, the tongue of scandal occasionally wagged in +moments of lassitude, discouragement, undeception. At such times +some weaker sister with a vulgar mind, or a mind with vulgar streaks +in it, might hint at the great interest taken in Vivie by a +distinguished man of science who had become an M.P. and a raging +suffragist. Or indecorum would be hinted in the relations between +this enigmatic woman, so prone seemingly to don male costume, and +the burly clerk who attended her so faithfully and had brought her +home on the night of Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's spirited raid. + +So much so, that Vivie with a sigh, as soon as she attained +convalescence was fain to send for Bertie and tell him with +unanswerable decision that he must return to his work with Rossiter +and thither she would send from time to time special instructions if +he could help her business in any way. + +This was done in January, 1912. Vivie's feet were now healed and the +woman surgeon was satisfied that she could walk on them without +displacing the reset bones. The slight fracture in the breastbone +had repaired itself by one of Nature's magic processes. So one day +our battered heroine doffed the invalid garments of Michaelis and +donned those of any well-dressed woman of 1912, including a thick +veil. Thus attired she passed from the parapet to the fire-escape +(recalling the agony these gymnastics had caused her the previous +November), and from the fire-escape to the roof of No. 92 +(continuous with the roof of 94), and past the chimney stacks, into +the top storey of 94, and so on down to the street, where a taxi was +waiting to convey her to the Lilacs. + +(The W.S.P.U., by the bye, to bluff Scotland Yard had added to the +name of "Algernon Mainwaring, 5th Floor," the qualification of +"Hygienic Corset-maker," as an explanation--possibly--of why so many +women found their way to the top storey of No. 94.) + +Arrived at the Lilacs, Vivie took up for a brief spell the life of +an ordinary young woman of the well-to-do middle class, seriously +interested in the suffrage question but non-militant. She attended +several of Honoria's or Mrs. Fawcett's suffrage parties or public +meetings and occasionally spoke and spoke well. She also went over +to Brussels twice in 1912 to keep in touch with her mother. Mrs. +Warren had had one or two slight warnings that a life of pleasure +saps the strongest constitution.[1] She lived now mainly at her +farm, the Villa Beau-sejour, and only occasionally occupied her +_appartement_ in the Rue Royale. She must have been about fifty-nine +in the spring of 1912, and was beginning to "soigner son salut," +that is to say to take stock of her past life, apologize for it to +herself and see how she could atone reasonably for what she had done +wrong. A decade or two earlier she would have turned to religion, +inevitably to that most attractive and logical form, the religion +expounded by the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. She would +have confessed her past, slightly or very considerably _gazee_, to +some indulgent confessor, have been pardoned, and have presented a +handsome sum to an ecclesiastical charity or work of piety. But she +had survived into a skeptical age and she had conceived an immense +respect for her clever daughter. Vivie should be her spiritual +director; and Vivie's idea put before her at their reconciliation +three years previously had seemed the most practical way of making +amends to Woman for having made money in the past out of the +economic and physiological weakness of women. She had fined herself +Ten Thousand pounds then; and out of her remaining capital of Fifty +or Sixty thousand (all willed with what else she possessed to her +daughter) she would pay over more if Vivie demanded it as further +reparation. Still, she found the frequentation of churches soothing +and gave much and often to the mildly beseeching Little Sisters of +the Poor when they made their rounds in town or suburbs. + + [Footnote 1: Or so the observers say who haven't had a life of + pleasure.] + +"What do you think about Religion, Viv old girl?" she said one day +in the Eastertide of 1912, when Vivie was spending a delicious +fortnight at Villa Beau-sejour. + +"Personally," said Vivie, "I hate all religions, so far as I have +had time to study them. They bind up with undisputed ethics more or +less preposterous theories concerning life and death, the properties +of matter, man, God, the universe, the laws of nature, the food we +should eat, the relations of the sexes, the quality of the weekly +day of rest. Gradually they push indisputable ethics on one side and +are ready to apply torture, death, or social ostracism to the +support of these preposterous theories and explanations of God and +Man. Such theories"--went on Vivie, though her mother's attention +had wandered to some escaped poultry that were scratching +disastrously in seed beds--"Such theories and explanations, mark +you--_do_ listen, mother, since you asked the question..." + +"I'm listenin', dearie, but you talk like a book and I don't know +what some of your words mean--What's ethics?" + +"Well 'ethics' means er--er--'morality'; it comes from a Greek word +meaning 'character.'..." + +_Mrs. Warren_: "You talk like a book--" + +_Vivie_: "I do sometimes, when I remember something I've read. But +now I've lost my thread.... What I meant to finish up with was +something like this 'Such theories and explanations were formulated +several hundred, or more than two thousand years ago, in times when +Man's knowledge of himself, of his surroundings, of the earth and +the universe was almost non-existent, yet they are preserved to our +times as sacred revelations, though they are not superior to the +fancies and fetish rites of a savage.' There! All that answer is +quoted from Professor Rossiter's little book (_Home University +Library_, "The Growth of the Human Mind")." + +_Mrs. Warren_: "Rossiter! Is that the man you're sweet on?" + +_Vivie_: "Don't put it so coarsely. There is a great friendship +between us. We belong to a later generation than you. A man and a +woman can be friends now without becoming lovers." + +_Mrs. Warren_: "Go _on_! Don't humbug me. Men and women's the same +as when I was young. I'm sorry, all the same, dear girl. There are +you, growin' middle-aged and not married to some good-'earted chap +as 'd give you three-four children I could pet in me old age. +Wodjer want to go fallin' in love with some chap as 'as got a wife +already? _I_ know your principles. There's iron in yer blood, same +as there is in that proud priest, your father. I know you'd break +your 'eart sooner 'n have a good time with the professor. My! It +seems to me Love's as bad as Religion for bringin' about sorrer!" + +_Vivie_: "If you mean that it is answerable for the same intense +happiness and even more intense _un_happiness, I suppose you're +right. I'm _miserable_, mother, and it's some relief to me to say +so. If I could become honourably the wife of Michael Rossiter I'm +afraid I should let Suffrage have the go-by. But as I can't, why +this struggle for the vote is the only thing that keeps me going. I +shall fight for it for another ten years, and by that time certain +physiological changes may have taken place in me, and my feelings +towards Rossiter will have calmed down." + +(Here Mrs. Warren proceeded to call out rather disharmoniously in +Flemish to the poultry woman, and asked why the something-or-other +she let the Houdans spoil the seed beds.) + +_Mrs. Warren_ resuming: "Well it's clear you're your father's +daughter. 'E'd 'ave gone on--_did_ go on--in just such a way. 'Im +and me were jolly well suited to one another. I'd got to reg'lar +love 'im. I'd 'a bin a true wife to him, and 'ave worked my fingers +to the bone for 'im, and you bet I'd 'ave made a livin' somehow. And +he'd have written some jolly good books and 'ave made lots of money. +But no! This beastly Religion comes in with its scare of Hell fire +and back 'e goes to the priests and 'is prayers and 'is penances. +The last ten years or so 'e's bin filled up with pride. 'Is passions +'ave died down and 'e thinks 'imself an awful swell as the head of +his Order. And they do say as 'e's got 'is fingers in several pies +and is a reg'lar old conspirator, working up the Irish to do +something against England. Yer know since I've made my peace with +you.... _Ain't_ it a rum go, by the bye? Ten or twenty years ago +it'd 'a bin 'my peace with God.' I dunno nothin' about God--can't +see 'im at the end of a telescope, anyways. But I _can_ see you, +Vivie, and there's no one livin' I respect more" (speaks with real +feeling).... "Well, as I was sayin', since I'd set myself right with +you and wound up the business of the hotels I ain't so easy cowed by +'is looks as I used to be. So every now and then it amuses me to run +over in my auto to Louvain and stroll about there and watch 'im as +'e comes out for 'is promenade, pretendin' to be readin' a breviary +or some holy book. I know it riles 'im.... + +"Well, but for high principles, 'e and I might 'a bin as 'appy as +'appy and 'ad a large family. And there was nothin' to stop 'im +a-marryin' me, if that was all he wanted to feel comfortable about +it. But jus' see. He's had a life that seems to me downright +sterile, and I--well, I ain't been _really_ happy till we made it up +three years ago" (leans over, and kisses Vivie a little +timorously). + +"Now there's you, burning yourself out 'cos your high principles +won't let you go for once in a way on the spree with this +Rossiter--s'posin' 'e's game, of course.... You've too much pride to +throw yourself at his head. But if he loves you as bad as you loves +'im, why don't you ask him" (instinctively the old ministress of +love speaks here) "ask 'im to take you over to Paris for a trip? +I'll lay 'e 'as to go over now'n again to the Sorbonne or one of +them scientific institutes. _She'd_ never come to 'ear of it. An' +after one or two such honeymoons you'd soon get tired of 'im, +specially now you're gettin' on a bit in years, and may be you'd +settle down quietly after that. Or if you ain't reg'lar set on +_'im_, why not giv' up this suffrage business and live a bit with me +here? There's plenty of upstanding, decent, Belgian men in good +positions as'd like to have an English wife. _They_ wouldn't look +too shy at my money..." + +_Vivie_: "Get thee behind me, Satan! Mother, you oughtn't to make +such propositions. Don't you understand, we must all have a religion +somewhere. Some principle to which we sacrifice ourselves. Rossiter +would be horrified if he could hear you. His mistress is Science, +besides which he is really devoted to his wife and would do nothing +that could hurt her. You don't know England, it's clear. Supposing +for one moment I could consent--and I couldn't--we should be found +out to a certainty, and then Michael's career would be ruined. + +"My religion, though I sometimes weary of it and sneer at it, is +Women's Rights: women must have precisely the same rights as men, no +disqualification whatever based merely on their being women. Did you +read those disgusting letters in the _Times_ by the surgeon, the +midwifery man, Sir Wrigsby Blane? Declaring that the demand for the +Vote was based on immorality, and pretending that once a month, till +they were fifty, and for several years _after_ they were fifty, +women were not responsible for their actions, because of what he +vaguely called 'physiological processes.' What poisonous rubbish! +You know as well as I do that in most cases it makes little or no +difference; and if it does, what about men? Aren't _they_ at certain +times not their normal selves? When they're full up with wine or +beer or whiskey, when they're courting, when they're pursuing some +illicit love, when after fifty they get a little odd in their ways +through this, that and the other internal trouble or change of +function? What's true of the one sex is equally true of the other. +Most men and women between twenty and sixty jolly well know what +they want, and generally they want something reasonable. We don't +legislate for the freaks, the unbalanced, the abnormal; or if we do +restrict the vote in those cases, let's restrict it for males as +well as females--But don't you see at the same time what a text I +should furnish to this malign creature if I ran away to Paris with +Michael, and made the slightest false step ... even though it had no +bearing on the main argument?..." + +At this juncture Vivie, whose obsession leads her more and more to +address every one as a public meeting--is interrupted by the smiling +_bonne a tout faire_ who announces that _le dejeuner de Madame est +servi_, and the two women gathering up books and shawls go in to the +gay little _saile-a-manger_ of the Villa Beau-sejour. + +On Vivie's return to London, after her Easter holiday, she threw +herself with added zest into the Suffrage struggle. The fortnight of +good feeding, of quiet nights and lazy days under her mother's roof +had done her much good. She was not quite so thin, the dark circles +under her grey eyes had vanished, and she found not only in herself +but even in the most middle-aged of her associates a delightful +spirit of tomboyishness in their swelling revolt against the Liberal +leaders. It was specially during the remainder of 1912 that Vivie +noted the enormous good which the Suffrage movement had done and was +doing to British women. It was producing a splendid camaraderie +between high and low. Heroines like Lady Constance Lytton +mingled as sister with equally heroic charwomen, factory girls, +typewriteresses, waitresses and hospital nurses. Women doctors of +Science, Music, and Medicine came down into the streets and did the +bravest actions to present their rights before a public that now +began to take them seriously. Debutantes, no longer quivering with +fright at entering the Royal Presence, modestly but audibly called +their Sovereign's attention to the injustice of Mr. Asquith's +attitude towards women, while princesses of the Blood Royal had +difficulty in not applauding. Many a tame cat had left the fire-side +and the skirts of an inane old mother (who had plenty of people to +look after her selfish wants) and emerged, dazed at first, into a +world that was unknown to her. Such had thrown away their crochet +hooks, their tatting-shuttles and fashion articles, their Church +almanacs, and Girl's Own Library books, and read and talked of +social, sexual, and industrial problems that have got to be faced +and solved. Colour came into their cheeks, assurance into their +faded manners, sense and sensibility into their talk; and whatever +happened afterwards they were never crammed back again into the +prison of Victorian spinsterhood. They learnt rough cooking, skilled +confectionery, typewriting, bicycling, jiu-jitsu perhaps. "The +maidens came, they talked, they sang, they read; till she not fair +began to gather light, and she that was became her former beauty +treble" sang in prophecy, sixty years before, the greatest of poets +and the poet-prophet of Woman's Emancipation. Many a woman has +directly owed the lengthened, happier, usefuller life that became +hers from 1910-1911-1912 onwards to the Suffrage movement for the +Liberation of Women. + +The crises of 1912 moreover were not so acute as bitterly to envenom +the struggle in the way that happened during the two following +years. There was always some hope that the Ministry might permit the +passing of an amendment to the Franchise Bill which would in some +degree affirm the principle of Female Suffrage. It is true that a +certain liveliness was maintained by the Suffragettes. The W.S.P.U. +dared not relax in its militancy lest Ministers should think the +struggle waning and Woman already tiring of her claims. The vaunted +Manhood Suffrage Bill had been introduced by an anti-woman-suffrage +Quaker Minister and its Second reading been proposed by an equally +anti-feminist Secretary of State--this was in June-July, 1912; and +no member of the Cabinet had risen to say a word in favour of the +Women's claims. Still, something might be done in Committee, in the +autumn Session--if there were one--or in the following year. There +was a simmering in the Suffragist ranks rather than any alarming +explosion. In March, before Vivie went to Brussels, Mrs. Pankhurst +had carried out a window-smashing raid on Bond Street and Regent +Street and the clubs of Piccadilly, during which among the two +hundred and nineteen arrests there were brought to light as +"revolutionaries" two elderly women surgeons of great distinction +and one female Doctor of Music. In revenge the police had raided the +W.S.P.U. offices at Clifford's Inn, an event long foreseen and +provided against in the neighbouring Chancery Lane. + +The Irish Nationalist Party had shown its marked hostility to the +enfranchisement of women in any Irish Parliament and so a few +impulsive Irish women had thrown things at Nationalist M.P.'s +without hurting them. Mr. Lansbury had spoken the plain truth to the +Prime Minister in the House of Commons and had been denied access to +that Chamber where Truth is so seldom welcome. + +In July the slumbering movement towards resisting the payment of +taxes by vote-less women woke up into real activity, and there were +many ludicrous and pathetic scenes organized often by Vivie and +Bertie Adams at which household effects were sold and bought in by +friends to satisfy the claims of a tax-collector. In the autumn +Vivie and others of the W.S.P.U. organized great pilgrimages--the +marches of the Brown Women--from Scotland, Wales, Devon and Norfolk +to London, to some goal in Downing Street or Whitehall, some +door-step which already had every inch of its space covered by +policemen's boots. These were among the pleasantest of the +manifestations and excited great good humour in the populace of town +and country. They were extended picnics of ten days or a fortnight. +The steady tramp of sixteen to twenty miles a day did the women +good; the food _en route_ was abundant and eaten with tremendous +appetite. The pilgrims on arrival in London were a justification in +physical fitness of Woman's claim to equal privileges with Man. + +Vivie after her Easter holiday took an increasingly active part in +these manifestations of usually good-humoured insurrection. As +Vivien Warren she was not much known to the authorities or to the +populace but she soon became so owing to her striking appearance, +telling voice and gift of oratory. All the arts she had learnt as +David Williams she displayed now in pleading the woman's cause at +the Albert Hall, at Manchester, in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Countess +Feenix took her up, invited her to dinner parties where she found +herself placed next to statesmen in office, who at first morose and +nervous--expecting every moment a personal assault--gradually +thawed when they found her a good conversationalist, a clever woman +of the world, becomingly dressed. After all, she had been a third +wrangler at Cambridge, almost a guarantee that her subsequent life +could not be irregular, according to a man's standard in England of +what an unmarried woman's life should be. She deprecated the +violence of the militants in this phase. + +But she was Protean. Much of her work, the lawless part of it, was +organized in the shape and dress of Mr. Michaelis. Some of her +letters to the Press were signed Edgar McKenna, Albert Birrell, +Andrew Asquith, Edgmont Harcourt, Felicia Ward, Millicent Curzon, +Judith Pease, Edith Spenser-Churchhill, Marianne Chamberlain, or +Emily Burns; and affected to be pleas for the granting of the +Suffrage emanating from the revolting sons or daughters, aunts, +sisters or wives of great statesmen, prominent for their opposition +to the Women's Cause. The W.S.P.U. had plenty of funds and it did +not cost much getting visiting cards engraved with such names and +supplied with the home address of the great personage whom it was +intended to annoy. One such card as an evidence of good faith would +be attached to the plausibly-worded letter. The _Times_ was seldom +taken in, but great success often attended these audacious +deceptions, especially in the important organs of the provincial +press. Editors and sub-editors seldom took the trouble and the time +to hunt through _Who's Who_, or a Peerage to identify the writer of +the letter claiming the Vote for Women. No real combination of names +was given, thus forgery was avoided; but the public and the +unsuspecting Editor were left with the impression that the +Premier's, Colonial Secretary's, Home Secretary's, Board of Trade +President's, or prominent anti-suffragist woman's son, daughter, +brother, sister, wife or mother-in-law did not at all agree with the +anti-feminist opinions of its father, mother, brother or husband. +If the politician were foolish enough to answer and protest, he was +generally at a disadvantage; the public thought it a good joke and +no one (in the provinces) believed his disclaimers. + +Vivie generally heckled ministers on the stump and parliamentary +candidates dressed as a woman of the lower middle class. It would +have been unwise to do so in man's guise, in case there should be a +rough-and-tumble afterwards and her sex be discovered. Although in +order to avoid premature arrest she did not herself take part +in those most ingenious--and from the view of endurance, +heroic--stow-aways of women interrupters in the roofs, attics, +inaccessible organ lofts or music galleries of public halls, she +organized many of these surprises beforehand. It was Vivie to whom +the brilliant idea came of once baffling the police in the rearrest +of either Mrs. Pankhurst or Annie Kenney. Knowing when the police +would come to the building where one or other of these ladies was to +make her sensational re-appearance, she had previously secreted +there forty other women who were dressed and veiled precisely +similarly to the fugitive from justice. Thus, when the force of +constables claimed admittance, forty-one women, virtually +indistinguishable one from the other, ran out into the street, and +the bewildered minions of the law were left lifting their helmets to +scratch puzzled heads and admitting "the wimmen were a bit too much +for us, this time, they were." + +In her bedroom at 88-90 she kept an equipment of theatrical +disguises; very natural-looking moustaches which could be easily +applied and which remained firmly adhering save under the +application of the right solvent; pairs of tinted spectacles; wigs +of credible appearance; different styles of suiting, different types +of women's dress. She sometimes sat in trains as a handsome, +impressive matron of fifty-five, with a Pompadour confection and a +tortoiseshell _face-a-main_, conversing with ministers of state or +permanent officials on their way to their country seats, and saying +"_Horrid_ creatures!" if any one referred to the activities of the +Suffragettes. Thus disguised she elicited considerable information +sometimes, though she might really be on her way to organize the +break-up of the statesman's public meeting, the enquiry into +discreditable circumstances which might compel his withdrawal from +public life, or merely the burning down of his shooting box. + +This life had its risks and perils, but it agreed with her health. +It was exciting and took her mind off Rossiter. + +Rossiter for his part experienced a slackening in the tension of his +mind during the same year 1912. He was touched by his wife's faint +suspicion of his alienated affection and by her dogged determination +to be sufficient to him as a companion and a helper; and a little +ashamed at his middle-aged--he was forty-seven--infatuation for a +woman who was herself well on in the thirties. There were times when +a rift came in the cloud of his passion for Vivie, when he looked +out dispassionately on the prospect of the rest of his life--he +could hope at most for twenty more years of mental and bodily +activity and energy. Was this all too brief period to be filled up +with a senile renewal of sexual longing! He felt ashamed of the +thoughts that had occupied so much of his mind since he had laid +David Williams on the couch of his library, to find it was Vivie +Warren whose arms were round his neck. He was not sorry this love +for a woman he could not possess had sent him into Parliament. He +was beginning to enjoy himself there. He had found himself, had lost +that craven fear of the Speaker that paralyzes most new members. He +knew when to speak and when to be silent; and when he spoke +unsuspected gifts of biting sarcasm, clever characterization, +convincing scorn of the uneducated minister type came to his aid. +His tongue played round his victims, unequipped as they were with +his vast experience of reality, vaguely discursive, on the surface +as are most lawyers, at a loss for similes and tropes as are most +men of business, or dull of wits as are most of the fine flowers of +the public schools, stultified with the classics and scripture +history. He knew that unless there was some radical change of +government he could not be a minister; but he cared little for that. +He was rich--thanks to his wife--he was recovering his influence and +his European and American reputation as a great discoverer, a deep +thinker. He enjoyed pulverizing the Ministry over their suffrage +insincerities and displaying his contempt of the politician elected +only for his money influence in borough, county, or in the +subscription lists of the Chief Whip. Though his pulses still beat a +little quicker when he held Vivie's hand in his at some reception of +Lady Feenix's or a dinner party at the Gorings--Vivie as the child +of a "fallen" woman had a prescriptive right of entrance to Diana's +circle--he had not the slightest intention of running away with her, +of nipping his career in two, just as he might be scaling the last +heights to the citadel of fame: either as a politician of the new +type, the type of high education, or as one of the giants of +inductive science. Besides in 1912, if I mistake not, Dr. +Smith-Woodward and Mr. Charles Dawson made that discovery of the +remains of an ape-like man in the gravels of mid-Sussex; and the +hounds of Anthropology went off on a new scent at full cry, Rossiter +foremost in the pack. + +Mrs. Rossiter in the same year allowed herself more and more to be +tempted into anti-suffrage discussions at the houses of peers or of +strong-minded, influential ladies who were on the easiest terms with +peers and potentates. She still resented the line her husband +had taken in politics and believed it to be chiefly due to an +inexplicable interest in Vivien Warren who she began to feel was the +same person as "David Williams." + +If she could only master the "Anti" arguments--they sounded so +convincing from the lips of Miss Violet Markham or Mrs. Humphry Ward +or some suave King's Counsel with the remnants of mutton-chop +whiskers--if she could wean Michael away from that disturbing +nonsense--he could assign "militancy" as the justification of his +change of mind...! All that was asked by Authority, so far as she +could interpret hints from great ladies, was neutrality, the return +of Professor Rossiter to the paths of pure science in which area no +one disputed his eminence. _Then_ he might receive that knighthood +that was long overdue; better still his next lot of discoveries in +anatomy might bring him the peerage he richly deserved and which her +wealth would support. He could then rest on his oars, cease his more +or less nasty investigations; they could take a place in the country +and move from this much too large house which lay almost outside the +limits of Society's London to a really well-appointed flat in +Westminster and have a thoroughly enjoyable old age. + +Honoria in these times did not see so much of Vivie as before. Her +warrior husband spent a good deal of 1912 at home as he had a +Hounslow command. He had come to realize--some spiteful person had +told him--who Vivie's mother had been, and told Honoria in accents +of finality that the "Aunt Vivie" nonsense must be dropped and Vivie +must not come to the house. At the most, if she _must_ meet her +friend of college days--oh, he was quite willing to believe in her +personal propriety, though there were odd stories in circulation +about her dressing as a man and doing some very rum things for the +W.S.P.U.--still if she _must_ see her, it would have to be in public +places or at her friends, at Lady Feenix's, if she liked. No. He +wasn't attacking the cause of Suffrage. Women could have the vote +and welcome so far as he was concerned: they couldn't be greater +fools than the men, and they were probably less corrupt. He himself +never remembered voting in his life, so Honoria was no worse off +than her husband. But he drew the line in his children's friends at +the daughter of a.... + +Here Honoria to avoid hearing something she could not forgive put +her plump hand over his bristly mouth. He kissed it and somehow she +couldn't take the high tone she had at first intended. She simply +said "she would see about it" and met the difficulty by giving up +her suffrage parties for a bit and attending Lady Maud's instead; +where you met not only poor Vivie, but--had she been in London and +guaranteed reformed and _rangee_--you might have met Vivie's mother; +as well as the Duchess of Dulborough--American, and intensely +Suffrage--the charwoman from Little Francis Street, the bookseller's +wife, the "mother of the maids" from Derry and Toms; and that very +clever chemist who had mended Juliet Duff's nose when she fell on +the ice at Princes'--they would both be there. Honoria said nothing +to Vivie and Vivie said nothing to Honoria about the inhibition, but +together with her irrational jealousy of _Eoanthropos dawsoni_ and +irritation at the growing contentedness with things as they were on +the part of Rossiter, it made her a trifle more reckless in her +militancy. + +And Praddy? How did he fare in these times? Praed felt himself +increasingly out of the picture. He was not far gone in the sixties, +sixty-one, perhaps at most. But out of the movement. In his prime +the people of his set--the cultivated upper middle class, with a few +recruits from the peerage--cared only about Art in some shape or +form--recondite music, the themes of which were never obvious enough +to be hummed, the androgyne poetry of the 'nineties, morbidities +from the Yellow Book, and Scarlet Sins that you disclaimed for +yourself, to avoid unpleasantness with the Criminal Investigation +Department, but freely attributed to people who were not in the +room; the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley and successors in audacity +and ugly indecency who left Beardsley a mere disciple of Raphael +Tuck; also architecture which ignored the housemaid's sink, the +box-room and the fire-escape. + +The people who still came to his studio because he had the +reputation of being a wit and the husband of his parlour-maid (whom +to her indignation they called Queen Cophetua) cared not a straw +about Art in any shape or form. The women wanted the Vote--few of +them knew why--the men wanted to be aviators, motorists beating the +record in speed on French trial trips, or Apaches in their relations +with the female sex or prize-fighters--Jimmy Wilde had displaced +Oscar, to the advantage of humanity, even Praddy agreed. + +To Praed however Vivie took the bitterness, the disillusions which +came over her at intervals: + +"I feel, Praddy, I'm getting older and I seem to be at a loose end. +D'you know I'm on the verge of thirty-seven--and I have no definite +career? I'm rather tired of being a well-meaning adventuress." + +"Then why," Praddy would reply, "don't you go and live with your +mother?" + +"Ugh! I couldn't stand for long that life in Belgium or elsewhere +abroad. They seem miles behind us, with all our faults. Mother only +seems to think now of good things to eat and a course of the waters +at Spa in September to neutralize the over-eating of the other +eleven months. There is no political career for women on the +Continent." + +"Then why not marry and have children? That is a career in itself. +Look at Honoria, how happy she is." + +"Yes--but there is only one man I could love, and he's married +already." + +"Pooh! nonsense. There are as many good fish in the sea as ever came +out of it. If you won't do as Beryl did--by the bye isn't she a +swell in these days! And _strict_ with her daughters! She won't let +'em come here, I'm told, because of some silly story some one set +abroad about me! And that humbug, Francis Brimley Storrington--by +the bye he's an A.R.A. now and scarcely has enough talent to design +a dog kennel, yet they've given him the job of the new stables at +Buckingham Palace. Well if you won't share some one else's husband, +pick out a good man for yourself. There must be plenty going--some +retired prize-fighter. They seem all the rage just now, and are +supposed to be awfully gentlemanly out of the ring." + +"Don't be perverse. You know exactly how I feel. I'm wasting the +prime of my life. I see no clear course marked out before me. +Sometimes I think I would like to explore Central Africa or get up a +Woman's Expedition to the South Pole. Life has seemed so flat since +I gave up being David Williams. Then I lived in a perpetual thrill, +always on my guard. I tire every now and then of my monkey tricks, +and the praise of all these women leaves me cold. I wish I were as +simple minded as most of them are. To them the Vote seems the +beginning of the millennium. They seem to forget that after we've +_got_ the Vote we shall have another fight to be admitted as members +to the House. You may be sure the men will stand out another fifty +years over _that_ surrender. I alternate in my moods between the +reckless fury of an Anarchist and the lassitude of Lord Rosebery. To +think that I was once so elated and conceited about being a Third +Wrangler...!" + +With the closing months of 1912, however, there was a greater +tenseness, a sharpening of the struggle which once more roused +Vivie to keen interest. When she returned from an autumn visit to +Villa Beau-sejour she found there had been a split between the +"Peths" and the "Panks." The Girondist section of the women +suffragists had separated from those who could see no practical +policy to win the Vote but a regime of Terrorism--mild terrorism, it +is true--somewhat that of the Curate in _The Private Secretary_ who +at last told his persecutors he should _really have to give them a +good hard knock_. The Peths drew back before the Pankish programme +(mild as this would seem, to us of Bolshevik days and of Irish +insurrection). _Votes for Women_ returned to the control of the +Pethick Lawrences, and the Pankhurst party to which Vivie belonged +were to start a new press organ, _The Suffragette_. + +The Panks, it seemed, had a more acute fore-knowledge than the +Peths. The latter had felt they were forcing an open door; that the +Liberal Ministry would eventually squeeze a measure of Female +Suffrage into the long-discussed Franchise Bill; and that too much +militancy was disgusting the general public with the Woman's cause. +The former declared all along that Women were going to be done in +the eye, because all the militancy hitherto had got very little in +man's way, had only excited smiles, and shoulder-shrugs. Ministers +of the Crown in 1912 had compared the hoydenish booby-traps and +bloodless skirmishes of the Suffragettes with the grim fighting, the +murders, burnings, mob-rule of the 1830's, when MEN were agitating +for Reform; or the mutilation of cattle, the assassinations, +dynamite outrages, gun-powder plots, bombs and boycotting of the +long drawn-out Irish agitation for Home Rule. An agitation which was +now resulting in the placing on the Statute Book of a Home Rule +Bill, while another equally deadly agitation--in promise--was being +worked up by Sir Edward Carson, the Duke of This and the Marquis of +That, and a very rising politician, Mr. F.E. Smith, to defeat the +operation of Home Rule for Ireland. In short, if one might believe +the second-rate ministers who were not repudiated by their superiors +in rank, the Vote for Women could only be wrung from the reluctance +of the tyrant man, _if_ the women made life unbearable for the male +section of the community. + +It was a dangerous suggestion to make, or would have proved so, had +these sneering politicians been provoking men to claim their +constitutional rights: bloodshed would almost certainly have +followed. But the leaders of the militant women ordered (and were +obeyed) that no attacks on life should be part of the Woman's +militant programme. Property might be destroyed, especially such as +did not impoverish the poor; but there were to be no railway +accidents, no sinking of ships, no violent deeds dangerous to life. +At the height and greatest bitterness of militancy no statesman's +life was in danger. + +The only recklessness about life was in the militant women. They +risked and sometimes lost their lives in carrying out their +protests. They invented the Hunger Strike (the prospect of which as +an inevitable episode ahead of her, filled Vivie with tremulous +dread) to balk the Executive of its idea of turning the prisons of +England into Bastilles for locking up these clamant women who had +become better lawyers than the men who tried them. But think what +the Hunger Strike and its concomitant, Forcible Feeding, meant in +the way of pain and danger to the life of the victim. The Government +were afraid (unless you were an utterly unknown man or woman of the +lower classes) of letting you die in prison; so to force them to +release you, you had first to refuse for four days all food--the +heroic added all drink. Then to prevent your death--and being human +you, the prisoner, must have hoped they were keeping a good look-out +on your growing weakness--the prison doctor must intervene with his +forcible feeding. This was a form of torture the Inquisition would +have been sorry to have overlooked, and one no doubt that the +Bolsheviks have practised with great glee. The patient was strapped +to a chair or couch or had his--usually her--limbs held down by +warders (wardresses) and nurses. A steel or a wooden gag was then +inserted, often with such roughness as to chip or break the teeth, +and through the forced-open mouth a tube was pushed down the throat, +sometimes far enough to hurt the stomach. This produced an +apoplectic condition of choking and nausea, and as the stomach +filled up with liquid food the retching nearly killed the patient. +The windpipe became involved. Food entered the lungs--the tongue was +cut and bruised (Think what a mere pimple on the tongue means to +some of us: it keeps _me_ awake half the night)--the lips were torn. +Worse still--requiring really a pathological essay to which I am not +equal--was feeding by slender pipes through the nose. The far +simpler and painless process _per rectum_ was debarred because it +might have constituted an indecent assault. + +Was ever Ministry in a greater dilemma? It was too old-fashioned, +too antiquely educated to realize the spirit of its age, the pass at +which we had arrived of conceding to Women the same rights as to +men. Women were ready to die for these rights (not to kill others in +order to attain them). Yet for fear of wounding the national +sentimentality they must not be allowed to die; they must not be +saved from suicide by any action savouring of indecency; so they +must be tortured as prisoners hardly were in the worst days of the +Inquisition or at the worst-conducted public school of the Victorian +era. + +But Vivie's gradually rising wrath was to be brought by degrees to +boiling-point through the spring of 1913, and to explode at last +over an incident more tragic than any one of the five or six hundred +cases of forcible feeding. + +Early in 1913, the Speaker intimated that any insertion of a Woman +Suffrage Amendment into the Manhood Franchise Bill would be +inconsistent with some unwritten code of Parliamentary procedure of +which apparently he was the sole guardian and interpreter. Ministers +who had probably prepared this _coup_ months before went about +expressing hypocritical laments at the eccentricities of our +constitution; and the Franchise Act was abandoned. A little later, +frightened at the renewal of arson in town and country, at +interferences with their week-end golf courses, at the destruction +of mails in the letter-boxes, and the slashing of Old Masters at the +National Gallery (purchased at about five times their intrinsic +value by a minister who would not have spent one penny of national +money to encourage native art), the Cabinet let it be known that a +way would be found presently to give Woman Suffrage a clear run. A +private member would be allowed to bring in a Bill for conferring +the franchise on women, and the opinion of the House would be sought +on its merits independently of party issues. The Government Whips +would be withdrawn and members of the Government be left free to +vote as they pleased. + +It was a fair deduction, however, from what was said at that time +and later, that the strongest possible pressure--arguments _ad +hominem_ and in a sense _ad pecuniam_--was brought to bear on +Liberals and on Irish Nationalists to vote against the Bill. Had the +Second reading been carried, the Government would have resigned and +a Home Rule Bill for Ireland have been once more postponed. + +The rejection of Mr. Dickinson's measure by a majority of +forty-seven convinced the Militants that Pharaoh had once more +hardened his heart; and the hopelessness of the Woman's cause at +that juncture inspired one woman with a resolution to give her life +as a protest in the manner most calculated to impress the male mind +of the British public. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +IMPRISONMENT + + +Prior to the Derby day of 1913, Vivie had heard of Emily Wilding +Davison as a Northumbrian woman, distantly related to the Rossiters +and also to the Lady Shillito she had once defended. She came from +Morpeth in Northumberland and had had a very distinguished +University career at Oxford and in London, of which latter +university she was a B.A. The theme of the electoral enfranchisement +of Women had gradually possessed her mind to the exclusion of all +other subjects; she became in fact a fanatic in the cause and a +predestined martyr to it. In 1909 she had received her first +sentence of imprisonment for making a constitutional protest, and to +escape forcible feeding had barricaded her cell. The Visiting +Committee had driven her from this position by directing the warders +to turn a hose pipe on her and knock her senseless with a douche of +cold water; for which irregularity they were afterwards fined and +mulcted in costs. Two years later, for another Suffragist offence +(setting fire to a pillar box after giving warning of her intention) +she went to prison for six months. Here the tortures of forcible +feeding so overcame her reason--it was alleged--that she flung +herself from an upper gallery, believing she would be smashed on the +pavement below and that her death under such circumstances might +call attention to the agony of forcible feeding and the reckless +disregard of consequences which now inspired educated women who were +resolved to obtain the enfranchisement of their sex. But an iron +wire grating eight feet below broke her fall and only cut her face +and hands. The accident or attempted suicide, however, procured the +shortening of her sentence. + +Vivie and she often met in the early months of 1913, and on the +first day of June she confided to a few of the W.S.P.U. her +intention of making at Epsom a public protest against public +indifference to the cause of the Woman's Franchise. This protest was +to be made in the most striking manner possible at the supreme +moment of the Derby race on the 4th of June. Probably no one to whom +she mentioned the matter thought she contemplated offering up her +own life; at most they must have imagined some speech from the Grand +Stand, some address to Royalty thrown into the Royal pavilion, some +waving of a Suffrage Flag or early-morning placarding of the +bookies' stands. + +Vivie however had been turning her thoughts to horse-racing as a +field of activity. She was amused and interested at the effect that +had been produced in ministerial circles by her interference with +the game of golf. If now something was done by the militants +seriously to impede the greatest of the sports, the national form of +gambling, the protected form of swindling, the main interest in life +of the working-class, of half the peerage, all the beerage, the +chief lure of the newspapers between October and July, and the +preoccupation of princes, she might awaken the male mind in a very +effectual way to the need for settling the Suffrage question. + +So she determined also to see the running of the Derby, as a +preliminary to deciding on a plan of campaign. She had become +hardened to pushing and scrouging, so that the struggle to get a +seat in one of the fifty or sixty race trains leaving Waterloo or +Victoria left her comparatively calm. She was dressed as a young man +and had no clothing impediments, and as a young man she was better +able to travel down with racing rascality. In that guise she did +not attract too much attention. Rough play may have been in the mind +of the card-playing, spirit-drinking scoundrels that occupied the +other seats in the compartment, but Vivie in her man's dress created +a certain amount of suspicion and caution. "Look's like a 'tec,'" +one man whispered to another. So the card-playing was not thrust on +her as a round-about form of plunder, and the stories told were more +those derived from the spicy columns of the sporting papers, in +words of double meaning, than the outspoken, stable obscenity +characteristic of the race-course rabble. + +Vivie arriving early managed to secure a fairly good seat on the +Grand Stand, to which she could have recourse when the crowd on the +race course became too repulsive or too dangerous. She wished as +much as possible to see all aspects of the premier race meeting. +Indeed, meeting a friend of Lady Feenix's, a good-natured young peer +who halted irresolute between four worlds--the philosophic, the +political, the philanthropic, and the sporting, she introduced +herself as "David Williams"--hoping no Bencher was within +hearing--said "Dare say you remember me? Lady Feenix's? Been much +abroad lately--really feel quite strange on an English race course," +and persuaded him to take her round before the great people of the +day were all assembled. She was shown the Royal pavilion being got +ready for the King and Queen, the weighing room of the jockeys, the +paddock and temporary stables of the horses that were to race that +day. Here was a celebrated actress in a magnificent lace dress and +a superb hat, walking up and down on the sun-burnt, trodden turf, in +a devil of a temper. Her horse--for with her lovers' money she kept +a racing stable--had been scratched for the race--I really can't +tell you why, not having been able to study all the _minutiae_ of +racing. [Talking of that, _how_ annoying it is--or was--when +one cared about things of great moment, to take up an evening +newspaper's last edition and read in large type "Official +Scratchings," with a silly algebraic formula underneath about horses +being withdrawn from some race, when you thought it was a bear fight +in the Cabinet.] Vivie gathered from her guide that to-day would be +rather a special Derby, because it did not often happen that a +King-Emperor was there to see a horse from his own racing stables +running in the classic race. + +Then, thanking the pleasant soldier-peer for his information, Vivie +(David Williams) left him to his duties as equerry and member of the +Jockey-Club and entered the dense crowd on either side of the race +course. It reminded her just slightly of Frith's Derby Day. There +were the gypsies, the jugglers, the acrobats, the costers with their +provision barrows; the grooms and stable hands; the beggars and +obvious pick-pockets; the low-down harlots--the high-up ones were +already entering the seats of the Grand Stand or sitting on the +four-in-hand coaches or in the open landaulettes and Silent Knights. +But evidently the professional betting men were a new growth since +the mid-nineteenth century. They were just beginning to assemble, +wiping their mouths from the oozings of the last potation; some, the +aristocrats of their calling, like sporting peers in dress and +appearance; others like knock-about actors on the music-hall stage. +The generality were remarkably similar to ordinary city men or to +the hansom-cab drivers of twenty years ago. + +In the very front of the crowd on the Grand Stand side, leaning with +her elbows on the wooden rail, she descried Emily Davison. Vivie +edged and sidled through the crowd and touched her on the shoulder. +Emily looked up with a start, surprised at seeing the friendly face +of a young man, till she recognized Vivie by her voice. "Dear +Emily," said Vivie, "you look so tired. Aren't you over-trying your +strength? I don't know what you have in hand, but why not postpone +your action till you are quite strong again?" + +"I shall never be stronger than I am to-day and it can't be +postponed, cost me what it will," was the reply, while the sad eyes +looked away across the course. + +"Well," said Vivie, "I wanted you to know that I was close by, +prepared to back you up if need be. And there are others of our +Union about the place. That young man over there talking to the +policeman is really A---- K---- though she is supposed to be in +prison. Mrs. Tuke is somewhere about, Mrs. Despard is on the Grand +Stand, and Blanche Smith is selling _The Suffragette_." + +"Thank you," said Miss Davison, turning round for an instant, and +pressing Vivie's hand, "Good-bye. I hope what I am going to do will +be effectual." + +Vivie did not like to prolong the talk in case it should attract +attention. Individual action was encouraged under the W.S.P.U., and +when a member wished to do something on her own, her comrades did +not fuss with advice. So Vivie returned to the Grand Stand. + +Presently there was the stir occasioned by the arrival of the Royal +personages. Vivie noted with a little dismay that while she was +wearing a Homburg hat all the men near her wore the black and +glistening topper which has become--or had, for the tyranny of +custom has lifted a little since the War--the conventional head-gear +in which to approach both God and the King. There was a great +raising of these glistening hats, there were grave bows or smiling +acknowledgments from the pavilion. Then every one sat down and the +second event was run. + +Still Emily Wilding Davison made no sign. Vivie could just descry +her, still in the front of the crowd, still gazing out over the +course, pressed by the crowd against the broad white rail. + + * * * * * + +The race of the day had begun. The row of snickering, plunging, +rearing, and curvetting horses had dissolved, as in a kaleidoscope, +into a bunch, and a pear-shaped formation with two or three horses +streaming ahead as the stem of the pear. Then the stem became +separated from the pear-shaped mass by its superior speed, and again +this vertical line of horses formed up once more horizontally, +leaving the mass still farther behind. Then the horses seen from the +Grand Stand disappeared--and after a minute reappeared--three, four, +five--and the bunch of them, swerving round Tattenham Corner and +thundering down the incline towards the winning post.... The King's +horse seemed to be leading, another few seconds would have brought +it or one of its rivals past the winning post, when ... a slender +figure, a woman, darted with equal swiftness from the barrier to the +middle of the course, leapt to the neck of the King's horse, and in +an instant, the horse was down, kneeling on a crumpled woman, and +the jockey was flying through the air to descend on hands and knees +practically unhurt. The other horses rushed by, miraculously +avoiding the prostrate figures. Some horse passed the winning post, +a head in front of some other, but no one seemed to care. The race +was fouled. Vivie noted thirty seconds--approximately--of amazed, +horrified silence. Then a roar of mingled anger, horror, enquiry +went up from the crowd of many thousands. "It's the Suffragettes" +shouted some one. And up to then Vivie had not thought of connecting +this unprecedented act with the purposed protest of Emily Wilding +Davison. She sprang to her feet, and shouting to all who might have +tried to stop her "I'm a friend of the lady. I am a doctor"--she +didn't care what lie she told--she was soon authoritatively pushing +through the ring of police constables who like warrior ants had +surrounded the victims of the protest--the shivering, trembling +horse, now on its legs, the pitifully crushed, unconscious +woman--her hat hanging to the tresses of her hair by a dislodged +hat-pin, her thin face stained with blood from surface punctures. +The jockey was being carried from the course, still unconscious, but +not badly hurt. + +A great surgeon happening to be at Epsom Race course on a friend's +drag, had hurried to offer his services. He was examining the +unconscious woman and striving very gently to straighten and +disentangle her crooked body. Presently there was a respectful stir +in the privileged ring, and Vivie was conscious by the raising of +hats that the King stood amongst them looking down on the woman who +had offered up her life before his eyes to enforce the Woman's +appeal. He put his enquiries and offered his suggestions in a low +voice, but Vivie withdrew, less with the fear that her right to be +there and her connection with the tragedy might be questioned, as +from some instinctive modesty. The occasion was too momentous for +the presence of a supernumerary. Emily Wilding Davison should have +her audience of her Sovereign without spectators. + +Returning with a blanched face to the seething crowd, and presently +to the Grand Stand, Vivie's mood altered from awe to anger. The +"bookies" were beside themselves with fury. She noted the more +frequent of the nouns and adjectives they applied to the dying woman +for having spoilt the Derby of 1913, but although she went to the +trouble, in framing her indictment of the Turf, of writing down +these phrases, my jury of matrons opposes itself to their appearance +here, though I am all for realism and completeness of statement. +After conversing briefly and in a lowered voice with such +Suffragettes as gathered round her, so that this one could carry the +news to town and that one his to communicate with Miss Davison's +relations, Vivie--recklessly calling herself to any police +questioner, "David Williams" and eliciting "Yes, sir, I have seen +you once or twice in the courts," reached once more the Grand Stand +with its knots of shocked, puzzled, indignant, cynical, consternated +men and women. Most of them spoke in low tones; but one--a blond Jew +of middle age--was raving in uncontrolled anger, careless of what he +said or of who heard him. He was short of stature with protruding +bloodshot eyes, an undulating nose, slightly prognathous muzzle and +full lips, and a harsh red moustache which enhanced the prognathism. +His silk hat tilted back showed a great bald forehead, in which +angry, bluish veins stood out like swollen earth worms. "Those +Suffragettes!" he was shouting or rather shrieking in a nasal whine, +"if I had _my_ way, I'd lay 'em out along the course and have 'em +---- by ----. The ----'s!" + +The shocked auditory around him drew away. Vivie gathered he was +Mr. ---- well, perhaps I had better not give his name,[1] even +in a disguised form. He had had a chequered career in South +America--Mexico oil, Peruvian rubber, Buenos Aires railways, and a +corner in Argentine beef--but had become exceedingly rich, a fortune +perhaps of twenty millions. He had given five times more than any +other aspirant in benefactions to charities and to the party chest +of the dominant Party, but the authorities dared not reward him with +a baronetcy because of the stories of his early life which had to be +fought out in libel cases with Baxendale Strangeways and others. But +he had won through these libel cases, and now devoted his vast +wealth to improving our breed of horses by racing at Newmarket, +Epsom, Doncaster, Gatwick, Sandown and Brighton. Racing had, in +fact, become to him what Auction Bridge was to the Society gamblers +of those days, only instead of losing and winning tens and hundreds +of pounds, his fluctuations in gains and losses were in thousands, +generally with a summing up on the right side of the annual account. +But whether on the Turf, at the billiard table, or in the stock +market he was or had become a bad loser. He lost his temper at the +same time. On this occasion Miss Davison's suicide or martyrdom +would leave him perhaps on the wrong side in making up his day's +book to the extent of fifteen hundred pounds. Viewed in the right +proportion it would be equivalent to our--you and me--having given a +florin to a newspaper boy as the train was moving, instead of a +penny. But no doubt her unfortunate impulse had spoiled the day for +him in other ways, upset schemes that were bound up with the winning +of the King's horse. Yet his outburst and the shocking language he +applied to the Suffrage movement made history: for they fixed on him +Vivie's attention when she was looking out for some one or something +on whom to avenge the loss of a comrade. + + [Footnote 1: He died in 1917. My jury of matrons has excised his + phrases.] + +She forthwith set out for London and wrote up the dossier of Mr. +----. In the secret list of buildings which were to be destroyed by +fire or bombs, with as little risk as possible to human or animal +life, she noted down the racing stables, trainers' houses and +palaces of Mr. ---- at Newmarket, Epsom, the Devil's Dyke, and the +neighbourhood of Doncaster. + + +Rossiter and Vivie met for the first time for a year at Emily +Davison's funeral. Rossiter had been profoundly moved at her +self-sacrifice; she was moreover a Northumbrian and a distant +kinswoman. Perhaps, also, he felt that he had of late been a little +lukewarm over the Suffrage agitation. His motor-brougham, +containing with himself the very unwilling Mrs. Rossiter, followed +in the procession of six thousand persons which escorted the coffin +across London from Victoria station to King's Cross. A halt was made +outside a church in Bloomsbury where a funeral service was read. + +Mrs. Rossiter thought the whole thing profoundly improper. In the +first place the young woman had committed suicide, which of itself +was a crime and disentitled you to Christian burial; in the second +she had died in a way greatly to inconvenience persons in the +highest society; in the third she had always understood that racing +was a perfectly proper pastime for gentlemen; and in the fourth this +incident, touching Michael through his relationship with the +deceased, would bring him again in contact with that Vivie +Warren--_there_ she was and there was _he_, in close converse--and +make a knighthood from a nearly relenting Government well-nigh +impossible. Rossiter, after the service, had begged Vivie to come +back to tea with them in Park Crescent and give Mrs. Rossiter and +himself a full account of what took place at Epsom. Vivie had +declined. She had not even spoken to the angry little woman, who had +refused to attend the service and had sat fuming all through the +half hour in her electric brougham, wishing she had the courage and +determination to order the chauffeur to turn round and run her home, +leaving the Professor to follow in a taxi. But perhaps if she did +that, he would go off somewhere with that Warren woman. + +Michael presently re-entered the carriage and in silence they +returned to Portland Place. + +The next day his wife meeting one of her Anti-Suffrage friends said: + +"Er--supposing--er--you had got to know something about these +dreadful militant women, something which might help the police, yet +didn't want to get _too_ much mixed up with it yourself, and +_certainly_ not bring your husband into it--the Professor +_thoroughly_ disapproves of militancy, even though he may have +foolish ideas about the Vote--er--what would you do?" + +"Well, what is it?" + +"It's part of a letter." + +"Well, I should just send it to the Criminal Investigation +Department, New Scotland Yard, and tell them under what +circumstances it came into your possession. You needn't even give +your name or address. They'll soon know whether it's any use or +not." So Mrs. Rossiter took from her desk that scrap of partly burnt +paper with the typewritten words on it which she had picked out of +the grate two and a half years before, and posted it to the Criminal +Investigation Department, with the intimation that this fragment had +come into the possession of the sender some time ago, and seemed to +refer to a militant Suffragist who called herself "Vivie Warren" or +"David Williams," and perhaps it might be of some assistance to the +authorities in tracking down these dangerous women who now stuck at +nothing. She posted the letter with her own hands in the North West +district. Park Crescent, Portland Place, she always reflected, was +still in the _Western_ district, though it lay perilously near the +North West border line, beyond which Lady Jeune had once written, no +one in Society thought of living. This was a dictum that at one time +had occasioned Mrs. Rossiter considerable perturbation. It was +alarming to think that by crossing the Marylebone Road or migrating +to Cambridge Terrace you had passed out of Society. + + +It took the police a deuce of a time--two months--to make use +effectively of the information contained in Mrs. Rossiter's scrap of +burnt paper; though the statement of their anonymous correspondent +that Vivie Warren and David Williams were probably the same person +helped to locate Mr. Michaelis's office. It was soon ascertained +that Miss Vivien Warren, well known as a sort of Society speaker on +Suffrage, lived at the Lilacs in Victoria Road, Kensington. But when +a plain-clothes policeman called at Victoria Road he was only told +by the Suffragette caretaker (whose mother now usually lived with +her to console her for her mistress's frequent absences) that Miss +Warren was away just then, had recently been much away from home, +probably abroad where her mother lived. (Here the enquirer +registered a mental note: Miss Warren has a mother living abroad: +could it be _the_ Mrs. Warren?). Polite and respectful calls on Lady +Feenix, Lady Maud Parry, and Mrs. Armstrong--Vivie's known +associates--elicted no information, till on leaving the last-named +lady's house in Kensington Square the detective heard Colonel +Armstrong come in from the garden and call out "Ho-no-ria." +"'--ria," he said to himself, "'-ria kept the keys, and +now--' Honoria. What was her name before she married Colonel +Armstrong?--why--" He soon found out--"Fraser." "Wasn't there once a +firm, _Fraser and Warren_, which set up to be some new dodge for +establishing women in a city career?--Accountancy? Stockbroking? +Where did _Fraser and Warren_ have their office? Fifth floor of +Midland Insurance office in Chancery Lane. What was that building +now called? No. 88-90." Done. + +These two sentences run over a period of--what did I say? Two +months?--in their deductions and guesses and consultation of +out-of-date telephone directories. But on one day in September, +1913, two plain-clothes policemen made their way up to the fifth +floor of 88-90 Chancery Lane and found the outer door of Mr. +Michaelis's office locked and a notice board on it saying "Absent +till Monday." Not deterred by this, they forced open the door--to +the thrilling interest of a spectacled typewriteress, who had no +business on that landing at all, but she usually made assignations +there with the lift man. And on the writing table in the outer +office they found a note addressed to Miss Annie Kenney, which said +inside: "Dear Annie. If you should chance to look in between your +many imprisonments and find me out, you will know I am away on the +Firm's business, livening up the racing establishments of the Right +Honble Sir ---- ----, Bart. Bart. No one knows anything about this +at No. 94." + +(This note was purely unnecessary--a bit of swagger perhaps, lest +Miss Kenney should think Vivie never did anything dangerous, but +only planned dangerous escapades for others. Like the long letter of +Vivie to Michael Rossiter, written on the last day of December, +1910, which he had imperfectly destroyed, it was a reminder of that +all-too-true saying: "Litera scripta manet.") + +If the outer door of Michaelis's office was locked how could Miss +Kenney be expected to call and find this note awaiting her? Why, +_here_ came in the "No. 94" of the scrap of paper. There was an +over-the-roofs communication between the block of 88-90 and House +No. 94. The policemen in fact found that the large casement of the +partners' room was only pulled to, so that it was easily opened from +the outside. From the parapet they passed to the fire-escapes and +through the labyrinth of chimney stacks to a similar window leading +into the top storey of 94, the office of Mr. Algernon Mainwaring, +Hygienic Corset-maker. This office at the time of their unexpected +entry was fairly full of Suffragettes planning all sorts of direful +things. So the plain-clothes policemen had a rare haul that day and +certainly had Mrs. Rossiter to thank for rising to be Inspectors and +receiving some modest Order of later days. It was about the worst +blow the W.S.P.U. had; before the outbreak of War turned suddenly +the revolting women into the stanchest patriots and the right hands +of muddling ministers. For in addition to many a rich find in No. 94 +and a dozen captives caught red-handed in making mock of the +Authorities, the plain-clothes policemen made themselves thoroughly +at home in Mr. Michaelis's quarters till the following Monday. And +when in the fore-noon of that day, Mr. Michaelis entered his rooms, +puzzled and perturbed at finding the outer door ajar, he was +promptly arrested on a multiform charge of arson ... and on being +conveyed to a police station and searched he was found to be Miss +Vivien Warren. + +At intervals in the summer and early autumn of 1913 the male section +of the public had been horrified and scandalized at the destruction +going on in racing establishments, particularly those of Sir George +Crofts and of a well-known South American millionaire, whose +distinguished services to British commerce and immense donations to +Hospitals and Homes would probably be rewarded by a grateful +government. If these outrages were not stopped, horse-racing and +race-horse breeding must come to a stand-still; and we leave our +readers to realize what _that_ would mean! There would be no horses +for the plough or the gig, or the artillery gun-carriage; +no--er--fox-hunting, and without fox-hunting and steeple-chasing and +point-to-point races you could have no cavalry and without cavalry +you could have no army. If we neglected blood stock we would deal +the farmer a deadly blow, we should--er-- + +You know the sort of argument? Reduced to its essentials it is +simply this:--That a few rich people are fond of gambling and fond +of the excitement that is concentrated in the few minutes of the +horse race. Some others, not so rich, believe that by combining +horse-racing with a certain amount of cunning and bold cheating +they can make a great deal of money. A few speculators have invested +funds in spaces of open turf, and turn these spaces into race +courses. Having no alternative, no safer method of gambling offered +them, and being as fond of gambling as other peoples of the world, +the men of the labouring classes and a few of their women, the +publicans and their frequenters, army officers, farmers, and women +of uncertain virtue stake their money on horses they have never +seen, who may not even exist, and thus keep the industry going. And +the chevaliers of this "industry," the go-betweens, the parasites of +this sport, are the twelve thousand professional book-makers and +racing touts. + +Somehow the Turf has during the last hundred years, together with +its allies the Distillers and Brewers, the Licensed Victuallers and +the Press that is supported by these agencies, acquired such a hold +over the Government Departments, the Labour Party, the Conservative +Party, and Liberal politicians who are descended from county +families, that it has more interest with those who govern us than +the Church, the Nonconformist Conscience, the County Palatine of +Lancaster or any other body of corporate opinion. So that when in +September, 1913, representatives of the Turf (and no doubt of the +Trade Unions) went to the Home Secretary in reference to the burning +and bombing of racing stables, trainers' houses, Grand Stands and +the residences of racing potentates, and said "Look here! This has +GOT TO STOP," the Home Secretary and the Cabinet knew they were up +against no ordinary crisis. At the same time Sir Edward Carson, the +Marquis of Londonderry, the Duke of Abercorn, Mr. F.E. Smith and +nearly a third of the Colonels in the British Army of Ulster descent +were actively organizing armed resistance to any measure of Home +Rule; while Keltiberian Ireland was setting up the Irish Volunteers +to start a Home Rule insurrection. You can therefore imagine for +yourselves the mental irritability of members of the Liberal Cabinet +in the autumn of the sinister year 1913. I have been told that there +were days at the House of Commons during the Autumn Session of that +year when the leading ministers would just shut themselves up in +their Private Rooms and scream on end for a quarter of an hour.... +Of course an exaggeration, a sorry jest. + +In retrospect one feels almost sorry for them: the Great War must +have come almost as a relief. Not one of them was what you would +call a bad man. Some of them suffered over forcible feeding and the +Cat and Mouse Act as acutely as does the loving father or mother who +says to the recently spanked child, "You _know_, dear, it hurts _me_ +almost as much as it hurts _you_." If one met them out at dinner +parties, or in an express train which they could not stop by pulling +the communication cord, and sympathized with their dilemma, they +would ask plaintively _what_ they could do. They could not yield to +violence and anarchy; yet they could not let women die in prison. + +Of course the answer was this, but it was one they waved aside: +"Dissolve Parliament and go to the Country on the one question of +Votes for Women. If the Country returns a great majority favourable +to that concession, you must bring in a Bill for eliminating the sex +distinction in the suffrage. If on the other hand, the Country votes +against the reform, then you must leave it to the women to make a +male electorate change its mind. And meantime if men and women, to +enforce some principle, rioted and were sent to prison for it, and +then started to abstain from food and drink, why they must please +themselves and die if they wanted to." + +But this was just what the Liberal Ministry of those days would not +do; at all costs they must stick to office, emoluments, patronage, +the bestowal of honours, and the control of foreign policy. They +clung to power, in fact, at all costs; even inconsistency with the +bedrock principle of Liberalism: no Taxation without Representation. + + +It was decided in the innermost arcana of the Home Office that an +example should be made of Vivie. They had evidently in her got hold +of something far more dangerous than a Pankhurst or a Pethick +Lawrence, a Constance Lytton or an Emily Davison. The very probable +story--though the Benchers were loth to take it up--that she had +actually in man's garb passed for the Bar and pleaded successfully +before juries, appalled some of the lawyer-ministers by its +revolutionary audacity. They might not be able to punish her on that +count or on several others of the misdemeanours imputed to her; but +they had got her, for sure, on Arson; and on the arson not of +suburban churches, which occurred sometimes at Peckham or in the +suburbs of Birmingham and made people laugh a little in the trains +coming up to town and say there were far too many churches, seemed +to them; _but_ the burning down of racing establishments. _That_ was +Bolshevism, indeed, they would have said, had they been able to +project their minds five years ahead. Being only in 1913 they called +Vivie by the enfeebled term of Anarchist, the word applied by +_Punch_ to Mr. John Burns in 1888 for wishing to address the Public +in Trafalgar Square. + +So it was arranged that Vivie's trial should take place in October +at the Old Bailey and that a judge should try her who was quite +certain he had never stayed at a Warren Hotel; who would be careful +to keep great names out of court; and restrain counsel from dragging +anything in to the simple and provable charge of arson which might +give Miss Warren a chance to say something those beastly newspapers +would get hold of. + +I am not going to give you the full story of Vivie's trial. I have +got so much else to say about her, before I can leave her in a quiet +backwater of middle age, that this must be a story which has gaps to +be filled up by the reader's imagination. You can, besides, read for +yourself elsewhere--for this is a thinly veiled chronicle of real +events--how she was charged, and how the magistrate refused bail +though it was offered in large amounts by Rossiter and Praed, the +latter with Mrs. Warren's purse behind him. How she was first lodged +in Brixton Prison and at length appeared in the dock at the Old +Bailey before a Court that might have been set for a Cinematograph. +There was a judge with a full-bottomed wig, a scarlet and ermine +vesture, there was a jury of prosperous shopkeepers, retired half +pay officers, a hotelkeeper or two, a journalist, an architect, and +a builder. A very celebrated King's Counsel prosecuted--the Cabinet +thus said to the Racing World "We've done _all_ we can"--and Vivie +defended herself with the aid of a clever solicitor whom Bertie +Adams had found for her. + +From the very moment of her arrest, Bertie Adams had refused--even +though they took away his salary--to think of anything but Vivie's +trial and how she might issue from it triumphant. He must have lost +a stone in weight. He was ready to give evidence himself, though he +was really quite unconcerned with the offences for which Vivie was +on trial; prepared to swear to anything; to swear he arranged the +conflagrations; that Miss Warren had really been in London when +witness had seen her purchasing explosives at Newmarket (both +stories were equally untrue). Bertie Adams only asked to be allowed +to perjure himself to the tune of Five Years' penal servitude if +that would set Vivie free. Yet at a word or a look from her he +became manageable. + +The Attorney General of course began something like this. "I am +very anxious to impress on you," he said, addressing the jury, "that +from the moment we begin to deal with the facts of this case, all +questions of whether a woman is entitled to the Parliamentary +franchise, whether she should have the same right of franchise as a +man are matters which in no sense are involved in the trial of this +issue. All you have to decide is whether the prisoner in the dock +committed or procured and assisted others to commit the very serious +acts of arson of which she is accused..." + +Nevertheless he or the hounds he kept in leash, the lesser counsel, +sought subtly to prejudice the jury's mind against Vivie by dragging +in her parentage and the eccentricities of her own career. As +thus:-- + +_Counsel for the prosecution_: "We have in you the mainspring of +this rebellious movement..." + +_Vivie_: "Have you?" + +_Counsel_: "Are you not the daughter of the notorious Mrs. Warren?" + +_Vivie_: "My mother's name certainly is Warren. For what is she +notorious?" + +_Counsel_: "Well--er--for being associated abroad with--er--a +certain type of hotel synonymous with a disorderly house--" + +_Vivie_: "Indeed? Have you tried them? My mother has managed the +hotels of an English Company abroad till she retired altogether from +the management some years ago. It was a Company in which Sir George +Crofts--" + +_Judge_, interposing: "We need not go into that--I think the Counsel +for the prosecution is not entitled to ask such questions." + +_Counsel_: "I submit, Me Lud, that it is germane to my case that the +prisoner's upbringing might have--" + +_Vivie_: "I am quite willing to give you all the information I +possess as to my upbringing. My mother who has resided mainly at +Brussels for many years preferred that I should be educated in +England. I was placed at well-known boarding schools till I was old +enough to enter Newnham. I passed as a Third Wrangler at Cambridge +and then joined the firm of Fraser and Warren. As you seem so +interested in my relations, I might inform you that I have not many. +My mother's sister, Mrs. Burstall, the widow of Canon Burstall, +resides at Winchester; my grandfather, Lieutenant Warren, was killed +in the Crimea--or more likely died of neglected wounds owing to the +shamefully misconducted, man-conducted Army Medical Service of those +days. My mother in early days was better known as Miss Kate +Vavasour. She was the intimate friend of a celebrated barrister +who--" + +_Judge_, intervening: "We have had enough of this discursive +evidence which really does not bear on the case at all. I must ask +the prosecuting counsel to keep to the point and not waste the time +of the court." + +_Prosecuting Counsel_ (who has meantime received three or four +energetic notes from his leader, begging him to remember his +instructions and not to be an ass): "Very good M'Lud." (To Vivie) +"Do you know Mr. David Vavasour Williams, a barrister?" + +_Vivie_: "I have heard of him." + +_Counsel_: "Have you spoken of him as your cousin?" + +_Vivie_: "I may have done. He is closely related to me." + +_Counsel_: "I put it to you that _you_ are David Williams, or at any +rate that you have posed as being that person." + +_Judge_, interposing with a weary air: "_Who_ is David Williams?" + +_Counsel_: "Well--er--a member of the Bar--well known in the +criminal courts--Shillito case--" + +_Judge_: "Really? I had not heard of him. Proceed." + +_Counsel_ (to Vivie): "You heard my questions?" + +_Vivie_: "I have never posed as being other than what I am, a woman +much interested in claiming the Parliamentary Franchise for Women; +and I do not see what these questions have to do with my indictment, +which is a charge of arson. You introduce all manner of irrelevant +matter--" + +_Counsel_: "You decline to answer my questions?" + +(Vivie turns her head away.) + +_Judge_, to Counsel: "I do not quite see the bearing of your +enquiries." + +_Counsel_: "Why, Me Lud, it is common talk that prisoner is the +well-known barrister, David Vavasour Williams; that in this disguise +and as a pretended man she passed the necessary examinations and was +called to the Bar, and--" + +_Judge_: "But what bearing has this on the present charge, which is +one of Arson?" + +_Counsel_: "I was endeavouring by my examination to show that the +prisoner has often and successfully passed as a man, and that the +evidence of witnesses who affirmed that they only saw _a young man_ +at or near the scene of these incendiary fires, that a young man, +supposed to have set the stables alight, once dashed in and rescued +two horses which had been overlooked, might well have been the +prisoner who is alleged to have committed most of these crimes in +man's apparel--" + +_Judge_: "I see." (To Vivie) "Are you David Vavasour Williams?" + +_Vivie_: "Obviously not, my Lord. My name is Vivien Warren and my +sex is feminine." + +_Judge_, to Counsel: "Well, proceed with your examination--" (But +here the Leader of the prosecution takes up the role and brushes his +junior on one side). + + +Vivie of course was convicted. The case was plain from the start, as +to her guilt in having organized and carried out the destruction of +several great Racing establishments or buildings connected with +racing. There had been no loss of life, but great damage to +property--perhaps two or three hundred thousand pounds, and a +serious interruption in the racing fixtures of the late summer and +early autumn. The jury took note that on one occasion the prisoner +in the guise of a young man had personally carried out the rescue of +two endangered horses; and added a faintly-worded recommendation to +mercy, seeing that the incentive to the crimes was political +passion. + +But the judge put this on one side. In passing sentence he said: "It +is my duty, Vivien Warren, to inflict what in my opinion is a +suitable and adequate sentence for the crime of which you have been +most properly convicted. I must point out to you that whatever may +have been your motives, your deeds have been truly wicked because +they have exposed hard-working people who had done you no wrong to +the danger of being burnt, maimed or killed, or at the least to the +loss of employment. You have destroyed property of great value +belonging to persons in no way concerned with the granting or +withholding of the rights you claim for women. In addition, you have +for some time past been luring other people--young men and young +women--to the committal of crime as your assistants or associates. I +cannot regard your case as having any political justification or +standing, or as being susceptible of any mitigation by the +recommendation of the jury. The least sentence I can pass upon you +is a sentence of Three years' penal servitude." + +Vivie took the blow without flinching and merely bowed to the judge. +There was the usual "sensation in Court." Women's voices were heard +saying "Shame!" "Shame!" "Three cheers for Vivie Warren," and a +slightly ironical "Three cheers for David Whatyoumay-callem +Williams." The judge uttered the usual unavailing threats of prison +for those who profaned the majesty of the Court; Honoria, Rossiter, +Praed (in tears), Bertie Adams, looking white and ill, all the noted +Suffragists who were out of prison for the time being and could +obtain admittance to the Court, crowded round Vivie before the +wardresses led her away from the dock, assuring her they would move +Heaven and Earth, first to get the sentence mitigated, and secondly +to have her removed to the First Division. + +But on both points the Government proved adamant. An interview +between Rossiter and the Home Secretary nearly ended in a personal +assault. All the officials concerned refused to see Honoria, who +almost had a serious quarrel with her husband, the latter averring +that Vivien Warren had only got what she asked for. Vivien was +therefore taken to Holloway to serve her sentence as a common felon. + + +"Didn't she hunger-strike to force the Authorities to accord her +better prison treatment?" She did. But she was very soon, and with +extra business-like brutality, forcibly fed; and that and the +previous starvation made her so ill that she spent weeks in +hospital. Here it was very plainly hinted to her that between +hunger-striking and forcible feeding she might very soon die; and +that in her case the Government were prepared to stand the racket. +Moreover she heard by some intended channel about this time that +scores of imprisoned suffragists were hunger-striking to secure her +better treatment and were endangering if not their lives at any rate +their future health and validity. So she conveyed them an earnest +message--and was granted facilities to do so--imploring them to do +nothing more on her account; adding that she was resolved to go +through with her imprisonment; it might teach her valuable lessons. + +The Governor of the prison fortunately was a humane and reasonable +man--unlike some of the Home Office or Scotland Yard officials. He +read the newspapers and reviews of the day and was aware who Vivie +Warren was. He probably made no unfair difference in her case from +any other, but so far as he could mould and bend the prison +discipline and rules it was his practice not to use a razor for +stone-chipping or a cold-chisel for shaving. He therefore put Vivie +to tasks co-ordinated with her ability and the deftness of her +hands--such as book-binding. She had of course to wear prison +dress--a thing of no importance in her eyes--and her cell was like +all the cells in that and other British prisons previous to the +newest reforms--dark, rather damp, cruelly cold in winter, and +disagreeable in smell; badly ventilated and oppressively ugly. But +it was at any rate clean. She had not the cockroaches, bugs, fleas +and lice that the earliest Suffragists of 1908 had to complain of. +Five years of outspoken protests on the part of educated, +delicate-minded women had wrought great reforms in our prisons--the +need for which till then was not apparent to the perceptions of +Visiting Magistrates. + +The food was better, the wardresses were less harsh, the chaplains a +little more endurable, though still the worst feature in the prison +personnel, with their unreasoning Bibliolatry, their contemptuous +patronage, their lack of Christian pity--Christ had never spoken to +_them_, Vivie often thought--their snobbishness. The chaplain of her +imprisonment became quite chummy when he learnt that she had been a +Third Wrangler at Cambridge, knew Lady Feenix, and had lived in +Kensington prior to committing the offences for which she was +imprisoned. However this helped to alleviate her dreary seclusion +from the world as he occasionally dropped fragments of news as to +what was going on outside, and he got her books through the prison +library that were not evangelical pap. + +One day when she had been in prison two months she had a great +surprise--a visit from her mother. Strictly speaking this was only +to last fifteen minutes, but the wardress who had conceived a liking +for her intimated that she wouldn't look too closely at her watch. +Honoria came too--with Mrs. Warren--but after kissing her friend and +leaving some beautiful flowers (which the wardress took away at once +with pretended sternness and brought back in a vase after the +visitors had left) Honoria with glistening eyes and a smile that was +all tremulous sweetness, intimated that Mrs. Warren had so much to +say that she, Honoria, was not going to stay more than that _one_ +minute. + +Mrs. Warren had indeed so much to impart in the precious half hour +that it was one long gabbled monologue. + +"When I heard you'd got into trouble, my darling, I _was_ put about. +Some'ow I'd never thought of your being pinched and acshally sent to +prison. It was in the Belgian papers, and a German friend of +mine--Oh! quite proper I assure you! He's a Secretary of their +legation at Brussels and ages ago he used to be one of my clients +when the Hotel had a different name. Well, he was full of it. +'Madam,' 'e said, 'your English women are splendid. They're going to +bring about a revolt, you'll see, and that, an' your Ulster movement +'ll give you a lot of trouble next year.' + +"Well: I wrote at once to Praddy, givin' him an order on my London +agents, 'case he should want cash for your defence. I offered to +come over meself, but he replied that for the present I'd better +keep away. Soon as I heard you was sent to prison I come over and +went straight to Praddy. My! He _was_ good. He made me put up with +him, knowin' I wanted to live quiet and keep away from the old set. +'There's my parlour-maid,' 'e says, 'sort of housekeeper to +me--good sort too, but wants a bit of yumourin.' You'll fix it up +with her,' he says. And I jolly soon did. I give her to begin with +a good tip, an' I said: 'Look 'ere, my gal--she's forty-five I +should think--Every one's in trouble _some_ time or other in their +lives, and _I'm_ in trouble now, if you like. And the day's come,' I +said, 'when all women ought to stick by one another.' 'Pears she's +always had the highest opinion of you; very different, you was, from +_some_ of 'er master's friends. I says 'Right-o; then _now_ we know +where we are.' + +"Praddy soon got into touch with the authorities, but for some +reason they wouldn't pass on a letter or let me come and see you, +till to-day. But here I am, and here I'm goin' to stay--with +Praddy--till they lets you out. I'm told that if you be'ave yourself +they'll let me send you a passel of food, once a week. Think of +that! My! won't I find some goodies, and pate de foie gras. I'll +come here once a month, as often as they'll let me, till I gets you +out. 'N after that, we'll leave this 'orrid, 'yprocritical old +country and live 'appily at my Villa, or travel a bit. Fortunately +I've plenty of money. Bein' over here I've bin rearranging my +investments a bit. Fact is, I 'ad a bit of a scare this autumn. They +say in Belgium, War is comin'. Talkin' to this same German--He's +always pumpin' me about the Suffragettes so I occasionally put a +question or so to 'im, 'e knowing 'what's, what' in the money +market--'e says to me just before I come over, 'What's your English +proverb, Madame Varennes, about 'avin' all your eggs in one basket? +Is all your money in English and Belgian securities?' I says +'Chiefly Belgian and German and Austrian, and some I've giv' to me +daughter to do as she likes with.' 'Well' 'e says, 'friend speakin' +to friend, you've giv' me several good tips this autumn,' he says. +'Now I'll give you one in return. Sell out your Austrian +investments--there's goin' to be a big war in the Balkans next year +and as like as not _we_ shall be here in Belgium. Sell out most of +yer Belgian stock and put all your money into German funds. They'll +be safe there, come what may.' I thanked 'im; but I haven't quite +done what he suggested. I'm takin' all my money out of Austrian +things and all but Ten thousand out of Belgian funds. I'm leavin' my +German stock as it was, but I'm puttin' Forty thousand pounds--I've +got Sixty thousand altogether--all yours some day--into Canadian +Pacifics and Royal Mail--people 'll always want steamships--and New +Zealand Five per cents. I don't like the look of things in old +England nor yet on the Continent. Now me time's up. Keep up your +heart, old girl; it'll soon be over, specially if you don't play the +fool and rile the prison people or start that silly hunger strike +and ruin your digestion. G--good-bye; and G-God b-bless you, my +darlin'" added Mrs. Warren relapsing into tears and the conventional +prayer, of common humanity, which always hopes there _may_ be a +pitiful Deity, somewhere in Cosmos. + +Going out into the corridor, she attempted to press a sovereign into +the wardress's hard palm. The latter indignantly repudiated the gift +and said if Mrs. Warren tried on such a thing again, her visits +would be stopped. But her indignation was very brief. She was +carrying Honoria's flowers at the time, and as she put them on the +slab in Vivie's cell, she remarked that say what you liked, there +was nothing to come up to a mother, give her a mother rather than a +man any day. + +On other occasions Bertie Adams came with Mrs. Warren; even +Professor Rossiter, who also went to see Vivie's mother at Praed's, +and conceived a whimsical liking for the unrepentant, outspoken old +lady. + +Vivie's health gradually recovered from the effects of the forcible +feeding; the prison fare, supplemented by the weekly parcels, suited +her digestion; the peace of the prison life and the regular work at +interesting trades soothed her nerves. She enjoyed the respite from +the worries of her complicated toilettes, the perplexity of what to +wear and how to wear it; in short, she was finding a spell of prison +life quite bearable, except for the cold and the attentions of the +chaplain. She gathered from the fortnightly letter which her +industry and good conduct allowed her to receive, and to answer, +that unwearied efforts were being made by her friends outside to +shorten her sentence. Mrs. Warren through Bertie Adams had found out +the cases where jockeys and stable lads had lost their effects in +the fires or explosions which had followed Vivie's visits to their +employers' premises, and had made good their losses. As to their +employers, they had all been heavily insured, and recovered the +value of their buildings; and as to the insurance companies _they_ +had all been so enriched by Mr. Lloyd George's legislation that the +one-or-two hundred thousand pounds they had lost, through Vivie's +revenge for the seemingly-fruitless death of Emily Wilding Davison, +was a bagatelle not worth bothering about. But all attempts to get +the Home Office to reconsider Miss Warren's case or to shorten her +imprisonment (except by the abridgment that could be earned in the +prison itself) were unavailing. So long as the Cabinet held Vivie +under lock and key, the Suffrage movement--they foolishly +believed--was hamstrung. + +So the months went by, and Vivie almost lost count of time and +almost became content to wait. Till War was declared on August 4th, +1914. A few days afterwards followed the amnesty to Suffragist +prisoners. From this the Home Office strove at first to exclude +Vivien Warren on the plea that her crime was an ordinary crime and +admitted of no political justification; but at this the wrath of +Rossiter and the indignation of the W.S.P.U. became so alarming that +the agitated Secretary of State--not at all sure how we were going +to come out of the War--gave way, and an order was signed for +Vivie's release on the 11th of August; on the understanding that she +would immediately proceed abroad; an understanding to which she +would not subscribe but which in her slowly-formed hatred of the +British Government she resolved to carry out. + +Mrs. Warren, assured by Praed and Rossiter that Vivie's release was +a mere matter of a few days, had left for Brussels on the 5th of +August. If--as was then hoped--the French and Belgian armies would +suffice to keep the Germans at bay on the frontier of Belgium, she +would prefer to resume her life there in the Villa de Beau-sejour. +If however Belgium was going to be invaded it was better she should +secure her property as far as possible, transfer her funds, and make +her way somehow to a safe part of France. Vivie would join her as +soon as she could leave the prison. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +BRUSSELS AND THE WAR: 1914 + + +The Lilacs in Victoria Road had been disposed of--through +Honoria--as soon as possible, after the sentence of Three years' +imprisonment had been pronounced on Vivie; and the faithful +Suffragette maid had passed into Honoria's employ at Petworth, a +fact that was not fully understood by Colonel Armstrong until he had +become General Armstrong and perfectly indifferent to the Suffrage +agitation which had by that time attained its end. So when Vivie had +come out of prison and had promised to write to all the wardresses +and to meet them some day on non-professional ground; had found +Rossiter waiting for her in his motor and Honoria in hers; had +thanked them both for their never-to-be-forgotten kindness, and had +insisted on walking away in her rather creased and rumpled clothes +of the previous year with Bertie Adams; she sought the hospitality +of Praddy at Hans Place. The parlour-maid received her sumptuously, +and Praddy's eyes watered with senile tears. + +But Vivie would have no melancholy. "Oh Praddy! If you only knew. +It's worth going to prison to know the joy of coming out of it! I'm +so happy at thinking this is my last day in England for ever so +long. When the War is over, I think I shall settle in Switzerland +with mother--or perhaps all three of us--you with us, I mean--in +Italy. We'll only come back here when the Women have got the Vote. +Now to-night you shall take me to the theatre--or rather I'll take +_you_. I've thought it all out beforehand, and Bertie Adams has +secured the seats. It's _The Chocolate Soldier_ at the Adelphi, the +only war piece they had ready; there are two stalls for us and +Bertie and his wife are going to the Dress Circle. My Cook's ticket +is taken for Brussels and I leave to-morrow by the Ostende route." + +"To-morrow" was the 12th of August, and Dora was not yet in being to +interpose every possible obstacle in the way of the civilian +traveller. Down to the Battle of the Marne in September, 1914, very +little difficulty was made about crossing the Channel, especially +off the main Dover-Calais route. + +So in the radiant noon of that August day Vivie looked her last on +the brown-white promontories, cliffs and grey castle of Dover, +scarcely troubling about any anticipations one way or the other, and +certainly having no prevision she would not recross the Channel for +four years and four months, and not see Dover again for five or six +years. + +British war vessels were off the port and inside it. But there was +not much excitement or crowding on the Ostende steamer or any of +those sensational precautions against being torpedoed or mined, +which soon afterwards oppressed the spirits of cross-Channel +passengers. Vessels arriving from Belgium were full of passengers of +the superior refugee class, American and British tourists, or +wealthy people who though they preferred living abroad had begun to +think that the Continent just now was not very healthy and England +the securest refuge for those who wished to be comfortable. + +Vivie being a good sailor and economical by nature, never thought of +securing a cabin for the four or five hours' sea-journey. She sat on +the upper deck with her scanty luggage round her. A nice-looking +young man who had a cabin the door of which he locked, was walking +up and down on the level deck and scrutinizing her discreetly. And +when at last they worked their way backwards into Ostende--the +harbour was full of vessels, chiefly mine-dredgers and torpedo +boats--she noticed the obsequiousness of the steamer people and how +he left the ship before any one else. + +She followed soon afterwards, having little encumbrances in the way +of luggage; but she observed that he just showed a glimpse of some +paper and was allowed to walk straight through the Douane with +unexamined luggage, and so, on to the Brussels train. + +But she herself had little difficulty. She put her hand luggage--she +had no other--into a first-class compartment, and having an hour and +a half to wait walked out to look at Ostende. + +Summer tourists were still there; the Casino was full of people, the +shops were doing an active trade; the restaurants were crowded with +English, Americans, Belgians taking tea, chocolate, or liqueurs at +little tables and creating a babel of talk. Newspapers were being +sold everywhere by ragamuffin boys who shouted their head-lines in +French, Flemish, and quite understandable English. A fort or two at +Liege had fallen, but it was of no consequence. General Leman could +hold out indefinitely, and the mere fact that German soldiers had +entered the town of Liege counted for nothing. Belgium had virtually +won the war by holding up the immense German army. France was +overrunning Alsace, Russia was invading East Prussia and also +sending uncountable thousands of soldiers, via Archangel, to +England, whence they were being despatched to Calais for the relief +of Belgium. + +"It looks," thought Vivie, after glancing at the _Independance +Belge_, "As though Belgium were going to be extremely interesting +during the next few weeks; I may be privileged to witness--from a +safe distance--another Waterloo." + +Then she returned to the train which in her absence had been so +crowded with soldiers and civilian passengers that she had great +difficulty in finding her place and seating herself. The young man +whom she had seen pacing the deck of the steamer approached her and +said: "There is more room in my compartment; in fact I have +selfishly got one all to myself. Won't you share it?" + +She thanked him and moved in there with her suit case and rugs. +When the train had started and she had parried one or two polite +enquiries as to place and ventilation, she said: "I think I ought to +tell you who I am, in case you would not like to be seen speaking to +me--I imagine you are in diplomacy, as I noticed you went through +with a Red passport.--I am Vivien Warren, just out of prison, and an +outlaw, more or less." + +"'The outlaws of to-day are the in-laws of to-morrow,' as the +English barrister said when he married the Boer general's daughter. +I have thought I recognized you. I have heard you speak at Lady +Maud's and also at Lady Feenix's Suffrage parties. My name is Hawk. +I suppose you've been in prison for some Suffrage offence? So has my +aunt, for the matter of that." + +_Vivie_: "Yes, but in her case they only sentenced her to the First +Division; whereas _I_ have been doing nine months' hard." + +_Hawk_: "What was your crime?" + +_Vivie_: "I admit nothing, it is always wisest. But I was accused of +burning down Mr. ----'s racing stables--and other things..." + +_Hawk_: "_That_ beast. Well, I suppose it was very wrong. Can't +quite make up my mind about militancy, one way or the other. But +here we are up against the biggest war in history, and such +peccadilloes as yours sink into insignificance. By the bye, my aunt +was amnestied and so I suppose were you?" + +_Vivie_: "Yes, but not so handsomely. I was requested to go away +from England for a time, so here I am, about to join my mother in +Brussels--or in a little country place near Brussels." + +_Hawk_: "Well, I've been Secretary of Legation there. I'm just going +back to--to--well I'm just going back." + +At Bruges they were told that the train would not leave for Ghent +and Brussels for another two hours--some mobilization delay; so Hawk +proposed they should go and see the Memlings and then have some +dinner. + + +"Don't you think they're perfectly wonderful?"--_apropos_ of the +pictures in the Hospital of St. Jean. + +_Vivie_: "It depends on what you mean by 'wonderful.' If you admire +the fidelity of the reproduction in colour and texture of the +Flemish costumes of the fifteenth century, I agree with you. It is +also interesting to see the revelations of their domestic +architecture and furniture of that time, and the types of domestic +dog, cow and horse. But if you admire them as being true pictures of +life in Palestine in the time of Christ, or in the Rhineland of the +fifth century, then I think they--like most Old Masters--are +perfectly rotten. And have you ever remarked another thing about all +paintings prior to the seventeenth century: how _plain_, how _ugly_ +all the people are? You never see a single good-looking man or +woman. Do let's go and have that dinner you spoke of. I've got a +prison appetite." + + +At Ghent another delay and a few uneasy rumours. The Court was said +to be removing from Brussels and establishing itself at Antwerp. The +train at last drew into the main station at Brussels half an hour +after midnight. Vivie's mother was nowhere to be seen. She had +evidently gone back to the Villa Beau-sejour while she could. It was +too late for any tram in the direction of Tervueren. There were no +taxis owing to the drivers being called up. Leaving most of her +luggage at the cloak-room--it took her about three-quarters of an +hour even to approach the receiving counter--Vivie walked across to +the _Palace Hotel_ and asked the night porter to get her a room. But +every room was occupied, they said--Americans, British, wealthy war +refugees from southern Belgium, military officers of the Allies. The +only concession made to her--for the porter could hold out little +hope of any neighbouring hotel having an empty room--was to allow +her to sit and sleep in one of the comfortable basket chairs in the +long atrium. At six o'clock a compassionate waiter who knew the name +of Mrs. Warren gave her daughter some coffee and milk and a +_brioche_. At seven she managed to get her luggage taken to one of +the trams at the corner of the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique. The +train service to Tervueren was suspended--and at the Porte de Namur +she would be transferred to the No. 45 tram which would take her out +to Tervueren. + +Even at an early hour Brussels seemed crowded and as the tram passed +along the handsome boulevards the shops were being opened and +tourists were on their way to Waterloo in brakes. Every one seemed +to think in mid-August, 1914, that Germany was destined to receive +her _coup-de-grace_ on the field of Waterloo. It would be so +appropriate. And no one--at any rate of those who spoke their +thoughts aloud--seemed to consider that Brussels was menaced. + +Leaving her luggage at the tram terminus, Vivie sped on foot through +forest roads, where the dew still glistened, to the Villa +Beau-sejour. Mrs. Warren was not yet dressed, but was rapturous in +her greeting. Her chauffeur had been called up, so the auto could +not go out, but a farm cart would be sent for the luggage. + +"I believe, mother, I'm going to enjoy myself enormously," said +Vivie as she sat in the verandah in the morning sunshine, making a +delicious _petit dejeuner_ out of fresh rolls, the butter of the +farm, a few slices of sausage, and a big cup of frothing chocolate +topped with whipped cream. The scene that spread before her was +idyllic, from a bucolic point of view. The beech woods of Tervueren +shut out any horizon of town activity; black and white cows were +being driven out to pasture, a flock of geese with necks raised +vertically waggled sedately along their own chosen path, a little +disturbed and querulous over the arrival of a stranger; turkey hens +and their half-grown poults and a swelling, strutting turkey cock, a +peacock that had already lost nearly all his tail and therefore +declined combat with the turkey and was, moreover, an isolated +bachelor; guinea-fowls scratching and running about alternately; and +plump cocks and hens of mixed breed covered most of the ground in +the adjacent farm yard and the turf of an apple orchard, where the +fruit was already reddening under the August sun. Pigeons circled +against the sky with the distinct musical notes struck out by their +wings, or cooed and cooed round the dove cots. The dairy women of +the farm laughed and sang and called out to one another in Flemish +and Wallon rough chaff about their men-folk who were called to the +Colours. There was nothing suggestive here of any coming tragedy. + +This was the morning of the 13th of August. For three more days +Vivie lived deliriously, isolated from the world. She took new books +to the shade of the forest, and a rug on which she could repose, and +read there with avidity, read also all the newspapers her mother had +brought over from England, tried to master the events which had so +rapidly and irresistibly plunged Europe into War. Were the Germans +to blame, she asked herself? Of course they were, technically, in +invading Belgium and in forcing this war on France. But were they +not being surrounded by a hostile Alliance? Was not this hostility +on the part of Servia towards Austria stimulated by Russia in order +to forestal the Central Powers by a Russian occupation of +Constantinople? Why should the Russian Empire be allowed to stretch +for nine millions of square miles over half Asia, much of Persia, +and now claim to control the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor? If +England might claim a large section of Persia as her sphere of +influence, and Egypt likewise and a fourth part of Africa, much of +Arabia, and Cyprus in the Mediterranean, why might not Germany and +Austria expect to have their little spheres of influence in the +Balkans, in Asia Minor, in Mesopotamia? We had helped France to +Morocco and Italy to Tripoli; why should we bother about Servia? It +might be unkind, but then were we not unkind towards her father's +country, Ireland? Were we very tender towards national independence +in Egypt, in Persia? + +Yet this brutal invasion of France, this unprovoked attack on Liege +were ugly things. France had shown no disposition to egg Servia on +against Austria, and Sir Edward Grey in the last days of June--she +now learnt for the first time, for she had seen no newspapers in +prison, where it is part of the dehumanizing policy of the Home +Office to prevent their entry, or the dissemination of any +information about current events--Sir Edward Grey had clearly shown +Great Britain did not approve of Servian intrigues in Bosnia. Well: +let the best man win. Germany was just as likely to give the Vote to +her women as was Britain. The Germans were first in Music and in +Science. She for her part didn't wish to become a German subject, +but once the War was over she would willingly naturalize herself +Belgian or Swiss. + +And the War must soon be over. Europe as a whole could not allow +this devastation of resources. America would intervene. Already the +Germans realized their gigantic blunder in starting the attack. +Their men were said to be--she read--much less brave than people had +expected. The mighty German Armies had been held up for ten days by +a puny Belgian force and the forts of Liege and Namur. There would +presently be an armistice and Germany would have to make peace with +perhaps the cession to France of Metz as a _solatium_, while Germany +was given a little bit more of Africa, and Austria got nothing.... + +Meantime the Villa Beau-sejour seemed after Holloway Prison a +paradise upon earth. Why quarrel with her fate? Why not drop +politics and take up philosophy? She felt herself capable of writing +a Universal History which would be far truer if more cynical than +any previous attempt to show civilized man the route he had followed +and the martyrdom he had undergone. + +On the 17th of August she took the tram into Brussels. It seemed +however as if it would never get there, and when she reached the +Porte de Namur she was too impatient to wait for the connection. She +could not find any gendarme, but at a superior-looking flower-shop +she obtained the address of the British Legation. + +She asked at the lodge for Mr. Hawk; but there was only a Belgian +coachman in charge, and he told her the Minister and his staff had +followed the Court to Antwerp. Mr. Hawk had only left that morning. +"What a nuisance," said Vivie to herself. "I might have found out +from him whether there is any truth in the rumours that are flying +about Tervueren." + +These rumours were to the effect that the Germans had captured all +the forts of Liege and their brave defender, General Leman; that +they were in Namur and were advancing on Louvain. "I wonder what we +had better do?" pondered Vivie. + +In her bewilderment she took the bold step of calling at the Hotel +de Ville, gave her name and nationality, and asked the advice of +the municipal employe who saw her as to what course she and her +mother had better pursue: leave Tervueren and seek a lodging in +Brussels; or retreat as far as Ghent or Bruges or even Holland? The +clerk reassured her. The Germans had certainly occupied the +south-east of Belgium, but dared not push as far to the west and +north as Brussels. They risked otherwise being nipped between the +Belgian army of Antwerp and the British force marching on Mons.... +He directed her attention to the last _communique_ of the Ministry +of War: "La situation n'a jamais ete meilleure. Bruxelles, a l'abri +d'un coup de main, est defendue par vingt mille gardes civiques +armes d'un excellent fusil," etc. + +Vivie returned therefore a trifle reassured. At the same time she +and her mother spent some hours in packing up and posting valuable +securities to London, via Ostende, in packing for deposit in the +strong rooms of a Brussels bank Mrs. Warren's jewellery and plate. +The tram service from Tervueren had ceased to run. So they induced a +neighbour to drive them into Brussels in a chaise: a slow and +wearisome journey under a broiling sun. Arrived in Brussels they +found the town in consternation. Placarded on the walls was a notice +signed by the Burgomaster--the celebrated Adolphe Max--informing the +Bruxellois that in spite of the resistances of the Belgian army it +was to be feared the enemy might soon be in occupation of Brussels. +In such an event he adjured the citizens to avoid all panic, to give +no legitimate cause of offence to the Germans, to renounce any idea +of resorting to arms! The Germans on their part were bound +by the laws of war to respect private property, the lives of +non-combatants, the honour of women, and the exercise of religion. + +Vivie and her mother found the banks closed and likewise the railway +station. They now had but one thought: to get back as quickly as +possible to Villa Beau-sejour, and fortunately for their dry-mouthed +impatience their farmer friend was of the same mind. Along the +Tervueren road they met numbers of peasant refugees in carts and on +foot, driving cattle, geese or pigs towards the capital; urging on +the tugging dogs with small carts and barrows loaded with personal +effects, trade-goods, farm produce, or crying children. All of them +had a distraught, haggard appearance and were constantly looking +behind them. From the east, indeed, came the distant sounds of +explosions and intermittent rifle firing. Mrs. Warren was blanched +with fear, her cheeks a dull peach colour. She questioned the people +in French and Flemish, but they only answered vaguely in raucous +voices: "Les Allemands!" "De Duitscher." + +One old woman, however, had flung herself down by the roadside, +while her patient dog lay between the shafts of the little cart till +she should be pleased to go on. She was more communicative and told +Mrs. Warren a tale too horrible to be believed, about husband, son, +son-in-law all killed, daughter violated and killed too, cottage in +flames, livestock driven off. Recovering from her exhaustion she +rose and shook herself. "I've no business to be here. I should be +with _them_. I was just packing this cart for the market when it +happened. Why did I go away? Oh for shame! I'll go back--to +_them_..." And forthwith she turned the dog round and trudged the +same way they were going. + +At last they came opposite the courtyard of the Villa and saw the +lawn and gravel sweep full of helmeted soldiers in green-grey +uniform, their bodies hung with equipment--bags, great-coats, +rolled-up blankets, trench spades, cartridge bandoliers. Vivie +jumped down quickly, said to her mother in a low firm voice: "Leave +everything to me. Say as little as possible." Then to the farmer: +"Nous vous remercions infiniment. Vous aurez mille choses a faire +chez vous, je n'en doute. Nous reglerons notre compte tout-a +l'heure.... Pour le moment, adieu." She clutched the handbags of +valuables, slung them somehow on her left arm, while with her other +she piloted the nearly swooning Mrs. Warren into the court. + +They were at once stopped by a non-commissioned officer who asked +them in abrupt, scarcely understandable German what they wanted. +Vivie guessing his meaning said in English--she scarcely knew any +German: "This is our house. We have been absent in Brussels. We want +to see the officer in command." The soldier knew no English, but +likewise guessed at their meaning. He ordered them to wait where +they were. Presently he came out of the Villa and said the Herr +Oberst would see them. Vivie led her mother into the gay little +hall--how pleasant and cool it had looked in the early morning! It +was now full of surly-looking soldiers. Without hesitating she took +a chair from one soldier and placed her mother in it. "You rest +there a moment, dearest, while I go in and see the officer in +command." The corporal she had first spoken with beckoned her into +the pretty sitting-room at the back where they had had their early +breakfast that morning. + +Here she saw seated at a table consulting plans of Brussels and +other papers a tall, handsome man of early middle age, who might +indeed have passed for a young man, had he not looked very tired and +care-worn and exhibited a bald patch at the back of his head, +rendered the more apparent because the brown-gold curls round it +were dank with perspiration. He rose to his feet, clicked his heels +together and saluted. "An English young lady, I am told, rather ... +a ... surprise ... on ... the ... outskirts ... of Brussels..." (His +English was excellent, if rather staccato and spaced.) "It ... is +... not ... usual ... for ... Englishwomen ... to ... be owners ... +of chateaux ... in Belgium. But I ... hear ... it ... is ... your +mother ... who is the owner ... from long time, and you are her +daughter newly arrived from England? Nicht wahr? Sie verstehen nicht +Deutsch, gnaediges Fraulein?" + +"No," said Vivie, "I don't speak much German, and fortunately you +speak such perfect English that it is not necessary." + +"I have stayed some time in England," was the reply; "I was once +military attache in London. Both your voice and your face seem--what +should one say? Familiar to me. Are you of London?" + +"Yes, I suppose I may say I am a Londoner, though I believe I was +born in Brussels. But I don't want to beat about the bush: there is +so much to be said and explained, and all this time I am very +anxious about my mother. She is in the hall outside--feels a little +faint I think with shock--might she--might I?"-- + +"But my dear Miss--?" + +"Miss Warren--" + +"My dear Miss Warren, of course. We are enemies--pour le moment--but +we Germans are not monsters. ("What about those peasants' stories?" +said Vivie to herself.) Your lady mother must come in here and take +that fauteuil. Then we can talk better at our ease." + +Vivie got up and brought her mother in. + +"Now you shall tell me everything--is it not so? Better to be quite +frank. A la guerre comme a la guerre. First, you are English?" + +"Yes. My mother is Mrs. Warren, I am her daughter, Vivien Warren. My +mother has lived many years in Belgium, though also in other places, +in Germany, Austria and France. Of late, however, she has lived +entirely here. This place belongs to her." + +"And you?" + +"I? I have just been released from prison in London, Holloway +Prison..." + +"My dear young lady! You are surely joking--what do you say? You +pull my leg? But no; I see! You have been Suffragette. Aha! _I_ +understand you are _the_ Miss Warren, the Miss Warren who make the +English Government afraid, nicht wahr? You set fire to Houses of +Parliament..." + +_Vivie_ (interrupting): "No, no! Only to some racing stables..." + +_Oberst_: "I understand. But you are rebel?" + +_Vivie_: "I hate the present British Government--the most +hypocritical, the most..." + +_Oberst_: "But we are in agreement, you and I! This is splendid. But +now we must be praktisch. We are at war, though we hope here for a +peaceful occupation of Belgium. You will see how the Flaemisch--Ah, +you say the Fleming?--the Flemish part of Belgium will receive us +with such pleasure. It is only with the Waelsch, the Wallon part we +disagree.... But there is so much for me to do--we must talk of all +these things some other time. Let us begin our business. I must +first introduce myself. I am Oberst Gottlieb von Giesselin of the +Saxon Army. (He rose, clicked heels, bowed, and sat down.) I see you +have three heavy bags you look at often. What is it?" + +_Vivie_ (taking courage): "It is my mother's jewellery and some +plate. She fears--" + +_Von G._: "I understand! We have a dr-r-eadful reputation, we poor +Germans! The French stuff you up with lies. But we are better than +you think. You shall take them in two--three days to Brussels when +things are quiet, and put them in some bank. Here I fear I must +stay. I must intrude myself on your hospitality. But better for you +perhaps if I stay here at present. I will put a few of my men in +your--your--buildings. Most of them shall go with their officers to +Tervueren for billet." (Turning to Mrs. Warren.) "Madam, you must +cheer up. I foresee your daughter and I will be great friends. Let +us now look through the rooms and see what disposition we can make. +I think I will have to take this room for my writing, for my work. I +see you have telephone here. _Gut_!" + +Leaving Mrs. Warren still seated, but a little less stertorous in +breathing, a little reassured, Vivie and Oberst von Giesselin then +went over the Villa, apportioning the rooms. The Colonel and his +orderly would be lodged in two of the bedrooms. Vivie and her mother +would share Mrs. Warren's large bedroom and retain the salon for +their exclusive occupation. They would use the dining-room in common +with their guest. + +Vivie looking out of the windows occasionally, as they passed from +room to room, saw the remainder of the soldiery strolling off to be +lodged at their nearest neighbour's, the farmer who had driven them +in to Brussels that morning. There were perhaps thirty, accompanying +a young lieutenant. How would he find room for them, poor man? They +were more fortunate in being asked only to lodge six or seven in +addition to the Colonel's orderly and soldier-clerk. Before sunset, +the Villa Beau-sejour was clear of soldiers, except the few that had +gone to the barn and the outhouses. The morning room had been fitted +up with a typewriter at which the military clerk sat tapping. The +Colonel's personal luggage had been placed in his bedroom. A soldier +was even sweeping up all traces of the invasion of armed men and +making everything tidy. It all seemed like a horrid dream that was +going to end up happily after all. Presently Vivie would wake up +completely and there would even be no Oberst, no orderly; only the +peaceful life of the farm that was going on yesterday. Here a sound +of angry voices interrupted her musings. The cows returning by +themselves from the pasture were being intercepted by soldiers who +were trying to secure them. Vivie in her indignation ran out and +ordered the soldiers off, in English. To her surprise they obeyed +silently, but as they sauntered away to their quarters she was +saddened at seeing them carrying the bodies of most of the turkeys +and fowls and even the corpse of the poor tailless peacock. They had +waited for sundown to rob the hen-roosts. + +Very much disillusioned she ran to the morning room and burst in on +the Colonel's dictation to his clerk. "Excuse me, but if you don't +keep your soldiers in better order you will have very little to eat +whilst you are here. They are killing and carrying off all our +poultry." + +The Colonel flushed a little at the peremptory way in which she +spoke, but without replying went out and shouted a lot of orders in +German. His orderly summoned soldiers from the barn and together +they drove the cows into the cow-sheds. All the Flemish servants +having disappeared in a panic, the Germans had to milk the cows that +evening; and Vivie, assisted by the orderly, cooked the evening +meal in the kitchen. He was, like his Colonel, a Saxon, a +pleasant-featured, domesticated man, who explained civilly in the +Thuringian dialect--though to Vivie there could be no discrimination +between varieties of High German--that the Sachsen folk were "Eines +guetes leute" and that all would go smoothly in time. + +Nevertheless the next morning when she could take stock she found +nearly all the poultry except the pigeons had disappeared; and most +of the apples, ripe and unripe, had vanished from the orchard trees. +The female servants of the farm, however, came back; and finding no +violence was offered took up their work again. Two days afterwards, +von Giesselin sent Vivie into Brussels in his motor, with his +orderly to escort her, so that she might deposit her valuables at a +bank. She found Brussels, suburbs and city alike, swarming with +grey-uniformed soldiers, most of whom looked tired and despondent. +Those who were on the march, thinking Vivie must be the wife of some +German officer of high rank, struck up a dismal chant from dry +throats with a refrain of "Gloria, Viktoria, Hoch! Deutschland, +Hoch!" At the bank the Belgian officials received her with +deference. Apart from being the daughter of the well-to-do Mrs. +Warren, she was English, and seemed to impose respect even on the +Germans. They took over her valuables, made out a receipt, and +cashed a fairly large cheque in ready money. Vivie then ventured to +ask the bank clerk who had seen to her business if he had any news. +Looking cautiously round, he said the rumours going through the town +were that the Queen of Holland, enraged that her Prince Consort +should have facilitated the crossing of Limburg by German armies, +had shot him dead with a revolver; that the Crown Prince of Germany, +despairing of a successful end of the War, had committed suicide at +his father's feet; that the American Consul General in Brussels--to +whom, by the bye, Vivie ought to report herself and her mother, in +order to come under his protection--had notified General Sixt von +Arnim, commanding the army in Brussels, that, _unless he vacated the +Belgian capital immediately_, England would bombard Hamburg and the +United States would declare war on the Kaiser. Alluring stories like +these flitted through despairing Brussels during the first two +months of German occupation, though Vivie, in her solitude at +Tervueren, seldom heard them. + +After her business at the bank she walked about the town. No one +took any notice of her or annoyed her in any way. The restaurants +seemed crowded with Belgians as well as Germans, and the Belgians +did not seem to have lost their appetites. The Palace Hotel had +become a German officers' club. On all the public buildings the +German Imperial flag hung alongside the Belgian. Only a few of the +trams were running. Yet you could still buy, without much difficulty +at the kiosques, Belgian and even French and British newspapers. +From these she gathered that the German forces were in imminent +peril between the Belgian Antwerp army on the north and the British +army advancing from the south; and that in the plains of Alsace the +French had given the first public exhibition of the new "Turpin" +explosive. The results had been _foudroyant_ ... and simple. +Complete regiments of German soldiers had been destroyed in _one +minute_. It seemed curious, she thought, that with such an arm as +this the French command did not at once come irresistibly to the +rescue of Brussels.... + +However, it was four o'clock, and there was her friend the enemy's +automobile drawn up outside the bank, awaiting her. She got in, and +the soldier chauffeur whirled her away to the Villa Beau-sejour, +beyond Tervueren. + +On her return she found her mother prostrate with bad news. Their +nearest neighbour, Farmer Oudekens who had driven them into Brussels +the preceding day had been executed in his own orchard only an hour +ago. It seemed that the lieutenant in charge of the soldiers +billeted there had disappeared in the night, leaving his uniform and +watch and chain behind him. The farmer's story was that in the night +the lieutenant had appeared in his room with a revolver and had +threatened to shoot him unless he produced a suit of civilian +clothes. Thus coerced he had given him his eldest son's Sunday +clothes left behind when the said son went off to join the Belgian +army. The lieutenant, grateful for the assistance, had given him as +a present his watch and chain. + +On the other hand the German non-commissioned officers insisted +their lieutenant had been made away with in the night. The farmer's +allegation that he had deserted (as in fact he had) only enhanced +his crime. The finding of the court after a very summary trial was +"guilty," and despite the frantic appeals of the wife, reinforced +later on by Mrs. Warren, the farmer had been taken out and shot. + +The evening meal consequently was one of strained relations. Colonel +von Giesselin came to supper punctually and was very spruce in +appearance. But he was gravely polite and uncommunicative. And after +dessert the two ladies asked permission to retire. They lay long +awake afterwards, debating in whispers what terror might be in store +for them. Mrs. Warren cried a good deal and lamented futilely her +indolent languor of a few days previously. _Why_ had she not, while +there was yet time, cleared out of Brussels, gone to Holland, and +thence regained England with Vivie, and from England the south of +France? Vivie, more stoical, pointed out it was no use crying over +lost opportunities. Here they were, and they must sharpen their wits +to get away at the first opportunity. Perhaps the American Consul +might help them? + +The next morning, however, their guest, who had insensibly turned +host, told Vivie the tram service to Brussels, like the train +service, was suspended indefinitely, and that he feared they must +resign themselves to staying where they were. Under his protection +they had nothing to fear. He was sorry the soldiers had helped +themselves so freely to the livestock; but everything had now +settled down. Henceforth they would be sure of something to eat, as +he himself had got to be fed. And all he asked of them was their +agreeable society. + +Two months went by of this strange life. Two months, in which Vivie +only saw German newspapers--which she read with the aid of von +Giesselin. Their contents filled her with despair. They made very +little of the Marne rebuff, much of the capture of Antwerp and +Ostende, and the occupation of all Belgium (as they put it). Vivie +noted that the German Emperor's heart had bled for the punishment +inflicted on Louvain. (She wondered how that strange personality, +her father, had fared in the destruction of monastic buildings.) But +she had then no true idea of what had taken place, and the +far-reaching harm this crime had done to the German reputation. She +noted that the German Press expressed disappointment that the cause +of Germany, the crusade against Albion, had received no support from +the Irish Nationalists, or from the "revolting" women, the +Suffragettes, who had been so cruelly maltreated by the +administration of Asquith and Sir Grey. + +This point was discussed by the Colonel, but Vivie found herself +speaking as a patriot. How _could_ the Germans expect British women +to turn against their own country in its hour of danger? + +"Then you would not," said von Giesselin, "consent to write some +letters to your friends, if I said I could have them sent safely to +their destination?--only letters," he added hastily, seeing her +nostrils quiver and a look come into her eyes--"to ask your Suffrage +friends to bring pressure to bear on their Government to bring this +d-r-r-eadful War to a just peace. That is all we ask." But Vivie +said "with all her own private grudge against the present ministry +she felt _au fond_ she was _British_; she must range herself in time +of war with her own people." + +Mrs. Warren went much farther. She was not very voluble nowadays. +The German occupation of her villa had given her a mental and +physical shock from which she never recovered. She often sat quite +silent and rather huddled at meal times and looked the old woman +now. In such a conversation as this she roused herself and her voice +took an aggressive tone. "My daughter write to her friends to ask +them to obstruct the government at such a time as this? _Never!_ I'd +disown her if she did, I'd repudiate her! She may have had her own +turn-up with 'em. I was quite with her there. But that, so to +speak, was only a domestic quarrel. We're British all through, and +don't you forget it--sir--(she added deprecatingly): British _all +through_ and we're goin' to beat Germany yet, _you'll_ see. The +British navy never _has_ been licked nor won't be, this time." + +Colonel von Giesselin did not insist. He seemed depressed himself at +times, and far from elated at the victories announced in his own +newspapers. He would in the dreary autumn evenings show them the +photographs of his wife--a sweet-looking woman--and his two +solid-looking, handsome children, and talk with rapture of his home +life. Why, indeed, was there this War! His heart like his Emperor's +bled for these unhappy Belgians. But it was all due to the +Macchiavellian policy of "Sir Grey and Asquiss." If Germany had not +felt herself surrounded and barred from all future expansion of +trade and influence she would not have felt forced to attack France +and invade Belgium. Why, see! All the time they were talking, +barbarous Russia, egged on by England, was ravaging East Prussia! + +Then, in other moods, he would lament the war and the policy of +Prussia. How he had loved England in the days when he was military +attache there. He had once wanted to marry an Englishwoman, a Miss +Fraser, a so handsome daughter of a Court Physician. + +"Why, that must have been Honoria, my former partner," said Vivie, +finding an intense joy in this link of memory. And she told much of +her history to the sentimental Colonel, who was conceiving for her a +sincere friendship and camaraderie. They opened up other veins of +memory, talked of Lady Feenix, of the musical parties at the Parrys, +of Emily Daymond's playing, of this, that and the other hostess, of +such-and-such an actress or singer. + +The Colonel of course was often absent all day on military duties. +He advised Vivie strongly on such occasions not to go far from Mrs. +Warren's little domain. "I am obliged to remind you, dear young +lady, that you and your mother are my prisoners in a sense. Many bad +things are going on--things we cannot help in war--outside this +quiet place..." + +In November, however, there was a change of scene, which in many +ways came to Vivie and her mother with a sense of great relief. +Colonel von Giesselin told them one morning he had been appointed +Secretary to the German Governor of Brussels, and must reside in the +town not far from the Rue de la Loi. He proposed that the ladies +should move into Brussels likewise; in fact he delicately insisted +on it. Their pleasant relations could thus continue--perhaps--who +knows?--to the end of this War, "to that peace which will make us +friends once more?" It would in any case be most unsafe if, without +his protection, they continued to reside at this secluded farm, on +the edge of the great woods. In fact it could not be thought of, and +another officer was coming here in his place with a considerable +suite. Eventually compensation would be paid to Mrs. Warren for any +damage done to her property. + +The two women readily agreed. In the curtailment of their movements +and the absence of normal means of communication their life at Villa +Beau-sejour was belying its name. Their supply of money was coming +to an end; attempts must be made to regularize that position by +drawing on Mrs. Warren's German investments and the capital she +still had in Belgian stock--if that were negotiable at all. + +Where should they go? Mrs. Warren still had some lien on the Hotel +Edouard-Sept (the name, out of deference to the Germans, had been +changed to Hotel Imperial). With the influence of the Government +Secretary behind her she might turn out some of its occupants and +regain the use of the old "appartement." This would accommodate +Vivie too. And there was no reason why their friend should not place +his own lodging and office at the same hotel, which was situated +conveniently on the Rue Royale not far from the Governor's residence +in the Rue de la Loi. + +So this plan was carried out. And in December, 1914, Mrs. Warren had +some brief flicker of happiness once more, and even Vivie felt the +nightmare had lifted a little. It was life again. Residence at the +Villa Beau-sejour had almost seemed an entombment of the living. +Here, in the heart of Brussels, at any rate, you got some news every +day, even if much of it was false. The food supply was more certain, +there were 700,000 people all about you. True, the streets were very +badly lit at night and fuel was scarce and dear. But you were in +contact with people. + +In January, Vivie tried to get into touch with the American +Legation, not only to send news of their condition to England but to +ascertain whether permission might not be obtained for them to leave +Belgium for Holland. But this last plea was said by the American +representative to be unsustainable. For various reasons, the German +Government would not permit it, and he was afraid neither Vivie nor +her mother would get enough backing from the British authorities to +strengthen the American demand. She must stop on in Brussels till +the War came to an end. + +"But how are we to live?" asked Vivie, with a catch in her throat. +"Our supply of Belgian money is coming to an end. My mother has +considerable funds invested in England. These she can't touch. She +has other sums in German securities, but soon after the War they +stopped sending her the interest on the plea that she was an +'enemy.' As to the money we have in Belgium, the bank in Brussels +can tell me nothing. What are we to do?" The rather cold-mannered +American diplomatist--it was one of the Secretaries of Legation and +he knew all about Mrs. Warren's past, and regarded Vivie as an +outlaw--said he would try to communicate with her friends in England +and see if through the American Relief organization, funds could be +transmitted for their maintenance. She gave him the addresses of +Rossiter, Praed, and her mother's London bankers. + +Vivie now tried to settle down to a life of usefulness. To increase +their resources she gave lessons in English to Belgians and even to +German officers. She offered herself to various groups of Belgian +ladies who had taken up such charities as the Germans permitted. She +also asked to be taken on as a Red Cross helper. But in all these +directions she had many snubs to meet and little encouragement. +Scandal had been busy with her name--the unhappy reputation of her +mother, the peculiar circumstances under which she had left England, +the two or three months shut up at Tervueren with Colonel von +Giesselin, and the very protection he now accorded her and her +mother at the Hotel Imperial. She felt herself looked upon almost as +a pariah, except among the poor of Brussels in the Quartier des +Marolles. Here she was only regarded as a kind Englishwoman, +unwearied in her efforts to alleviate suffering, mental and bodily. + + +And meantime, silence, a wall of silence as regarded +England--England which she was beginning to look upon as the +paradise from which she had been chased. Not a word had come through +from Rossiter, from Honoria, Bertie Adams, or any of her Suffrage +friends. I can supply briefly what she did not know. + +Rossiter at the very outbreak of War had offered his services as one +deeply versed in anatomy and in physiology to the Army Medical +Service, and especially to a great person at the War Office; but had +been told quite cavalierly that they had no need of him. As he +persisted, he had been asked--in the hope that it might get rid of +him--to go over to the United States in company with a writer of +comic stories, a retired actor and a music-hall singer, and lecture +on the causes of the War in the hope of bringing America in. This he +had declined to do, and being rich and happening to know personally +General Armstrong (Honoria's husband) he had been allowed to +accompany him to the vicinity of the front and there put his +theories of grafting flesh and bone to the test; with the ultimate +results that his work became of enormous beneficial importance and +he was given rank in the R.A.M.C. Honoria, racked with anxiety about +her dear "Army," and very sad as to Vivie's disappearance, slaved at +War work as much as her children's demands on her permitted; or even +put her children on one side to help the sick and wounded. Vivie's +Suffrage friends forgot she had ever existed and turned their +attention to propaganda, to recruiting for the Voluntary Army which +our ministers still hoped might suffice to win the War, to the +making of munitions, or aeroplane parts, to land work and to any +other work which might help their country in its need. + +And Bertie Adams? + +When he realized that his beloved and revered Miss Warren was shut +off from escape in Belgium, could not be heard of, could not be got +at and rescued, he went nearly off his nut.... He reviewed during a +succession of sleepless nights what course he might best pursue. His +age was about thirty-two. He might of course enlist in the army. But +though very patriotic, his allegiance lay first at the feet of Vivie +Warren. If he entered the army, he might be sent anywhere but to the +Belgian frontier; and even if he got near Belgium he could not dart +off to rescue Vivie without becoming a deserter. So he came speedily +to the conclusion that the most promising career he could adopt, +having regard to his position in life and lack of resources, was to +volunteer for foreign service under the Y.M.C.A., and express the +strongest possible wish to be employed as near Belgium as was +practicable. So that by the end of September, 1914, Bertie was +serving out cocoa and biscuits, writing paper and cigarettes, hot +coffee and sausages and cups of bovril to exhausted or resting +soldiers in the huts of the Y.M.C.A., near Ypres. Alternating with +these services, he was, like other Y.M.C.A. men in the same district +and at the same time, acting as stretcher bearer to bring in the +wounded, as amateur chaplain with the dying, as amateur surgeon with +the wounded, as secretary to some distraught officer in high command +whose clerks had all been killed; and in any other capacity if +called upon. But always with the stedfast hope and purpose that he +might somehow reach and rescue Vivie Warren. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE GERMANS IN BRUSSELS: 1915-1916 + + +In the early spring of 1915, Vivie, anxious not to see her mother in +utter penury, and despairing of any effective assistance from the +Americans (very much prejudiced against her for the reasons already +mentioned), took her mother's German and Belgian securities of a +face value amounting to about L18,000 and sold them at her Belgian +bank for a hundred thousand francs (L4,000) in Belgian or German +bank notes. She consulted no one, except her mother. Who was there +to consult? She did not like to confide too much to Colonel von +Giesselin, a little too prone in any case to "protect" them. But as +she argued with Mrs. Warren, what else were they to do in their +cruel situation? If the Allies were eventually victorious, Mrs. +Warren could return to England. There at least she had in safe +investments L40,000, ample for the remainder of their lives. If +Germany lost the War, the German securities nominally worth two +hundred thousand marks might become simply waste paper; even now +they were only computed by the bank at a purchase value of about one +fifth what they had stood at before the War. If Germany were +victorious or agreed to a compromise peace, her mother's shares in +Belgian companies might be unsaleable. Better to secure now a lump +sum of four thousand pounds in bank notes that would be legal +currency, at any rate as long as the German occupation lasted. And +as one never knew what might happen, it was safer still to have all +this money (equivalent to a hundred thousand francs), in their own +keeping. They could live even in war time, on such a sum as this +for four, perhaps five years, as they would be very economical and +Vivie would try to earn all she could by teaching. It was useless to +hope they would be able to return to Villa Beau-sejour so long as +the German occupation lasted, or during that time receive a penny in +compensation for the sequestration of the property. + +The notes for the hundred thousand francs therefore were carefully +concealed in Mrs. Warren's bedroom at the Hotel Imperial and Vivie +for a few months afterwards felt slightly easier in her mind as to +the immediate future; for, as a further resource, there were also +the jewels and plate at the bank. + +They dared hope for nothing from Villa Beau-sejour. Von Giesselin, +after more entreaty than Vivie cared to make, had allowed them with +a special pass and his orderly as escort to go in a military motor +to the Villa in the month of April in order that they might bring +away the rest of their clothes and personal effects of an easily +transportable nature. But the visit was a heart-breaking +disappointment. Their reception was surly; the place was little else +than a barrack of disorderly soldiers and insolent officers. Any +search for clothes or books was a mockery. Nothing was to be found +in the chests of drawers that belonged to them; only stale food and +unnameable horrors or military equipment articles. The garden was +trampled out of recognition. There had been a beautiful vine in the +greenhouse. It was still there, but the first foliage of spring hung +withered and russet coloured. The soldiers, grinning when Vivie +noticed this, pointed to the base of the far spreading branches. It +had been sawn through, and much of the glass of the greenhouse +deliberately smashed. + +On their way back, Mrs. Warren, who was constantly in tears, +descried waiting by the side of the road the widow of their +farmer-neighbour, Madame Oudekens. She asked the orderly that they +might stop and greet her. She approached. Mrs. Warren got out of the +car so that she might more privately talk to her in Flemish. Since +her husband's execution, the woman said, she had had to become the +mistress of the sergeant-major who resided with her as the only +means, seemingly, of saving her one remaining young son from exile +in Germany and her daughters from unbearably brutal treatment; +though she added, "As to their virtue, _that_ has long since +vanished; all I ask is that they be not half-killed whenever the +soldiers get drunk. Oh Madame! If you could only say a word to that +Colonel with whom you are living?" + +Mrs. Warren dared not translate this last sentence to Vivie, for +fear her daughter forced her at all costs to leave the Hotel +Imperial. Where, if she did, were they to go? + +The winter of 1914 had witnessed an appalling degree of +frightfulness in eastern Belgium, the Wallon or French-speaking part +of the country more especially. The Germans seemed to bear a special +grudge against this region, regarding it as doggedly opposed to +absorption into a Greater Germany; whereas they hoped the Flemish +half of the country would receive them as fellow Teutons and even as +deliverers from their former French oppressors. Thousands of old men +and youths, of women and children in the provinces south of the +Meuse had been shot in cold blood; village after village had been +burnt. Scenes of nearly equal horror had taken place between +Brussels and Antwerp, especially around Malines. Von Bissing's +arrival as Governor General was soon signalized by those dreaded Red +Placards on the walls of Brussels, announcing the verdicts of +courts-martial, the condemnation to death of men and women who had +contravened some military regulation. + +Yet in spite of this, life went on in Brussels once more--by von +Bissing's stern command--as though the country were not under the +heel of the invader. The theatres opened their doors; the cinemas +had continuous performances; there was Grand Opera; there were +exhibitions of toys, or pictures, and charitable bazaars. Ten days +after the fall of Antwerp _char-a-bancs_ packed with Belgians drove +out of Brussels to visit the scenes of the battles and those +shattered forts, so fatuously deemed impregnable, so feeble in their +resistance to German artillery. + +Vivie, even had she wished to do so, could not have joined the +sight-seers. As the subjects of an enemy power she and her mother +had had early in January to register themselves at the Kommandantur +and were there warned that without a special passport they might not +pass beyond the limits of Brussels and its suburbs. Except in the +matter of the farewell visit to the farm at Tervueren, Vivie was +reluctant to ask for any such favour from von Giesselin, though she +was curious to see the condition of Louvain and to ascertain whether +her father still inhabited the monastic house of his order--she had +an idea that he was away in Germany in connection with his schemes +for raising the Irish against the British Government. Von Giesselin +however was becoming sentimentally inclined towards her and she saw +no more of him than was necessary to maintain polite relations. Frau +von Giesselin, for various reasons of health or children, could not +join him at Brussels as so many German wives had done with other of +the high functionaries (to the great embitterment of Brussels +society); and there were times when von Giesselin's protestations of +his loneliness alarmed her. + +The King of Saxony had paid a visit to Brussels in the late autumn +of 1914 and had invited this Colonel of his Army to a fastuous +banquet given at the Palace Hotel. The King--whom the still defiant +Brussels Press, especially that unkillable _La Libre Belgique_, +reminded ironically of his domestic infelicity, by enquiring +whether he had brought Signor Toselli to conduct his orchestra--was +gratified that a subject of his should be performing the important +duties of Secretary to the Brussels Government, and his notice of +von Giesselin gave the latter considerable prestige, for a time; an +influence which he certainly exercised as far as he was able in +softening the edicts and the intolerable desire to annoy and +exasperate on the part of the Prussian Governors of province and +kingdom. He even interceded at times for unfortunate British or +French subjects, stranded in Brussels, and sometimes asked Vivie +about fellow-countrymen who sought this intervention. + +This caused her complicated annoyances. Seeing there was some hope +in interesting her in their cases, these English governesses, +tutors, clerks, tailors' assistants and cutters, music-hall singers, +grooms appealed to Vivie to support their petitions. They paid her +or her mother a kind of base court, on the tacit assumption that +she--Vivie--had placed Colonel von Giesselin under special +obligations. If in rare instances, out of sheer pity, she took up a +case and von Giesselin granted the petition or had it done in a +higher quarter, his action was clearly a personal favour to her; and +the very petitioners went away, with the ingratitude common in such +cases, and spread the news of Vivie's privileged position at the +Hotel Imperial. It was not surprising therefore that in the small +circles of influential British or American people in Brussels she +was viewed with suspicion or contempt. She supported this odious +position at the Hotel Imperial as long as possible, in the hope that +Colonel von Giesselin when he had realized the impossibility of +using herself or her mother in any kind of intrigue against the +British Government would do what the American Consul General +professed himself unable or unwilling to do: obtain for them +passports to proceed to Holland. + +Von Giesselin, from December, 1914, took up among other duties that +of Press Censor and officer in charge of Publicity. After the +occupation of Brussels and the fall of Antwerp, the "patriotic" +Belgian Press had withdrawn itself to France and England or had +stopped publication. Its newspapers had been invited to continue +their functions as organs of news-distribution and public opinion, +but of course under the German Censorate and martial law. As one +editor said to a polite German official: "If I were to continue the +publication of my paper under such conditions, my staff and I would +all be shot in a week." + +But the large towns of Belgium could not be left without a Press. +Public Opinion must be guided, and might very well be guided in a +direction favourable to German policy. The German Government had +already introduced the German hour into Belgian time, the German +coinage, the German police system, and German music; but it had no +intention, seemingly, of forcing the German speech on the old +dominions of the House of Burgundy. On the contrary, in their tenure +of Belgium or of North-east France, the Germans seemed desirous of +showing how well they wrote the French language, how ready they were +under a German regime to give it a new literature. Whether or not +they enlisted a few recreants, or made use of Alsatians or +Lorrainers to help them, it is never-the-less remarkable how free as +a rule their written and printed French was from mistakes or German +idioms; though their spoken French always remained Alsatian. It +suffered from that extraordinary misplacement and exchange in the +upper and lower consonants which has distinguished the German +people--that nation of great philologists--since the death of the +Roman Empire. German officers still said "Barton, die fous brie," +instead of "Pardon, je vous prie" (if they were polite), but they +were quite able to contribute _articles de fond_ to a pretended +national Belgian press. Besides there was a sufficiency of Belgian +"Sans-Patries" ready to come to their assistance: Belgian nationals +of German-Jewish or Dutch-Jewish descent, who in the present +generation had become Catholic Christians as it ranged them with the +best people. They were worthy and wealthy Belgian citizens, but +presumably would not have deeply regretted a change in the political +destinies of Belgium, provided international finance was not +adversely affected. There were also a few Belgian Socialists--a few, +but enough--who took posts under the German provisional government, +on the plea that until you could be purely socialistic it did not +matter under what flag you drew your salary. + +Von Giesselin was most benevolently intentioned, in reality a +kind-hearted man, a sentimentalist. Not quite prepared to go to the +stake himself in place of any other victim of Prussian cruelty, but +ready to make some effort to soften hardships and reduce sentences. +(There were others like him--Saxon, Thuringian, Hanoverian, +Wuerttembergisch--or the German occupation of Belgium might have +ended in a vast Sicilian Vespers, a boiling-over of a maddened +people reckless at last of whether they died or not, so long as they +slew their oppressors.) He hoped through the pieces played at the +theatres and through his censored, subsidized press to bring the +Belgians round to a reasonable frame of mind, to a toleration of +existence under the German Empire. But his efforts brought down on +him the unsparing ridicule of the Parisian-minded Bruxellois. They +were prompt to detect his attempts to modify the text of French +operettas so that these, while delighting the lovers of light music, +need not at the same time excite a military spirit or convey the +least allusion of an impertinent or contemptuous kind towards the +Central Powers. Thus the couplets + + "Dans le service de l'Autriche + Le militaire n'est pas riche" + +were changed to + + "Dans le service de la Suisse + Le militaire n'est pas riche." + +These passionate lines of a political exile: + + "A l'etranger un pacte impie + Vendait mon sang, liait ma foi, + Mais a present, o ma patrie + Je pourrai done mourir pour toi!" + +were rendered harmless as + + "A l'etranger, en reverie + Chaque jour je pleurais sur toi + Mais a present, o ma patrie + Je penserai sans cesse a toi!" + +The pleasure he took in recasting this doggerel--calling in Vivie to +help him as presumably a good scholar in French--got on her nerves, +and she was hard put to it to keep her temper. + +Sometimes he proposed that she should take a hand, even become a +salaried subordinate; compose articles for his subsidized paper, +"_L'Ami de l'Ordre_" (nicknamed "L'Ami de L'Ordure" by the +Belgians), "_La Belgique_," "_Le Bruxellois_," "_Vers la Paix_." +He would allow her a very free hand, so long as she did not attack +the Germans or their allies or put in any false news about military +or naval successes of the foes of Central Europe. She might, for +instance, dilate on the cruel manner in which the Woman Suffragists +had been persecuted in England; give a description of forcible +feeding or of police ferocity on Black Friday. + +Vivie declined any such propositions. "I have told you already, and +often," she said, "I am deeply grateful for all you have done for +my mother and me. We might have been in a far more uncomfortable +position but for your kindness. But I cannot in any way associate +myself with the German policy here. I cannot pretend for a moment to +condone what you do in this country. If I were a Belgian woman I +should probably have been shot long ago for assassinating some +Prussian official--I can hardly see von Bissing pass in his +automobile, as it is, without wishing I had a bomb. But there it is. +It is no business of mine. As I can't get away, as you won't let us +go out of the country--Switzerland, Holland--and as I don't want to +go mad by brooding, find something for me to do that will occupy my +thoughts: and yet not implicate me with the Germans. Can't I go and +help every day in your hospitals? If you'll continue your kindness +to mother--and believe me"--she broke off--"I _do_ appreciate what +you have done for us. I shall _never_ forget I have met _one true +German gentleman_--if you'll continue to be as kind as before, you +will simply give instructions that mother is in no way disturbed or +annoyed. There are Germans staying here who are odious beyond +belief. If they meet my mother outside her room they ask her +insulting questions--whether she can give them the addresses +of--of--light women ... you know the sort of thing. I have always +been outspoken with you. All I ask is that mother shall be allowed +to stay in her own room while I am out, and have her meals served +there. But the hotel people are beginning to make a fuss about the +trouble, the lack of waiters. A word from you--And then if my mind +was at ease about her I could go out and do some good with the poor +people. They are getting very restive in the Marolles quarter--the +shocking bad bread, the lack of fuel--Most of all I should like to +help in the hospitals. My own countrywomen will not have me in +theirs. They suspect me of being a spy in German pay. Besides, your +von Bissing has ordered now that all Belgian, British, and French +wounded shall be taken to the German Red Cross. Well: if you want +to be kind, give me an introduction there. Surely it would be bare +humanity on your part to let an Englishwoman be with some of those +poor lads who are sorely wounded, dying perhaps"--she broke +down--"The other day I followed two of the motor ambulances along +the Boulevard d'Anspach. Blood dripped from them as they passed, and +I could hear some English boy trying to sing 'Tipperary--'" + +"My _tear_ Miss Warren--I will try to do all that you want--You will +not do _anything I_ want, but never mind. I will show you that +Germans can be generous. I will speak about your mother. I am sorry +that there are bad-mannered Germans in the hotel. There are +some--what-you-call 'bounders'--among us, as there are with you. It +is to be regretted. As to our Red Cross hospitals, I know of a +person who can make things easy for you. I will write a letter to my +cousin--like me she is a Saxon and comes from Leipzig--Minna von +Stachelberg. She is but a few months widow, widow of a Saxon +officer, Graf von Stachelberg who was killed at Namur. Oh! it was +very sad; they were but six months married. Afterwards she came here +to work in our Red Cross--I think now she is in charge of a ward..." + +So Vivie found a few months' reprieve from acute sorrow and bitter +humiliation. Graefin von Stachelberg was as kind in her way as her +cousin the Colonel, but much less sentimental. In fact she was of +that type of New German woman, taken all too little into account by +our Press at the time of the War. There were many like her of the +upper middle class, the professorial class, the lesser nobility to +be found not only in Leipzig but in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfort, +Halle, Bonn, Muenchen, Hannover, Bremen, Jena, Stuttgart, +Cologne--nice to look at, extremely modern in education and good +manners, tasteful in dress, speaking English marvellously well, +highly accomplished in music or with some other art, advocates of +the enfranchisement of women. The War came just too soon. Had Heaven +struck down that epilept Emperor and a few of his ministers, had +time been given for the New German Woman to assert herself in +politics, there would have been no invasion of Belgium, no +maltreatment of Servia. Germany would have ranged herself with the +Western powers and Western culture. + +Minna von Stachelberg read her cousin's note and received the worn +and anxious-looking Vivie like a sister ... like a comrade, she +said, in the War for the Vote ... "which we will resume, my dear, as +soon as this dreadful Man's war is over, only we won't fight with +the same weapons." + +But though kind, she was not gushing and she soon told Vivie that in +nursing she was a novice and had much to learn. She introduced her +to the German and Belgian surgeons, and then put her to a series of +entirely menial tasks from which she was to work her way up by +degrees. But if any English soldier were there and wanted sympathy, +she should be called in to his ward ... From that interview Vivie +returned almost happy. + +In the hot summer months she would sometimes be allowed to accompany +Red Cross surgeons and nurses to the station, when convoys of +wounded were expected, if there was likelihood that British soldiers +would be amongst them. These would cheer up at the sound of her +pleasant voice speaking their tongue. Yet she would witness on such +occasions incongruous incidents of German brutality. Once there came +out of the train an English and a French soldier, great friends +evidently. They were only slightly wounded and the English soldier +stretched his limbs cautiously to relieve himself of cramp. At that +moment a German soldier on leave came up and spat in his face. The +Frenchman felled the German with a resounding box on the ear. +Alarums! Excursions! A German officer rushed up to enquire while the +Frenchman was struggling with two colossal German military policemen +and the Englishman was striving to free him. Vivie explained to the +officer what had occurred. He bowed and saluted: seized the +soldier-spitter by the collar and kicked him so frightfully that +Vivie had to implore him to cease. + +Moreover the Red Placards of von Bissing were of increasing +frequency. As a rule Vivie only heard what other people said of +them, and that wasn't very much, for German spies were everywhere, +inviting you to follow them to the dreaded Kommandantur in the Rue +de la Loi--a scene of as much in the way of horror and mental +anguish as the Conciergerie of Paris in the days of the Red Terror. +But some cheek-blanching rumour she had heard on a certain Monday in +October caused her to look next day on her way home at a fresh Red +Placard which had been posted up in a public place. The daylight had +almost faded, but there was a gas lamp which made the notice +legible. It ran: + + CONDAMNATIONS + + Par jugement du 9 Octobre, 1915, le tribunal de campagne a + prononce les condamnations suivantes pour trahison commise + pendant l'etat de guerre (pour avoir fait passer des recrues + a l'ennemi): + + 1 deg. Philippe BAUCQ, architecte a Bruxelles; + + 2 deg. Louise THULIEZ, professeur a Lille; + + 3 deg. Edith CAVELL, directrice d'un institut medical a + Bruxelles; + + 4 deg. Louis SEVERIN, pharmacien a Bruxelles; + + 5 deg. Comtesse JEANNE DE BELLEVILLE, a Montignies. + + A LA PEINE DE MORT + + * * * * * + +Vivie then went on to read with eyes that could hardly take in the +words a list of other names of men and women condemned to long terms +of hard labour for the same offence--assisting young Belgians to +leave the Belgium that was under German occupation. And further, +the information that of the five condemned to death, _Philip Bauck_ +and _Edith Cavell_ had already been _executed_. + + * * * * * + +The monsters! Oh that von Bissing. How gladly she would die if she +might first have the pleasure of killing him! That pompous old man +of seventy-one with the blotched face, who had issued orders that +wherever he passed in his magnificent motor he was to be saluted +with Eastern servility, who boasted of his "tender heart," so that +he issued placards about this time punishing severely all who split +the tongues of finches to make them sing better. Edith Cavell--she +did not pause to consider the fate of patriotic Belgian women--but +Edith Cavell, directress of a nursing home in Brussels, known far +and wide for her goodness of heart. She had held aloof from Vivie, +but was that to be wondered at when there was so much to make her +suspect--living, seemingly, under the protection of a German +official? But the very German nurses and doctors at the Red Cross +hospital had spoken of her having given free treatment in her Home +to Germans who needed immediate operations, and for whom there was +no room in the military hospitals--And for such a trivial offence as +_that_--and to kill her before there could be any appeal for +reconsideration or clemency. Oh _what_ a nation! She would tend +their sick and wounded no more. + +She hurried on up the ascent of the Boulevard of the Botanic Garden +on her way to the Rue Royale. She burst into von Giesselin's office. +He was not there. A clerk looking at her rather closely said that +the Herr Oberst was packing, was going away. Vivie scarcely took in +the meaning of his German phrases. She waited there, her eyes +ablaze, feeling she must tell her former friend and protector what +she thought of his people before she renounced any further +relations with him. + +Presently he entered, his usually rather florid face pale with +intense sorrow or worry, his manner preoccupied. She burst out: +"_Have_ you seen the Red Placard they have just put up?" + +"What about?" he said wearily. + +"The assassination by your Government of Edith Cavell, a crime for +which England--yes, and America--will _never_ forgive you.... From +this moment I--" + +"But have you not heard what has happened to _me_? I am _dismissed_ +from my post as Secretary, I am ordered to rejoin my regiment in +Lorraine--It is very sad about your Miss Cavell. I knew nothing of +it till this morning when I received my own dismissal--And _oh_ my +dear Miss, I fear we shall never meet again." + +"Why are they sending you away?" asked Vivie drily, compelled to +interest herself in his affairs since they so closely affected her +own and her mother's. + +"Because of this," said von Giesselin, nearly in tears, pulling from +a small portfolio a press cutting. "Do you remember a fortnight ago +I told you some one, some Belgian had written a beautiful poem and +sent it to me for one of our newspapers? I showed it to you at the +time and you said--you said 'it was well enough, but it did not seem +to have much point.'" Vivie did remember having glanced very +perfunctorily at some effusion in typewriting which had seemed +unobjectionable piffle. She hadn't cared two straws whether he +accepted it or not, only did not want to be too markedly +indifferent. Now she took it up and still read it through +uncomprehendingly, her thoughts absent with the fate of Miss Cavell. +"Well! what is all the fuss about? I still see nothing in it. It is +just simply the ordinary sentimental flip-flap that a French +versifier can turn out by the yard." + +"It is _far_ worse than that! It is a horrible--what the French +call 'acrostiche,' a deadly insult to our people. And I never saw +it, the Editor never saw it, and you, even, never guessed its real +meaning![1] The original, as you say, was in typewriting, and at the +bottom was the name and address of a very well-known homme de +lettres: and the words: 'Offert a la redaction de l'Ami de L'Ordre.' +He say now, _never never_ did he send it. It was a forgery. When we +came to understand what it meant all the blame fall on me. I am sent +back to the Army--I shall be killed before Verdun, so good-bye dear +Miss--We have been good friends. Oh this War: this d-r-r-eadful +War--It has spoilt everything. Now we can never be friends with +England again." + + [Footnote 1: I have obtained a copy and give it here as it had an + almost historical importance in the events of the German occupation. + But the reader must interpret its meaning for himself. + + LA GUERRE + + Ma soeur, vous souvient-il qu'aux jours de notre enfance, + En lisant les hauts fails de l'histoire de France, + Remplis d'admiration pour nos freres Gaulois, + Des generaux fameux nous vantions les exploits? + + En nos ames d'enfants, les seuls noms des victoires + Prenaient un sens mystique evocateur de gloires; + On ne revait qu'assauts et combats; a nos yeux + Un general vainqueur etait l'egal des dieux. + + Rien ne semblait ternir l'eclat de ces conquetes. + Les batailles prenaient des allures de fetes + Et nous ne songions pas qu'aux hurrahs triomphants + Se melaient les sanglots des meres, des enfants. + + Ah! nous la connaissons, helas, l'horrible guerre: + Le fleau qui punit les crimes de la terre, + Le mot qui fait trembler les meres a genoux + Et qui seme le deuil et la mort parmi nous! + + Mais ou sqnt les lauriers que reserve l'Histoire + A celui qui demain forcera la Victoire? + Nul ne les cueillira: les lauriers sont fletris + Seul un cypres s'eleve aux torubes de nos fils.] + + + +He gave way to much emotion. Vivie, though still dazed with the +reverberating horror of Edith Cavell's execution, tried to regain +her mind balance and thank him for the kindness he had shown them. +But it was now necessary to see her mother who might also be +undergoing a shock. As she walked up to their bedroom she reflected +that the departure of von Giesselin would have to be followed by +their own exile to some other lodging. They would share in his +disgrace. + +The next morning in fact the Belgian manager of the hotel with many +regrets gave them a month's warning. The hotel would be required for +some undefined need of the German Government and he had been told no +one could be lodged there who was not furnished with a permit from +the Kommandantur. + +For three weeks Vivie sought in vain for rooms. Every suitable place +was either full or else for reasons not given they were refused. She +was reduced to eating humble pie, to writing once more to Graefin von +Stachelberg and imparting the dilemma in which they were placed. Did +this kind lady know where a lodging could be obtained? She herself +could put up with any discomfort, but her mother was ill. If she +could help them, Vivie would humbly beg her pardon for her angry +letter of three weeks ago and resume her hospital work. Minna von +Stachelberg made haste to reply that there were some things better +not discussed in writing: if Vivie could come and see her at six one +evening, when she had a slight remission from work-- + +Vivie went. Out of hearing, Graefin von Stachelberg--who, however, to +facilitate intercourse, begged Vivie to call her "Minna,"--"We may +all be dead, my dear, before long of blood-poisoning, bombs from +your aeroplanes, a rising against us in the Marolles quarter--" said +very plainly what she thought of Edith Cavell's execution. "It makes +me think of Talleyrand--was it not?--who said 'It is a blunder; +worse than a crime' ... these terrible old generals, they know +nothing of the world outside Germany." As to her cousin, Gottlieb +von Giesselin--"Really dear, if in this time of horrors one _dare_ +laugh at anything, I feel--oh it is too funny, but also, too +'schokking,' as we suppose all English women say. Yet of course I am +sad about him, because he is a good, kind man, and I know his wife +will be very very unhappy when she hears--And it means he will die, +for certain. He must risk his life to--to--regain his position, and +he will be shot before Verdun in one of those dreadful assaults." +Then she told Vivie where she might find rooms, where at any rate +she could use her name as a reference. Also: "Stay away at present +and look after your mother. When she is quite comfortably settled, +come back and work with me--here--it is at any rate the only way in +which you can see and help your countrymen." + +One day in November when their notice at the hotel was nearly +expired, Vivie proposed an expedition to her mother. They would walk +slowly--because Mrs. Warren now got easily out of breath--up to the +Jardin Bontanique; Vivie would leave her there in the Palm House. It +was warm; it was little frequented; there were seats and the +Belgians in charge knew Mrs. Warren of old time. Vivie would then go +on along the inner Boulevards by tram and look at some rooms +recommended by Minna von Stachelberg in the Quartier St. Gilles. + +Mrs. Warren did as she was told. Vivie left her seated in one of the +long series of glass houses overlooking Brussels from a terrace, +wherein are assembled many glories of the tropics: palms, dracaenas, +yuccas, aloes, tree-ferns, cycads, screw-pines, and bananas: +promising to be back in an hour's time. + +Somehow as she sat there it seemed to Mrs. Warren it was going for +her to be the last hour of fully conscious life--fully conscious and +yet a curious mingling in it of the past and present. She had sat +here in the middle of the 'seventies with Vivie's father, the young +Irish seminarist, her lover for six months. He had a vague interest +in botany, and during his convalescence after his typhoid fever, +when she was still his nurse, not yet his mistress, she used to +bring him here to rest and to enjoy the aspect of these ferns and +palms. What a strange variety of men she had known. Some she had +loved, more or less; some she had exploited frankly. Some--like +George Crofts and Baxendale Strangeways--she had feared, though in +her manner she had tried to conceal her dread of their violence. +Well! she had taken a lot of money off the rich, but she had never +plundered the poor. Her greatest conquest--and that when she was a +woman of forty--was the monarch of this very country which now lay +crushed under the Kaiser's heel. For a few months he had taken a +whimsical liking to her handsome face, well-preserved figure, and +amusing cockney talk. But he had employed her rather as the mistress +of his menus plaisirs, as his recruiting agent. He had rewarded her +handsomely. Now it was all in the dust: her beautiful Villa +Beau-sejour a befouled barrack for German soldiers. She herself a +homeless woman, repudiated by the respectable British and Americans +more or less interned in this unhappy city. + +Not much more than a year ago she had been one of the most respected +persons in Brussels, with a large income derived from safe +investments. Now all she had for certain was something over three +thousand pounds in bank notes that might turn out next month to be +worthless paper. And was she certain even of them? Had Vivie before +they left the hotel remembered to put some, at least, of this +precious sum on her person? Suppose, whilst they were out, looking +for a fresh dwelling place, the hotel servants or the police raided +her bedroom and found the little hoard of notes? This imagined +danger made her want to cry. They were so friendless now, she in +particular felt so completely deserted. Had she deserved this +punishment by Fate? Was there after all a God who minded much about +the sex foolishnesses and punished you for irregularities--for +having lovers in your youth, for selling your virtue and inducing +other women to sell theirs? Was she going to die soon and was there +a hereafter?' She burst out crying in an abandonment of grief. + +An elderly gardener who had been snipping and sweeping in the next +house came up and vaguely recognized her as a well-known +Bruxelloise, a good-natured lady, a foreigner who, strange to say, +spoke Flemish. "Ach," he said, looking out where he thought lay the +source of her tears, at the dim view of beautiful Brussels through +the steamy glass, "Onze arme, oude Bruessel." Mrs. Warren wept +unrestrainedly. "Madame is ill?" he enquired. Mrs. Warren +nodded--she felt indeed very ill and giddy. He left her and returned +shortly with a small glass of Schnapps. "If Madame is faint--?" She +sipped the cordial and presently felt better. Then they talked of +old times. Madame had kept the Hotel Leopold II in the Rue +Royale? Ah, _now_ he placed her. A _superb_ establishment, always +well-spoken of. Her self-respect returned a little. "Yes," she said, +"never a complaint! I looked after those girls like a mother, indeed +I did. Many a one married well from there." The gardener +corroborated her statement, and added that her _clientele_ had been +of the most chic. He had a private florist's business of his own and +he had been privileged often to send bouquets to the pensionnaires +of Madame. But Madame was not alone surely in these sad times. Had +he not seen her come here with a handsome English lady who was said +to have been--to have been--fortunately--_au mieux_ with one of the +German officials? + +"_That_ was my daughter," Mrs. Warren informed him with pride.... +"She is a lady who has taken a high degree at an English University. +She has been an important person in the English feminist movement. +When this dreadful war is over, I and my daughter will--" + +At this juncture Vivie entered. "_Mother_, I hope you haven't +missed me, haven't been unwell?" she said, looking rather +questioningly at the little glass of Schnapps, only half of which +had been drunk. + +"Well yes, dear, I have. _Terrible_ low spirits and all swimmy-like. +Thought I was going to faint. But this man here has been so kind +"--her tears flowed afresh--"We've bin talking of old times; he used +to know me before--" + +_Vivie_: "Quite so. But I think, dear, we had better be going back. +I want to talk to you about the new rooms I've seen. Are you equal +to walking? If not perhaps this kind man would try to get us a +cab...?" + +But Mrs. Warren said it was no distance, only round the corner, and +she could well walk. When they got back she would go and lie down. +Vivie, reading her mother's thoughts, pressed a five-franc note into +the gardener's not reluctant palm, and they regained the Rue Royale. + +But just as they were passing through the revolving door of the +Hotel Imperial, a German who had been installed as manager came up +with two soldiers and said explosively: "Heraus! Foutez-nous le +camp! Aout you go! Don't show your face here again!" + +"But," said Vivie, "our notice doesn't expire till the end of this +week...!" + +"Das macht nichts. The rooms are wanted and I won't have you on the +premises. Off you go, or these soldiers shall take you both round to +the Kommandantur." + +"But our luggage? _Surely_ you will let me go up to our room and +pack it--and take it away? We..." + +"Your luggage has been packed and is in the corridor. If you send +round for it, it shall be delivered to your messenger. But you are +not to stop on the premises another minute. You understand?" he +almost shrieked. + +"But--" + +For answer, the soldiers took them by the shoulders and whirled +them through the revolving door on to the pavement, where a crowd +began to collect, as it does in peace or war if you cough twice or +sneeze three times in Brussels. "Englische Hure! Englische +Kuepplerin," shouted the soldiers as they retreated and locked the +revolving door. Mrs. Warren turned purple and swayed. Vivie caught +her round the waist with her strong arm.... Thus was Mrs. Warren +ejected from the once homely inn which she had converted by her +energy, management and capital into the second most magnificent +hostelry of Brussels; thus was Vivie expelled from the place of her +birth.... + +Hearing the shouting and seeing the crowd a Belgian gendarme came +up. To him Vivie said, "Si vous etes Chretien et pas Allemand--" +"Prenez garde, Madame," he said warningly--"Vous m'aiderez a porter +ma mere a quelqu' endroit ou elle peut se remettre..." + +He assisted her to carry the inert old woman across the street and a +short distance along the opposite pavement. Here, there was a +pleasant, modest-looking tea-shop with the name of Walcker over the +front, and embedded in the plate glass were the words "Tea Rooms." +These of course dated from long before the war, when the best +Chinese tea was only four francs the demi-kilo and the fashion for +afternoon tea had become established in Brussels. Vivie and her +mother had often entered Walcker's shop in happier days for a cup of +tea and delicious forms of home-made pastry. Besides the cakes, +which in pre-war times were of an excellence rarely equalled, they +had been drawn to the pleasant-looking serving woman. She was so +English in appearance, though she only spoke French and Flemish. +Behind the shop was a cosy little room where the more intimate +clients were served with tea; a room with a look-out into a little +square of garden. Thither Mrs. Warren was carried or supported. She +regained consciousness slightly as she was placed on a chair, +opened her eyes, and said "Thank you, my dears." Then her head fell +over to one side and she was dead--seemingly.... + +The _agent de police_ went away to fetch a doctor and to disperse +the crowd of _ketjes_[1] and loafers which had transferred itself +from the hotel to the tea-shop. The shop woman, who was one of those +angels of kindness that turn up unexpectedly in the paths of unhappy +people, called in a stout serving wench from the kitchen, and the +three of them carried Mrs. Warren out of the inner tea-room into the +back premises and a spare bedroom. Here she was laid on the bed, +partially undressed and all available and likely restoratives +applied. + + [Footnote 1: Street urchins of Brussels. How they harassed the + Germans and maddened them by mimicking their military manoeuvres!] + +The doctor when he came pronounced her dead, thought it was probably +an effusion of blood on the brain but couldn't be certain till he +had made an autopsy. + +"What _am_ I to do?" said Vivie thinking aloud.... + +"Why, stay here till all the formalities are over and you can find +rooms elsewhere," said Mme. Trouessart, the owner-servant of the +tea-shop. "I have another spare room. For the moment my locataires +are gone. I know you both very well by sight, you were clients of +ours in the happy days before the War. Madame votre mere was, I +think, the gerante of the Hotel Edouard-Sept when I first came to +manage here. Since then, you have often drunk my tea. Je me nomme +'Trouessart' c'est le nom de mon mari qui est ... qui est--Vous +pouvez diviner ou il est, ou est a present tout Belge loyal qui peut +servir. Le nom Walcker? C'etait le nom de nom pere, et de plus est, +c'etait un nom Anglais transforme un peu en Flamand. Mon +arriere-grand-pere etait soldat Anglais. Il se battait a Waterloo. +For me, I spik no English--or ver' leetle." + +She went on to explain, whilst the doctors occupied themselves with +their gruesome task, and Vivie was being persuaded to take some +nourishment, that her great grandfather had been a soldier servant +who had married a Belgian woman and settled down on the site of this +very shop a hundred years ago. He and his wife had even then +made a specialty of tea for English tourists. She, his great +grand-daughter, had after her marriage to Monsieur Trouessart +carried on the business under the old name--Walker, made to look +Flemish as Walcker. + +Vivie when left alone suddenly thought of the money question. She +remembered then that before going out to look for rooms she had +transferred half the notes from their hiding-place to an inner +pocket. They were still there. But what about her luggage and her +mother's, and the remainder of the money? In her distress she wrote +to Graefin von Stachelberg. Minna came over from her hospital at half +past six in the evening. By that time the doctor had given the +necessary certificate of the cause of death, and an undertaker had +come on the scene to make his preparations. + +Minna went over to the Hotel Imperial with Vivie. Appearing in her +Red Cross uniform, she was admitted, announced herself as the Graefin +von Stachelberg, and demanded to know what justification the manager +could offer for his extraordinary brutality towards these English +ladies, the result of which had been the death of the elder lady. +The manager replied that inasmuch as the All Highest himself was to +arrive that very evening to take up his abode at the Hotel Imperial, +the hotel premises had been requisitioned, etc., etc. He still +refused absolutely to allow Vivie to proceed to her room and look +for her money. She might perhaps be allowed to do so when the +Emperor was gone. As to her luggage he would have it sent over to +the tea-shop. (The money, it might be noted, she never recovered. +There were many things also missing from her mother's trunks and no +satisfaction was ever obtained.) + +So there was Vivie, one dismal, rainy November evening in 1915; +homeless, her mother lying dead in a room of this tea-shop, and in +her own pocket only a matter of thirty thousand francs to provide +for her till the War was over. A thousand pounds in fluctuating +value was all that was left of a nominal twenty thousand of the year +before. + +But the financial aspect of the case for the time being did not +concern her. The death of her mother had been a stunning shock, and +when she crossed over to the hotel--what irony, by the bye, to think +she had been born there thirty-nine years ago, in the old inn that +had preceded the twice rebuilt hotel!--when she crossed the street +with Minna, it had been with blazing, tearless eyes and the desire +to take the hotel manager and his minions by the coat collar, fling +_them_ into the street, and assert her right to go up to her room. +But now her violence was spent and she was a broken, weeping woman +as she sat all night by the bedside of her dead mother, holding the +cold hand, imprinting kisses on the dead face which was now that of +a saintly person with nothing of the reprobate in its lineaments. + + * * * * * + +The burial for various reasons had to take place in the Cemetery of +St. Josse-ten-Noode, near the shuddery National Shooting Range where +Edith Cavell and numerous Belgian patriots had recently been +executed. Minna von Stachelberg left her hospital, with some one +else in charge, and insisted on accompanying Vivie to the interment. +This might have been purely "laic"; not on account of any harsh +dislike to the religious ceremony on Vivie's part; only due to the +fact that she knew no priest or pastor. But there appeared at the +grave-side to make a very suitable and touching discourse and to +utter one or two heartfelt prayers, a Belgian Baptist minister, a +relation of Mme. Trouessart. + +Waterloo left many curious things behind it. Not only a tea-shop or +two; but a Nonconformist nucleus, that intermarried, as Sergeant +Walker or Walcker had done, with Belgian women and left descendants +who in the third generation--and by inherent vigour, thrift, +matrimony and conversion--had built up quite a numerous +congregation, which even grew large enough and rich enough to +maintain a mission of its own in Congoland. Kind Mme. Trouessart +(nee Walcker), distressed and unusually moved at the sad +circumstances of Mrs. Warren's death, had called in her uncle the +Baptist pastor (who also in some unexplained way seemed to hold a +brief for the Salvation Army). He prayed silently by the death-bed +which, under the circumstances, was more tactful than open +intercession. He helped greatly over all the formalities of the +funeral, and he took upon himself the arrangement of the ceremony, +so that everything was done decorously, and certainly to the +satisfaction of the Belgians, who attended. Such people would be +large-minded in religion--you might be Protestant, if you were not +Catholic, or you might be Jewish; but a funeral without some outward +sign of faith and hope would have puzzled and distressed them. + +To Vivie's great surprise, there was a considerable attendance at +the ceremony. She had expected no more than the company of Minna--an +unprofessing but real Christian, if ever there were one, and the +equally Christian if equally hedonist Mme. Trouessart. But there +came in addition quite a number of shopkeepers from the Rue Royale, +the Rues de Schaerbeek, du Marais, de Lione, and de l'Association, +with whom Mrs. Warren had dealt in years gone by. "C'etait une dame +_tres_ convenable," said one purveyor, and the others agreed. "Elle +me paya ecus sonnants," said another, "et toujours sans +marchander." There was even present a more distinguished +acquaintance of the past: a long-retired Commissaire de Police of +the Quartier in which Mrs. Warren's hotel was situated. + +He appeared in the tightly-buttoned frock-coat of civil life, with a +minute disc of some civic decoration in his button hole, and an +incredibly tall chimney-pot hat. He came to render his _respectueux +hommages_ to the maitresse-femme who had conducted her business +within the four corners of the law, "sans avoir maille a partir avec +la police des moeurs." + +Mrs. Warren at least died with the reputation of one who promptly +paid her bills; and the whole _assistance_, as it walked slowly back +to Brussels, recalled many a deed of kindness and jovial charity on +the part of the dead Englishwoman. + + * * * * * + +Vivie, on sizing up her affairs, got Monsieur Walcker, the Baptist +pasteur, to convey a letter to the American Consulate General. +Walcker was used to such missions as these, of which the German +Government was more or less cognizant. The Germans, among their many +contradictory features, had a great respect for religion, a great +tolerance as to its forms. They not only appreciated the difference +between Jews and Christians, Catholics and Lutherans, but between +the Church of England and the various Free Churches of Britain and +America. The many people whom they sentenced to death must all have +their appropriate religious consolation before facing the firing +party. Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists were all provided for; +there was a Church of England chaplain for the avowed Anglicans; but +what was to be done for the Free Churches and Nonconformist sects of +the Anglo-Saxons? They were not represented by any captive pastor; +so in default this much respected Monsieur Walcker, the Belgian +Baptist, was called in to minister to the Nonconformist mind in its +last agony. He therefore held a quasi-official position and was +often entrusted with missions which would have been dealt with +punitorily on the part of any one else. Consequently he was able to +deliver Vivie's communication to the American Consul-General with +some probability of its being sent on. It contained no further +appeal to American intervention than this: that the Consul-General +would try to convey to England the news of her mother's death to +such-and-such solicitors, and to Lewis Maitland Praed A.R.A. in Hans +Place. + +She went to the Brussels bank a fortnight after her mother's death +whilst still availing herself of the hospitality of Madame +Trouessart: to withdraw the jewellery and plate which she had +deposited there on her mother's account. But there she found herself +confronted with the red tape of the Latin which is more formidable, +even, than that of the land of Dora at the present day. These +deposited articles were held on the order of Mrs. Warren; they could +not be given up till her will was proved and letters of +administration had been granted. So _that_ small resource in funds +was withheld, at any rate till some time after peace had been +declared. However she had a thousand pounds (in notes) between her +and penury, and the friendship of Minna von Stachelberg. She would +resume her evening lessons in English--Madame Trouessart had found +her several pupils--and she would lodge--as they kindly invited her +to do--with the Baptist pastor and his wife in the Rue Haute. And +she would help Minna at the hospital, and hope to be rewarded with +the opportunity of bringing comfort and consolation to the wounded +British prisoners. + +Thus, with no unbearable misery, she passed the year 1916. There +were short commons in the way of food, and the cold was sometimes +cruel. But Madame Walcker was a wonderful cook and could make soup +from a sausage skewer, and heaped _edredons_ on Vivie's bed. Vivie +sighed a little over the Blue Placards which announced endless +German victories by land and sea; and she gasped over the dreadful +Red Placards with their lists of victims sentenced to death by the +military courts. She ground her teeth over the announcement of +Gabrielle Petit's condemnation, and behind the shut door of Minna's +small sitting-room--and she only shut the door not to compromise +Minna--she raved over the judicial murder of this Belgian heroine, +who was shot, as was Edith Cavell, for nothing more than assisting +young Belgians to escape from German-occupied Belgium. + +She witnessed the air-raids of the Allies, when only comforting +papers were dropped on Brussels city, but bombs on the German +aerodromes outside; and she also saw the Germans turn their guns +from the aeroplanes--which soared high out of their reach or skimmed +below range--on to thickly-inhabited streets of the poorer quarters, +to teach them to cheer the air-craft of the Allies! + +She beheld--or she was told of--many acts of rapine, considered +cruelty and unreasoning ferocity on the part of German officials or +soldiers; yet saw or heard of acts and episodes of unlooked-for +kindness, forbearance and sympathy from the same hated people. Von +Giesselin, after all, was a not uncommon type; and as to Minna von +Stachelberg, she was a saint of the New Religion, the Service of +Man. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE BOMB IN PORTLAND PLACE + + +Mrs. Rossiter said to herself in 1915 that she had scarcely known a +happy day, or even hour, since the War began. In the first place +Michael had again shown violence of temper with ministers of state +over the release from prison of "that" Miss Warren--"a convict doing +a sentence of hard labour." And then, when he had got her released, +and gone himself with their beautiful new motor--whatever _could_ +the chauffeur have thought?--to meet her at the prison gates, +_there_ he was, afterwards, worrying himself over the War: not +content as she was, as most of her friends were, as the newspapers +were, to leave it all to Lord Kitchener and Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward +Grey, and even Mr. Lloyd George--though the latter had made some +rather foolish and exaggerated speeches about Alcohol. Michael, if +he went on like this, would _never_ get his knighthood! + +Then when Michael had at last, thanks to General Armstrong, found +his right place and was accomplishing marvels--the papers said--as a +"mender of the maimed"--here was she left alone in Portland Place +with hardly any one to speak to, and all her acquaintances--she now +realized they were scarcely her friends--too much occupied with war +work to spend an afternoon in discussing nothing very important over +a sumptuous tea, still served by a butler and footman. + +Presently, too, the butler left to join the Professor in France and +the footman enlisted, and the tea had to be served by a _distraite_ +parlour-maid, with her eye on a munitions factory--so that she +might be "in it"--and her heart in the keeping of the footman, who, +since he had gone into khaki, was irresistible. + +Mrs. Rossiter of course said, in 1914, that she would take up war +work. She subscribed most handsomely to the Soldiers' and Sailors' +Families' Association, to the Red Cross, to the Prince of Wales's +Fund (one of the unsolved war-time mysteries ... what's become of +it?), to the Cigarette Fund, the 1914 Christmas Plum Pudding Fund, +the Blue Cross, the Purple Cross, the Green Cross funds; to the +outstandingly good work at St. Dunstan's and at Petersham--(I am +glad she gave a Hundred pounds each to _them_); and to the +French, Belgian, Russian, Italian, Serbian, Portuguese and Japanese +Flag Days and to Our Own Day; besides enriching a number of +semi-fraudulent war charities which had alluring titles. + +But if, from paying handsomely to all these praise-worthy endeavours +to mitigate the horrors of war, she proceeded to render personal +service, she became the despair of the paid organizers and +business-like workers. She couldn't add and she couldn't subtract or +divide with any certainty of a correct result; she couldn't spell +the more difficult words or remember the right letters to put after +distinguished persons' names when she addressed envelopes in her +large, childish handwriting; she couldn't be trusted to make +enquiries or to detect fraudulent appeals. She lost receipts and +never grasped the importance of vouchers; she forgot to fill up +counterfoils, or if reminded filled them up "from memory" so that +they didn't tally; she signed her name, if there was any choice of +blank spaces, in quite the wrong place. + +So, invariably, tactful secretaries or assistant secretaries were +told off to explain to her--ever so nicely--that "she was no +business woman" (this, to the daughter of wholesale manufacturers, +sounded rather flattering), and that though she was invaluable as a +"name," as a patroness, or one of eighteen Vice Presidents, she was +of no use whatever as a worker. + +She had no country house to place at the disposal of the Government +as a convalescent home. Michael after a few experiments forbade her +offering any hospitality at No. 1 Park Crescent to invalid officers. +Such as were entrusted to her in the spring of 1915 soon found that +she was--as they phrased it--"a pompous little, middle-class fool," +wielding no authority. They larked in the laboratory with Red Cross +nurses, broke specimens, and did very unkind and noisy things ... +besides smoking in both the large _and_ the small dining-rooms. So, +after the summer of 1915, she lived very much alone, except that she +had the Adams children from Marylebone to spend the day with her +occasionally. + +Poor Mrs. Adams, though a valiant worker, was very downcast and +unhappy. She confided to Mrs. Rossiter that although she dearly +loved her Bert--"and a better husband I defy you to find"--he never +seemed all hers. "Always so wrapped up in that Miss Warren or 'er +cousin the barrister." And no sooner had war broken out than off he +was to France, as a kind of missionary, she believed--the Young +Men's Christian Something or other; "though before the War he didn't +seem particular stuck on religion, and it was all she could do to +get him sometimes to church on a Sunday morning. Oh yes: she got 'er +money all right; and she couldn't say too much of Mr. and Mrs. +Rossiter's kindness. There was Bert, not doin' a stroke of work for +the Professor, and yet his pay going on all the same. Indeed she was +putting money by, because Bert was kep' out there, and all found." + +However his two pretty children were some consolation to Mrs. +Rossiter, whom they considered as a very grand lady and one that was +lavishly kind. + +Mrs. Rossiter tried sometimes in 1915 having working parties in her +house or in the studio; and if she could attract workers gave them +such elaborate lunches and plethoric teas that very little work was +done, especially as she herself loved a long, aimless gossip about +the Royal Family or whether Lord Kitchener had ever _really_ been in +love. Or she tried, since she was a poor worker herself--her only +jersey and muffler were really finished by her maid--reading aloud +to the knitters or stitchers, preferably from the works of Miss +Charlotte Yonge or some similar novelist of a later date. But that +was found to be too disturbing to their sense of the ludicrous. For +she read very stiltedly, with a strange exotic accent for the love +passages or the death scenes. As Lady Victoria Freebooter said, she +would have been _priceless_ at a music-hall matinee which was +raising funds for war charities, if only she could have been induced +to read passages from Miss Yonge in _that_ voice for a quarter of an +hour. Even the Queen would have had to laugh. + +But as that could not be brought off, it was decided that working +parties at her house led to too much giddiness from suppressed +giggles or torpor from too much food. So she relapsed once more into +loneliness. Unfortunately air-raids were now becoming events of +occasional fright and anxiety in London, and this deterred Cousin +Sophie from Darlington, Cousin Matty from Leeds, Joseph's wife from +Northallerton or old, married schoolfellows from other northern or +midland towns coming to partake of her fastuous hospitality. Also, +they all seemed to be busy, either over their absent husbands' +business, or their sons', or because they were plunged in war work +themselves. "And really, in these times, I couldn't stand Linda for +more than five minutes," one of them said. + +As to the air-raids, she was not greatly alarmed at them. Of course +it was very uncomfortable having London so dark at night, but then +she only went out in the afternoon, and never in the evening. And +the Germans seemed to be content and discriminating enough not to +bomb what she called "the resi_den_tial" parts of London. The +nearest to Portland Place of their attentions was Hampstead or +Bloomsbury. "We are protected, my dear, by the open spaces of +Regent's Park. They wouldn't like to waste their bombs on poor me!" + +However her maid didn't altogether like the off chance of the +Germans or our air-craft guns making a mistake and trespassing on +the residential parts of London, so she persuaded her mistress to +spend part of the winter of 1915-16 at Bournemouth. Here she was not +happy and far lonelier even than in London. She did not like to send +all that way for the Adams children, she had a parlour suite all to +herself at the hotel, and was timid about making acquaintances +outside, since everybody now-a-days wanted you to subscribe to +something, and it was so disagreeable having to say "no." She was +not a great walker so she could not enjoy the Talbot woods; the sea +made her feel sad, remembering that Michael was the other side and +the submarines increasingly active: in short, air-raids or no +air-raids, she returned home in March, and her maid, who had been +with her ten years, gave her warning. + +But then she had an inspiration! She engaged Mrs. Albert Adams to +take her place, and although the parlour-maid at this took offence +and cut the painter of domestic service, went off to the munitions +till Sergeant Frederick Summers should get leave to come home and +marry her; and they were obliged to engage another parlour-maid in +her place at double the wages: Mrs. Rossiter had done a very wise +thing. "Bert" had been home for three weeks in the preceding +February, and the recently bereaved Mrs. Adams had united her tears +with Mrs. Rossiter's on the misery of the War which separated +attached husbands and wives. It now alleviated the sorrows of both +that they should be together as mistress and maid. The cook--a most +important factor--had always liked Bertie and adored his "sweet, +pretty little children." "If you'll let 'em sleep in the spare room +on the fourth floor, next their mother, and play in the day-time in +the servants' 'all, they'll be no manner of difficulty _nor_ bother +to me and the maids. We shall love to 'ave 'em, the darlin's. And +they'll serve to cheer you up a bit ma'am till the Professor comes +back." + +Mrs. Adams was a very capable person who hated dust and grime. The +big house wanted some such intervention, as since the butler's +departure it had become rather slovenly, save in the portions +occupied by Mrs. Rossiter. Charwomen were got in, and spring +cleanings on a gigantic scale took place, so that when Rossiter did +return he thought it had never looked so nice, or his Linda been so +cheery and companionable. + +But before this happy confirmation of her wisdom in engaging Nance +Adams as maid and factotum, Mrs. Rossiter had several waves of doubt +and distress to breast. There was the Suffrage question. Once +converted by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Miss Violet Markham, Sir Almroth +Wright--whose _prenom_ she could not pronounce--the late Lord +Cromer, and the impressive Lord Curzon, to the perils of the Woman's +Vote, Mrs. Rossiter was hard to move from her uncompromising +opposition to the enfranchisement of her sex. Some adroit champion +of the Wrong had employed the argument that _once_ Women got the +vote, _the Divorce Laws would be greatly enlarged_. This would be +part of the scheme of the wild women to get themselves all married; +that and _the legalisation of Polygamy_ which would follow the Vote +_as surely as the night the day_. Linda had an undefined terror that +her Michael might take advantage of such licentiousness to depose +her, like the Empress Josephine was put aside in favour of a +child-producing rival; or if polygamy came into force, that Miss +Warren might lawfully share the Professor's affections. + +She was therefore greatly perturbed in the course of 1916 at the +sudden throwing up of the sponge by the Anti-suffragists. However, +there it was. The long struggle drew to a victorious close. Example +as well as precept pointed to what women could do and were worth; +sound arguments followed the inconveniences of militancy, and the +men were convinced. Or rather, the men in the mass and the fighting, +working men had for some time been convinced, but the great +statesmen who had so obstinately opposed the measures were now +weakening at the knees before the results of their own mismanagement +in the conduct of the War. + +A further perplexity and anxiety for Mrs. Rossiter arose over the +German spy mania. She had been to one of Lady Towcester's afternoon +parties "to keep up our spirits." Lady Towcester collected for at +least six different charities and funds, and Mrs. Rossiter was a +generous subscriber to all six. Touching the wood of the central +tea-table, she had remarked to Lady Victoria and Lady Helen +Freebooter how fortunate they (who lived within the prescribed area +defined by Lady Jeune) had been in so far escaping air-raids. + +"But don't you know why?" said Lady Victoria. + +Mrs. Rossiter didn't. + +"Because in Manchester Square, in Cavendish--Grosvenor--Hanover +Squares, in Portland Place--a few doors off your own house--in +Harley Street and Wigmore Street: there are special friends of the +Kaiser living. They _may_ call themselves by English names, they may +even be ex-cabinet-ministers; but they are working for the Kaiser, +all the same. And _he_ wouldn't be such a fool as to have them +bombed, would he?" + +"Especially as it is well known that there _is a wireless +installation_ on a house in Portland Place which communicates with +a similar installation in the Harz Mountains," added Lady Helen. + +This was a half-reassuring, half-terrifying statement. It was +comfortable to know that you lived under the Kaiser's wing--Mrs. +Rossiter hoped the aim of the aeronauts was accurate, and their +knowledge of London topography good. At the same time it was +alarming to feel that you might be involved in that final blow up of +the villains which must bring such scoundreldom to a close. But if +Lady Vera and Lady Helen knew all this for a fact, why not tell the +Police? "What would be the good? They'd deny everything and we +should only be sued for libel." + +However to form some conception of how English home life was +undermined with plots, she was advised to go and see Mr. Dennis +Eadie in _The Man That Stayed at Home_. She did, taking Mrs. Adams +with her to the Dress Circle for a matinee. Both were very much +impressed, and on their return expected the fireplaces to open all +of a piece and reveal German spies with masked faces and pistols, +standing in the chimney. + +At last these and other nightmares were dispelled by the arrival of +Rossiter on leave of absence in the autumn of 1916. He had the rank +of Colonel in the R.A.M.C., and wore the khaki uniform--Mrs. +Rossiter proudly thought--of a General. He had shaved off his beard +and trimmed his moustache and looked particularly soldierly. The +butler who came with him though not precisely a soldier but a sort +of N.C.O. in a medical corps, also looked quite martial, and had so +much to say for himself that Mrs. Rossiter felt he could never +become a butler again. But he did all the same, and a most efficient +one though a little breezy in manner. + +Linda now entered on an aftermath of matrimonial happiness. Rossiter +was to take quite a long leave so that he could pursue the most +important researches in curative surgery--bone grafting and the +like; not only in his own laboratory but at the College of Surgeons +and the Zoological Gardens Prosectorium. With only occasional +week-ends at home he had been away from London since September, +1914; had known great hardships, the life of the trenches and the +bomb-proof shelter, stewed tea and bad tinned milk, rum and water, +bully beef, plum and apple jam, good bread, it is true, but shocking +margarine for butter. He had slept for weeks together on an old sofa +more or less dressed, kept warm by his great-coat and two Army +blankets of woven porcupine quills (seemingly) the ends of which +tickled his nose and scratched his face. He had been very cold and +sweatingly hot, furiously hungry with no meal to satisfy his healthy +appetite, madly thirsty and no long drink attainable; unable to +sleep for three nights at a time owing to the noise of the +bombardment; surfeited with horrible smells; sickened with butchery; +shocked at his own failures to retrieve life, yet encouraged by an +isolated victory, here and there, over death and disablement. So the +never-before-appreciated comfort of his Park Crescent home filled +him with intense gratitude to Linda. + +Had he known, he owed some of his acknowledgment to Mrs. Adams; who +had worked both hard and tactfully in her undefined position of +lady's-maid-housekeeper-companion. But naturally he didn't know, +though he praised his wife warmly for her charity of soul in taking +pity on the poor little woman and her two children. He could only +give the slightest news about Bertie, but said he was a sort of +jack-of-all-trades for the Y.M.C.A. As to Vivie--"that Miss +Warren"--he answered his wife's questions neither with the glowering +taciturnity nor suspicious loquacity of former times. "Miss Warren? +Vivie? I fancy she's still at Brussels, but there is no chance of +finding out. There is a story that her mother is dead. P'raps now +they'll let her come away. She must be jolly well sick of Brussels +by now. When I last heard of Adams he was still hoping to get into +touch with her. I hope he won't take any risks. She's a clever woman +and I dare say can take care of herself. I hope we shall all meet +again when the War is over." + +He seemed very pleased to hear of the new Conciliation Bill, the +general agreement all round on the Suffrage question and the +enlargement of the electorate. He had always told Linda it was bound +to come. "And after it has come, dearie, you mark my words: things +will go on pretty much as before." But his real, intense, absorbing +interest lay in the new experiments he was about to make in bone +grafting and cartilage replacing, and the functions of the pituitary +body and the interstitial glands. To carry these out adequately the +Zoological Society had accumulated troops of monkeys and baboons. At +a certain depot in Camden Town dogs were kept for his purposes. And +the vaults and upper floors of the Royal College of Surgeons were at +Rossiter's disposal, with Professor Keith to co-operate. Never had +his house in Portland Place--to be accurate the Park Crescent end +thereof--seemed so conveniently situated, or its studio-laboratory +so well designed. "Air-raids? Pooh! Just about one chance in a +million we should be struck. Besides: can't think of that, when so +much is at stake. That's a fine phrase, 'Menders of the Maimed.' +Just what we want to be! No more artificial limbs if we can help you +to grow your own new legs and arms--perhaps. At any rate, mend up +those that are a hopeless mash. Grand work! Only bright thing in the +War. Now dear, are you ready with that lymph?" + +And she was. Never had Linda been so happy. She overcame her disgust +at the sight of blood, at monkeys, dogs, and humans under +anaesthetics, at yellow fat, gleaming sinew, and blood-stained bone. +She was careful as a washer-up. The services of Mrs. Adams were +enlisted, and she was more deft even than her mistress; and the +butler, who was by this time a regular hospital dresser, greatly +admired her pretty arms when they were bared to the elbow, and her +flushed cheeks when she took a humble part in some tantalizing +adjustment. + +"I'm some use to you after all," Linda would say when they retired +from the studio for a rest and she made the tea. "Some _use_? I +should think so!" said Rossiter (whether truly or not). And he +reproached himself that twenty years ago he had not trained and +developed her to help him in his work, to be a real companion in his +studies. + +He was really fond of her through the winter of 1916. And so jovial +and lover-like, so boyish in his fun, so like the typical Tommy home +from the trenches. When he was overjoyed at the success of some +uncovered and peeped-at experiment, he would sing, "When _I_ get me +civvies on again, an' it's Home Sweet Home once more"; and ask for +the ideal cottage "with rowses round the door--And a nice warm +bottle in me nice warm bed, An' a nice soft pillow for me nice soft +'ead..." Mrs. Rossiter began to think there was a good side to the +War, after all. It made some men more conscious of their home +comforts and less exigent for intellectuality in their home +companions. + +They went out very little into Society. Rossiter held that war-time +parties were scandalous. He poohpoohed the idea that immodest +dancing with frisky matrons or abandoned spinsters was necessary +to restore the shell-shocked nerves of temporary captains, +locally-ranked majors, or the recently-joined subaltern. He was far +too busy for twaddly tea-fights and carping at hard-worked generals +who were doing their best and a good best too. He and Linda did dine +occasionally with Honoria, but the latter felt she could not let +herself go about Vivie in the presence of Mrs. Rossiter and seemed +a little cold in manner. + +Ordinarily, after working hard all day while the daylight lasted +they much preferred an evening of complete solitude. Rossiter's new +robustness of taste included love of a gramophone. Money being no +consideration with them, they acquired a tip-top one with +superlative records; not so much the baaing, bellowing and shrieking +of fashionable singers, but orchestral performances, heart-melting +duets between violin and piano (_what_ human voice ever came up to a +good violin or violoncello?), racy comic songs, inspiriting two +steps, xylophone symphonies, and dreamy, sensuous waltzes. This +gramophone Linda learnt to work; and while Michael read voraciously +the works of Hunter, Hugh Owen Thomas, Stromeyer, Duchenne, Goodsir, +Wolff, and Redfern on bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, +periosteum and osteogenesis--or, more often, Keith's compact and +lucid analysis of their experiments and conclusions--Linda let loose +in the scented air of a log fire these varied melodies which attuned +the mind to extraordinary perceptibility. + +The little Adamses were allowed to steal in and listen, on condition +they never uttered a word to break the spell of Colonel Rossiter's +thoughts. + +I think also Rossiter felt his wife had been unjustly snubbed by the +great ladies and the off-hand, harum-scarum young war-workers; so he +flatly declined to have any of them messing around his studio or +initiated into his research work. It was intimated that the Rossiter +Thursday afternoons of long ago would not be resumed until after the +peace. Linda therefore derived much consolation and satisfaction for +past injuries to her pride when Lady Vera--or Victoria--Freebooter +called one day just before Christmas and said "Oh--er--mother's let +our house till February and thinks we'd better--I mean the Marrybone +Guild of war-workers--meet at _your_ house instead"; and she, +Linda, had the opportunity of replying: "Oh, I'm sorry, _but_ It's +QUITE impossible. The Professor--I mean, Colonel Rossiter--and I are +so _very_ busy ... we are seeing _no_ one just now. Indeed we've +enlisted all the servants to help the Colonel in his work, so I +can't even offer you a cup of tea.... I must _rush_ back at once.... +You'll excuse me?" + +"That Rossiter woman is quite off her head with grandeur," said Lady +Vera to Lady Helen. "I expect Uncle Algy has let out that her +husband is in the New Year's honours." + +And so he was. But Uncle Algy, though he might have babbled to his +nieces, had not written a word to the Rossiters. So they just +enjoyed Christmas--too much, they thought, more than any Christmas +before--in the simple satisfaction of being Colonel and Mrs. +Rossiter, all in all to each other, but rendered additionally happy +by making those about them happy. The little Adamses staggered under +their presents and had a Christmas Tree to which they were allowed +to ask their two grannies--Mrs. Laidly from Fig Tree Court and Mrs. +Adams from the Kilburn Laundry--and numerous little friends from +Marylebone, who had been washed and curled and crimped and adjured +not to disgrace their parents, _or_ father--in the trenches--would +be told "as sure as I stand here." + +(The little Adamses were also warned that if they _ever_ again were +heard calling Mrs. Rossiter "Gran'ma," they'd--but the threat was +too awful to be uttered, especially as their mother at this time was +always on the verge of tears, either at getting no news of Bert or +at the unforgettable kindness of Bert's employer.) + +Mrs. Rossiter, quite unaware that she was soon to be a Dame, gave +Christmas entertainments at St. Dunstan's, at the Marylebone +Workhouse, and to all the wounded soldiers in the parish. And on +December 31, 1916, Michael received a note from the Prime Minister +to say that His Majesty, in recognition of his exceptional services +in curative surgery at the front, had been pleased to bestow on him +a Knight Commandership of the Bath. "So that, Linda, you can call +yourself Lady Rossiter, and you will have to get some new cards +printed for both of us." + +Linda didn't feel quite that ecstasy over her title that she had +expected in her day-dreams. She was getting a little frightened at +her happiness. Generations of Puritan forefathers and mothers had +left some influence of Calvinism on her mentality. She was brought +up to believe in a jealous God, whose Providence when you felt too +happy on earth just landed you in some unexpected disaster to fit +you for the Kingdom of Heaven--a Kingdom which all healthy human +beings shrink from entering with the terror of the unknown and a +certain homeliness of disposition which is humbly content with this +cosy planet and a corporeal existence. + +However it was very nice to leave cards of calling on Lady +Towcester--even though she was out of town on account of +air-raids--and on others, inscribed: "Lady Rossiter, Colonel Sir +Michael Rossiter, Sir Michael and Lady Rossiter;" and to see printed +foolscap envelopes for Michael arrive from the War Office and lie on +the hall table, addressed: Colonel Sir Michael Rossiter K.C.B. etc., +etc., etc., etc. + +And later on, in January or February, for some very good reason, Sir +Michael and Lady Rossiter were received in audience by the King and +Queen at Buckingham Palace. The King had already watched Sir Michael +at work in his laboratory just behind the French front; so they two, +as Linda timidly glanced at them, had no lack of subjects for +conversation. But the Queen! Linda had thought she could _never_ +have talked to a Queen without swooning, and indeed had arrived +primed with much sal volatile. Yet there, as in some realistic +dream, she was led on to talk about her war charities and Sir +Michael's experiments without trembling, and found herself able to +listen with intelligence to the Queen's practical suggestions about +war work and the application of relief funds in crowded districts. +"_We actually compared notes!_" said a flushed and triumphant Linda +to her Michael, as they drove away through the blue twilight of St. +James's Park. + +And so far from being puffed up by this, people said they had always +thought Lady Rossiter was kind, but they really before had never +imagined there was so much in her. She was even allowed to preside +as Vice President, in the absence of Lady Towcester; and got through +it quite creditably--kind hearts being more than coronets--and made +a little speech to which cook and Nance Adams called out "Hear, +_Hear_!" and roused quite a hearty response. + + +Of course it was an awful wrench when Michael had to return to +France. But he would be back in the autumn, and meantime she must +remember she was a soldier's wife. So the summer was got through +with cheerfulness, especially as she was now treated with much more +regard in the different committees whereof she was Vice President. +On these committees she met Honoria Armstrong, and the longing to +renew the old friendship and talk about Michael's superlative +qualities to one who had long known them, took her over to +Kensington Square, impulsively. Honoria perceived the need +instinctively. The coldness engendered by Linda's silly +Anti-suffragism disappeared. They both talked by the hour together +of their respective husbands and their outstanding virtues and +charming weaknesses. The Armstrong children took to calling her Aunt +Linda--Michael and Petworth, after all, were brothers-in-arms and +friends from youth. Lady Rossiter was delighted, and lavished +presents on them, till Honoria reminded her it was war-time and +extravagance in all things was reprehensible, even in British-made +toys. + +They discussed the Vote, soon to be theirs, and how it should be +exercised. From that--by some instinct--Honoria passed on to a talk +about Vivien Warren ... a selective talk. She said nothing about +David Williams, but enlarged on Vivie's absolute "straightness," +especially towards other women; her business capacities, her +restoration of her mother to the ranks of the respectable; till at +last it seemed as though the burning down of racing stables was a +meritorious act ... "ridding England of an evil that good might +come." And there was poor Vivie, locked up in Brussels, if indeed +she were still living. + +Linda felt shocked at her own treachery to the Woman's Cause in +having betrayed that poor, well-meaning Miss Warren to the police. +Never could she confess this to Lady Armstrong (Sir Petworth had +just been knighted for a great success in battle), tell her about +the fragment of letter she had forwarded anonymously to Scotland +Yard. Perhaps she might some day tell Michael, when he returned. In +any case she would say at the next opportunity that as soon as Miss +Warren reappeared in England, he might ask her to the house as often +as he liked--even to stay with them if she were in want of a home. + +She said as much to Michael when he came back in September, 1917, to +make some further investigations into bone grafting. He seemed +genuinely pleased at her broad-mindedness, and said it would indeed +be delightful when the War was over--and it _surely_ must be over +soon--now Mr. Lloyd George and Clemenceau and President Wilson had +taken it in hand--it would indeed be delightful to form a circle of +close friends who had all been interested in the Woman's Movement. +As to Vivie ... if she were not dead ... he should advise her to go +in for Parliament. + +He had had no news of her since ever so long; what was worse, he +had now very great misgivings about Bertie Adams. During the autumn +of 1916 he had disappeared in the direction of La Bassee. There were +stories of his having joined some American Relief Expedition at +Lille--a most dangerous thing to do; insensate, if it were not a mad +attempt to get through to Brussels in disguise to rescue Miss +Warren. No one in the Y.M.C.A. believed for a moment that he had +done anything dishonourable. Most likely he had been killed--as so +many Y.M.C.A. people were just then, assisting to bring in the +wounded or going up to the trenches with supplies. Mrs. Adams had +better be prepared, cautiously, for a bereavement. Rossiter himself +was very sad about it. He had missed Bertie's services much these +last three years. He had never known a better worker--turn his hand +to anything--Such a good indexer, for example. + +Linda wondered whether _she_ could do any indexing? Three years ago +Michael would have replied: "_You?_ Nonsense, my dear. You'd only +make a muddle of it. Much better stick to your housekeeping" (which +as a matter of fact was done in those days by cook, butler and +parlour-maid). But now he said, thoughtfully: + +"Well--I don't know--perhaps you might. There's no reason you +shouldn't try." + +And Linda began trying. + +But she also worked regularly in the laboratory now, calling it at +his suggestion the lab, and stumbling no more over the word. She +wore a neat overall with tight sleeves and her hair plainly dressed +under a little white, pleated cap. She never now caught anything +with her sleeve and switched it off the table; she never let +anything drop, and was a most judicious duster and wiper-up. + +Rossiter in this autumn of 1917 was extremely interested in certain +crucial experiments he was making with spiculum in sponge-cells; +with scleroblasts, "mason-cells," osteoblasts, and "consciousness" +in bone-cells. Most of the glass jars in which these experiments +were going on (those of the sponges in sea-water) required daylight +for their progress. There was no place for their storage more +suitable than that portion of his studio-laboratory which was above +ground; and the situation of his house in regard to air attacks, +bombs, shrapnel seemed to him far more favourable than the upper +rooms at the College of Surgeons. That great building was often +endangered because of its proximity to the Strand and Fleet Street; +and the Strand and Fleet Street, being regarded by the Germans as +arteries of Empire, were frequently attacked by German air-craft. + +But in Rossiter's studio there was an under-ground annex as +continuation of the house cellars; and the household was instructed +that if, in Rossiter's absence, official warnings of an air-raid +were given, certain jars were to be lifted carefully off the shelves +and brought either into the library or taken down below in case, +through shrapnel or through the vibration of neighbouring +explosions, the glass of the studio roof was broken. + +One day in October, 1917, the German air fleet made a determined +attack on London. It was intended this time to belie the stories of +the heart of the Western district being exempted from punishment +because Lady So-and-so lived there and had lent her house in East +Anglia to the Empress and her children in 1912, or because Sir +Somebody-else was really an arch spy of the Germans and had to go on +residing in London. So the aeroplanes this time began distributing +their explosives very carefully over the residential area between +Regent's Park and Pall Mall, the Tottenham Court Road and +Selfridge's. + +Lady Rossiter in her overall was disturbed at her indexing by the +clamour of an approaching daylight raid; by the maroons, the +clanging of bells, the hooters, the gunfire; and finally by the not +very distant sounds of exploding bombs. She called and rang for the +servants, and then rushed from the library into the studio to +commence removing the more important of the jars to a place of +greater safety. She had seized two of them, one under each arm, and +was making for the library door, when there came the most awful +crash she had ever heard, and resounding bangs which seemed to echo +indefinitely in her ears.... + +Rossiter was working in the Prosectorium at the Zoo when the +daylight air-raid began. It seemed to be coming across the middle of +London; so, hastily doffing his overall, he left the Gardens and +walked rapidly towards Portland Place. He had hardly got past the +fountain presented by Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy in wasted +benevolence, than he heard the deafening report of the bomb which +had wrecked his studio, reduced it to a tangle of iron girders and +stanchions, strewn its floor with brick rubble and thick dust, and +left his wife a human wreck, lying unconscious with a broken spine, +surrounded by splinters of glass, broken jars, porcelain trays, and +nasty-looking fragments of sponge and vertebrate anatomy. With an +almost paralyzing premonition of disaster he ran as quickly as +possible towards Park Crescent. The Marylebone Road was strewn with +glass, and a policeman--every one else had taken shelter--was +ringing and knocking at his front door to ascertain the damage and +possible loss of life. Michael let both of them in with his +latch-key. In the hall the butler was lying prone, stunned by a +small statue which had been flung at him by the capricious violence +of the explosion. All the mirrors were shivered and most of the +pictures were down. At the entrance to the library cook was +standing, all of a tremble. The two little Adamses rushed up to him: +"Oh Sir Michael! Mummie is dead and Gran'ma is awfully hurted." + +But Mummie--Mrs. Adams--was not dead; neither was the expensive +parlour-maid. Both had fainted or been stunned by the explosion on +their way to help their mistress. Both lay inanimate on the library +floor. The library glass door was shivered to dangerous jagged +splinters, but the iron framework--"Curse it"--remained a tangled, +maddening obstacle to his further progress. He could see through the +splinters of thick glass something that looked like Linda, lying on +her back--and--something that looked like blood. The policeman who +followed him was strong and adroit. Together they detached the glass +splinters and wrenched open the framework, with space enough, at any +rate, to pass through without the rending of clothes into the +studio. + +Linda Rossiter was regaining consciousness for just a few more +minutes of sentient life. She was aware there had been a dreadful +accident to some one; perhaps to herself. But she fully believed she +had first of all saved the precious jars. No doubt they had put her +to bed, and as there was something warm (her blood, poor thing) +round her body, they must have packed her with hot water bottles. +Some idea of Michael's no doubt. How _kind_ he was! + +She would soon get right, with him to look after her. She opened +her eyes to meet his, as he bent over her, and said with the ghost +of an arch smile: "I--have been--of some use--to you, haven't--I? +... (then the voice faltered and trailed away) ... I ... +saved--your--specimens--" + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +BERTIE ADAMS + + +One day, early in April, 1917, Vivie was standing in a corridor of +the Hopital de St. Pierre talking to Minna von Stachelberg. She had +just come from the railway station, where in common with the few +British and Americans who remained in Brussels she had been to take +a respectful and grateful farewell of the American Minister and his +wife, who were leaving Belgium for Holland, prior to the American +declaration of war. American diplomacy had done little for her or +her mother, but it had been the shield, the salvation, the only hope +of Belgium. Moreover, the break-off of diplomatic relations +initiated the certain hope of a happier future. American +intervention in the war _must_ lead to Peace and Freedom. Germany +_must_ now be beaten and Belgium set free. + +So she had contributed her mite to the fund which purchased spring +flowers--hothouse-grown, for this April was a villainous +prolongation of winter--with which to strew the approach to the +station and fill the reserve compartment of the train. + +As Vivie was nearing the end of her description--and Minna was +hoping it _was_ the end, as she wanted to get back to her +patients--two German policemen marched up to Vivie, clicked their +heels, saluted, and said in German, "Mademoiselle Varennes, nicht +wahr? Be good enough to accompany us to the Kommandantur." + +At this dread summons, Vivie turned pale, and Minna dismayed began +to ask questions. The Polizei answered that they had none to +give.... Might she accompany her friend? She might not. Then +followed a ride in a military motor, with the two silent policemen. + +They arrived outside the Kommandantur.... More clanking, clicking, +and gruff conversation in German. She got out, in response to a +tight pressure on her arm, a grip in fact, and accompanied her grim +guide through halls and corridors, and at last entered a severely +furnished office, a kind of magistrate's court, and was confronted +with--Bertie Adams! A whiskered, bearded, moustached, shabbily +dressed (in a quasi-military uniform) Bertie Adams: lean, and +hollow-eyed, but with the love-light in his eyes. He turned on her +such a look of dog-like fealty, of happy recognition that although, +by instinct and for his safety, she was about to deny all knowledge +of him, she could not force her eyes or tongue to tell the lie. + +"Oh miss, oh my dear Miss Warren! _How_ I have hungered and thirsted +for a sight of you all these months and years! To see you once more +is worth all and more I've gone through to get here. They may shoot +me now, if they've got the heart--Not that I've done anything to +deserve it--I've simply had one object in view: To come here and +help you." + +He looked around as if instinctively to claim the sympathy of the +policemen. To say he met with none would be to make them out more +inhuman than they were. But as all this speech was in English they +understood but little of what he had said. They guessed he loved the +woman to whom he spake, but he may have been pleading with her not +to give him away, to palliate his acts of espionage. + +Vivie replied: + +"_Dear_ Bertie! You can't be gladder to see me than I am you. I +greet you with all my heart. But you must be aware that in coming +here like this you--" her words stuck in her throat--she knew not +what to say lest she might incriminate him farther-- + +A police officer broke in on her embarrassment and said in German: +"Es ist genug--You recognize him, Madame? He was arrested this +morning at the Hotel Imperial, enquiring for you. Meantime, you also +are under arrest. Please follow that officer." + +"May I communicate with my friends?" said Vivie, with a dry tongue +in a dry mouth. + +"Who are your friends?" + +"Graefin von Stachelberg, at the Hopital de St. Pierre; le Pasteur +Walcker, Rue Haute, 33--" + +"I will let them know that you are arrested on a charge of high +treason--in league with an English spy," he hissed. + +Then Vivie was pushed out of the room and Bertie was seized by two +policemen-- + + +They did not meet again for three days. It was a Saturday, and a +police agent came into the improvised cell where Vivie was +confined--who had never taken off her clothes since her arrest and +had passed three days of such mental distress as she had never +known, unable to sleep on the bug-infested pallet, unable to eat a +morsel of the filthy food--and invited her to follow him. "By the +grace of the military governor of the prison of Saint-Gilles"--he +said this in French as she understood German imperfectly--"you are +permitted to proceed there to take farewell of your English friend, +the prisoner A-dams, who has been condemned to death." + + +Bertie had been tried by court-martial in the Senate, on the Friday. +He followed all the proceedings in a dazed condition. Everything was +carried on in German, but the parts that most concerned him were +grotesquely translated by a ferocious-looking interpreter, who +likewise turned Bertie's stupid, involved, self-condemnatory answers +into German--no doubt very incorrectly. Bertie however protested, +over and over again, that Miss Warren knew _nothing_ of his +projects, and that his only object in posing as an American and +travelling with false passports was to rescue Miss Warren from +Brussels and enable her to pass into Holland, "or get out of the +country _some_ 'ow." As to the Emperor, and taking his life--"why +lor' bless you, _I_ don't want to take _any one's_ life. I 'ate war, +more than ever after all I've seen of it. Upon my honour, gentlemen, +all I want is Miss Warren." Here one member of the court made a +facetious remark in German to a colleague who sniggered, while, with +his insolent light blue eyes, he surveyed Bertie's honest, earnest +face, thin and hollowed with privations and fatigue.... + +He was perfunctorily defended by a languid Belgian barrister, tired +of the invidious role of mechanical pleading for the lives of +prisoners, especially where, as in this case, they were foredoomed, +and eloquence was waste of breath, and even got you disliked by the +impatient ogres, thirsty for the blood of an English man or +woman.... "Du reste," he said to a colleague, "agissait-il d'un +Belge, mon cher, tu sais que l'on se sentirait force a risquer le +deplaisir de ces ogres: tandis que, pour un pauvre bougre +d'Anglais...? Et qu'ont-ils fait pour nous, les Anglais? Nous avons +tache de leur boucher le trou a Liege--et--il--nous--ont--abandonne. +Enfin--allons boire un coup--" + + +Verdict: as translated by the ferocious interpreter:-- + +"Ze Court faind you Geeltee. You are condemned to Dess, and you will +be shot on Monday." + +In the prison of Saint-Gilles--as I believe elsewhere in +Belgium--though there might be a military governor in control who +was a German, the general direction remained in the hands of the +Belgian staff which was there when the German occupation began. +These Belgian directors and their subordinates were as kind and +humane to the prisoners under their charge as the Germans were the +reverse. Everything was done at Saint-Gilles to alleviate the mental +agony of the condemned-to-death. The German courts tried to prolong +and enhance the agony as much as possible, by sentencing the +prisoners three days, six days, a week before the time of execution +(though for fear of a reprieve this sentence was not immediately +published) and letting them know that they had just so many days or +hours to live: consequently most of them wasted away in prison with +mind-agony, inability to sleep or eat; and even opiates or +soporifics administered surreptitiously by the Belgian prison +doctors were but slight alleviations. + +Bertie when first placed in his cell at Saint-Gilles asked for pen, +ink, and paper. They were supplied to him. He was allowed to keep on +the electric light all night, and he distracted his mind--with some +dreadful intervals of horror at his fate--by trying to set forth on +paper for Vivie to read an explanation and an account of his +adventures. He intended to wind up with an appeal for his wife and +children. + +Vivie never quite knew how Bertie had managed to cross the War zone +from France into Belgium, and reach Brussels without being arrested. +When they met in prison they had so little time to discuss such +details, in face of the one awful fact that he was there, and was in +all probability going to die in two days. But from this incomplete, +tear-stained scribble that he left behind and from the answers he +gave to her few questions, she gathered that the story of his quest +was something like this:-- + +He had planned an attempt to reach her in Brussels or wherever she +might be, from the autumn of 1914 onwards. The most practicable way +of doing so seemed to be to pass as an American engaged in Belgian +relief work, in the distribution of food. Direct attempts to be +enrolled for such work proved fruitless, only caused suspicion; so +he lay low. In course of time he made the acquaintance of one of +those American agents of Mr. Hoover--a tousle-haired, hatless, +happy-go-lucky, lawless individual, who made mock of laws, rules, +precedents, and regulations. He concealed under a dry, taciturn, +unemotional manner an intense hatred of the Germans. But he was +either himself of enormous wealth or he had access to unlimited +national funds. He spent money like water to carry out his relief +work and was lavishly generous to German soldiers or civilians if +thereby he might save time and set aside impediments. He took a +strong liking to Bertie, though he showed it little outwardly. The +latter probably in his naivete and directness unveiled his full +purpose to this gum-chewing, grey-eyed American. When the news of +Mrs. Warren's death had reached Bertie through a circuitous +course--Praed-Honoria-Rossiter--he had modified his scheme and at +the same time had become still more ardent about carrying it into +execution. In fact he felt that Mrs. Warren's death was opportune, +as with her still living and impossible to include in a flight, +Vivie would probably have refused to come away. + +Therefore in the summer of 1916, he asked his American friend to +obtain two American passports, one for himself and one for "his +wife, Mrs. Violet Adams." Mr. Praed had sent him a credit for Five +hundred pounds in case he could get it conveyed to Vivie. Bertie +turned the credit into American bank notes. This money would help +him to reach Brussels and once there, if Vivie would consent to pass +as his wife, he might convey her out of Belgium into Holland, as two +Americans working under the Relief Committee. + +It had been excessively difficult and dangerous crossing the War +zone and getting into occupied Belgium. There was some hint in his +talk of an Alsatian spy who helped him at this stage, one of those +"sanspatries" who spied impartially for both sides and sold any one +they could sell (Fortunately after the Armistice most of these +Judases were caught and shot). The spy had probably at first +blackmailed him when he was in Belgium--which is why of the Five +hundred pounds in dollar notes there only remained about a third in +his possession when he reached Brussels--and then denounced him to +the authorities, for a reward. + +But his main misfortune lay in the long delay before he reached +Brussels. During that time, the entire American diplomatic and +consular staff was leaving Belgium; and the Emperor was arriving +more or less secretly in Brussels (it was said in the hope that a +personal talk with Brand Whitlock might stave off the American +declaration of war). + +Bertie on his arrival dared not to go to the American legation for +fear of being found out and disavowed. So he had asked his way in +very "English" French, and wearing the semi-military uniform of an +American Relief officer--to the Hotel "Edward-Sett," where he +supposed Vivie would be or could be heard of. When he reached the +Hotel Imperial and asked for "Miss Warren," he had been at once +arrested. Indeed probably his steps had been followed all the way +from the railway station to the door of the hotel by a plain-clothes +German policeman. The Germans were convinced just then that many +Englishmen and some American cranks were out to assassinate the +Kaiser. They took Bertie's appearance at the door of the Hotel +Imperial as a proof of his intention. They considered him to have +been caught red-handed, especially as he had a revolver concealed on +his person and was obviously travelling with false passports. + +"Ah, Bertie," said Vivie, when they first met in his cell at +Saint-Gilles prison. "If _only_ I had not led you into this! I am +mad with myself..." + +"Are you, miss? But 'oo could 'a foreseen this war would come along! +We thought all we 'ad to fight was the Police and the 'Ome Office to +get the Vote. And _then_, you'd 'a bin able to come out into the +open and practise as a barrister--and me, again, as your clerk. It +was our damned Government that made you go abroad and get locked up +'ere. And once I realized you couldn't get away, thinks I to meself, +_I'll_ find a way..." + +It was here that Vivie began questioning him as to how he had +reached Brussels from the War zone; and as, towards the end of his +story--some of which he said she would find he had written down in +case they wouldn't let him see her--the reference to the Emperor +came in, she sprang up and tried the door of the cell. It was +fastened without, but a face covered the small, square opening +through which prisoners were watched; and a rough voice asked her +what she wanted. It was the German police agent or spy, who, perched +on a stool outside, next this small window, was there to listen to +all they said. As they naturally spoke in English and the rough +creature only knew "God-dam," and a few unrepeatable words, he was +not much the wiser for his vigil. + +"I want--I _must_ see the Director," said Vivie. + +Presently the Director came. + +"Oh, sir," said Vivie, "give me paper and an envelope, I _implore_ +you. There is pen and ink here and I will write a letter to the +Emperor, a petition. I will tell him briefly the true story of this +poor young man; and _then_, if you will only forward it he may grant +a reprieve." + +The Director said he would do his best. After all, you never knew; +and the Kaiser, though he said he hated them always, had a greater +regard for the English than for any other nation. As he glanced +from Vivie and her face of agonized appeal to the steadfast gaze +which Bertie fixed on her, as on some fairy godmother, his own eyes +filled with tears--as indeed they did many, many times over the +tragic scenes of the German Terror. + +Another request. Could Vivie see or communicate with Graefin von +Stachelberg?--with Pasteur Walcker? + +Here the police agent intervened--"Nothing of the kind! You're not +going to hold a salon here. Far too many concessions already. Much +more fuss and trouble, and I shall take you back to the Kommandantur +and report. Write your letter to the All Highest, who may deign to +receive it. As to Pastor Walcker, he shall come to-morrow, Sunday, +to prepare the Englishman for his death, on Monday--" + +Vivie wrote her letter--probably in very incoherent language. It was +handed to the German police agent. He smiled sardonically as he took +it in his horny hand with its dirty broken nails. The Governor +General disliked these appeals to the All Highest. Indeed, in most +cases executions that were intended to take place were only +announced at the same time as the condemnation, to obviate the worry +of these appeals. Besides, he knew the Emperor had left that morning +for Charleville, after having bestowed several decorations on the +police officials who told him they had just frustrated an English +plot for his assassination. + + +Vivie and Bertie were at length alone, for the police agent was +bored, couldn't understand their talk, and gave himself an afternoon +off. In this prison of Saint-Gilles, the cells were in many ways +superior to those of English prisons. They were well lit through a +long window, not so high up but that by standing on a chair you +could look out on the prison garden. Through this window the rays of +the sun could penetrate into and light up the cell. There was no +unpleasant smell--one of the horrors of Holloway. The floor was a +polished parquet. The bed was comfortable. There was a table, even a +book-shelf. The toilet arrangements were in no way repulsive or +obvious. + +Vivie insisted on Bertie lying down on the bed; she would sit on the +chair by his side. He must be so exhausted.... + +"And what about _you_, miss? I'll lay you ain't slept these last +three nights. _What_ a mess I've made of the 'ole thing!" + +"Bertie! _Why_ did you do this? _Why_ did you risk your life to come +here; _oh why, oh why_?" wailed Vivie. + +"Because I loved you, because I've always loved you, better'n any +one else on earth--since I was a boy of fourteen and you spoke so +kind to me and encouraged me to get on and improve myself; and giv' +me books, and encouraged me about me cricket. I suppose I'm going to +die, so I ain't got any shame about tellin' you all this. Though if +I thought I was goin' to live, I'd cut my tongue out sooner'n offend +you--Oh,"--he gave a kind of groan--"When the news come about Mrs. +Warren bein' dead an' you p'raps without money and at the mercy of +these Germans ... well!--all I wonder at is I didn't steal an +airyplane, and come in that. I tell you I had to exercise great +self-control to stay week after week fiddling with the food +distribution and pretendin' to be an American.... + +"Well! There it is! We must all die sooner or later. It's a wonder I +ain't dead already. I've bin in some tight places since I come out +for the Y.M.C.A.... + +"And talkin' about the Y.M.C.A., miss, I do _beg_ of you, if you get +out of this--an' I'm sure you will--they'll never kill _you_," said +Bertie adoringly, looking up at the grave, beautiful face that bent +over him--"I do _beg_ of you to make matters right with the +Y.M.C.A. I ain't taken away one penny of their money--I served 'em +faithfully up to the last day before I saw my chance of hooking it +across the lines--They must think me dead--and so must poor Nance, +my wife. For I haven't dared to write to any one since I've bin in +Belgium. But I did send her a line 'fore I started, sayin', 'Don't +be surprised if you get no letter from me for some time. I'll turn +up all right, you bet your boots--' + +"That may 'ave kept 'er 'opin'. An' soon you'll be able to let 'er +know. Who can say? _I_ dunno! But Peace, you'd think, must come +soon--Seems like our poor old world is comin' to an end, don't it? +_What_ times we've 'ad--if you don't mind me puttin' it like that! I +remember when I had to be awful careful always to say 'Sir' to you, +and 'Mr. David' or 'Mr. Williams'"--and a roguish look, a gleam of +merriment came into Bertie's eyes, and he laughed a laugh that was +half sob. "If you was to write your life, no one 'ud believe it, +miss. It licks any novel I ever read--and I've read a tidy few, +looking after the Y.M.C.A. libraries.... + +"My! But you was wonderful as a pleader in the courts! I used +sometimes to reg'lar cry when I heard you takin' up the case of some +poor girl as 'ad bin deserted by 'er feller, and killed 'er baby. +'Tricks of the trade,' says some other barrister's clerk, sneerin' +because you wasn't 'is boss. An' then I'd punch 'is 'ead.... An' I +don't reckon myself a soft-'earted feller as a rule.... Reklect that +Shillito Case--?" + +"_Don't_, Bertie! _Don't_ say such things in praise of me. I'm not +_worth_ such love. I'm just an arrogant, vain, quarrelsome woman.... +Look how many people I've deceived, what little good I've really +done in the world--" + +"Rub--bish! You done good wherever you went ... to my pore +mother--wonder, by the bye, what _she_ thinks and 'ow _she's_ +gettin' on? Sons are awful ungrateful and forgettin'. What with +you--and Nance--and the little 'uns, I ain't scarcely give a thought +to poor mother. But you'll let her know, won't you, miss?... + +"Think 'ow good you was to your old father down in Wales, 'im as you +called your father--an' 'oo's to say 'e wasn't? You never know.... +Miss Warren! what a pity it is you never married. There's lots was +sweet on you, I'll bet. Yet I remember I used to 'ate the idea of +your doin' so, and was glad you dressed up as a man, an' took 'em +all in.... I may tell you all, miss, now I'm goin' to die, day after +to-morrow. My poor Nance! She see there was some one that always +occupied my mind, and she used to get jealous-like, at times. But +never did I let on it was you. Why I wouldn't even 'av said it to +myself--I respected you more than--than--" + +And Bertie, at a loss for a parallel, ceased speaking for a time, +and gulped down the sobs that were mastering him. + +Then, after this pause--"I haven't a word to say against Nance. No +one could 'a bin a better wife. I know, miss, if you get away from +here you'll look after her and my kids? I ain't bin much of a father +to 'em lately. P'raps this is a punishment for neglecting my home +duties--As they used to say to you when you was Suffragin'." He gave +a bitter laugh--"Two such _nice_ kids.... I ain't seen 'em since +last February twelve-month ... more'n a year ago ... I got a bit of +leave then.... There's little Vivie--the one we called after you.... +She's growin' up so pretty ... and Bert! 'E'll be a bigger and a +better man than me, some day. 'E's started in life with better +chances. I 'ope 'e'll be a cricketer. There's no game comes up to +cricket, in my opinion..." + +At this juncture, the Belgian Directeur of the jail opened the door +and asked Vivie to follow him, telling Bertie she would return in +the afternoon. At the same time, a warder escorting two good conduct +prisoners who did the food distribution proceeded to place quite an +appetizing meal in Bertie's cell. "Dear miss," said the Directeur in +French, "You are so wise, I know, you will do what I wish...?" + +(Vivie bowed.) + +"I shall not send you back to the Kommandantur. I will take that on +myself. But I must regard you while here as my prisoner"--he smiled +sadly--"Come with me. I will give you a nice cell where you shall +eat and sleep, and--yes--and my wife shall come and see you..." + + +In the evening of that day, Vivie was led back to Bertie's cell. +There she found kind Pasteur Walcker. In some way he had heard of +Bertie's condemnation--perhaps seen it posted up on a Red +Placard--and in his quiet assumption that whatever he did was right, +had not waited for an official summons but had presented himself at +the prison of Saint-Gilles and asked to see the Directeur. He +constituted himself Bertie's spiritual director from that time +onwards.... He spoke very little English but he was there more to +sympathize than to preach-- + +"Ce n'est pas, chere Mamselle que je suis venu le troubler sur les +questions de religion. J'ai voulu le rassurer--et vous aussi--que +j'ai deja mis en train tous les precedes possibles, et que je +connais, pour obtenir sa grace.... But," he went on, "I have spoken +to the prison doctor and begged him meantime to give the poor young +man an injection or a dose of something to make him sleep a little +while..." + +Then he withdrew. + +The daylight turned pink and faded to grey whilst Vivie sat by the +bed holding the left hand of the sleeping man. Exhausted with +emotion, she dropped off to sleep herself, slid off the chair on to +the parquet, laid her head on the angle of his pillow and slept +likewise.... + +The electric light suddenly shone out from a globe in the angle of +the wall which served two cells. She awoke; Bertie awoke. He was +still happy in some opiate dream and his eyes in his haggard face +looked at her with a sleepy, happy affection. Loth to awaken him to +reality she kissed him on the cheek and withdrew from the cell--for +the Directeur, out of delicacy, had withdrawn and left the door +ajar. She rejoined him in the corridor and he led her to her own +quarters for the night; where, worn out with sorrow and fatigue, she +undressed and slept dreamlessly. + +But the hour of the awakening on that wintry Sunday morning! It was +snowing intermittently and the sky, seen from the high window, was +lead-coloured. Owing to the scarcity of fuel, the cell was unwarmed. +She dressed hurriedly, feeling still untidy and dishevelled when she +had finished. Her breakfast, and with it a little packet of white +powder from the prison doctor, to be taken with the breakfast. She +swallowed it. If it were poison sent by the German Government, what +matter? But it was in reality some drug which took the edge off +sorrow. + +Bertie had evidently been given a similar dose. They spent the +morning and the afternoon of that Sunday together, almost happily. +With intervals of dreamy silence, they talked of old times. Neither +would have been surprised had the cell walls dissolved as in a +transformation scene and they had been able to step out into the +Fountain Court of the Temple or into the cheerful traffic of +Chancery Lane. + +When however she returned to his cell after her evening meal, his +mood had changed; the effect of the drug had passed. He had moods of +despair and wild crying. No response had come, no answer to Vivie's +appeal, no result from Monsieur Walcker's activities. Bertie +reproached himself for cowardice ... then the doctor came in. "An +injection in the arm? So! He will sleep now till morning. Esperons +toujours! Et vous, ma pauvre Mademoiselle. Vous etes excedee. +Permettez que je vous fasse la meme piqure?" + +But she thanked him and said she wanted all her wits about her, +though she promised "se maitriser"--to keep calm. + +What a night! Her ears had a sense of hearing that was +preternaturally acute. The most distant step in the corridors was +audible. Was it a reprieve? One such sound multiplied itself into +the footsteps of two men walking, coming ever nearer--nearer--nearer +till they stopped outside her cell door. With a clank it was opened. +She sprang up. Fortunately she had not undressed. "You've brought a +reprieve?" she gasped. But the Directeur and Monsieur Walcker only +stood with downcast faces. "It will soon be morning," the Directeur +said. "There is no hope of a reprieve. He is to be executed at seven +at the Tir National. All we have secured for you is permission to +accompany him to the end. But if you think _that_ too painful, too +great a strain, I would suggest that you--" + +"Nothing could overstrain me," said Vivie, "or rather I don't care +if anything kills me. I will go with him and stay with him, till the +very last moment, stay with him till he is buried if you permit!" + +She made some hasty toilette, more because she wanted to look a fit +companion for him, and not a wretched derelict. They summoned her, +proffering a cup of acorn coffee, which she waved aside. The bitter +cold air of the snowy April morning braced her. She entered the +shuttered, armoured prison taxi in which Bertie and a soldier were +placed already. Bertie had his arms tied, but not too painfully. He +was shivering with the cold, but as he said, "_Not_ afraid, miss. +It'll come out allright, some'ow. That Mr. Walcker, 'e done me a lot +of good. At any rate I'll show how an Englishman can die. 'Sides 'e +says reprieves sometimes comes at the last moment. They takes a +pleasure in tantalizin' you. And the doctor put somethin' in me cup +of coffee, sort of keeps me spirits up." + +But for Vivie, that drive was an unforgettable agony. They went +through suburbs where the roads had been unrepaired or torn up by +shrapnel. The snow lay in places so thickly that it nearly stopped +the motor. Still, it came to an end at last. The door on one side +was wrenched open; she was pulled out rather unceremoniously; then, +the pinioned Bertie, who was handed over to a guard; and the soldier +escort after him, who took his place promptly by his side. Vivie had +just time to note the ugly red-brick exterior of the main +building of the Tir National. It reminded her vaguely of some +hastily-constructed Exhibition at Earl's Court or Olympia. Then she +was pushed inside a swinging door, into a freezing corridor; where +the Prison Directeur and Monsieur Walcker were standing--irresolute, +weeping.... + +"Where is Bertie?" she asked. + +"He is being prepared for the shooting party," they answered. "It +will soon be over ... dear dear lady ... try to be calm--" + +"I will be as calm as you like," she said, "I will behave with the +utmost correctitude or whatever you call it, if you--if they--the +soldiers--the officer--will let me see him--as you promised--up to +the last, the very last. But by God--if there _is_ a God--if you or +they prevent me, I'll--" + +Inexplicably, sheer mind-force prevailed, without the need for +formulating the threat the poor grief-maddened woman might have +uttered--she moved unresisted to a swing door which opened on to a +kind of verandah. Here was drawn up the firing party, and in front +of them, fifteen feet away on snow-sodden, trampled grass, stood +Bertie. He caught sight of Vivie passing in, behind the firing +party, and standing beyond them at the verandah rail. He +straightened himself; ducked his head aside from the handkerchief +with which they were going to bandage his eyes, and shouted "Take +away your blasted handkerchief! _I_ ain't afraid o' the guns. If +you'll let me look at HER, I'll stand as quiet as quiet." + +The officer in command of the firing party shrugged his shoulders. +The soldier escort desisted from his attempts to blindfold the +Englishman and stood aside, out of range. Bertie fixed his glowing +eyes on the woman he had loved from his youth up, the rifles rang +out with a reverberating bellow, and he fell out of her sight, +screened by the soldiers, a crumpled body over which they threw a +sheet. + +What happened then to Vivie? I suppose you expect the time-worn +trick of the weary novelist, anxious to put his pen down and go to +his tea: "Then she seemed swallowed up in a cloud of blackness and +knew no more"--till it was convenient to the narrator to begin a +fresh chapter. But with me it must be the relentless truth and +nothing but the truth, in all its aspects. Vivie was deafened, +nearly stunned by the frightful noise of the volley in a confined +space. Next, she was being unceremoniously pushed out of the +verandah, into the corridor, and so out into the snow-covered space +in front of the brick building; whilst the officer was examining the +dead body of the fallen man, ready to give the _coup-de-grace_, if +he were not dead. But he was. Vivie was next conscious that she had +the most dreadful, blinding headache she had ever known, and with it +felt an irresistible nausea. The prison Directeur was taking her +hand and saying: "Mademoiselle: it is my duty to inform you that you +are no longer under arrest. You are free to return to your lodging." +Minna von Stachelberg had come from somewhere and was taking her +right arm, to lead her Brussels-ward; and Pasteur Walcker was +ranging himself alongside to be her escort. Unable to reply to any +of them, she strode forward by herself to where under the snow lay +an ill-kept grass plot, and there was violently sick. The +anaesthetics and soporifics of the last two days were having their +usual aftermath. After that came on a shuddering faintness and a +rigor of shivers, under which her teeth clacked. Some doctor came +forward with a little brandy. She put the glass to her lips, then +pushed it aside, took Pasteur Walcker's proffered arm, and walked +towards the tram terminus. + +Then they were in the tram, going towards the heart of Brussels. How +commonplace! Fat frowsy market women got in--or got out--with their +baskets; clerks entered with portfolios--don't they call them +"serviettes"?--under their arms; German policemen, Belgian +gendarmes, German soldiers, a priest with his breviary came and went +as though this Monday morning were like any other. Vivie walked +quite firmly and staidly from the tram halt to the Walckers' house +in the Rue Haute. There she was met by Madame Walcker, who at a sign +from her husband took her upstairs, silently undressed her and put +her to bed with a hot water bottle and a cup of some hot drink which +tasted a little of coffee. + +After that Vivie passed three days of great sickness and nausea, a +furred tongue, and positively no appetite. Finally she arose a week +after the execution and looked at herself in the mirror. She was +terribly haggard, she looked at least fifty-five--"They must have +taken me for his mother or his aunt; never for his sweetheart," she +commented bitterly to herself. And her brown-gold hair was now +distinctly a cinder grey. + +The next day she went back to work at the hospital. + +To Minna, she said: "I can _never, never, never_ forget your +kindness and sympathy. 'Sister' seems an insufficient name to call +you by. Whatever happens, unless you cast me off, we shall be +friends.... I dare say I even owe my life to you, if it is worth +anything. But it is. I want to live--now--I want to live to be +revenged. I want to live to help Bertie's"--her voice still shook +over the name--"Bertie's wife and children. I expect but for you I +should have been tried already in the Senate for complicity with ... +Bertie ... and found guilty and shot..." + +_Minna_: "I won't go so far as to say you are right. But I certainly +_was_ alarmed about you, when you were arrested. Of course I knew +nothing--_nothing_--about that poor young man till just before his +execution when Pastor Walcker came to me. Even then I could do +nothing, and I understood so badly what had happened. But about you: +I said to myself, if I do not do _something_, you can perhaps be +sentenced to imprisonment ... and I _did_ bestir myself, you can +bet!" (Minna liked to show she knew a slangy phrase or two.) "So I +telegraphed to the Emperor, I besieged von Bissing at the Ministere +des Sciences et des Arts; wrote to him, telegraphed to him, +telephoned to him, sat in his anterooms, neglected my hospital work +entirely from Friday to Monday-- + +"I expect as a matter of fact they found nothing in that poor +young's man's papers to implicate you. They just wanted--the +brutes--to give you a good fright ... and I dare say ... such is the +military mind--even wished you to see him shot. + +"By the bye, I suppose you have heard that von Bissing is very ill? +Dying, perhaps--" + +_Vivie_: "I _hope_ so. I am _so_ glad. I hope it's a painful +illness and that he'll die and find there really _is_ a Hell, and an +uncommonly hot one!" + + +It must not be supposed from the frequent quotations from Countess +von Stachelberg's condemnations of German cruelties that she was an +unpatriotic woman, repudiating, apostatizing from her own country. +On the contrary: she held--mistakenly or not--that Germany had been +the victim of secret diplomacy, had been encircled by a ring fence +of enemies, refused the economic guarantees she required, and the +colonial expansion she desired. Minna disliked the Slavs, did not +believe in them, save as musicians, singers, painters, dancers, +and actors. She believed Germany had a great civilizing, +culture-spreading mission in South-east Europe; and that the germs +of this war lay in the policy of Chamberlain, the protectionism of +the United States, the revengeful spirit and colonial selfishness of +France. + +But she shuddered over the German cruelties in Belgium and France. +The horrors of War were a revelation to her and she was henceforth a +Pacifist before all things. "_Your_ old statesmen and _our_ old or +middle-aged generals, my dear, are alike to blame. But you and I +know where the _real_ mischief lies. We are mis-ruled by an +All-Man Government. _I_, certainly, don't want the other extreme, +an All-Woman Government. What we want, and must have, is a +Man-and-Woman--a Married--Government. _Then_ we shall settle our +differences without going to war." + +Vivie agreed with her, cordially. + +She--Vivie--I really ought to begin calling her "Vivien": she is +forty-one by now--in resuming her duties at the Hopital de St. +Pierre found no repugnance in tending wounded German soldiers--the +officers she did shrink from--She realized that the soldiers were +but the slaves of the officer class, of Kaiserdom. Her reward for +this degree of Christianity was to have a batch of wounded English +boys or men to look after. She saw again Bertie Adams in many of +them, especially in the sergeants and corporals. They, in turn, +thought her a very handsome, stately lady, but rather maudlin at +times. "So easy to set 'er off a-cryin' as though 'er 'eart would +break, poor thing.... And I says 'why ma'am, the pain's _nuthin_', +nuthin' to what it use ter be.' 'Spec' she lost some son in the war. +Wonder 'ow she came to be 'ere? Ain't the Germans afraid of 'er!"... + +They were. The mental agony she had been through had etherialized +her face, added to its look of age and gravity, but imparted +likewise a sort of "awfulness." She exhaled an aura of righteous +authority. She had been through the furnace, and foolishness and +petulance had been burnt out of her ... though, thank goodness, she +retained some sense of humour. She had probably never been so +handsome from the painter's point of view, though one could not +imagine a young man falling in love with her now. + +Her personality was first definitely noted by the Bruxellois the day +that von Bissing's funeral cortege passed through the streets of +Brussels on its way to Germany. Vivien Warren was sufficiently +restored to health then to stand on the steps of some monument and +cry "Vive la Belgique! A bas les tyrans!" The policemen and the +spies looked another way and affected deafness. They had orders not +to arrest her unless she actually resorted to firearms or other +lethal weapons. + +It was said that her appeal for Bertie Adams did reach the Emperor, +two days too late; that he pished and pshawed over von Bissing's +cruel precipitancy. "Englishmen," he muttered to his entourage, +"don't assassinate. The Irish do. But _how_ I'm going to make peace +with England, _I_ don't know...!" + +(His Hell on Earth must have been that few people admired the +English character more than he did, and yet, unprovoked, he had +blundered into war with England.) + +However, though it was too late to save "this lunatic Adams," he +gave orders that Vivie was to be let alone. He even, through Graefin +von Stachelberg, transmitted to her his regrets that she and her +mother had been treated so cavalierly at the Hotel Imperial. It was +not through any orders of his. + +So: Vivie became quite a power in Brussels during that last anxious +year and a half of waiting, between May, 1917, and November, 1918. +German soldiers, still limping from their wounds, saluted her in the +street, remembering her kindness in hospital, and the letters she +unweariedly wrote at their dictation to their wives and +families--for she had become quite a scholar in German. The scanty +remains of the British Colony and the great ladies among the +patriotic Belgians now realized how false were the stories that had +circulated about her in the first year of the War; and extended to +her their friendship. And the Spanish Minister who had taken the +place of the American as protector of British subjects, invited her +to all the fetes he gave for Belgian charities and Red Cross funds. +Through his Legation she endeavoured to send information to the +Y.M.C.A. and to Bertie's widow that Albert Adams of the Y.M.C.A. +"had died in Brussels from the consequences of the War." + +I dare say in the autumn of 1917, if Vivien Warren had applied +through the Spanish Minister for a passport to leave Belgium for +some neutral country, it would have been accorded to her: the German +authorities would have been thankful to see her no more. She +reminded them of one of the cruellest acts of their administration. +But she preferred to stay for the historical revenge of seeing the +Germans driven out of Belgium, and Belgian independence restored. +And she could not go lest Bertie's grave should be forgotten. In +common with Edith Cavell, Gabrielle Petit, Philippe Bauck, and the +other forty or fifty victims of von Bissing's "Terror," he had been +buried in the grassy slopes of the amphitheatre of the Rifle range, +near where he had been executed. Every Sunday, wet or fine, Vivien +went there with fresh flowers. She had marked the actual grave with +a small wooden cross bearing his name, till the time should come +when she could have his remains transferred to English soil. + +One day, as she was leaving the hospital in the autumn of 1917, a +shabby man pushed into her hand a soiled, way-worn copy of the +_Times_, a fortnight old. "Three francs," he whispered. She paid +him. It was no uncommon thing for her or one of her English or +Belgian acquaintances to buy the _Times_ or some other English daily +at a price ranging from one franc to ten, and then pass it round the +friendly circle of subscribers who apportioned the cost. On this +occasion she opened her _Times_ in the tram, going home, and glanced +at its columns. In any one but "Mees Varennes" in these days of +1917, 1918, this would have been a punishable offence; but in her +case no spy or policeman noted the infringement of regulations about +the enemy press. On one of the pages she read the account of a bad +air-raid on Portland Place, and a reference--with a short obituary +notice elsewhere--to the death of one of the victims of the German +bombs. This was "Linda, Lady Rossiter, the dearly loved wife of Sir +Michael Rossiter, whose discoveries in the way of bone grafting and +other forms of curative surgery had been among the outstanding +achievements in etc., etc." + +"Dear me!" said Vivien to herself, as the tram coursed on beyond her +usual stopping place and the conductor obstinately looked the other +way, "I'm glad she lived to be _Lady_ Rossiter. It must have given +her such pleasure. Poor thing! And to think the knowledge that he's +a widower hardly stirs my pulses one extra beat. And how I _loved_ +that man, seven years, six years, five years ago! Hullo! Where am I? +Miles from the Rue Haute! Conducteur! Arretez, s'il vous plait." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +AFTER THE ARMISTICE + + +The Bruxellois felt very disheartened in the closing months of 1917. +The Russian revolution had brought about the collapse of Russia as +an enemy of Germany; and the Germans were enabled to transport most +of their troops on the Russian frontier to the west and to the +Italian frontier. Italy had lost half Venetia and enormous +quantities of guns in the breach of her defences at Caporetto. It +seemed indeed at any moment, when the ice and snow of that dreadful +winter of 1917-18 melted, as though Italy would share the fate of +Rumania. Though the British army had had a grand success with their +Tanks, they had, ere 1917 ended, lost nearly all the ground gained +round Cambrai. Besides, the submarine menace was imperilling the +British food supplies and connections with America. As to the United +States: was their intervention going to be more than money loans and +supplies of material? Would they really supply the fighting men, the +one thing at this crisis necessary to defeat Germany? + +Belgium had been divided administratively into two distinct +portions, north and south of the Meuse. North of the Meuse she was +to be a Dutch-speaking country either part of Germany eventually, or +given to Holland to compensate her for her very benevolent +neutrality towards Germany during the War. A handful of Flemish +adventurers appeared at Brussels to form the Council of Flanders, +and sickened the Bruxellois by their lavish praise of the German +administration and servile concurrence with all German measures. + +The events of the spring of 1918 accentuated the despair in the +Belgian capital. When the Germans broke through the defences of the +new lines which ran through Picardy and Champagne, reached the +vicinity of Amiens, retook Soissons, and recrossed the Marne, it +seemed as though Belgian independence had been lost; the utmost she +could hope for would be the self-government of a German province. + +But Vivie was not among the pessimists. She discerned a smouldering +discontent among the German soldiers, even when Germany seemed near +to a sweeping victory over France and Britain. + +The brutality of the soldiers, their deliberate, nasty dirtiness +during the first two years of the War seemed due rather to their +officers' orders than to an anti-human disposition of their own. +Many of the soldiers in Belgium, in Brussels, turned round--so to +speak--and conceived a horror of what they had done, of what they +had been told to do. Men who on the instigation of their +officers--and these last, especially the Prussians, seemed fiends +incarnate--had offered violence to young Belgian women, ended by +offering to marry them, even showed themselves kind husbands, only +too willing to become domesticated, groaning at having to leave +their temporary homes and return to the terrible fighting on the +Yser or in France. + +There were, for example, the soldiers stationed at the Villa +Beau-sejour and at the Oudekens' farm. Vivie had a growing desire to +find out what had happened to her mother's property. One day, late +in February, 1918, when there was a premature breath and feeling of +Spring in the air, she called on her friend--as he had become--the +Directeur of the Prison of Saint-Gilles, and asked him--since she +herself could not deign to ask any favour or concession of the +German authorities--to obtain for her a permit to proceed to +Tervueren, the railway service between Brussels and that place +having been reopened. She walked over--with what reminiscences the +roads and paths were filled--to the Villa, and showing her pass was +received, not uncivilly, by the sergeant-major in charge. +Fortunately the officers had all gone, voting it very dull, with +Brussels so near and yet so far. After their departure the +sergeant-major and his reduced guard of men had begun to make the +place more homelike. The usual German thrift had shown itself. They +had reassembled the remains of Mrs. Warren's herd of cows. These had +calves and were giving milk. There were once more the beginnings of +a poultry yard. The rooms had been cleaned at any rate of their +unspeakable filth, though the dilapidations and the ruined furniture +made tears of vexation stand in Vivie's eyes. However she kept her +temper and told the sergeant that it was _her_ property now; that +she intended to reclaim it at the end of the War, and that if he saw +to it that the place was handed back to her with no further damage, +she would take care that he was duly rewarded; and as an instalment +she gave him a good tip. He replied with a laugh and a shrug "That +may well come about." ("Das koennte wohl geschehen.") + +He had already heard of the Englaenderin whom the Kommandantur was +afraid to touch, and opened his heart to her; even offering to +prepare her a little meal in her own _salle a manger_. With what +strange sensations she sat down to it. The sergeant as he brought in +the _oeufs au plat_ said the soldiers were already sick of the +War. Most wanted to go back to Germany, but a few were so much in +love with Belgium that they hoped they might be allowed to settle +down there; especially those who spoke Platt-deutsch, to whom +Flemish came so easy. + +From Villa Beau-sejour, Vivien Warren passed on to the Oudekens' +farm, wondering what she would see--Some fresh horror? But on the +contrary, Mme. Oudekens looked years younger; indeed when Vivien +first stood outside the house door, she had heard really hearty +laughter coming from the orchard where the farmer's widow was +pinning up clothes to dry. Yet it was here that the woman's husband +had been shot and buried, as the result of a field-court's sentence. + +But when she answered Vivien's questions, after plying her with +innumerable enquiries, she admitted with a blush that Heinrich, the +German sergeant, with whom she had first cohabited by constraint, +had recently married her at the Mairie, though the Cure had refused +to perform the religious service. Heinrich was now invariably kind +and worked hard on the farm. He hoped by diligently supplying the +officers' messes in Brussels with poultry and vegetables that he and +his assistants--two corporals--might be overlooked and not sent back +into the fighting ranks. As to her daughters, after a few months of +promiscuity--a terrible time that Mme. Oudekens wanted to +forget--they had been assigned to the two corporals as their +exclusive property. They were both of them about to become mothers, +and if no one interfered, as soon as this accursed War was over +their men would marry them. "But," said Vivie, "suppose your husband +and these corporals are married already, in Germany?" "Qu'est-ce-que +ca fait?" said Mme. Oudekens. "C'est si loin." By making these +little concessions she had already saved her youngest son from +deportation to Germany. + +The enormous demands for food in Brussels, which in 1918 had a +floating population of over a million and where the Germans were +turning large dogs into pemmican, had tripled the value of all +productive farms so near the capital as those round Tervueren, +especially now the railway service was reopened. Many of the +peasants were making huge fortunes in complicity with some German +soldier-partner. + +In Brussels itself, soldiers often sided with the people against the +odious "polizei," the intolerable German spies and police agents. +Conflicts would sometimes occur in the trams and the streets when +the German police endeavoured to arrest citizens for reading the +_Times_ or _La Libre Belgique_, or for saying disrespectful things +about the Emperor. + +The tremendous rush of the German offensive onward to the Marne, +Somme, and Ypres salient in March-June, 1918, was received by the +shifting garrison of Brussels with little enthusiasm. Would it not +tend to prolong the War? The German advance into France was +spectacular, but it was paid for by an appalling death-roll. The +hospitals at Brussels were filled to overflowing with wounded and +dying men. The Austrians who were brought from the Italian front to +replenish the depleted battalions, quarrelled openly with the +Prussians, and in some cases had to be surrounded in a barrack +square and shot down. + +The first real check to the German Army in its second march on +Paris--that which followed its crossing of the Marne near +Dormans--was prophetically greeted by the Bruxellois as the turning +of the tide. The Emperor had gone thither from the Hotel Imperial in +order to witness and follow the culminating march on Paris. But Foch +now struck with his reserves, and the head of the tortoise was +nipped off. The driving back of the Germans over the Marne coincided +with the Belgian National Fete of July 21. Not since 1914 had this +fete been openly observed. But on this day in 1918, the German +police made no protest when a huge crowd celebrated the fete day in +every church and every street. Vivien herself, smiling and laughing +as she had not done since Bertie's death, attended the service in +Sainte-Gudule and joined in singing _La Brabanconne_ in place of +_Te Deum, laudamus_. In the streets and houses of Brussels every +piano, every gramophone was enrolled to play the _Marseillaise_, +_Vers l'Avenir_, and _La Brabanconne_, the Belgian national anthem +(uninspiring words and dreary tune). From this date onwards--July +21--the German _debacle_ proceeded, with scarcely one day's +intermission, with never a German regain of lost ground. + +When the Americans had retaken St. Mihiel on September 14, then did +Belgians boldly predict that their King would be back in Brussels by +Christmas. But their prophecies were outstripped by events. Already, +in the beginning of October, the accredited German Press in Belgium +was adjuring the Belgians not to be impatient, but to let them +evacuate Belgium quietly. At the end of October, Minna von +Stachelberg told Vivien that she and the other units of the German +Red Cross had received instructions to leave and hand over their +charges to the Belgian doctors and nurses. The two women took an +affectionate farewell of each other, vowing they would meet +again--somewhere--when the War was over. British wounded now began +to cease coming into Brussels, so Vivie was free to attend to her +own affairs. + +Enormous quantities of German plunder were streaming out of Belgium +by train, by motor, in military lorries, in carts and waggons. +Nearly all this belonged to the officers, and the already-rebellious +soldiers broke out in protestations. "Why should they who had done +all the fighting have none of the loot?" So they won over the +Belgian engine-drivers--delighted to see this quarrel between the +hyenas--and held up the trains in the suburban stations north of +Brussels. There were pitched battles which ended always in the +soldiers' victory. + +The soldiers then would hold auctions and markets of the plunder +captured in the trains and lorries. They were in a hurry to get a +little money to take back with them to Germany. Vivie, who had laid +her plans now as to what to do after the German evacuation of +Brussels, attended these auctions. She was nearly always civilly +treated, because so many German soldiers had known her as a friend +in hospital and told other soldiers. At one such sale she bought a +serviceable motor-car for 750 francs; at another drums of petrol. + +She had provided herself with funds by going to her mother's bank +and reopening the question of the deposited jewels and plate. Now +that the victory of the Allies seemed certain, the bank manager was +more inclined to make things easy for her. He had the jewels and +plate valued--roughly--at L3,000; and although he would not +surrender them till the will could be proved and she could show +letters of administration, he consented on behalf of the bank to +make her a loan of 30,000 francs. + +On November 10th, a German soldier who followed Vivien about with +humble fidelity since she had cured him of a bad whitlow--and also +because, as he said, it was a joy to speak English once more--for he +had been a waiter at the Savoy Hotel--came to her in the Boulevard +d'Anspach and said "The Red flag, lady, he fly from Kommandantur. +With us I think it is Kaput." This was what Vivien had been waiting +for. Asking the man to follow her, she first stopped outside a shop +of military equipment, and after a brief inspection of its goods +entered and purchased a short, not too flexible riding-whip, with a +heavy handle. Then as the trams were densely crowded, she walked at +a rapid pace--glancing round ever and again to see that her German +soldier was following--up the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique and +along the Rue Royale until she came to the Hotel Imperial. Here she +halted for a minute to have the soldier close behind her; then gave +the revolving door a turn and found herself and him in the marble +hall once built for Mrs. Warren's florid taste. "Call the Manager," +she said--trying not to pant--to two Belgian servants who came up, +a porter and a lift man. The Manager--he who had ejected her and her +mother in 1915--was fortunately a little while in appearing. He was +really packing up with energy so as to depart with all the plunder +he could transport before the way of escape was closed. This little +delay enabled Vivien to get her breath and resume an impressive +calm. + +"Well: what you want?" the Manager said insolently, recollecting +her. + +"This first," she said, seizing him suddenly by his coat collar. + +"I want--to--give--you--the--soundest--thrashing you have ever +had..." + +And before he could offer any effective resistance she had lashed +him well with the riding _cravache_ about the shoulders, hands, back +and face. He wrenched himself free and crouched ready for a counter +attack. But the Belgian servants intervened and tripped him up; and +the German soldier--the ex-waiter from the Savoy--said that Madame +was by nature so kind that there must be some good reason for this +chastisement. + +"There is," she replied, now she had got her breath and was inwardly +feeling ashamed at her resort to such violent methods. + +"Three years ago, this creature turned my mother and myself out of +this hotel with such violence that my mother died of it a few +minutes afterwards. He stole our money and much of our property. I +have inherited from my mother, to whom this hotel once belonged, a +right over certain rooms which she used to occupy. I resume that +right from to-day. I shall go to them now. As to this wretch, throw +him out on to the pavement. He can afterwards send for his luggage, +and what really is his he shall have." + +Her orders were executed. + +She then sent a message to Mme. Walcker and to the kind tea-shop +woman, Mme. Trouessart, close by, explaining what she had done and +why. "I shall take control of this hotel in the name of the Belgian +Company that owns it, a Company in which, through my mother, I +possess shares. I shall stay here till responsible persons take it +over and I shall resume possession of the _appartement_ that +belonged to my mother." Meantime, would Madame Trouessart engage a +few stout wenches to eke out the scanty hotel staff, most of which +being German had already commenced its flight back to the fatherland +with all the plunder it could carry off. The soldier-ex-hotel-waiter +was provisionally engaged to remain, as long as the Belgian +Government allowed him, and three stalwart British soldiers, until +the day before prisoners-of-war, were enlisted in her service and +armed with revolvers to repel any ordinary act of brigandage. + +By the end of November she had the Hotel Edouard-Sept--with the +old name restored--running smoothly and ready for the new +guests--British, French officers and civilians who would follow +the King of the Belgians on his return to his capital. The +re-established Belgian authorities soon put her into possession of +the Villa Beau-sejour. The German sergeant-major here had kept faith +with her, and in return for handing over everything intact, +including the herd of cows, received a _douceur_ which amply +rewarded him for this belated honesty before he, too, set his face +towards Germany with the rest of the evacuating army. The motor-car +she had bought enabled her to fetch supplies of food from farm to +hotel and to perform many little services to Belgians who were +returning to their old homes. Madame Trouessart, not as yet having +any stock of tea with which to reopen her tea-shop to the first +incoming of curious tourists, agreed to live with Miss Warren at the +hotel and act as her deputy, if affairs took her away from Brussels. + +It was at the Hotel Edouard-Sept, the place where she had been +born, that Rossiter met her when he arrived in Brussels after the +Armistice. She felt a little tremulous when his card was sent up to +her, and kept him waiting quite five minutes while she saw that her +hair was tidy and estimated before the glass the extent to which it +had gone grey. She had let it grow of late years--the days of David +Williams and Mr. Michaelis seemed very remote--and spent some time +and consideration in arranging it. Her costume was workmanlike and +that of an hotel manageress in the morning; yet distinctly set off +her figure and suited her character of an able-bodied, intellectual +woman. + + * * * * * + +"Vivie!" + +"Michael!" + +"My _dear_! You're handsomer than ever!" + +"Michael! Your khaki uniform becomes you; and I'm _so_ glad you've +got rid of that beard. _Now_ we can see your well-shaped chin. But +still: we mustn't stand here, paying one another compliments, though +this meeting is _too_ wonderful: I never thought I should see you +again. Let's come to realities. I suppose the real heart-felt +question at the back of your mind is: _can_ I let you have a room? I +can, but not a bath-room suite; they're all taken..." + +_Michael_: "Nonsense! I'm going to be put up at the Palace Hotel. +Jenkins--you remember the butler of old time?--Jenkins, and my +batman, a refined brigand, a polished robber, have already been +there and commandeered something.... + +"No. I came here, firstly to find out if you were living; secondly +to ask you to marry me" ... (a pause) ... "and thirdly to find out +what happened to Bertie Adams. A message came through the Spanish +Legation here, a year and a half ago, to the effect that he had died +at Brussels from the consequences of the War. However, unless you +can tell me at once this is all a mistake, we can go into his +affairs later. My first question is--Oh! Bother all this cackle.... +_Will_ you marry me?" + +_Vivie_: "Dear, brave Bertie, whom I shall everlastingly mourn, was +shot here in Brussels by the abominable Germans, as a spy, on April +8th, 1917. He was of course no more a spy than you are or I am. The +poor devoted fool--I rage still, because I shall never be worth such +folly, such selfless devotion--got into Belgium with false +passports--American: in the hope of rescuing me. He came and +enquired here--my last address in his remembrance--and came by sheer +bad luck just as the Kaiser was about to arrive. They jumped to the +conclusion that--" + +_Rossiter_: "_Awfully, cruelly_ sad. But you can give me the details +of it later on. You must have a long, long story of your own to tell +which ought to be of poignant interest. But ... will you marry me? I +suppose you know dear Linda died--was killed by a bomb in a German +air-raid last year--October, 1917. I really felt _heart-broken_ +about it, but I know now I am only doing what she would have wished. +She came at last to talk about you _quite_ differently, _quite_ +understanding--" + +_Vivie_: "That's what all widowers say. They always declare the dead +wife begged them to marry again, and even designated her successor. +Poor Linda! Yes, I read an account of it in a copy of the _Times_; +but I couldn't of course communicate with you to say how _truly, +truly_ sorry I was. I am glad to know she spoke nicely of me. Did +she really? Or have you only made it up?" + +_Michael_: "_Of course_ I haven't. She really did. Do you know, she +and I quite altered after the War began? She lost all her old +silliness and inefficiency--or at any rate only retained enough of +the old childishness to make her endearing. And I really grew to +love her. I quite forgot you. Yes: I admit it.... + +"But somehow, after she was dead the old feeling for you came back +... and without any disloyalty to Linda. I felt in a way--I know it +is an absurd thing for a man of science to say, for we have still no +proof--I felt somehow as though she lived still. That's why I don't +want to get rid of the Park Crescent house. Her presence seems to +linger there. But I also knew--instinctively--that she would like us +to come together.... She..." + +_Waiter_ (knocking at door and slightly opening it): "Madame! Le +General Tompkins veut vous voir. Il ajoute qu'il n'est pas habitue a +attendre. Il y a aussi M'sieur Emile Vandervelde, qui arrive +instamment et qui n'a pas d'installation..." + +_Rossiter_: "Damn! Let me go and settle with 'em. Tompkins! I never +heard such cheek--" + +_Vivien_: "Not at all. You forget I am Manageress." (To Waiter) +"Entrez done! Dites au General que je serai a sa disposition dans +trois minutes; et montrez-lui ce que nous avons en fait de chambres. +Tous les appartements avec bain sont pris. Casez M'sieur Vandervelde +quelque part. Du reste, je descendrai."... (Waiter goes out) ... +"Michael! It is impossible to have a sentimental conversation here, +and at this hour--Eleven o'clock on a busy morning. If you want an +answer to your second question, now you've seen me, meet me outside +the Palm House of the Jardin Botanique, at 3 p.m. I'll get off +somehow for an hour just then. Don't forget! It's close by +here--along the Rue Royale. Be absolutely punctual, or else I shall +think that having _seen_ me, seen how changed I am, you have altered +your mind. I shall _quite_ understand; only I _may_ come back at +five minutes past three and accept General Tompkins. Acquaintances +ripen quickly in Brussels." + + * * * * * + +In the Palm House--or rather one of its many compartments; 3.5 p.m., +on a beautiful afternoon in early December. The sun is sinking over +outspread Brussels in a pink and yellow haze radiating from the +good-humoured-looking, orange orb. There are no other visitors to +the Palm House, at any rate not to this compartment, except the +superintending gardener--the same that cheered the last hours of +Mrs. Warren. He recognizes Vivien and salutes her gravely. Seeing +that she is accompanied by a gentleman in khaki he discreetly +withdraws out of hearing and tidies up a tree fern. Vivien and +Michael seat themselves on two green iron chairs under the fronds +and in front of grey stems. + +_Vivie_: "This is a favourite place of mine for assignations. I +can't think why it is so little appreciated by young Brussels. These +palm houses are much more beautiful than anything at Kew; they are +in the heart of Brussels, over which, as you see, you have a +wonderful view. It was much more frequented when the Germans were +here. With all their brutality they did not injure this unequalled +collection of Tropical plants. They made the Palm House an allowance +of coal and coke in winter while we poor human beings went without. +I used often to come in here on a winter's day to get warm and to +forget my sorrows.... + +"Look at that superb Raphia--_what_ fronds! And that Phoenix +spinosa--and that Aralia--" + +_Rossiter_: "Bother the Aralia. I haven't come here for a Botany +lesson. Besides, it isn't an Aralia; it's a Gomphocarpus.... Vivie! +_Will_ you marry me?" + +_Vivie_: "My dear Michael: I was forty-three last October." + +_Michael_: "I was _fifty-three_ last November, the day the Armistice +was signed. But I feel more like thirty-three. Life in camp has +quite rejuvenated me..." + +_Vivie_ (continuing): ... "And my hair is cinder grey--an +unfortunate transition colour. And if the gardener were not looking +I should say: 'Feel my elbows ... Dreadfully bony! And my face has +become..." She turns her face towards him. He sees tears trembling +on the lower lashes of her grey eyes, but something has come into +the features, some irradiation of love--is it the light of the +sunset?--which imparts a tender youthfulness to the curvature of +cheek, lips and chin. Her face, indeed, might be of any age: it held +the undying beauty of a goddess, in whom knowledge has sweetened to +tenderness and divinity has dissolved in a need for compassion; and +the youthful assurance of a happy woman whose wish at last is +won.... + +For a minute she looks at him without finishing her sentence. Then +she sits up straighter and says explicitly: "Yes, I will." + + * * * * * + +The gardener managed an occasional peep at them, sitting hand in +hand. He wished the idyll to last as long as the clear daylight, but +the hour for closing was four o'clock--"Il n'y avait pas a nier." +Either they were husband and wife, reunited, after years of +war-severance; or they were mature lovers, and probably of the most +respectable. In either case, the necessary hint that ecstasies must +transfer themselves at sunset from the glass houses of the Jardin +Botanique to the outer air was best conveyed on this occasion by a +discreet gift of flowers. Accordingly he went on to where exotic +lilies were blooming, picked a few blossoms, returned, came with +soft padding steps up to Vivie, offered them with a bow and "Mes +felicitations _sinceres_, Madame." Vivie laughed and took the +lilies; Rossiter of course gave him a ten-franc note. And they +sauntered slowly back to the hotel. + + + + +L'ENVOI + + +I am reproached by such Art Critics as deign to notice my pictures +with "finishing my foregrounds over much,"--filling them with +superabundant detail, making the primroses more important than the +snow-peaks. And by my publishers with forgetting the price of paper +and the cost of printing. My jury of matrons thinks I don't know +where to leave off and that I might very well close this book on the +answer that Mrs. Warren's daughter gave to Sir Michael Rossiter's +proposal of marriage in the Palm House at Brussels. "The reader," +they say, "can very well fill in the rest of the story for himself +or herself. It is hardly likely that Vivie will cry off at the last +moment, or Michael reconsider the plunge into a second marriage. Why +therefore waste print and paper and our eyesight in describing the +marriage ceremony, the inevitable visit to Honoria, and what Vivie +did with the property she inherited from her mother?" + +No doubt they are all right. Yet I am distrustful of my readers' +judgment and imagination. I feel both want guiding, and I doubt +their knowledge of the world and goodness of heart being equal to +mine, except in rare cases. + +So I throw out these indications to influence the sequels they may +plan to this story. + +I think that Michael and Vivie were married at the British Legation +in Brussels between Christmas and the New Year of 1918-1919; before +that Legation was erected into an Embassy; and that the marriage +officer was kind, genial Mr. Hawk when he returned to Brussels from +The Hague and proceeded to get the Legation into working order. I am +sure Mr. Hawk entered into the spirit of the thing and gave an +informal breakfast afterwards in the Rue de Spa to which Mons. and +Mme. Walcker, Mons. and Mme. Trouessart, and the Directeur of the +prison of Saint-Gilles and his wife were invited. I think the head +gardener of the Jardin Botanique who had charge of the Tropical +houses cribbed from the collections some of the most magnificent +blooms, and presented them to Vivie on the morning of her marriage; +and that afterwards she laid the bouquet on her mother's newly +finished tomb in the cemetery of St. Josse-ten-Noode, where, the +weather being singularly mild for the time of year, the flowers +lasted fresh and blooming for several days. + +I am sure she and Michael then crossed the road and passed on to the +building of the Tir National; entered it and stood for a moment in +the verandah from which Vivie had seen Bertie Adams executed; and +passed on over the tussocky grass to the graves of Bertie Adams and +Edith Cavell, where they did silent homage to the dead. I believe a +few days afterwards they visited the Senate where the victims of von +Bissing's "Terror" had been tried, browbeaten, insulted, mocked. And +the functionary who showed them over this superb national palace is +certain to have included in his exposition the once splendid +carpets which the German officers prior to their evacuation of the +Senate--all but the legislative chamber of which was used as a +barracks for rough soldiery--had sprayed and barred, streaked and +splodged with printing ink. He would also have pointed out the +three-hundred-year-old tapestries they had ripped from the walls and +the historical portraits they had slashed, and would again have +emphasized the fact that in all these senseless devastations the +officers were far worse than the men. + +Also I am certain that Michael and Vivie made a pilgrimage to the +prison of Saint-Gilles, and stood silently in the cell where Bertie +Adams and Vivie had spent those terrible days of suspense and +despair between April 6 and April 8, 1917; and that when they +entered that other compartment of the prison where Edith Cavell had +passed her last days before her execution, they listened with +sympathetic reverence to the recital by the Directeur of verses from +"l'Hymne d'Edith Cavell"--as it is now called--no other than the sad +old poem of human sorrow, _Abide with me_; and that they appreciated +to the full the warmth of Belgian feeling which has turned the cell +of Edith Cavell into a Chapelle Ardente in perpetuity. + +I think they returned to England in January, 1919, so that Michael +might get back quickly to his work of mending the maimed, now +transferred to English hospitals; and so that Vivie--always a +practical woman--should prove her mother's will, secure her heritage +and have it in hand as a fund from which to promote all the +happiness she could. I doubt whether she will give much of it to +"causes" rather than cases and to politics in preference to persons. +I think she was awfully disgusted when she was back in the England +of to-day not to find Mrs. Fawcett Prime Ministress and First Lady +of the Treasury, Annie Kenney at the Board of Trade and Christabel +Pankhurst running the Ministry of Health. It was disheartening after +the long struggle for the Woman's Vote and the equality of the sexes +in opportunity to find the same old men-muddlers in charge of all +public affairs and departments of state, and the only woman on the +benches of the House of Commons a millionaire peeress never before +identified with the struggle for the Woman's Cause. + +However I think her disenchantment did not diminish the rapture at +finding herself once more in the intimacy of Honoria Armstrong. Sir +Petworth, when he ran over on leave from the Army of Occupation, +thought her enormously improved, though he had the tact not to say +so. He frankly made the _amende honorable_ for his suspicions and +churlishness of the past, and himself--I think--insisted on his +frank and friendly children calling her "Aunt Vivie." I am equally +sure that Vivie was not long in London before she appeared at dear +old Praddy's studio, beautifully gowned and looking years younger +than forty-three; and I shouldn't wonder but that her presence once +more in his circle will give his frame a fillip so that he may cheat +Death over a few more annual outbreaks of influenza. I am convinced +that he has left all his money, after providing a handsome annuity +for the parlour-maid, to Vivie, knowing that in her hands, far +more--and far more quickly than in those that direct princely and +public charities--will his funds reach the students and the +poverty-stricken artists whom he wants to benefit. + +I think that after spending the first five months of 1919 in London, +getting No. 1 Park Crescent tidy again and fully repaired (because +Michael wished to pursue more thoroughly than ever his biological +researches), Vivie and Michael went off to spend their real +honeymoon in the Occupied Territory of the Rhineland, in that +never-to-be forgotten June, memorable for its splendid sunshine and +the beauty of its flowers and foliage. I think they did this +expressly (under the guise of a visit to General Armstrong), so that +Vivie and Minna von Stachelberg--now Minna Schultz--might foregather +at Bonn. Minna had married again, an officer of no family but of +means and of fine physique whom she had nursed in Brussels. His left +arm had been shattered, but the skill of the Belgian surgeons and +her devoted nursing had saved it from being amputated. She had +wished however to have him examined by some great exponent of +curative surgery at Bonn University, and the conjunction of the +celebrated Sir Michael Rossiter--who in his discussions of anatomy +with the Bonn professors forgot there had ever been a war between +Britain and Germany--was most opportune. + +I think however that Sir Michael said this was all humbug on Minna's +part, and that all she wanted--her husband, Major Schultz, looking +the picture of health--was to meet once more her well-beloved Vivie. +At any rate I am sure they met in the Rhineland in a propitious +month when you could be out of doors all day and all night; and that +Minna said some time or other how happy she was in her second +marriage, and that however heartily she disliked militarism and +condemned War, soldiers made the nicest husbands. I think before she +and Vivie parted to go their several ways, they determined to work +for the building up of an Anglo-German reconciliation, and for the +advocacy in both countries of a Man-and-Woman Government. + +I think, nevertheless, that Vivie being a sound business woman and +possessing a strong sense of justice on the lines of an eye for an +eye, will claim at least Five Thousand pounds from the German +Government for the devastations and thefts at the Villa Beau-sejour; +and that having got it and having disposed of her mother's jewellery +and plate for L3,500, she will present the Villa Beau-sejour +property and an endowment of L8,000 to the Town of Brussels, as an +educational orphanage for the children of Belgian soldiers who have +died in the War, where they may receive a practical education in +agriculture and poultry farming. + +I fancy she gave a Thousand pounds to Pasteur Walcker's Congo +Mission; and transferred to Mme. Trouessart all her shares in and +rights over the Hotel Edouard-Sept. + +I also picture to myself the Rossiters having a motor tour of pure +pleasure and delight of the eyes in South Wales in September, 1919. + +I imagine their going to Pontystrad and surprising the Vicar and +Vicaress and puzzling them by purposely-diffuse stories of Vivie's +cousin the late David Vavasour Williams, intended to convey the +idea, without telling unnecessary fibs, that David died abroad +during the War, but that Vivie in his memory and that of his dear +old father intends to continue a strong personal interest in the +Village Hall and its educational aims. I also picture Vivie going +alone to Mrs. Evanwy's rose-entwined cottage. The old lady is now +rather shaky and does not walk far from her little garden with its +box bower and garden seat. I can foreshadow Vivie dispelling some of +the mystery about David Williams and being embraced by the old +Nannie with warm affection and the hearty assurances that she had +guessed the secret from the very first but had been so drawn to the +false David Williams and so sure of his honest purposes that nothing +would have induced her to undeceive the old Vicar. I can even +imagine the old lady ere--years hence--paralysis strikes her +down--telling Vivie so much gossip about the Welsh Vavasours that +Vivie becomes positively certain her mother came from that stock and +that she really was first cousin to the boy she personated for the +laudable purpose of showing how well a woman could practise at the +Bar. + +I like to think also that by the present year of grace--1920--the +Rossiters will have become convinced that No. 1 Park Crescent, even +with the Zoo and the Royal Botanic Gardens close by and the +ornamental garden of Regent's Park in between, does not satisfy all +their needs and ambitions: that they will have resolved even before +this year began--to supplement it by a home in the country for +week-ends, for summer visits, and finally for rest in their old age. +That for this purpose they will acquire some ideal Grange or Priory, +or ample farmstead near Petworth and the Armstrongs' home, over +against the South Downs, and near the river Rother; that it shall be +in no mere suburb of Petworth but in a stately little village with +its own character and history going back to Roman times and a church +with a Saxon body and a Norman chancel. And that in the ideal +churchyard of this enviable church with ancient yews and 18th +century tomb-stones, and old, old benches in the sunshine for the +grandfathers and loafers of the village to sit on and smoke of a +Sabbath morning, a place shall be found for the bones of Bertie +Adams; reverently brought over from the grassy amphitheatre of the +Tir National to repose in this churchyard of West Sussex which looks +out over one of the finest cricket pitches in the county. If, then, +there is any lien between the mouldering fragments of our bodies and +the inexplicable personality which has been generated in the living +brain, the former office boy of _Fraser and Warren_ will know that +he is always present in the memory of Vivien Rossiter, that she has +placed the few physical fragments still representing him in such a +setting as would have delighted his honest, simple nature in his +lifetime. He would also know that his children are now hers and her +husband's; that his Nance very rightly married the excellent butler, +Jenkins, with whom he had discussed many a cricket score; and that +Love, after all, is stronger than Death. + + +THE END + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Mrs. Warren's Daughter, by Sir Harry Johnston + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. WARREN'S DAUGHTER *** + +***** This file should be named 15380.txt or 15380.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/3/8/15380/ + +Produced by Janet Kegg and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + diff --git a/15380.zip b/15380.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3475e54 --- /dev/null +++ b/15380.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..070923d --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #15380 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15380) |