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."