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.