Mrs. Warren's Daughter Part 6

_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 fas.h.i.+on 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 G.o.d'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 circ.u.mstances, 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 doc.u.ments 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.sed his preliminary examination (since he could not avow that inside his clothes he was a third wrangler), having satisfied his two "G.o.dfathers" 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 pa.s.sed through some magic door, gone through the looking-gla.s.s 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 friends.h.i.+p 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, gla.s.s-roofed studio-laboratory--ab.u.t.ted 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 gla.s.s 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 c.o.c.katoos 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 a.s.sisted 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 G.o.d 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 fas.h.i.+ons and ideals receded and modern taste shook itself free from what was tawdry, fluffy, stuffy, floppy, messy, cheaply imitative, fringed and ta.s.selled 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 ma.s.sive 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 ta.s.selled 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 st.i.tch 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 "pet.i.te"--she loved the French adjective ever since it had been applied to her at Scarborough by a sycophantic governess--pet.i.te--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 ma.s.sive door. David pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.ses, 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 Mitch.e.l.l argued about the caeca--caec.u.ms, 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 a.s.sistant had fed it up in the laboratory, and they had tried a few experiments on it with painless drugs with astonis.h.i.+ng 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 st.i.tch 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 d.a.m.ned 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 _h.e.l.l_ does it matter to _you_?'"...

David by this time has grown scarlet with embarra.s.sment and confusion. But he endeavoured to meet the situation.