Mrs. Warren's Daughter Part 12

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 bl.u.s.tery, 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sport 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 b.u.t.ton 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 _pet.i.t dejeuner_--which is surely rather late? There were signs and appetizing smells of the larger meal being imminent as I pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.ter 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. Ae! 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 d.a.m.nable 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 pa.s.sport (as a mere means of rapidly establis.h.i.+ng one's ident.i.ty 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 s.h.i.+lling 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 circ.u.mstances 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sured 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 h.e.l.l. But ... G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l.' 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 d.a.m.ned.

'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 pa.s.sage 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sions 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 prost.i.tution, which I think perfectly horrible--I--I should like to penalize it. Perhaps it is the Irish ascetic in my const.i.tution. 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 partners.h.i.+p 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.