Mrs. Warren's Daughter Part 25

Waterloo left many curious things behind it. Not only a tea-shop or two; but a Nonconformist nucleus, that intermarried, as Sergeant Walker or Walcker had done, with Belgian women and left descendants who in the third generation--and by inherent vigour, thrift, matrimony and conversion--had built up quite a numerous congregation, which even grew large enough and rich enough to maintain a mission of its own in Congoland. Kind Mme. Trouessart (nee Walcker), distressed and unusually moved at the sad circ.u.mstances of Mrs. Warren's death, had called in her uncle the Baptist pastor (who also in some unexplained way seemed to hold a brief for the Salvation Army). He prayed silently by the death-bed which, under the circ.u.mstances, was more tactful than open intercession. He helped greatly over all the formalities of the funeral, and he took upon himself the arrangement of the ceremony, so that everything was done decorously, and certainly to the satisfaction of the Belgians, who attended. Such people would be large-minded in religion--you might be Protestant, if you were not Catholic, or you might be Jewish; but a funeral without some outward sign of faith and hope would have puzzled and distressed them.

To Vivie's great surprise, there was a considerable attendance at the ceremony. She had expected no more than the company of Minna--an unprofessing but real Christian, if ever there were one, and the equally Christian if equally hedonist Mme. Trouessart. But there came in addition quite a number of shopkeepers from the Rue Royale, the Rues de Schaerbeek, du Marais, de Lione, and de l'a.s.sociation, with whom Mrs. Warren had dealt in years gone by. "C'etait une dame _tres_ convenable," said one purveyor, and the others agreed. "Elle me paya ecus sonnants," said another, "et toujours sans marchander." There was even present a more distinguished acquaintance of the past: a long-retired Commissaire de Police of the Quartier in which Mrs. Warren's hotel was situated.

He appeared in the tightly-b.u.t.toned frock-coat of civil life, with a minute disc of some civic decoration in his b.u.t.ton hole, and an incredibly tall chimney-pot hat. He came to render his _respectueux hommages_ to the maitresse-femme who had conducted her business within the four corners of the law, "sans avoir maille a partir avec la police des moeurs."

Mrs. Warren at least died with the reputation of one who promptly paid her bills; and the whole _a.s.sistance_, as it walked slowly back to Brussels, recalled many a deed of kindness and jovial charity on the part of the dead Englishwoman.

Vivie, on sizing up her affairs, got Monsieur Walcker, the Baptist pasteur, to convey a letter to the American Consulate General.

Walcker was used to such missions as these, of which the German Government was more or less cognizant. The Germans, among their many contradictory features, had a great respect for religion, a great tolerance as to its forms. They not only appreciated the difference between Jews and Christians, Catholics and Lutherans, but between the Church of England and the various Free Churches of Britain and America. The many people whom they sentenced to death must all have their appropriate religious consolation before facing the firing party. Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists were all provided for; there was a Church of England chaplain for the avowed Anglicans; but what was to be done for the Free Churches and Nonconformist sects of the Anglo-Saxons? They were not represented by any captive pastor; so in default this much respected Monsieur Walcker, the Belgian Baptist, was called in to minister to the Nonconformist mind in its last agony. He therefore held a quasi-official position and was often entrusted with missions which would have been dealt with punitorily on the part of any one else. Consequently he was able to deliver Vivie's communication to the American Consul-General with some probability of its being sent on. It contained no further appeal to American intervention than this: that the Consul-General would try to convey to England the news of her mother's death to such-and-such solicitors, and to Lewis Maitland Praed A.R.A. in Hans Place.

She went to the Brussels bank a fortnight after her mother's death whilst still availing herself of the hospitality of Madame Trouessart: to withdraw the jewellery and plate which she had deposited there on her mother's account. But there she found herself confronted with the red tape of the Latin which is more formidable, even, than that of the land of Dora at the present day. These deposited articles were held on the order of Mrs. Warren; they could not be given up till her will was proved and letters of administration had been granted. So _that_ small resource in funds was withheld, at any rate till some time after peace had been declared. However she had a thousand pounds (in notes) between her and penury, and the friends.h.i.+p of Minna von Stachelberg. She would resume her evening lessons in English--Madame Trouessart had found her several pupils--and she would lodge--as they kindly invited her to do--with the Baptist pastor and his wife in the Rue Haute. And she would help Minna at the hospital, and hope to be rewarded with the opportunity of bringing comfort and consolation to the wounded British prisoners.

Thus, with no unbearable misery, she pa.s.sed the year 1916. There were short commons in the way of food, and the cold was sometimes cruel. But Madame Walcker was a wonderful cook and could make soup from a sausage skewer, and heaped _edredons_ on Vivie's bed. Vivie sighed a little over the Blue Placards which announced endless German victories by land and sea; and she gasped over the dreadful Red Placards with their lists of victims sentenced to death by the military courts. She ground her teeth over the announcement of Gabrielle Pet.i.t's condemnation, and behind the shut door of Minna's small sitting-room--and she only shut the door not to compromise Minna--she raved over the judicial murder of this Belgian heroine, who was shot, as was Edith Cavell, for nothing more than a.s.sisting young Belgians to escape from German-occupied Belgium.

She witnessed the air-raids of the Allies, when only comforting papers were dropped on Brussels city, but bombs on the German aerodromes outside; and she also saw the Germans turn their guns from the aeroplanes--which soared high out of their reach or skimmed below range--on to thickly-inhabited streets of the poorer quarters, to teach them to cheer the air-craft of the Allies!

She beheld--or she was told of--many acts of rapine, considered cruelty and unreasoning ferocity on the part of German officials or soldiers; yet saw or heard of acts and episodes of unlooked-for kindness, forbearance and sympathy from the same hated people. Von Giesselin, after all, was a not uncommon type; and as to Minna von Stachelberg, she was a saint of the New Religion, the Service of Man.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BOMB IN PORTLAND PLACE

Mrs. Rossiter said to herself in 1915 that she had scarcely known a happy day, or even hour, since the War began. In the first place Michael had again shown violence of temper with ministers of state over the release from prison of "that" Miss Warren--"a convict doing a sentence of hard labour." And then, when he had got her released, and gone himself with their beautiful new motor--whatever _could_ the chauffeur have thought?--to meet her at the prison gates, _there_ he was, afterwards, worrying himself over the War: not content as she was, as most of her friends were, as the newspapers were, to leave it all to Lord Kitchener and Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, and even Mr. Lloyd George--though the latter had made some rather foolish and exaggerated speeches about Alcohol. Michael, if he went on like this, would _never_ get his knighthood!

Then when Michael had at last, thanks to General Armstrong, found his right place and was accomplis.h.i.+ng marvels--the papers said--as a "mender of the maimed"--here was she left alone in Portland Place with hardly any one to speak to, and all her acquaintances--she now realized they were scarcely her friends--too much occupied with war work to spend an afternoon in discussing nothing very important over a sumptuous tea, still served by a butler and footman.

Presently, too, the butler left to join the Professor in France and the footman enlisted, and the tea had to be served by a _distraite_ parlour-maid, with her eye on a munitions factory--so that she might be "in it"--and her heart in the keeping of the footman, who, since he had gone into khaki, was irresistible.

Mrs. Rossiter of course said, in 1914, that she would take up war work. She subscribed most handsomely to the Soldiers' and Sailors'

Families' a.s.sociation, to the Red Cross, to the Prince of Wales's Fund (one of the unsolved war-time mysteries ... what's become of it?), to the Cigarette Fund, the 1914 Christmas Plum Pudding Fund, the Blue Cross, the Purple Cross, the Green Cross funds; to the outstandingly good work at St. Dunstan's and at Petersham--(I am glad she gave a Hundred pounds each to _them_); and to the French, Belgian, Russian, Italian, Serbian, Portuguese and j.a.panese Flag Days and to Our Own Day; besides enriching a number of semi-fraudulent war charities which had alluring t.i.tles.

But if, from paying handsomely to all these praise-worthy endeavours to mitigate the horrors of war, she proceeded to render personal service, she became the despair of the paid organizers and business-like workers. She couldn't add and she couldn't subtract or divide with any certainty of a correct result; she couldn't spell the more difficult words or remember the right letters to put after distinguished persons' names when she addressed envelopes in her large, childish handwriting; she couldn't be trusted to make enquiries or to detect fraudulent appeals. She lost receipts and never grasped the importance of vouchers; she forgot to fill up counterfoils, or if reminded filled them up "from memory" so that they didn't tally; she signed her name, if there was any choice of blank s.p.a.ces, in quite the wrong place.

So, invariably, tactful secretaries or a.s.sistant secretaries were told off to explain to her--ever so nicely--that "she was no business woman" (this, to the daughter of wholesale manufacturers, sounded rather flattering), and that though she was invaluable as a "name," as a patroness, or one of eighteen Vice Presidents, she was of no use whatever as a worker.

She had no country house to place at the disposal of the Government as a convalescent home. Michael after a few experiments forbade her offering any hospitality at No. 1 Park Crescent to invalid officers.

Such as were entrusted to her in the spring of 1915 soon found that she was--as they phrased it--"a pompous little, middle-cla.s.s fool,"

wielding no authority. They larked in the laboratory with Red Cross nurses, broke specimens, and did very unkind and noisy things ...

besides smoking in both the large _and_ the small dining-rooms. So, after the summer of 1915, she lived very much alone, except that she had the Adams children from Marylebone to spend the day with her occasionally.

Poor Mrs. Adams, though a valiant worker, was very downcast and unhappy. She confided to Mrs. Rossiter that although she dearly loved her Bert--"and a better husband I defy you to find"--he never seemed all hers. "Always so wrapped up in that Miss Warren or 'er cousin the barrister." And no sooner had war broken out than off he was to France, as a kind of missionary, she believed--the Young Men's Christian Something or other; "though before the War he didn't seem particular stuck on religion, and it was all she could do to get him sometimes to church on a Sunday morning. Oh yes: she got 'er money all right; and she couldn't say too much of Mr. and Mrs.

Rossiter's kindness. There was Bert, not doin' a stroke of work for the Professor, and yet his pay going on all the same. Indeed she was putting money by, because Bert was kep' out there, and all found."

However his two pretty children were some consolation to Mrs.

Rossiter, whom they considered as a very grand lady and one that was lavishly kind.

Mrs. Rossiter tried sometimes in 1915 having working parties in her house or in the studio; and if she could attract workers gave them such elaborate lunches and plethoric teas that very little work was done, especially as she herself loved a long, aimless gossip about the Royal Family or whether Lord Kitchener had ever _really_ been in love. Or she tried, since she was a poor worker herself--her only jersey and m.u.f.fler were really finished by her maid--reading aloud to the knitters or st.i.tchers, preferably from the works of Miss Charlotte Yonge or some similar novelist of a later date. But that was found to be too disturbing to their sense of the ludicrous. For she read very stiltedly, with a strange exotic accent for the love pa.s.sages or the death scenes. As Lady Victoria Freebooter said, she would have been _priceless_ at a music-hall matinee which was raising funds for war charities, if only she could have been induced to read pa.s.sages from Miss Yonge in _that_ voice for a quarter of an hour. Even the Queen would have had to laugh.

But as that could not be brought off, it was decided that working parties at her house led to too much giddiness from suppressed giggles or torpor from too much food. So she relapsed once more into loneliness. Unfortunately air-raids were now becoming events of occasional fright and anxiety in London, and this deterred Cousin Sophie from Darlington, Cousin Matty from Leeds, Joseph's wife from Northallerton or old, married schoolfellows from other northern or midland towns coming to partake of her fastuous hospitality. Also, they all seemed to be busy, either over their absent husbands'

business, or their sons', or because they were plunged in war work themselves. "And really, in these times, I couldn't stand Linda for more than five minutes," one of them said.

As to the air-raids, she was not greatly alarmed at them. Of course it was very uncomfortable having London so dark at night, but then she only went out in the afternoon, and never in the evening. And the Germans seemed to be content and discriminating enough not to bomb what she called "the resi_den_tial" parts of London. The nearest to Portland Place of their attentions was Hampstead or Bloomsbury. "We are protected, my dear, by the open s.p.a.ces of Regent's Park. They wouldn't like to waste their bombs on poor me!"

However her maid didn't altogether like the off chance of the Germans or our air-craft guns making a mistake and trespa.s.sing on the residential parts of London, so she persuaded her mistress to spend part of the winter of 1915-16 at Bournemouth. Here she was not happy and far lonelier even than in London. She did not like to send all that way for the Adams children, she had a parlour suite all to herself at the hotel, and was timid about making acquaintances outside, since everybody now-a-days wanted you to subscribe to something, and it was so disagreeable having to say "no." She was not a great walker so she could not enjoy the Talbot woods; the sea made her feel sad, remembering that Michael was the other side and the submarines increasingly active: in short, air-raids or no air-raids, she returned home in March, and her maid, who had been with her ten years, gave her warning.

But then she had an inspiration! She engaged Mrs. Albert Adams to take her place, and although the parlour-maid at this took offence and cut the painter of domestic service, went off to the munitions till Sergeant Frederick Summers should get leave to come home and marry her; and they were obliged to engage another parlour-maid in her place at double the wages: Mrs. Rossiter had done a very wise thing. "Bert" had been home for three weeks in the preceding February, and the recently bereaved Mrs. Adams had united her tears with Mrs. Rossiter's on the misery of the War which separated attached husbands and wives. It now alleviated the sorrows of both that they should be together as mistress and maid. The cook--a most important factor--had always liked Bertie and adored his "sweet, pretty little children." "If you'll let 'em sleep in the spare room on the fourth floor, next their mother, and play in the day-time in the servants' 'all, they'll be no manner of difficulty _nor_ bother to me and the maids. We shall love to 'ave 'em, the darlin's. And they'll serve to cheer you up a bit ma'am till the Professor comes back."

Mrs. Adams was a very capable person who hated dust and grime. The big house wanted some such intervention, as since the butler's departure it had become rather slovenly, save in the portions occupied by Mrs. Rossiter. Charwomen were got in, and spring cleanings on a gigantic scale took place, so that when Rossiter did return he thought it had never looked so nice, or his Linda been so cheery and companionable.

But before this happy confirmation of her wisdom in engaging Nance Adams as maid and factotum, Mrs. Rossiter had several waves of doubt and distress to breast. There was the Suffrage question. Once converted by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Miss Violet Markham, Sir Almroth Wright--whose _prenom_ she could not p.r.o.nounce--the late Lord Cromer, and the impressive Lord Curzon, to the perils of the Woman's Vote, Mrs. Rossiter was hard to move from her uncompromising opposition to the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of her s.e.x. Some adroit champion of the Wrong had employed the argument that _once_ Women got the vote, _the Divorce Laws would be greatly enlarged_. This would be part of the scheme of the wild women to get themselves all married; that and _the legalisation of Polygamy_ which would follow the Vote _as surely as the night the day_. Linda had an undefined terror that her Michael might take advantage of such licentiousness to depose her, like the Empress Josephine was put aside in favour of a child-producing rival; or if polygamy came into force, that Miss Warren might lawfully share the Professor's affections.

She was therefore greatly perturbed in the course of 1916 at the sudden throwing up of the sponge by the Anti-suffragists. However, there it was. The long struggle drew to a victorious close. Example as well as precept pointed to what women could do and were worth; sound arguments followed the inconveniences of militancy, and the men were convinced. Or rather, the men in the ma.s.s and the fighting, working men had for some time been convinced, but the great statesmen who had so obstinately opposed the measures were now weakening at the knees before the results of their own mismanagement in the conduct of the War.

A further perplexity and anxiety for Mrs. Rossiter arose over the German spy mania. She had been to one of Lady Towcester's afternoon parties "to keep up our spirits." Lady Towcester collected for at least six different charities and funds, and Mrs. Rossiter was a generous subscriber to all six. Touching the wood of the central tea-table, she had remarked to Lady Victoria and Lady Helen Freebooter how fortunate they (who lived within the prescribed area defined by Lady Jeune) had been in so far escaping air-raids.

"But don't you know why?" said Lady Victoria.

Mrs. Rossiter didn't.

"Because in Manchester Square, in Cavendish--Grosvenor--Hanover Squares, in Portland Place--a few doors off your own house--in Harley Street and Wigmore Street: there are special friends of the Kaiser living. They _may_ call themselves by English names, they may even be ex-cabinet-ministers; but they are working for the Kaiser, all the same. And _he_ wouldn't be such a fool as to have them bombed, would he?"

"Especially as it is well known that there _is a wireless installation_ on a house in Portland Place which communicates with a similar installation in the Harz Mountains," added Lady Helen.

This was a half-rea.s.suring, half-terrifying statement. It was comfortable to know that you lived under the Kaiser's wing--Mrs.

Rossiter hoped the aim of the aeronauts was accurate, and their knowledge of London topography good. At the same time it was alarming to feel that you might be involved in that final blow up of the villains which must bring such scoundreldom to a close. But if Lady Vera and Lady Helen knew all this for a fact, why not tell the Police? "What would be the good? They'd deny everything and we should only be sued for libel."

However to form some conception of how English home life was undermined with plots, she was advised to go and see Mr. Dennis Eadie in _The Man That Stayed at Home_. She did, taking Mrs. Adams with her to the Dress Circle for a matinee. Both were very much impressed, and on their return expected the fireplaces to open all of a piece and reveal German spies with masked faces and pistols, standing in the chimney.

At last these and other nightmares were dispelled by the arrival of Rossiter on leave of absence in the autumn of 1916. He had the rank of Colonel in the R.A.M.C., and wore the khaki uniform--Mrs.

Rossiter proudly thought--of a General. He had shaved off his beard and trimmed his moustache and looked particularly soldierly. The butler who came with him though not precisely a soldier but a sort of N.C.O. in a medical corps, also looked quite martial, and had so much to say for himself that Mrs. Rossiter felt he could never become a butler again. But he did all the same, and a most efficient one though a little breezy in manner.

Linda now entered on an aftermath of matrimonial happiness. Rossiter was to take quite a long leave so that he could pursue the most important researches in curative surgery--bone grafting and the like; not only in his own laboratory but at the College of Surgeons and the Zoological Gardens Prosectorium. With only occasional week-ends at home he had been away from London since September, 1914; had known great hards.h.i.+ps, the life of the trenches and the bomb-proof shelter, stewed tea and bad tinned milk, rum and water, bully beef, plum and apple jam, good bread, it is true, but shocking margarine for b.u.t.ter. He had slept for weeks together on an old sofa more or less dressed, kept warm by his great-coat and two Army blankets of woven porcupine quills (seemingly) the ends of which tickled his nose and scratched his face. He had been very cold and sweatingly hot, furiously hungry with no meal to satisfy his healthy appet.i.te, madly thirsty and no long drink attainable; unable to sleep for three nights at a time owing to the noise of the bombardment; surfeited with horrible smells; sickened with butchery; shocked at his own failures to retrieve life, yet encouraged by an isolated victory, here and there, over death and disablement. So the never-before-appreciated comfort of his Park Crescent home filled him with intense grat.i.tude to Linda.

Had he known, he owed some of his acknowledgment to Mrs. Adams; who had worked both hard and tactfully in her undefined position of lady's-maid-housekeeper-companion. But naturally he didn't know, though he praised his wife warmly for her charity of soul in taking pity on the poor little woman and her two children. He could only give the slightest news about Bertie, but said he was a sort of jack-of-all-trades for the Y.M.C.A. As to Vivie--"that Miss Warren"--he answered his wife's questions neither with the glowering taciturnity nor suspicious loquacity of former times. "Miss Warren?

Vivie? I fancy she's still at Brussels, but there is no chance of finding out. There is a story that her mother is dead. P'raps now they'll let her come away. She must be jolly well sick of Brussels by now. When I last heard of Adams he was still hoping to get into touch with her. I hope he won't take any risks. She's a clever woman and I dare say can take care of herself. I hope we shall all meet again when the War is over."

He seemed very pleased to hear of the new Conciliation Bill, the general agreement all round on the Suffrage question and the enlargement of the electorate. He had always told Linda it was bound to come. "And after it has come, dearie, you mark my words: things will go on pretty much as before." But his real, intense, absorbing interest lay in the new experiments he was about to make in bone grafting and cartilage replacing, and the functions of the pituitary body and the interst.i.tial glands. To carry these out adequately the Zoological Society had acc.u.mulated troops of monkeys and baboons. At a certain depot in Camden Town dogs were kept for his purposes. And the vaults and upper floors of the Royal College of Surgeons were at Rossiter's disposal, with Professor Keith to co-operate. Never had his house in Portland Place--to be accurate the Park Crescent end thereof--seemed so conveniently situated, or its studio-laboratory so well designed. "Air-raids? Pooh! Just about one chance in a million we should be struck. Besides: can't think of that, when so much is at stake. That's a fine phrase, 'Menders of the Maimed.'

Just what we want to be! No more artificial limbs if we can help you to grow your own new legs and arms--perhaps. At any rate, mend up those that are a hopeless mash. Grand work! Only bright thing in the War. Now dear, are you ready with that lymph?"

And she was. Never had Linda been so happy. She overcame her disgust at the sight of blood, at monkeys, dogs, and humans under anaesthetics, at yellow fat, gleaming sinew, and blood-stained bone.

She was careful as a washer-up. The services of Mrs. Adams were enlisted, and she was more deft even than her mistress; and the butler, who was by this time a regular hospital dresser, greatly admired her pretty arms when they were bared to the elbow, and her flushed cheeks when she took a humble part in some tantalizing adjustment.