His good mother was a washerwoman-widow, in whom Honoria Fraser had interested herself in her Harley Street girlhood. Bertie was the eldest of six, and his father had been a coal porter who broke his back tumbling down a cellar when a little "on." Bertie—he now figured as Mr. Albert Adams in the cricket lists—was a well-grown youth, rather blunt-featured, but with honest hazel eyes, fresh-coloured, shock-haired. Vivie had once derided him for trying to woo his frontal hair into a flattened curl with much pomade ... he now only sleeked his curly hair with water. You might even have called him "common." He was of the type that went out to the War from 1914 to 1918, and won it, despite the many mistakes of our flurried strategicians: the type that so long as it lasts unspoilt will make England the predominant partner, and Great Britain the predominant nation; the type out of which are made the bluejacket and petty officer, the police sergeant, the engine driver, the railway guard, solicitor's clerk, merchant service mate, engineer, air-pilot, chauffeur, army non-commissioned officer, head gardener, head game-keeper, farm-bailiff, head printer; the trustworthy manservant, the commissionaire of a City Office; and which in other avatars ran the British World on an average annual income of L150 before the War. When women of a similar educated lower middle class come into full equality with men in opportunity, they should marry the Bertie Adamses of their acquaintance and not the stockbrokers, butchers, drapers, bookies, professional cricketers or pugilists. They would then become the mothers of the salvation-generation of the British people which will found and rule Utopia.

However, Bertie Adams was quite unconscious of all these possibilities, and thought of himself modestly, rather cheaply. Swallowing the fourth or fifth sob, he rose from his crouching over the desk, wiped his face with a wet towel, smoothed his hair, put straight his turn-over collar and smart tie, and went to his work with glowing eyes and cheeks; resolved to show Miss Warren that she had not thought too highly of him.

Nevertheless, when Miss Mullet arrived and giggled over the details of her trousseau and Lily Steynes discussed the advertisements of Aylesbury ducks in the current Exchange and Mart, he was reserved and rather sarcastic with them both. He intimated later that he had long been aware of the coming displacements; but he said not a word of Vivie's letter.



CHAPTER IV

PONTYSTRAD

On a morning in mid-July, 1901, Mr. D.V. Williams bicycled to Paddington Station from New Square, Lincoln's Inn. The brown canvas case fitted to the frame of his male bicycle contained a change of clothes, a suit of paijamas, a safety razor, tooth-brush, hair-brush and comb. He himself was wearing a well-cut dark grey suit—Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers and thick stockings.

Having had his bicycle labelled "Swansea," he entered a first-class compartment of the South Wales express. Though not lavish on his expenditure he was travelling first because he still felt a little uneasy in the presence of men—mostly men of the rougher type. Perhaps there was a second class in those days; there may be still. But I have a distinct impression that Mr. Vavasour Williams, law student, travelled "first" on this occasion: for this was how he met a person of whom his friend, Honoria Fraser, had often spoken—Michael Rossiter.

He did not of course—till after they had passed Swindon—know the name of his travelling companion. Five minutes before the train left Paddington there entered his compartment of the corridor carriage a tall man with a short, curly black beard and nice eyes—eyes like agates in colour. There was a touch of grey about the temples, otherwise the head hair, when he changed from a hard felt hat to a soft travelling cap, showed as dark as the beard and moustache. His frame was strong, muscular and loosely built, and he had clever, nervous hands with fingers somewhat spatulate. His clothes did not much suggest the tourist—they seemed more like a too well-worn town morning suit of dark blue serge; as though he had left home in an absent-minded mood intent on some hurriedly conceived plan. He cast one or two quick glances at David; once, indeed, as they got out into full daylight, away from tunnels and high walls, letting his glance lengthen into a searching look. Then he busied himself with a number of scientific periodicals he had brought to read in the train.

Impelled, he knew not why, to provoke conversation, David asked (quite needlessly), "This is the South Wales express, I mean the Swansea train, is it not?"

Blackbeard was struck with the unusualness of the voice—a very pleasant one to come from the lips of a man—and replied: "It is; at least I got in under that impression as I am intending to go to Swansea; but in any case the ticket inspector is sure to come along the corridor presently and we'll make sure then. We stop at Swindon, I think, so if we've made a mistake we can rectify it there."

Then after a pause he resumed: "I think you said you were going to Swansea? Might I ask if you are bound on the same errand as I am? I mean, are you one of Boyd Dawkins's party to examine the new cave on the Gower coast?"

D.V.W.: "Oh no—I—I am going inland from Swansea to—to have a bicycling tour. I'm going to a place on the river—I don't know how to pronounce it—at least I've forgotten. The river's name is spelt Llwchwr."

Blackbeard: "You should change your mind and turn south—come and see these extraordinary caves. Are you interested in palaeontology?" (David hesitates) "What careless people call 'prehistoric animals' or 'prehistoric man.' They have been ridiculously misled by comic artists in Punch who imagine a few thousand years of Prehistory would take us back to the Cretaceous period; really four or five million years before Man came into existence, when this country and most other lands swarmed with preposterous reptiles that had become extinct long before the age of mammals. However, I don't suppose this interests you. I only spoke because I thought you might be one of Boyd Dawkins's pupils ... or one of mine."

David: "On the contrary, I am very, very much interested in the subject, but I am afraid it has lain rather outside my line of studies so far—p'raps I will turn south when I have seen something of the part of Glamorgan I am going to. I'm really Welsh in origin, but I know Wales imperfectly because I left it when I was quite young" ("This'll be good practice," Vivie's brain voice was saying to herself) ... "I've returned recently from South Africa."

Blackbeard: "What were you doing there?"

David: "I—I—was in the army ... at least in a police force ... I got wounded, had to go into hospital—necrosis of the jaw ... I came home when I got well..."

Blackbeard: "Necrosis of the jaw! That was a bad thing. But you seem to have got over it very well. I can't see any scar from where I am..."

David: "Oh no. It was only a slight touch and I dare say I exaggerate ... I've left the Army however and now I'm reading Law..."

Blackbeard thinks at this point that he has gone far enough in cross-examination and returns to his periodicals and pamphlets. But there's something he likes—a wistfulness—in the young man's face, and he can't quite detach his mind to the presence of palaeolithic man in South Wales. At Swindon they both get out—there was still lingering the practice of taking lunch there—have a hasty lunch together and more talk, and share a bottle of claret.

On returning to their compartment, Rossiter offers David a cigar but the young man prefers smoking a cigarette. By this time they have exchanged names. D.V.W. however is reticent about the South African War—says it was all too horrible for words, and should never have taken place and he can't bear to think about it and was knocked out quite early in the day. Now all he asks is peace and quiet and the opportunity of studying law in London so that he may become some day a barrister. Rossiter says—after more talk, "Pity you're going in for the Bar—we've too many lawyers already. You should take up Science"—and as far as the Severn Tunnel discourses illuminatingly on biology, mineralogy, astronomy, chemistry as David-Vivien had never heard them treated previously. In the Severn Tunnel the noise of the train silences both professor and listener, who willingly takes up the position of pupil. Between Newport and Neath, David thinks he has never met any one so interesting. It has been his first real induction into the greatest of all books: the Book of the Earth itself. Rossiter on his part feels indefinably attracted by this young expatriated Welshman. David does not say much, but what he does contribute to the conversation shows him a quick thinker and a person of trained intelligence. Yet somehow the professor of Biology in the University of London—and many other things beside—F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.L.S., Gold Medallist of this and that Academy and University abroad—does not "see" him as a soldier or a non-commissioned officer in the British Army: law-student is a more likely qualification. However as they near Swansea, Michael Rossiter gives Mr. D.V. Williams his card (D.V.W. regrets he cannot reciprocate but says he has hardly settled down yet to any address) and—though as a rule he is taciturn in trains and cautious about making acquaintances—expresses the hope he will call at 1, Park Crescent some afternoon—"My wife and I are generally at home on Thursdays"—when all are back in town for the autumn. They separate at Swansea station.

David spends the night at Swansea, employing some of his time there by enquiring at the Terminus Hotel as to the roads that lead up the valley of the Llwchwr, what sort of a place is Pontystrad ("the bridge by the meadow"), whether any one knows the clergyman of that parish, Mr.... er ... Howel Vaughan Williams. The "boots" or one of the "bootses," it appears, comes from the neighbourhood of Pontystrad and knows the reverend gentleman by sight—a nice old gentleman—has heard that he's aged much of late years since his son ran away and disappeared out in Africa. His sight was getting bad, Boots understood, and he could not see to do all the reading and writing he was once so great at.

After a rather wakeful night, during which D.V. Williams is more disturbed by his thoughts and schemes than by the continual noises of the trains passing into and out of Swansea, he rises early and drafts a telegram:—

Revd. Howel Williams, Vicarage, Pontystrad, Glamorgan. Hope return home this evening. All is well.

DAVID.

Then pays his bill and tries to mount his bicycle the wrong way to the great amusement of the Boots; then remembers the right way and rides off, with the confidence of one long accustomed to bicycling, through the crowded traffic of Swansea in the direction of Llwchwr.

It was a very hot ride through a very lovely country, now largely spoilt by mining and metallurgy, along a road that was constantly climbing up steeply to descend abruptly. David of course could have travelled by rail to the Pontyffynon station and thence have ridden back three miles to Pontystrad. But he wished purposely to bicycle the whole way from Swansea and take in with the eye the land of his fathers. He was postponing as long as possible the test of meeting his father, the father of the young n'eer-do-weel who had been lying for months in a South African field hospital the year before. He halted for a cup of tea at Llandeilotalybont ... Wales has many place names like this ... and being there not many miles from Pontystrad was able to glean more recent and more circumstantial information about the man he proposed to greet as "father."

At half-past six that evening, having perspired and dried, perspired and dried, strained a tendon and acquired a headache, he halted before the gate of the Vicarage garden at Pontystrad, having been followed thither to his secret annoyance by quite a troop of village boys of whom he had imprudently asked the way. As they talked Welsh he could not tell what they were saying, but conjectured that his telegram had arrived and that he was expected.

Standing under the porch of the house was an old man with a long white beard like a Druid in spectacles shading his eyes and expectant...

A bicycle might prove an incumbrance in the ensuing interview, so David hastily propped his against a fuchsia hedge and hurried forward to meet the old man, who extended hands to envelop him, not trusting to his eyes. An old, rosy-cheeked woman in a sunbonnet came up behind the old man, shrieked out "Master David!" and only waited with twitching fingers for her own onslaught till the father had first embraced his prodigal son. This was done at least three times, accompanied with tears, blessings, prayers, the uplifting of poor filmy eyes to a cloudless Heaven—"Diolch i Dduw!"—ejaculations as to the wonder of it—"Rhyfeddol yw yn eiholl ffyrdd"—God's Providence—His ways are past finding out! "Ni ellir olrain ei Ragluniaeth!"—"My own dear boy! Fy machgen annwyli!"

Then the old woman took her turn: "Master David! Eh, but you're changed, mun!"—then a lot of Welsh exclamations, which until the Welsh can agree to spell their tongue phonetically I shall not insert—"Five years since you left us! Eh, and I never thought to see you no more. Some said you wass dead, others that you wass taken prisoner by the Wild Boars. But here you are, and welcome—indeed—" Then Master David between the embraces was scanned, a little more critically than by the purblind father, but with distinct approval.

At last David stood apart in the stone-flagged hall of the Vicarage. His abundant hair was rumpled, his face was stained by other people's tears, his collar, tie, dress disordered, and his heart touched. It was a rare experience in his twenty-four years of life—he guessed that should be his age—to find himself really taken on trust, really desired and loved. Honoria's friendship was a pure and precious thing, but in its very purity carefully restrained. Praddy's kindness, and the office boy's worship had both been gratifying to Vivie's self-esteem, but both had to be kept at bay. Somehow the love of a father and of an old nurse were of a different category to these other contacts.

All these thoughts passed through David's brain in thirty seconds. He shook himself, straightened himself, smiled adequately, and tried to live up to the situation.

"Dear father! And dear ... Nannie! (A bold but successful deduction). How sweet of you both—greeting me like this. I've come home a very different David to the one that left you—what was it? Five—six years ago?—to go to Mr. Praed's studio. I've learnt a lot in the interval. But I'm so sick of the past, I don't want to talk about it more than I can help, and I've been in very queer health since I got ill—and—wounded—in—South Africa. My memory has gone for many things—I'm afraid I've forgotten all my Welsh, Nannie, but it'll soon come back, that is, if I may stay here a bit." (Exclamations from father and nurse: "This is your home, Davy-bach!") "I'm not going to stay too long this time because I've got my living to earn in London....

"Did you never hear anything about me from ... South Africa ... or the War Office—or—your old college chum, Mr. Gardner?"

"I heard—my own dear boy—" said the Revd. Howel, again taking him in his arms in a renewed spasm of affection. "I heard you were wounded and very ill in the camp hospital at Colesberg. It was a nursing sister, I think, who sent me the information. I wrote several times to the War Office, my letters were acknowledged, that was all. Then Sam Gardner wrote to me from Margate and said his son had been in the same hospital with you. Later on I saw in a Bristol paper that this hospital—Colesberg—had fallen into the hands of the Boers and the Cape insurgents. Then I said to myself 'My poor boy's been taken prisoner' and as time went on, 'My poor boy's dead, or he would have written to me.'"

Here the Revd. Howel stopped to wipe his eyes and blow his nose. David touched through his armour of cynicism, said—Nannie retiring to prepare the evening meal—"Father dear, though I don't want to refer too often to the past, I behaved disgracefully some time ago and the Colonies seemed my only chance of setting myself right. I did manage to get away from the Boers, but I had not the courage to present myself before you till I had done something to regain your good opinion. I have got now good employment in London and I'm even reading up Law. We will talk of that by and bye but I tell you now—from my heart—I am a different David to the one you knew, and you shall never regret taking me back."

Both father and son were crying now, for emotion especially in Wales is catching. But the father laughed through his tears; and incoherently thanked God for the return of the prodigal—a fine upstanding lad—whole and sound. "No taint about you, Davy, I'll be bound. Why your voice alone shows you've been a clean liver. It's music in my ears, and if I could see as well as I can hear I'd wager you're a handsome lad and have lost much of your foolishness. Davy, lad" (lowering his voice) "you've no cause to be anxious about Jenny. She—she—had a boy, but we got her married to a miner—I made it right with him. She has another child now, but they're being brought up together. We won't refer to it again. She lives twenty miles from here, at Gower—and ... and ... there's an end of it....

"Now you won't run away back to London till you're obliged? Where's your luggage? At Pontyffynon?"

"No," said David, a little non-plussed at evidences of his dissolute past and this unexpected fatherhood assumed on his account. "I haven't more luggage than what is contained in my bicycle bag. But don't let that concern you. I'll go over to Swansea one day or some nearer town and buy what may be necessary, and I'll stay with you all my holidays, tell you all my plans, and even after I go back to London I'll always come down here when I can get away. For the present I'm going simply to enjoy myself for the first time in my life. The last four years we'll look on as a horrid dream. What a paradise you live in." His eye ranged over the two-storeyed, soundly-built stone house facing south, with mountains behind and the western sun throwing shafts of warm yellow green over the lawn and the flower beds; over clumps of elms in the middle, southern distance, that might have been planted by the Romans (who loved this part of Wales). Bees, butterflies and swallows were in the air; the distant lowing of kine, the scent of the roses, the clatter in the kitchen where Nannie aided by another female servant was preparing supper, even the barking of a watch dog; aware that something unusual was going on, completed the impression of the blissful countryside. "What a paradise you live in! How could I have left it?"

"Ay, dear lad; I doubt not it looks strange and new to you since you've been in South Africa and London. But it'll soon seem homelike enough. And now you'll like to see your room, and have a wash before supper. Tom, the gardener, shall take in your bicycle and give it a rub over. I've still got the old one here in the coach-house which you left behind. Tom's new, since you left. He's not so clever with the bees as your old friend Evan was, but he's a steadier lad. I fear me Evan led you into some of your scrapes. The fault was partly mine. I shouldn't have let you run wild so much, but I was so wrapped up in my studies—Well, well!"

David was careful to play his part sufficiently to say when shown into his old bedroom, "Just the same, father; scarcely a bit altered—but isn't the bed moved—to another place?"

"You're right, my boy—Ah! your memory can't be as bad as you pretend. Yes, we moved it there, Bridget and I, because the Archdeacon came once to stay and complained of the draught from the window."

"The deuce he did!" said David. "Well, I shan't complain of anything."

His father left him and he then proceeded to lay out the small store of things he had brought in his bicycle bag, giving special prominence to the shaving tackle. He had just finished a summary toilet when there was a tap on the door, and, suppressing an exclamation of impatience—for he dearly wanted time and solitude for collected thought—he admitted Bridget.

"Well, Nannie," he said, "come for a gossip?"

"Yess. I can hardly bear to take my eyes off you, for you've changed, you have changed. And yet, I don't know? You don't look much older than you wass when you went off to London to be an architect. Your cheek—" (lifting her hand and stroking it, while David tried hard not to wince) "Your cheek's as soft and smooth as it was then, as any young girl's. Wherever you've been, the world has not treated you very bad. No one would have dreamt you'd been all the way to South Africa to them Wild Boars. But some men wear wonderful well. I suppose your father giv' you a bit of a shock? He's much older looking; and he wassn't suffering, to speak of, from his sight when you went away. And now he can hardly see to read even with his new spectol. Old Doctor Murgatroyd can't do nothing for him—Advises him to go to see some Bristol or London eye-doctor. But after you seemed to disappear in Africa he had no heart for trying to get his sight back. He'd sit for hours doing nothing but think and talk, all about old Welsh times, or Bible times. Of course he knows hiss services by heart; hiss only job wass with the Lessons.... But you see, he'd often only have me and the girl and Tom in church. There's a new preacher up at Little Bethel that's drawn all the village folk to hear him. But your father'll be a different man now—you see, he'll be like a boy again. And if you could stay long enough, you might take him to Bristol—or Clifton I think it wass—to see if they could do anything about his eyes....

"The past's the past and we aren't going to say no more about it, and now you've turned over a new leaf—somehow I can't feel you're the same person—don't go worrying yourself about that slut Jenny. She's all right. After your baby was born at her mother's, she went into service at Llanelly and there she met a miner who's at work on the new coal mine in Gower. He wasn't a bad sort of chap and when he'd heard her story he said for a matter of twenty pound he'd marry her and take over her baby. So your father paid the twenty pounds, and if she'll only keep straight she'll be none the worse for what's happened. I always said it wass my fault. It wass the year I had to go away to my sister, and your father had to go to St. David's, and after all, if it hadn't 'a-been you, it 'd 'a-been young Evan. Why there's bin some girls in the village have had two and even three babies before they settled down and got married. Now we must dish up supper. I've given you lots and lots of pancakes and the cream and honey you wass always so fond of—you bad boy—" She ventured a kiss on the smooth cheek of her nursling and heavily descended the stairs.

David had a very bad night, because to please his old nurse he had eaten too many of her pancakes with cream and honey. In fact, he had at last to tip-toe down through a sleeping house cautiously to let himself out and relieve his feelings by pacing the verandah till the nausea passed off. After that he lay long awake trying to size up the situation. He got his thoughts at last into some such shape as this:—

"It's clear I was a regular young rake before I was sent up to London to be Praddy's pupil. Apparently I seduced the housemaid or kitchenmaid—my father's establishment seems to consist of Nannie who is housekeeper and cook, and a maid who does housework and helps in the kitchen—and this unfortunate girl who fell a prey to my solicitations—or more likely misled me—afterwards gave birth to a child attributed either to my fatherhood or the gardener's. But the matter has been hushed up by a payment of twenty pounds and the girl is now married and respectable and ought to give no further trouble. I suppose that was a climax of naughtiness on my part and the main reason why I was sent away. The two people who matter most have received me without doubt or question, but the one to be wary about is the old nurse, whose very affection makes her inconveniently inquisitive. Mem. get up and lock my door, or else she may come in with hot water or something in the morning and take me by surprise.

"The original David is evidently dead and well out of the way. There can be no harm in my taking his place, at any rate for a few years: it may give the old man new life and genuine happiness, for I shall play my part as a good son, and certainly shall cost him nothing. I'll begin by taking him to an oculist and finding out what is wrong with his eyes.... Probably only cataract. It may be possible to effect a cure and he can then finish his book on the history of Glamorganshire from earliest times. Must remember, by the bye, that the Welsh change most of the old m's into f's and that this country is called Forganwg, with the w pronounced like oo, and the f like v. Must learn some Welsh. What a nuisance. But nothing is worth doing if it isn't done well. If I can keep this deception up this would be a jolly place to come to for occasional holidays, and I simply couldn't have a better reference to respectability, sex and station with the benchers of Lincoln's Inn than 'my father,' the Revd. Howel Williams, Vicar of Pontystrad. They'll probably want a second or a third reference. Can I rely on Praddy? Is it possible I might work up my acquaintance with that professor whom I met in the train? I'll see. Perhaps I could attend classes of his if he lectures in London."

Then the plotting David fell asleep at last and woke to hear the loud tapping on his door at eight o'clock, of Bridget, rather surprised to find the door locked, but entering (when he had garbed himself in his Norfolk jacket and opened the door), with hot water for shaving and a cup of tea.

It was a hot July morning, and while he dressed, the southern breeze came in through the open window scented by the roses and the lemon verbena growing against the wall. His father was pacing up and down the hall and the verandah restlessly awaiting him, fearing lest the whole episode of the day before might not have been one of his waking dreams. His failing sight made reading almost a torture and writing more a matter of feeling than visual perception. Time therefore hung wearisomely on his hands; Bridget was not a good reader, besides being too busy a housekeeper to have time for it. Had David really returned to him? Would he sometimes read aloud and sometimes write his letters, or even the finish of his History? Too good to be true!

But there was David coming down the stairs, greeting him with tender affection. "Read and write for you, father? Of course! But before I go back to London—and unfortunately I must go back early in August—I'm going to take you to see an oculist—Bristol or Clifton perhaps—and get your sight restored."

After breakfast, however, the father decided he must take David round the village, to see and be seen. David was not very anxious to go, but as the Revd. Howel looked disappointed he gave in.

It had to be got over some time or other. So they first visited the church, a building in the form of a cross, with an imposing battlemented tower. Here David asked to inspect the registers and found therein (while the old gentleman silently prayed or sat in mute thankfulness in a sunny corner)—the record of his father's marriage to Mary Vavasour twenty-six years before (Mary was twenty-three and the Revd. Howel forty at the time) and of his own baptism two years afterwards.

Then issuing from the church, father and son walked through the village, the father pointing out the changes for better or worse that had taken place in four years, and not noticing the vagueness of his son's memories of either persons or features in the landscape. The village, like most Welsh villages, was of white-washed cottages, slate-roofed, but it was embowered with that luxuriance of foliage and flowers which makes Glamorganshire—out of sight of the coal-mining—seem an earthly paradise. Every now and then the Revd. Howel would nudge his son and say: "That man who spoke was old Goronwy, as big a scoundrel now as he was five years ago," or he would introduce David to a villager of whom he thought more favourably. If she were a young woman she generally smirked and looked sideways; if a man he grunted out a Welsh greeting or only gave a nod of surly recognition. Several professed fluent recognition but some said in Welsh "he wasn't a bit like the Mr. David they had known." Whereupon the Revd. Howel laughed and said: "Wait till you have been out to South Africa fighting for your king and country and see if that doesn't change you!"

The visit to the Clifton oculist resulted in a great success. The oculist after two or three days' preparation in a nursing home performed the operation and advised David then to leave his father for a few days (promising if any unfavourable symptoms supervened he would telegraph) so that he might pass the time in sleep as much as possible, and with no mental stimulation. During this interval David transferred himself and his bicycle to Swansea, and thence visited the Gower caves where he ran up against Rossiter once more and spent delightful hours being inducted into palaeontology by Rossiter and his companions. Then back to—by contrast—boresome Clifton (except for its Zoological Gardens). After another week his father was well enough to be escorted home. In another fortnight he might be able to use his eyes, and soon after that would be able to read and write—in moderation.

But David could not wait to see his intervention crowned with complete success. He must keep faith with Honoria who would be wanting a long holiday in Switzerland; and their joint business must not suffer by his absence from London. There were, indeed, times when the peace and comfort and beauty of Pontystrad got hold of him and he asked himself: "Why not settle down here for the rest of his life, put aside other ambitions, attempt no more than this initial fraud, leave the hateful world wherein women had only three chances to men's seven." Then there would arise once more fierce ambition, the resolve to avenge Vivien Warren for her handicaps, the desire to keep tryst with Honoria and to enjoy more of Rossiter's society. Besides, he ran a constant risk of discovery under the affectionate but puzzled inspection of the old nurse. In her mind, residence amongst the "Wild Boars," service in an army, travel and adventure generally during an absence of five years, as well as emergence from adolescence into manhood, accounted for much change in physical appearance, but not sufficiently for the extraordinary change in morale: the contrast between the vicious, untidy, selfish, insolent boy that had gone off to London with ill-concealed glee in 1896 and this grave-mannered, polite, considerate, pleasant-voiced young man who had already managed to find good employment in London before he revealed himself anew to his delighted father.

These doubts David read in Nannie's mind. But he would not give them time and chance to become more precise and formulated. Gradually she would become used to the seeming miracle. In the meantime he would return to London, and if his father's recovery was complete he would not revisit "home" till Christmas. As soon as he was able to write, his father would forward him the copy of his birth-certificate, and he would likewise answer in the sense agreed upon any letters of reference or enquiry: would state the apprenticeship to architecture with Praed A.R.A., and then the impulse to go out to South Africa, the slight wound—David insisted it was slight, a fuss about nothing, because he had enquired about necrosis of the jaw and realized that even if he had recovered it would have left indisputable marks on face and throat. In fact there were so many complications involved in an escape from the Boers, only to be justified under the code of honour prevailing in war time, that he would rather his father said little or nothing about South Africa but left him to explain all that. A point of view readily grasped by the Revd. Howel, who to get such a son back would even have not thought too badly of desertion—and the negative letters of the War Office said nothing of that.

So early in September, after the most varied, anxious, successful six weeks in his life—so far—David Vavasour Williams returned to Fig Tree Court, Inner Temple.



CHAPTER V

READING FOR THE BAR

It had been a hot, windless day in London, in early September. Though summer was in full swing in the country without a hint of autumn, the foliage in the squares and gardens of the Inns of Court was already seared and a little shrivelled. The privet hedges were almost black green; and the mould in the dismal borders that they screened looked as though it had never known rain or hose water and as if it could no more grow bright-tinted flowers than the asbestos of a gas stove which it resembled in consistency and colour. It was now an evening, ending one of those days which are peculiarly disheartening to a Londoner returned from a long stay in the depths of the country—a country which has hills and streams, ferny hollows, groups of birches, knolls surmounted with pines, meadows of lush, emerald-green grass, full-foliaged elms, twisted oaks, orchards hung with reddening apples, red winding lanes between unchecked hedges, blue mountains in the far distance, and the glimpse of a river or of ponds large enough to be called a mere or even a lake. The exhausted London to which David Williams had returned a few days previously had lost a few thousands of its West-end and City population—just, in fact, most of its interesting if unlikable folk, its people who mattered, its insolent spoilt darlings whom you liked to recognize in the Carlton atrium, in Hyde Park, in a box at the theatre: yet the frowsy, worthy millions were there all the same. The air of its then smelly streets was used up and had the ammoniac strench of the stable. It was a weary London. The London actors had not returned from Cornwall and Switzerland. Provincial companies enjoyed—a little anxiously owing to uncertain receipts at the box office—a brief license on the boards of famous play-houses. The newspapers had exhausted the stunt of the silly season and were at their flattest and most yawn-provoking. The South African War had reached its dreariest stage....

Bertie Adams on this close September evening had out-stayed the other employes of Fraser and Warren in their fifth floor office at No. 88-90 Chancery Lane. He had remained after office hours to do a little work, a little "self-improvement"; and he was just about to close the outer office and leave the key with the housekeeper, when the lift came surging up and out of it stepped a young man in a summer suit and a bowler hat who, to Bertie's astonishment, not only dashed straight at the door of the partners' room, but opened its Yale lock with a latch-key as though long accustomed to do so. "But, sir!..." exclaimed the junior clerk (his promotion to that rank had tacitly dated from Vivie Warren's departure). "It's all right," said the stranger. "I'm Mr. David Williams and I've come to draw up some notes for Mrs. Claridge. I dare say Miss Fraser has told you I should work in the office every now and then whilst my cousin—Miss Warren, you know—is away. You needn't wait, though you can close the outer office before you go; and, by the bye, you might fetch me Who's Who for the present year." All this was said a little breathlessly.

Bertie brought the volume, then only half the size of its present bulk, because it lacked our new nobility and gave no heed to your favourite recreation. D.V. Williams stood in the yellow light of the west window, reading a letter... "Cousin? No! Twin brother, perhaps; but had she one?..." mused Bertie... and then, that never-to-be-forgotten voice ... "Here's 'Oo's Oo—er—Hoo's Hoo, I mean.... Miss..." He only added the last word as by some sub-conscious instinct.

"Mister Williams," said Vivien-David-Warren Williams, facing him with resolute eyes. "Be quite clear about that, Adams; David Vavasour Williams, Miss Warren's cousin."

"Indeed I will be, Miss ... Mister ... er ... Sir..." said the transfigured Bertie (his brain voice saying over and over again in ecstasy ... "I tumble to it! I tumble to it!"). And then again "Indeed I will, Mr. Williams. I'm a bit stupidlike this evenin' ... readin' too much.... May I stay and help you, Sir? I'm pretty quick on the typewriter, Miss Warren may have told you ... Sir ... and I ain't—I mean—I am not—half bad with me shorthand.... You know—I mean, she would know I'd joined them evenin' classes..."

"Thank you, Adams; but if you have joined the evening classes you oughtn't to interrupt your attendance there. I can quite manage here alone and you need not be afraid: I shall leave everything properly closed. You could give up the key of the outer office as you go out. You may often find me at work here after office hours, but that need not disturb you ... and I need hardly say, after all Miss Fraser and Miss Warren have told me about you, I rely on you to be at all times thoroughly discreet and not likely to discuss the work of this firm or my share in it with any one?"...

"Indeed you may ... Mr. Williams ... indeed you may.... Oh! I'm so happy.... Good-night ... Sir!"

And Adams's heart was too full for attendance at a lecture on Roman law. He went off instead to the play. He himself belonged now to the world of romance. He knew of things—and wild horses and red-hot tweezers should not tear the knowledge from him, or make him formulate his deductions—he knew of things as amazing, as prodigal of developments as anything in the problem play enacted beyond the pit and the stalls; he was the younger brother of Herbert Waring and the comrade of Jessie Joseph: at that moment deceiving the sleuth hounds of Stage law by parading in her fiance's evening dress and going to prison for his sake.

Beryl Claridge had taken up much of Vivie Warren's work on the 1st of August in that year, while Honoria Fraser was touring in Switzerland. Miss Mullet and Miss Steynes were replaced (Steynes staying on a little later to initiate the new-comers) by two young women so commonplace yet such efficient machines that their names are not worth hunting up or inventing. If I have to refer to them I will call them Miss A. and Miss B.

Beryl Claridge was closely scanned by Bertie Adams, and frequently compared in his mind with the absent and idealized Vivie. He decided that although she was shrewd and clever and very good-looking, he did not like her. She smoked too many cigarettes for 1901. She had her curly hair "bobbed" (though the term was not invented then). She put up her feet too high and too often; so much so that the scandalized Bertie saw she wore black knickerbockers and no petticoats under her smart "tailor-made." She snapped your head off, was short, sharp and insolent, joked too much with the spectacled women clerks (who became her willing slaves); then would ask Bertie about his best girl and tell him he'd got jolly good teeth, a good biceps and quite a nice beginning of a moustache.

But she was a worker: no doubt of that! Of course, in the dead season there were not many clients to shock or to win over by her nonchalant manners, only a few women who required advice as to houses, stocks, and shares, law, or private enquiries as to the good faith of husbands or fiances. Such as found their way up in the lift were a little disappointed at seeing Beryl in Vivie's chair or at not being received by their old friend Honoria Fraser. But Beryl was too good a business woman to put them off with any license of speech or manners. For the rest she spent August and early September in "mugging up" the firm's business. Although deep down in her curious little heart, under all her affectation of hardness and insolent disdain of public or family opinion she firmly loved her architect and the children she had borne him, she desired quite as passionately to be self-supporting, to earn a sufficient income of her own, to be dependent on no one. She might have her passing caprices and her loose and flippant mode of talking, but she wasn't going to be a failure, a cadger, a parasite, a "fallen" woman. She fully realized that in England no woman has fallen who is self-supporting, whose income meets her expenses and who pays her way. Given those guarantees, all else that she does which is not actually criminal is eventually put down to mere eccentricity.

So Honoria's offer and Honoria's business provided her with a most welcome opening. She realized the opportunities that lay before this Woman's Office for General Inquiries, established in the closing years of the nineteenth century—this business that before Woman's enfranchisement nibbled discreetly at the careers and the openings for profit-making hitherto rigidly reserved for Man. She wasn't going to let Honoria down. Honoria, she realized, was in herself equivalent to many thousands of pounds in capital. Her reputation was flawless. She was known to and esteemed by a host of women of the upper middle class. Her Cambridge reputation for learning, her eventual inheritance of eighty thousand pounds were unexpressed reasons for many a woman of good standing preferring to confide her affairs to the judgment of Fraser and Warren, in preference to dealing with male legal advisers, male land agents, men on the Stock Exchange, men in house property business.

So Beryl became in most respects a source of strength to Honoria Fraser, deprived for a time of the overt co-operation of her junior partner.

Beryl in the first few weeks of her stay evinced small interest in the departure of Vivien Warren and her reasons for going abroad. She had a scheme of her own in which her architect would take a prominent part, for providing women—authoresses, actresses, or the wives of the newly enriched—with week-end cottages; the desire for which was born with the Twentieth century and fostered by the invention of motors and bicycles. Cases before the firm for opinions on intricate legal problems Beryl was advised to place before the consideration of one of Honoria's friends, a law student, Mr. D.V. Williams, who would shortly be back from his holiday and who had agreed to look in at the office from time to time and go through such papers as were set aside for him to read. Beryl had remarked—without any intention behind it—on seeing some of his notes initialled V.W. that it was rum he should have the same initials as that Vivie girl whom she remembered at Newnham ... who was "so silent and standoffish and easily shocked." But she noticed later that when Mr. Williams got to work his initials were really three and not two—D.V.W. One thing with the other: her departure from the office at the regular closing hour—five—so that she might see her babies before they were put to bed; Williams's habit of coming to work after six; kept them from meeting till the October of 1901. When they did meet after Honoria's return from Switzerland, Beryl scanned the law student critically; decided he was rather nice-looking but very pre-occupied; perhaps engaged to some girl whose parents objected; rather mysterious, quand meme; she had heard some one say this Mr. David Williams was a cousin or something of Vivie Warren ... what if he were in love with Vivie and she had gone away because she had some fad or other about not wanting to marry? Well! All this could be looked into some other time, if it were worth bothering about at all. Or could Williams be spoony on Honoria? After her money? He was much younger—evidently—but young men adored ripe women, and young girls idolized elderly soldiers. C'etait a voir (Beryl ever since she had been to Paris on a stolen honeymoon with the architect liked saying things to herself in French).

Towards the end of October, David received at Fig Tree Court a letter from his father in Glamorganshire.

Pontystrad Vicarage, October 20, 1901.

MY DEAR SON,—

The improvement in my sight continues. I can now read a little every day, by daylight, without pain or fatigue, and write letters. I feel I owe you a long one; but I shall write a portion each day and not try my eyes unduly.

I am glad to know you are now settled down in chambers at Fig Tree Court in the Temple and have begun your studies for the Bar. You could not have taken up a finer profession. What seems to me so wonderful is that you should be able to earn your living at the same time and be no charge on me. I accept your assurances that you need no support; but never forget, my dear Son, that if you do, I am ready and willing to help. You sowed your wild oats—perhaps we both exaggerated the sins of the wild years—at any rate you have made a noble reparation. What a splendid school the Colonies must be! What a difference between the David who left me five years ago for Mr. Praed's studio and the David who returned to me last summer! I can never be sufficiently thankful to Almighty God for the change He has wrought in you! No lip religion, but a change of heart. I presume you explained everything to the Colonial Office after you got back to London and that you are now free to take up a civil career? The people out there never sent me any further information; but the other day one of my letters to you (written after I had received the sad news) returned to me, with the information that the hospital you were in had been captured by the Boers and that you could not be traced. I enclose it. You can now finish up the story yourself and let the authorities know how you got away and returned home.

The other day that impudent baggage Jenny Gorlais came and asked to see me ... she said her husband was out of work and refused to give her enough money to provide for all her children, that he had advised her to apply to you for the maintenance of your son! Relying on what you had told me I sent for Bridget and we both told her we had made every enquiry and now refused absolutely to believe in her stories of five years ago—that we were sure you were not the father of her eldest child. Bridget, for example, believed the postman was its father. Jenny burst into tears, and as she did not persist in her claim my heart was moved, and I gave her ten shillings, but told her pretty plainly that if she ever made such a claim again I should go to the police. You should have heard Bridget defending you! Such a champion. If you want a witness to character for your references you should call her! She is loud in your praise.

October 22.

There is one thing I want to tell you; and it is easier to write it than say it. Your mother did not die when you were three years old—much worse: she left me—ran away with an engineer who was tracing out the branch railway. He seemed a nice young fellow and I had him often up at the Vicarage, and that was the way he repaid my hospitality! He wrote to me a year afterwards asking me to divorce her. As though a Clergyman of the Church of England could do such a thing! I had offered to take her back—not then—it would have been a mockery—but by putting advertisements into the South Wales papers. But after her paramour's letter—which I did not answer—I never heard any more about her....

["Damn it all," said David to himself at this juncture of the letter—he was training himself to swear in a moderate, gentlemanly way—"Damn it all! Whatever I do, it seems I cannot come from altogether respectable stock."...]

You grew up therefore without a mother's care, though good Bridget did her best. When you were a child I fear I rather neglected you. I was so disappointed and embittered that I sought consolation in the legends of our beloved country and in Scriptural exegesis. You were rather a naughty boy at Swansea Grammar School and somewhat of a scamp at Malvern College—Well! we won't go over all that again. I quite understand your reticence about the past. Once again I think the blame was mine as much as yours. I ought to have interested myself more in your pursuits and games ... what a pity, by the bye, that you seem to have lost your gift of drawing and painting! I do remember how at one time we were drawn together over the old Welsh legends and the very clever drawings you made of national heroes and heroines—they seemed to come on you as quite a surprise when I took them out of the old portfolio.

But about your mother—for it is necessary you should know all I can tell you in case you have to answer questions as to your parentage. Your mother's name was, as you know, Mary Vavasour. It is a common name in South Wales though it seems to be Norman French. She came to our Pontystrad school as a teacher in 1873. Her father was something to do with mining at Merthyr. I fell in love with her—she had a sweet face—and married her in 1874. You were born two years afterwards. Bridget had been my housekeeper before I was married and I asked her to stay on lest your mother should be inexperienced at first in the domestic arts. They never got on well together and when Mary had recovered from her confinement and seemed disposed to take up housekeeping I sent away poor Bridget reluctantly and only took her back after your mother's flight. Bridget was a second mother to you as you know, though I fear you never showed her much affection till these later days.

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 fashion 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 God'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 L50 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 circumstances, I bid you provide for her, but how much, I leave entirely to your judgment. Meantime, here I am with an income of nearly L700 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 documents 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 sunshine 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 passed his preliminary examination (since he could not avow that inside his clothes he was a third wrangler), having satisfied his two "godfathers" 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 passed through some magic door, gone through the looking-glass 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 friendship 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, glass-roofed studio-laboratory—abutted 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 glass 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 L5,000 when she first married had risen to L9,000 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 cockatoos 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 assisted 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 God 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 fashions and ideals receded and modern taste shook itself free from what was tawdry, fluffy, stuffy, floppy, messy, cheaply imitative, fringed and tasselled 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 massive 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 tasselled 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 stitch 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 "petite"—she loved the French adjective ever since it had been applied to her at Scarborough by a sycophantic governess—petite—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 massive door. David passed 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 classes, 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 Mitchell argued about the caeca—caecums, 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 assistant had fed it up in the laboratory, and they had tried a few experiments on it with painless drugs with astonishing 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 stitch 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 washing 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 damned 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 hell does it matter to you?'"...

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

"My character has changed during the last five years, and especially so since I came back from South Africa. But I am quite sure it was not due to any operation, on the throat or anywhere else. I really don't know why I told you that silly falsehood in the train—about necrosis of the jaw. The fact is that when I was in hospital—at—Colesberg, a friend of mine in the same ward used—to chaff me—and say I was going to have necrosis. I had got knocked over one day—by—the—wind of a shell and thought I was done for, but it really was next to nothing. P'raps I had a dose of fever on top. At any rate they kept me in hospital, and one morning the doctors disappeared and the Boers marched in and when I got well enough I managed to escape and get away to—er—Cape Town and so returned—with some money—my friend Frank Gardner lent me." (At this stage the sick-at-heart Vivie was saying to herself, "What an account I'm laying up for Frank to honour when he comes back—if he does come back.") "I don't know why I tell you all this, except that I ought never to have misled you at the start. But if you are a kind and good man"—David's voice broke here—"You will forget all about it and not upset my father, I can assure you I haven't done anything really wrong. I haven't deserted—some day—perhaps—I can tell you all about it. But at present all that South African episode is just a horrid dream—I was more sinned against than sinning" (tears were rather in the voice at this stage). "I want to forget all about it—and settle down and vex my father no more. I want to read for the Bar—a soldier's life is the very opposite to what I should choose if I were a free agent. But you will trust me, won't you? You will believe me when I say I've done nothing wrong, nothing that you, if you knew all the facts, would call wrong...?"

Speech here trailed off into emotion. Despite the severest self-restraint the bosom rose and fell. A few tears trickled down the smooth cheeks—it was an ingratiating boy on the verge of manhood that Rossiter saw before him. He hastened to say:

"My dear chap! Don't say another word, unless you like to blackguard me for my impertinence in putting these questions. I quite understand. We'll consider the whole thing erased from our memories. Go on studying for the Bar with all your might, if you must take up so barren a profession and won't become my pupil in biology—Great openings, I can tell you, coming now in that direction." (A pause.)

"But if it's of any interest to you, just come here as often as you like in your spare time—either to tea with Mrs. Rossiter or to see me at work on my experiments. I've taken a great liking to you, if you'll allow me to say so. I think there's good stuff in you. A young man reading for the Bar in London is none the worse for a few friends. He must often feel pretty lonely on a Sunday, for example. And he may also—now I'm going to be impertinent and paternal again—he may also pick up undesirable acquaintances, male—and female. Don't you get feeling lonely, with your home far away in Wales. Consider yourself free of this place at any rate, and my wife and I can introduce you to some other people you might like to know. I might introduce you to Mark Stansfield the Q.C. Do you know any one in London, by the bye?"

"Oh yes," said David, smiling with all but one tear dried on a still coloured cheek. "I know Honoria Fraser—I know Mr. Praed the architect—"

"The A.R.A.? Of course; you or your father said you had been his pupil. H'm. Praed. Yes, I visualize him. Rather a dilettante—whimsical—I didn't like what I heard of him at one time. However it's no affair of mine. And Honoria Fraser! She's simply one of the best women I know. It's curious she wasn't here—At least I didn't see her—this afternoon. She's a friend of my wife's. I knew her when she was at Newnham. She had a great friend—what was it? Violet? No, Vera? Vivien—yes that was it, Vivien Warren. Of course! Why that business she started for women in the City somewhere is called Fraser and Warren. She was always wanting to bring this Vivien Warren here. Said she had such a pretty colouring. I own I rather like to see a pretty woman. But she didn't come" (pulls at his pipe and thrusts another cigarette on David). "Went abroad. Seemed rather morose. Some one who came with Honoria said she had a bad mother, and Honoria very rightly shut him up. By the bye, where and how did you come to meet Honoria first?"

(David was on the point of saying—he was so unstrung—"Why we were at Newnham together." Then resolved to tell another whopper—Indeed I am told there is a fascination in certain circumstances about lying—and replied): "Vivien Warren was my cousin. She was a Vavasour on her mother's side—from South Wales—and my mother was a Vavasour too—" And as the disguised Vivie said this, some inkling came into her mind that there was a real relationship between Catharine Warren nee Vavasour and the Mary Vavasour who was David's mother. A spasm of joy flashed through her at the possibility of her story being in some slight degree true.

"I see," said Rossiter, satisfied, and feeling now that the interview had lasted long enough and that there would be just time to glance at his assistant's afternoon work before he dressed for dinner....

"Well, old chap. Good-bye for the present. Come often and see us and look upon me—I must be fifteen years older than you are—What, twenty-four? Impossible! You don't look a day older than twenty—in fact, if you hadn't told me you'd been in South Africa—However as I was saying, look on me as in loco parentis while you are in London. I'll show you the way out into the hall. Shall they call you a cab? No? You're quite right. It's a splendid night for January. Where do you live? Here, write it down in my address book.... '7 Fig Tree Court, Temple'—What a jolly address! Are there fig trees in the Temple ... still? P'raps descended from cuttings or layers the poor Templars brought from the Holy Land."

David returned to Fig Tree Court and his studies of criminology. But his body and mind thrilled with the experiences of the afternoon; and the musty records in works of repellent binding and close, unsympathetic print of nineteenth century forgery, poisoning, assaults-on-the-person, and cruelty-to-children cases for once failed to hold his close attention. He sat all through the evening after a supper of bread and cheese and ginger beer in his snug, small room, furnished principally with well-filled book-shelves. The room had a glowing fire and a green-shaded reading lamp. He sat staring beyond his law books at visions, waking dreams that came and went. The dangers of exposure that opened before him were in these dreams, but there were other mind-pictures that filled his life with a glow of colour. How different from the drab horizons that encircled poor Vivie Warren less than a year ago! Poor Vivie, whom even FitzJohn's Avenue at Hampstead had rejected, who had long since been dropped—no doubt on account of rumours concerning her mother—by the few acquaintances she had made at Cambridge, who had parents living in South Kensington, Bayswater, and Bloomsbury. Here was Portland Place receiving her in her guise as David Williams with open arms. Men and women looked at her kindly, interestedly, and she could look back at them without that protective frown. At night she could walk about the town, go to the theatre, stroll along the Embankment and attract no man's offensive attentions. She could enter where she liked for a meal, a cup of tea, frequent the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons when she would without waiting for a "ladies" day; stop to look at a street fight, cause no sour looks if she entered a smoking compartment on the train, mingle with the man-world unquestioned, unhindered, unnoticed, exciting at most a pleasant off-hand camaraderie due to her youth and good looks.

Should she go on with the bold adventure? A thousand times yes! David should break no law in Vivie's code of honour, do real wrong to no one; but Vivie should see the life best worth living in London from a man's standpoint.

David however must be armed at every point and have his course clearly marked out before his contemplation. He must steep himself in the geography of South Africa—Why not get Rossiter to propose him as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society? That would be a lark because they wouldn't admit women as members: they had refused Honoria Fraser. David must read up—somewhere—the history of the South African War as far as it went. He had better find out something about the Bechuanaland Police Force; how as a member of such a force he could have drifted as far south as the vicinity of Colesberg; how thereabouts he could have got sick enough—he certainly would say nothing more about a wound—to have been put into hospital. He must find out how he could have escaped from the Boers and come back to England without getting into difficulties with the military or the Colonial Office or whoever had any kind of control over the members of the Bechuanaland Border Police....

But the whole South African episode had better be dropped. Rossiter, after his appeal, would set himself to forget and ignore it. It must be damped down in the poor old father's mind as of relative unimportance—after all, his father was a recluse who did not have many visitors ... by the bye, he must remember to write on the morrow and explain why he could not come down for Christmas or the New Year ... would promise a good long visit in the Easter holidays instead—Must remember that resolution to learn up some Welsh. What a nuisance it was that you couldn't buy anywhere in London or in South Wales any book about modern conversation in Welsh. The sort of Welsh you learnt in the old-fashioned books, which were all that could be got, was Biblical language—Some one had told David that if you went into Smithfield Market in the early morning you might meet the Welsh farmers and stock-drivers who had come up from Wales during the night and who held forth in the Cymric tongue over their beasts. But probably their language was such as would shock Nannie.... Supposing Frank Gardner did come to England? In that case it might be safer to confide in Frank. He was harum-scarum, but he was chivalrous and he pitied Vivie. Besides he was a prime appreciator of a lark. Should she even tell Rossiter? No, of course not. That was just one of the advantages of being "David." As "David" she could form a sincere and inspiring friendship with Rossiter which would be utterly beyond her reach as "Vivie." How pale beside the comradeship of Honoria now appeared the hand-grips, the hearty male free-masonry of a man like Rossiter. How ungrateful however even to make such an admission to herself....