Mrs. Warrens Daughter | Page 7

found out as 'Mrs. Warren's daughter.' That beast George Crofts revenged himself because I wouldn't marry him by letting it be known here and there that I was the daughter of the 'notorious Mrs. Warren'; whereupon several of the people I liked--you remember?--dropped me--the Burne-Joneses, the Lacrevys. Or if it wasn't Crofts some other swine did. But for the fact that it would upset our style as a firm I could change my name: call myself something quite different....
"D'you know, I've sometimes thought I'd cut my hair short and dress in men's clothes, and go out into the world as a man ... my voice is almost a tenor--Such a lark! I'd get admitted to the Bar. But the nuisance about that would be the references. I'm an outlaw, you see, through no fault of mine.... I couldn't give you as a reference, and I don't know any man who would be generous enough to take the risk of participating in the fraud.... unless it were Praed--good old Praddy. I'm sure it's been done now and again. They call Judge FitzSimmons 'an old woman.' Well, d'you know, I believe he is ... a wise old woman."
_Norie_: "Well: bide a wee, till our firm is doing a roaring business: I can pretend then to take in a male partner, p'raps. Rose and Lilian are very hard-working and we can't afford to lose them yet. If you appeared one morning dressed as a young man they might throw up their jobs and go elsewhere..."
_Vivie_: "You may be quite sure I won't let you down. Moreover I haven't the money for any vagaries yet, though I have an instinct that it is coming. You know those Charles Davis shares I bought at 5_s._ 3_d._? Well, they rose to 29_s._ whilst you were away; so I sold out. We had three hundred, and that, less commissions, made about ��350 profit; the boldest coup we have had yet. And all because I spotted that new find of emery powder in Tripoli, saw it in a Consular Report....
"I want to be rich and therefore powerful, Norie! Then people will forget fast enough about my shameful parentage."
_Norie_: "How is she? Do you ever hear from or of her now?"
_Vivie_: "I haven't heard from her for two years, since I left her letters unanswered. But I hear of her every now and again. No. Not through Crofts. I suppose you know--if you take any interest in that wretch--that since he married the American quakeress he took his name off the Warren Hotels Company and sold out much of his interest. He is now living in great respectability, breeding race horses. They even say he has given up whiskey. He has got a son and has endowed six cots in a Children's hospital. No. I think it must be mother who has notices posted to me, probably through that scoundrel, Bax Strangeways ... generally in the London Argus and the _Vie-de-Paris_--cracking up the Warren Hotels in Brussels, Berlin, Buda-Pest and Roquebrune. What a comedy!...
"There's my Aunt Liz at Winchester--Mrs. Canon Burstall--won't know me--I'm too compromising. But I'm sure her money-bags have been filled at one time--perhaps are still--out of the profits on mother's 'Hotels.'..."
_Norie_: "I didn't remember your aunt was married ... or rather I suppose I did, but thought she was a widow, real or _soi-disant_..."
_Vivie_: "So she is, after four years of happy married life! My 'uncle' Canon Burstall--Oh what a screaming joke the whole thing is!... I doubt if he was aware he had a niece.... Don't you remember he was killed in the Alps last autumn?..."
_Norie_: "I remember your going down to see your aunt after you broke off relations with your mother in--in--1897...?"
_Vivie_: "Yes. I wanted to see how the land lay and not judge any one unfairly. Besides I--I--didn't like being dependent entirely on you--at that time--for support: and Praed was in Italy. I knew that Aunt Liz, like mother, was illegitimate--and guessed she had once made her living in the higher walks of prostitution--she was a stockbroker's mistress at one time--. But she had married and settled down at Winchester ... She met her Canon--the Alpine traveller ... in Switzerland. I felt if she took no money from mother's 'houses,' I could perhaps make a home with her, or at any rate have some kith and kin to go to. She had no children.... But--I must have told you all this years ago?--she almost pushed me out of her house for fear I should stay till the Canon came in from the afternoon service; denied everything; threatened me as though I was a blackmailer; almost looked as if she could have killed me and buried me in the garden of the Canonry....
"I've examined the business of the _Warren Hotels Ltd._ since then,