Mrs. Warrens Daughter | Page 3

I dare say I shall be
invalided out of the Army and get a small wound pension. And I've a
project which will make lots of money--up in Rhodesia--a tip I've had
from a man in the know. I'm going to take up some land near Salisbury.
Ripping country and climate and all that. It would suit you down to the
ground. You could put all that Warren business behind you, forget it all,
drop the name, start a new career as Mrs. Frank Gardner, and find an
eternally devoted husband in the man that signs this letter.
I've been out here long enough to be up to all the ropes, and I'd already
made a bit of money in Rhodesia before the war broke out and I got a
commission. At any rate I've enough to start on as a married man,
enough to give you a decent outfit and your passage out here and have
a honeymoon before we start work on our future home. Darling Vivie!
Do think about it. You'd never regret it. I'm a very different Frank to
the silly ass you knew in the old Haslemere days. Now here's a five
pound note to cover the cost of a full cable to say "yes," and when
you'll be ready to start. When I get your answer--somehow I feel it'll be
"yes"--I'll send you a draft on a London bank to pay for a suitable
trousseau and your passage from London to Cape Town, and of course
I'll come and meet you there, where we can be married. I shan't sleep
properly till I get your "yes."
Your ever loving and always faithful FRANK.
P.S. There's a poor fellow here in the same ward dying--I should
say--of necrosis of the jaw--Vavasour Williams is his name or a part of
his name. His father was at Cambridge with my old man, and--isn't it
rum?--he was a pupil of _Praddy's_!! He mucked his school and
'varsity career, thought next he'd like to be an architect or a scene
painter. My dad recommended Praddy as a master. He worked in the
Praed studio, but got the chuck over some foolery. Then as he couldn't

face his poor old Governor, he enlisted in the Bechuanaland Border
police, came out to South Africa and got let in for this show. The
doctors and nurses give him about a month and he doesn't know it. He
can't talk much owing to his jaw being tied up--usually he writes me
messages, all about going home and being a good boy, turning over a
new leaf, and so on. I suppose the last person you ever see nowadays is
the Revd. Sam Gardner? You know they howked him out of Woodcote?
He got "preferment" as he calls it, and a cure of souls at Margate.
Rather rough on the dear old mater--bless her, _always_--She so liked
the Hindhead country. But if you run up against Praddy you might let
him know and he might get into touch with Vavasour Williams's
people--twig?--F.G.
Vivie rose to her feet half-way through this letter and finished it
standing by the window.
She was tall--say, five feet eight; about twenty-five years of age; with a
well-developed, athletic figure, set off by a smart, tailor-made gown of
grey cloth. Yet although she might be called a handsome woman she
would easily have passed for a good-looking young man of twenty, had
she been wearing male costume.
Her brown-gold hair was disposed of with the least ostentation possible
and with no fluffiness. Her eyebrows were too well furnished for
femininity and nearly met when she frowned--a too frequent practice,
as was the belligerent look from her steely grey eyes with their
beautiful Irish setting of long dark lashes. She had a straight nose and
firm rounded chin, a rather determined look about the mouth--lower lip
too much drawn in as if from perpetual self-repression. But all this
severity disappeared when she smiled and showed her faultless teeth.
The complexion was clear though a little tanned from deliberate
exposure in athletics. Altogether a woman that might have been
described as "jolly good-looking," if it had not been that whenever any
man looked at her something hostile and forbidding came into the
countenance, and the eyebrows formed an angry bar of hazel-brown
above the dark-lashed eyes. But her "young man" look won for her
many a feminine friendship which she impatiently repelled; for

sentimentality disgusted her.
The door of the partners' room opened and in walked Honoria Fraser.
She was probably three years older than Vivie and likewise a
well-favoured woman, a little more matronly in appearance, somewhat
after the style of a married actress who really loves her husband and has
preserved her own looks wonderfully, though no one would take her for