Vivie Warren

“ From that—by some instinct—Honoria passed on to a talk about Vivien Warren ... a selective talk. She said nothing about David Williams, but enlarged on Vivie's absolute "straightness," especially towards other women; her business capacities, her restoration of her mother to the ranks of the respectable; till at last it seemed as though the burning down of racing stables was a meritorious act ... "ridding England of an evil that good might come." And there was poor Vivie, locked up in Brussels, if indeed she were still living. ”

“ Because I have thrown this logic ruthlessly overboard, I am accused of ignoring, not stage logic, but, of all things, human feeling. People with completely theatrified imaginations tell me that no girl would treat her mother as Vivie Warren does, meaning that no stage heroine would in a popular sentimental play. ”

“ I suppose the truth, the commonplace truth is, that rather late in life, Vivien Warren has fallen in love in the old-fashioned way—How Nature mocks at us!—and now sees things somewhat differently. At any rate, David and Vivie, fused into one personality, are going abroad for a protracted period ... going out of your life, my dearest, for it is better so. Linda has every right to you and Science is a jealous mistress. Moreover poor, outcast Vivie has her own bitter pride. ”

“ 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'était à voir (Beryl ever since she had been to Paris on a stolen honeymoon with the architect liked saying things to herself in French) . ”

“ Vivie: "I don't care if I am, poor outlaw that I am! Every avenue to an honest and ambitious career seems closed to me, either because I am a woman or—in women's careers—the few that there are—because I am Kate Warren's daughter. I am not to blame for my mother's misdeeds, yet I am being punished for them. That beast of a friend of yours—that filthy swine, George Crofts—set it about after I refused to marry him that I was 'Mrs. Warren's Daughter,' and the few nice people I knew from Cambridge days dropped me, all except Honoria and her mother." ”

“ The pilgrims on arrival in London were a justification in physical fitness of Woman's claim to equal privileges with Man.
Vivie after her Easter holiday took an increasingly active part in these manifestations of usually good-humoured insurrection. As Vivien Warren she was not much known to the authorities or to the populace but she soon became so owing to her striking appearance, telling voice and gift of oratory. All the arts she had learnt as David Williams she displayed now in pleading the woman's cause at the Albert Hall, at Manchester, in Edinburgh and Glasgow. ”

“ Her ideas of women's employment and a modern woman's pose in life were based largely on the figure of Vivie Warren in Mrs. Warren's Profession. She had seen Mrs. Warren's Profession furtively with Hetty Widgett from the gallery of a Stage Society performance one Monday afternoon. Most of it had been incomprehensible to her, or comprehensible in a way that checked further curiosity, but the figure of Vivien, hard, capable, successful, and bullying, and ordering about a veritable Teddy in the person of Frank Gardner, appealed to her. ”

“ You will find him very much improved. In every way he will do you credit. And what is more, if you don't repel him, he will come and see you much oftener than his cousin—I'm not ashamed to adopt her as a cousin—Vivie Warren could have done. Because Vivie, with her deplorable parentage, had your good name to think of, and visited you very seldom; whereas there could be raised no objection from your parlour-maid if Mr. D.V. Williams came rather often to chat with you and ask your advice. Think it over, dear friend—Good-bye. ”

“ VIVIE. Wait a moment: I’ve not done. Tell me why you continue your business now that you are independent of it. Your sister, you told me, has left all that behind her. Why don’t you do the same?
MRS WARREN. Oh, it’s all very easy for Liz: she likes good society, and has the air of being a lady. Imagine me in a cathedral town! Why, the very rooks in the trees would find me out even if I could stand the dulness of it. I must have work and excitement, or I should go melancholy mad. And what else is there for me to do? The life suits me: I’m fit for it and not for anything else. ”

“ VIVIE. What on earth is it like?
PRAED. Well, you must have observed, Miss Warren, that people who are dissatisfied with their own bringing-up generally think that the world would be all right if everybody were to be brought up quite differently. Now your mother’s life has been—er—I suppose you know—
VIVIE. Don’t suppose anything, Mr Praed. I hardly know my mother. Since I was a child I have lived in England, at school or at college, or with people paid to take charge of me. I have been boarded out all my life. My mother has lived in Brussels or Vienna and never let me go to her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ VIVIE. Mr Praed: once for all, there is no beauty and no romance in life for me. Life is what it is; and I am prepared to take it as it is.
PRAED [enthusiastically] You will not say that if you come with me to Verona and on to Venice. You will cry with delight at living in such a beautiful world.
FRANK. This is most eloquent, Praddy. Keep it up.
PRAED. Oh, I assure you I have cried—I shall cry again, I hope—at fifty! At your age, Miss Warren, you would not need to go so far as Verona. Your spirits would absolutely fly up at the mere sight of Ostend. ”

“ Alternating with these services, he was, like other Y.M.C.A. men in the same district and at the same time, acting as stretcher bearer to bring in the wounded, as amateur chaplain with the dying, as amateur surgeon with the wounded, as secretary to some distraught officer in high command whose clerks had all been killed; and in any other capacity if called upon. But always with the stedfast hope and purpose that he might somehow reach and rescue Vivie Warren. ”

“ Vivie: "Oh, they ache rather, but it is such joy to have such friends as you and Praddy and Michael Rossiter, that I don't mind what I go through..."
Frank: "But I say, Viv, about this Rossiter man. He seems awfully gone on you...?"
Vivie (flushing in the firelight) : "Does he? It's only friendship. I really don't see them often but he came to my assistance once at a critical time. And now that Praddy's all-powerful parlour-maid's definitely left us, I will tell you my story." ”

“ 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 ”

“ To Praed however Vivie took the bitterness, the disillusions which came over her at intervals:
"I feel, Praddy, I'm getting older and I seem to be at a loose end. D'you know I'm on the verge of thirty-seven—and I have no definite career? I'm rather tired of being a well-meaning adventuress."
"Then why," Praddy would reply, "don't you go and live with your mother?"
"Ugh! I couldn't stand for long that life in Belgium or elsewhere abroad. They seem miles behind us, with all our faults. ”

“ PRAED. How do you do, Miss Warren? [She presses his hand cordially, though a certain sentimentality in his high spirits jars upon her] . I start in an hour from Holborn Viaduct. I wish I could persuade you to try Italy.
VIVIE. What for?
PRAED. Why, to saturate yourself with beauty and romance, of course.
[Vivie, with a shudder, turns her chair to the table, as if the work waiting for her there were a support to her. Praed sits opposite to her. Frank places a chair near Vivie, and drops lazily and carelessly into it, talking at her over his shoulder.]
FRANK. No use, Praddy. ”

“ I'll keep Crofts away. I'll not trouble you much: you see I have to be constantly running about from one place to another. Youll be quit of me altogether when I die.
VIVIE. No: I am my mother's daughter. I am like you: I must have work, and must make more money than I spend. But my work is not your work, and my way is not your way. We must part. It will not make much difference to us: instead of meeting one another for perhaps a few months in twenty years, we shall never meet: thats all.
MRS WARREN [her voice stifled in tears] Vivie: I meant to have been more with you: I did indeed. ”

“ MRS WARREN. Bring him in.
PRAED. All right. [To Frank] Will you accept the invitation?
FRANK [incredulous, but immensely amused] Is that Vivie’s mother?
PRAED. Yes.
FRANK. By Jove! What a lark! Do you think she’ll like me?
PRAED. I’ve no doubt youll make yourself popular, as usual. Come in and try [moving towards the house] .
FRANK. Stop a bit. [Seriously] I want to take you into my confidence.
PRAED. Pray don’t. It’s only some fresh folly, like the barmaid at Redhill.
FRANK. It’s ever so much more serious than that. You say you’ve only just met Vivie for the first time? ”

“ David: "No. I hardly came about that; though dear old Praddy, I wish I had time to look after you ... Perhaps later.... No: what I came to ask was: what did you mean the other day by paying in a Thousand Pounds to Vivie Warren's account at her bank? She's not in want of money so far as I know, and you can't be so very rich, even though you design three millionaire's houses a year. Who gave you the money to pay in to my—to Vivie's account?"
Praed: "Well, when Vivie herself comes to ask me, p'raps I'll tell ”

“ VIVIE [to Praed, with deep reproach] Can you find no better example of your beauty and romance than Brussels to talk to me about?
PRAED [puzzled] Of course it's very different from Verona. I don't suggest for a moment that—
VIVIE [bitterly] Probably the beauty and romance come to much the same in both places.
PRAED [completely sobered and much concerned] My dear Miss Warren: I— [looking enquiringly at Frank] Is anything the matter?
FRANK. She thinks your enthusiasm frivolous, Praddy. She's had ever such a serious call.
VIVIE [sharply] Hold your tongue, Frank. Don't be silly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ VIVIE. Pah! It's meaner than stealing it. No: I'm not coming. [She sits down to work at the table, with her back to the glass door, and begins turning over the papers] .
FRANK [remonstrating piteously] But, my dear Viv, I want to talk to you ever so seriously.
VIVIE. Very well: sit down in Honoria's chair and talk here. I like ten minutes chat after tea. [He murmurs] . No use groaning: I'm inexorable. [He takes the opposite seat disconsolately] . Pass that cigar box, will you?
FRANK [pushing the cigar box across] Nasty womanly habit. Nice men don't do it any longer. ”

“ Warren it was going for her to be the last hour of fully conscious life—fully conscious and yet a curious mingling in it of the past and present. She had sat here in the middle of the 'seventies with Vivie's father, the young Irish seminarist, her lover for six months. He had a vague interest in botany, and during his convalescence after his typhoid fever, when she was still his nurse, not yet his mistress, she used to bring him here to rest and to enjoy the aspect of these ferns and palms. What a strange variety of men she had known. ”

“ That is all we ask." But Vivie said "with all her own private grudge against the present ministry she felt au fond she was British; she must range herself in time of war with her own people."
Mrs. Warren went much farther. She was not very voluble nowadays. The German occupation of her villa had given her a mental and physical shock from which she never recovered. She often sat quite silent and rather huddled at meal times and looked the old woman now. ”

“ Vivie: "I am quite willing to give you all the information I possess as to my upbringing. My mother who has resided mainly at Brussels for many years preferred that I should be educated in England. I was placed at well-known boarding schools till I was old enough to enter Newnham. I passed as a Third Wrangler at Cambridge and then joined the firm of Fraser and Warren. As you seem so interested in my relations, I might inform you that I have not many. My mother's sister, Mrs. Burstall, the widow of Canon Burstall, resides at Winchester ”