Mrs. Warren's Daughter — Chapter XVIII, The Bomb in Portland Place, Part 1

THE BOMB IN PORTLAND PLACE

Mrs. Rossiter said to herself in 1915 that she had scarcely known a happy day, or even hour, since the War began.

In the first place Michael had again shown violence of temper with ministers of state over the release from prison of "that" Miss Warren--"a convict doing a sentence of hard labour."

And then, when he had got her released, and gone himself with their beautiful new motor--whatever _could_ the chauffeur have thought?

--to meet her at the prison gates, _there_ he was, afterwards, worrying himself over the War: not content as she was, as most of her friends were, as the newspapers were, to leave it all to Lord Kitchener and Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, and even Mr. Lloyd George--though the latter had made some rather foolish and exaggerated speeches about Alcohol.

Michael, if he went on like this, would _never_ get his knighthood!

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

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

Mrs. Rossiter of course said, in 1914, that she would take up war work.

She subscribed most handsomely to the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families' Association, to the Red Cross, to the Prince of Wales's Fund (one of the unsolved war-time mysteries ...

what's become of it?

), to the Cigarette Fund, the 1914 Christmas Plum Pudding Fund, the Blue Cross, the Purple Cross, the Green Cross funds; to the outstandingly good work at St. Dunstan's and at Petersham--(I am glad she gave a Hundred pounds each to _them_); and to the French, Belgian, Russian, Italian, Serbian, Portuguese and Japanese Flag Days and to Our Own Day; besides enriching a number of semi-fraudulent war charities which had alluring titles.

But if, from paying handsomely to all these praise-worthy endeavours to mitigate the horrors of war, she proceeded to render personal service, she became the despair of the paid organizers and business-like workers.

She couldn't add and she couldn't subtract or divide with any certainty of a correct result; she couldn't spell the more difficult words or remember the right letters to put after distinguished persons' names when she addressed envelopes in her large, childish handwriting; she couldn't be trusted to make enquiries or to detect fraudulent appeals.

She lost receipts and never grasped the importance of vouchers; she forgot to fill up counterfoils, or if reminded filled them up "from memory" so that they didn't tally; she signed her name, if there was any choice of blank spaces, in quite the wrong place.

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

She had no country house to place at the disposal of the Government as a convalescent home.

Michael after a few experiments forbade her offering any hospitality at No. 1 Park Crescent to invalid officers.

Such as were entrusted to her in the spring of 1915 soon found that she was--as they phrased it--"a pompous little, middle-class fool," wielding no authority.

They larked in the laboratory with Red Cross nurses, broke specimens, and did very unkind and noisy things ...

besides smoking in both the large _and_ the small dining-rooms.

So, after the summer of 1915, she lived very much alone, except that she had the Adams children from Marylebone to spend the day with her occasionally.

Poor Mrs. Adams, though a valiant worker, was very downcast and unhappy.

She confided to Mrs. Rossiter that although she dearly loved her Bert--"and a better husband I defy you to find"--he never seemed all hers.

"Always so wrapped up in that Miss Warren or 'er cousin the barrister."

And no sooner had war broken out than off he was to France, as a kind of missionary, she believed--the Young Men's Christian Something or other; "though before the War he didn't seem particular stuck on religion, and it was all she could do to get him sometimes to church on a Sunday morning.

Oh yes: she got 'er money all right; and she couldn't say too much of Mr. and Mrs. Rossiter's kindness.

There was Bert, not doin' a stroke of work for the Professor, and yet his pay going on all the same.

Indeed she was putting money by, because Bert was kep' out there, and all found."

However his two pretty children were some consolation to Mrs. Rossiter, whom they considered as a very grand lady and one that was lavishly kind.

Mrs. Rossiter tried sometimes in 1915 having working parties in her house or in the studio; and if she could attract workers gave them such elaborate lunches and plethoric teas that very little work was done, especially as she herself loved a long, aimless gossip about the Royal Family or whether Lord Kitchener had ever _really_ been in love.

Or she tried, since she was a poor worker herself--her only jersey and muffler were really finished by her maid--reading aloud to the knitters or stitchers, preferably from the works of Miss Charlotte Yonge or some similar novelist of a later date.

But that was found to be too disturbing to their sense of the ludicrous.

For she read very stiltedly, with a strange exotic accent for the love passages or the death scenes.

As Lady Victoria Freebooter said, she would have been _priceless_ at a music-hall matinée which was raising funds for war charities, if only she could have been induced to read passages from Miss Yonge in _that_ voice for a quarter of an hour.

Even the Queen would have had to laugh.

But as that could not be brought off, it was decided that working parties at her house led to too much giddiness from suppressed giggles or torpor from too much food.

So she relapsed once more into loneliness.

Unfortunately air-raids were now becoming events of occasional fright and anxiety in London, and this deterred Cousin Sophie from Darlington, Cousin Matty from Leeds, Joseph's wife from Northallerton or old, married schoolfellows from other northern or midland towns coming to partake of her fastuous hospitality.

Also, they all seemed to be busy, either over their absent husbands' business, or their sons', or because they were plunged in war work themselves.

"And really, in these times, I couldn't stand Linda for more than five minutes," one of them said.

As to the air-raids, she was not greatly alarmed at them.

Of course it was very uncomfortable having London so dark at night, but then she only went out in the afternoon, and never in the evening.

And the Germans seemed to be content and discriminating enough not to bomb what she called "the resi_den_tial" parts of London.

The nearest to Portland Place of their attentions was Hampstead or Bloomsbury.

"We are protected, my dear, by the open spaces of Regent's Park.

They wouldn't like to waste their bombs on poor me!"

However her maid didn't altogether like the off chance of the Germans or our air-craft guns making a mistake and trespassing on the residential parts of London, so she persuaded her mistress to spend part of the winter of 1915-16 at Bournemouth.

Here she was not happy and far lonelier even than in London.

She did not like to send all that way for the Adams children, she had a parlour suite all to herself at the hotel, and was timid about making acquaintances outside, since everybody now-a-days wanted you to subscribe to something, and it was so disagreeable having to say "no." She was not a great walker so she could not enjoy the Talbot woods; the sea made her feel sad, remembering that Michael was the other side and the submarines increasingly active: in short, air-raids or no air-raids, she returned home in March, and her maid, who had been with her ten years, gave her warning.

But then she had an inspiration!

She engaged Mrs. Albert Adams to take her place, and although the parlour-maid at this took offence and cut the painter of domestic service, went off to the munitions till Sergeant Frederick Summers should get leave to come home and marry her; and they were obliged to engage another parlour-maid in her place at double the wages: Mrs. Rossiter had done a very wise thing.

"Bert" had been home for three weeks in the preceding February, and the recently bereaved Mrs. Adams had united her tears with Mrs. Rossiter's on the misery of the War which separated attached husbands and wives.

It now alleviated the sorrows of both that they should be together as mistress and maid.

The cook--a most important factor--had always liked Bertie and adored his "sweet, pretty little children."

"If you'll let 'em sleep in the spare room on the fourth floor, next their mother, and play in the day-time in the servants' 'all, they'll be no manner of difficulty _nor_ bother to me and the maids.

We shall love to 'ave 'em, the darlin's. And they'll serve to cheer you up a bit ma'am till the Professor comes back."

Mrs. Adams was a very capable person who hated dust and grime.

The big house wanted some such intervention, as since the butler's departure it had become rather slovenly, save in the portions occupied by Mrs. Rossiter.

Charwomen were got in, and spring cleanings on a gigantic scale took place, so that when Rossiter did return he thought it had never looked so nice, or his Linda been so cheery and companionable.

But before this happy confirmation of her wisdom in engaging Nance Adams as maid and factotum, Mrs. Rossiter had several waves of doubt and distress to breast.

There was the Suffrage question.

Once converted by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Miss Violet Markham, Sir Almroth Wright--whose _prénom_ she could not pronounce--the late Lord Cromer, and the impressive Lord Curzon, to the perils of the Woman's Vote, Mrs. Rossiter was hard to move from her uncompromising opposition to the enfranchisement of her sex.

Some adroit champion of the Wrong had employed the argument that _once_ Women got the vote, _the Divorce Laws would be greatly enlarged_.

This would be part of the scheme of the wild women to get themselves all married;

that and _the legalisation of Polygamy_ which would follow the Vote _as surely as the night the day_.

Linda had an undefined terror that her Michael might take advantage of such licentiousness to depose her, like the Empress Josephine was put aside in favour of a child-producing rival; or if polygamy came into force, that Miss Warren might lawfully share the Professor's affections.

She was therefore greatly perturbed in the course of 1916 at the sudden throwing up of the sponge by the Anti-suffragists.

However, there it was.

The long struggle drew to a victorious close.

Example as well as precept pointed to what women could do and were worth;

sound arguments followed the inconveniences of militancy, and the men were convinced.

Or rather, the men in the mass and the fighting, working men had for some time been convinced, but the great statesmen who had so obstinately opposed the measures were now weakening at the knees before the results of their own mismanagement in the conduct of the War.

A further perplexity and anxiety for Mrs. Rossiter arose over the German spy mania.

She had been to one of Lady Towcester's afternoon parties "to keep up our spirits."

Lady Towcester collected for at least six different charities and funds, and Mrs. Rossiter was a generous subscriber to all six.

Touching the wood of the central tea-table, she had remarked to Lady Victoria and Lady Helen Freebooter how fortunate they (who lived within the prescribed area defined by Lady Jeune) had been in so far escaping air-raids.

"But don't you know why?"

said Lady Victoria.

Mrs. Rossiter didn't. "Because in Manchester Square, in Cavendish--Grosvenor--Hanover Squares, in Portland Place--a few doors off your own house--in Harley Street and Wigmore Street: there are special friends of the Kaiser living.

They _may_ call themselves by English names, they may even be ex-cabinet-ministers; but they are working for the Kaiser, all the same.

And _he_ wouldn't be such a fool as to have them bombed, would he?"

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

This was a half-reassuring, half-terrifying statement.

It was comfortable to know that you lived under the Kaiser's wing--Mrs. Rossiter hoped the aim of the aeronauts was accurate, and their knowledge of London topography good.

At the same time it was alarming to feel that you might be involved in that final blow up of the villains which must bring such scoundreldom to a close.

But if Lady Vera and Lady Helen knew all this for a fact, why not tell the Police?

"What would be the good?

They'd deny everything and we should only be sued for libel."

However to form some conception of how English home life was undermined with plots, she was advised to go and see Mr. Dennis Eadie in _The Man That Stayed at Home_.

She did, taking Mrs. Adams with her to the Dress Circle for a matinée. Both were very much impressed, and on their return expected the fireplaces to open all of a piece and reveal German spies with masked faces and pistols, standing in the chimney.

At last these and other nightmares were dispelled by the arrival of Rossiter on leave of absence in the autumn of 1916. He had the rank of Colonel in the R. A.

M. C.

, and wore the khaki uniform--Mrs. Rossiter proudly thought--of a General.

He had shaved off his beard and trimmed his moustache and looked particularly soldierly.

The butler who came with him though not precisely a soldier but a sort of N. C. O.

in a medical corps, also looked quite martial, and had so much to say for himself that Mrs. Rossiter felt he could never become a butler again.

But he did all the same, and a most efficient one though a little breezy in manner.

Linda now entered on an aftermath of matrimonial happiness.

Rossiter was to take quite a long leave so that he could pursue the most important researches in curative surgery--bone grafting and the like; not only in his own laboratory but at the College of Surgeons and the Zoological Gardens Prosectorium.

With only occasional week-ends at home he had been away from London since September, 1914; had known great hardships, the life of the trenches and the bomb-proof shelter, stewed tea and bad tinned milk, rum and water, bully beef, plum and apple jam, good bread, it is true, but shocking margarine for butter.

He had slept for weeks together on an old sofa more or less dressed, kept warm by his great-coat and two Army blankets of woven porcupine quills (seemingly) the ends of which tickled his nose and scratched his face.

He had been very cold and sweatingly hot, furiously hungry with no meal to satisfy his healthy appetite, madly thirsty and no long drink attainable; unable to sleep for three nights at a time owing to the noise of the bombardment; surfeited with horrible smells; sickened with butchery;

shocked at his own failures to retrieve life, yet encouraged by an isolated victory, here and there, over death and disablement.

So the never-before-appreciated comfort of his Park Crescent home filled him with intense gratitude to Linda.

Had he known, he owed some of his acknowledgment to Mrs. Adams; who had worked both hard and tactfully in her undefined position of lady's-maid-housekeeper-companion.

But naturally he didn't know, though he praised his wife warmly for her charity of soul in taking pity on the poor little woman and her two children.

He could only give the slightest news about Bertie, but said he was a sort of jack-of-all-trades for the Y. M. C. A.

As to Vivie--"that Miss Warren"--he answered his wife's questions neither with the glowering taciturnity nor suspicious loquacity of former times.

"Miss Warren?

Vivie?

I fancy she's still at Brussels, but there is no chance of finding out.

There is a story that her mother is dead.

P'raps now they'll let her come away.

She must be jolly well sick of Brussels by now.

When I last heard of Adams he was still hoping to get into touch with her.

I hope he won't take any risks.

She's a clever woman and I dare say can take care of herself.

I hope we shall all meet again when the War is over."

He seemed very pleased to hear of the new Conciliation Bill, the general agreement all round on the Suffrage question and the enlargement of the electorate.

He had always told Linda it was bound to come.

"And after it has come, dearie, you mark my words: things will go on pretty much as before."

But his real, intense, absorbing interest lay in the new experiments he was about to make in bone grafting and cartilage replacing, and the functions of the pituitary body and the interstitial glands.

To carry these out adequately the Zoological Society had accumulated troops of monkeys and baboons.

At a certain depôt in Camden Town dogs were kept for his purposes.

And the vaults and upper floors of the Royal College of Surgeons were at Rossiter's disposal, with Professor Keith to co-operate.

Never had his house in Portland Place--to be accurate the Park Crescent end thereof--seemed so conveniently situated, or its studio-laboratory so well designed.

"Air-raids?

Pooh!

Just about one chance in a million we should be struck.

Besides: can't think of that, when so much is at stake.

That's a fine phrase, 'Menders of the Maimed.'

Just what we want to be!

No more artificial limbs if we can help you to grow your own new legs and arms--perhaps.

At any rate, mend up those that are a hopeless mash.

Grand work!

Only bright thing in the War.

Now dear, are you ready with that lymph?"

And she was.

Never had Linda been so happy.

She overcame her disgust at the sight of blood, at monkeys, dogs, and humans under anæsthetics, at yellow fat, gleaming sinew, and blood-stained bone.

She was careful as a washer-up.

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

"I'm some use to you after all," Linda would say when they retired from the studio for a rest and she made the tea.

"Some _use_?

I

should think so!"

said Rossiter (whether truly or not).

And he reproached himself that twenty years ago he had not trained and developed her to help him in his work, to be a real companion in his studies.

He was really fond of her through the winter of 1916. And so jovial and lover-like, so boyish in his fun, so like the typical Tommy home from the trenches.

When he was overjoyed at the success of some uncovered and peeped-at experiment, he would sing, "When _I_ get me civvies on again, an' it's Home Sweet Home once more"; and ask for the ideal cottage "with rowses round the door--And a nice warm bottle in me nice warm bed, An' a nice soft pillow for me nice soft 'ead..."

Mrs. Rossiter began to think there was a good side to the War, after all.

It made some men more conscious of their home comforts and less exigent for intellectuality in their home companions.