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Mrs. Warren's Daughter by Sir Harry Johnston

S >> Sir Harry Johnston >> Mrs. Warren\'s Daughter




I think however that Sir Michael said this was all humbug on Minna's
part, and that all she wanted--her husband, Major Schultz, looking
the picture of health--was to meet once more her well-beloved Vivie.
At any rate I am sure they met in the Rhineland in a propitious
month when you could be out of doors all day and all night; and that
Minna said some time or other how happy she was in her second
marriage, and that however heartily she disliked militarism and
condemned War, soldiers made the nicest husbands. I think before she
and Vivie parted to go their several ways, they determined to work
for the building up of an Anglo-German reconciliation, and for the
advocacy in both countries of a Man-and-Woman Government.

I think, nevertheless, that Vivie being a sound business woman and
possessing a strong sense of justice on the lines of an eye for an
eye, will claim at least Five Thousand pounds from the German
Government for the devastations and thefts at the Villa Beau-sejour;
and that having got it and having disposed of her mother's jewellery
and plate for L3,500, she will present the Villa Beau-sejour
property and an endowment of L8,000 to the Town of Brussels, as an
educational orphanage for the children of Belgian soldiers who have
died in the War, where they may receive a practical education in
agriculture and poultry farming.

I fancy she gave a Thousand pounds to Pasteur Walcker's Congo
Mission; and transferred to Mme. Trouessart all her shares in and
rights over the Hotel Edouard-Sept.

I also picture to myself the Rossiters having a motor tour of pure
pleasure and delight of the eyes in South Wales in September, 1919.

I imagine their going to Pontystrad and surprising the Vicar and
Vicaress and puzzling them by purposely-diffuse stories of Vivie's
cousin the late David Vavasour Williams, intended to convey the
idea, without telling unnecessary fibs, that David died abroad
during the War, but that Vivie in his memory and that of his dear
old father intends to continue a strong personal interest in the
Village Hall and its educational aims. I also picture Vivie going
alone to Mrs. Evanwy's rose-entwined cottage. The old lady is now
rather shaky and does not walk far from her little garden with its
box bower and garden seat. I can foreshadow Vivie dispelling some of
the mystery about David Williams and being embraced by the old
Nannie with warm affection and the hearty assurances that she had
guessed the secret from the very first but had been so drawn to the
false David Williams and so sure of his honest purposes that nothing
would have induced her to undeceive the old Vicar. I can even
imagine the old lady ere--years hence--paralysis strikes her
down--telling Vivie so much gossip about the Welsh Vavasours that
Vivie becomes positively certain her mother came from that stock and
that she really was first cousin to the boy she personated for the
laudable purpose of showing how well a woman could practise at the
Bar.

I like to think also that by the present year of grace--1920--the
Rossiters will have become convinced that No. 1 Park Crescent, even
with the Zoo and the Royal Botanic Gardens close by and the
ornamental garden of Regent's Park in between, does not satisfy all
their needs and ambitions: that they will have resolved even before
this year began--to supplement it by a home in the country for
week-ends, for summer visits, and finally for rest in their old age.
That for this purpose they will acquire some ideal Grange or Priory,
or ample farmstead near Petworth and the Armstrongs' home, over
against the South Downs, and near the river Rother; that it shall be
in no mere suburb of Petworth but in a stately little village with
its own character and history going back to Roman times and a church
with a Saxon body and a Norman chancel. And that in the ideal
churchyard of this enviable church with ancient yews and 18th
century tomb-stones, and old, old benches in the sunshine for the
grandfathers and loafers of the village to sit on and smoke of a
Sabbath morning, a place shall be found for the bones of Bertie
Adams; reverently brought over from the grassy amphitheatre of the
Tir National to repose in this churchyard of West Sussex which looks
out over one of the finest cricket pitches in the county. If, then,
there is any lien between the mouldering fragments of our bodies and
the inexplicable personality which has been generated in the living
brain, the former office boy of _Fraser and Warren_ will know that
he is always present in the memory of Vivien Rossiter, that she has
placed the few physical fragments still representing him in such a
setting as would have delighted his honest, simple nature in his
lifetime. He would also know that his children are now hers and her
husband's; that his Nance very rightly married the excellent butler,
Jenkins, with whom he had discussed many a cricket score; and that
Love, after all, is stronger than Death.


THE END

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