"However, I have still the whole scheme to work out and when I'm ready to start on it—which will be very soon—I'll let you know. Now, though I'd love to discuss all the other details, I mustn't forget your mother will be wanting you—I wish I had a mother to tend—I wonder" (wistfully) "whether I was too hard on mine?
"D'you mind posting these letters as you go out? I shall change back to Vivie Warren in a dressing gown, give myself a light supper, and then put in two hours studying Latin and Norman French. Good night, dearest!"
Two months after this conversation Vivie decided to pay a call on an old friend of her mother's, Lewis Maitland Praed, if you want his full name, a well-known architect, and one of the few male friends of Catherine Warren who had not also been her lover. Why, he never quite knew himself. When he first met her she was the boon companion, the mistress—more or less, and unattached—of a young barrister, a college friend of Praed's. Kate Warren at that time called herself Kitty Vavasour; and on the strength of having done a turn or two on the music halls considered herself an actress with a right to a professional name. It was in this guise that the "Revd." Samuel Gardner met her and had that six months' infatuation for her which afterwards caused him so much disquietude; though it preceded the taking of his ordination vows by quite a year, and his marriage to his wife—much too good for him—in 1874. [The Revd. Sam, you may remember, was the father of the scapegrace Frank who nearly captured Vivie's young affections and had written from South Africa proposing marriage at the opening of this story.]
Kate Vavasour in 1872 was an exceedingly pretty girl of nineteen or twenty; showily dressed, and quick with her tongue. She was good-natured and jolly, and though Praed himself was the essence of refinement there was something about her reckless mirth and joy in life—the immense relief of having passed from the sordid life of a barmaid to this quasi-ladyhood—that enlisted his sympathies. Though she was always somebody else's mistress until she developed her special talent as a manageress of high-class houses of accommodation, "private hotels" on the Continent, chiefly frequented by English and American roués—Praed kept an eye on her career, and occasionally rendered her, with some cynicism, unobtrusive friendly services in disentangling her affairs when complications threatened. He was an art student in those days of the 'seventies, possessed of about four hundred a year, beginning to go through the aesthetic phase, and not decided whether he would emerge a painter of pictures or an architect of grandiose or fantastic buildings. To his studio Miss Kitty Vavasour or Miss Kate Warren would often come and pose for the head and shoulders, or for some draped caryatid wanted for an ambitious porch in an imaginary millionaire's house in Kensington Palace Gardens. When in 1897, Vivie had learnt about her mother's "profession," she had flung off violently from all her mother's "friends," except "Praddy." She even continued to call him by this nickname, long ago bestowed on him by her mother. At distant intervals she would pay him a visit at his house and studio near Hans Place; when Honoria's advice and assistance did not meet the case of some grave perplexity.
So one afternoon in June, 1901, she came to his little dwelling with its large studio, and asked to have a long talk to him, whilst his parlour-maid—he was still a bachelor—denied him to other callers. They had tea together and Vivie plunged as quickly as possible into her problem.
"You know, Praddy dear, I want to be a Barrister. But as a female they will never call me to the Bar. So I'm going to send Vivien Warren off for a long absence abroad—the few who think about me will probably conclude that money has carried the day and that I've gone to help my mother in her business—and in her absence Mr. Vavasour Williams will take up the running. David V. Williams—don't interrupt me—will study for the Bar, eat through his terms—six dinners a year, isn't it?—pass his examinations, and be called to the English Bar in about three years from now. Didn't you once have a pupil called Vavasour Williams?"
Praed: "What, David, the Welsh boy? Yes. His name reminded me of your mother in one of her stages. David Vavasour Williams. I took him on in—let me see? I think it was in 1895 or early 1896. But how did you hear about him?"
Vivie: "Never mind, or never mind for the moment. Tell me some more about him."
Praed: "Well to sum him up briefly he was what school boys and subalterns would call 'a rotter.' Not without an almost mordid cleverness; but the Welsh strain in him which in the father turned to emotional religion—the father was Vicar or Rector of Pontystrad—came out in the boy in unhealthy fancies. He had almost the talent of Aubrey Beardsley. But I didn't think he had a good influence over my other pupils, so before I planned that Italian journey—on which you refused to accompany me—I advised him to leave my tuition—I wasn't modern enough, I said. I also advised him to make up his mind whether he wanted to be a sane architect—he despised questions of housemaids' closets and sanitation and lifts and hot-water supply—or a scene painter. I think he might have had a great career at Drury Lane over fairy palaces or millionaire dwellings. But I turned him out of my studio, though I put the fact less brutally before his father—said I should be absent a long while in Italy and that I feared the boy was too undisciplined. Afterwards I think he went into some South African police force..."
Vivie: "He did, and died last year in a South African hospital. Had he—er—er—many relations, I mean did he come of well-known people?"