University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII
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 residential" 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.

They went out very little into Society. Rossiter held that war-time parties were scandalous. He poohpoohed the idea that immodest dancing with frisky matrons or abandoned spinsters was necessary to restore the shell-shocked nerves of temporary captains, locally-ranked majors, or the recently-joined subaltern. He was far too busy for twaddly tea-fights and carping at hard-worked generals who were doing their best and a good best too. He and Linda did dine occasionally with Honoria, but the latter felt she could not let herself go about Vivie in the

presence of Mrs. Rossiter and seemed a little cold in manner.

Ordinarily, after working hard all day while the daylight lasted they much preferred an evening of complete solitude. Rossiter's new robustness of taste included love of a gramophone. Money being no consideration with them, they acquired a tip-top one with superlative records; not so much the baaing, bellowing and shrieking of fashionable singers, but orchestral performances, heart-melting duets between violin and piano (what human voice ever came up to a good violin or violoncello?), racy comic songs, inspiriting two steps, xylophone symphonies, and dreamy, sensuous waltzes. This gramophone Linda learnt to work; and while Michael read voraciously the works of Hunter, Hugh Owen Thomas, Stromeyer, Duchenne, Goodsir, Wolff, and Redfern on bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, periosteum and osteogenesis--or, more often, Keith's compact and lucid analysis of their experiments and conclusions--Linda let loose in the scented air of a log fire these varied melodies which attuned the mind to extraordinary perceptibility.

The little Adamses were allowed to steal in and listen, on condition they never uttered a word to break the spell of Colonel Rossiter's thoughts.

I think also Rossiter felt his wife had been unjustly snubbed by the great ladies and the off-hand, harum-scarum young war-workers; so he flatly declined to have any of them messing around his studio or initiated into his research work. It was intimated that the Rossiter Thursday afternoons of long ago would not be resumed until after the peace. Linda therefore derived much consolation and satisfaction for past injuries to her pride when Lady Vera--or Victoria--Freebooter called one day just before Christmas and said "Oh--er--mother's let our house till February and thinks we'd better--I mean the Marrybone Guild of war-workers--

meet at your house instead"; and she, Linda, had the opportunity of replying: "Oh, I'm sorry, but It's QUITE impossible. The Professor--I mean, Colonel Rossiter--and I are so very busy ... we are seeing no one just now. Indeed we've enlisted all the servants to help the Colonel in his work, so I can't even offer you a cup of tea.... I must rush back at once.... You'll excuse me?"

"That Rossiter woman is quite off her head with grandeur," said Lady Vera to Lady Helen. "I expect Uncle Algy has let out that her husband is in the New Year's honours."

And so he was. But Uncle Algy, though he might have babbled to his nieces, had not written a word to the Rossiters. So they just enjoyed Christmas--too much, they thought, more than any Christmas before--in the simple satisfaction of being Colonel and Mrs. Rossiter, all in all to each other, but rendered additionally happy by making those about them happy. The little Adamses staggered under their presents and had a Christmas Tree to which they were allowed to ask their two grannies--Mrs. Laidly from Fig Tree Court and Mrs. Adams from the Kilburn Laundry--and numerous little friends from Marylebone, who had been washed and curled and crimped and adjured not to disgrace their parents, or father--in the trenches--would be told "as sure as I stand here."

(The little Adamses were also warned that if they ever again were heard calling Mrs. Rossiter "Gran'ma," they'd--but the threat was too awful to be uttered, especially as their mother at this time was always on the verge of tears, either at getting no news of Bert or at the unforgettable kindness of Bert's employer.)

Mrs. Rossiter, quite unaware that she was soon to be a Dame, gave Christmas entertainments at St. Dunstan's, at the Marylebone Workhouse, and to all the

wounded soldiers in the parish. And on December 31, 1916, Michael received a note from the Prime Minister to say that His Majesty, in recognition of his exceptional services in curative surgery at the front, had been pleased to bestow on him a Knight Commandership of the Bath. "So that, Linda, you can call yourself Lady Rossiter, and you will have to get some new cards printed for both of us."

Linda didn't feel quite that ecstasy over her title that she had expected in her day-dreams. She was getting a little frightened at her happiness. Generations of Puritan forefathers and mothers had left some influence of Calvinism on her mentality. She was brought up to believe in a jealous God, whose Providence when you felt too happy on earth just landed you in some unexpected disaster to fit you for the Kingdom of Heaven--a Kingdom which all healthy human beings shrink from entering with the terror of the unknown and a certain homeliness of disposition which is humbly content with this cosy planet and a corporeal existence.

However it was very nice to leave cards of calling on Lady Towcester--even though she was out of town on account of air-raids--and on others, inscribed: "Lady Rossiter, Colonel Sir Michael Rossiter, Sir Michael and Lady Rossiter;" and to see printed foolscap envelopes for Michael arrive from the War Office and lie on the hall table, addressed: Colonel Sir Michael Rossiter K.C.B. etc., etc., etc., etc.

And later on, in January or February, for some very good reason, Sir Michael and Lady Rossiter were received in audience by the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace. The King had already watched Sir Michael at work in his laboratory just behind the French front; so they two, as Linda timidly glanced at them, had no lack of subjects for conversation. But the Queen! Linda had thought she could never have talked to a Queen without swooning, and

indeed had arrived primed with much sal volatile. Yet there, as in some realistic dream, she was led on to talk about her war charities and Sir Michael's experiments without trembling, and found herself able to listen with intelligence to the Queen's practical suggestions about war work and the application of relief funds in crowded districts. "We actually compared notes!" said a flushed and triumphant Linda to her Michael, as they drove away through the blue twilight of St. James's Park.

And so far from being puffed up by this, people said they had always thought Lady Rossiter was kind, but they really before had never imagined there was so much in her. She was even allowed to preside as Vice President, in the absence of Lady Towcester; and got through it quite creditably--kind hearts being more than coronets--and made a little speech to which cook and Nance Adams called out "Hear, Hear!" and roused quite a hearty response.

Of course it was an awful wrench when Michael had to return to France. But he would be back in the autumn, and meantime she must remember she was a soldier's wife. So the summer was got through with cheerfulness, especially as she was now treated with much more regard in the different committees whereof she was Vice President. On these committees she met Honoria Armstrong, and the longing to renew the old friendship and talk about Michael's superlative qualities to one who had long known them, took her over to Kensington Square, impulsively. Honoria perceived the need instinctively. The coldness engendered by Linda's silly Anti-suffragism disappeared. They both talked by the hour together of their respective husbands and their outstanding virtues and charming weaknesses. The Armstrong children took to calling her Aunt Linda--Michael and Petworth, after all, were brothers-in-arms and friends from youth. Lady Rossiter

was delighted, and lavished presents on them, till Honoria reminded her it was war-time and extravagance in all things was reprehensible, even in British-made toys.

They discussed the Vote, soon to be theirs, and how it should be exercised. 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.

Linda felt shocked at her own treachery to the Woman's Cause in having betrayed that poor, well-meaning Miss Warren to the police. Never could she confess this to Lady Armstrong (Sir Petworth had just been knighted for a great success in battle), tell her about the fragment of letter she had forwarded anonymously to Scotland Yard. Perhaps she might some day tell Michael, when he returned. In any case she would say at the next opportunity that as soon as Miss Warren reappeared in England, he might ask her to the house as often as he liked--even to stay with them if she were in want of a home.

She said as much to Michael when he came back in September, 1917, to make some further investigations into bone grafting. He seemed genuinely pleased at her broad-mindedness, and said it would indeed be delightful when the War was over--and it surely must be over soon--now Mr. Lloyd George and Clemenceau and President Wilson had taken it in hand--it would indeed be delightful to form a circle of close friends who had all been interested in the Woman's Movement. As to Vivie ... if she were not dead ... he should advise her to go in for Parliament.

He had had no news of her since ever so long; what was worse, he had now very great misgivings about Bertie Adams. During the autumn of 1916 he had disappeared in the direction of La Bassée. There were stories of his having joined some American Relief Expedition at Lille--a most dangerous thing to do; insensate, if it were not a mad attempt to get through to Brussels in disguise to rescue Miss Warren. No one in the Y.M.C.A. believed for a moment that he had done anything dishonourable. Most likely he had been killed--as so many Y.M.C.A. people were just then, assisting to bring in the wounded or going up to the trenches with supplies. Mrs. Adams had better be prepared, cautiously, for a bereavement. Rossiter himself was very sad about it. He had missed Bertie's services much these last three years. He had never known a better worker--turn his hand to anything--Such a good indexer, for example.

Linda wondered whether she could do any indexing? Three years ago Michael would have replied: "You? Nonsense, my dear. You'd only make a muddle of it. Much better stick to your housekeeping" (which as a matter of fact was done in those days by cook, butler and parlour-maid). But now he said, thoughtfully:

"Well--I don't know--perhaps you might. There's no reason you shouldn't try."

And Linda began trying.

But she also worked regularly in the laboratory now, calling it at his suggestion the lab, and stumbling no more over the word. She wore a neat overall with tight sleeves and her hair plainly dressed under a little white, pleated cap. She never now caught anything with her sleeve and switched it off the table; she never let anything drop, and was a most judicious duster and wiper-up.

Rossiter in this autumn of 1917 was extremely interested in certain crucial experiments he was making with spiculum in sponge-cells; with scleroblasts, "mason-cells,"

osteoblasts, and "consciousness" in bone-cells. Most of the glass jars in which these experiments were going on (those of the sponges in sea-water) required daylight for their progress. There was no place for their storage more suitable than that portion of his studio-laboratory which was above ground; and the situation of his house in regard to air attacks, bombs, shrapnel seemed to him far more favourable than the upper rooms at the College of Surgeons. That great building was often endangered because of its proximity to the Strand and Fleet Street; and the Strand and Fleet Street, being regarded by the Germans as arteries of Empire, were frequently attacked by German air-craft.

But in Rossiter's studio there was an under-ground annex as continuation of the house cellars; and the household was instructed that if, in Rossiter's absence, official warnings of an air-raid were given, certain jars were to be lifted carefully off the shelves and brought either into the library or taken down below in case, through shrapnel or through the vibration of neighbouring explosions, the glass of the studio roof was broken.

One day in October, 1917, the German air fleet made a determined attack on London. It was intended this time to belie the stories of the heart of the Western district being exempted from punishment because Lady So-and-so lived there and had lent her house in East Anglia to the Empress and her children in 1912, or because Sir Somebody-else was really an arch spy of the Germans and had to go on residing in London. So the aeroplanes this time began distributing their explosives very carefully over the residential area between Regent's Park and Pall Mall, the Tottenham Court Road and Selfridge's.

Lady Rossiter in her overall was disturbed at her indexing by the clamour of an approaching daylight raid; by the maroons, the clanging of bells, the hooters, the gunfire; and finally by the not very distant sounds of exploding

bombs. She called and rang for the servants, and then rushed from the library into the studio to commence removing the more important of the jars to a place of greater safety. She had seized two of them, one under each arm, and was making for the library door, when there came the most awful crash she had ever heard, and resounding bangs which seemed to echo indefinitely in her ears....

Rossiter was working in the Prosectorium at the Zoo when the daylight air-raid began. It seemed to be coming across the middle of London; so, hastily doffing his overall, he left the Gardens and walked rapidly towards Portland Place. He had hardly got past the fountain presented by Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy in wasted benevolence, than he heard the deafening report of the bomb which had wrecked his studio, reduced it to a tangle of iron girders and stanchions, strewn its floor with brick rubble and thick dust, and left his wife a human wreck, lying unconscious with a broken spine, surrounded by splinters of glass, broken jars, porcelain trays, and nasty-looking fragments of sponge and vertebrate anatomy. With an almost paralyzing premonition of disaster he ran as quickly as possible towards Park Crescent. The Marylebone Road was strewn with glass, and a policeman--every one else had taken shelter--was ringing and knocking at his front door to ascertain the damage and possible loss of life. Michael let both of them in with his latch-key. In the hall the butler was lying prone, stunned by a small statue which had been flung at him by the capricious violence of the explosion. All the mirrors were shivered and most of the pictures were down. At the entrance to the library cook was standing, all of a tremble. The two little Adamses rushed up to him: "Oh Sir Michael! Mummie is dead and Gran'ma is awfully hurted."

But Mummie--Mrs. Adams--was not dead; neither was the expensive parlour-maid. Both had fainted or

been stunned by the explosion on their way to help their mistress. Both lay inanimate on the library floor. The library glass door was shivered to dangerous jagged splinters, but the iron framework--"Curse it"--remained a tangled, maddening obstacle to his further progress. He could see through the splinters of thick glass something that looked like Linda, lying on her back--and--something that looked like blood. The policeman who followed him was strong and adroit. Together they detached the glass splinters and wrenched open the framework, with space enough, at any rate, to pass through without the rending of clothes into the studio.

Linda Rossiter was regaining consciousness for just a few more minutes of sentient life. She was aware there had been a dreadful accident to some one; perhaps to herself. But she fully believed she had first of all saved the precious jars. No doubt they had put her to bed, and as there was something warm (her blood, poor thing) round her body, they must have packed her with hot water bottles. Some idea of Michael's no doubt. How kind he was!

She would soon get right, with him to look after her. She opened her eyes to meet his, as he bent over her, and said with the ghost of an arch smile: "I--have been--of some use--to you, haven't--I? ... (then the voice faltered and trailed away) ... I ... saved--your--specimens--"