Mrs. Warren's Daughter Part 19

Mrs. Rossiter thought the whole thing profoundly improper. In the first place the young woman had committed suicide, which of itself was a crime and disent.i.tled you to Christian burial; in the second she had died in a way greatly to inconvenience persons in the highest society; in the third she had always understood that racing was a perfectly proper pastime for gentlemen; and in the fourth this incident, touching Michael through his relations.h.i.+p with the deceased, would bring him again in contact with that Vivie Warren--_there_ she was and there was _he_, in close converse--and make a knighthood from a nearly relenting Government well-nigh impossible. Rossiter, after the service, had begged Vivie to come back to tea with them in Park Crescent and give Mrs. Rossiter and himself a full account of what took place at Epsom. Vivie had declined. She had not even spoken to the angry little woman, who had refused to attend the service and had sat fuming all through the half hour in her electric brougham, wis.h.i.+ng she had the courage and determination to order the chauffeur to turn round and run her home, leaving the Professor to follow in a taxi. But perhaps if she did that, he would go off somewhere with that Warren woman.

Michael presently re-entered the carriage and in silence they returned to Portland Place.

The next day his wife meeting one of her Anti-Suffrage friends said:

"Er--supposing--er--you had got to know something about these dreadful militant women, something which might help the police, yet didn't want to get _too_ much mixed up with it yourself, and _certainly_ not bring your husband into it--the Professor _thoroughly_ disapproves of militancy, even though he may have foolish ideas about the Vote--er--what would you do?"

"Well, what is it?"

"It's part of a letter."

"Well, I should just send it to the Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard, and tell them under what circ.u.mstances it came into your possession. You needn't even give your name or address. They'll soon know whether it's any use or not." So Mrs. Rossiter took from her desk that sc.r.a.p of partly burnt paper with the typewritten words on it which she had picked out of the grate two and a half years before, and posted it to the Criminal Investigation Department, with the intimation that this fragment had come into the possession of the sender some time ago, and seemed to refer to a militant Suffragist who called herself "Vivie Warren" or "David Williams," and perhaps it might be of some a.s.sistance to the authorities in tracking down these dangerous women who now stuck at nothing. She posted the letter with her own hands in the North West district. Park Crescent, Portland Place, she always reflected, was still in the _Western_ district, though it lay perilously near the North West border line, beyond which Lady Jeune had once written, no one in Society thought of living. This was a dictum that at one time had occasioned Mrs. Rossiter considerable perturbation. It was alarming to think that by crossing the Marylebone Road or migrating to Cambridge Terrace you had pa.s.sed out of Society.

It took the police a deuce of a time--two months--to make use effectively of the information contained in Mrs. Rossiter's sc.r.a.p of burnt paper; though the statement of their anonymous correspondent that Vivie Warren and David Williams were probably the same person helped to locate Mr. Michaelis's office. It was soon ascertained that Miss Vivien Warren, well known as a sort of Society speaker on Suffrage, lived at the Lilacs in Victoria Road, Kensington. But when a plain-clothes policeman called at Victoria Road he was only told by the Suffragette caretaker (whose mother now usually lived with her to console her for her mistress's frequent absences) that Miss Warren was away just then, had recently been much away from home, probably abroad where her mother lived. (Here the enquirer registered a mental note: Miss Warren has a mother living abroad: could it be _the_ Mrs. Warren?). Polite and respectful calls on Lady Feenix, Lady Maud Parry, and Mrs. Armstrong--Vivie's known a.s.sociates--elicted no information, till on leaving the last-named lady's house in Kensington Square the detective heard Colonel Armstrong come in from the garden and call out "Ho-no-ria."

"'--ria," he said to himself, "'-ria kept the keys, and now--' Honoria. What was her name before she married Colonel Armstrong?--why--" He soon found out--"Fraser." "Wasn't there once a firm, _Fraser and Warren_, which set up to be some new dodge for establis.h.i.+ng women in a city career?--Accountancy? Stockbroking?

Where did _Fraser and Warren_ have their office? Fifth floor of Midland Insurance office in Chancery Lane. What was that building now called? No. 88-90." Done.

These two sentences run over a period of--what did I say? Two months?--in their deductions and guesses and consultation of out-of-date telephone directories. But on one day in September, 1913, two plain-clothes policemen made their way up to the fifth floor of 88-90 Chancery Lane and found the outer door of Mr.

Michaelis's office locked and a notice board on it saying "Absent till Monday." Not deterred by this, they forced open the door--to the thrilling interest of a spectacled typewriteress, who had no business on that landing at all, but she usually made a.s.signations there with the lift man. And on the writing table in the outer office they found a note addressed to Miss Annie Kenney, which said inside: "Dear Annie. If you should chance to look in between your many imprisonments and find me out, you will know I am away on the Firm's business, livening up the racing establishments of the Right Honble Sir ---- ----, Bart. Bart. No one knows anything about this at No. 94."

(This note was purely unnecessary--a bit of swagger perhaps, lest Miss Kenney should think Vivie never did anything dangerous, but only planned dangerous escapades for others. Like the long letter of Vivie to Michael Rossiter, written on the last day of December, 1910, which he had imperfectly destroyed, it was a reminder of that all-too-true saying: "Litera scripta manet.")

If the outer door of Michaelis's office was locked how could Miss Kenney be expected to call and find this note awaiting her? Why, _here_ came in the "No. 94" of the sc.r.a.p of paper. There was an over-the-roofs communication between the block of 88-90 and House No. 94. The policemen in fact found that the large cas.e.m.e.nt of the partners' room was only pulled to, so that it was easily opened from the outside. From the parapet they pa.s.sed to the fire-escapes and through the labyrinth of chimney stacks to a similar window leading into the top storey of 94, the office of Mr. Algernon Mainwaring, Hygienic Corset-maker. This office at the time of their unexpected entry was fairly full of Suffragettes planning all sorts of direful things. So the plain-clothes policemen had a rare haul that day and certainly had Mrs. Rossiter to thank for rising to be Inspectors and receiving some modest Order of later days. It was about the worst blow the W.S.P.U. had; before the outbreak of War turned suddenly the revolting women into the stanchest patriots and the right hands of muddling ministers. For in addition to many a rich find in No. 94 and a dozen captives caught red-handed in making mock of the Authorities, the plain-clothes policemen made themselves thoroughly at home in Mr. Michaelis's quarters till the following Monday. And when in the fore-noon of that day, Mr. Michaelis entered his rooms, puzzled and perturbed at finding the outer door ajar, he was promptly arrested on a multiform charge of arson ... and on being conveyed to a police station and searched he was found to be Miss Vivien Warren.

At intervals in the summer and early autumn of 1913 the male section of the public had been horrified and scandalized at the destruction going on in racing establishments, particularly those of Sir George Crofts and of a well-known South American millionaire, whose distinguished services to British commerce and immense donations to Hospitals and Homes would probably be rewarded by a grateful government. If these outrages were not stopped, horse-racing and race-horse breeding must come to a stand-still; and we leave our readers to realize what _that_ would mean! There would be no horses for the plough or the gig, or the artillery gun-carriage; no--er--fox-hunting, and without fox-hunting and steeple-chasing and point-to-point races you could have no cavalry and without cavalry you could have no army. If we neglected blood stock we would deal the farmer a deadly blow, we should--er--

You know the sort of argument? Reduced to its essentials it is simply this:--That a few rich people are fond of gambling and fond of the excitement that is concentrated in the few minutes of the horse race. Some others, not so rich, believe that by combining horse-racing with a certain amount of cunning and bold cheating they can make a great deal of money. A few speculators have invested funds in s.p.a.ces of open turf, and turn these s.p.a.ces into race courses. Having no alternative, no safer method of gambling offered them, and being as fond of gambling as other peoples of the world, the men of the labouring cla.s.ses and a few of their women, the publicans and their frequenters, army officers, farmers, and women of uncertain virtue stake their money on horses they have never seen, who may not even exist, and thus keep the industry going. And the chevaliers of this "industry," the go-betweens, the parasites of this sport, are the twelve thousand professional book-makers and racing touts.

Somehow the Turf has during the last hundred years, together with its allies the Distillers and Brewers, the Licensed Victuallers and the Press that is supported by these agencies, acquired such a hold over the Government Departments, the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, and Liberal politicians who are descended from county families, that it has more interest with those who govern us than the Church, the Nonconformist Conscience, the County Palatine of Lancaster or any other body of corporate opinion. So that when in September, 1913, representatives of the Turf (and no doubt of the Trade Unions) went to the Home Secretary in reference to the burning and bombing of racing stables, trainers' houses, Grand Stands and the residences of racing potentates, and said "Look here! This has GOT TO STOP," the Home Secretary and the Cabinet knew they were up against no ordinary crisis. At the same time Sir Edward Carson, the Marquis of Londonderry, the Duke of Abercorn, Mr. F.E. Smith and nearly a third of the Colonels in the British Army of Ulster descent were actively organizing armed resistance to any measure of Home Rule; while Keltiberian Ireland was setting up the Irish Volunteers to start a Home Rule insurrection. You can therefore imagine for yourselves the mental irritability of members of the Liberal Cabinet in the autumn of the sinister year 1913. I have been told that there were days at the House of Commons during the Autumn Session of that year when the leading ministers would just shut themselves up in their Private Rooms and scream on end for a quarter of an hour....

Of course an exaggeration, a sorry jest.

In retrospect one feels almost sorry for them: the Great War must have come almost as a relief. Not one of them was what you would call a bad man. Some of them suffered over forcible feeding and the Cat and Mouse Act as acutely as does the loving father or mother who says to the recently spanked child, "You _know_, dear, it hurts _me_ almost as much as it hurts _you_." If one met them out at dinner parties, or in an express train which they could not stop by pulling the communication cord, and sympathized with their dilemma, they would ask plaintively _what_ they could do. They could not yield to violence and anarchy; yet they could not let women die in prison.

Of course the answer was this, but it was one they waved aside: "Dissolve Parliament and go to the Country on the one question of Votes for Women. If the Country returns a great majority favourable to that concession, you must bring in a Bill for eliminating the s.e.x distinction in the suffrage. If on the other hand, the Country votes against the reform, then you must leave it to the women to make a male electorate change its mind. And meantime if men and women, to enforce some principle, rioted and were sent to prison for it, and then started to abstain from food and drink, why they must please themselves and die if they wanted to."

But this was just what the Liberal Ministry of those days would not do; at all costs they must stick to office, emoluments, patronage, the bestowal of honours, and the control of foreign policy. They clung to power, in fact, at all costs; even inconsistency with the bedrock principle of Liberalism: no Taxation without Representation.

It was decided in the innermost arcana of the Home Office that an example should be made of Vivie. They had evidently in her got hold of something far more dangerous than a Pankhurst or a Pethick Lawrence, a Constance Lytton or an Emily Davison. The very probable story--though the Benchers were loth to take it up--that she had actually in man's garb pa.s.sed for the Bar and pleaded successfully before juries, appalled some of the lawyer-ministers by its revolutionary audacity. They might not be able to punish her on that count or on several others of the misdemeanours imputed to her; but they had got her, for sure, on Arson; and on the arson not of suburban churches, which occurred sometimes at Peckham or in the suburbs of Birmingham and made people laugh a little in the trains coming up to town and say there were far too many churches, seemed to them; _but_ the burning down of racing establishments. _That_ was Bolshevism, indeed, they would have said, had they been able to project their minds five years ahead. Being only in 1913 they called Vivie by the enfeebled term of Anarchist, the word applied by _Punch_ to Mr. John Burns in 1888 for wis.h.i.+ng to address the Public in Trafalgar Square.

So it was arranged that Vivie's trial should take place in October at the Old Bailey and that a judge should try her who was quite certain he had never stayed at a Warren Hotel; who would be careful to keep great names out of court; and restrain counsel from dragging anything in to the simple and provable charge of arson which might give Miss Warren a chance to say something those beastly newspapers would get hold of.

I am not going to give you the full story of Vivie's trial. I have got so much else to say about her, before I can leave her in a quiet backwater of middle age, that this must be a story which has gaps to be filled up by the reader's imagination. You can, besides, read for yourself elsewhere--for this is a thinly veiled chronicle of real events--how she was charged, and how the magistrate refused bail though it was offered in large amounts by Rossiter and Praed, the latter with Mrs. Warren's purse behind him. How she was first lodged in Brixton Prison and at length appeared in the dock at the Old Bailey before a Court that might have been set for a Cinematograph.

There was a judge with a full-bottomed wig, a scarlet and ermine vesture, there was a jury of prosperous shopkeepers, retired half pay officers, a hotelkeeper or two, a journalist, an architect, and a builder. A very celebrated King's Counsel prosecuted--the Cabinet thus said to the Racing World "We've done _all_ we can"--and Vivie defended herself with the aid of a clever solicitor whom Bertie Adams had found for her.

From the very moment of her arrest, Bertie Adams had refused--even though they took away his salary--to think of anything but Vivie's trial and how she might issue from it triumphant. He must have lost a stone in weight. He was ready to give evidence himself, though he was really quite unconcerned with the offences for which Vivie was on trial; prepared to swear to anything; to swear he arranged the conflagrations; that Miss Warren had really been in London when witness had seen her purchasing explosives at Newmarket (both stories were equally untrue). Bertie Adams only asked to be allowed to perjure himself to the tune of Five Years' penal servitude if that would set Vivie free. Yet at a word or a look from her he became manageable.

The Attorney General of course began something like this. "I am very anxious to impress on you," he said, addressing the jury, "that from the moment we begin to deal with the facts of this case, all questions of whether a woman is ent.i.tled to the Parliamentary franchise, whether she should have the same right of franchise as a man are matters which in no sense are involved in the trial of this issue. All you have to decide is whether the prisoner in the dock committed or procured and a.s.sisted others to commit the very serious acts of arson of which she is accused..."

Nevertheless he or the hounds he kept in leash, the lesser counsel, sought subtly to prejudice the jury's mind against Vivie by dragging in her parentage and the eccentricities of her own career. As thus:--

_Counsel for the prosecution_: "We have in you the mainspring of this rebellious movement..."

_Vivie_: "Have you?"

_Counsel_: "Are you not the daughter of the notorious Mrs. Warren?"

_Vivie_: "My mother's name certainly is Warren. For what is she notorious?"

_Counsel_: "Well--er--for being a.s.sociated abroad with--er--a certain type of hotel synonymous with a disorderly house--"

_Vivie_: "Indeed? Have you tried them? My mother has managed the hotels of an English Company abroad till she retired altogether from the management some years ago. It was a Company in which Sir George Crofts--"

_Judge_, interposing: "We need not go into that--I think the Counsel for the prosecution is not ent.i.tled to ask such questions."

_Counsel_: "I submit, Me Lud, that it is germane to my case that the prisoner's upbringing might have--"

_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 pa.s.sed 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; my grandfather, Lieutenant Warren, was killed in the Crimea--or more likely died of neglected wounds owing to the shamefully misconducted, man-conducted Army Medical Service of those days. My mother in early days was better known as Miss Kate Vavasour. She was the intimate friend of a celebrated barrister who--"

_Judge_, intervening: "We have had enough of this discursive evidence which really does not bear on the case at all. I must ask the prosecuting counsel to keep to the point and not waste the time of the court."

_Prosecuting Counsel_ (who has meantime received three or four energetic notes from his leader, begging him to remember his instructions and not to be an a.s.s): "Very good M'Lud." (To Vivie) "Do you know Mr. David Vavasour Williams, a barrister?"

_Vivie_: "I have heard of him."

_Counsel_: "Have you spoken of him as your cousin?"

_Vivie_: "I may have done. He is closely related to me."

_Counsel_: "I put it to you that _you_ are David Williams, or at any rate that you have posed as being that person."

_Judge_, interposing with a weary air: "_Who_ is David Williams?"

_Counsel_: "Well--er--a member of the Bar--well known in the criminal courts--s.h.i.+llito case--"

_Judge_: "Really? I had not heard of him. Proceed."

_Counsel_ (to Vivie): "You heard my questions?"

_Vivie_: "I have never posed as being other than what I am, a woman much interested in claiming the Parliamentary Franchise for Women; and I do not see what these questions have to do with my indictment, which is a charge of arson. You introduce all manner of irrelevant matter--"

_Counsel_: "You decline to answer my questions?"

(Vivie turns her head away.)

_Judge_, to Counsel: "I do not quite see the bearing of your enquiries."