Mrs. Warren's Daughter — Chapter XV, Imprisonment, Part 1

IMPRISONMENT

Prior to the Derby day of 1913, Vivie had heard of Emily Wilding Davison as a Northumbrian woman, distantly related to the Rossiters and also to the Lady Shillito she had once defended.

She came from Morpeth in Northumberland and had had a very distinguished University career at Oxford and in London, of which latter university she was a B. A.

The theme of the electoral enfranchisement of Women had gradually possessed her mind to the exclusion of all other subjects; she became in fact a fanatic in the cause and a predestined martyr to it.

In 1909 she had received her first sentence of imprisonment for making a constitutional protest, and to escape forcible feeding had barricaded her cell.

The Visiting Committee had driven her from this position by directing the warders to turn a hose pipe on her and knock her senseless with a douche of cold water; for which irregularity they were afterwards fined and mulcted in costs.

Two years later, for another Suffragist offence (setting fire to a pillar box after giving warning of her intention) she went to prison for six months.

Here the tortures of forcible feeding so overcame her reason--it was alleged--that she flung herself from an upper gallery, believing she would be smashed on the pavement below and that her death under such circumstances might call attention to the agony of forcible feeding and the reckless disregard of consequences which now inspired educated women who were resolved to obtain the enfranchisement of their sex.

But an iron wire grating eight feet below broke her fall and only cut her face and hands.

The accident or attempted suicide, however, procured the shortening of her sentence.

Vivie and she often met in the early months of 1913, and on the first day of June she confided to a few of the W. S.

P.

U.

her intention of making at Epsom a public protest against public indifference to the cause of the Woman's Franchise.

This protest was to be made in the most striking manner possible at the supreme moment of the Derby race on the 4th of June.

Probably no one to whom she mentioned the matter thought she contemplated offering up her own life; at most they must have imagined some speech from the Grand Stand, some address to Royalty thrown into the Royal pavilion, some waving of a Suffrage Flag or early-morning placarding of the bookies' stands.

Vivie however had been turning her thoughts to horse-racing as a field of activity.

She was amused and interested at the effect that had been produced in ministerial circles by her interference with the game of golf.

If now something was done by the militants seriously to impede the greatest of the sports, the national form of gambling, the protected form of swindling, the main interest in life of the working-class, of half the peerage, all the beerage, the chief lure of the newspapers between October and July, and the preoccupation of princes, she might awaken the male mind in a very effectual way to the need for settling the Suffrage question.

So she determined also to see the running of the Derby, as a preliminary to deciding on a plan of campaign.

She had become hardened to pushing and scrouging, so that the struggle to get a seat in one of the fifty or sixty race trains leaving Waterloo or Victoria left her comparatively calm.

She was dressed as a young man and had no clothing impediments, and as a young man she was better able to travel down with racing rascality.

In that guise she did not attract too much attention.

Rough play may have been in the mind of the card-playing, spirit-drinking scoundrels that occupied the other seats in the compartment, but Vivie in her man's dress created a certain amount of suspicion and caution.

"Look's like a 'tec,'" one man whispered to another.

So the card-playing was not thrust on her as a round-about form of plunder, and the stories told were more those derived from the spicy columns of the sporting papers, in words of double meaning, than the outspoken, stable obscenity characteristic of the race-course rabble.

Vivie arriving early managed to secure a fairly good seat on the Grand Stand, to which she could have recourse when the crowd on the race course became too repulsive or too dangerous.

She wished as much as possible to see all aspects of the premier race meeting.

Indeed, meeting a friend of Lady Feenix's, a good-natured young peer who halted irresolute between four worlds--the philosophic, the political, the philanthropic, and the sporting, she introduced herself as "David Williams"--hoping no Bencher was within hearing--said "Dare say you remember me?

Lady Feenix's?

Been much abroad lately--really feel quite strange on an English race course," and persuaded him to take her round before the great people of the day were all assembled.

She was shown the Royal pavilion being got ready for the King and Queen, the weighing room of the jockeys, the paddock and temporary stables of the horses that were to race that day.

Here was a celebrated actress in a magnificent lace dress and a superb hat, walking up and down on the sun-burnt, trodden turf, in a devil of a temper.

Her horse--for with her lovers' money she kept a racing stable--had been scratched for the race--I really can't tell you why, not having been able to study all the _minutiæ_ of racing.

[Talking of that, _how_ annoying it is--or was--when one cared about things of great moment, to take up an evening newspaper's last edition and read in large type "Official Scratchings," with a silly algebraic formula underneath about horses being withdrawn from some race, when you thought it was a bear fight in the Cabinet.

] Vivie gathered from her guide that to-day would be rather a special Derby, because it did not often happen that a King-Emperor was there to see a horse from his own racing stables running in the classic race.

Then, thanking the pleasant soldier-peer for his information, Vivie (David Williams) left him to his duties as equerry and member of the Jockey-Club and entered the dense crowd on either side of the race course.

It reminded her just slightly of Frith's Derby Day.

There were the gypsies, the jugglers, the acrobats, the costers with their provision barrows; the grooms and stable hands; the beggars and obvious pick-pockets; the low-down harlots--the high-up ones were already entering the seats of the Grand Stand or sitting on the four-in-hand coaches or in the open landaulettes and Silent Knights.

But evidently the professional betting men were a new growth since the mid-nineteenth century.

They were just beginning to assemble, wiping their mouths from the oozings of the last potation; some, the aristocrats of their calling, like sporting peers in dress and appearance; others like knock-about actors on the music-hall stage.

The generality were remarkably similar to ordinary city men or to the hansom-cab drivers of twenty years ago.

In the very front of the crowd on the Grand Stand side, leaning with her elbows on the wooden rail, she descried Emily Davison.

Vivie edged and sidled through the crowd and touched her on the shoulder.

Emily looked up with a start, surprised at seeing the friendly face of a young man, till she recognized Vivie by her voice.

"Dear Emily," said Vivie, "you look so tired.

Aren't you over-trying your strength?

I don't know what you have in hand, but why not postpone your action till you are quite strong again?"

"I shall never be stronger than I am to-day and it can't be postponed, cost me what it will," was the reply, while the sad eyes looked away across the course.

"Well," said Vivie, "I wanted you to know that I was close by, prepared to back you up if need be.

And there are others of our Union about the place.

That young man over there talking to the policeman is really A---- K---- though she is supposed to be in prison.

Mrs. Tuke is somewhere about, Mrs. Despard is on the Grand Stand, and Blanche Smith is selling _The Suffragette_."

"Thank you," said Miss Davison, turning round for an instant, and pressing Vivie's hand, "Good-bye.

I hope what I am going to do will be effectual."

Vivie did not like to prolong the talk in case it should attract attention.

Individual action was encouraged under the W. S.

P.

U.

, and when a member wished to do something on her own, her comrades did not fuss with advice.

So Vivie returned to the Grand Stand.

Presently there was the stir occasioned by the arrival of the Royal personages.

Vivie noted with a little dismay that while she was wearing a Homburg hat all the men near her wore the black and glistening topper which has become--or had, for the tyranny of custom has lifted a little since the War--the conventional head-gear in which to approach both God and the King.

There was a great raising of these glistening hats, there were grave bows or smiling acknowledgments from the pavilion.

Then every one sat down and the second event was run.

Still Emily Wilding Davison made no sign.

Vivie could just descry her, still in the front of the crowd, still gazing out over the course, pressed by the crowd against the broad white rail.

* * * * * The race of the day had begun.

The row of snickering, plunging, rearing, and curvetting horses had dissolved, as in a kaleidoscope, into a bunch, and a pear-shaped formation with two or three horses streaming ahead as the stem of the pear.

Then the stem became separated from the pear-shaped mass by its superior speed, and again this vertical line of horses formed up once more horizontally, leaving the mass still farther behind.

Then the horses seen from the Grand Stand disappeared--and after a minute reappeared--three, four, five--and the bunch of them, swerving round Tattenham Corner and thundering down the incline towards the winning post....

The King's horse seemed to be leading, another few seconds would have brought it or one of its rivals past the winning post, when ...

a slender figure, a woman, darted with equal swiftness from the barrier to the middle of the course, leapt to the neck of the King's horse, and in an instant, the horse was down, kneeling on a crumpled woman, and the jockey was flying through the air to descend on hands and knees practically unhurt.

The other horses rushed by, miraculously avoiding the prostrate figures.

Some horse passed the winning post, a head in front of some other, but no one seemed to care.

The race was fouled.

Vivie noted thirty seconds--approximately--of amazed, horrified silence.

Then a roar of mingled anger, horror, enquiry went up from the crowd of many thousands.

"It's the Suffragettes" shouted some one.

And up to then Vivie had not thought of connecting this unprecedented act with the purposed protest of Emily Wilding Davison.

She sprang to her feet, and shouting to all who might have tried to stop her "I'm a friend of the lady.

I am a doctor"--she didn't care what lie she told--she was soon authoritatively pushing through the ring of police constables who like warrior ants had surrounded the victims of the protest--the shivering, trembling horse, now on its legs, the pitifully crushed, unconscious woman--her hat hanging to the tresses of her hair by a dislodged hat-pin, her thin face stained with blood from surface punctures.

The jockey was being carried from the course, still unconscious, but not badly hurt.

A great surgeon happening to be at Epsom Race course on a friend's drag, had hurried to offer his services.

He was examining the unconscious woman and striving very gently to straighten and disentangle her crooked body.

Presently there was a respectful stir in the privileged ring, and Vivie was conscious by the raising of hats that the King stood amongst them looking down on the woman who had offered up her life before his eyes to enforce the Woman's appeal.

He put his enquiries and offered his suggestions in a low voice, but Vivie withdrew, less with the fear that her right to be there and her connection with the tragedy might be questioned, as from some instinctive modesty.

The occasion was too momentous for the presence of a supernumerary.

Emily Wilding Davison should have her audience of her Sovereign without spectators.

Returning with a blanched face to the seething crowd, and presently to the Grand Stand, Vivie's mood altered from awe to anger.

The "bookies" were beside themselves with fury.

She noted the more frequent of the nouns and adjectives they applied to the dying woman for having spoilt the Derby of 1913, but although she went to the trouble, in framing her indictment of the Turf, of writing down these phrases, my jury of matrons opposes itself to their appearance here, though I am all for realism and completeness of statement.

After conversing briefly and in a lowered voice with such Suffragettes as gathered round her, so that this one could carry the news to town and that one his to communicate with Miss Davison's relations, Vivie--recklessly calling herself to any police questioner, "David Williams" and eliciting "Yes, sir, I have seen you once or twice in the courts," reached once more the Grand Stand with its knots of shocked, puzzled, indignant, cynical, consternated men and women.

Most of them spoke in low tones; but one--a blond Jew of middle age--was raving in uncontrolled anger, careless of what he said or of who heard him.

He was short of stature with protruding bloodshot eyes, an undulating nose, slightly prognathous muzzle and full lips, and a harsh red moustache which enhanced the prognathism.

His silk hat tilted back showed a great bald forehead, in which angry, bluish veins stood out like swollen earth worms.

"Those Suffragettes!"

he was shouting or rather shrieking in a nasal whine, "if I had _my_ way, I'd lay 'em out along the course and have 'em ---- by ----.

The ----'s!"

The shocked auditory around him drew away.

Vivie gathered he was Mr. ---- well, perhaps I had better not give his name,[1] even in a disguised form.

He had had a chequered career in South America--Mexico oil, Peruvian rubber, Buenos Aires railways, and a corner in Argentine beef--but had become exceedingly rich, a fortune perhaps of twenty millions.

He had given five times more than any other aspirant in benefactions to charities and to the party chest of the dominant Party, but the authorities dared not reward him with a baronetcy because of the stories of his early life which had to be fought out in libel cases with Baxendale Strangeways and others.

But he had won through these libel cases, and now devoted his vast wealth to improving our breed of horses by racing at Newmarket, Epsom, Doncaster, Gatwick, Sandown and Brighton.

Racing had, in fact, become to him what Auction Bridge was to the Society gamblers of those days, only instead of losing and winning tens and hundreds of pounds, his fluctuations in gains and losses were in thousands, generally with a summing up on the right side of the annual account.

But whether on the Turf, at the billiard table, or in the stock market he was or had become a bad loser.

He lost his temper at the same time.

On this occasion Miss Davison's suicide or martyrdom would leave him perhaps on the wrong side in making up his day's book to the extent of fifteen hundred pounds.

Viewed in the right proportion it would be equivalent to our--you and me--having given a florin to a newspaper boy as the train was moving, instead of a penny.

But no doubt her unfortunate impulse had spoiled the day for him in other ways, upset schemes that were bound up with the winning of the King's horse.

Yet his outburst and the shocking language he applied to the Suffrage movement made history: for they fixed on him Vivie's attention when she was looking out for some one or something on whom to avenge the loss of a comrade.

[Footnote 1: He died in 1917. My jury of matrons has excised his phrases.

] She forthwith set out for London and wrote up the dossier of Mr. ----.

In the secret list of buildings which were to be destroyed by fire or bombs, with as little risk as possible to human or animal life, she noted down the racing stables, trainers' houses and palaces of Mr. ---- at Newmarket, Epsom, the Devil's Dyke, and the neighbourhood of Doncaster.

Rossiter and Vivie met for the first time for a year at Emily Davison's funeral.

Rossiter had been profoundly moved at her self-sacrifice; she was moreover a Northumbrian and a distant kinswoman.

Perhaps, also, he felt that he had of late been a little lukewarm over the Suffrage agitation.

His motor-brougham, containing with himself the very unwilling Mrs. Rossiter, followed in the procession of six thousand persons which escorted the coffin across London from Victoria station to King's Cross.

A halt was made outside a church in Bloomsbury where a funeral service was read.

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 disentitled 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 relationship 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, wishing 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 circumstances 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 scrap 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 assistance 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 passed 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 scrap 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 associates--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 establishing 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 assignations 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 scrap 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 casement of the partners' room was only pulled to, so that it was easily opened from the outside.

From the parapet they passed 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.