Mrs. Warren's Daughter Part 16

_Frank_: "I see."

The next day Vivie wisely spent in bed, healing her wounds and resting her limbs which after the mental excitement was over ached horribly. Honoria came round and listened, applauded, pitied, laughed and concurred.

But she was well enough on the following Tuesday after Black Friday to attend another meeting of the W.S.P.U. at Caxton Hall, to hear one more ambiguous, tricky, many-ways-to-be-interpreted promise of the then Prime Minister. Mrs. Pankhurst pointing out the vagueness of these a.s.surances announced her intention then and there of going round to Downing Street to ask for a more definite wording. Vivie and many others followed this dauntless lady. Their visit was unexpected, the police force was small and the Suffragettes had two of the Cabinet Ministers at their mercy. They contented themselves by shaking, hustling, frightening but not otherwise injuring their victims before the latter were rescued and put into taxi-cabs.

CHAPTER XIV

MILITANCY

The Lilacs, Victoria Road, S.W.

_December_ 31, 1910.

DEAR MICHAEL,--

I'm so glad you got returned all right by your University. I feared very much your championship of the Woman's Cause might have told against you. But these newer Universities are more liberal-minded.

I am keeping my promise to tell you of any important move I am making. So this is to inform you, _in very strict confidence_, of my latest dodge. For the effective organization of my particular branch of the W.S.P.U.

activities, I must have an office. "The Lilacs" is far too small, and besides I shrink from having my little home raided or too much visited even by confederates. I learned the other day that the old Fraser and Warren offices on the top floor of 88-90 Chancery Lane were vacant. The Midland Insurance Co. that occupied nearly all the building has cleared out and the block is to be given over to a mult.i.tude of small undertakings. Well: I secured our old rooms! Simply splendid, with the two safes that Honoria, untold ages ago, fitted into the walls, and hid so cleverly that if there is no treachery it would be hard for the police to find them and raid them. The Midland Insurance Co. did not behave well to Fraser and Warren, so Beryl Storrington, when she was clearing out said nothing about the safes, which were not noticed by the Company. Honoria kept the keys and now hands them over to me.

The W.S.P.U. has taken--also under an alias--other offices on the same side of the way, at No. 94, top storey. We find we can, by using the fire escape, pa.s.s over the intervening roofs and reach the parapet outside the "partners' room" at the 88-90 building. I shall once again make use of the little room next the partners' office as a bedroom or rather, "tiring" room, where I can if necessary effect changes of costume. I have taken the new offices in the name of Mr. Michaelis[1] for a special reason; and with some modifications of David's costume I have appeared in person to a.s.sume possession of them. I generally enter No. 94 dressed as Vivie Warren. All this may sound very silly to you, like playing at conspiracy. But these precautions seem to be necessary. The Government is beginning to take Suffragism seriously, and a whole department at New Scotland Yard has been organized to cope with our activities.

[Footnote 1: Michaelis, I believe, was a Greek merchant dealing with sponges, emery powder, coral, and other products of the Mediterranean sh.o.r.es whose acquaintance Vivie had originally made when interested in the shares of that Levantine house, Charles Davis and Co. Of Ionian birth he had become a naturalized British subject, but having grown wealthy had decided to transfer himself to Athens and enter political life. He had consented amusedly to Vivie's adoption of his name for her new tenancy and had given her an old pa.s.sport, which you could do in the days that knew not Dora--she resembling him somewhat in appearance. He was aware of her Suffragist activities and guessed she might want it occasionally for eluding the police on trips abroad.--H.H.J.]

One reason I have in writing this letter--a letter I hope you will burn after you have read and noted its contents--is to ask you to lend me for a while the services of Bertie Adams as clerk. Of course I shall insist on paying his salary whilst I employ him, and indemnifying him for anything he may suffer in my service--that of the W.S.P.U. I am fairly well off for money now. Besides the funds the W.S.P.U. places at my disposal, I have the interest on mother's Ten Thousand pounds, and she would give me more if I asked for it. She has quite taken to the idea of spending her ill-gotten gains on the Enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of Women! (I am going over to see her for a week or so, when it is not quite so cold.)

What business am I going specially to undertake in Mr.

Michaelis's office on the top storey of 88-90? I will tell you. Scotland Yard is getting busy about us, the Suffragists, trying to find out all it can that is detrimental to our personal characters, our upbringing, our progeniture, our businesses and our relations; whether we had a forger in the family, whether I am the daughter of the "notorious" Mrs. Warren, whether Mrs. Canon Burstall is really my aunt and whether she couldn't be brought to use her private influence on me to keep me quiet, in case it came out that Kate Warren was her sister, and that she led Kate into that way of life wherein she earned her shameful livelihood. I have had one or two covert hints from Aunt Liz promising to open up relations _if_ only I'll behave myself!

Scotland Yard has already had the sorry triumph of causing one or two of our most prominent workers to retire from the ranks because they were not properly married or had been married after the eldest child was born; or had once "been in trouble," over some peccadillo, or had had a son or a sister who though now upright and prosperous had once been in the clutches of the law.

Now my idea is to turn the tables on all this. I myself am impeccable in a real court of equity. My avatar as David Williams was by way of being a superb adventure. I only retired from the harmless imposture lest I might compromise you, and you are so far gone in politics now that the revelation--if it came about--that you were deceived by me and by my "father"--would do you no harm. For a number of reasons I know pretty well that the Benchers would not make themselves ridiculous by having the story of my successful entry into their citadel told in open court. I have in fact, through a devious channel, received the a.s.surance that if I do not resume this character (of D.V.W.) nothing more will be said. What, then, have I to fear? My mother _s'est bien rangee_. She leads a life of the most respectable. If they challenge her, she can counter with some of the most piquant scandals of the last thirty years.

My own careful study of criminology and the a.s.siduous searchings of Albert Adams in the same direction; my mother's anecdotes of the lives of statesmen, police-magistrates, prosecuting counsel, judges, press-editors--many of whom have enjoyed her hospitality abroad--have given me numerous hints in what direction to pursue my researches. Consequently the office of Mr.

Michaelis will be the Criminal Investigation Department of the W.S.P.U. I feel instinctively I am touching pitch and that you will disapprove ... but if we are to fight with clean hands, _que Messieurs les a.s.sa.s.sins commencent_! If Scotland Yards drops slander and infamous suggestions as a weapon we will let our poisoned arrows rust in the armoury.

How _beastly_ all this is! _Why_ do they drive us to these extremes? I know already enough to blast the characters of several among our public men. Yet I know in so doing I should wreck the life-happiness of faithful wives, believing sisters or daughters, or bright-faced children. Perhaps I won't, when it comes to the pinch. But somehow, I think, if they guess I have this knowledge in my possession, they will leave David Williams and Kate Warren alone.

Sometimes, d'you know, I wake up in the middle of the night at the Lilacs or in my reconst.i.tuted bedroom at 88-90, and wish I were quit of all this Suffrage business, all this vain struggle against predominant man--and away with you on a Pacific Island. Then I realize that we should have large c.o.c.kroaches and innumerable sand fleas in our new home, that we should have broken Linda's heart, have set back the Suffrage cause as much as Parnell's adultery postponed Home Rule; and above all that I am already thirty-five and shall soon be thirty-six and that it wouldn't be very long before you in comfort-loving middle age sighed for the well-ordered life of No. 1, Park Crescent, Portland Place!

On the whole, I think the most rational line I can take is to continue resolutely this struggle for the Vote. With the Vote must come the opening of Parliament to women. I'm not too old to aspire to be some day Secretary of State for Home Affairs. Because the General Post Office has already become interested in my correspondence, and because this is really a "pivotal" letter I am not trusting it to the post but am calling with it at No. 1 and handing it personally to your butler. I look to you to destroy it when you have read its contents--if you go to that length.

Yours, VIVIE.

Rossiter read this letter an hour or so after it had been delivered, frowned a good deal, made notes in one of his memorandum books; then tore the sheets of typewriting into four and placed them on the fire. Having satisfied himself that the flames had caught them, he went up with a sullen face to dress for dinner: Linda was giving a New Year's Eve dinner to friends and relations and he had to play the part of host with a.s.sumed heartiness.

In the perversity of fate, one piece of the typewritten letter escaped the burning except along the edge. A puff of air from the chimney or the opened door, as Linda entered the room, lifted it off the cinders and deposited it on the hearth. Linda had dressed early for the party, had felt a little hurt at the locked door of Michael's dressing-room, and had come with some vague intention into his study, to see perhaps if the fire was burning brightly: because to avoid unnecessary journies upstairs they would receive their guests to-night in the study and thence pa.s.s to the dining-room.

But the fire had gone sulky, as fires do sometimes even with well-behaved chimneys and first-cla.s.s coal. She noted the charred portion of paper lying untidily on the hearth, with typewriting on its upper surface. Picking it up she read inside the scorched margin:

ria kept the keys and now them over to me.

W.S.P.U. has taken--also under an alias--other of same side of the way, at No. 94, top storey. We using the fire-escape, pa.s.s over the intervening r reach the parapet outside the "partners' room" at the ding. I shall once again make use of the little room tners' office as a bedroom or rather "tiring" room, w if necessary effect changes of costume. I have tak ces in the name of Mr. Michaelis for a special reas ome modifications of David's costume I have appeared in p ssume possession of them. I generally enter No. 94 dressed a Warren. All this may sound very silly to you, like pla

"Warren!" That name stood out clear. Did it mean the suffragette, Vivien Warren, who had sometimes been here, and in whose adventures her husband seemed so unbecomingly interested? One of the great ladies who were Anti-Suffragists and had already decoyed Mrs.

Rossiter within their drawing-rooms had referred with great disapproval to Miss Warren as the daughter of a most notorious woman whom their husbands wouldn't hear mentioned because of her shocking past. And David, David of course must be that tiresome David Williams, supposed to be a cousin of Vivien Warren, but really seeming in these allusions to be a disguise in which this bold female deceived people. And "Mr. Michaelis?" Could that be her own Michael? The shameless baggage! She choked at the thought. Was it a conspiracy into which they were luring her husband, already rather compromised as a man of science by his enthusiasm for the Suffrage cause? People used to speak of Michael almost with awe, he was so clever, he made such wonderful discoveries. Now, since he had become a politician he had many enemies, and several ladies of high t.i.tle referred to him contemptuously even in her hearing and cut _her_ without compunction, though she had Ten thousand a year. She felt all the same a profound conviction that Michael was the most honourable of men. Yet why all this mystery? The W.S.P.U.? Those letters stood for some more than usually malignant Suffrage Society.

She had seen the letters often in "Votes for Women."...

Her musings here were stayed by the sound of her husband's steps in the pa.s.sage. Hastily she thrust the half sheet of charred paper into her corsage and brushed off the fragments of the burnt edges from her laces; then turned and affected to be tidying the writing table as Michael came in.

_Rossiter_: "Linda! Surely not putting my papers in order--or rather disorder? I thought you were far too intimate with my likes and dislikes to do that!... Why, what's the matter?"

_Linda_: "Oh nothing. I was only seeing if they had made up your fire. I--I--haven't touched anything."

(Rossiter looked anxiously at the grate, but was relieved to see nothing but burnt, shrivelled squares of paper. He poked the fire fiercely and at any rate demolished the remains of Vivie's letter.)

_Rossiter_: "Yes: it isn't very cheerful. They must brighten it while we are at dinner; though as we shall go to the drawing-room afterwards we shan't need a huge fire here. There! It looks better after that poke. I threw some papers on it to start a flame just before I went up to dress.... Why dearie! What cold hands and what flushed cheeks!"...

_Linda_: "Oh Michael! You'll always love me, won't you? I--I know I'm not clever, not half clever enough for you. But I _do_ try to help you all I can. I--I--" (Sobs.)

_Rossiter_ (really distressed): "_Of course_ I love you! What silly notion have you got into your head?" (He asks himself anxiously "Surely all that letter was burnt before she came in?") "Come! Pull yourself together. Be worthy of that dress. It is such a beauty."

_Linda_: "I thought you'd like it. I remembered your saying that blue always became me." (Dabs at her eyes with a small lace handkerchief.)

Loud double knocks begin to sound. Dinner guests are soon announced.

Linda and Michael receive them heartily. Rossiter--as many a public man does and has to do--shoves his vain regrets, remorse, anxiety, weary longing for the unattainable--somewhere to the back of his brain, where these feelings will not revive till he lies awake at three in the morning; and prepares to entertain half-a-dozen hearty men and buxom women who are easily impressed by a little spoon-fed science. Linda is soon distracted from the sc.r.a.p of paper in her bosom and gives all her attention to her cousins and grown-up school friends from Bradford and Northallerton who are delighted to see the New Year in amid the gaieties of London.

But before she rings for her maid and undresses that night, she locks the burnt fragment in a secret drawer of her desk.

The Ministry which was returned to power in December, 1910, had to plan during the first half of 1911 to keep the Suffragists becalmed with promises and prevent their making any public protest which might mar the Coronation festivities. So various Conciliation Bills were allowed to be read to the House of Commons and to reach Second readings at which they were pa.s.sed with huge majorities. Then they came to nothingness by being referred to a Committee of the whole House. Still a hope of some solution was dangled before the oft-deluded women, who could hardly believe that British Ministers of State would be such breakers of promises and tellers of falsehoods. In November, 1911, there being no reason for further dissembling, the Government made the announcement that it was contemplating a Manhood Suffrage Bill, which would override altogether the petty question as to whether a proportion of women should or should not enjoy the franchise. This new electoral measure was to be designed for men only, but--the Government opined--it might be susceptible of amendment so as to admit women likewise.

[Probably the Government had satisfied itself beforehand that, acting on some unwritten code of Parliamentary procedure, the Speaker would rule out such an amendment as unconst.i.tutional. At any rate, this is what he did in 1913.]

The wrath of the oft-deluded women flamed out with immediate resentment when the purport of this trick was discerned. Led by Mrs.

Pethick Lawrence a band of more than a thousand women and men (and some of the presumed men were, like Vivie, women in men's clothes, as it enabled them to move about with more agility and also to escape identification) entered Whitehall and Parliament Street armed with hammers and stones. They broke all the windows they could in the fronts of the Government offices and at the residences of Ministers of State. Vivie found herself shadowed everywhere by Bertie Adams though she had given him no orders to join the crowd, indeed had begged him to mind his own business and go home. "This _is_ my business," he had said curtly, and for once masterfully, and she gave way. Though Vivie for her own reasons carried no hammer or stone and as one of the princ.i.p.al organizers of the militant movement had been requested by the inner Council of the W.S.P.U. to keep out of prison as long as possible, she could not help cheering on the boldest and bravest in the mild violence of their protest. To the angry police she seemed merely an impertinent young man, hardly worth arresting when they could barely master the two hundred and twenty-three arch offenders with gla.s.s-breaking weapons in their hands. So a constable contented himself with marching on her feet with all his weight and thrusting his elbows violently into her breast.

She well-nigh fainted with the pain; in fact would have fallen in the crowd but for the interposition of Adams who carried her out of it to the corner of Parliament Street, where he pounced on one of the many taxis that crawled about the outskirts of the shouting, swaying crowd, sure of a fare from either police or escaping Suffragists. Feeling certain that some policeman had not left the disguised Vivie entirely un.o.bserved--indeed Bertie had half thought he caught the words above the din: "That's David Williams, that is,"

he told the taxi man to drive along the Embankment to the Temple. By the time they had reached the nearest access on that side of Fountain Court, Vivie was sufficiently recovered from her semi-swoon to get out, and leaning heavily on Bertie's arm, limp slowly through the intricacies of the Temple and out into Fleet Street by Sergeant's Inn. Then with fresh efforts and further halts they made their way to 94, Chancery Lane.

Some one was sitting up here with one electric light on, ready for any development connected with W.S.P.U. work that night. To her--fortunately it was a woman--Bertie handed over his stricken chief, and then made his way home to his little house in Marylebone and a questioning and not too satisfied wife. The Suffragette in charge of the top storey at 94 knew something, fortunately, of first aid, was deft of hands and full of sympathy. Vivie's--or Mr.

Michaelis's--lace-up boots were carefully removed and the poor crushed and bleeding toes washed with warm water. The collar was taken off and the shirt unb.u.t.toned revealing a terrible bruise on the sternum where the policeman's elbow had struck her--better however there, though it had nearly broken the breastbone, than on either side, as such a blow might have given rise to cancer. As it was, Vivie when she coughed spat blood.

A cup of hot bovril and an hour's rest on a long chair and she was ready, supremely anxious indeed, to try the last adventure: an excursion across the roofs and up and down fire-escapes on to the parapet of her own especial dwelling, the old offices of Fraser and Warren at No. 88-90. The great window of the partners' room opened to her manipulations--it had been carefully left unbolted before her departure for Caxton Hall; and aided cautiously and cleverly by her suffragette helper, Vivie at last found herself--or Mr.

Michaelis did--in the snug little bedroom that knew her chiefly in her male form.

Here she was destined to lie up for several weeks till the feet and the chest were healed and sound again. Hither by the normal entrance came a woman suffragette surgeon to heal, and Vivie's woman clerk to act as secretary; whilst Adams typed away in the outer office on Mr.