THE SHILLITO CASE
In the autumn of 1905, increase among women of the idea of full
citizenship made rapid strides. There was a feeling in the air that
Balfour must soon resign or go to the country, that a Liberal
Ministry would succeed to power, and that being Liberal it could
scarcely, in reason or with any logic, refuse to enlarge the
franchise to the advantage of the female half of the community.
These idealizers of the Liberal Party, which had really definitely
ceased to be Liberal in 1894, had a rude awakening. Annie Kenney and
Christabel Pankhurst dared to act as if they were men, and asked Sir
Edward Grey at his Manchester meeting in October, 1905, if a Liberal
Administration would give Votes to Women, should it be placed in
power at the next Election. Answer they had none, from the platform;
but the male audience rose in their hundreds, struck these audacious
hussies in the face, scratched and slapped them (this was the rôle
of the boys), and hustled them out into the street, bleeding and
dishevelled. Here for attempting to explain the causes of their
expulsion they were arrested by the police, and the following
morning were sent to prison, having declined to pay the fines
illegally imposed on them.
This incident made a great impression on the newspaper-reading
public, because at that time the Press boycott on the Woman Suffrage
movement had not set in. It gave David much to think about, and he
found Honoria Fraser and several of his men and women friends had
joined the Woman Suffrage movement and were determined that the new
Liberal Government should not shirk the issue; an issue on which
many members of Parliament had been returned as acquiescent in the
principle. On that account they had received the whole-hearted
support of many, women owing allegiance to the Liberal Party.
At first of course the new Government was too busy in allotting the
loaves and fishes of Office and in handing out the peerages,
baronetcies, knighthoods, Governorships, private secretaryships, and
promotions among the civil servants which had--not to put too fine a
point on it--been purchased by large and small contributions to the
Party Chest.
[Such a procedure seems to be inseparable from our present Party
system. In this respect the Conservatives are no better than the
Liberals; and it is always possible that in a different way the
Labour Party when It comes into power will be similarly inclined to
reward those who have furnished the sinews of war. The House of
Commons in the last Act which revised the conditions of elections of
members of Parliament was careful to leave open many avenues along
which Money might attain to the heart of things.]
But at length all such matters were settled, and the Cabinet was
free to face the steady demand of the women leaders of the
Suffrage movement; a demand that at any rate _some_ measure of
enfranchisement should be granted to the women of the British Isles
without delay.
We all know how this demand was received by the leading men of the
Liberal Party and by the more prominent Liberals among their
supporters in the House; with evasions, silences, sneers, angry
refusals, hasty promises given to-day (when Ministers were
frightened) and broken to-morrow; with a whole series of
discreditable tongue-in-the-cheek tricks of Parliamentary
procedure; till at last the onlooker must have wondered at and felt
grateful for our British phlegm; surprised that so little actual
harm was done (except to the bodies of the Suffragists), that no
Home Secretary or Police Inspector or magistrate, no flippant
talker-out of would-be-serious Franchise Bills was assassinated,
trounced, tarred and feathered, kidnapped, nose-tweaked, or even
mud-bespattered. (I am reproducing here the growing comprehension of
the problem as it shaped in Vivie's mind, under the hat and
waistcoat of David Williams.)
Honoria, faithful to her old resolve, continued to devote the
greater part of the Two Thousand a year she had set aside for the
Woman's Cause to financing the new Suffrage movement; and
incidentally she brought grist to David's mill by recommending him
as Counsel to many women in distress, arrested Suffragists. In 1906,
1907 and 1908 he made himself increasingly famous by his pleadings
in court on behalf of women who with dauntless courage and at the
cost of much bodily pain and even at the risk of death had forcibly
called attention to this grave defect in the British polity, the
withholding of the ordinary rights of tax-paying citizens from adult
women.
Where the Suffragist was poor he asked no fee, or a small fee was
paid by some Suffragist Association. But he gained much renown over
his advocacy; he became quite a well-known personality outside as
well as inside the Law Courts and Police-stations by 1908. His
pleadings were sometimes so moving, so passionate that--_teste_
Mrs. Pankhurst--"burly policemen in court had tears trickling down
their faces" as he described the courage, the flawless private
lives, the selfless devotion to a noble cause of these women
agitating for the rights of their sex--rich and poor, old and young.
Juries flinched from the verdict which some bitter-faced judge
enjoined; magistrates swerved from executing the secret orders of
the Home Office; policemen--again--for they are most of them decent
fellows--resigned their positions in the Force, sooner than carry
out the draconian policy of the Home Secretary.
But of course concurrently he lost many a friend and friendship in
the Inns of Court. There were even growls that he should be
disbarred--after this espousal of the Suffrage cause had been made
manifest for three years. He might have been, but that he had other
compeers, below and above his abilities and position; advocates like
Lord Robert Brinsley, the famous son of the Marquis of Wiltshire. If
Williams was to be disbarred, why they would have to take the same
course with a Brinsley who also defended women law-breakers,
fighting for their constitutional rights. And of course such a
procedure as _that_ was unthinkable. Yet where a Brinsley sailed
unhampered, undangered over these troubled waters, poor David often
came near to crashing on the rocks. "To hear the fellow talk," said
one angry K.C. in the Library at the Inner Temple, "you'd think he
was a woman himself!" "Egad" said his brother K.C.--yes, he
really _did_ say "Egad," the oath still lingers in the Inns of
Court--"Egad, he looks like one. No hair on his face and I'll lay he
doesn't shave."
There were of course other briefs he held, for payment or for love
of justice; young women who had killed their babies (as to these he
was far from sentimental; he only defended where the woman had any
claim to sympathy or mitigation of the unreal death sentence);
breach of promise actions where the woman had been grossly wronged;
affiliation cases in high life--or the nearest to high life that
makes a claim on the man for his fatherhood. He was a deadly
prosecutor in cases where women had been robbed by their male
trustees, or injured in any other way wherein, in those days, the
woman was at a disadvantage and the marriage laws were unjust.
One way and another, with the zealous aid and business-like care of
his interests by his clerk, Albert Adams, David must have earned
between 1906 and the autumn of 1908, an average Three hundred a
year. As he paid Adams £150 a year and allowed him certain
perquisites, and lived within his own fixed income (from his annuity
and investments) of £290 a year, this meant a profit of about £500.
This was raised at a leap to £1,500 by the fees and the special gift
he received for defending Lady Shillito.
The "Shillito Case," an indictment for murder, was tried at the
winter assize of the North-eastern Circuit, January or February,
1909. I dare say you have forgotten all about it now: Lady Shillito
changed her name, married again (eventually), and was lost in the
crowd--she may even, eleven years afterwards, be reading this novel
at the riper age of forty and be startled out of her well-fed apathy
by the revival of acute memories.
There have been not a few similar cases before and since of
comparatively young, beautiful women murdering their elderly,
objectionable husbands in a clever cattish way, and of course
getting off through lack of evidence or with a short term of
imprisonment. (They were always treated in prison far more tenderly
than were Suffragettes, and the average wardress adored them and
obtained for them many little alleviations of their lot before the
Home Secretary gave way and released them.) Nowadays the War and the
pressing necessities of life, the coal famine, the milk famine, the
railway strikes have robbed such cases of all or nearly all their
interest. I could quite believe that women in similar circumstances
continue to murder their elderly husbands, and the doctors and
coroners and relations on "his" side tacitly agree not to raise a
fuss in the presence of much graver subjects of apprehension.
I can also understand why these beautiful-women-elderly-husband
cases scarcely starred our Island story prior to the 'fifties of
the last century. It was only when chemical analysis had approached
its present standard of perfection that the presence of the more
subtle poisons could be detected in the stomach and intestines, and
that the young and beautiful wife could be charged with and found
guilty of the deed by the damning evidence of an analytical chemist.
It was Rossiter who secured for David the conduct of Lady Shillito's
defence. Arbella[1] Shillito was his second cousin, a Rossiter by
birth, and would fain have married Michael herself, only that he was
not at that time thinking of marriage, and when his thoughts turned
that way--the very day after, as it were--he met Linda Bennet and
her thousands a year. But he retained a half humorous liking for
this handsome young woman.
[Footnote 1: An old Northumbrian variant of Arabella.]
Arbella, disappointed over Michael--though she was a mere slip of a
girl at the time--next decided that she must marry money. When she
was twenty-one she met Grimthorpe Shillito, an immensely rich man of
Newcastle-on-Tyne, whose foundries poured out big guns and many
other things made of iron and steel combined with acids and brains.
Grimthorpe was a curious-looking person, even at forty; in
appearance a mixture of Julius Caesar, several unpleasant-featured
Doges of Venice, and Voltaire in middle age. His looks were not
entirely his fault and doubtless acquired for him, in his moral
character, a worse definition than he deserved. He had travelled
much in his pursuit of metallurgy and chemistry; at forty he saw
rising before him the prospect of a peerage, due either for his
extraordinary discoveries and inventions in our use of steel, or
easily purchasable out of his immense wealth. What is the good of a
peerage if it ends with your life? He was not without his vanities,
though one of the most cynical men of his cynical period.
He arrived therefore at the decision that he would marry some young
and buxom creature of decent birth and fit in appearance to be a
peeress, and decided on Arbella Rossiter.
After a gulp or two and several _moues_ behind his back, she
accepted him. A brilliant marriage ceremony followed, conducted by a
Bishop and an Archdeacon. And then Arbella was carried off to live
in a Bluebeard's Castle he possessed on the Northumbrian coast.
In the three years following her marriage she gave him two boys,
with which he was content, especially as his own health began to
fail a little just then. At the end of four years of marriage with
this cynical, Italianate tyrant, Arbella got very sick of him and
thought more and more tenderly of a certain subaltern in the Cavalry
whom she had once declined to marry on £500 a year. This subaltern
had returned from the South African war, a Colonel and still
extremely good-looking. They had met again at a garden party and
fallen once more deeply in love. If only her tiresome old Borgia
would die--was the thought that came too often into the mind of
Arbella, now entering the "thirties" of life, and with the least
possible misgiving of her Colonel's constancy if she became
presently "_un peu trop mûre_."
She noticed at this time that Grimthorpe Shillito went on several
occasions to London to consult a specialist. He complained of
indigestion, was rather thin, and balder than ever, and difficult to
please in his food and appetite.
This was her opportunity. She would have said, had she been
convicted, that he had driven her to it by his cruelties: that's as
may be.--She consulted the family doctor who attended to the
household of Bluebeard's Castle; suggested that Sir Grimthorpe (they
had just knighted him) might be the better for a strychnine tonic;
she had read somewhere that strychnine did wonders for middle-aged
men who had led rather a rackety life in their early manhood.
The family doctor who disliked her and suspected her, as you or I
wouldn't have done, but doctors think of everything, feigned to
agree; and supplied her with little phials of _aqua distillata_
flavoured with quinine. He himself was puzzled over Sir Grimthorpe's
condition but was a little offended at not being personally
consulted.
The fact was that Sir G. had a very poor opinion of his abilities in
diagnosis and being naturally secretive and generally cussed,
preferred consulting a London specialist. He wasn't then Sir
Grimthorpe, the specialist wasn't very certain that it _was_ cancer
on the liver, and amid his multitude of consulters did not, unless
aroused, remember very clearly the case of a Mr. Shillito from
somewhere up in the North.
But Shillito pondered gravely over the specialist's carefully
guarded phrases about "growths, possibly malign, but at the same
time--difficult to be sure quite so soon--perhaps harmless, might of
course be merely severe suppressed jaundice." When the pains
began--he hated the idea of operations, and knew that any operation
on the liver only at best staved off the dread, inevitable end for a
year or a few months--When the pains began, he had grown utterly
tired of life; so he compounded a subtle poison--he was a great
chemist and had--only his wife knew not of this--a cabinet which
contained a variety of mineral, vegetable, and acid poisons; and
kept the draught in a secret locker in his bedroom. Meantime
Arbella, who after all was human, was tortured at the sight of his
tortures. She felt she must end it, or her nerves would give way.
She trebled, she quintupled the dose of _aqua distillata_ embittered
with quinine. One night when the night nurse was sleeping ("resting
her eyes," she called it) the wretched man stole from his bed to
the night nursery and kissed both his boys. He then swiftly took the
phial from its hiding place and drank the contents and died in one
ghastly minute.
When the night nurse awoke he was crisped in a horrible _rigor_. On
the night table was the phial with the remains of the draught. She
had noticed in the last day or two Lady Shillito fussing a good deal
about the sick man, pressing on him doses of a colourless medicine.
_What if she had stolen in while the nurse was asleep and placed a
finally fatal draught by the bedside?_ From that she proceeded to
argue (when she had leisure to think it out) that she _hadn't_ been
to sleep, had merely been resting her eyes. And she was now sure
that whilst she had closed those orbs she had heard--as indeed she
had, only it was Sir Grimthorpe himself--some one stealing into the
room.
She communicated her suspicions to the doctor. The latter knew his
patient had not died of anything he had prescribed, but concluded
that Lady Shillito, wishing to be through with the business, had
prepared a fulminating dose obtained elsewhere; and insisted on
autopsy with a colleague, to whom he more than hinted his
suspicions. Together they found the strychnine they were looking for--not
very much, but the proportion that was combined by Shillito
with less traceable drugs to make the death process more rapid--and
quite overlooked the signs of cancer in the liver.
The outcome was that Lady Shillito at the inquest found herself "in
a very unpleasant position" and was placed under arrest, and later
charged with the murder of her husband.
Believing herself guilty she summoned all her resolution to her aid,
admitted nothing, appealed to Michael Rossiter and others for
advice. Thus David was drawn into the business.
[But this doesn't sound very credible, you will say. "If the
husband felt he could not face the agony of death by cancer, why
didn't he leave a note saying so, and every one would have
understood and been quite 'nice' about it?" I really can't say.
Perhaps he wished to leave trouble for her behind him; perhaps he
divined the reason why she thought a day nurse unnecessary, and
insisted on giving him his day medicines with her own fair hands.
Perhaps he hoped for an open verdict. Perhaps he wasn't quite right
in his mind. I have told you the story as I remember it and my
memory is not perfect. Personally I've always been a bit sorry for
Grimthorpe. It is quite possible that all those hints as to his
"queerness" were invented by his wife to excuse herself. I only know
that Science benefited greatly from his researches, and that he
bequeathed some priceless collections to both branches of the
British Museum. Some one once told me he had a heart somewhere and
had loved intensely a sister much younger than himself and had only
begun to be "queer" and secretive and bald after her premature
death. I think also that in the last year of his life he was greatly
embittered at not getting the expected peerage; after the trouble
and disagreeableness he had gone through to obtain heirs for this
distinction this poor little attempt at immortality which it is in
the power of a Prime Minister to bestow.]
The Grand Jury returned a true bill against Lady Shillito. David had
been studying the case from the morrow of the inquest, that is as
soon as Rossiter had learnt of the coming trouble. The latter though
he regarded Cousin Arbella as a rather amusing minx, an interesting
type in modern psychology (though really her type is as old
as--say--the Hallstadt period) had no wish to see her convicted of
murder. Furthermore he was getting so increasingly interested in
this clever David Williams that he would have liked to make his
fortune by helping him to a sensational success as a pleader, to
one of those cases which if successfully conducted mark out a path
to the Bench. So he insisted that David Williams be briefed for the
defence, and well fee'ed, in order that he might be able to devote
all his time to the investigation of the mystery. David had an
uphill task. He went down to the North in November, 1908, conferred
with Lady Shillito's solicitors, and at great length with the
curiously calm, ironly-resolved Lady Shillito herself. The evidence
was too much against her for him to prevent her being committed for
trial and lodged in reasonably comfortable quarters in Newcastle
jail, or for the Grand Jury to find no true bill of indictment. But
between these stages in the process and the actual trial for murder
in February, 1909, David worked hard and accumulated conclusive
evidence (with Rossiter's help) to prove his client's innocence of
the deed of which she believed herself guilty. To punish her as she
deserved he allowed her to think herself guilty till his defence of
her began.
The prospect of a death on the gallows did not perturb Lady Shillito
in the least. She was perfectly certain that if found guilty her
beauty and station in life would avail to have the death penalty
commuted to a term of imprisonment which she would spend in the
Infirmary. Still, that would ruin her life pretty conclusively. She
would issue from prison a broken woman, whom in spite of her
wealth--if she retained any--no impossibly-faithful Colonel would
marry at the age of forty-five or fifty. So she followed the opening
hours of the trial with a dry mouth.
With the help of Rossiter and of many and minute researches David
got on the track of the consultation in Harley Street, the warning
given of the possible cancer. He found in Sir Grimthorpe's
laboratory sufficient strychnine to kill an army. He was privately
informed by the family doctor (who didn't want to press matters to
a tragedy) that although he fully believed Arbella capable of the
deed, she certainly had--so far as the doctor's prescriptions were
concerned--obtained nothing from him which could have killed her
husband, even if she had centupled the dose.
Lady Shillito appeared in the dock dressed as much as possible like
Mary, Queen of Scots on her trial; and was attended by a hospital
nurse with restoratives and carminatives. The Jury retired for a
quarter of an hour only, and returned a verdict of _Not Guilty_. The
Court was rent with applause, and the Judge commented very severely
on such a breach of decorum, apparently unknown to him in previous
annals of our courts of justice. Lady Shillito fainted and the nurse
fussed, and the Judge in his private room sent for Mr. Williams and
complimented him handsomely on his magnificent conduct of the case.
"Of course she _meant_ to poison him; but I quite agree with the
Jury, she didn't. He saved her the trouble. Now I suppose she'll
marry again. Well! I pity her next husband. Come and have lunch with
me."
And in the course of the meal, His Ludship spoke warmly to Mr.
Williams of the bright prospects that lay before him if he would
drop those foolish Suffragette cases.
David returned to London with Rossiter and remained silent all the
way. His companion believed him to be very tired, and refrained from
provoking conversation, but surrounded him with a quiet, fatherly
care. Arrived at King's Cross Rossiter said: "Don't go on to your
chambers. My motor's here. It can take your luggage on with mine to
Portland Place. You can have a wash and a rest and a talk when
you're rested; and after we've dined and talked the motor shall come
round and take you back to Fig Tree Court."
Mrs. Rossiter was there to greet them, and whilst David went to wash
and rest and prepare himself for dinner, she chirrupped over her
big husband, and asked endless and sometimes pointless questions
about the trial and the verdict. "Did Michael believe she really
_had_ done it? She, for one, could believe anything about a woman
who obviously dyed her hair and improved her eyebrows. (Of course
Michael said he didn't, or the questions, as to why, how, when might
have gone on for hours). Was Mr. Williams's defence of Arbella so
very wonderful as the evening papers said? Why could he not have
gone straight home and rested _there_? It would have been so much
nicer to have had Mike all to herself on his return, and not have
this tiresome, melancholy young man spending the evening with them
... really _some_ people had _no_ tact ... could _not_ see they were
_de trop_. Why didn't Mr. Williams marry some nice girl and make a
home for himself? Not well enough off? Rubbish! She had known plenty
young couples marry and live very happily on Two hundred and fifty a
year, and Mr. Williams must surely be earning that? And if he must
always be dining out and spending the evening with other people, why
did he not make himself more 'general?' Not _always_ be absorbed in
her husband. Of course she understood that while Arbella's fate hung
in the balance they had to study the case together and have long
confabulations over poisons in the Lab'rat'ry...!" (This last
detestable word was a great worry to Mrs. Rossiter. Sometimes she
succeeded in suppressing as many vowels as possible; at others she
felt impelled to give them fuller values and call it "labóratorry.")
And so on, for an hour or so till dinner was announced.
David sat silent all through this meal, under Mrs. Rossiter's
mixture of mirthless badinage: "We shall have you now proposing to
Lady Shillito after saving her life! I expect her husband won't have
altered his will as she didn't poison him, and she must have had
quite thirty thousand pounds settled on her.... They do say however
she's a great _flirt_..." Indiscreet questions: "How much will you
make out of this case? You don't know? I thought barristers had all
that marked on their briefs? And didn't she give you 'refreshers,'
as they call them, from time to time? What was it like seeing her in
prison? Was she handcuffed? Or chained? What did she wear when she
was tried?" And inconsequent remarks: "I remember my mamma--she died
when I was only fourteen--used to dream she was being tried for
murder. It distressed her very much because, as she said, she
couldn't have hurt a fly. What do _you_ dream about, Mr. Williams?
Some pretty young lady, I'll be bound. I dream about such _funny_
things, but I nearly always forget what they were just as I am going
to tell Michael. But I did remember one dream just before Michael
went down to Newcastle to join you ... was it about mermaids? No. It
was about _you_--wasn't that funny? And you seemed to be dressed as
a mermaid--no, I suppose it must have been a mer_man_--and you were
trying to follow Michael up the rocks by walking on your tail; and
it seemed to hurt you awfully. Of course I know what it all came
from. Michael had wanted me to read Hans Andersen's fairy
stories--don't you think they're pretty? I do; but sometimes they
are about rather silly things, skewers and lucifer matches ... and I
had spent the afternoon at the Zoo. Michael's a fellow, of course,
and I use his ticket and always feel quite at home there ... and at
the Zoo that day I had seen one of the sea-lions trying to walk on
his tail.... Oh, _how_ I laughed! But what made me associate the
sea-lion with you and mermaids, I cannot say, but then as poor papa
used to say, 'Dreams are funny things'..."
David's replies were hardly audible, and to his hostess's pressing
entreaties that he would try this dish or not pass that, he did not
answer at all. He felt, indeed, as though the muscles of his throat
would not let him swallow and if he opened his mouth wide enough to
utter a consecutive speech he would burst out crying. A great
desire--almost unknown to Vivie hitherto--seized him to get away
to some lonely spot and cry and cry, give full vent to some
unprecedented fit of hysteria. He could not look at Rossiter though
he knew that Michael's eyes were resting on his face, because if he
attempted to reply to the earnest gaze by a reassuring smile, the
lips would tremble and the tears would fall.
At last when the dessert was reached and the servants--_do_ they
never feel telepathically at such moments that some one person
seated at the table, crumbling bread, wishes them miles away and
loathes their quiet ministrations?--the servants had withdrawn for a
brief respite till they reappeared with coffee, David rose to his
feet and stammered out something about not being well--would they
order the motor and let him go? And as he spoke, and tried to speak
in a level, "society" voice, his aching eyes saw the electric lamps,
the glinting silver, Mrs. Rossiter's pink, foolish face and crisp
little flaxen curls, Rossiter's bearded countenance with its honest,
concerned look all waltzing round and round in a dizzying whirl. He
made the usual vain clutches at unreal supports, and fainted into
Rossiter's arms.
The latter carried him with little effort into the cool library and
laid him down on a couch. Mrs. Rossiter followed, full of
exclamations, vain questions, and suggestions of inapplicable or
unsuitable remedies. Rossiter paid little heed to her, and proceeded
to remove David's collar and tie and open his shirt front in order
to place a hand over the heart. Suddenly he looked up and round on
his wife, and said with a peremptoriness which admitted of no
questioning: "Go and see that one of the spare bedrooms is got
ready, a fire lit, and so on. Get this done _quickly_, and meantime
leave him to me. I have got restoratives here close at hand."
Mrs. Rossiter awed into silence summoned the housemaid and
parlour-maid and hindered them as much as possible in the task of
getting a room ready.
Meantime the sub-conscious David sighed a great deal and presently
wept a great deal in convulsive sobs, and then opened his eyes and
saw the tourbillon of whirling elements settling down into
Rossiter's grave, handsome face--yes, but a gravity somehow
interpenetrated by love, a love not ashamed to show itself--bending
over him with great concern. The secret had been guessed, was known;
and as they held each other with their eyes as though the world were
well lost in this discovery, their lips met in one kiss, and for a
minute Vivie's arms were round Michael's neck, for just one
unforgettable moment, a moment she felt she would cheerfully have
died to have lived through.
They were soon unlaced, for sharp little high-heeled footsteps on
the tiled passage and the clinketing of trinkets announced the
return of Mrs. Rossiter.
Vivie became David once more, but left behind her the glad tears of
relief that were coursing down David's cheeks.
Mrs. Rossiter thought this was a very odd way for a barrister to
celebrate his winning a great case at the criminal courts, and
turned away in delicacy from the spectacle of a dishevelled and
obviously lachrymose young man with one arm dangling and the other
thrown negligently over the back of the leather couch. "Mr.
Williams's room is ready, Michael," she said primly. "All right,
dear; thank you. I will help Williams up to bed and have his luggage
sent up. He will be quite well to-morrow if he can get to sleep. You
needn't bother any more, dearie. Go into the drawing-room and I
will join you there presently."
Rossiter gave the rather shuddery, shivery, teeth-clacking David an
arm till he saw him into the bedroom and resting on the bedroom
sofa. Then he drew up a chair and said in low but distinct tones:--
"Look here. I know you want to make me an explanation. Well! It can
wait. A little more of this strain and you'll be having brain
fever. Sleep if you can, and eat all the breakfast Linda sends you
up in the morning. Get up at eleven to-morrow and if you are fit
then to drive out in my motor, return to your chambers. When you
have calmed down to a normal pulse, write to me all you want to
say. No one shall read it but me ... I'll burn it afterwards or
send it back to you under seal. But at the present time, it may be
easier for both of us if our communications are only written and
not spoken. We have both been tried rather high; and both of us are
human, however high-principled. If you write, register the
letter.... Good-night..."
This that follows is probably what Vivie wrote to Michael. He burnt
the long letter when he had finished reading it though he made
excerpts in a pocket-book. But I can more or less correctly surmise
how she would put her case; how she typed it herself in the solitude
of two evenings; how, indeed, her nervous break-down was made the
reason for fending off all clients and denying herself to all
callers.
"I am not David Vavasour Williams. I am Vivien Warren, the daughter
of a woman who runs a series of disreputable Private Hotels on the
Continent. I had no avowed father, nor had my mother, who likewise
was illegitimate. She was probably the daughter of a Lieutenant
Warren who was killed in the Crimea, and _her_ mother's name was
Vavasour. My grandmother was probably--I can only deal with
probabilities and possibilities in this undocumented past--a Welsh
woman of Cardiff, and I should not be surprised if I were a sort of
cousin of the man I am personating.
"He was the ne'er-do-weel, only son of a Welsh vicar, a pupil of
Praed's, who went out to South Africa and died or was killed in the
war.
"You have met my adopted father. He fully believes I am the bad son,
the prodigal son, returned and reformed. He has grown to love me so
much that it really seems to have put new life into him. I have
helped him to get his affairs straight, and I think I may say he has
gained by this substitution of one son for another, even though the
new son is a daughter! I have taken none of his money, other than
small sums he has thrust on me. I have some money of my own, earned
in Honoria's firm, for I was the 'Warren' of her 'Fraser and
Warren.' She has known my secret all along, hasn't quite approved,
but was overborne by me in my resolve to show what a woman--in
disguise, it may be--could do at the Bar.
"Michael! I started out twelve years ago--and the dreadful thing is
I am now _thirty-four_ in true truth! to conquer Man, and a man has
conquered me! I wanted to show that woman could compete with man in
all careers, and especially in the Law. So she can--have I not shown
it by what I have done? But it is a drawn battle. I have realized
that if some men are bad--rotten--others, like you--are supremely
good. I love you as I never thought I could love any one. I cannot
trust myself to write down how much I love you: it would read
shamefully and be too much a surrender of my first principle of
self-respect.
"I am going to throw up the whole D.V.W. business. It has put us in
a false relation which was exasperating me and puzzling you.
Moreover the disguise was wearing very thin. Only those two loyal
souls, Honoria Fraser and Albert Adams, were cognizant of the
secret, but it was being guessed at and almost guessed right, in
certain quarters. Professional jealousy was on my track. I never
fainted before in my life--so far as I can remember--but I might
have done so elsewhere than in your dear house, after the strain of
such an effort as I made to save that worthless woman--she was your
cousin, which is why I fought for her so hard--How often is not
justice deflected by Love! I might, somewhere else, when
over-strained have had a fit of hysterics; and my disguise would
have been penetrated by eyes less merciful than yours. Then would
have come exposure and its consequences--damaging to You (_I_ should
not have mattered), to my poor old 'father' down in Wales--whom I
sincerely love--to Praddy, to Honoria....
"Let me be thankful to get off so easily! _Somme toute_, I have had
a glorious time, have seen the world from the man's point of
view--and I can assure you that from his point of view it is a jolly
place to live in--_He_ can walk up and down the Strand and receive
no insult.
"Well now, to relieve your anxieties, I will tell you, that after a
brief visit to South Wales to recuperate from the exertions of that
trial, Mr. David Williams the famous young barrister at the Criminal
Bar will go abroad to investigate the White Slave Traffic. Miss
Vivien Warren privately believes--and hopes--that the horrors of
this traffic in British womanhood are greatly exaggerated. The lot
in life of many of these young women is so bad in their native land
that they cannot make it worse by going abroad, no matter in what
avowed career. But Mr. David Williams takes rather a higher line and
is resolved in any case to get at the Truth. Miss Warren, nathless,
has her misgivings anent her old mamma, and would like to know what
that old lady is doing at the present time, and whether she is past
reform. Miss Warren even has her moments of doubt as to the
flawless perfection of her own life: whether the path of duty in
1897 did not rather lie in the direction of a serious attempt to be
a daughter to her wayward mother and reclaim her then, instead of
going off at a tangent as the mannish type of New Woman, to whom
applicable Mathematics are everything and human affections very
little. I suppose the truth, the commonplace truth is, that rather
late in life, Vivien Warren has fallen in love in the old-fashioned
way--How Nature mocks at us!--and now sees things somewhat
differently. At any rate, David and Vivie, fused into one
personality, are going abroad for a protracted period ... going out
of your life, my dearest, for it is better so. Linda has every right
to you and Science is a jealous mistress. Moreover poor, outcast
Vivie has her own bitter pride. She is resolved to show that a woman
_can_ cultivate strength of character and an unflinching sobriety of
conduct, even when born of such doubtful stock as mine, even when
devoid of all religious faith. I know you love me, I glory in the
knowledge, but I know that you likewise are more strongly bound by
principles of right conduct because like myself you have no sham
theology....
"Michael! _why_ are we tortured like this? Why mayn't we love where
we please? Is this discipline necessary to the improvement of the
race? I only know that if we sinned against these human laws and
conventions, your great career in Science--and again, why in
Science? Lightness in love does not seem to affect the career of
orchestral conductors, actors, singers, play-wrights and house
painters--why weren't you one of these, and not a High Priest of the
only real religion? I only know also that if I fell, so many people
would have the satisfaction of saying: 'There! _what_ did I say?
What's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. _That's_ how the
Woman's Movement's goin' to end, you take my word for it! They'll
get a man somewhere, somehow, and then they'll clear out of it.'
"I think I said before--I meant to say, at any rate, so as to ease
your mind: I'm all right as regards financial matters. I have a life
annuity and some useful savings. I shall give Bertie Adams a year's
salary; and if you feel, dear friend, you _must_ put forth your hand
to help me, help _him_ instead to get another position. He has a
wife and a young family, and for his class is just about as good a
chap as I have ever met--this is 'David' speaking! If you can do
nothing you may be sure Vivie will, even if she has to borrow
unclean money from her wicked old mother to keep Bertie Adams from
financial anxiety and his pretty young wife and the child they are
so proud of....
"I must finish this gigantic letter somewhere, though I'm not going
to stop writing to you. I couldn't--I should lose all hold on life
if I did. For the purpose of correspondence and finishing up things,
I shall be 'David Williams' for some time longer. You know his
address in Wales? Pontystrad Vicarage, Pontyffynon, Glamorgan, if
you've forgotten it. He'll be there till April, and then begin his
foreign tour and write to you at intervals from the Continent. As to
Vivie, I think she won't return to life and activity till the autumn
and _then_ she'll make things hum. She'll throw all the energy of
frustrated love into the Woman's Cause, and get 'em the Vote
somehow...!"
Early in the genesis of the book. I appointed a jury of matrons to
judge each chapter before it went to the Press, and to decide
whether it was suited to the restrictions of the circulating
library, and whether it would cause real distress or perturbation to
three persons whom we chose as representative readers of decent
fiction: Admiral Broadbent, Lady Percy Mountjoye, and old Mrs.
Bridges (Mrs. Bridges was said to have had a heart attack after
reading THE GAY-DOMBEYS--I did not wish her to have another). This
jury of broad-minded women of the world decided that Rossiter's
reply to Vivie's very long epistle should not see the light. He
himself would probably--had he known we were discussing his
affairs--have been thankful for this decision; because twelve hours
after he had written it he was heartily ashamed of his momentary
lapse from high principles, ashamed that the woman in the case
should have shown herself truer metal. He resolved, so far as our
poor human resolves are worth anything, to remain inflexibly true to
his devoted Linda and to his career in biological Science. He knew
too well that if he were caught in adultery it would be all over
with the great theories he was working to establish. The Royal
Society would condemn them. Besides, so fine a resolve as Vivie's,
to live on the heights must be respected.
At the same time, it is certain that for the next three months he
muddled his experiments, confused his arguments, lost his temper
with a colleague on the Council of the Zoological Society, kicked
the pugs--even caused the most unbearable two of them to be poisoned
by his assistant--and lied in attributing their deaths to other
causes. He promised the weeping Linda a Pom instead; he said "Hell!"
when the macaw interrupted them with raucous screams. He let pass
all sorts of misprints in his article on the Ductless Glands for the
_Encyclopaedia Scotica_, he was always losing the thread of his
discourse in his lectures at the London Institution and University
College; and he spent too much of his valuable time writing hugely
long letters on all sorts of subjects to David Williams.
David--or Vivie--replied much more laconically. In the first place
he--she--had had her say in the one big outpouring from which I
have quoted so freely; in the second she did not wish to stoke up
these fires lest they should become volcanic and break up a happy
home and a great career. She wrote once saying: "If ever you were in
trouble of any kind; if Linda should die before me, for example, I
would come back to you from the ends of the earth and even if I were
legitimately married to the Prince of Monaco; come back and serve
you as a drudge, as a butt for your wit, as a sick nurse. But
meantime, Michael, you must play the game."
And so after this three months' frenzy was past, he did. It was not
always easy. Linda's devotion was touching. She perceived--though
she hardly liked admitting it--that her husband missed the society
of "that" Mr. Williams, in whom she, for one, never could see
anything particularly striking, and who was now travelling abroad on
a quest it would be indelicate to particularize, and one that in
_her_ opinion should have been taken up by a far older man, the
father of a grown-up family. She strove to replace Williams as an
intelligent companion in the Library and even in the Laboratory. She
gave up works of charity and espionage in Marylebone and many of her
trips into Society, to sit more often with the dear Professor, and
was a little distressed by his groans which seemed to be quite
unprovoked by her remarks or her actions. However as the months went
by, Rossiter buckled down more to his work, and Mrs. Rossiter
noticed that he engaged a new assistant at £300 a year to take
charge of his enormous correspondence. Mr. Bertie Adams seemed a
nice young man, though also afflicted at times with something that
gave melancholy to his gaze. But he had a good little wife who came
to make a home for him in Marylebone. Mrs. Rossiter being a kindly
woman went to call on her and was entirely taken up with their one
child whom she frequently asked to tea and found much more
interesting than the new Pom. "But it's got such a funny name,
Michael; I mean funny for their station in life. It's a girl and
they call it 'Vivvy,' which is short for Vivien. I told Mrs. Adams
she must have been reading Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_; but she
said 'No, she wasn't much of a reader: Adams was, and it was some
lady's name in a story that had stuck in his head, and that as her
mother's name was Susan and his was Jane, she hadn't minded.'"