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,[5] 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.
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.