CHAPTER IX.

Intrigue Like Those in Days of Nero.

EVELYN TELLS HOW WHITE PLOTTED WITH FALSEHOODS AND MONEY AS HIS INSTRUMENTS, TO BLAST HER LIFE BY FORCING HER TO LEAVE HARRY THAW--SOUGHT TO WRECK HER LOVE--HUSBAND GHASTLY IN COURT--LAWYER DICTATED “AFFIDAVIT” ACCUSING THAW, WHILE BEAUTIFUL ACTRESS WEPT--BREACH OF PROMISE SUIT CONSPIRACY--BLACKMAIL HINTED--WHITE FLEECED--ARCHITECT EVEN TRIED TO STEAL EVELYN FROM HUSBAND--JACK BARRYMORE, ACTOR, BROUGHT INTO CASE--WANTED TO MARRY WITNESS--PROPOSED TWICE--RUIN OF OTHER GIRLS BROUGHT UP--EVERYBODY AFFECTED BY TRAGIC STORY.

“I refused to marry Harry at first because I loved him--it was because of my reputation. I loved him more than all else--more than my own life. I did not want to ruin his career, to estrange him from his family and blast his future,”--Evelyn Nesbit Thaw told the Jury.

Intrigue--a story of intrigue by Stanford White to steal Evelyn Nesbit’s love away from Harry Thaw by means of false, shocking stories of cruelty to other women was bared by the fragile Evelyn the second day she was on the stand.

Spectators shuddered at the diabolical ingenuity of White, millionaire, famous and feted, who, with noble aims ready for his mind, diverted his talent instead to hideous crimes.

The ordeal of the witness chair had made nervous wrecks of the frail woman and of her husband, for whose life she was battling. Young Thaw for the first time since the trial began had lost the spring in his step, and instead of walking briskly to his place at the table of his counsel he moved hesitatingly and looked constantly from left to right about the courtroom. The big crowd seemed to annoy him. The pallid face broke into a faint smile as the prisoner recognized his brother, Edward Thaw, who was the only member of the family in court.

“Call Mrs. Evelyn Nesbit Thaw to the stand,” requested Mr. Delmas of the clerk.

When she appeared and took her place in the big witness chair Mrs. Thaw was dressed precisely as on the previous day. She was extremely pale and her lips trembled visibly as she replied to the first simple question asked her by counsel.

“Please relate what you told Mr. Thaw besides what you stated before,” said Mr. Delmas, looking at Jerome, as if to say, “You cannot stop me now.”

“He asked me how I came to speak to Stanford White after my return from Europe,” said Mrs. Thaw. “I told him I was driving down Fifth avenue one day in a hansom cab with my maid and we passed Stanford White. I heard him exclaim: ‘Oh, look at Evelyn.’

“A few days later I was called to the telephone and it was Mr. White. He said: ‘My, but it is good to hear your voice again,’ and said he wanted to come and see me. I told him I could not see him. He said it was very important that I should see him at once. He said he had had much trouble with my family and must see me. I asked if my mother was ill.

“He said it was a matter of life and death--he could not tell me over the telephone. So he came to see me at the Hotel Savoy.

“When he came in he tried to kiss me, but I did not let him. He asked me what was the matter. I told him to sit down and asked him again if my mother was ill. He said, ‘No,’ and at once began to talk about Harry Thaw. He told me that different actresses had told him that I was in Europe with Harry Thaw.

“He said presently that Harry Thaw took me to Europe, and asked me why I went around with a man who took morphine. He said positively that Harry Thaw took morphine, that he was not even a gentleman, and I must have nothing to do with him.

“After that he came constantly to see me. He also sent people to me who told me stories about Mr. Thaw, the stories I told yesterday. I told Mr. Thaw afterward that the stories worried me so much I could not sleep nights. I got very nervous, for I knew Mr. Thaw was coming over and I did not want to see him. I told Mr. White I did not want to see Mr. Thaw.

“One day Mr. White telephoned me that he was going to send a carriage for me and I was to come to Broadway and Nineteenth street. I did so, and White met me and got into the carriage. He said he was taking me to see Abe Hummel, the greatest lawyer in New York, who would protect me from Harry Thaw. He said I was not to be afraid of Mr. Hummel; he was a little man with a big, bald head, warts on his face and was very ugly.

“When I got to Mr. Hummel’s office Mr. White went away. Mr. Hummel’s office walls were covered with photographs of actresses, with writing on them. He asked me how I came to go to Europe with Harry Thaw, and I told him that I didn’t, I went with my mother and Thaw followed us. He asked me about my quarrel with my mother in London. I said it was a continuous quarrel between us; we simply couldn’t get along. She wanted to come home to America and I said she could come, but I was going to stay there and return to the stage; but the doctor told me I couldn’t dance for a year. Hummel asked me all places where I went with Thaw.

“I told him all I could remember. He said I was a minor and that Thaw should have been more careful. He said he had a case in his office against Thaw, but the woman in the case was a very bad one and he did not think the case was much good.

“Then he said Thaw was a very bad man, and, above all things, I must be protected from him. Mr. White then said that the other man was to get Harry Thaw out of New York and keep him out.

“They asked me if I went to Europe of my own accord, and I said I certainly had. I said I remained in Europe after my mother left because I had quarreled with her and could not dance for a year, and I liked Mr. Thaw very much and could not do anything else.

“‘Nevertheless,’ Hummel said, ‘you are a minor and he should not have taken you away from your mother.’ I said he did not take me away.

“Mr. White said that strong methods must be resorted to to keep Thaw out of New York, and to protect myself I must help in every way I could.

“Mr. White said I must leave everything in Mr. Hummel’s hands. Then they sent for a stenographer, and the lawyer said I must not interrupt him in what he was about to say. I was very nervous and excited, and I think I began to cry. Then they began to dictate and put in a lot of stuff that I had been carried away by Harry Thaw against my will. I started to interrupt, but the lawyer put up his hands and stopped me.

“They put in that I had been taken away from my mother and a lot of stuff that was not true--that

I had been treated badly by Mr. Thaw. Then they sent the man out of the room.

“Several days later Mr. Hummel called me up and asked if I had any letters from Mr. Thaw.

“I said I did, but I could not see what that had to do with it. Mr. White also called up and said if I was not willing to help in every way they could not protect me from Mr. Thaw. He said I must do just what Mr. Hummel said. So I made the letters up in a bundle and took them down to Mr. Hummel’s office. He said he did not want to read them, and did not care what they contained. He asked, however, if they were love letters, and I said ‘yes.’

“He said he just wanted to hold them over Harry K. Thaw’s head. He sealed them up in a big envelope so I could see, he said, that he did not care anything about them.

“Then he asked me why I did not sue Harry Thaw for breach of promise. I said that was absurd, for if there had been any breach of promise it was on my part. He said that did not matter.

“Mr. Hummel said a breach of promise suit would be a fine advertisement for me. I told him I did not care for that kind of advertising. He said lots of actresses had done the same thing and he had won lots of cases for them. He told me an English duke had once been sued by an actress for breach of promise. He declared he could easily win a suit for me. I said I did not want to sue anybody.

“This made Mr. Hummel very mad and angry and he told me I was foolish.”

“What more did you tell Mr. Thaw?” suggested Mr. Delmas, to give the girl witness a breathing spell.

“Mr. Thaw asked me if I had signed anything in Mr. Hummel’s office and I said I had not. He said that was funny, for if they wanted to cause trouble I must have signed something. I said I had signed absolutely nothing in Mr. Hummel’s office.

“Mr. Thaw was very much agitated. He said Hummel was a blackmailer and he said, I think, that there was something bad in the air and he impressed me that he was going to see Mr. Longfellow, his lawyer.”

Mrs. Thaw testified to going to her own lawyer and relating her experiences with Hummel. Her lawyer, she said, was greatly incensed at what she told him of her experiences in Hummel’s office. Mrs. Thaw said:

“My lawyer, too, told me that Hummel was a shyster.” A laugh went around the room. Hummel was at this time under conviction in a divorce scandal. Mrs. Thaw continued:

“Mr. Thaw told me that I had no business to speak again with Stanford White. He accused me of having been imprudent with Mr. White since I came back from Europe, and I said that it was a lie. He said it would look to people as if I was a blackmailer by going to Hummel’s office.”

“Did you tell of another incident?”

“Yes, I told him of one day when White came to the hotel Navarre and he was terribly mad, and walked up and down the room with a camp chair in his hand. ‘My child,’ he said, ‘what did you tell Mr. Hummel about me?’ I said I had not said anything, and then Mr. White said I must have told Hummel, because Hummel had just squeezed $1,000 out of him and he was not going to send another $1,000.”

The witness, continuing, said that she did not know what she had signed when she signed the paper at the request of Mr. White in his office in Madison Square garden.

“I called Mr. White up on the telephone after I had talked to Mr. Thaw, and I demanded of Mr. White that he put the paper in the fire. He said he did not have it--but that it was in Mr. Hummel’s office. I said: ‘Very well,’ and told him I was going down to Mr. Hummel’s office immediately. He told me to not talk about the matter over the telephone, and I said I did not care who heard me. Then White said he would meet me on the corner and I met him.

“When I met him we went down to Mr. Hummel’s office. He showed me the paper and showed me my signature and asked if it was mine, and I said it was. Then they put the paper in a big jardiniere and burned it. Afterward I told Mr. Thaw all about it and also saw Mr. Longfellow and told him.

“How did Mr. Thaw treat you from that time until he proposed marriage?”

“He treated me very nicely; carried me up and down stairs when I was sick and brought me flowers and took me carriage riding.”

After her marriage to Mr. Thaw the witness said they took a trip through the west. While in Pittsburg, she said, she had lived at the home of her husband’s mother. She related how she had persistently refused to marry Thaw before she finally did so.

“What reason did you give him for not marrying him?”

“It was because of my reputation. I did not want to separate him from his family. I knew it would be a good thing for me to marry him, but it would not be for him. It was because I loved him that I would not marry. If I did not love him so much I might have been anxious to marry him.”

Mr. Delmas got the witness to relate how she met some of the Thaw family in Europe.

“There was something happened which led you to change your mind in regard to marrying Thaw?” asked Mr. Delmas.

“Yes,” answered the young woman.

“You were given to believe that his family would receive you as his wife?”

“Yes.”

“Did you meet Mrs. Thaw, his mother, in New York.”

“I did.”

“After your marriage did you visit New York from Pittsburg?”

“We did.”

“Did you tell your husband of the efforts of Stanford White to renew your friendship?”

“I did.”

“What was the first occurrence you told your husband about?”

“Once when I was driving on Fifth avenue, when I passed Mr. White and he called out to me, ‘Evelyn.’”

“Did you tell your husband?”

“I did, and he said it was not right for me to see him and made me promise that if I ever met White again I would tell him about it.”

“Did you tell him?”

“I did.”

“When did you see Mr. White again?”

“It was on Fifth avenue one day when I was riding to Dr. Delavan to have my throat treated. I was in a hansom and Mr. White was also riding in a hansom, too.

“When I got home I told Mr. Thaw that at about Thirty-fourth street I had passed Mr. White, both of us in hansoms. He did not attempt to speak to me, but stared hard at me. I looked away. When I got down to the doctor’s office I found Stanford White in his hansom coming there. I ran up the steps, but I was excited and nervous and I told the door porter that I would come some other time, so I ran back down the stairs, jumped into my hansom, looked neither to the right nor to the left, and told the driver to go back to the Lorraine as quickly as ever he could.”

“How did Mr. Thaw act when you told him of this?”

“Oh, he was always very excited whenever I told him of my meetings with White. He bit his nails and looked excited.”

“Did you ever tell Mr. Thaw how you came to be sent to school at Pompton, N. J., and if so, relate it to the jury, and also wherein the name of Jack Barrymore entered into the discussion, and tell what your relations to Barrymore were.”

“I met Mr. Barrymore when I was with the ‘Wild Rose’ company at the Knickerbocker theater. Mr. White gave a dinner to a whole lot of friends. I was asked to attend and I went there and met his friends at the party. Mr. Barrymore was there.”

Mrs. Thaw privately mentioned the names of the members of the party to Mr. Jerome. She said that when she told White of “Jack” Barrymore’s proposal he became very angry and said he would send her away to school to New Jersey. She continued to detail her relations with Barrymore, and her being sent to school.

“It all came about through a quarrel between Mr. White, my mother and myself over Mr. Barrymore, continued the witness. One afternoon in Madison Square garden Mr. Barrymore said to me, ‘Evelyn, will you marry me?’”

Mrs. Thaw pronounced the name with a long “e.”

“I answered him, and said, ‘I don’t know,’” she went on.

“White asked me if I would marry Barrymore and said, ‘If kids like you get married, what would you have to live on?’

“Every day after that when I would meet my mother she would ask me if I intended ‘to marry that little pup Barrymore,’ saying Mr. White was afraid I would.

“Mr. White then came to see me and said I would be very foolish to marry Mr. Barrymore: we would have nothing to live on, would probably quarrel and get a divorce. He also said Mr. Barrymore was a little bit crazy, that his father was in an asylum, and he thought the whole family was touched. He was certain Mr. Barrymore would be crazy in a few years, and for that reason said I ought not to marry him.

“Mr. Barrymore asked me a second time if I would marry him, and again I said, ‘I don’t know,’ and laughed. The upshot of the whole matter was that Mr. White came and said I ought to be sent to school, and I was.”

Mr. Delmas had asked Mrs. Thaw if Thaw had told her the fate of other girls ‘at the hands of this man White?’

Mr. Jerome objected to further “defamation being thrown on the dead, who have no chance to answer. The state is not permitted to controvert the truth of a single statement in this testimony,” he added. “Stanford White is dead, and I object to this question, which is along a path which we can not follow.”

Mr. Delmas said he had no desire to besmirch the name of the dead. He was introducing letters by Thaw to corroborate the question.

Justice Fitzgerald said he thought further competent evidence as to Thaw’s insanity should be introduced before further testimony along the day’s line was taken.

“We are ready to submit the proof,” said Mr. Delmas.

The line of examination was changed and Mrs. Thaw was asked to identify more letters.

One of the papers Mrs. Thaw was asked to identify was Harry Thaw’s will.

The old saying, “Nothing but good of the dead,” must have recurred again and again to Mr. Jerome as the slender Evelyn told her story. It is a good old saying, but there is another: “The dead are safe--let us take care of the living.” Jerome strove to protect the cold and unresponsive dead. Delmas tried to save the living, and the fragile little model was the life-line in his hands. Evelyn Nesbit’s story, as she told it, showed new and curious lights and shadows in the character of White. One thing was

evident: White, once possessor of a victim, wished to cling to that victim through the years. Unlike nearly all other men of similar stamp, he did not cast aside his playthings when wearied of them. Possibly he had been like other men in this regard--possibly he had turned from many another victim in the past. But the frail and pitiful little Evelyn seemed to have enthralled his fancies, conquered his vagrant passions. All his thoughts were for her, and for her his future dreams. He lavished his bounty on her, and he strove to keep her from all other men. The story of Evelyn’s affair with Jack Barrymore was a page in real life that made the courtroom crowd strain its eager ears. Barrymore, young, handsome, and romantic, had appealed to the girlish mind and eye. The burly White, with his 50 years, found himself fading into the background. He seized an opportunity to pose as “the friend of the family” by discrediting Barrymore and sending the little girl to school. It was an index to White’s soul--but it showed that White, at least, had no idea of parting from or wearying of his victim.

What had Delmas done?

He made the jurors regard Stanford White as a fiend whose slaying was a noble deed.

He made the jurors thrill with sympathy for the fragile, pale-faced little Evelyn.

He showed cause enough ten times over for the dethronement of reason in the brain of Harry Thaw.

What more could any lawyer do?