Delia Blanchflower Part 54

Winnington meanwhile became more and more conscious of an abnormal state of nerve and brain in this pale Delia, the shadow of her proper self, and as the hours went on, he was presently for throwing all Madeleine's counsels aside, and somehow breaking through the girl's silence, in the hope of getting at--and healing--the cause of it. He guessed of course at a hundred things to account for it--at a final breach between her and Gertrude--at the disappointment of cherished hopes and illusions--at a profound travail of mind, partly moral, partly intellectual, going back over the past, and bewildered as to the future. But at the first sign of a change of action, of any attempt to probe her, on his part, she was off--in flight; throwing back at him often a look at once so full of pain and so resolute that he dared not pursue her. She possessed at all times a great personal dignity, and it held him at bay.

He himself--unconsciously--enabled her to hold him at bay. Naturally, he connected some of the haunting anxiety he perceived with Monk Lawrence, and with Gertrude Marvell's outrageous speech in Latchford market-place. But he himself, on the other hand, was not greatly concerned for Monk Lawrence. Not only he---the whole neighbourhood was on the alert, in defence of the famous treasure-house. The outside of the building and the gardens were patrolled at night by two detectives; and according to Daunt's own emphatic a.s.surance to Winnington, the house was never left without either the Keeper himself or his niece in it, to mount guard. They had set up a dog, with a bark which was alone worth a policeman. And finally, Sir Wilfrid himself had been down to see the precautions taken, had especially ordered the strengthening of the side door, and the provision of iron bars for all the ground floor windows. As to the niece, Eliza Daunt, she had not made herself popular with the neighbours or in the village; but she seemed an efficient and managing woman, and that she "kept herself to herself" was far best for the safety of Monk Lawrence.

Whenever during these days Winnington's business took him in the Latchford direction, so that going or coming he pa.s.sed Monk Lawrence, he would walk up to the Abbey in the evening, and in the course of the gossip of the day, all the rea.s.suring news he had to give would be sure to drop out; while Delia sat listening, her eyes fixed on him. And then, for a time, the shadow almost lifted, and she would be her young and natural self.

In this way, without knowing it, he helped her to keep her secret, and, intermittently, to fight down her fears.

On one of these afternoons, in the February twilight, he had been talking to both the ladies, describing _inter alia_ a brief call at Monk Lawrence and a chat with Daunt, when Madeleine Tonbridge went away to change her walking dress, and he and Delia were left alone.

Winnington was standing in the favourite male att.i.tude--his hands in his pockets, and his back to the fire; Delia was on a sofa near. The firelight flickered on the black and white of her dress, and on the face which in losing something of its dark bloom had gained infinitely in other magic for the eyes of the man looking down upon her.

Suddenly she said--

"Do you remember when you wanted me to say--I was sorry for Gertrude's speech--and I wouldn't?"

He started.

"Perfectly."

"Well, I am sorry now. I see--I know--it has been all a mistake."

She lifted her eyes to his, very quietly--but the hands on her lap shook.

His pa.s.sionate impulse was to throw himself at her feet, and silence any further humbleness with kisses. But he controlled himself.

"You mean--that violence--has been a mistake?"

"Yes--just that. Oh, of course!"--she flushed again--"I am just as much for _women_--I am just as rebellious against their wrongs--as I ever was. I shall be a Suffragist always. But I see now--what we've stirred up in England. I see now--that we can't win that way--and that we oughtn't to win that way."

He was silent a moment, and then said in a rather m.u.f.fled voice--

"I don't know who else would have confessed it--so bravely!" His emotion seemed to quiet her. She smiled radiantly.

"Does it make you feel triumphant?"

"Not in the least!"

She held out both hands, and he grasped them, smiling back--understanding that she wished him to take it lightly.

Her eyes indeed now were full of gaiety--light swimming on depths.

"You won't be always saying 'I told you so?'"

"Is it my way?"

"No. But perhaps it's cunning on your part. You know it pays better to be generous."

They both laughed, and she drew her hands away. In another minute, she had asked him to go on with some reading aloud while she worked. He took up the book. The blood raced in his veins. "Soon, soon!"--he said to himself, only to be checked by the divining instinct which added--"but not yet!"

Only a few more days now, to the Commons debate. Every morning the newspapers contained a crop of "militant" news of the kind foreshadowed by Gertrude Marvell--meetings disturbed, private parties raided, Ministers waylaid, windows smashed, and the like, though in none of the reports did Gertrude's own name appear. Only two days before the debate, a glorious Reynolds in the National Gallery was all but hopelessly defaced by a girl of eighteen. Feeling throughout the country surged at a white-heat. Delia said little or nothing, but the hollows under her eyes grew steadily darker, and her cheeks whiter. Nor could Winnington, for all his increasing anxiety, devote himself to soothing or distracting her. An ugly strike in the Latchford brickfields against nonunion labour was giving the magistrates of the country a good deal of anxiety. Some bad outrages had already occurred, and Winnington was endeavouring to get a Board of Trade arbitration,--all of which meant his being a good deal away from home.

Meanwhile Delia was making a new friend. Easily and simply, though no one knew exactly how, Susy Amberley had found her way to the heart of the young woman so much talked about and so widely condemned by the county. Her own departure for London had been once more delayed by the illness of her mother. But the worst of her own struggle was over now; and no one had guessed it. She was a little older, though it was hardly perceptible to any eye but her mother's; a little graver; in some ways sweeter, in others perhaps a trifle harder, like the dipped sword. Her dress had become less of a care to her; she minded the fas.h.i.+ons less than her mother. And there had opened before her more and more alluringly that world of social service, which is to so many beautiful souls outside Catholicism the equivalent of the vowed and dedicated life.

But just as of old, she guessed Mark Winnington's thoughts, and by some instinct divined his troubles. He loved Delia Blanchflower; that she knew by a hundred signs; and there were rough places in his road,--that too she knew. They were clearly not engaged; but their relation was clearly, also, one of no ordinary friends.h.i.+p. Delia's dependence on him, her new gentleness and docility were full of meaning--for Susy. As to the causes of Delia's depression, why, she had lost her friend, or at any rate, to judge from the fact that Delia was at Maumsey, while Miss Marvell remained, so report said, in London--had ceased to agree or act with her. Susy divined and felt for the possible tragedy involved. Delia indeed never spoke of the militant propaganda; but she often produced on Susy a strange impression as of someone listening--through darkness.

The net result of all these guessings was that the tender Susy fell suddenly in love with Delia--first for Mark's sake, then for her own; and became in a few days of frequent meetings, Delia's small wors.h.i.+pper and ministering spirit. Delia surrendered, wondering; and it was soon very evident that, on her side, the splendid creature, in her unrevealed distress, pined after all to be loved, and by her own s.e.x.

She told Susy no secrets, either as to Winnington, or Gertrude; but very soon, just as Susy was certain about her, so she--very pitifully and tenderly--became certain about Susy. Susy loved--or had once loved--Winnington. And Delia knew very well, whom Winnington loved. The double knowledge softened all her pride--all her incipient jealousy away. She took Susy into her heart, though not wholly into her confidence; and soon the two began to walk the lonely country roads together hand in hand. Susy's natural tasks took her often among the poor. But Delia would not go with her. She shrank during these days, with a sick distaste from the human world around her,--its possible claims upon her. Her mind was pre-engaged; and she would not pretend what she could not feel.

This applied especially to the folk on her father's estate. As to the neighbours of her own cla.s.s, they apparently shrank from her. She was left coldly alone. No one called, but Susy, France and his wife, and Captain Andrews. Mrs. Andrews indeed was loud in her denunciation of Delia and all her crew. Her daughter Marion had abominably deserted all her family duties, without any notice to her family, and was now--according to a note left behind--brazenly living in town with some one or other of the "criminals" to whom Miss Blanchflower of course, had introduced her. But as she had given no address she was safe from pursuit. Mrs. Andrews' life had never been so uncomfortable.

She had to maid herself, and do her own housekeeping, and the thing was Scandalous and intolerable. She filled the local air with wailing and abuse.

But her son, the gallant Captain, would not allow any abuse of Delia Blanchflower in his presence. He had begun, indeed, immediately after Delia's return, to haunt the Abbey so persistently that Madeleine Tonbridge had to make an opportunity for a few quiet words in his ear, after which he disappeared disconsolate.

But he was a good fellow at heart, and the impression Delia had made upon him, together with some plain speaking on the subject from Lady Tonbridge, in the course of a chance meeting in the village, roused a remorseful discomfort in him about his sister. He tried honestly to find out where she was, but quite in vain. Then he turned upon his Mother, and told her bluntly she was herself to blame for her daughter's flight. "Between us, we've led her a dog's life, Mother, there, that's the truth! All the same, I'm d.a.m.ned sorry she's taken up with this business."

However, it mattered nothing to anybody whether the Captain was "d.a.m.ned sorry" or not. The hours were almost numbered. The Sunday before the Tuesday fixed for the Second Reading came and went. It was a foggy February day, in which the hills faded from sight, and all the world went grey. Winnington spent the afternoon at Maumsey. But neither he nor Madeleine seemed to be able to rouse Delia during that day from a kind of waking dream--which he interpreted as a brooding sense of some catastrophe to come.

He was certain that her mind was fixed on the division ahead--the scene in the House of Commons--and on the terror of what the "Daughters"--Gertrude perhaps in the van--might be planning and plotting in revenge for it. His own feeling was one of vast relief that the strain would be so soon over, and his own tongue loosed. Monk Lawrence was safe enough! And as for any other attempt at vengeance, he dismissed the notion with impatient scorn.

But meanwhile he said not a word that could have jarred on any conviction or grief of Delia's. Sometimes indeed they touched the great subject itself--the "movement" in its broad and arguable aspects; though it seemed to him that Delia could not bear it for long. Mind and heart were too sore; and her weary reasonableness made him long for the prophetic furies of the autumn. But always she felt herself enwrapped by a tenderness, a chivalry that never failed. Only between her and it--between her and him--as she lay awake through broken nights, some barrier rose--dark and impa.s.sable. She knew it for the barrier of her own unconquered fear.

Chapter XIX

On this same Sunday night before the date fixed for the Suffrage debate, a slender woman, in a veil and a waterproof, opened the gate of a small house in the Brixton Road. It was about nine o'clock in the evening. The pavements were wet with rain, and a gusty wind was shrieking through the s.m.u.tty almond and alder trees along the road which had ventured to put out their poor blossoms and leaves in the teeth of this February gale.

The woman stood and looked at the house after shutting the gate, as though uncertain whether she had found what she was looking for. But the number 453, on the dingy door, could be still made out by the light of the street opposite, and she mounted the steps.

A slatternly maid opened the door, and on being asked whether Mrs.

Marvell was at home, pointed curtly to a dimly lighted staircase, and disappeared.

Gertrude Marvell groped her way upstairs. The house smelt repulsively of stale food, and gas mingled, and the wailing wind from outside seemed to pursue the visitor with its voice as she mounted. On the second floor landing, she knocked at the door of the front room.

After an interval, some shuffling steps came to the door, and it was cautiously opened.

"What's your business, please?"

"It's me--Gertrude. Are you alone?"

A sound of astonishment. The door was opened, and a woman appeared. Her untidy, brown hair, touched with grey, fell back from a handsome peevish face of an aquiline type. A delicate mouth, relaxed and bloodless, seemed to make a fretful appeal to the spectator, and the dark circles under the eyes shewed violet on a smooth and pallid skin.

She was dressed in a faded tea-gown much betrimmed, covered up with a dingy white shawl.

"Well, Gertrude--so you've come--at last!"--she said, after a moment, in a tone of resentment.

"If you can put me up for the night--I can stay. I've brought no luggage."