Delia Blanchflower

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Delia Blanchflower

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"Only let nothing bar your path. Winnington is a good fellow, but a
thickheaded Philistine all the same. You spoke to me about him with
compunction. Have no compunctions. Go straight forward. Women have got
to shew themselves ruthless, and hard, and cunning, like men--if they
are to fight men."

"Yours faithfully,
PAUL LATHROP."

Delia's thoughts danced and flamed, like the pile of blazing wood
before her. What a singular being was this Paul Lathrop! He had paid
them four or five visits already; and they had taken tea with him once
in his queer hermitage under the southern slope of the Monk Lawrence
hill--a one-storey thatched cottage, mostly built by Lathrop himself
with the help of two labourers, standing amid a network of ponds,
stocked with trout in all stages. Inside, the roughly-plastered walls
were lined with books--chiefly modern poets, with French and Russian
novels, and with unframed sketches by some of the ultra clever fellows,
who often, it seemed, would come down to spend Sunday with Lathrop, and
talk and smoke till dawn put out the lights.

She found him interesting--certainly interesting. His outer man--heavy
mouth and lantern cheeks--dreamy blue eyes, and fair hair--together
with the clumsy power in his form and gait, were not without a certain
curious attraction. And his story--as Gertrude Marvell told it--would
be forgiven by the romantic. All the same his letter had offended Delia
greatly. She had given him no encouragement to write in such a
tone--so fervid, so emotional, so intimate; and she would shew
him--plainly--that it offended her.

Nevertheless the phrases of the letter ran in her mind; until her
discomfort and resentment were lost in something else.

She could not quiet her conscience about that cheque! Not indeed as to
giving it to the "Daughters." She would have given everything she
possessed to them, keeping the merest pittance for herself, if fate and
domestic tyranny had allowed. No!--but it hurt her--unreasonably,
foolishly hurt her--that she must prepare herself again to face the
look of troubled amazement in Mark Winnington's eyes, without being
able to justify herself to herself, so convincingly as she would have
liked to do.

"I am simply giving my own money to a cause I adore!" said one voice in
the mind.

"It is not legally yours--it is legally his," said another. "You should
have warned him. You have got hold of it under false pretences."

"Quibbles! It _is_ mine--equitably," replied the first. "He and I are
at war. And I _have_ warned him."

"At war?" Her tiresome conscience kicked again. Why, not a day had
passed since her settlement at Maumsey, without some proof, small or
great, of Winnington's consideration and care for her. She
knew--guiltily knew, that he was overwhelmed by the business of the
executorship and the estate, and had been forced to put aside some of
his own favourite occupations to attend to it.

"Well!--my father made it worth his while!"

But her cheek reddened, with a kind of shame, as the thought passed
through her mind. Even in this short time and because of the daily
contact which their business relations required, she was beginning to
know Winnington, to realise something of his life and character. And as
for the love borne him in the neighbourhood--it was really
preposterous--bad for any man! Delia pitied herself, not only because
she was Winnington's ward against her will, but because of the silent
force of public opinion that upheld him, and must necessarily condemn
her.

So he had once been engaged? Lady Tonbridge had told her so. To a
gentle, saintly person of course!--a person to suit him. Delia could
not help a movement of half petulant curiosity--and then an involuntary
thrill. Many women since had been in love with him. Lady Tonbridge had
said as much. And he--with no one! But he had a great many women
friends? No doubt!--with that manner, and that charm. Delia resented
the women friends. She would have been quite ready indeed to enrol
herself among them--to worship with the rest--from afar; were it not
for ideas, and principles, and honesty of soul! As it was, she despised
the worship of which she was told, as something blind and overdone. It
was not the greatest men--not the best men--who were so easily and
universally beloved.

What did he really think of her? Did he ever guess that there was
something else in her than this obstinacy, this troublesomeness with
which she was forced to meet him? She was sorry for herself, much more
than for him; because she must so chill and mislead a man who _ought_
to understand her.

Looking up she saw a dim reflection of her own beauty in the glass
above the mantelpiece. "No, I am _not_ either a minx, or a
wild-cat!"--she thought, as though she were angrily arguing with
someone. "I could be as attractive, as 'feminine,' as silly as anyone
else, if I chose! I could have lovers--of course--just like other
girls--if it weren't"--

For what? At that moment she hardly knew. And why were her eyes filling
with tears? She dashed them indignantly away.

But for the first time, this cause, this public cause to which she was
pledged presented itself to her as a sacrifice to be offered, a noble
burden to be borne, rather than as something which expressed the
natural and spontaneous impulse of her life.

Which meant that, already, since her recapture by this English world,
since what was hearsay had begun to be experience, the value of things
had slightly and imperceptibly changed.

* * * * *

The days ran on. One evening, just before the first of the
"Daughters'" meetings, which was to be held at Latchford, Winnington
appeared in Lady Tonbridge's drawing-room to ask for a cup of tea on
his way to a public dinner in Wanchester.

He seemed pre-occupied and worried; and she fed him before questioning
him. But at last she said--

"You couldn't prevail on her to give up any of these performances?"

"Miss Delia? Not one. But it's only the Latchford one that matters.
Have you been talking to her?"

He looked at her a little plaintively, as though he _could_ have
reminded her that she had promised him a friend's assistance.

"Of course! But I might as well talk to this table. She won't really
make friends--nor will Miss Marvell allow her. It's the same, I find,
with everyone else. However, I'm bound to say, the neighbourhood is
just now in the mood that it doesn't much want to make friends!"

"I know," said Winnington, with a sigh--relapsing into silence.

"Is she taking an interest in the property--the cottages?"

He shook his head.

"I'm sure she meant to. But it seems to be all dropped."

"Provoking!" said Madeleine, drily--"considering how you've been
slaving to please her--"

Winnington interrupted--not without annoyance--

"How can she think of anything else when she's once deep in this
campaign? One must blame the people who led her into it!"

"Oh! I don't know!" said Lady Tonbridge, protesting. "She's a very
clever young woman, with a strong will of her own."

"Captured just at the impressionable moment!" cried Winnington--"when a
girl will do anything--believe anything--for the person she loves!"

"Well the prescription should be easy--at her age. Change the person!
But then comes the question: Is _she_ loveable? Speak the truth, Mr.
Guardian!"

Winnington began a rather eager assent. Watch her with the servants,
the gardeners, the animals! Then you perceived what should be the
girl's natural charm and sweetness--

"'Hm. Does she show any of it to you?"

Winnington laughed.

"You forget--I am always there as the obstacle in the path. But if it
weren't for the sinister influence--in the background."

And again he went off at score--describing various small incidents that
had touched or pleased him, as throwing light upon what he vowed was
the real Delia.

Madeleine listened, watching him attentively the while. When he took
his leave and she was alone, she sat thinking for some time, and then
going to a cupboard in her writing-table, which held her diaries of
past years, she rummaged till she found one bearing a date fifteen
years old. She turned up the entry for the sixteenth of May:

"She died last night. This morning, at early service, Mark was there.
We walked home together. I doubt whether he will ever marry--now. He is
not one of those men who are hurried by the mere emotion and
unbearableness of grief, into a fresh emotion of love. But what a
lover--what a husband lost!"

She closed the book, and stood with it in her hand--pondering.

* * * * *

As he left her house, and turned towards the station Winnington passed
a lady to whom he bowed, recognising her as Miss Andrews.

"Hope you've got an umbrella!" he said to her cheerily, as he passed.
"The rain's coming!"

She smiled, pleased like all the world to be addressed with that
Winningtonian manner which somehow implied that the person addressed
was, for the moment at any rate, his chiefest concern. Immediately
after meeting him she turned from the village street, and began to
mount a lane leading to the slope on which Monk Lawrence stood. Her
expression as she walked along, sometimes with moving lips, had grown
animated and sarcastic. Here were two men, a dead father and a live
guardian, trying to coerce one simple girl--and apparently not making
much of a job of it. She gloried in what she had been told or perceived
of Delia Blanchflower's wilfulness, which seemed to her mother and her
brother the Captain so monstrous. Only--could one entirely trust
anybody like Delia Blanchflower--so prosperous--and so good-looking?

Miss Andrews mounted the hill, passed through a wood that ran along its
crest, and took a footpath, leading past the edge of a railway cutting,
from which the wonderful old house could be plainly seen. She paused
several times to look at it, wrapped in a kind of day-dream, which gave
a growing sombreness to her harsh and melancholy features. Beyond the
footpath a swing gate opened into a private path leading to the house.

She opened the gate, and walked a little way up the path, in the fast
gathering darkness. But she was suddenly arrested by the appearance of
a figure in the far distance, black against the pale greys of the
house. It was a policeman on his beat--she caught one of the gleams of
a lantern.

Instantly she turned back, groped her way again through the wood, and
into a side road leading to her brother's house.

She found her mother lying on the sofa in the drawing-room, the remains
of a rather luxurious tea beside her--her outdoor clothes lying
untidily about the room.

"Where have you been?" said Mrs. Andrews, fretfully--"there were
several letters I wanted written before post."

"I wanted a little air. That linen business took me all the morning."

For it was the rule in the Andrews' household that the house linen
should be gone through every six months with a view to repairs and
renewals. It was a tedious business. Mrs. Andrews' nerves did not allow
her to undertake it. It fell therefore, and had always fallen to the
only daughter, who was not made for housewifery tasks, and detested the
half-yearly linen day accordingly.

Her tone displeased her mother.

"There you are--grumbling again, Marion! What else have you to do, I
should like to know, than your home duties?"

Marion made no reply. What was the use of replying? But her black eyes,
as she helped herself wearily to some very cold tea, took note of her
mother's attitude. It was only the week before that Dr. France had
expressed himself rather pointedly to the effect that more exercise and
some fresh interests in life "would be good for Mrs. Andrews."

Mrs. Andrews returned to the ladies' paper she was reading. The fashion
plates for the week were unusually attractive. Marion observed her
unseen.

Suddenly the daughter said:--

"I must ask you for that five pounds, mother. Bill promised it me. My
underclothing is literally in rags. I've done my best, and it's past
mending. And I must have another decent dress."

"There you are,--clamouring for money again"--said her mother,
bouncing up on the sofa--"when you know how hard-pressed Bill is. He's
got another instalment to pay for the motor the end of this week."

"Yes--the motor you made him get!"--said Marion, as though the words
burst from her.

"And why shouldn't he, pray! The money's his--and mine. It was high
time we got rid of that rattletrap. It jolted me to pieces."

"You said a little while ago it would do very well for another year.
Anyway, Bill promised me something for clothes this month--and he also
said that he'd pay my school of art fees, at Wanchester, and give me a
third season ticket. Is that all done with too?"

The girl sat erect, her face with its sparkling eyes expressing mingled
humiliation and bitterness.

"Oh, well really, I can't stand these constant disputes!" said Mrs.
Andrews, rising angrily from the sofa. "You'd better go to your
brother. If he likes to waste his money, he can of course. But I've got
none to spare." She paused at the door--"As for your underclothing, I
daresay I could find you something of mine you could make do for a bit.
Now do be sensible!--and don't make a scene with Bill!"

She closed the door. Marion walked to the side window of the
drawing-room, and stood looking at the wooded slope of the hill, with
Monk Lawrence in the distance.

Her heart burned within her. She was thirty-four. She had never had any
money of her own--she had never been allowed any education that would
fit her to earn. She was absolutely dependent on her mother and
brother. Bill was kind enough, though careless, and often selfish. But
her mother rubbed her dependence into her at every turn--"And yet I
earn my clothes and my keep--every penny of them!" she thought,
fiercely.

A year before this date she had been staying in London with a cousin
who sometimes took pity on her and gave her a change of scene. They had
gone together for curiosity's sake to a "militant" meeting in London. A
lady, slight in figure, with dark eyes and hair, had spoken on the
"economic independence of women"--as the only path to the woman's goal
of "equal rights" with men. She had spoken with passion, and Marion's
sore heart had leapt to answer her.

That lady was Gertrude Marvell. Marion had written to her, and there
had been a brief acquaintance, enough to kindle the long-repressed will
and passion of the girl's stormy nature. She had returned home, to
read, in secret, everything that she could find on the militant
movement. The sheer violence of it appealed to her like water to the
thirsty. War, war!--on a rotten state of society, and the economic
slavery of women!

And now her first awakener, her appointed leader, her idol had appeared
in this dead country-side, with orders to give, and tasks to impose.
And she should be obeyed--to the letter!

The girl's heavy eyes kindled to a mad intensity, as she stood looking
at the hill-side, now almost dark, except for that distant light, which
she knew as the electric lamp still lit at sunset, even in Sir
Wilfrid's absence, over the stately doorway of Monk Lawrence.

But she was not going to the Latchford meeting. "Don't give yourself
away. Don't be seen with the others. Keep out of notice. There are more
important things for you to do--presently. Wait!"

The words echoed in her ears. She waited; exulting in the thought that
no one, not even Miss Blanchflower, knew as much as she; and that
neither her mother nor her brother had as yet any idea of her
connection with the "Daughters." Her "silly suffrage opinions" were
laughed at by them both--good-humouredly, by Bill. Of the rest, they
knew nothing.

Chapter IX

"Mark! you've done the day's work of two people already!" cried Mrs.
Matheson in a tone of distress. "You don't mean to say you're going in
to Latchford again?--and without waiting for some food?"

She stood under the porch of Bridge End remonstrating with her brother.

"Can't be helped, dear!" said Winnington, as he filled his pipe--"I'm
certain there'll be a row to-night, and I must catch this train!"

"What, that horrid meeting! Delia Blanchflower lets you slave and slave
for her, and never takes the smallest notice of your wishes or your
advice! She ought to be ashamed!"

The sister's mild tone trembled with indignation.

"She isn't!" laughed Winnington. "I never knew anyone less so. But we
can't have her ill treated. Expect me back when you see me!"

And kissing his hand to his sister, he went out into a dark and
blustering evening. Something had just gone wrong with the little motor
car he generally drove himself, and there was nothing for it but to
walk the mile and a half to the railway station.

He had spent the whole day in County Council business at Wanchester,
was tired out, and had now been obliged to leave home again without
waiting even for a belated cup of tea. But there was no help for it. He
had only just time to catch the Latchford train.

As he almost ran to the station he was not conscious however of any of
these small discomforts; his mind was full of Delia. He did not
encourage anyone but Madeleine Tonbridge to talk to him about his ward;
but he was already quite aware, before his old friend laid stress on
it, of the hostile feeling towards Delia and her chaperon that was
beginning to show itself in the neighbourhood. He knew that she was
already pronounced heartless, odious, unprincipled, consumed with a
love of notoriety, and ready for any violence, at the bidding of a
woman who was probably responsible at that very moment--as a prominent
organiser in the employ of the society contriving them--for some of the
worst of the militant outrages. His condemnation of Delia's actions was
sharp and unhesitating; his opinion of Miss Marvell not a whit milder
than that of his neighbours. Yet he had begun, as we have seen, to
discover in himself a willingness, indeed an eagerness to excuse and
pity the girl, which was wholly lacking in the case of the older woman.
Under the influence, indeed, of his own responsive temperament,
Winnington was rapidly drifting into a state of feeling where his
perception of Delia's folly and unreason was almost immediately checked
by some enchanting memory of her beauty, or of those rare moments in
their brief acquaintance, when the horrid shadow of the "Movement" had
been temporarily lifted, and he had seen her, as in his indulgent
belief she truly was--or was meant to be. She flouted and crossed him
perpetually; and he was beginning to discover that he only thought of
her the more, and that the few occasions when he had been able to force
a smile out of her,--a sudden softness in her black eyes, gone in a
moment!--were constantly pleading for her in his mind. All part no
doubt of his native and extreme susceptibility to the female race--the
female race in general. For he could see himself, and laugh at himself,
_ab extra_, better than most men.

At the station he came across Captain Andrews, and soon discovered from
that artless warrior that he also was bound for Latchford, with a view
to watching over Delia Blanchflower.

"Can't have a lot of hooligans attacking a good-looking girl like
that--whatever nonsense she talks!" murmured the Captain, twisting his
sandy moustache; "so I thought I'd better come along and see fair play.
Of course I knew you'd be there."

The train was crowded. Winnington, separated from the Captain, plunged
into a dimly-lighted third class, and found himself treading on the
toes of an acquaintance. He saluted an elderly lady wearing a bonnet
and mantle of primeval cut, and a dress so ample in the skirt that it
still suggested the days of crinoline. She was abnormally tall, and
awkwardly built; she wore cotton gloves, and her boots were those of a
peasant. She carried a large bag or reticule, and her lap was piled
with brown parcels. Her large thin face was crowned by a few straggling
locks of what had once been auburn hair, now nearly grey, the pale
spectacled eyes were deeply wrinkled, and the nose and mouth slightly
but indisputably crooked.

"My dear Miss Dempsey!--what an age since we met! Where are you off to?
Give me some of those parcels!"

And Winnington, seizing what he could lay hands on, transferred them to
his own knees, and gave a cordial grip to the right hand cotton glove.

Miss Dempsey replied that she had been in Brownmouth for the day, and
was going home. After which she smiled and said abruptly, bending
across her still laden knees and his--so as to speak unheard by their
neighbours--

"Of course I know where you're going to!"

"Do you?"

The queer head nodded.

"Why can't you keep her in order?"

"Her? Who?"

"Your ward. Why don't you stop it?"

"Stop these meetings? My ward is of age, please remember, and quite
aware of it."

Miss Dempsey sighed.

"Naughty young woman!" she said, yet with the gentlest of accents. "For
us of the elder generation to see our work all undone by these maniacs!
They have dashed the cup from our very lips."

"Ah! I forgot you were a Suffragist," said Winnington, smiling at her.

"Suffragist?" she held up her head indignantly--"I should rather think
I am. My parents were friends of Mill, and I heard him speak for Woman
Suffrage when I was quite a child. And now, after the years we've
toiled and moiled, to see these mad women wrecking the whole thing!"

Winnington assented gravely.

"I don't wonder you feel it so. But you still want it--the vote--as
much as ever?"

"Yes!" she said, at first with energy; and then on a more wavering
note--"Yes,--but I admit a great many things have been done without it
that I thought couldn't have been done. And these wild women give one
to think. But you? Are you against us?--or has Miss Delia converted
you?"

He smiled again, but without answering her question. Instead, he asked
her in a guarded voice--

"You are as busy as ever?"

"I am there always--just as usual. I don't have much success. It
doesn't matter."

She drew back from him, looking quietly out of window at the autumn
fields. Over her wrinkled face with its crooked features, there dawned
a look of strange intensity, mingled very faintly with something
exquisite--a ray from a spiritual world.

Winnington looked at her with reverence. He knew all about her; so did
many of the dwellers in the Maumsey neighbourhood. She had lived for
half-a-century in the same little house in one of the back-streets of
Latchford, a town of some ten thousand inhabitants. Through all that
time her life had been given to what is called "rescue work"--though
she herself rarely called it by that name. She loved those whom no one
else would love--the meanest and feeblest of the outcast race. Every
night her door stood on the latch, and as the years passed, thousands
knew it. Scarcely a week went by, that some hand did not lift that
latch, and some girl in her first trouble, or some street-walker, dying
of her trade, did not step in to the tiny hall where the lamp burnt all
night, and wait for the sound of the descending footsteps on the
stairs, which meant shelter and pity, warmth and food. She was
constantly deceived, sometimes robbed; for such things she had no
memory. She only remembered the things which cannot be told--the
trembling voices of hope or returning joy--the tenderness in dying
eyes, the clinging of weak hands, the kindness of "her poor children."
She had written--without her name--a book describing the condition of a
great seaport town where she had once lived. The facts recorded in it
had inspired a great reforming Act. No one knew anything of her part in
it--so far as the public was concerned. Many persons indeed came to
consult her; she gave all her knowledge to those who wanted it; she
taught, and she counselled, always as one who felt herself the mere
humble mouthpiece of things divine and compelling; and those who went
away enriched did indeed forget her in her message, as she meant them
to do. But in her own town as she passed along the streets, in her
queer garb, blinking and absently smiling as though at her own
thoughts, she was greeted often with a peculiar reverence, a homage of
which her short sight told her little or nothing.

Winnington especially had applied to her in more than one difficulty
connected with his public work. It was to her he had gone at once when
the Blanchflower agent had come to him in dismay reporting the decision
of Miss Blanchflower with regard to the half-witted girl whose third
illegitimate child by a quite uncertain father had finally proved her
need of protection both from men's vileness, and her own helplessness.
Miss Dempsey had taken the girl first into her own house, and then,
persuading and comforting the old father, had placed her in one of the
Homes where such victims are sheltered.

Winnington briefly enquired after the girl. She as briefly replied.
Then she added:--as other travellers got out and they were left to
themselves.

"So Miss Blanchflower wanted to keep her in the village?"

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