Delia Blanchflower

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Delia Blanchflower

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"That's not fair!"--protested Delia, the colour flooding in her cheeks.
"As for burning stupid villas--that are empty and insured--or
boathouses--or piers--or tea-pavilions, to keep the country in
mind of us,--that's one thing. But threatening _persons_ with
violence--that's--somehow--another thing. And as to villas and piers
even--to be quite honest--I sometimes wonder, Gertrude!--I declare, I'm
beginning to wonder! And why shouldn't one take up one's policy from
time to time and look at it, all round, with a free mind? We haven't
been doing particularly well lately."

Gertrude laughed--a dry, embittered sound--as she pushed the _Tocsin_
from her.

"Oh well, of course, if you're going to desert us in the worst of the
fight, and to follow your guardian's lead--"

"But I'm not!" cried Delia, springing to her feet. "Try me. Haven't I
promised--a hundred things? Didn't I say all you expected me to say at
Latchford? And, on the whole"--her voice dragged a little--"the empty
houses and the cricket pavilions--still seem to me fair game. It's
only--as to the good it does. Of course--if it were Monk Lawrence--"

"Well--if it were Monk Lawrence?"

"I should think that a crime! I told you so before."

"Why?"

Delia looked at her friend with a contracted brow.

"Because--it's a national possession! Lang's only the temporary
owner--the trustee. We've no right to destroy what belongs to
_England_."

Gertrude laughed again--as she rose from the tea-table.

"Well, as long as women are slaves, I don't see what England matters to
them. However, don't trouble yourself. Monk Lawrence is all right. And
Mr. Winnington's a charmer--we all know that."

Delia flushed angrily. But Gertrude, having gathered up her papers,
quietly departed, leaving her final shaft to work.

Delia went back to her own sitting-room, but was too excited, too
tremulous indeed, to settle to her letters. She had never yet found
herself in direct collision with Gertrude, impetuous as her own temper
was. Their friendship had now lasted nearly three years. She looked
back to their West Indian acquaintance, that first year of adoration,
of long-continued emotion,--mind and heart growing and blossoming
together. Gertrude, during that year, had not only aroused her pupil's
intelligence; she had taught a motherless girl what the love of women
may be for each other. To make Gertrude happy, to be approved by her,
to watch her, to sit at her feet--the girl of nineteen had asked
nothing more. Gertrude's accomplishments, her coolness, her
self-reliance, the delicate precision of her small features and frame,
the grace of her quiet movements, her cold sincerity, the unyielding
scorns, the passionate loves and hates that were gradually to be
discovered below the even dryness of her manner,--by these Delia had
been captured; by these indeed, she was still held. Gertrude was to her
everything that she herself was not. And when her father had insisted
on separating her from her friend, her wild resentment, and her girlish
longing for the forbidden had only increased Gertrude's charm tenfold.

The eighteen months of their separation, too, had coincided with the
rise of that violent episode in the feminist movement which was
represented by the founding and organisation of the "Daughters"
society. Gertrude though not one of the first contrivers and
instigators of it, had been among the earliest of its converts. Its
initial successes had been the subject of all her letters to Delia;
Delia had walked on air to read them. At last the world was moving, was
rushing--and it seemed that Gertrude was in the van. Women were at last
coming to their own; forcing men to acknowledge them as equals and
comrades; and able to win victory, not by the old whining and
wheedling, but by their own strength. The intoxication of it filled the
girl's days and nights. She thought endlessly of processions and raids,
of street-preaching, or Hyde Park meetings. Gertrude went to prison for
a few days as the result of a raid on Downing Street. Delia, in one
dull hotel after another, wearily following her father from "cure" to
"cure," dreamed hungrily and enviously of Gertrude's more heroic fate.
Everything in those days was haloed for her--the Movement, its first
violent acts, what Gertrude did, and what Gertrude thought--she saw it
all transfigured and aflame.

And now, since her father's death, they had been four months
together--she and her friend--in the closest intimacy, sharing--or so
Delia supposed--every thought and every prospect. Delia for the greater
part of that time _had_ been all glad submission and unquestioning
response. It was quite natural--absolutely right--that Gertrude should
command her house, her money, her daily life. She only waited for
Gertrude's orders; it would be her pride to carry them out. Until--

What had happened? The girl, standing motionless beside her window,
confessed to herself, as she had not been willing to confess to
Gertrude, that something _had_ happened--some change of climate and
temperature in her own life.

In the first place, the Movement was not prospering. Why deny it? Who
could deny it? Its first successes were long past; its uses as
advertisement were exhausted; the old violences and audacities, as they
were repeated, fell dead. The cause of Woman Suffrage had certainly not
advanced. Check after check had been inflicted on it. The number of its
supporters in the House of Commons had gone down and down. By-elections
were only adding constantly to the number of its opponents.

"Well, what then?"--said the stalwarts of the party--"More outrages,
more arson, more violence! We _must_ win at last!" And, meanwhile,
blowing through England like a steadily increasing gale, could be felt
the force of public anger, public condemnation.

Delia since her return to England had felt the chill of it, for the
first time, on her own nerves and conscience. For the first time she
had winced--morally--even while she mocked at her own shrinking.

Was that Gertrude pacing outside? The day was dark and stormy. But
Gertrude, who rarely took a walk for pleasure, scarcely ever missed the
exercise which was necessary to keep her in health. Her slight figure,
wrapped in a fur cape, paced a sheltered walk. Her shoulders were bent,
her eyes on the ground. Suddenly it struck Delia that she had begun to
stoop, that she looked older and thinner than usual.

"She is killing herself!"--thought the girl in a sudden
anguish--"killing herself with work and anxiety. And yet she always
says she is so strong. What can I do? There is nobody that matters to
her--nobody!--but me!"

And she recalled all she knew--it was very little--of Gertrude's
personal history. She had been unhappy at home. Her mother, a widow,
had never been able to get on with her elder daughter, while petting
and spoiling her only son and her younger girl, who was ten years
Gertrude's junior. Gertrude had been left a small sum of money by a
woman friend, and had spent it in going to a west-country university
and taking honours in history. She never spoke now of either her mother
or her sister. Her sister was married, but Gertrude held no
communication with her or her children. Delia had always felt it
impossible to ask questions about her, and believed, with a thrilled
sense of mystery, that some tragic incident or experience had separated
the two sisters. Her brother also, it seemed, was as dead to her. But
on all such personal matters Gertrude's silence was insuperable, and
Delia knew no more of them than on the first day of their meeting.

Indomitable figure! Worn with effort and struggle--worn above all with
_hating_. Delia looked at it with a sob in her throat. Surely, surely,
the great passion, the great uplifting faith they had felt in common,
was vital, was true! Only, somehow, after the large dreams and hopes of
the early days, to come down to this perpetual campaign of petty
law-breaking, and futile outrage, to these odious meetings and shrieking
newspapers, was to be--well, discouraged!--heart-wearied.

"Only, she is not wearied, or discouraged!" thought Delia,
despairingly. "And why am I?"

Was it hatefully true--after all--that she was being influenced--drawn
away?

The girl flushed, breathing quick. She must master herself!--get rid of
this foolish obsession of Winnington's presence and voice--of a pair of
grave, kind eyes--a look now perplexed, now sternly bright--a
personality, limited no doubt, not very accessible to what Gertrude
called "ideas," not quick to catch the last new thing, but honest,
noble, tender, through and through.

Absurd! She was holding her own with him; she would hold her own. That
very day she must grapple with him afresh. She had sent him a note that
morning, and he had replied in a message that he would ride over to
luncheon.

For the question of money was urgent. Delia was already overdrawn. Yet
supplies were wanted for the newly rented flat, for Weston's operation,
for Gertrude's expenses in London--for a hundred things.

She paced up and down, imagining the conversation, framing eloquent
defences for her conduct, and again, from time to time, meanly,
shamefacedly reminding herself of Winnington's benefit under the will.
If she was a nuisance, she was at least a fairly profitable nuisance.

* * * * *

Winnington duly arrived at luncheon. The two ladies appeared to him as
usual--Gertrude Marvell, self-possessed and quietly gay, ready to
handle politics or books, on so light a note, that Winnington's acute
recollection of her, as the haranguing fury on the Latchford waggon,
began to seem absurd even to himself. Delia also, lovely, restless,
with bursts of talk, and more significant bursts of silence, produced
on him her normal effect--as of a creature made for all delightful
uses, and somehow jangled and out of tune.

After luncheon, she led the way to her own sitting-room. "I am afraid I
must talk business," she said abruptly as she closed the door and stood
confronting him. "I am overdrawn, Mr. Winnington, and I must have some
more money."

Winnington laid down his cigarette, and looked at her in open-mouthed
amazement.

"Overdrawn!--but--we agreed--"

"I know. You gave me what you thought was ample. Well, I have spent it,
and there is nothing left to pay house bills, or servants with, or--or
anything."

Her pale defiance gave him at once a hint of the truth.

"I fear I must ask what it has been spent on," he said, after a pause.

"Certainly. I gave L500 of it in one cheque to Miss Marvell. Of course
you will guess how it has been spent."

Winnington took up his cigarette again, and smoked it thoughtfully. His
colour was, perhaps, a little higher than usual.

"I am sorry you have done that. It makes it rather awkward both for you
and for me. Perhaps I had better explain. The lawyers have been
settling the debts on your father's estate. That took a considerable
sum. A mortgage has been paid off, according to directions in Sir
Robert's will. And some of the death duties have been paid. For the
moment there is no money at all in the Trust account. I hope to have
replenished it by the New Year, when I understood you would want fresh
funds."

He sat on the arm of a chair and looked at her quietly.

Delia made no attempt at explanation or argument. After a short
silence, she said--

"What will you do?"

"I must, of course, lend you some of my own."

Delia flushed violently.

"That is surely absurd, Mr. Winnington! My father left a large sum!"

"As his trustee I can only repeat that until some further securities
are realised--which may take a little time--I have no money. But _you_
must have money--servants and tradesmen can't go unpaid. I will give
you, therefore, a cheque on my own bank--to replace that L500."

He drew his cheque book from his breast pocket. Delia was stormily
walking up and down. It struck him sharply, first that she was wholly
taken by surprise; and next that shock and emotion play finely with
such a face as hers. He had never seen her so splendid. His own pulses
ran.

"This--this is not at all what I want, Mr. Winnington! I want my own
money--my father's money! Why should I distress and inconvenience you?"

"I have tried to explain."

"Then let the lawyers find it somehow. Aren't they there to do such
things?"

"I assure you this is simplest. I happen"--he smiled--"to have enough
in the bank. Alice and I can manage quite well till January!"

The mention of Mrs. Matheson was quite intolerable in Delia's ears. She
turned upon him--

"I can't accept it! You oughtn't to ask it."

"I think you must accept it," he said with decision. "But the important
question with me is--the further question--am I not really bound to
restore this money to your father's estate?"

Delia stared at him bewildered.

"What _do_ you mean!"

"Your father made me his trustee in order that I might protect his
money--from uses of which he disapproved--and protect you, if I could,
from actions and companions he dreaded. This L500 has gone--where he
expressly wished it not to go. It seems to me that I am liable, and
that I ought to repay."

Delia gasped.

"I never heard anything so absurd!"

"I will consider it," he said gravely. "It is a case of conscience.
Meanwhile"--he began to write the cheque--"here is the money. Only, let
me warn you, dear Miss Delia,--if this were repeated, I might find
myself embarrassed. I am not a rich man!"

Silence. He finished writing the cheque, and handed it to her. Delia
pushed it away, and it dropped on the table between them.

"It is simply tyranny--monstrous tyranny--that I should be coerced like
this!" she said, choking. "You must feel it so yourself! Put yourself
in my place, Mr. Winnington."

"I think--I am first bound--to try and put myself in your father's
place," he said, with vivacity. "Where has that money gone, Miss
Delia?"

He rose, and in his turn began to pace the little room. "It has been
proved, in evidence, that a great deal of this outrage is _paid_
outrage--that it could not be carried on without money--however madly
and fanatically devoted, however personally disinterested the
organisers of it may be--such as Miss Marvell. You have, therefore,
taken your father's money to provide for this payment--payment for all
that his soul most abhorred. His will was his last painful effort to
prevent this being done. And yet--you have done it!"

He looked at her steadily.

"One may seem to do evil"--she panted--"but we have a faith, a cause,
which justifies it!"

He shook his head sadly,

Delia sat very still, tormented by a score of harassing thoughts. If
she could not provide money for the "Daughters" what particular use
could she be to Gertrude, or Gertrude's Committee? She could speak, and
walk in processions, and break up meetings. But so could hundreds of
others. It was her fortune--she knew it--that had made her so important
in Gertrude's eyes. It had always been assumed between them that a
little daring and a little adroitness would break through the meshes of
her father's will. And how difficult it was turning out to be!

At that moment, an idea occurred to her. Her face, responsive as a
wave to the wind, relaxed. Its sullenness disappeared in sudden
brightness--in something like triumph. She raised her eyes. Their
tremulous, half whimsical look set Winnington wondering what she could
be going to say next.

"You seem to have beaten me," she said, with a little nod--"or you
think you have."

"I have no thoughts that you mightn't know," was the quiet reply.

"You want me to promise not to do it again?"

"If you mean to keep it."

As he stood by the fire, looking down upon her rather sternly--she yet
perceived in his grey eyes, something of that expression she had seen
there at their first meeting--as though the heart of a good man tried
to speak to her. The same expression--and yet different; with something
added and interfused, which moved her strangely.

"Odd as it may seem, I will keep it!" she said. "Yet without giving up
any earlier purpose, or promise, whatever." Each word was emphasized.

His face changed.

"I won't worry _you_ in any such way again," she added hastily and
proudly.

Some other words were on her lips, but she checked them. She held out
her hand for the cheque, and the smile with which she accepted it,
after her preceding passion, puzzled him.

She locked up the cheque in a drawer of her writing-table. Winnington's
horse passed the window, and he rose to go. She accompanied him to the
hall door and waved a light farewell. Winnington's response was
ceremonious. A sure instinct told him to shew no further softness. His
dilemma was getting worse and worse, and Lady Tonbridge had been no use
to him whatever.

Chapter XII

One of the first days of the New year rose clear and frosty. When the
young housemaid who had temporarily replaced Weston as Delia's maid
drew back her curtains at half-past seven, Delia caught a vision of an
opaline sky with a sinking moon and fading stars. A strewing of snow
lay on the ground, and the bare black trees rose, vividly separate, on
the white stretches of grass. Her window looked to the north along the
bases of the low range of hills which shut in the valley and the
village. A patch of paler colour on the purple slope of the hills
marked the long front of Monk Lawrence.

As she sleepily roused herself, she saw her bed littered with dark
objects--two leather boxes of some size, and a number of miscellaneous
cases--and when the maid had left the room, she lay still, looking at
them. They were the signs and symbols of an enquiry she had lately been
conducting into her possessions, which seemed to her to have yielded
very satisfactory results. They represented in the main the contents of
a certain cupboard in the wall of her bedroom where Lady Blanchflower
had always kept her jewels, and where, in consequence, Weston had so
far locked away all that Delia possessed. Here were all her own girlish
ornaments--costly things which her father had given her at intervals
during the three or four years since her coming out; here were her
Mother's jewels, which Sir Robert had sent to his bankers after his
wife's death, and had never seen again during his lifetime; and here
were also a number of family jewels which had belonged to Delia's
grandmother, and had remained, after Lady Blanchflower's death, in the
custody of the family lawyers, till Delia, to whom they had been left
by will, had appeared to claim them.

Delia had always known that she possessed a quantity of valuable
things, and had hitherto felt but small interest in them. Gertrude's
influence, and her own idealism had bred in her contempt for gauds. It
was the worst of breeding to wear anything for its mere money value;
and nothing whatever should be worn that wasn't in itself beautiful.
Lady Blanchflower's taste had been, in Delia's eyes, abominable; and
her diamonds,--tiaras, pendants and the rest--had absolutely nothing to
recommend them but their sheer brute cost. After a few glances at them,
the girl had shut them up and forgotten them.

But they _were_ diamonds, and they must be worth some thousands.

It was this idea which had flashed upon her during her last talk with
Winnington, and she had been brooding over it, and pondering it ever
since. Winnington himself was away. He and his sister had been spending
Christmas with some cousins in the midlands. Meanwhile Delia recognised
that his relation to her had been somewhat strained. His letters to her
on various points of business had been more formal than usual; and
though he had sent her a pocket Keats for a Christmas present, it had
arrived accompanied merely by his "kind regards" and she had felt
unreasonably aggrieved, and much inclined to send it back. His
cheque meanwhile for L500 had gone into Delia's bank. No help for
it--considering all the Christmas bills which had been pouring in! But
she panted for the time when she could return it.

As for his threat of permanently refunding the money out of his own
pocket, she remembered it with soreness of spirit. Too bad!

Well, there they lay, on the counterpane all round her--the means of
checkmating her guardian. For while she was rummaging in the wall-safe,
the night before, suddenly the fire had gone down, and the room had
sunk to freezing point. Delia, brought up in warm climates, had jumped
shivering into bed, and there, heaped round with the contents of the
cupboard, had examined a few more cases, till sleep and cold
overpowered her.

In the grey morning light she opened some of the cases again. Vulgar
and ugly, if you like--but undeniably, absurdly worth money! Her dark
eyes caught the sparkle of the jewels running through her fingers.
These tasteless things--mercifully--were her own--her very own.
Winnington had nothing to say to them! She could wear them--or give
them--or sell them, as she pleased.

She was alternately exultant, and strangely full of a fluttering
anxiety. The thought of returning Winnington's cheque was sweet to her.
But her disputes with him had begun to cost her more than she had ever
imagined they could or would. And the particular way out, which, a few
weeks before, she had so impatiently desired--that he should resign the
guardianship, and leave her to battle with the Court of Chancery as
best she could--was no longer so attractive to her. To be cherished and
cared for by Mark Winnington--no woman yet, but had found it
delightful. Insensibly Delia had grown accustomed to it--to his comings
and goings, his business-ways, abrupt sometimes, even peremptory, but
informed always by a kindness, a selflessness that amazed her.
Everyone wanted his help or advice, and he must refuse now--as he had
never refused before--because his time and thoughts were so much taken
up with his ward's affairs. Delia knew that she was envied; and knew
also that the neighbours thought her an ungrateful, unmanageable
hoyden, totally unworthy of such devotion.

She sat up in bed, dreaming, her hands round her knees. No, she didn't
want Winnington to give her up! Especially since she had found this
easy way out. Why should there be any more friction between them at
all? All that _he_ gave her henceforward should be religiously spent on
the normal and necessary things. She would keep accounts if he liked,
like any good little girl, and shew them up. Let him do with the trust
fund exactly what he pleased. For a long time at any rate, she could be
independent of it. Why had she never thought of such a device before?

But how to realise the jewels? In all business affairs, Delia was the
merest child. She had been brought up in the midst of large
expenditure, of which she had been quite unconscious. All preoccupation
with money had seemed to her mean and pettifogging. Have it!--and
spend it on what you want. But wants must be governed by ideas--by
ethical standards. To waste money on personal luxury, on eating,
drinking, clothes, or any form of mere display, in such a world as
Gertrude Marvell had unveiled to her, seemed to Delia contemptible and
idiotic. One must have _some_ nice clothes--some beauty in one's
surroundings--and the means of living as one wished to live.
Otherwise, to fume and fret about money, to be coveting instead of
giving, buying and bargaining, instead of thinking--or debating--was
degrading. She loathed shopping. It was the drug which put women's
minds to sleep.

Who would help her? She pondered. She would tell no one till it was
done; not even Gertrude, whose cold, changed manner to her hurt the
girl's proud sense to think of.

"I must do it properly--I won't be cheated!"

The London lawyers? No. The local solicitor, Mr. Masham? No! Her vanity
was far too keenly conscious of their real opinion of her, through all
their politeness.

Lady Tonbridge? No! She was Mark Winnington's intimate friend--and a
constitutional Suffragist. At the notion of consulting her,--on the
means of providing funds for "militancy"--Delia sprang out of bed, and
went to her dressing, dissolved in laughter.

And presently--sobered again, and soft-eyed--she was stealing along the
passage to Weston's door for a word with the trained nurse who was now
in charge. Just a week now--to the critical day.

* * * * *

"Is Miss Marvell, in? Ask if she will see Mr. Lathrop for a few
minutes?"

Paul Lathrop, left to himself, looked round Delia's drawing-room. It
set his teeth on edge. What pictures--what furniture! A certain
mellowness born of sheer time, no doubt--but with all its ugly
ingredients still repulsively visible. Why didn't the heiress burn
everything and begin again? Was all her money to be spent on burning
other people's property, when her own was so desperately in need of the
purging process--or on dreary meetings and unreadable newspapers?
Lathrop was already tired of these delights; his essentially Hedonist
temper was re-asserting itself. The "movement" had excited and
interested him for a time; had provided besides easy devices for
annoying stupid people. He had been eager to speak and write for it,
had persuaded himself that he really cared.

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