Delia Blanchflower

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Delia Blanchflower

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"If I could have kept her to myself for another year, he could have
done nothing. But he has intervened before her opinions were anything
more than the echoes of mine;--and for the future I shall have less and
less chance against him. What shall we ever get out of her as a married
woman? What would Mark Winnington--to whom she will give herself, body
and soul,--allow us to get out of her? Better break with her now, and
disentangle my own life!"

With such thoughts, a pale and brooding woman pursued the now distant
figure of Delia. At the same time Gertrude Marvell had no intention
whatever of provoking a premature breach which might deprive either the
Cause or herself of any help they might still obtain from Delia in the
desperate fight immediately ahead. She, personally, would have
infinitely preferred freedom and a garret to Delia's flat, and any kind
of dependence on Delia's money. "I was not born to be a parasite!" she
angrily thought. But she had no right to prefer them. All that could be
extracted from Delia should be extracted. She was now no more to
Gertrude than a pawn in the game. Let her be used--if she could not be
trusted!

But if this had fallen differently, if she had remained the true
sister-in-arms, given wholly to the joy of the fight, Gertrude's stern
soul would have clasped her to itself, just as passionately as it now
dismissed her.

"No matter!" The hard brown eyes looked steadily into the future.
"That's done with. I am alone--I shall be alone. What does it
signify?--a little sooner or later?"

The vagueness of the words matched the vagueness of certain haunting
premonitions in the background of the mind. Her own future always
shaped itself in tragic terms. It was impossible--she knew it--that it
should bring her to any kind of happiness. It was no less impossible
that she should pause and submit. That active defiance of the existing
order, on which she had entered, possessed her, gripped her,
irrevocably. She was like the launched stone which describes its
appointed curve--till it drops.

As for any interference from the side of her own personal ties and
affections,--she had none.

In her pocket she carried a letter she had received that morning, from
her mother. It was plaintive, as usual.

"Winnie's second child arrived last week. It was an awful confinement.
The first doctor had to get another, and they only just pulled her
through. The child's a misery. It would be much better if it had died.
I can't think what she'll do. Her husband's a wretched creature--just
manages to keep in work--but he neglects her shamefully--and if there
ever is anything to spend, _he_ spends it--on his own amusement. She
cried the other day, when we were talking of you. She thinks you're
living with a rich lady, and have everything you want--and she and
her children are often half-starved. 'She might forgive me now, I do
think--' she'll say sometimes--'And as for Henry, if I did take him
away from her, she may thank her stars she didn't marry him. She'd have
killed him by now. She never could stand men like Henry. Only, when he
was a young fellow, he took her in--her first, and then me. It was a
bad job we ever saw him.'

"Why are you so set against us, Gertrude?--your own flesh and blood.
I'm sure if I ever was unkind to you I'm sorry for it. You used to say
I favoured Albert at your expense--Well, he's as good as dead to me
now, and I've got no good out of all the spoiling I gave him. I sit at
home by myself, and I'm a pretty miserable woman. I read everything I
can in the papers about what you're doing--you, who were my only
child, seven years before Albert came. It doesn't matter to you what I
think--at least, it oughtn't. I'm an old woman, and whatever I thought
I'd never quarrel with you. But it would matter to me a good deal, if
you'd sometimes come in, and sit by the fire a bit, and chat. It's
three years since I've even seen you. Winnie says you've forgotten
us--you only care about the vote. But I don't believe it. Other people
may think the vote can make up for everything--but not you. You're too
clever. Hoping to see you,"

"Your lonely old mother,
JANET MARVELL."

To that letter, Gertrude had already written her reply. Sometime--in
the summer, perhaps, she had said to her mother. And she had added the
mental proviso--"if I am alive." For the matters in which she was
engaged were no child's play, and the excitements of prison and
hunger-striking might tell even on the strongest physique.

No--her family were nothing to her. Her mother's appeal, though it
should not be altogether ignored, was an insincere one. She had always
stood by the men of the family; and for the men of the family,
Gertrude, its eldest daughter, felt nothing but loathing and contempt.
Her father, a local government official in a western town, a
small-minded domestic tyrant, ruined by long years of whisky-nipping
between meals; her only brother, profligate and spendthrift, of whose
present modes of life the less said the better; her brother-in-law,
Henry Lewison, the man whom, in her callow, ignorant youth, she was
once to have married, before her younger sister supplanted her--a
canting hypocrite, who would spend his day in devising petty torments
for his wife, and begin and end it with family prayers:--these types,
in a brooding and self-centred mind, had gradually come to stand for
the whole male race.

Nor had her lonely struggle for a livelihood, after she had fled from
home, done anything to loosen the hold of these images upon her. She
looked back upon a dismal type-writing office, run by a grasping
employer; a struggle for health, warring with the struggle for bread;
sick headache, sleeplessness, anaemia, yet always within, the same iron
will driving on the weary body; and always the same grim perception on
the dark horizon of an outer gulf into which some women fell, with no
hope of resurrection. She burnt again with the old bitter sense of
injustice, on the economic side; remembering fiercely her own stinted
earnings, and the higher wages and larger opportunities of men, whom,
intellectually, she despised. Remembering too the development of that
new and ugly temper in men--men hard-pressed themselves--who must now
see in women no longer playthings or sweethearts, but rivals and
supplanters.

So that gradually, year by year, there had strengthened in her that
strange, modern thing, a woman's hatred of men--the normal instincts of
sex distorted and embittered. And when suddenly, owing to the slow
working of many causes, economic and moral, a section of the Woman
Suffrage movement had broken into flame and violence, she had flung her
very soul to it as fuel, with the passion of one to whom life at last
"gives room." In that outbreak were gathered up for her all the
rancours, and all the ideals of life, all its hopes and all its
despairs. Not much hope!--and few ideals. Her passion for the Cause
had been a grim force, hardly mixed with illusion; but it had held and
shaped her.

Meanwhile among women she has found a few kindred souls. One of them, a
fellow-student, came into money, died, and left Gertrude Marvell a
thousand pounds. On that sum she had educated herself, had taken her
degree at a West Country University, had moved to London and begun work
as a teacher and journalist. Then again, a break down in health,
followed by a casual acquaintance with Lady Tonbridge--Sir Robert's
offer--its acceptance--Delia!

How much had opened to her with Delia! _Pleasure_, for the first time;
the sheer pleasure of travel, society, tropical beauty; the strangeness
also of finding herself adored, of feeling that young loveliness, that
young intelligence, all yielding softness in her own strong hands--

Well, that was done;--practically done. She cheated herself with no
vain hopes. The process which had begun in Delia would go forward. One
more defeat to admit and forget. One more disaster to turn one's back
upon.

And no disabling lamentations! Her eyes cleared, her mouth stiffened.
She went quietly back to her packing.

"Gertrude! What _are_ you doing?" The voice was Delia's. She stood on
the threshold of Gertrude's den, looking with amazement, at the
littered room and the packing-cases.

"I find I must go up at once--They want help at the office." Gertrude,
who was writing a letter, delivered the information over her shoulder.

"But the flat won't be ready!"

"Never mind. I can go to a hotel for a few days."

A cloud dropped over the radiance of Delia's face, fresh from the sun
and frost outside.

"I can't bear your going alone!"

"Oh, you'll come later," said Gertrude indifferently.

"Did you--did you--have such urgent letters this morning?"

"Well--you know things _are_ urgent! But then, you see, you have made
up your mind to stay with Weston!"

A slight mocking look accompanied the words.

"Yes--I must stay with Weston," said Delia, slowly, and then perceiving
that the typist showed no signs of leaving them together, and that
confidential talk was therefore impossible, she reluctantly went away.

Weston that morning was in much pain, and Delia sat beside her,
learning by some new and developing instinct how to soothe her. The
huntress of the Tyrolese woods had few caressing ways, and pain had
always been horrible to her; a thing to be shunned, even by the
spectator, lest it should weaken the wild natural energies. But Weston
was very dear to her, and the maid's suffering stirred deep slumbering
powers in the girl's nature. She watched the trained Nurse at her work,
and copied her anxiously. And all the time she was thinking, thinking,
now of Gertrude, now of her letter to Winnington. Gertrude was vexed
with her, thought her a poor creature--that was plain. "But in a
fortnight, I'll go to her,--and they'll see!--" thought the girl's
wrestling mind. "And before that, I shall send her money. I can't help
what she thinks. I'm not false!--I'm not giving in! But I must have
this fortnight,--just this fortnight;--for Weston's sake, and--"

For her proud sincerity would not allow her to pretend to herself. What
had happened to her? She felt the strangest lightness--as though some
long restraint had broken down; a wonderful intermittent happiness,
sweeping on her without reason, and setting the breath fluttering. It
made her think of what an old Welsh nurse of her childhood had once
told her of "conversion," in a Welsh revival, and its marvellous
effects; how men and women walked on air, and the iron bands of life
and custom dropped away.

Then she rose impatiently, despising herself, and went downstairs again
to try and help Gertrude. But the packing was done, the pony-cart was
ordered, and in an hour more, Gertrude was gone. Delia was left
standing on the threshold of the front door, listening to the sound of
the receding wheels. They had parted in perfect friendliness, Gertrude
with civil wishes for Weston's complete recovery, Delia with eager
promises--"I shall soon come--_very_ soon!"--promises of which, as she
now remembered, Gertrude had taken but little notice.

But as she went back into the house, the girl had a queer feeling of
catastrophe, of radical change. She passed the old gun-room, and looked
in. All its brown paper bundles, its stacks of leaflets, its books of
reference were gone; only a litter of torn papers remained here and
there, to shew what its uses had been. And suddenly, a swell of
something like exultation, a wild sense of deliverance, rushed upon
her, driving out depression. She went back to the drawing-room, with
little dancing steps, singing under her breath. The flowers wanted
freshening. She went out to the greenhouse, and brought in some early
hyacinths and violets till the room was fragrant. Some of them she took
up to Weston, chatting to the patient and her nurse as she arranged
them, with such sweetness, such smiles, such an abandonment of
kindness, that both looked after her amazed, when, again, she vanished.
What had become of the imperious absent-minded young woman of ordinary
days?

Delia lunched alone. And after lunch she grew restless.

He must have received her letter at breakfast-time. Probably he had
some tiresome meetings in the morning, but soon--soon--

She tried to settle to some reading. How long it was since she had read
anything for the joy of it!--anything that in some shape or other was
not the mere pemmican of the Suffrage Movement; dusty arguments for, or
exasperating arguments against. She plunged into poetry--a
miscellaneous volume of modern verse--and the new world of feeling
in which her mind had begun to move, grew rich, and deep, and
many-coloured about her.

Surely--a sound at the gate! She sat up, crimson. Well?--she was going
to make friends with her guardian--to bury the hatchet--for a whole
fortnight at least. Only that. Nothing more--nothing--nothing!

Steps approached. She hastily unearthed a neglected work-basket, and a
very ancient piece of half-done embroidery. Was there a thimble
anywhere--or needles! Yes!--by good luck. Heavens!--what shamming! She
bent over the dingy bit of silk, her cheeks dimpling with laughter.

Their first greetings were done, and Winnington was sitting by
her--astride a chair, his arms lying along the top of it, his eyes
looking down upon her, as she made random stitches in what looked like
a futurist design.

"Do you know that you wrote me a very, _very_ nice letter?" and as he
spoke, she heard in his voice that tone--that lost tone, which she had
heard in it at their very first interview, before she had chilled and
flouted him, and made his life a burden to him. Her pulses leapt; but
she did not look up.

"I wonder whether--you quite deserved it? You were angry with me--for
nothing!"

"I am afraid I can't agree!" The voice now was a little dry, and a pair
of very keen grey eyes examined her partially hidden face.

She pushed her work away and looked up.

"You ought!" she said vehemently. "You accused me--practically--of
flirting with Mr. Lathrop. And I was doing nothing of the kind!"

He laughed.

"I never imagined that you were--or could be--flirting with Mr.
Lathrop."

"Then why did you threaten to give me up if I went on seeing him?"

He hesitated--but said at last--gravely--

"Because I could not take the responsibility."

"How would it help me--to give me up? According to you--" she breathed
fast--"I should only--go to perdition--the quicker!" Her eyes still
laughed, but behind the laughter there was a rush of feeling which
communicated itself to him.

"May I suggest that it is not necessary to go to perdition--at
all--fast or slow?"

She shook her head. Silence followed; which Winnington broke.

"You said you would like to come and see some of the village
people--your own people--and the school? Was that serious?"

"Certainly!" She raised an indignant countenance. "I suppose you
think--like everybody--that because I want the vote, I can't care
about anything else?"

"You'll admit it has a way of driving everything else out," he said,
mildly. "Have you ever been into the village--for a month?--for two
months? The things you wanted have been done. But you haven't been to
see." She sprang to her feet.

"Shall I come now?"

"If it suits you. I've saved the afternoon."

She ran out of the room to put on her things, upsetting as she did so,
the work-box with which she had been masquerading, and quite
unconscious of it. Winnington, smiling to himself, stooped to pick up
the reels and skeins of silk. One, a skein of pink silk with which she
had been working, he held in his hand a moment, and, suddenly, put in
his pocket. After which he drifted absently to the hearthrug, and stood
waiting for her, hat in hand. He was thinking of that moment in the
wintry dawn when he had read her letter. The shock of emotion returned
upon him. But what was he to do? What was really in her mind?--or, for
the matter of that, in his own?

She re-appeared, radiant in a moleskin cap and furs, and then they both
awkwardly remembered--he, that he had made no inquiry about Weston, and
she, that she had said nothing of Gertrude Marvell's hurried departure.

"Your poor maid? Tell me about her. Oh, but she'll do well. We'll take
care of her. France is an awfully good doctor."

Her eyes thanked him. She gave him a brief account of Weston's state;
then looked away.

"Do you know--that I'm quite alone? Gertrude went up to town this
morning?"

Winnington gave a low whistle of astonishment.

"She had to--" said Delia, hurriedly. "It was the office--they couldn't
do without her."

"I thought she had undertaken to be your chaperon?"

The girl coloured.

"Well yes--but of course--the other claim came first."

"You don't expect me to admit that," said Winnington, with energy.
"Miss Marvell has left you alone?--_alone_?--at a moment's notice--with
your maid desperately ill--and without a word to me, or anybody?" His
eyes sparkled.

"Don't let's quarrel!" cried Delia, as she stood opposite to him,
putting on her gloves. "_Don't_! Not to-day--not this afternoon! And
we're sure to quarrel if we talk about Gertrude."

His indignation broke up in laughter.

"Very well. We won't mention her. Well, but look here--" he
pondered--"You _must_ have somebody. I would propose that Alice
should come and keep you company, but I left her in bed with what
looks like the flu. Ah!--I have it. But--am I really to advise? You
are twenty-one, remember,--nearly twenty-two!"

The tender sarcasm in his voice brought a flood of colour to her
cheeks.

"Go on!" she said, and stood quivering.

"Would you consider asking Lady Tonbridge to come and stay with you?
Nora is away on a visit."

Delia moved quietly to the writing-table, pulled off her gloves, sat
down to write a note. He watched her, standing behind her; his strained
yet happy look resting on the beautiful dark head.

She rose, and held out the note, addressed to Lady Tonbridge. He took
the note, and the hand together. The temptation was irresistible. He
raised the hand and kissed it. Both were naturally reminded of the only
previous occasion on which he had done such a thing; and as he dropped
his hold, Delia saw the ugly scar which would always mark his left
wrist.

"Thank you!"--he said warmly--"That'll be an immense relief to my
mind."

"You mustn't think she'll convert me," said Delia, quickly.

"Why, she's a Suffragist!"

Delia shrugged her shoulders. "_Pour rire_!"

"Let's leave the horrid subject alone--shall we?"

Delia assented; and they set out, just as the winter sun of a bright
and brilliant afternoon was beginning to drop towards its setting.

* * * * *

When Delia afterwards looked back on those two hours in Mark
Winnington's company, she remembered them as a time enskied and
glorified. First, the mere pleasure of the senses--the orange glow of
the January evening, the pleasant crackling of the frosty ground, the
exhilaration of exercise, and of the keen pungent air; then the beauty
of the village and of the village lanes in the dusk, of the blue smoke
drifting along the hill, of the dim reds and whites of the old houses,
and the occasional gleams of fire and lamp through the small-paned
windows; the gaiety of the children racing home from school, the
dignity of the old labourers, the seemliness of the young. It was good
to be alive--in England--breathing English air. It was good to be young
and strong-limbed, with all one's life before one.

And next--and greater--there was the pleasure of Winnington beside her,
of his changed manner, of their new comradeship. She felt even a
curious joy in the difference of age between them. Now that by some
queer change, she had ceased to stand on her dignity with him, to hold
him arrogantly at arm's length, there emerged in her a childish
confidence and sweetness, enchanting to the man on whom it played. "May
I?--" "Do you think I might?--" she would say, gently, throwing out
some suggestion or other, as they went in and out of the cottages, and
the humbleness in her dark eyes, as though a queen stooped, began to
turn his head.

And how beautiful this common human life seemed that evening--after all
the fierce imaginings in which she had lived so long! In the great
towns beyond the hills, women were still starved and sweated,--still
enslaved and degraded. Man no doubt was still the stupid and vicious
tyrant, the Man-Beast that Gertrude Marvell believed him. But here in
this large English village, how the old primal relations stood
out!--sorrow-laden and sin-stained often, yet how touching, how worthy,
in the main, of reverence and tenderness! As they went in and out of
the cottages of her father's estate, the cottages where Winnington was
at home, and she a stranger, all that "other side" of any great
argument began to speak to her--without words. The world of politics
and its machinery, how far away!--instead, the world of human need, and
love, and suffering unveiled itself this winter evening to Delia's
soul, and spoke to her in a new language. And always it was a language
of sex, as between wives and husbands, mothers and sons, sisters and
brothers. No isolation of one sex or the other. No possibility of
thinking of them apart, as foes and rivals, with jarring rights and
claims. These old couples tending each other, clinging together, after
their children had left them, till their own last day should dawn;
these widowed men or women, piteously lost without the old companion,
like the ox left alone in the furrow; these young couples with their
first babies; these dutiful or neglectful sons, these hard or tender
daughters; these mothers young and old, selfish or devoted:--with
Winnington beside her, Delia saw them all anew, heard them all anew.
And Love, in all its kinds, everywhere the governing force, by its
presence or its absence!--Love abused and degraded, or that Love,
whether in the sunken eyes of the old, or on the cheeks of the young,
which is but "a little lower than the angels."

And what frankly amazed her was Winnington's place in this world of
labouring folk. He had given it ten years of service; not charity, but
simply the service of the good citizen; moved by a secret, impelling
motive, which Delia had yet to learn. And how they rewarded him! She
walked beside a natural ruler, and felt her heart presently big with
the pride of it.

"But the cripples?" She enquired for them, with a touch of sarcasm. "So
far," she said, "the population Maumsey, appeared to be quiet
exceptionally able-bodied."

"Goodness!" said Winnington--"I can't shew you more than two or three
cripples to a village. Maumsey only rejoices in two. My county school
will collect from the whole county. And I should never have found out
the half of them, if it hadn't been for Susy Amberley."

"How did she discover them?" asked Delia, without any sort of
cordiality.

"We--the County Council--put the enquiry into her hands. I showed
her--a bit. But she's done it admirably. She's a wonderful little
person, Susy. What the old parents will do without her when she goes to
London I can't think."

"Why is she going?"

Winnington shrugged his shoulders kindly.

"Wants a training--wants something more to do. Quite right--if it
makes her happy. You women have all grown so restless nowadays." He
laughed into the rather sombre face beside him. And the face lit
up--amazingly.

"Because the world's so _marvellous_," said Delia, with her passionate
look. "And there's so little time to explore it in. You men have always
known that. Now we women know it too."

He pondered the remark--half smiling.

"Well, you'll see a good deal of it before you've done," he said at
last. "Now come and look at what I've been trying to do for the women
who complained to you."

And he shewed her how everything had been arranged to please her, at
the cost of infinite trouble, and much expense. The woman with the
eight children had been moved into a spacious new cottage made out of
two old ones; the old granny alone in a house now too big for her, had
been induced to take in a prim little spinster, the daughter of a small
grocer just deceased; and the father of the deficient girl, for whom
Miss Dempsey had made herself responsible, received Winnington with a
lightening of his tired eyes, and taking him out of earshot of Delia,
told him how Bessie "had got through her trouble," and was now earning
money at some simple hand-work under Miss Dempsey's care.

"I didn't know you were doing all this!" said Delia, remorsefully, as
they walked along the village street. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I think I did tell you--once or twice. But you had other things to
think about."

"I hadn't!" said Delia, with angry energy. "I hadn't, you needn't make
excuses for me!"

He smiled at her, a little gravely, but said nothing--till they
reached a path leading to an isolated cottage--

"Here's a cripple at last!--Susy!--You here?"

For as the door opened to his knock, a lady rose from a low seat, and
faced them.

Winnington grasped her by the hand.

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