Delia Blanchflower

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Delia Blanchflower

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"I thought you were already gone."

"No--they've put it off again for a week or two--no vacancy yet."

She shook hands formally with Delia. "I came to have another look at
this boy. Isn't he splendid?"

She pointed to a grinning child of five sitting on the edge of the
kitchen table, and dangling a pair of heavily ironed legs. The mother
proudly shewed them. He had been three months in the Orthopaedic
Hospital, she told Delia. The legs twisted with rickets had been broken
and set twice, and now he was "doing fine." She set him down, and made
him walk. "I never thought to see him do that!" she said, her wan face
shining. "And it's all his doing--" she pointed to Winnington, "and
Miss Susy's."

Meanwhile Susy and Winnington were deep in conversation--very
technical much of it--about a host of subjects they seemed to have in
common.

Delia silent and rather restless, watched them both, the girl's sweet,
already faded, face, and Winnington's expression. When they emerged
from the cottage Susy said shyly to Delia--

"Won't you come to tea with me some day next week?"

"Thank you. I should like to. But my maid is very ill. Else I should be
in London."

"Oh, I'm very sorry. May I come to you?"

Delia thanked her coldly. She could have beaten herself for a rude,
ungracious creature; yet for the life of her she could not command
another manner. Susy drew back. She and Winnington began to talk again,
ranging over persons and incidents quite unknown to Delia--the frank
talk, full of matter of comrades in a public service. And again Delia
watched them acutely--jealous--yet not in any ordinary sense. When Susy
turned back towards the Rectory, Delia said abruptly--

"She's helped you a great deal?"

"Susy!" He went off at score, ending with--"What France and I shall do
without her, I don't know. If we could only get more women--_scores
more women_--to do the work! There we sit, perched up aloft on the
Council, and what we want are the women to advise us, and the women's
hands--_to do the little things_--which make just all the difference!"

She was silent a moment, and then said sorely--"I suppose that means,
that if we did all the work we might do--we needn't bother about the
vote."

He turned upon with animation--

"I vow I wasn't thinking about the vote!"

"Miss Amberley doesn't seem to bother about it."

Winnington's voice shewed amusement.

"I can't imagine Susy a suff. It simply isn't in her."

"I know plenty of suffragists just as good and useful as she is," said
Delia, bristling.

Winnington did not immediately reply. They had left the village behind,
and were walking up the Maumsey lane in a gathering darkness, each
electrically conscious of the other. At last he said in a changed
tone--

"Have I been saying anything to wound you? I didn't mean it."

She laughed unsteadily.

"You never say anything to wound me. I was only--a kind of fretful
porcupine--standing up for my side."

"And the last thought in my mind to-night was to attack your 'side,'"
he protested.

Her tremulous sense drank in the gentleness of his voice, the joy of
his strong, enveloping presence, and the sweetness of her own surrender
which had brought him back to her, the thought of it vibrating between
them, unspoken. Until, suddenly, at the door of the Abbey, Winnington
halted and took her by both hands.

"I must go home. Good-night. Have you got books to amuse you?"

"Plenty."

"Poor child!--all alone! But you'll have Lady Tonbridge to-morrow."

"How do you know? She mayn't come."

"I'm going there now. I'll make her. You--you won't be doing any more
embroidery to-night?"

He looked at her slyly. Delia laughed out.

"There!--when one tries to be feminine, that's how you mock!"

"'_Mock_!' I admired. Good-night!--I shall be here to-morrow."

He was gone--into the darkness.

Delia entered the lonely house, in a bewilderment of feeling. As she
passed Gertrude's deserted sitting-room on her way to the staircase,
she saw that the parlourmaid had lit a useless lamp there. She went in
to put it out. As she did so, a torn paper among the litter on the
floor attracted her notice. She stooped and took it up.

It seemed to be a fragment of a plan--a plan of a house. It shewed two
series of rooms, divided by a long passage. One of the rooms was marked
"Red Parlour," another, "Hall," and at the end of the passage, there
were some words, clearly in Gertrude Marvell's handwriting--

"_Garden door, north_."

With terror in her heart, Delia brought the fragment to the lamp, and
examined every word and line of it.

Recollections flashed into her mind, and turned her pale. That what she
held was part of a general plan of the Monk Lawrence ground-floor, she
was certain--dismally certain. And Gertrude had made it. Why?

Delia tore the paper into shreds and burnt the shreds. Afterwards she
spent an oppressed and miserable night. Her friend reproached her, on
the one side; and Winnington, on the other.

Chapter XIV

Lady Tonbridge was sitting in the window-seat of a little sitting-room
adjoining her bedroom at Maumsey Abbey. That the young mistress of
Maumsey had done her best to make her guest comfortable, that guest
most handsomely acknowledged. Some of the few pretty things which the
house contained had been gathered there. The chintz covered sofa and
chairs, even though the chintz was ugly, had the pleasant country-house
look, which suggests afternoon tea, and chatting friends; a bright
fire, flowers and a lavish strewing of books completed the hospitable
impression.

Yet Madeleine Tonbridge had by no means come to Maumsey Abbey, at
Winnington's bidding, as to a Land of Cockaigne. She at all events
regarded Delia as a "handful," and was on the watch day by day
for things outrageous. She could not help liking the beautiful
creature--almost loving her! But Delia was still a "Daughter of
Revolt"--apparently unrepentant; that dangerous fanatic, her pretended
chaperon, was still in constant correspondence with her; the papers
teemed with news of militant outrages, north, south, east and west; and
riotous doings were threatened for the meetings of Parliament by
Delia's Society. On all these matters Delia shut her proud lips. Indeed
her new reticence with regard to militant doings and beliefs struck
Lady Tonbridge as more alarming than the young and arrogant defiance
with which on her first arrival she had been wont to throw them at the
world. Madeleine could not rid herself of the impression during these
weeks that Delia had some secret cause of anxiety connected with the
militant propaganda. She was often depressed, and there were moments
when she shewed a nervousness not easily accounted for. She scarcely
ever mentioned Gertrude Marvell; and she never wrote her letters in
public; while those she received, she would carry away to the gun
room--which she had now made her own particular den--before she opened
them.

At the same time, if Weston recovered from the operation, in three
weeks or so it would be possible for Delia to leave Maumsey; and it was
generally understood that she would then join her friend in London,
just in time for the opening of Parliament. For the moment, it was
plain she was not engaged in any violent doings. But who could answer
for the future?

And meanwhile, what was Mark Winnington about? It was all very well to
sit there trifling with the pages of the _Quarterly Review_! In her
moments of solitude by night or day, during the five days she had
already spent at Maumsey, Madeleine had never really given her mind to
anything else but the engrossing question. "Is he in love with her--or
is he not?"

Of course she had foreseen--had feared--the possibility of it, from
that very first moment, almost--when Winnington had written to her
describing the terms of Bob Blanchflower's will, and his own acceptance
of the guardianship.

Yet why "feared"? Had she not for years desired few things so sincerely
as to see Winnington happily married? As to that old tragedy, with its
romantic effect upon his life, her first acquiescence in that effect,
as something irrevocable, had worn away with time. It now seemed to her
an intolerable thing that Agnes Clay's death should forever stand
between Winnington and love. It was positively anti-social--bad
citizenship--that such a man as Mark Winnington should not produce
sons and daughters for the State, when all the wastrels and cheats in
creation were so active in the business.

All the same she had but rarely ventured to attack him on the subject,
and the results had not been encouraging. She was certain that he had
entered upon the guardianship of Delia Blanchflower in complete
single-mindedness--confident, disdainfully confident, in his own
immunity; and after that first outburst into which friendship had
betrayed her, she had not dared to return to the subject. But she had
watched him--with the lynx eyes of a best friend; and that best friend,
a woman to whom love affairs were the most interesting things in
existence. In which, of course, she knew she was old-fashioned, and
behind the mass of the sex, now racing toward what she understood was
called the "economic independence of women"--_i.e._ a life without man.

But in spite of watching, she was much perplexed--as to both the
persons concerned. She had now been nearly a week at Maumsey, in
obedience to Delia's invitation and Winnington's urging. The
opportunity indeed of getting to know Mark's beautiful--and
troublesome--ward, more intimately, was extremely welcome to her
curiosity. Hitherto Gertrude Marvell had served as an effective barrier
between Delia and her neighbours. The neighbours did not want to know
Miss Marvell, and Miss Marvell, Madeleine Tonbridge was certain, had
never intended that the neighbours should rob her of Delia.

But now Gertrude Marvell had in some strange sudden way vacated her
post; and the fortress lay open to attack and capture, were anyone
strong enough to seize it. Moreover Delia's visitor had not been
twenty-four hours in the house before she had perceived that Delia's
attitude to her guardian was new, and full of suggestion to the shrewd
bystander. Winnington had clearly begun to interest the girl
profoundly--both in himself, and in his relation to her. She now wished
to please him, and was nervously anxious to avoid hurting or offending
him. She was always conscious of his neighbourhood or his mood; she was
eager--though she tried to conceal it--for information about him; and
three nights already had Lady Tonbridge lingered over Delia's bedroom
fire, the girl on the rug at her feet, while the elder woman poured out
her recollections of Mark Winnington, from the days when she and he had
been young together.

As to that vanished betrothed, Agnes Clay,--the heroine of Winnington's
brief engagement--Delia's thirst for knowledge, in a restless,
suppressed way, had been insatiable. Was she jealous of that poor
ghost, and of all those delicate, domestic qualities with which her
biographer could not but invest her? The daughter of a Dean of
Wanchester--retiring, spiritual, tender,--suggesting a cloistered
atmosphere, and _The Christian Year_--she was still sharp in
Madeleine's recollection, and that lady felt a certain secret and
mischievous zest in drawing her portrait, while Delia, her black brows
drawn together, her full red mouth compressed, sat silent.

Then--Wilmington as a friend!--upon that theme indeed Madeleine had
used her brightest colours. And to make this passive listener
understand what friendship meant in Wilmington's soul, it had been
necessary for the speaker to tell her own story, as much at least as it
was possible for her to tell, and Delia to hear. A hasty marriage--"my
own fault, my dear, as much as my parents'!"--twelve years of torment
and humiliation at the hands of a bad man, descending rapidly to the
pit, and quite willing to drag his wife and child with him, ending in a
separation largely arranged by Winnington--and then--

"We retired, Nora and I, on a decent allowance, my own money really,
only like a fool, I had let it all get into Alfred's hands. We took a
house at Richmond. Nora was fifteen. For two years my husband paid the
money. Then he wrote to say he was tired of doing without his daughter,
and he required her to live with him for six months in the year, as a
condition of continuing the allowance. I refused. We would sooner both
of us have thrown ourselves into the Thames. Alfred blustered and
threatened--but he could do nothing--except cut off the allowance,
which he did, at once. Then Mark Winnington found me the cottage here,
and made everything smooth for us. I wouldn't take any money from him,
though he was abominably ready to give it us! But he got me lessons--he
got me friends. He's made everybody here feel for us, and respect us.
He's managed the little bits of property we've got left--he's watched
over Nora--he's been our earthly Providence--and we both adore him!"

On which the speaker, with a flickering smile and tear-dashed eyes, had
taken Delia's face in her two slender hands--

"And don't be such a fool, dear, as to imagine there's been anything in
it, ever, but the purest friendship and good-heartedness that ever
bound three people together! My greatest joy would be to see him
married--to a woman worthy of him--if there is one! And he I suppose
will find his reward in marrying Nora--to some nice fellow. He begins
to match-make for her already."

Delia slowly withdrew herself.

"And he himself doesn't intend to marry?" She asked the question,
clasping her long arms round her knees, as she sat on the floor, her
dark eyes--defiantly steady on her guest's face.

Lady Tonbridge could hear her own answer.

"L'homme propose! Let the right woman try!" Whereupon Delia, a
delicious figure, in a slim white dressing-gown, a flood of curly brown
hair falling about her neck and shoulders, had sprung up, and bidden
her guest a hasty good-night.

One other small incident she recalled.

_A propos_ of some anxious calculation made by Winnington's sister
Alice Matheson one day in talk with Lady Tonbridge--Delia being
present--as to whether Mark could possibly afford a better motor than
the "ramshackle little horror" he was at present dependent on, Delia
had said abruptly, on the departure of Mrs. Matheson--

"But surely the legacy my father left Mr. Winnington would get a new
motor!"

"But he hasn't taken it, and never will!" Lady Tonbridge had cried,
amazed at the girl's ignorance.

"Why not?" Delia had demanded, almost fiercely, looking very tall, and
oddly resentful.

Why not? "Because one doesn't take payment for that sort of thing!" had
been Mark's laughing explanation, and the only explanation that she,
Madeleine, had been able to get out of him. She handed it on--to
Delia's evident discomfort. So, all along, this very annoying--though
attaching--young woman had imagined that Winnington was being
handsomely paid for putting up with her?

* * * * *

And Winnington?

Here again, it was plain there was a change of attitude, though what it
meant Madeleine could not satisfactorily settle with herself. In the
early days of his guardianship he had been ready enough to come to her,
his most intimate woman-friend, and talk about his ward, though always
with that chivalrous delicacy which was his gift among men. Of late he
had been much less ready to talk; a good sign! And now, since Gertrude
Marvell's blessed departure, he was more at Maumsey than he had ever
been before. He seemed indeed to be pitting his own influence against
Miss Marvell's, and in his modest way, yet consciously, to be taking
Delia in hand, and endeavouring to alter her outlook on life; clearing
away, so far as he could, the atmosphere of angry, hearsay propaganda
in which she had spent her recent years, and trying to bring her face
to face with the deeper loves and duties and sorrows which she in her
headstrong youth knew so little about, while they entered so profoundly
into his own upright and humane character.

Well, but did all this mean _love_?--the desire of the man for the
woman.

Madeleine Tonbridge pondered it. She recollected a number of little
acts and sayings, throwing light upon his profound feeling for the
girl, his sympathy with her convictions, her difficulties, her wild
revolts against existing abuses and tyrannies. "I learn from her"--he
had said once, in conversation,--"she teaches me many things."
Madeleine could have laughed in his face--but for the passionate
sincerity in his look.

One thing she perceived--that he was abundantly roused on the subject
of that man Lathrop's acquaintance with his ward. Lathrop's name had
not been mentioned since Lady Tonbridge's arrival, but she received the
impression of a constant vigilance on Winnington's part, and a certain
mystery and unhappiness on Delia's. As to the notion that such a man as
Paul Lathrop could have any attraction for such a girl as Delia
Blanchflower, the idea was simply preposterous,--except on the general
theory that no one is really sane, and every woman "is at heart a
rake." But of course there was the common interest, or what appeared to
be a common interest in this militant society to which Delia was still
so intolerably committed! And an unscrupulous man might easily make
capital out of it.

At this stage in the rambling reverie which possessed her, Lady
Tonbridge was aware of footsteps on the gravel outside. Winnington? He
had proposed to take Delia for a ride that afternoon, to distract her
mind from Weston's state, and from the operation which was to take
place early the following morning. She drew the curtain aside.

Paul Lathrop!

Madeleine felt herself flushing with surprise and indignation. The
visitor was let in immediately. It surely was her duty to go down and
play watchdog.

She firmly rose. But as she did so, there was a knock at her door, and
Delia hurriedly entered.

"I--I thought I'd better say--Mr. Lathrop's just come to see me--on
business. I'm so sorry, but you won't mind my coming to say so?"

Lady Tonbridge raised her eyebrows.

"You mean--you want to see him alone? All right. I'll come down
presently."

Delia disappeared.

* * * * *

For more than half an hour did that "disreputable creature," as Lady
Tonbridge roundly dubbed him, remain closeted with Delia, in Delia's
drawing-room. Towards the end of the time the visitor overhead was
walking to and fro impatiently, vowing to herself that she was
bound--positively bound to Winnington--to go down and dislodge the man.
But just as she was about to leave her room, she again heard the front
door open and close. She ran to the window just in time to see Lathrop
departing--and Winnington arriving!--on foot and alone. She watched
the two men pass each other in the drive--Winnington's start of haughty
surprise--and Lathrop's smiling and, as she thought, insolent greeting.
It seemed to her that Winnington hesitated--was about to stop and
address the intruder. But he finally passed him by with the slightest
and coldest recognition. Lathrop's fair hair and slouching shoulders
disappeared round a corner of the drive. Winnington hurried to the
front door and entered.

Lady Tonbridge resolutely threw herself into an arm-chair and took up a
novel.

"Now let them have it out! I don't interfere."

* * * * *

Meanwhile Delia, with a red spot of agitation on either cheek, was
sitting at the old satin-wood bureau in the drawing-room, writing a
cheque. A knock at the door disturbed her. She half rose, to see
Wilmington open and close it.

A look at his face startled her. She sank back into her chair, in
evident confusion. But her troubled eyes met his appealingly.

Wilmington's disturbance was plain.

"I had ventured to think--to hope--" he began, abruptly--"that although
you refused to give me your promise when I asked it, yet that you would
not again--or so soon again--receive Mr. Lathrop--privately."

Delia rose and came towards him.

"I told Lady Tonbridge not to come down. Was that very wrong of me?"

She looked at him, half smiling, half hanging her head.

"It was unwise--and, I think, unkind!" said Winnington, with energy.

"Unkind to you?" She lifted her beautiful eyes. There was something
touching in their strained expression, and in her tone.

"Unkind to yourself, first of all," he said, firmly. "I must repeat
Miss Delia, that this man is not a fit associate for you or any young
girl. You do yourself harm by admitting him--by allowing him to see you
alone--and you hurt your friends."

Delia paused a moment.

"Then you don't trust me at all?" she said at last, slowly.

Winnington melted. How pale she looked! He came forward and took her
hand--

"Of course I trust you! But you don't know--you are too young. You
confess you have some business with Mr. Lathrop that you can't tell
me--your guardian; and you have no idea to what misrepresentations you
expose yourself, or with what kind of a man you have to deal!"

Delia withdrew her hand, and dropped into a chair--her eyes on the
carpet.

"I meant--" she said, and her tone trembled--"I did mean to have told
you everything to-day."

"And now--now you can't?"

She made no reply, and in the silence he watched her closely. What
could account for such an eclipse of all her young vivacity? It was
clear to him that that fellow was entangling her in some monstrous
way--part and parcel no doubt of this militant propaganda--and
calculating on developments. Winnington's blood boiled. But while he
stood uncertain, Delia rose, went to the bureau where she had been
writing, brought thence a cheque, and mutely offered it.

"What is this?" he asked.

"The money you lent me."

And to his astonishment he saw that the cheque was for L500, and was
signed "Delia Blanchflower."

"You will of course explain?" he said, looking at her keenly. Suddenly
Delia's embarrassed smile broke through.

"It's--it's only that I've been trying to pay my debts!"

His patience gave way.

"I'm afraid I must tell you--very plainly--that unless you can account
to me for this cheque, I must entirely refuse to take it!"

Delia put her hands behind her, like a scolded child.

"It is my very own," she protested, mildly. "I had some ugly jewels
that my grandmother left me, and I have sold them--that's all."

Winnington's grey eyes held her.

"H'm--and--has Mr. Lathrop had anything to do with the sale?"

"Yes!" She looked up frankly, still smiling. "He has managed it for
me."

"And it never occurred to you to apply to your guardian in such a
matter? Or to your lawyer?"

She laughed--with what he admitted was a very natural scorn. "Ask my
guardian to provide me with the means of helping the 'Daughters'--when
he regards us all as criminals? On the contrary, I wanted to relieve
your conscience, Mr. Winnington!"

"I can't say you have succeeded," he said, grimly, as he began to pace
the drawing-room, with slow steps, his hands in his pockets.

"Why not? Now--everything you give me--can go to the right things--what
you consider the right things. And what is my own--my very own--I can
use as I please."

Yet neither tone nor gesture were defiant, as they would have been a
few weeks before. Rather her look was wistful--appealing--as she stood
there, a perplexing, but most charming figure, in her plain black
dress, with its Quakerish collar of white lawn.

He turned on her impetuously.

"And Mr. Lathrop has arranged it all for you?"

"Yes. He said he knew a good deal about jewellers. I gave him some
diamonds. He took them to London, and he has sold them."

"How do you know he has even treated you honestly!"

"I am certain he has done it honestly!" she cried indignantly. "There
are the letters--from the jewellers--" And running to the bureau, she
took thence a packet of letters and thrust them into Winnington's
hands.

He looked them through in silence,--turning to her, as he put them
down.

"I see. It is of course possible that this firm of jewellers have paid
Mr. Lathrop a heavy commission behind the scenes, of which you know
nothing. But I don't press that. Indeed I will assume exactly the
contrary. I will suppose that Mr. Lathrop has acted without any profit
to himself. If so, in my eyes it only makes the matter worse--for it
establishes a claim on you. Miss Delia!--" his resolute gaze held
her--"I do not take a farthing of this money unless you allow me to
write to Mr. Lathrop, and offer him a reasonable commission for his
services!"

"No--no! Impossible!"

She turned away from him, towards the window, biting her lip--in sharp
distress.

"Then I return you this cheque"--he laid it down beside her. "And I
shall replace the money,--the L500--which I ought never to have allowed
you to spend as you have done, out of my own private pocket."

She stood silent, looking into the garden, her chest heaving. She
thought of what Lady Tonbridge had told her of his modest means--and
those generous hidden uses of them, of which even his most intimate
friends only got an occasional glimpse. Suddenly she went up to him--

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