Delia Blanchflower

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Delia Blanchflower

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"Aye she's sorry now!"--said a stout farmer, bitterly, to his
neighbour--"now that she's led them as is even younger than herself
into trouble. My girl's in prison all along of her--and that woman as
they do say is at the bottom of this business."

The speaker was Kitty Foster's father. Kitty had just been sentenced to
six months' imprisonment for the burning of a cricket pavilion in the
Midlands, and her relations were sitting in shame and grief for her.

"Whoever 'tis as did it 'ull have a job to get away"--said the man he
addressed. "They've got a lot o' police out. Where's 'Liza Daunt, I
say? They're searching for her everywhere. Daunt's just come upon the
engine from Latchford--saw the fire from the train. He says he's been
tricked--a put-up job he says. There wasn't nothing wrong with his son,
he says, when he got to Portsmouth. If they do catch 'em, the police
will have to guard 'em safe. It won't do to let the crowd get at 'em.
They're fair mad. Oh, Lord!--it's caught another roof!"

And a groan rose from the fast-thickening multitude, as another wall
fell amid a shower of sparks and ashes, and the flames, licking up and
up, caught the high-pitched roof of the great hall, and ran along the
stone letters of the parapet, which spelt out the motto--"Except the
Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it." The fantastic
letters themselves, which had been lifted to their places before the
death of Shakespeare, seemed to dance in the flame like living and
tormented things.

Meanwhile in the courtyard, and on the side lawns, scores of persons
were busy removing furniture, pictures and tapestries. Winnington was
leading and organising the rescue parties, now inside, now outside the
house. And near him, under his orders, worked Paul Lathrop, in his
shirt sleeves, superhumanly active, and superhumanly strong--grinding
his teeth with rage sometimes, as the fire defeated one effort after
another to check it. Daunt, also was there, pouring out incoherent
confidences to the police, and distracted by the growing certainty that
his niece had been one of the chief authors of the plot. His children
naturally had been his first thought. But the Rector, who had just been
round to enquire for them at Mrs. Cresson's cottage, came back
breathless, shouting "all safe!"--and Daunt rushed off to help the
firemen; while Amberley reported to Susy the pitiable misery of Lily,
the little cripple, who had been shrieking for her father in wild
outbursts of crying, refusing to believe that he was not in the fire.
Susy, who loved the child, would have gladly gone to find her, and take
her home to the Rectory for the night. But, impossible to leave her
post at Delia's side, and this blazing spectacle that held the
darkness! Two village women, said the Rector, were in charge of the
children.

"No chance!" said Lathrop, bitterly, pausing for a moment beside
Winnington, while they both took breath--the sweat pouring from their
smoke-blackened faces.

"If one could get to the top of that window with the big hose--one
could reach the roof better"--panted Winnington, pointing to the still
intact double oriel which ran up through two stories of the building,
to the east of the doorway.

"I see!" Lathrop dashed away. And in a few seconds he and a fireman
could be seen climbing from a ladder upon a ledge, a carved
string-course, which connected the eastern and western oriels above the
main doorway. They crawled along the ledge like flies, clinging to
every projection, every stem of ivy, the fireman dragging the hose.

The crowd watched, all eyes. Winnington, after a rapid look or two,
turned away with the thought--"That fellow's done some rock-climbing in
his day!"

But against such a doom as had now gripped Monk Lawrence, nothing
availed. Lathrop and his companion had barely scaled the parapet of the
window when a huge central crash sent its resounding din circling round
the leafless woods, and the two climbing figures disappeared from view
amid a fresh rush of smoke and flame.

The great western chimney-stack had fallen. When the cloud of smoke
drifted away, a gaping cavity of fire was seen just behind the two men;
it could only be a matter of minutes before the wall and roof
immediately behind them came down upon them. The firemen shouted to
them from below. A long ladder was brought and run up to within twenty
feet of them. Lathrop climbed down to it over the scorched face of the
oriel, his life in jeopardy at every step. Then steadying himself on
the ladder,--and grasping a projection in the wall, he called to the
man above, to drop upon his shoulders. It was done, by a miracle--and
both holding on, the man above by the projections of the wall and
Lathrop by the ladder, descended, till the two were within reach of
safety.

A thin roar of cheers rose from the environing throng, scarcely audible
amid the greater roar of the flames. Lathrop, wearied, depressed, with
bleeding hands, came back to Winnington's side. Winnington looked
round. For the first time Lathrop saw through Mark's grey eyes the
generous heart within--unveiled.

"Splendid! Are you hurt?"

"Only scorched and scratched. Give me another job!"

"Come along then."

And thenceforward the two worked side by side, like brothers, in the
desperate attempt to save at least the Great Hall, and the beautiful
rooms adjoining; the Porch Room, with its Chatham memorials; the
library too, with its stores of seventeenth-century books, its busts,
and its portraits. But the flames rushed on and on, with a fiendish and
astounding rapidity. Fragments of news ran back to the onlookers. The
main staircase had been steeped in petrol--and sacks full of shavings
had been stored in the panelled spaces underneath it. Fire-lighters
heaped together had been found in the Red Parlour--to be dragged out by
the firemen--but again too late!--for the fire was already gnawing at
the room, like a wild prowling beast. A back staircase too had been
kindled with paraffin--the smell of it was everywhere. And thus urged,
a very demon of fire seemed to have seized on the beautiful place.
There was a will and a passion of destruction in the flames that
nothing could withstand. As the diamond-paned windows fell into
nothing-ness, the rooms behind shewed for a brief space; carved roofs,
stately fireplaces, gleaming for a last moment, before Time knew them
no more, and all that remained of them was the last vision of their
antique beauty, stamped on the aching memories of those who watched.

"Why did you let her come!" said France vehemently in Lady Tonbridge's
ear, with his eyes on Delia. "It's enough to kill her. She must know
who's done it!"

Lady Tonbridge shook her head despairingly, and both gazed, without
daring to speak to her, on the girl beside them. Madeleine had taken
one cold hand. France was torn with pity for her--but what comfort was
there to give! Her tears had dried. But there was something now in her
uncontrollable restlessness as she moved ghost-like along the front of
the spectators, pressing as near to the house as the police would
permit, scanning every patch of light or shadow, which suggested to
those who followed her, possession by some torturing fear--some terror
of worse still to come.

Meanwhile the police were thinking not only of the house, but still
more of its destroyers. They had a large number of men on the spot, and
a quick-witted inspector in charge. It was evident from many traces
that the incendiaries had only left the place a very short time before
the outbreak of the fire; they could not be far away. Scouts were flung
out on all the roads; search parties were in all the woods; every
railway station had been warned.

On the northern side, the famous Loggia, built by an Italianate owner
of the house, in the first half of the sixteenth century--a series of
open arches, with twisted marble pillars--ran along the house from
front to rear. It was approached on the south by a beautiful staircase,
of which the terra-cotta balustrading had been copied from a famous
villa on Como, and a similar staircase gave access to it from the
garden to the north. The fight for the Great Hall which the Loggia
adjoined, was being followed with agonised anxiety by the crowds. The
Red Parlour, with all its carvings and mouldings had gone, the porch
room was a furnace of fire, with black spars and beams hanging in
ragged ruin across it. The Great Hall seemed already tottering, and in
its fall, the Loggia too must go.

Then, as every eye hung upon the work of the firemen and the play of
the water, into the still empty space of the Loggia, and illumined by
the glare of the flames, there emerged with quiet step, the figure of a
woman. She came forward: she stood with crossed arms looking at the
crowd. And at the same moment, behind her, there appeared the form of a
child, a little fair-haired girl, hobbling on a crutch, in desperate
haste, and wailing--"Father!"

Delia saw them, and with one wild movement she was through the cordon
of police, and running for the house.

Winnington, at the head of his salvage corps, perceived her, and ran
too.

"Delia!--go back!--go back!"

"Gertrude!" she said, gasping--and pointed to the Loggia. And he had
hardly looked where all the world was looking, when a part of the roof
of the Hall at the back, fell suddenly outwards and northwards, in a
blaze of flame. Charred rafters stood out, hanging in mid air, and the
flames leapt on triumphant. At the same moment, evidently startled by
some sound behind her, the woman turned, and saw what the crowd
saw--the child, limping on its crutch, coming towards her, calling
incoherently.

Her own cry rang out, as she ran towards the cripple, waving her back.
And as she did so, came another thundering fall, another upward rush of
flame, as a fresh portion of the roof fell eastwards, covering the
Loggia and blotting out the figures of both woman and child.

With difficulty the police kept back the mad rush of the crowd. The
firemen swarmed to the spot.

But the child was buried deep under flaming ruin, where her father,
Daunt, who had rushed to save her, was only restrained by main force
from plunging after her, to his death. The woman they brought
out--alive. France, Delia and Winnington were beside her.

"Stand back!" shouted the mild old Rector--transformed into a
prophet-figure, his white hair streaming--as the multitude swayed
against the cordon of police. "Stand back! all of you--and pray--for
this woman!"

In a dead silence, men, shivering, took off their hats, and women
sobbed.

"Gertrude!" Delia called, in her anguish, as she knelt beside the
charred frame, over which France who was kneeling on the other side had
thrown his coat.

The dark eyes opened in the blackened face, the scorched lips unlocked.
A shudder ran through the dying frame.

"The child!--the child!"

And with that cry to heaven,--that protesting cry of an amazed and
conquered soul--Gertrude Marvell passed away.

* * * * *

Thus ended the First Act of Delia's life. When three weeks later, after
a marriage at which no one was present except the persons to be
married, Lady Tonbridge, and Dr. France, Winnington took his wife far
from these scenes to lands of summer and of rest, he carried with him a
Delia ineffaceably marked by this tragedy of her youth. Children, as
they come, will sometime re-kindle the natural joy in a face so lovely.
And till that time arrives Winnington's tenderness will be the
master-light of all her day. But there are sounds once heard that live
for ever in the mind. And in Delia's there will reverberate till death
that wail of a fierce and childless woman--that last cry of nature in
one who had defied nature--of womanhood in one who had renounced the
ways of womanhood: "_the child--the child_!"

Not long after the destruction of Monk Lawrence and the marriage of
Delia, Paul Lathrop left the Maumsey neighbourhood. His debts had been
paid by some unknown friend or friends, and he fell back into London
literary life, where he maintained a precarious but--to himself--not
unpleasant existence.

Miss Jackson, the science-mistress, went to Vancouver, married the
owner of a lumber camp, and so tamed her soul. Miss Toogood lived on,
rarely employed, and seldom going outside the tiny back parlour, with
its pictures of Winchester and Mr. Keble. But Lady Tonbridge and Delia
do their best to lighten the mild melancholy which grows upon her with
age; and a little red-haired niece who came to live with her, keeps her
old aunt's nerves alive and alert by various harmless vices--among them
an incorrigible interest in the Maumsey and Latchford youth. Marion
Andrews and Eliza Daunt disappeared together. They were not captured on
that terrible night when Gertrude Marvell, convinced that she could not
escape, and perhaps not much caring to escape, came back to look on the
ruin she had so long and carefully prepared, and perished in the heart
of it--not alone.

But such desperate happenings as the destruction of Monk Lawrence, to
whatever particular calamities they may lead, are but a backward ripple
on the vast and ceaseless tide of human efforts towards a new and
nobler order. Delia must still wrestle all her life with the meaning of
that imperious call to women which this century has sounded; and of
those further stages, upwards and onwards, to which the human spirit,
in Man or Woman, is perennially urged by the revealing forces that
breathe through human destiny. Two days after the death of Gertrude
Marvell, the immediate cause on which she and her fellows had wrought
such havoc, went down in Parliament to long and bitter eclipse. But the
end is not yet. And for that riddle of the Sphinx to which Gertrude and
her fellows gave the answer of a futile violence, generations more
patient and more wise, will yet find the fitting key.

THE END

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