Delia Blanchflower

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Delia Blanchflower

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"I shall be much obliged if you will make your decision as soon as
possible, so that both the lawyer and I may know how to proceed."

Yours faithfully,

DELIA BLANCHFLOWER.

Mark Winnington put down the letter. Its mixture of defiance, patronage
and persuasion--its young angry cleverness--would have tickled a
naturally strong sense of humour at any other time. But really the
matter was too serious to laugh at.

"What on earth am I to do!"

He sat pondering, his mind running through a number of associated
thoughts, of recollections old and new; those Indian scenes of fifteen
years ago; the story told him by the Swedish lady; recent incidents and
happenings in English politics; and finally the tone in which
Euphrosyne's father had described the snatching of his own innocent
from the clutches of Miss Blanchflower.

Then it occurred to him to look at the will. He read it through; a
tedious business; for Sir Robert had been a wealthy man and the
possessions bequeathed--conditionally bequeathed--to his daughter were
many and various. Two or three thousand acres of land in one of the
southern counties, bordering on the New Forest; certain large interests
in Cleveland ironstone and Durham collieries, American and South
African shares, Canadian mortgage and railway debentures:--there was
enough to give lawyers and executors work for some time, and to provide
large pickings for the Exchequer. Among the legacies, he noticed the
legacy of L4000 to himself.

"Payment for the job!" he thought, and shook his head, smiling.

The alternative arrangements made for transferring the trust to the
Public Trustee, should Winnington decline, and for vesting the
guardianship of the daughter in the Court of Chancery, subject to the
directions of the will, till she should reach the age of twenty-five,
were clear; so also was the provision that unless a specific signed
undertaking was given by the daughter on attaining her twenty-fifth
birthday, that the moneys of the estate would not be applied to the
support of the "militant suffrage" propaganda, the trust was to be made
permanent, a life income of L2000 a year was to be settled on Miss
Blanchflower, and the remainder, i.e. by far the major part of Sir
Robert's property, was to accumulate, for the benefit of his daughter's
heirs should she have any, and of various public objects. Should Miss
Blanchflower sign the undertaking and afterwards break it, the Public
Trustee was directed to proceed against her, and to claim the
restitution of the property, subject always to her life allowance.

"Pretty well tied up," thought Winnington, marvelling at the strength
of feeling, the final exasperation of a dying man, which the will
betrayed. His daughter must somehow--perhaps without realising it--have
wounded him to the heart.

He began to climb again through the forest that he might think the
better. What would be the situation, supposing he undertook what his
old friend asked of him?

He himself was a man of moderate means and settled habits. His small
estate and modest house which a widowed sister shared with him during
six months in the year, left him plenty of leisure from his own
affairs, and he had filled that leisure, for years past, to
overflowing, with the various kinds of public work that fall to the
country gentleman with a conscience. He was never idle; his work
interested him, and there was no conceit in his quiet knowledge that he
had many friends and much influence. Since the death of the girl to
whom he had been engaged for six short months, fifteen years before
this date, he had never thought of marriage. The circumstances of her
death--a terrible case of lingering typhoid--had so burnt the pity of
her suffering and the beauty of her courage into his mind, that natural
desire seemed to have died with her. He had turned to hard work and the
bar, and equally hard physical exercise, and so made himself master
both of his grief and his youth. But his friendships with women had
played a great part in his subsequent life. A natural chivalry, deep
based, and, in manner, a touch of caressing charm, soon evoked by those
to whom he was attached, and not easily confounded in the case of a man
so obviously manly with any lack of self-control, had long since made
him a favourite of the sex. There were few women among his
acquaintances who did not covet his liking; and he was the repository
of far more confidences than he had ever desired. No one took more
trouble to serve; and no one more carelessly forgot a service he had
himself rendered, or more tenaciously remembered any kindness done him
by man, woman or child.

His admiration for women was mingled indeed often with profound pity;
pity for the sorrows and burdens that nature had laid upon them, for
their physical weakness, for their passive role in life. That beings so
hampered could yet play such tender and heroic parts was to him
perennially wonderful, and his sense of it expressed itself in an
unconscious homage that seemed to embrace the sex. That the homage was
not seldom wasted on persons quite unworthy of it, his best women
friends were not slow to see; but in this he was often obstinate and
took his own way.

This mingling in him of an unfailing interest in the sex with an entire
absence of personal craving, gave him a singularly strong position with
regard to women, of which he had never yet taken any selfish advantage;
largely, no doubt, because of the many activities, most of them
disinterested, by which his life was fed and freshened; as a lake is by
the streams which fill it.

He was much moved by his old friend's letter, and he walked about
pondering it, till the morning was almost gone. The girl's position
also seemed to him particularly friendless and perilous, though she
herself, apparently, would be the last person to think so, could she
only shake herself free from the worrying restrictions her father had
inflicted on her. Her letter, and its thinly veiled wrath, shewed quite
plainly that the task of any guardian would be a tough one. Miss
Blanchflower was evidently angry--very angry--yet at the same time
determined, if she could, to play a dignified part; ready, that is, to
be civil, on her own conditions. The proposal to instal as her
chaperon, instantly, without a day's delay, the very woman denounced in
her father's last letter, struck him as first outrageous, and then
comic. He laughed aloud over it.

Certainly--he was not bound in any way to undertake such a business.
Blanchflower had spoken the truth when he said that he had no right to
ask it. And yet--

His mind dallied with it. Suppose he undertook it, on what lines could
he possibly run it? His feeling towards the violent phase of the
"woman's movement," the militancy which during the preceding three or
four years had produced a crop of outrages so surprising and so ugly,
was probably as strong as Blanchflower's own. He was a natural
Conservative, and a trained lawyer. Methods of violence in a civilised
and constitutional State, roused in him indignant abhorrence. He could
admit no excuse for them; at any rate no justification.

But, fundamentally? What was his real attitude towards this wide-spread
claim of women, now so general in many parts of the world admitted
indeed in some English Colonies, in an increasing number of the
American states, in some of the minor European countries--to share the
public powers and responsibilities of men? Had he ever faced the
problem, as it concerned England, with any thoroughness or candour? Yet
perhaps Englishmen--all Englishmen--had now got to face it.

Could he discover any root of sympathy in himself with what were
clearly the passionate beliefs of Delia Blanchflower, the Valkyrie of
twenty-one, as they were also the passionate beliefs of the little
Swedish lady, the blue-stocking of fifty? If so, it might be possible
to guide, even to control such a ward, for the specified three years,
at any rate, without exciting unseemly and ridiculous strife between
her and her guardian.

"I ought to be able to do it"--he thought--"without upsetting the
apple-cart!"

For, as he examined himself he realised that he held no closed mind on
the subject of the rights or powers or grievances of women. He had
taken no active part whatever in the English suffragist struggle,
either against woman suffrage or for it; and in his own countryside it
mattered comparatively little. But he was well aware what strong forces
and generous minds had been harnessed to the suffrage cause, since Mill
first set it stirring; and among his dearest women friends there were
some closely connected with it, who had often mocked or blamed his own
indifference. He had always thought indeed, and he thought still--for
many reasons--that they attributed a wildly exaggerated importance to
the vote, which, as it seemed to him, went a very short way in the case
of men. But he had always been content to let the thing slide; having
so much else to do and think about.

Patience then, and respect for honest and disinterested conviction, in
any young and ardent soul; sharp discrimination between lawful and
unlawful means of propaganda, between debate, and stone-throwing; no
interference with the first, and a firm hand against the
second:--surely, in that spirit, one might make something of the
problem? Winnington was accustomed to be listened to, to get round
obstacles that other men found insuperable. It was scarcely conceit,
but a just self-confidence which suggested to him that perhaps Miss
Blanchflower would not prove so difficult after all. Gentleness,
diplomacy, decision,--by Jove, they'd all be wanted! But his legal
experience (he had been for some years a busy barrister), and his later
life as a practical administrator had not been a bad training in each
and all of these qualities.

Of course, if the girl were merely obstinate and stupid, the case might
indeed be hopeless. But the picture drawn by the Swedish woman of the
"Valkyrie" on her black mare, of the ardent young lecturer, facing her
indifferent or hostile audience with such pluck and spirit, dwelt with
him, and affected him strongly. His face broke into amusement as he
asked himself the frank question--"Would you do it, if you hadn't heard
that tale?--if you knew that your proposed ward was just a plain
troublesome chit of a schoolgirl, bitten with suffragism?"

He put the question to himself, standing on a pinnacle of shadowed
rock, from which the world seemed to sink into blue gulfs beneath him,
till on the farther side of immeasurable space the mountains
re-emerged, climbing to the noonday sun.

And he answered it without hesitation. Certainly, the story told him
had added a touch of romance to the bare case presented by the batch of
letters:--had lent a force and point to Robert Blanchflower's dying
plea, it might not otherwise have possessed. For, after all, he,
Winnington, was a very busy man; and his life was already mortgaged in
many directions. But as it was--yes--the task attracted him.

At the same time, the twinkle in his grey eyes shewed him ironically
aware of himself.

"Understand, you old fool!--the smallest touch of philandering--and the
whole business goes to pot. The girl would have you at her mercy--and
the thing would become an odious muddle and hypocrisy, degrading to
both. Can you trust yourself? You're not exactly made of flint: Can you
play the part as it ought to be played?"

Quietly, his face sank into rest. For him, there was that in memory,
which protected him from all such risks, which had so protected him for
fifteen years. He felt quite sure of himself. Ever since his great loss
he had found his natural allies and companions among girls and young
women as much as among men. The embarrassment of sex seemed to have
passed away for him, but not the charm. Thus, he took what for him was
the easier path of acceptance. Kindly and scrupulous as he was, it
would have been hard for him in any case to say No to the dead, more
difficult than to say it to the living. Yes!--he would do what was
possible. _The Times_ that morning contained a long list of outrages
committed by militant suffragists--houses burnt down, meetings
disturbed, members attacked. In a few months, or weeks, perhaps,
without counsel to aid or authority to warn her, the Valkyrie might be
running headlong into all the perils her father foresaw. He pledged
himself to protect her if he could.

* * * * *

The post which left the hotel that evening took with it a short note
from Mark Winnington to Messrs. Morton, Manners & Lathom, accepting the
functions of executor, guardian and trustee offered him under Sir
Robert Blanchflower's will, and appointing an interview with them at
their office; together with a somewhat longer one addressed to "Miss
Delia Blanchflower, Claridge's Hotel, London.

"DEAR MISS BLANCHFLOWER, Pray let me send you my most sincere
condolence. Your poor father and I were once great friends, and I am
most truly sorry to hear of his death.

"Thank you for your interesting letter. But I find it impossible to
refuse your father's dying request to me, nor can I believe that I
cannot be of some assistance to his daughter. Let me try. We can always
give it up, if we cannot work it, but I see no reason why, with good
will on both sides, we should not make something of it.

"I am returning to London ten days from now, and hope to see you within
a fortnight.

"Please address, 'Junior Carlton Club, Pall Mall.'"

Believe me,
Yours very truly,
"MARK WINNINGTON."

On his arrival, in London, Winnington found a short reply awaiting him.

"DEAR MR. WINNINGTON,--As you please. I am however shortly leaving for
Maumsey with Miss Marvell, who, as I told you, has undertaken to live
with me as my chaperon.

"We shall hope to see you at Maumsey."

Yours faithfully,
"DELIA BLANCHFLOWER."

A few days later, after long interviews with some very meticulous
solicitors, a gentleman, very much in doubt as to what his reception
would be, took train for Maumsey and the New Forest, with a view to
making as soon as possible a first call upon his ward.

Chapter III

"We ought soon to see the house."

The speaker bent forward, as the train, sweeping round a curve, emerged
from some thick woods Into a space of open country. It was early
September and a sleepy autumnal sunshine lay upon the fields. The
Stubbles just reaped ran over the undulations of the land in silky
purples and gold; the blue smoke from the cottages and farms hung
poised in mid air; the eye could hardly perceive any movement in the
clear stream beside the line, as it slipped noiselessly by over its
sandy bed; it seemed a world where "it was always afternoon"; and the
only breaks in its sunny silence came from the occasional coveys of
partridges that rose whirring from the harvest-fields as the train
passed.

Delia Blanchflower looked keenly at the English scene, so strange to
her after many years of Colonial and foreign wandering. She thought,
but did not say--"Those must be my fields--and my woods, that we have
just passed through. Probably I rode about them with Grandpapa. I
remember the pony--and the horrid groom I hated!" Quick the memory
returned of a tiny child on a rearing pony, alone with a sulky groom,
who, out of his master's sight, could not restrain his temper, and
struck the pony savagely and repeatedly over the head, to an
accompaniment of oaths; frightening out of her wits the little girl who
sat clinging to the creature's neck. And next she saw herself marching
in erect--a pale-faced thing of six, with a heart of fury,--to her
grandfather, to demand justice on the offender. And grandpapa had done
her bidding then as always; the groom was dismissed that day. It was
only grandmamma who had ever tried to manage or thwart her; result,
perpetual war, decided often for the time by the brute force at command
of the elder, but ever renewed. Delia's face flamed again as she
thought of the most humiliating incident of her childhood; when
Grandmamma, unable, to do anything with her screaming and stamping
self, had sent in despair for a stalwart young footman, and ordered him
to "carry Miss Delia up to the nursery." Delia could still feel herself
held, wriggling and shrieking face downwards, under the young man's
strong arm, unable either to kick or to scratch, while Grandmamma half
fearful, half laughing, watched the dire ascent from the bottom of the
stairs.

"Male tyranny--my first taste of it!" thought Delia, smiling at
herself. "It was fated then that I should be a militant."

She looked across at her friend and travelling companion, half inclined
to tell the story; but the sight of Gertrude Marvell's attitude and
expression checked the trivial reminiscence on her lips.

"Are you tired?" she said, laying her hand on the other's knee.

"Oh, no. Only thinking."

"Thinking of what?"--

"Of all there is to do."--

A kind of flash passed from one face to the other, Delia's eyes darkly
answering. They looked at each other for a little, as though in silent
conversation, and then Delia turned again to the landscape outside.

Yes, there was the house, its long, irregular line with the village
behind it. She could not restrain a slight exclamation as she caught
sight of it, and her friend opposite turned interrogatively.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing--only there's the Abbey. I don't suppose I've seen it since I
was twelve."

The other lady put up an eye-glass and looked where Miss Blanchflower
pointed; but languidly, as though it were an effort to shake herself
free from pre-occupying ideas. She was a woman of about thirty-five,
slenderly made, with a sallow, regular face, and good, though
short-sighted eyes. The eyes were dark, so was the hair, the features
delicate. Under the black shady hat, the hair was very closely and
neatly coiled. The high collar of the white blouse, fitting tightly to
the slender neck, the coat and skirt of blue serge without ornament of
any kind, but well cut, emphasized the thinness, almost emaciation, of
the form. Her attitude, dress, and expression conveyed the idea of
something amazingly taut and ready--like a ship cleared for action. The
body with its clothing seemed to have been simplified as much as
possible, so as to become the mere instrument of the will which
governed it. No superfluity whatever, whether of flesh on her small
bones, or of a single unnecessary button, fold, or trimming on her
dress, had Gertrude Marvell ever allowed herself for many years. The
general effect was in some way formidable; though why the neat
precision of the little lady should convey any notion of this sort, it
would not at first sight have been easy to say.

"How old did you say it is?"--she asked, after examining the distant
building, which could be now plainly seen from the train across a
stretch of green park.

"Oh, the present building is nothing--a pseudo-Gothic monstrosity,
built about 1830," laughed Delia; "but there are some old remains and
foundations of the abbey. It is a big, rambling old place, and I should
think dreadfully in want of doing up. My grandfather was a bit of a
miser, and though he was quite rich, he never spent a penny he could
help."

"All the better. He left the more for other people to spend." Miss
Marvell smiled--a slight, and rather tired smile, which hardly altered
the face.

"Yes, if they are allowed to spend it!" said Delia, with a shrug. "Oh
well, anyway the house must be done up--painted and papered and that
kind of thing. A trustee has got to see that things of that sort are
kept in order, I suppose. But it won't have anything to do with me,
except that for decency's sake, no doubt, he'll consult me. I shall be
allowed to choose the wall-papers I suppose!"

"If you want to," said the other drily.

Delia's brows puckered.

"We shall have to spend some time here, you know, Gertrude! We may as
well have something to do."

"Nothing that might entangle us, or take too much of our thoughts,"
said Miss Marvell, gently, but decidedly.

"I'm afraid I like furnishing," said Delia, not without a shade of
defiance.

"And I object--because I know you do. After all--you understand as
well as I do that _every day_ now is important. There are not so many
of us, Delia! If you're going to do real work, you can't afford to
spend your time or thoughts on doing up a shabby house."

There was silence a moment. Then Delia said abruptly--"I wonder when
that man will turn up? What a fool he is to take it on!"

"The guardianship? Yes, he hardly knows what he's in for." A touch of
grim amusement shewed itself for a moment in Miss Marvell's quiet face.

"Oh, I daresay he knows. Perhaps he relies on what everyone calls his
'influence.' Nasty, sloppy word--nasty sloppy thing! Whenever I'm
'influenced,' I'm degraded!" The young shoulders straightened
themselves fiercely.

"I don't know. It has its uses," said the other tranquilly.

Delia laughed radiantly.

"O well--if one can make the kind of weapon of it you do. I don't mean
of course that one shouldn't be rationally persuaded. But that's a
different thing. 'Influence' makes me think of canting clergymen, and
stout pompous women, who don't know what they're talking about, and
can't argue--who think they've settled everything by a stale
quotation--or an appeal to 'your better self'--or St. Paul. If Mr.
Winnington tries it on with 'influence'--we'll have some fun."

Delia returned to her window. The look her companion bent upon her was
not visible to her. It was curiously detached--perhaps slightly
ironical.

"I'm wondering what part I shall play in the first interview!" said
Miss Marvell, after a pause. "I represent the first stone in Mr.
Winnington's path. He will of course do his best to put me out of it."

"How can he?" cried Delia ardently. "What can he do? He can't send for
the police and turn you out of the house. At least I suppose he could,
but he certainly won't. The last thing a gentleman of his sort wants is
to make a scandal. Every one says, after all, that he is a nice
fellow!"--the tone was unconsciously patronising--"It isn't his fault
if he's been placed in this false position. But the great question for
me is--how are we going to manage him for the best?"

She leant forward, her chin on her hands, her sparkling eyes fixed on
her friend's face.

"The awkward thing is"--mused Miss Marvell--"that there is so little
_time_ in which to manage him. If the movement were going on at its old
slow pace, one might lie low, try diplomacy, avoid alarming him, and so
forth. But we've no time for that. It is a case of blow on blow--action
on action--and the publicity is half the battle."

"Still, a little management there must be, to begin with!--because
I--we--want money, and he holds the purse-strings. Hullo, here's the
station!"

She jumped up and looked eagerly out of the window.

"They've sent a fly for us. And there's the station-master on the
lookout. How it all comes back to me!"

Her flushed cheek showed a natural excitement. She was coming back as
its mistress to a house where she had been happy as a child, which she
had not seen for years. Thoughts of her father, as he had been in the
old days before any trouble had arisen between them, came rushing
through her mind--tender, regretful thoughts--as the train came slowly
to a standstill.

But the entire indifference or passivity of her companion restrained
her from any further expression. The train stopped, and she descended
to the platform of a small country station, alive apparently with
traffic and passengers.

"Miss Blanchflower?" said a smiling station-master, whose countenance
seemed to be trying to preserve the due mean between welcome to the
living and condolence for the dead, as, hat in hand, he approached the
newcomers, and guided by her deep mourning addressed himself to Delia.

"Why, Mr. Stebbing, I remember you quite well," said Delia, holding out
her hand. "There's my maid--and I hope there's a cart for the luggage.
We've got a lot."

A fair-haired man in spectacles, who had also just left the train,
turned abruptly and looked hard at the group as he passed them. He
hesitated a moment, then passed on, with a curious swinging gait, a
long and shabby over-coat floating behind him--to speak to the porter
who was collecting tickets at the gate opening on the road beyond.

Meanwhile Delia had been accosted by another gentleman, who had been
sitting reading his _Morning Post_ on the sunny platform, as the train
drew up. He too had examined the new arrivals with interest, and while
Delia was still talking to the station-master, he walked up to her.

"I think you are Miss Blanchflower: But you won't remember me." He
lifted his hat, smiling.

Delia looked at him, puzzled.

"Don't you remember that Christmas dance at the Rectory, when you were
ten, and I was home from Sandhurst?"

"Perfectly!--and I quarrelled with you because you wouldn't give me
champagne, when I'd danced with you, instead of lemonade. You said what
was good for big boys wasn't good for little girls--and I called you a
bully--"

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