Delia Blanchflower

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Delia Blanchflower

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Susy herself, in a white frock, with touches of blue at her waist, and
in her shady hat, was moving about with cups of tea, taking that place
of Mrs. Matthews's lieutenant, which was always tacitly given her by
Winnington and his sister on festal occasions at Bridge End. As she
passed Winnington, who had been captured by Mrs. Andrews, he turned
with alacrity--

"My dear Miss Susy! What are you doing? Give me that cup!"

"No--please! I like doing it!" And she passed on, smiling, towards Lady
Tonbridge, whose sharp eyes had seen the trivial contact between
Winnington and the girl. How the mere sound of his voice had changed
the aspect of the young face! Poor child--poor child!

"How well you look Susy! Such a pretty dress!" said Madeleine tenderly
in the girl's ear.

Susy flushed.

"You really think so? Mother gave it me for a birthday present." She
looked up with her soft, brown eyes, which always seemed to have in
them, even when they smiled, a look of pleading--as of someone at a
disadvantage. At the same moment Winnington passed her.

"_Could_ you go and talk to Miss Andrews?" he said, over his shoulder,
so that only she heard.

Susy went obediently across the room to where a silent, dark-haired
girl sat by herself, quite apart from the rest of the circle. Marion
Andrews was plain, with large features and thick wiry hair. Maumsey
society in general declared her "impossible." She rarely talked; she
seemed to have no tastes; and the world believed her both stupid and
disagreeable. And by contrast with the effusive amiabilities of her
mother, she could appear nothing else. Mrs. Andrews indeed had a way of
using her daughter as a foil to her own qualities, which must have
paralysed the most self-confident, and Marion had never possessed any
belief in herself at all.

As Susy Amberley timidly approached her, and began to make
conversation, she looked up coldly, and hardly answered. Meanwhile Mrs.
Andrews was pouring out a flood of talk under which the uncomfortable
Winnington--for it always fell to him as host to entertain her--sat
practising endurance. She was a selfish, egotistical woman, with a vast
command of sloppy phrases, which did duty for all that real feeling or
sympathy of which she possessed uncommonly little. On this occasion she
was elaborately dressed,--overdressed--in a black satin gown, which
seemed to Winnington, an ugly miracle of trimming and tortured "bits."
Her large hat was thick with nodding plumes, and beside her spotless
white gloves and showy lace scarf, her daughter's slovenly coat and
skirt, of the cheapest ready-made kind, her soiled gloves, and clumsy
shoes, struck even a man uncomfortably. That poor girl seemed to grow
plainer and more silent every year.

He was just shaking himself free from the mother, when Dr. and Mrs.
France were announced. The doctor came in with a furrowed brow, and a
preoccupied look. After greeting Mrs. Matheson, and the other guests,
he caught a glance of enquiry from Winnington and went up to him.

"The evening paper is full of the most shocking news!" he said, with
evident agitation. "There has been an attempt on Hampton Court--and two
girls who were caught breaking windows in Piccadilly have been badly
hurt by the crowd. A bomb too has been found in the entrance of one of
the tube stations. It was discovered in time, or the results might have
been frightful."

"Good Heavens--those women again!" cried Mrs. Andrews, lifting hands
and eyes.

No one else spoke. But in everyone's mind the same thought emerged. At
any moment the door might open, and Delia Blanchflower and her chaperon
might come in.

The doctor drew Winnington aside into a bow-window.

"Did you know that the lady living with Miss Blanchflower was a member
of this League of Revolt?"

"Yes. You mean they are implicated in these things?"

"Certainly! I am told Miss Marvell was once an official--probably is
still. My dear Winnington--you can't possibly allow it!" He spoke with
the freedom of an intimate friend.

"How can I stop it," said Winnington, frowning. "My ward is of age. If
Miss Marvell does anything overt--But she has promised to do nothing
violent down here--they both have."

The doctor, an impetuous Ulsterman with white hair, and black eyes,
shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "When women once take to this kind
of thing"--he was interrupted by Mrs. Andrews' heavy voice rising
above the rather nervous and disjointed conversation of the other
guests--"If women only knew where their real power lies, Mrs. Matheson!
Why, 'the hand that rocks the cradle'--"

A sudden crash was heard.

"Oh, dear"--cried Lady Tonbridge, who had upset a small table with a
plate of cakes on it across the tail of Mrs. Andrews' dress--"how
stupid I am!"

"My gown!--my gown!" cried Mrs. Andrews in an anguish, groping for the
cakes.

In the midst of the confusion the drawing-room door had opened, and
there on the threshold stood Delia Blanchflower, with a slightly-built
lady behind her.

Winnington turned with a start and went forward to greet them. Dr.
France left behind in the bow-window observed their entry with a
mingling of curiosity and repulsion. It seemed to him that their entry
was that of persons into a hostile camp,--the senses all alert against
attack. Delia was of course in black, her face sombrely brilliant in
its dark setting of a plain felt hat, like the hat of a Cavalier
without its feathers. "She knows perfectly well we have been talking
about her!" thought Dr. France,--"that we have seen the newspapers. She
comes in ready for battle--perhaps thirsty for it! She is
excited--while the woman behind her is perfectly cool. The two
types!--the enthusiast--and the fanatic. But, by Jove, the girl is
handsome!"

Through the sudden silence created by their entry, Delia made her way
to Mrs. Matheson. Holding her head very high, she introduced "My
chaperon--Miss Marvell." And Winnington's sister nervously shook hands
with the quietly smiling lady who followed in Miss Blanchflower's wake.
Then while Delia sat down beside the hostess, and Winnington busied
himself in supplying her with tea, her companion fell to the Rector's
care.

The Rector, like Winnington, was not a gossip, partly out of scruples,
but mainly perhaps because of a certain deficient vitality, and he had
but disjointed ideas on the subject of the two ladies who had now
settled at the Abbey. He understood, however, that Delia, whom he
remembered as a child, was a "Suffragette," and that Mr. Winnington,
Delia's guardian, disapproved of the lady she had brought with her,
why, he could not recollect. This vague sense of something "naughty"
and abnormal gave a certain tremor to his manner as he stood beside
Gertrude Marvell, shifting from one foot to the other, and nervously
plying her with tea-cake.

Miss Marvell's dark eyes meanwhile glanced round the room, taking in
everybody. They paused a moment on the figure of the doctor, erect and
spare in a closely-buttoned coat, on his spectacled face, and
conspicuous brow, under waves of nearly white hair; then passed on. Dr.
France watched her, following the examining eyes with his own. He saw
them change, with a look--the slightest passing look--of recognition,
and at the same moment he was aware of Marion Andrews, sitting in the
light of a side window. What had happened to the girl? He saw her dark
face, for one instant, exultant, transformed; like some forest hollow
into which a sunbeam strikes. The next, she was stooping over a copy of
"Punch" which lay on the table beside her. A rush of speculation ran
through the doctor's mind.

"And you are settled at Maumsey?" Mrs. Matheson was saying to Delia;
aware as soon as the question was uttered that it was a foolish one.

"Oh no, not settled. We shall be there a couple of months."

"The house will want some doing up, Mark thinks."

"I don't think so. Not much anyway. It does very well."

There was an entire absence of girlish softness or shyness in the
speaker's manner, though it was both courteous and easy. The
voice--musically deep--and the splendid black eyes, that looked so
steadily at her, intimidated Mark Winnington's gentle sister.

Mrs. Andrews, whose dress, after Susy's ministration, had been declared
out of danger, bent across the tea-table, all smiles and benevolence
again, the plumes in her black hat nodding--

"It's like old times to have the Abbey open again, Miss Blanchflower!
Every week we used to go to your dear grandmother, for her Tuesday
work-party. I'm afraid you'll hardly revive _that_!"

Delia brought a rather intimidating brow to bear upon the speaker.

"I'm afraid not."

Lady Tonbridge, who had already greeted Delia as a woman naturally
greets the daughter of an old friend, came up as Delia spoke to ask for
a second cup of tea, and laid her hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Very sorry to miss you yesterday. I won't insult you by saying you've
grown. How about the singing? You used to sing I remember when I stayed
with you."

"Yes--but I've given it up. I took lessons at Munich last spring. But I
can't work at it enough. And if one can't work, it's no good."

"Why can't you work at it?"

Delia suddenly looked up in her questioner's face. Her gravity broke up
in a broad smile.

"Because there's so much else to do."

"What else?"

The look of excited defiance in the girl's eyes sharpened.

"Do you really want to know?"

"Certainly. The Suffrage and that kind of thing?" said Madeleine
Tonbridge lightly.

"The Suffrage and that kind of thing!" repeated Delia, still smiling.

Captain Andrews who was standing near, and whose martial mind was all
in confusion, owing to Miss Blanchflower's beauty, put in an eager
word.

"I never can understand, Miss Blanchflower, why you ladies want the
vote! Why, you can twist us round your little fingers!"

Delia turned upon him.

"But I don't want to twist you round my little finger!" she said, with
energy. "It wouldn't give me the smallest pleasure."

"I thought you wanted to manage us," said the Captain, unable to take
his eyes from her. "But you do manage us already!"

Delia's glance showed her uncertain whether the foe was worth her
steel.

"We want to manage ourselves," she said at last, smiling indifferently.
"We say you do it badly."

The Captain attempted to spar with her a little longer. Winnington
meanwhile stood, a silent listener, amid the group round the tea-table.
He--and Dr. France--were both acutely conscious of the realities behind
this empty talk; of the facts recorded in the day's newspapers; and of
the connection between the quiet lady in grey who had come in with
Delia Blanchflower, and the campaign of public violence, which was now
in good earnest alarming and exasperating the country.

Where was the quiet lady in grey? Winnington was thinking too much
about his ward to keep a constant eye upon her. But Dr. France observed
her closely, and he presently saw what puzzled him anew. After a
conversation, exceedingly bland, though rather monosyllabic, on Miss
Marvell's part, with the puzzled and inarticulate Rector, Delia's
chaperon had gently and imperceptibly moved away from the tea-table.
That she had been very coldly received by the company in general was no
doubt evident to her. She was now sitting beside that strange girl
Marion Andrews--to whom, as the Doctor had seen, she had been
introduced--apparently--by the Rector. And as Dr. France caught sight
of her, she and Marion Andrews rose and walked to a window opening on
the garden, apparently to look at the blaze of autumn flowers outside.

But it was the demeanour of the girl which again drew the doctor's
attention. Marion Andrews, who never talked, was talking fast and
earnestly to this complete stranger, her normally sallow face one glow.
It was borne in afresh upon Dr. France that the two were already
acquainted; and he continued to watch them as closely as politeness
allowed.

* * * * *

"Will you come and look at the house?" said Winnington to his ward.
"Not that we have anything to shew--except a few portraits and old
engravings that might interest you. But it's rather a dear old place,
and we're very fond of it."

Delia went with him in silence. He opened the oval panelled
dining-room, and shewed her the portraits of his father, the venerable
head of an Oxford college, in the scarlet robes of a D.D., and others
representing his forebears on both sides--quiet folk, painted by decent
but not important painters. Delia looked at them and hardly spoke. Then
they went into Mrs. Matheson's room, which was bright with pretty
chintzes, books and water-colours, and had a bow-window looking on the
garden. Still Delia said nothing, beyond an absent Yes or No, or a
perfunctory word of praise. Winnington became very soon conscious of
some strong tension in her, which was threatening to break down; a
tension evidently of displeasure and resentment. He guessed what the
subject of it might be, but as he was most unwilling to discuss it with
her, if his guess were correct, he tried to soothe and evade her by
such pleasant talk as the different rooms suggested. The house through
which he led her was the home, evidently, of a man full of enthusiasms
and affections, caring intensely for many things, for his old school,
of which there were many drawings and photographs in the hall and
passages, for the two great games in which he himself excelled; for
poetry and literature--the house overflowed everywhere with books; for
his County Council work, and all the projects connected with it; for
his family and his intimate friends.

"Who is that?" asked Delia, pointing to a charcoal drawing in Mrs.
Matheson's sitting-room, of a noble-faced woman of thirty, in a
delicate evening dress of black and white.

"That is my mother. She died the year after it was taken."

Delia looked at it in silence a moment. There was something in its
dignity, its restfulness, its touch of austerity which challenged her.
She said abruptly--"I want to speak to you please, Mr. Winnington. May
we shut the door?"

Winnington shut the door of his sister's room, and returned to his
guest. Delia had turned very white.

"I hear Mr. Winnington you have reversed an order I wrote to our agent
about one of the cottages. May I know your reasons?"

"I was very sorry to do so," said Winnington gently; "but I felt sure
you did not understand the real circumstances, and I could not come and
discuss them with you."

Delia stood stormily erect, and the level light of the October
afternoon streaming in through a west window magnified her height, and
her prophetess air.

"I can't help shocking you, Mr. Winnington. I don't accept what you
say. I don't believe that covering up horrible things makes them less
horrible. I want to stand by that girl. It is cruel to separate her
from her old father!"

Winnington looked at her in distress and embarrassment.

"The story is not what you think it," he said earnestly. "But it is
really not fit for your ears. I have given great thought and much time
to it, yesterday and to-day. The girl--who is mentally deficient--will
be sent to a home and cared for. The father sees now that it is the
best. Please trust it to me."

"Why mayn't I know the facts!" persisted Delia, paler than before.

A flash of some quick feeling passed through Winnington's eyes.

"Why should you? Leave us older folk, dear Miss Delia, to deal with
these sorrowful things."

Indignation blazed up in her.

"It is for women to help women," she said, passionately. "It is no good
treating us who are grown up--even if we are young--like children any
more. We intend to _know_--that we may protect--and save."

"I assure you," said Winnington gravely, "that this poor girl shall
have every care--every kindness. So there is really no need for you to
know. Please spare yourself--and me!"

He had come to stand by her, looking down upon her. She lifted her eyes
to his unwillingly, and as she caught his smile she was invaded by a
sudden consciousness of his strong magnetic presence. The power in the
grey eyes, and in the brow over-hanging them, the kind sincerity
mingled with the power, and the friendliness that breathed from his
whole attitude and expression, disarmed her. She felt herself for a
moment--and for the first time--young and ignorant,--and that
Winnington was ready to be in the true and not merely in the legal
sense, her "guardian," if she would only let him.

But the moment of weakening was soon over. Her mind chafed and twisted.
Why had he undertaken it--a complete stranger to her! It was most
embarrassing--detestable--for them both!

And there suddenly darted through her memory the recollection of a
certain item in her father's will. Under it Mr. Winnington received a
sum of L4,000 out of her father's estate, "in consideration of our old
friendship, and of the trouble I am asking him to undertake in
connection with my estates,"--or words to that effect.

Somehow, she had never yet paid much attention to that clause in the
will. It occurred in a list of a good many other legacies, and had been
passed over by the lawyers in explaining the will to her, as something
entirely in the natural course of things. But the poisonous thought
suggested itself--"It was that which bribed him!--he would have given
it up, but for that!" He might not want it for himself--very
possibly!--but for his charities, his Cripple School and the rest. Her
face stiffened.

"If you have arranged with her father, of course I can't interfere,"
she said coldly. "But don't imagine, please, Mr. Winnington, for one
moment, that I accept your view of the things I 'needn't know.' If I am
to do my duty to the people on this estate--"

"I thought you weren't going to live on the estate?" he said, lifting
his eyebrows.

"Not at once--not this winter." She was annoyed to feel herself
stammering. "But of course I have a responsibility--"

The kindly laugh in his grey eyes faded.

"Yes--I quite admit that,--a great responsibility," he said slowly. "Do
you mind if I mention another subject?"

"The meetings?" she said, quickly. "You mean that?"

"Yes--the meetings. I have just seen the placard in the village."

"Well?" Her loveliness in defiance dazzled him, but he held on stoutly.

"You said nothing to me about these meetings the other day."

"You never asked me!"

He paused a moment.

"No--but was it quite--quite fair to me--to let me suppose that the
drawing-room meeting at Maumsey, which you kindly gave up, was the only
meeting you had in view?"

He saw her breath fluttering.

"I don't know what you supposed, Mr. Winnington! I said nothing."

"No. But you let me draw an inference--a mistaken inference.
However--let that be. Can I not persuade you--now--to give up the
Latchford meeting, and any others of the same kind you may have ahead?"

She flamed at him.

"I refuse to give them up!" she said, setting her teeth. "I have as
much right to my views as you, Mr. Winnington! I am of full age, and I
intend to work for them."

"Setting fire to houses--which is what your society is advocating--and
doing--hardly counts as 'views,'" he said, with sudden sternness.
"Risking the lives, or spoiling the property of one's fellow
countrymen, is not the same thing as political argument."

"It's _our_ argument--" she said passionately.--"The men who are
denying us the vote understand nothing else!"

The slightest humorous quiver in Winnington's strong mouth enraged her
still further. But he spoke with most courteous gravity.

"Then I can't persuade you to give up these meetings? I should of
course make no objection whatever, if these were ordinary Suffrage
meetings. But the Society you are going to represent and collect money
for is a Society that exists _to break the law_. And its members
have--just lately--come conspicuously into collision with the law. Your
father would have protested, and I am bound to protest--in his name."

"I cannot give them up."

He was silent a moment.

"If that is so"--he said at last--"I must do my best to protect you."

"I don't want any protection!"

"I am a magistrate, as well as your guardian. You must allow me to
judge. There is a very bitter feeling abroad, after these--outrages--of
the last few days. The village where you are going to speak has some
rowdy elements--drawn from the brickfields near it. You will certainly
want protection. I shall see that you get it."

He spoke with decision. Delia bit her lip.

"We prefer to risk our lives," she said at last. "I mean--there isn't
any risk!--but if there were--our lives are nothing in comparison with
the cause!"

"You won't expect your friends to agree with you," he said drily; then,
still holding her with an even keener look, he added--

"And there is another point in connection with these meetings which
distresses me. I see that you are speaking on the same platform--with
Mr. Paul Lathrop--"

"And why not?"--she flashed, the colour rushing to her cheeks.

He paused, walked away with his hands in his pockets, and came back
again.

"I have been making some enquiries about him. He is not a man with whom
you ought to associate--either in public, or in private."

She gave a sound--half scorn--half indignation which startled him.

"You mean--because of the divorce case?"

He looked at her amazed.

"That is what I meant. But--I certainly do not wish to discuss it with
you. Will you not take it from me that Mr. Lathrop is not--cannot be--a
man whom as a young unmarried woman you ought to receive in your
house--or with whom you should be seen in public."

"No, indeed I won't take it from you!" she said passionately. "Miss
Marvell knows--Miss Marvell told me. He ran away with some one he
loved. Her husband was _vile_! But she couldn't get any help--because
of the law--the abominable law--which punishes women--and lets men go
free. So they went away together, and after a little she died. Alter
your law, Mr. Winnington!--make it equal for men and women--and then
we'll talk."

As she spoke--childishly, defiant--Winnington's mind was filled with a
confusion of clashing thoughts--the ideals of his own first youth
which made such a speech in the mouth of a girl of twenty-one almost
intolerable to him--and the moral conditions--slowly gained--of his
maturity. He agreed with what she said. And yet it was shocking to him
to hear her say it.

"I don't quarrel with you as to that," he said, gravely, after a
moment. "Though I confess that in my belief you are too young to have
any real opinion about it. But there was much in the case which
concerned Mr. Lathrop, of which you _can_ have no idea. I repeat--he
is not a fit companion for you--and you do yourself harm by appearing
with him--in public or private."

"Miss Marvell approves"--said Delia obstinately.

Winnington's look grew sterner.

"I appeal again to your father's memory," he said with energy.

He perceived her quickened breath, but she made no no reply.

He walked away from her, and stood looking out of the window for a
little. When he came back to her, it was with a change of manner and
subject.

"I should like you to understand that I have been doing all I _could_
to carry out your wishes with regard to the cottages."

He drew a paper out of his pocket, on which he had made some notes
representing his talk that morning with the agent of the Maumsey
estates. But in her suppressed excitement she hardly listened to him.

"It isn't exactly _business_, what we've done," he said at last, as he
put up the papers; "but we wanted you to have your way--about the old
woman--and the family of children." He smiled at her. "And the estate
can afford it."

Delia thanked him ungraciously. She felt like a child who is offered
sixpence for being good at the dentist's. It was his whole position
towards her--his whole control and authority--that she resented. And to
be forced to be grateful to him at the same time, compelled to
recognise the anxious pains he had taken to please her in nine-tenths
of the things she wanted, was really odious: she could only chafe under
it.

He took her back to the drawing-room. Delia walked before him in
silence. She was passionately angry; and yet beneath the stormy
currents of the upper mind, there were other feelings, intermittently
active. It was impossible to hate him!--impossible to help liking him.
His frankness and courtesy, his delicacy of feeling and touch forced
themselves on her notice. "I daresay!"--she said; "--but that's the
worst of it. If Papa hadn't done this fatal, _foolish_ thing, of course
we should have made friends!"

* * * * *

The Amberleys walked home together when the party dispersed. Mrs.
Amberley opened the discussion on the newcomers.

"She is certainly handsome, but rather bold-looking. Didn't you think
so, father?"

"I wasn't drawn to her. But she took no account of us," said the
Rector, with his usual despondent candour. In truth he was not thinking
about Miss Blanchflower, but only about the possible departure of his
daughter, Susy.

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