Delia Blanchflower

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"I thought her beautiful!--but I'm sorry for Mr. Winnington!" exclaimed
Susy, a red spot of excitement or indignation in each delicate cheek.

"Mrs. Matheson told me they will only do exactly what they wish--that
they won't take her brother's advice. Very wrong, very wrong." The
Rector shook his grey head. "Young women were different in my youth."

Mrs. Amberley sighed, and Susy biting her lip, knew that her own
conduct was perhaps more in question than Miss Blanchflower's.

They reached home in silence. Susy went to light her father's candles
in his modest book-littered study. Then she put her mother on the sofa
in the drawing-room, rubbed Mrs. Amberley's cold hands and feet, and
blew up the fire.

Suddenly her mother threw an arm round her neck.

"Oh, Susy, must you go?"

Susy kissed her.

"I should come back"--she said after a moment in a low troubled voice.
"Let me get this training, and then if you want me, darling, I'll come
back."

"Can't you be happy with us, Susy?"

"I want to _know_ something--and _do_ something," said Susy, with
intensity--evading the question. "It's such a big world, mother! I'll
be better worth having afterwards."

Mrs. Amberley said nothing. But a little later she went into her
husband's study.

"Frank--I think we'll have to let her," she said piteously.

The Rector looked up assentingly, and put his hand in his wife's.

"It's strange how different it all seems nowadays," said Mrs. Amberley,
in her low quavering voice. "If I'd wanted to do what Susy wants, my
mother would have called me a wicked girl to leave all my duties--and
I shouldn't have dared. But we can't take it like that, Frank,
somehow."

"No," said the Rector slowly. "In the old days it used to be only
_duties_ for the young--now it's rights too. It's God's will."

"Susy loves us, Frank. She's a good girl."

"She's a good girl--and she shall do what she thinks proper," said the
Rector, rising heavily.

So they gave their consent, and Susy wrote her application to Guy's
hospital. Then they all three lay awake a good deal of the
night,--almost till the autumn robin began to sing in the little
rectory garden.

As for Susy, in the restless intervals of restless sleep, she was
always back in the Bridge End drawing-room watching Delia Blanchflower
come in, with Mark Winnington behind. How glorious she looked! And
every day he would be seeing her, every day he would be thinking about
her--just because she was sure to give him so much trouble.

"And what right have _you_ to complain?" she asked herself, trampling
on her own pain. Had he ever said a word of love to her, ever shewn
himself anything else than the kind and sympathetic friend--sometimes
the inspiring teacher in the causes he had at heart? Never! And
yet--insensibly--his smile, his word of praise or thanks, the touch of
his firm warm hand, the sound of his voice, the look in his eyes--it
was for them she had now learned to live. Yes!--and because she could
no longer trust herself, she must go. She would not fail or harass him;
she was his friend. She would go away and scrub hospital floors, and
polish hospital taps. That would tame the anguish in her, and some day
she would be strong again--and come back--to those beloved ones who had
given her up--so tenderly.

Chapter VIII

The whole of Maumsey and its neighbourhood had indeed been thrown into
excitement by certain placards on the walls announcing three public
meetings to be held--a fortnight later--by the "Daughters of
Revolt"--at Latchford, Brownmouth, and Frimpton. Latchford was but
fifteen miles from Maumsey, and frequent trains ran between them.
Brownmouth and Frimpton, also, were within easy distance by rail, and
the Maumseyites were accustomed to shop at either. So that a wide
country-side felt itself challenged--invaded; at a moment when a series
of startling outrages--destruction of some of the nation's noblest
pictures, in the National Gallery and elsewhere, defacement of
churches, personal attacks on Ministers--by the members of various
militant societies, especially "The League of Revolt," had converted an
already incensed public opinion into something none the less ugly, none
the less alarming, because it had as yet found no organised expression.
The police were kept hard at work protecting open-air meetings on the
Brownmouth and Frimpton beaches, from an angry populace who desired to
break them up; every unknown woman who approached a village or strolled
into a village church, was immediately noticed, immediately reported
on, by hungry eyes and tongues alert for catastrophe; and every empty
house had become an anxiety to its owners.

And of course the sting of the outrage lay in the two names which
blazed in the largest of black print from the centre of the placards.
"The meeting will be addressed by Gertrude Marvell (D.R.), Delia
Blanchflower (D.R.), and Paul Lathrop."

Within barely two months of her father's death, this young lady to be
speaking on public platforms, in the district where she was still a
new-comer and a stranger, and flaunting in the black and orange of this
unspeakable society!--such was the thought of all quiet folk for miles
round. The tide of callers which had set in towards Maumsey Abbey
ceased to flow; neighbours who had been already introduced to her, old
friends of her grandparents, passed Delia on the road with either the
stiffest of bows or no notice at all. The labourers stared at her, and
their wives, those deepest well-heads of Conservatism in the country,
were loud in reprobation. Their astonishment that "them as calls
theirselves ladies" should be found burning and breaking, was always,
in Winnington's ears, a touching thing, and a humbling. "Violence and
arson" they seemed to say, "are good enough for the likes of us--you'd
expect it of us. But _you_--the glorified, the superfine--who have your
meals brought you regular, more food than you can eat, and more clothes
than you can wear--_you_!"

So that, underlying the country women's talk, and under the varnish of
our modern life, one caught the accents and the shape of an old
hierarchical world; and the man of sympathy winced anew under the
perennial submission and disadvantage of the poor.

Meanwhile Delia's life was one long excitement. The more she realised
the disapproval of her neighbours, the more convinced she was that she
was on the right road. She straightened her girlish back; she set her
firm red mouth. Every morning brought reams of letters and reports from
London, for Gertrude Marvell was an important member of the
"Daughters'" organisation, and must be kept informed. The reading of
them maintained a constant ferment in Delia. In any struggle of women
against men, just as in any oppression of women by men, there is an
element of fever, of madness, which poisons life. And in this element
Delia's spirit lived for this brief hour of her youth. Led by the
perpetual influence of the older mind and imagination at her side, she
was overshadowed with the sense of women's wrongs, haunted by their
grievances, burnt up by a flame of revolt against fate, against
society, above all, against men, conceived as the age-long and
irrational barrier in the path of women. It was irrational, and
therefore no rational methods were any good. Nothing but waspishly
stinging and hurting this great Man-Beast, nothing but defiance of all
rules and decorums, nothing but force--of the womanish kind--answering
to force, of the masculine kind, could be any use. Argument was
foolish. They--the Suffragists--had already stuffed the world with
argument; which only generated argument. To smash and break and burn,
in more senses than one, remained the only course, witness Nottingham
Castle, and the Hyde Park railings. And if a woman's life dashed itself
to pieces in the process, well, what matter? The cause would only be
advanced.

One evening, not long after the tea-party at Bridge End, a group of
persons, coming from different quarters, converged quietly, in the
autumn dusk, on Maumsey Abbey. Marion Andrews walked in front, with a
Miss Foster, the daughter of one of the larger farmers in the
neighbourhood; and a short limping woman, clinging to the arm of a
vigorously-built girl, the Science Mistress of the small but ancient
Grammar School of the village, came behind. They talked in low voices,
and any shrewd bystander would have perceived the mood of agitated
expectancy in which they approached the house.

"It's wonderful!" said little Miss Toogood, the lame dressmaker, as
they turned a corner of the shrubbery, and the rambling south front
rose before them,--"_wonderful_!--when you think of the people that
used to live here! Why, old Lady Blanchflower looked upon you and me,
Miss Jackson, as no better than earwigs! I sent her a packet of our
leaflets once by post. Well--_she_ never used to give me any work, so
she couldn't take it away. But she got Mrs. David Jones at Thring Farm
to take away hers, and Mrs. Willy Smith, the Vet's wife, you
remember?--and two or three more. So I nearly starved one winter; but
I'm a tough one, and I got through. And now there's one of _us_ sits in
the old lady's place! Isn't that a sign of the times?"

"But of course!" said her companion, whose face expressed a kind of
gloomy ardour. "We're winning. We must win--sometime!"

The cheerfulness of the words was oddly robbed of its effect by the
tragic look of the speaker. Miss Toogood's hand pressed her arm.

"I'm always so sorry"--murmured the dressmaker--"for those
others--those women--who haven't lived to see what we're going to see,
aren't you?"

"Yes," assented the other, adding--with the same emotional
emphasis--"But they've all helped--every woman's helped! They've all
played their parts."

"Well, I don't know about Lady Blanchflower!" laughed Miss Toogood,
happily.

"What did she matter? The Antis are like the bits of stick you put into
a hive. All they do is to stir up the bees."

Meanwhile Marion Andrews was mostly silent, glancing restlessly however
from side to side, as though she expected some spy, some enemy--her
mother?--to emerge upon them from the shadows of the shrubbery. Her
companion, Kitty Foster, a rather pretty girl with flaming red hair,
the daughter of a substantial farmer on the further side of the
village, chattered unceasingly, especially about the window-breaking
raid in which she had been concerned, the figure she had cut at the
police court, the things she had said to the magistrate, and the
annoyance she had felt when her father paid her fine.

"They led me a life when they got me home. And mother's been so ill
since, I had to promise I'd stay quiet till Christmas anyway. But then
I'm off! It's fine to feel you're doing something real--something hot
and strong--so that people can't help taking notice of you. That's what
I say to father, when he shouts at me--'we're not going to _ask_ you
now any more--we've asked long enough--we're going to _make_ you do
what we want.'"

And the girl threw back her head excitedly. Marion vaguely assented,
and the talk beside her rambled on, now violent, now egotistical, till
they reached the Maumsey door.

* * * * *

"Now that we've got women like you with us--it can't be long--it can't
be long!" repeated Miss Toogood, clasping her hands, as she looked
first at Delia, and then at the distant figure of Miss Marvell, who in
the further drawing-room, and through an archway, could be seen talking
with Marion Andrews.

Delia's brows puckered.

"I'm afraid it will be long," she said, with a kind of weary passion.
"The forces against us are so strong. But we must just go on--and
on--straight ahead."

She sat erect on her chair, very straight and slim, in her black dress,
her hands, with their long fingers, tightly pressed together on her
knee. Miss Toogood thought she had never seen anyone so handsome, or
so--so splendid! All that was romantic in the little dressmaker's
soul rose to appreciate Delia Blanchflower. So young and so
self-sacrificing--and looking like a picture of Saint Cecilia that hung
in Miss Toogood's back room! The Movement was indeed wonderful! How it
broke down class barriers, and knit all women together! As her eyes
fell on the picture of Lady Blanchflower, in a high cap and mittens,
over the mantelpiece, Miss Toogood felt a sense of personal triumph
over the barbarous and ignorant past.

"What I mind most is the apathy of people--the people down here. It's
really terrible!" said the science mistress, in her melancholy voice.
"Sometimes I hardly know how to bear it. One thinks of all that's going
on in London--and in the big towns up north--and here--it's like a
vault. Everyone's really against us. Why the poor people--the
labourers' wives--they're the worst of any!"

"Oh no!--we're getting on--we're getting on!" said Miss Toogood,
hastily. "You're too despondent, Miss Jackson, if you'll excuse
me--you are indeed. Now I'm never downhearted, or if I am, I say to
myself--'It's all right somewhere!--somewhere that you can't see.' And
I think of a poem my father was fond of--'If hopes are dupes, fears may
be liars--And somewhere in yon smoke concealed--Your comrades chase
e'en now the fliers--And but for you possess the field!' That's by a
man called Arthur Clough--Miss Blanchflower--and it's a grand poem!"

Her pale blue eyes shone in their wrinkled sockets. Delia remembered a
recent visit to Miss Toogood's tiny parlour behind the front room where
she saw her few customers and tried them on. She recollected the books
which the back parlour contained. Miss Toogood's father had been a
bookseller--evidently a reading bookseller--in Winchester, and in the
deformed and twisted form of his daughter some of his soul, his
affections and interests, survived.

"Yes, but what are you going to give us to _do_, Miss Blanchflower?"
said Kitty Foster, impatiently--"I don't care what I do! And the more
it makes the men mad, the better!"

She drew herself up affectedly. She was a strapping girl, with a huge
vanity and a parrot's brain. A year before this date a "disappointment"
had greatly embittered her, and the processions and the crowded London
meetings, and the window-breaking riots into which she had been led
while staying with a friend, had been the solace and relief of a
personal rancour and misery she might else have found intolerable.

"_I_ can't do anything--not anything public"--said Miss Jackson, with
emphasis--"or I should lose my post. Oh the slavery it is! and the
pittance they pay us--compared to the men. Every man in the Boys'
school get L120 and over--and we're thought lucky to get L80. And I'll
be bound we work more hours in the week than they do. It's _hard_!"

"That'll soon be mended," said Miss Toogood hopefully. "Look at Norway!
As soon as the women got the vote, why the women's salaries in public
offices were put up at once."

The strong, honest face of the teacher refused to smile. "Well it isn't
always so, Miss Toogood. I know they say that in New Zealand and
Colorado--where we've got the vote--salaries aren't equal by any
manner of means."

The dressmaker's withered cheek flushed red.

"'_They_ say'"--she repeated scornfully. "That's one of the Anti
dodges--just picking out the things that suit 'em, and forgetting all
the rest. Don't you look at the depressing things--I never do! Look at
what helps us! There's a lot o' things said--and there's a lot of
things ain't true--You've got to pick and choose--you can't take 'em as
they come. No one can."

Miss Jackson looked puzzled and unconvinced; but could think of no
reply.

The two persons in the distance appeared in the archway between the
drawing-rooms, Gertrude Marvell leading. Everyone looked towards her;
everybody listened for what she would say. She took Delia's chair,
Delia instinctively yielding it, and then--her dark eyes measuring and
probing them all while she talked, she gave the little group its
orders.

Kitty Foster was to be one of the band of girl-sellers of the _Tocsin_,
in Latchford, the day of the meeting. The town was to be sown with it
from end to end, and just before the meeting, groups of sellers, in the
"Daughters'" black and orange, were to appear in every corner of the
square where the open-air meeting was to be held.

"But we'll put you beside the speaker's waggon. You're so tall, and
your hair is enough to advertise anything!" With a grim little smile,
she stretched out a hand and touched Kitty Foster's arm.

"Yes, isn't it splendid!" said Delia, ardently.

Kitty flushed and bridled. Her people in the farmhouse at home thought
her hair ugly, and frankly told her so. It was nice to be admired by
Miss Blanchflower and her friend. Ladies who lived in a big house, with
pictures and fine furniture, and everything handsome, must know better
than farm-people who never saw anything but their cattle and their
fields.

"And you"--the clear authoritative voice addressed Miss Toogood--"can
you take round notices?"

The speaker looked doubtfully at the woman's lame foot and stick.

Miss Toogood replied that she would be at Latchford by midday, and
would take round notices till she dropped.

The teacher who could do nothing public, was invited to come to Maumsey
in the evening, and address envelopes. Miss Marvell had lately imported
a Secretary, who had set up her quarters in the old gun room on the
ground floor, and had already filled it with correspondence, and
stacked it with the literature of the Daughters.

Miss Jackson eagerly promised her help.

Nothing was apportioned to Marion Andrews. She sat silent following the
words and gestures of that spare figure in the grey cloth dress, in
whom they all recognised their chief. There was a feverish brooding in
her look, as though she was doubly conscious--both of the scene before
her, and of something only present to the mind.

"You know why we are holding these meetings"--said Gertrude Marvell,
presently.

No one answered. They waited for her.

"It is a meeting of denunciation," she said, sharply. "You know in the
Land League days in Ireland they used to hold meetings to denounce a
landlord--for evictions--and that landlord went afterwards in
fear--scorned--and cursed--and boycotted. Well, that's what we're going
to do with Ministers in their own localities where they live! We can't
boycott yet--we haven't the power. But we can denounce--we can set
people on--we can hold a man up--we can make his life a burden to him.
And that's what we're going to do--with Sir Wilfrid Lang. He's one of
this brutal Cabinet that keeps women in prison--one of the strongest of
them. His speeches have turned votes against us in the House of
Commons, time after time. We mean to be even with Sir Wilfrid Lang!"

She spoke quite quietly--almost under her breath; but her slender
fingers interlocked, and a steady glow had overflowed her pale cheeks.

A tremor passed through all her listeners--a tremor of excitement.

"What can we _do_?" said Miss Toogood at last, in a low voice. Her eyes
stared out of her kind old face, which had grown white. "Ah, leave that
to us!" said Miss Marvell, in another voice, the dry organising voice,
which was her usual one. And dropping all emotion and excitement, she
began rapidly to question three out of the four women as to the
neighbourhood, the opinions of individuals and classes, the strength in
it of the old Suffrage societies, the presence or absence of
propaganda. They answered her eagerly. They all felt themselves keyed
to a higher note since she had entered the room. They had got to
business; they felt themselves a power, the rank and file of an "army
with banners," under direction. Even Delia, clearly, was in the same
relation towards this woman whom the outer world only knew as
her--presumably--paid companion. She was questioned, put right,
instructed with the rest of them. Only no one noticed that Marion
Andrews took little or no part in the conversation.

An autumn wind raged outside, and the first of those dead regiments of
leaves which would soon be choking the lanes were pattering against the
windows. Inside, the fire leapt as the daylight faded, helped by a
couple of lamps, for Maumsey knew no electricity, and Delia, under
Gertrude's prompting, had declared against the expense of putting it
in. In the dim illumination the faces of the six women emerged, typical
all of them of the forces behind the revolutionary wing of the woman's
movement. Enthusiasms of youth and age--hardships of body and
spirit--rancour and generous hope--sore heart and untrained
mind--fanatical brain and dreaming ignorance--love unsatisfied, and
energies unused--they were all there, and all hanging upon, conditioned
by something called "the vote," conceived as the only means to a new
heaven and a new earth.

* * * * *

When Delia had herself dismissed her guests into the darkness of the
October evening, she returned thoughtfully to where Gertrude Marvell
was standing by the drawing-room fire, reading a letter.

"You gave them all something to do except that Miss Andrews, Gertrude?
I wonder why you left her out?"

"Oh, I had a talk with her before."

The tone was absent, and the speaker went on reading her letter.

"When you took her into the back drawing-room?"

The slightest possible flicker passed through Gertrude's drooped
eyelids.

"She was telling me a lot about her home-life--poor oppressed thing!"

Delia asked no more. But she felt a vague discomfort.

Presently Gertrude put down her letter, and turned towards her.

"May I have that cheque, dear--before post-time? If you really meant
it?"

"Certainly." Delia went to her writing-table, opened a drawer and took
out her cheque-book.

A laugh--conscious and unsteady--accompanied the dipping of her pen
into the ink.

"I wonder what he'll say?"

"Who?"

"Mr. Winnington--when I send him all the bills to be paid."

"Isn't he there to pay the bills?"

Delia's face shewed a little impatience.

"You're so busy, dear, that I am afraid you forget all I tell you about
my own affairs. But I _did_ tell you that my guardian had trustingly
paid eight hundred pounds into the bank to last me till the New Year,
for house and other expenses--without asking me to promise anything
either!"

"Well, now, you are going to let us have L500. Is there any
difficulty?"

"None--except that the ordinary bills I don't pay, and can't pay, will
now all go in to my guardian, who will of course be curious to know
what I have done with the money. Naturally there'll be a row."

"Oh, a row!" said Gertrude Marvell, indifferently. "It's your own
money, Delia. Spend it as you like!"

"I intend to," said Delia. "Still--I do rather wish I'd given him
notice. He may think it a mean trick."

"Do you care what he thinks?"

"Not--much," said Delia slowly. "All the same, Gertrude"--she threw her
head back--"he is an awfully good sort."

Gertrude shrugged her shoulders.

"I daresay. But you and I are at war with him and his like, and can't
stop to consider that kind of thing. Also your father arranged that he
should be well paid for his trouble."

Delia turned back to the writing-table, and wrote the cheque.

"Thank you, dearest," said Gertrude Marvell, giving a light kiss to the
hand that offered the cheque. "It shall go to headquarters this
evening--and you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you've
financed all the three bye-election campaigns that are coming--or
nearly."

* * * * *

Gertrude had gone away to her own sitting-room and Delia was left
alone. She hung over the fire, in an excited reverie, her pulses
rushing; and presently she took a letter from the handbag on her wrist,
and read it for the second time by the light of the blaze she had
kindled in the grate.

* * * * *

"I will be at the Rose and Crown at least half an hour before the
meeting. We have got a capital waggon for you to speak from, and chosen
the place where it is to stand. I am afraid we may have some rough
customers to deal with. But the police have been strongly warned--that
I have found out--though I don't know by whom--and there will be plenty
of them. My one regret is that I cannot be in the crowd, so as both to
see and hear you. I must of course stick to the waggon. What a day for
us all down here!--for our little down-trodden band! You come to us as
our Joan of Arc, leading us on a holy war. You shame us into action,
and to fight with you is itself victory. When I think of how you looked
and how you talked the other night! Do you know that you have a face
'to launch a thousand ships?' No, I am convinced you never think of
it--you never take your own beauty into consideration. And you won't
imagine that I am talking in this way from any of the usual motives.
Your personal charm, if I may say so, is merely an item in our balance
sheet; your money--I understand you have money--is another. You bring
your beauty and your money in your hand, and throw them into the great
conflagration of the Cause--just as the women did in Savonarola's day.
You fling them away--if need be--for an idea. And because of it, all
the lovers of ideas, and all the dreamers of great dreams will be your
slaves and servants. Understand!--you are going to be loved and
followed, as no ordinary woman, even with your beauty, is ever loved
and followed. Your footsteps may be on the rocks and flints--I promise
you no easy, nor royal road. There may be blood on the path! But a
cloud of witnesses will be all about you--some living and some dead;
you will be carried in the hearts of innumerable men and women--women
above all; and if you stand firm, if your soul rises to the height of
your call, you will be worshipped, as the saints were worshipped.

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