Delia Blanchflower by Mrs. Humphry Ward (top 10 most read books in the world TXT) 📖

sitting-room on the ground floor already appropriated to her, surrounded with a vast litter of letters and newspapers which she hastily pushed aside as he entered. He had a long interview with her, and as he afterwards confessed to Lady Tonbridge, he had rarely put his best powers forward to so little purpose. Miss Marvell did not attempt to deny that she was coming to live at Maumsey in defiance of the wishes of Delia's father and guardian, and of the public opinion of those who were to be henceforward Delia's friends and neighbours.

"But Delia has asked me to live with her. She is twenty-one, and women are not now the mere chattels they once were. Both she and I have wills of our own. You will of course give me no salary. I require none. But I don't see how you're going to turn me out of Delia's house, if Delia wishes me to stay."

And Winnington must needs acknowledge, at least to himself, that he did not see either.

He put the lady however through a cross-examination as to her connection with militancy which would have embarrassed or intimidated most women; but Gertrude Marvell, a slight and graceful figure, sitting erect on the edge of her chair, bore it with perfect equanimity, apparently frank, and quite unashamed. Certainly she belonged to the "Daughters of Revolt," the record of her imprisonment was there to shew it; and so did Delia. The aim of both their lives was to obtain the parliamentary vote for women, and in her opinion and that of many others, the time for constitutional action--"for that nonsense"--as she scornfully put it, had long gone by. As to what she intended to do, or advise Delia to do, that was her own affair. One did not give away one's plans to the enemy. But she realised, of course, that it would be unkind to Delia to plunge her into possible trouble, or to run the risk herself of arrest or imprisonment during the early days of Delia's mourning; and of her own accord she graciously offered the assurance that neither she nor Delia would commit any illegality during the two months or so that they might be settled at Maumsey. As to what might happen later, she, like Delia, declined to give any assurances. The parliamentary situation was becoming desperate, and any action whatever on the part of women which might serve to prod the sluggish mind of England before another general election, was in her view not only legitimate but essential.

"Of course I know what your conscience says on the matter," she said, with her steady eyes on Winnington. "But--excuse me for saying so--your conscience is not my affair."

Winnington rose, and prepared to take his leave. If he felt nonplussed, he managed not to shew it.

"Very well. For the present I acquiesce. But you will scarcely wonder, Miss Marvell, after this interview between us, if you find yourself henceforward under observation. You are here in defiance of Miss Blanchflower's legal guardian. I protest against your influence over her; and I disapprove of your presence here. I shall do my best to protect her from you."

She nodded.

"There of course, you will be in your right."

And rising, she turned to the open window and the bright garden outside, with a smiling remark on the decorative value of begonias, as though nothing had happened.

Winnington's temperament did not allow him to answer a woman uncivilly under any circumstances. But they parted as duellists part before the fray. Miss Marvell acknowledged his "Good afternoon," with a pleasant bow, keeping her hands the while in the pockets of her serge jacket, and she remained standing till Winnington had left the room.

"Now for Lady Tonbridge!" thought Winnington, as he rode away. "If she don't help me out, I'm done!"

At the gate of Maumsey he stopped to speak to the lodge-keeper, and as he did so, a man opened the gate, and came in. With a careless nod to Winnington he took his way up the drive. Winnington looked after him in some astonishment.

"What on earth can that fellow be doing here?"

He scented mischief; little suspecting however that a note from Gertrude Marvell lay in the pocket of the man's shabby overcoat, together with that copy of the _Tocsin_ which Delia's sharp eyes had detected the week before in the hands of its owner.

Meanwhile as he drove homeward, instead of the details of county business, the position of Delia Blanchflower, her personality, her loveliness, her defiance of him, absorbed his mind completely. He began to foresee the realities of the struggle before him, and the sheer dramatic interest of it held him, as though someone presented the case, and bade him watch how it worked out.


Chapter VI

The village or rather small town of Great Maumsey took its origin in a clearing of that royal forest which had now receded from it a couple of miles to the south. But it was still a rural and woodland spot. The trees in the fields round it had still a look of wildness, as survivors from the primeval chase, and were grouped more freely and romantically than in other places; while from the hill north of the church, one could see the New Forest stretching away, blue beyond blue, purple beyond purple, till it met the shining of the sea.

Great Maumsey had a vast belief in itself, and was reckoned exclusive and clannish by other places. It was proud of its old Georgian houses, with their white fronts, their pillared porches, and the pediment gables in their low roofs. The owners of these houses, of which there were many, charmingly varied, in the long main street, were well aware that they had once been old-fashioned, and were now as much admired in their degree, as the pictures of the great English artists, Hogarth, Reynolds, Romney, with which they were contemporary. There were earlier houses too, of brick and timber, with overhanging top stories and moss-grown roofs. There was a green surrounded with post and rails, on which a veritable stocks still survived, kept in careful repair as a memento of our barbarous forbears, by the parish Council. The church, dating from that wonderful fourteenth century when all the world must have gone mad for church-building, stood back from the main street, with the rectory beside it, in a modest seclusion of their own.

It was all very English, very spick and span, and apparently very well to do. That the youth of the village was steadily leaving it for the Colonies, that the constant marrying in and in which had gone on for generations had produced an ugly crop of mental deficiency, and physical deformity among the inhabitants--that the standard of morals was too low, and the standard of drink too high--were matters well known to the Rector and the Doctor. But there were no insanitary cottages, and no obvious scandals of any sort. The Maumsey estate had always been well managed; there were a good many small gentlefolk who lived in the Georgian houses, and owing to the competition of the railways, agricultural wages were rather better than elsewhere.

About a mile from the eastern end of the village was the small modernised manor-house of Bridge End, which belonged to Mark Winnington, and where his sister Alice, Mrs. Matheson, kept him company for the greater part of the year. The gates leading to Maumsey lay a little west of the village, while on the hill to the north rose, conspicuous against its background of wood, the famous old house of Monk Lawrence. It looked down upon Maumsey on the one hand and Bridge End on the other. It was generally believed that the owner of it, Sir Wilfrid Lang, had exhausted his resources in restoring it, and that it was the pressure of debt rather than his wife's health which had led to its being shut up so long.

The dwellers in the village regarded it as the jewel in their landscape, their common heritage and pride. Lady Tonbridge, whose little drawing-room and garden to the back looked out on the hill and the old house, was specially envied because she possessed so good a view of it. She herself inhabited one of the very smallest of the Georgian houses, in the main street of Maumsey. She paid a rent of no more than L40 a year for it, and Maumsey people who liked her, felt affectionately concerned that a duke's grand-daughter should be reduced to a rent and quarters so insignificant.

Lady Tonbridge however was not at all concerned for the smallness of her house. She regarded it as the outward and visible sign of the most creditable action of her life--the action which would--or should--bring her most marks when the recording angel came to make up her account. Every time she surveyed its modest proportions the spirit of freedom danced within her, and she envied none of the noble halls in which she had formerly lived, and to some of which she still paid occasional Visits.

At tea-time, on the day following Winnington's first interview with his ward, Madeleine Tonbridge came into her little drawing-room, in her outdoor things, and carrying a bundle of books under the arm.

As far as such words could ever apply to her she was tired and dusty. But her little figure was so alert and trim, her grey linen dress and its appointments so dainty, and the apple-red in her small cheeks so bright, that one might have conceived her as just fresh from a maid's hands, and stepping out to amuse herself, instead of as just returning from a tedious afternoon's work, by which she had earned the large sum of five shillings. A woman of forty-five, she looked her age, and she had never possessed any positive beauty, unless it were the beauty of delicate and harmonious proportion. Yet she had been pestered with suitors as a girl, and unfortunately had married the least desirable of them all. And now in middle life, no one had more devoted men-friends; and that without exciting a breath of scandal, even in a situation where one might have thought it inevitable.

She looked round her as she entered.

"Nora!--where are you?"

A girl, apparently about seventeen, put her head in through the French window that opened to the garden.

"Ready for tea, Mummy?"

"Rather!"--said Lady Tonbridge, with energy, as she put a match to the little spirit kettle on the tea-table where everything stood ready. "Come in, darling."

And throwing off her hat and jacket, she sank into a comfortable arm-chair with a sigh of fatigue. Her daughter quietly loosened her mother's walking-shoes and took them away. Then they kissed each other, and Nora went to look after the tea. She was a slim, pale-faced school-girl, with yellow-brown eyes, and yellow-brown hair, not as yet very attractive in looks, but her mother was convinced that it was only the plainness of the cygnet, and that the swan was only a few years off. Nora, who at seventeen had no illusions, was grateful to her mother for the belief but did not share it in the least.

"I'm sure you gave that girl half an hour over time," she said reprovingly, as she handed Lady Tonbridge her cup of tea--"I can't think why you do it." She referred to the solicitor's daughter whom Lady Tonbridge had been that afternoon instructing in the uses of the French participle.

"Nor can I. A kind of ridiculous _esprit de metier_ I suppose. I undertook to teach her French, and when after all these weeks she don't seem to know a thing more