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

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