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

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!