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

third class, and found himself treading on the toes of an acquaintance. He saluted an elderly lady wearing a bonnet and mantle of primeval cut, and a dress so ample in the skirt that it still suggested the days of crinoline. She was abnormally tall, and awkwardly built; she wore cotton gloves, and her boots were those of a peasant. She carried a large bag or reticule, and her lap was piled with brown parcels. Her large thin face was crowned by a few straggling locks of what had once been auburn hair, now nearly grey, the pale spectacled eyes were deeply wrinkled, and the nose and mouth slightly but indisputably crooked.

"My dear Miss Dempsey!--what an age since we met! Where are you off to? Give me some of those parcels!"

And Winnington, seizing what he could lay hands on, transferred them to his own knees, and gave a cordial grip to the right hand cotton glove.

Miss Dempsey replied that she had been in Brownmouth for the day, and was going home. After which she smiled and said abruptly, bending across her still laden knees and his--so as to speak unheard by their neighbours--

"Of course I know where you're going to!"

"Do you?"

The queer head nodded.

"Why can't you keep her in order?"

"Her? Who?"

"Your ward. Why don't you stop it?"

"Stop these meetings? My ward is of age, please remember, and quite aware of it."

Miss Dempsey sighed.

"Naughty young woman!" she said, yet with the gentlest of accents. "For us of the elder generation to see our work all undone by these maniacs! They have dashed the cup from our very lips."

"Ah! I forgot you were a Suffragist," said Winnington, smiling at her.

"Suffragist?" she held up her head indignantly--"I should rather think I am. My parents were friends of Mill, and I heard him speak for Woman Suffrage when I was quite a child. And now, after the years we've toiled and moiled, to see these mad women wrecking the whole thing!"

Winnington assented gravely.

"I don't wonder you feel it so. But you still want it--the vote--as much as ever?"

"Yes!" she said, at first with energy; and then on a more wavering note--"Yes,--but I admit a great many things have been done without it that I thought couldn't have been done. And these wild women give one to think. But you? Are you against us?--or has Miss Delia converted you?"

He smiled again, but without answering her question. Instead, he asked her in a guarded voice--

"You are as busy as ever?"

"I am there always--just as usual. I don't have much success. It doesn't matter."

She drew back from him, looking quietly out of window at the autumn fields. Over her wrinkled face with its crooked features, there dawned a look of strange intensity, mingled very faintly with something exquisite--a ray from a spiritual world.

Winnington looked at her with reverence. He knew all about her; so did many of the dwellers in the Maumsey neighbourhood. She had lived for half-a-century in the same little house in one of the back-streets of Latchford, a town of some ten thousand inhabitants. Through all that time her life had been given to what is called "rescue work"--though she herself rarely called it by that name. She loved those whom no one else would love--the meanest and feeblest of the outcast race. Every night her door stood on the latch, and as the years passed, thousands knew it. Scarcely a week went by, that some hand did not lift that latch, and some girl in her first trouble, or some street-walker, dying of her trade, did not step in to the tiny hall where the lamp burnt all night, and wait for the sound of the descending footsteps on the stairs, which meant shelter and pity, warmth and food. She was constantly deceived, sometimes robbed; for such things she had no memory. She only remembered the things which cannot be told--the trembling voices of hope or returning joy--the tenderness in dying eyes, the clinging of weak hands, the kindness of "her poor children." She had written--without her name--a book describing the condition of a great seaport town where she had once lived. The facts recorded in it had inspired a great reforming Act. No one knew anything of her part in it--so far as the public was concerned. Many persons indeed came to consult her; she gave all her knowledge to those who wanted it; she taught, and she counselled, always as one who felt herself the mere humble mouthpiece of things divine and compelling; and those who went away enriched did indeed forget her in her message, as she meant them to do. But in her own town as she passed along the streets, in her queer garb, blinking and absently smiling as though at her own thoughts, she was greeted often with a peculiar reverence, a homage of which her short sight told her little or nothing.

Winnington especially had applied to her in more than one difficulty connected with his public work. It was to her he had gone at once when the Blanchflower agent had come to him in dismay reporting the decision of Miss Blanchflower with regard to the half-witted girl whose third illegitimate child by a quite uncertain father had finally proved her need of protection both from men's vileness, and her own helplessness. Miss Dempsey had taken the girl first into her own house, and then, persuading and comforting the old father, had placed her in one of the Homes where such victims are sheltered.

Winnington briefly enquired after the girl. She as briefly replied. Then she added:--as other travellers got out and they were left to themselves.

"So Miss Blanchflower wanted to keep her in the village?"

Winnington nodded, adding--

"She of course had no idea of the real facts."

"No. Why should she?--_Why should she_!--" the old lips repeated with passion. "Let her keep her youth while she can! It's so strange to me--how they will throw away their youth! Some of us must know. The black ox has trodden on us. A woman of thirty must look at it all. But a girl of twenty! Doesn't she see that she helps the world more by _not_ knowing!--that her mere unconsciousness is _our_ gain--_our_ refreshment."

The face of the man sitting opposite her, reflected her own feeling.

"You and I always agree," he said warmly. "I wish you'd make friends with her."

"Who? Miss Blanchflower? What could she make out of an old stager like me!" Miss Dempsey's face broke into amusement at the notion. "And I don't know that I could keep my temper with a militant. Well now you're going to hear her speak--and here we are."

* * * * *

Winnington and Captain Andrews left the station together. Latchford owned a rather famous market, and market day brought always a throng of country folk into the little town. A multitude of booths under flaring gas jets--for darkness had just fallen--held one side of the square, and the other was given up to the hurdles which penned the sheep and cattle, and to their attendant groups of farmers and drovers.

The market place was full of people, but the crowd which filled it was not an ordinary market-day crowd. The cattle and sheep indeed had long since gone off with their new owners or departed homeward unsold. The booths were most of them either taken down or were in process of being dismantled. For the evening was falling fast; it was spitting with rain; and business was over. But the shop windows in the market-place were still brilliantly lit, and from the windows of the Crown Inn, all tenanted by spectators, light streamed out on the crowd below. The chief illumination came however from what seemed to be a large shallow waggon drawn up not far from the Crown. Three people stood in it; a man--who was speaking--and two women. From either side, a couple of motor lamps of great brilliance concentrated upon them threw their faces and figures into harsh relief.

The crowd was steadily pressing toward the waggon, and it was evident at once to Winnington and his companion that it was not a friendly crowd.

"Looks rather ugly, to me!" said Andrews in Winnington's ear. "They've got hold of that thing which happened at Wanchester yesterday, of the burning of that house where the care-taker and his children only just escaped."

A rush of lads and young men passed them as he spoke--shouting--

"Pull 'em down--turn 'em out!"

Andrews and Winnington pursued, but were soon forced back by a retreating movement of those in front. Winnington's height enabled him to see over the heads of the crowd.

"The police are keeping a ring," he reported to his companion--"they seem to have got it in hand! Ah! now they've seen me--they'll let us through."

Meanwhile the shouts and booing of the hostile portion of the audience--just augmented by a number of rough-looking men from the neighbouring brickfields--prevented most of the remarks delivered by the male speaker on the cart from reaching the audience.

"Cowards!" said an excited woman's voice--"that's all they can do!--howl like wild beasts--that's all they're fit for!"

Winnington turned to see a tall girl, carrying an armful of newspapers. She had flaming red hair, and she wore a black and orange scarf, with a cap of the same colours. "Foster's daughter," he thought, wondering. "What happens to them all!" For he had known Kitty Foster from her school days, and had never thought of her except as a silly simpering flirt, bent on the pursuit of man. And now he beheld a maenad, a fury.

Suddenly another woman's voice cut across the others--

"Aren't you ashamed of those colours! Go home--and take them off. Go home and behave like a decent creature!"

Heads were turned--to see a middle-aged woman of quiet dress and commanding aspect, sternly pointing to the astonished Kitty Foster. "Do you see that girl?"--the woman continued, addressing her neighbours,--"she's got the 'Daughters'' colours on. Do you know what the Daughters have been doing in town? You've seen about the destroying of letters in London. Well, I'll tell you what that means. I had a little servant I was very fond of. She left me to go and live near her sister in town. The sister died, and she got consumption. She went into lodgings, and there was no one to help her. She wrote to me, asking me to come to her. Her letter was destroyed in one of the pillar-boxes raided--by those women--" She pointed. "Then she broke her heart because she thought I'd given her up. She daren't write again. And now I've found her out--in hospital--dying. I've seen her to-day. If it hadn't have been for these demented creatures she might ha' lived for years."

The woman paused, her voice breaking a little. Kitty Foster tossed her head.

"What are most women in hospital for?" she said, shrilly. "By the fault of men!--one way or the other. That's what we think of."

"Yes I know--that's one of the shameless things you say--to us who have husbands and sons we thank God for!" said the elder woman, quivering. "Go and get a husband!--if you can find one to put up with you, and hold your tongue!" She turned her back.

The girl laughed affectedly.

"I can do