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

lay a grasp upon Delia's arm, which she could hardly have resisted. She did not, however, resist. She felt herself lifted down from the waggon, and hurried along, the police keeping back the crowd, into the open door of the hotel. Shouts of a populace half enraged, half amused, pursued her.

"Brutes--Cowards!" she gasped, between her teeth--then to Winnington--"Where are you taking me? I have the car!"

"There's a motor belonging to a doctor ready at once in the yard of the hotel. Better let me take you home in it. Andrews, I assure you, will look after Miss Marvell!"

They passed through the brilliantly-lighted inn, where landlady, chambermaids, and waiters stood grinning in rows to see, and Winnington hurried his charge into the closed motor standing at the inn's back door.

"Take the street behind the hotel, and get out by the back of the town. Be quick!" said Winnington to the chauffeur.

Booing groups had already begun to gather at the entrance of the yards, and in the side street to which it led. The motor passed slowly through them, then quickened its pace, and in what seemed an incredibly short time, they were in country lanes.

Delia leant hack, drawing long breaths of fatigue and excitement. Then she perceived with disgust that her dress was bemired with scraps of dirty refuse, and that some mud was dripping from her hat. She took off the hat, shook it out of the window of the car, but could not bring herself to put it on again. Her hair, loosely magnificent, framed a face that was now all colour and passion. She hated herself, she hated the crowd; it seemed to her she hated the man at her side. Suddenly Winnington turned on the electric light--with an exclamation.

"So sorry to be a nuisance--but have you got a spare handkerchief? I'm afraid I shall spoil your dress!"

And Delia saw, to her dismay, that his own handkerchief which he had originally tied round his wound was already soaked, and the blood was dripping from it on to the motor-rug.

"Yes--yes--I have!" And opening her little wrist-bag, she took out of it two spare handkerchiefs, and tied them, with tremulous hands, round the wrist he held out to her,--a wrist brown and spare and powerful, like the rest of him.

"Now--have you got anything you could tie round the arm, above the wound--and then twist the knot?"

She thought.

"My veil!" She slipped it off in a moment, a long motor veil of stout make. He turned towards her, pushing up his coat sleeve as high as it would go, and shewing her where to put the bandage. She helped him to turn back his shirt sleeve, and then wound the veil tightly round the arm, so as to compress the arteries. Her fingers were warm and strong. He watched them--he felt their touch--with a curious pleasure.

"Now, suppose you take this pencil, and twist it in the knot--you know how? Have you done any First Aid?"

She nodded.

"I know." She did it well. The tourniquet acted, and the bleeding at once slackened.

"All right!" said Winnington, smiling at her. "Now if I keep it up that ought to do!" She drew down the sleeve, and he put his hand into the motor-strap hanging near him, which supported it. Then he threw his head back a moment against the cushions of the car. The sudden loss of blood on the top of a long fast, had made him feel momentarily faint.

Delia looked at him uneasily--biting her lip.

"Let us go back to Latchford, Mr. Winnington, and find a doctor."

"Oh dear no! I'm only pumped for a moment. It's going off. I'm perfectly fit. When I've taken you home, I shall go in to our Maumsey man, and get tied up."

There was silence. The hedges and fields flew by outside, under the light of the motor, stars overhead, Delia's heart was full of wrath and humiliation.

"Mr. Winnington--"

"Yes!" He sat up, apparently quite revived.

"Mr. Winnington--for Heaven's sake--do give me up!"

He looked at her with amused astonishment.

"Give you up!--How?"

"Give up being my guardian! I really can't stand it. I--I don't mind what happens to myself. But it's too bad that I should be forced to--to make myself such a nuisance to you--or desert all my principles. It's not fair to _me_--that's what I feel--it's not indeed!" she insisted stormily.

He saw her dimly as she spoke--the beautiful oval of the face, the white brow, the general graciousness of line, so feminine, in truth!--so appealing. The darkness hid away all that shewed the "female franzy." Distress of mind--distress for his trumpery wound?--had shaken her, brought her back to youth and childishness? Again he felt a rush of sympathy--of tender concern.

"Do you think you would do any better with a guardian chosen by the Court?" he asked her, smiling, after a moment's pause.

"Of course I should! I shouldn't mind fighting a stranger in the least."

"They would be very unlikely to appoint a stranger. They would probably name Lord Frederick."

"He wouldn't dream of taking it!" she said, startled. "And you know he is the laziest of men."

They both laughed. But her laugh was a sound of agitation, and in the close contact of the motor he was aware of her quick breathing.

"Well, it's true he never answers a letter," said Winnington. "But I suppose he's ill."

"He's been a _malade imaginaire_ all his life, and he isn't going to begin to put himself out for anybody now!" she said, scornfully.

"Your aunt, Miss Blanchflower?"

"I haven't spoken to her for years. She used to live with us when I was eighteen. She tried to boss me, and set father against me. But I got the best of her."

"I am sure you did," said Winnington.

She broke out--

"Oh, I know you think me a perfectly impossible creature whom nobody could ever get on with!"

He paused a moment, then said gravely--

"No, I don't think anything of the kind. But I do think that, given what you want, you are going entirely the wrong way to get it."

She drew a long and desperate breath.

"Oh, for goodness sake don't let's argue!"

He refrained. But after a moment he added, still more gravely--"And I do protest--most strongly!--against the influence upon you of the lady you have taken to live with you!"

Delia made a vehement movement.

"She is my friend!--my dearest friend!" she said, in a shaky voice. "And I believe in her, and admire her with all my heart!"

"I know--and I am sorry. Her speech this evening--all the latter part of it--was the speech of an Anarchist. And the first half was a tissue of misstatements. I happen to know something about the facts she dealt with."

"Of course you take a different view!"

"I _know_," he said, quietly--a little sternly. "Miss Marvell either does not know, or she wilfully misrepresents."

"You can't prove it!"

"I think I could. And as to that man--Mr. Lathrop--but you know what I think."

They both fell silent. Through all his own annoyance and disgust, Winnington was sympathetically conscious of what she too must be feeling--chafed and thwarted, at every turn, by his legal power over her actions, and by the pressure of his male will. He longed to persuade her, convince her, soothe her; but what chance for it, under the conditions she had chosen for her life?

The motor drew up at the door of the Abbey, and Winnington turned on the light.

"I am afraid I can't help you out. Can you manage?"

She stooped anxiously to look at his wrist.

"It's bleeding worse again! I am sure I could improve that bandage. Do come in. My maid's got everything."

He hesitated--then followed her into the house. The maid was summoned, and proved an excellent nurse. The wound was properly bandaged, and the arm put in a sling.

Then, as the maid withdrew, Delia and her guardian were left standing together in the drawing-room, lit only by a dying gleam of fire, and a single lamp.

"Good-night," said Winnington, gently. "Don't be the least alarmed about Miss Marvell. The train doesn't arrive for ten minutes yet. Thank you for looking after me so kindly."

Delia laughed--but it was a sound of distress.

Suddenly he stooped, lifted her hand, and kissed it.

"What you are doing seems to me foolish--and _wrong!_ I am afraid I must tell you so plainly," he said, with emotion. "But although I feel like that--my one wish--all the time--is--forgive me if it sounds patronising!--to help you--and stand by you. To see you in that horrid business to-night--made me--very unhappy. I am old-fashioned I suppose--but I could hardly bear it. I wish I could make you trust me a little!"

"I do!" she said, choked. "I do--but I must follow my conscience."

He shook his head, but said no more. She murmured good-night, and he went. She heard the motor drive away, and remained standing where he had left her, the hand he had kissed hanging at her side. She still felt the touch of his lips upon it, and as the blood rushed into her cheeks, her heart was conscious of new and strange emotions. She longed to go to him as a sister or a daughter might, and say--"Forgive me--understand me--don't despair of me!"

The trance of feeling broke, and passed away. She caught up a cloak and went to the hall door to listen for Gertrude Marvell.

"What I _shall_ have to say to him before long, is--'I have tricked you this quarter out of L500--and I mean to do it again next quarter--if I can!' He won't want to kiss my hand again!"


Chapter X

Two men sat smoking and talking with Paul Lathrop in the hook-littered sitting-room of his cottage. One was a young journalist, Roger Blaydes, whose thin, close-shaven face wore the knowing fool's look of one to whom the world's his oyster, and all the bricks for opening it familiar. The other was a god-like creature, a poet by profession, with long lantern-jaws, grey eyes deeply set, and a mass of curly black hair, from which the face with its pallor and its distinction, shone dimly out like the portrait of a Cinquecento. Lathrop, in a kind of dressing-gown, as clumsily cut as the form it wrapped, his reddish hair and large head catching the firelight, had the look of one lazily at bay, as wrapped in a cloud of smoke, he twined from one speaker to the other.

"So you were at another of these meetings last night?" said Blaydes, with a mouth half smiling, half contemptuous.

"Yes. A disgusting failure! They didn't even take the trouble to pelt us." The poet--Merian by name--moved angrily on his chair. Blaydes threw a sly look at him, as he knocked the ash from his cigarette.

"And what the deuce do you expect to get by it all?"

Paul Lathrop paused a moment--and at last said with a lift of the eyebrows:--

"Well!--I have no illusions!"

Merian broke out indignantly--

"I say, Lathrop--why should you try and play up to that cynic there? As if he ever had an illusion about anything!"

"Well, but one may have faith without illusions," protested Blaydes, with hard good temper.

"I doubt whether Lathrop has an ounce of either!"

Lathrop reached out for