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

that tone--that lost tone, which she had heard in it at their very first interview, before she had chilled and flouted him, and made his life a burden to him. Her pulses leapt; but she did not look up.

"I wonder whether--you quite deserved it? You were angry with me--for nothing!"

"I am afraid I can't agree!" The voice now was a little dry, and a pair of very keen grey eyes examined her partially hidden face.

She pushed her work away and looked up.

"You ought!" she said vehemently. "You accused me--practically--of flirting with Mr. Lathrop. And I was doing nothing of the kind!"

He laughed.

"I never imagined that you were--or could be--flirting with Mr. Lathrop."

"Then why did you threaten to give me up if I went on seeing him?"

He hesitated--but said at last--gravely--

"Because I could not take the responsibility."

"How would it help me--to give me up? According to you--" she breathed fast--"I should only--go to perdition--the quicker!" Her eyes still laughed, but behind the laughter there was a rush of feeling which communicated itself to him.

"May I suggest that it is not necessary to go to perdition--at all--fast or slow?"

She shook her head. Silence followed; which Winnington broke.

"You said you would like to come and see some of the village people--your own people--and the school? Was that serious?"

"Certainly!" She raised an indignant countenance. "I suppose you think--like everybody--that because I want the vote, I can't care about anything else?"

"You'll admit it has a way of driving everything else out," he said, mildly. "Have you ever been into the village--for a month?--for two months? The things you wanted have been done. But you haven't been to see." She sprang to her feet.

"Shall I come now?"

"If it suits you. I've saved the afternoon."

She ran out of the room to put on her things, upsetting as she did so, the work-box with which she had been masquerading, and quite unconscious of it. Winnington, smiling to himself, stooped to pick up the reels and skeins of silk. One, a skein of pink silk with which she had been working, he held in his hand a moment, and, suddenly, put in his pocket. After which he drifted absently to the hearthrug, and stood waiting for her, hat in hand. He was thinking of that moment in the wintry dawn when he had read her letter. The shock of emotion returned upon him. But what was he to do? What was really in her mind?--or, for the matter of that, in his own?

She re-appeared, radiant in a moleskin cap and furs, and then they both awkwardly remembered--he, that he had made no inquiry about Weston, and she, that she had said nothing of Gertrude Marvell's hurried departure.

"Your poor maid? Tell me about her. Oh, but she'll do well. We'll take care of her. France is an awfully good doctor."

Her eyes thanked him. She gave him a brief account of Weston's state; then looked away.

"Do you know--that I'm quite alone? Gertrude went up to town this morning?"

Winnington gave a low whistle of astonishment.

"She had to--" said Delia, hurriedly. "It was the office--they couldn't do without her."

"I thought she had undertaken to be your chaperon?"

The girl coloured.

"Well yes--but of course--the other claim came first."

"You don't expect me to admit that," said Winnington, with energy. "Miss Marvell has left you alone?--_alone_?--at a moment's notice--with your maid desperately ill--and without a word to me, or anybody?" His eyes sparkled.

"Don't let's quarrel!" cried Delia, as she stood opposite to him, putting on her gloves. "_Don't_! Not to-day--not this afternoon! And we're sure to quarrel if we talk about Gertrude."

His indignation broke up in laughter.

"Very well. We won't mention her. Well, but look here--" he pondered--"You _must_ have somebody. I would propose that Alice should come and keep you company, but I left her in bed with what looks like the flu. Ah!--I have it. But--am I really to advise? You are twenty-one, remember,--nearly twenty-two!"

The tender sarcasm in his voice brought a flood of colour to her cheeks.

"Go on!" she said, and stood quivering.

"Would you consider asking Lady Tonbridge to come and stay with you? Nora is away on a visit."

Delia moved quietly to the writing-table, pulled off her gloves, sat down to write a note. He watched her, standing behind her; his strained yet happy look resting on the beautiful dark head.

She rose, and held out the note, addressed to Lady Tonbridge. He took the note, and the hand together. The temptation was irresistible. He raised the hand and kissed it. Both were naturally reminded of the only previous occasion on which he had done such a thing; and as he dropped his hold, Delia saw the ugly scar which would always mark his left wrist.

"Thank you!"--he said warmly--"That'll be an immense relief to my mind."

"You mustn't think she'll convert me," said Delia, quickly.

"Why, she's a Suffragist!"

Delia shrugged her shoulders. "_Pour rire_!"

"Let's leave the horrid subject alone--shall we?"

Delia assented; and they set out, just as the winter sun of a bright and brilliant afternoon was beginning to drop towards its setting.

* * * * *

When Delia afterwards looked back on those two hours in Mark Winnington's company, she remembered them as a time enskied and glorified. First, the mere pleasure of the senses--the orange glow of the January evening, the pleasant crackling of the frosty ground, the exhilaration of exercise, and of the keen pungent air; then the beauty of the village and of the village lanes in the dusk, of the blue smoke drifting along the hill, of the dim reds and whites of the old houses, and the occasional gleams of fire and lamp through the small-paned windows; the gaiety of the children racing home from school, the dignity of the old labourers, the seemliness of the young. It was good to be alive--in England--breathing English air. It was good to be young and strong-limbed, with all one's life before one.

And next--and greater--there was the pleasure of Winnington beside her, of his changed manner, of their new comradeship. She felt even a curious joy in the difference of age between them. Now that by some queer change, she had ceased to stand on her dignity with him, to hold him arrogantly at arm's length, there emerged in her a childish confidence and sweetness, enchanting to the man on whom it played. "May I?--" "Do you think I might?--" she would say, gently, throwing out some suggestion or other, as they went in and out of the cottages, and the humbleness in her dark eyes, as though a queen stooped, began to turn his head.

And how beautiful this common human life seemed that evening--after all the fierce imaginings in which she had lived so long! In the great towns beyond the hills, women were still starved and sweated,--still enslaved and degraded. Man no doubt was still the stupid and vicious tyrant, the Man-Beast that Gertrude Marvell believed him. But here in this large English village, how the old primal relations stood out!--sorrow-laden and sin-stained often, yet how touching, how worthy, in the main, of reverence and tenderness! As they went in and out of the cottages of her father's estate, the cottages where Winnington was at home, and she a stranger, all that "other side" of any great argument began to speak to her--without words. The world of politics and its machinery, how far away!--instead, the world of human need, and love, and suffering unveiled itself this winter evening to Delia's soul, and spoke to her in a new language. And always it was a language of sex, as between wives and husbands, mothers and sons, sisters and brothers. No isolation of one sex or the other. No possibility of thinking of them apart, as foes and rivals, with jarring rights and claims. These old couples tending each other, clinging together, after their children had left them, till their own last day should dawn; these widowed men or women, piteously lost without the old companion, like the ox left alone in the furrow; these young couples with their first babies; these dutiful or neglectful sons, these hard or tender daughters; these mothers young and old, selfish or devoted:--with Winnington beside her, Delia saw them all anew, heard them all anew. And Love, in all its kinds, everywhere the governing force, by its presence or its absence!--Love abused and degraded, or that Love, whether in the sunken eyes of the old, or on the cheeks of the young, which is but "a little lower than the angels."

And what frankly amazed her was Winnington's place in this world of labouring folk. He had given it ten years of service; not charity, but simply the service of the good citizen; moved by a secret, impelling motive, which Delia had yet to learn. And how they rewarded him! She walked beside a natural ruler, and felt her heart presently big with the pride of it.

"But the cripples?" She enquired for them, with a touch of sarcasm. "So far," she said, "the population Maumsey, appeared to be quiet exceptionally able-bodied."

"Goodness!" said Winnington--"I can't shew you more than two or three cripples to a village. Maumsey only rejoices in two. My county school will collect from the whole county. And I should never have found out the half of them, if it hadn't been for Susy Amberley."

"How did she discover them?" asked Delia, without any sort of cordiality.

"We--the County Council--put the enquiry into her hands. I showed her--a bit. But she's done it admirably. She's a wonderful little person, Susy. What the old parents will do without her when she goes to London I can't think."

"Why is she going?"

Winnington shrugged his shoulders kindly.

"Wants a training--wants something more to do. Quite right--if it makes her happy. You women have all grown so restless nowadays." He laughed into the rather sombre face beside him. And the face lit up--amazingly.

"Because the world's so _marvellous_," said Delia, with her passionate look. "And there's so little time to explore it in. You men have always known that. Now we women know it too."

He pondered the remark--half smiling.

"Well, you'll see a good deal of it before you've done," he said at last. "Now come and look at what I've been trying to do for the women who complained to you."

And he shewed her how everything had been arranged to please her, at the cost of infinite trouble, and much expense. The woman with the eight children had been moved into a spacious new cottage made out of two old ones; the old granny alone in a house now too big for her, had been induced to take in a prim little spinster, the daughter of a small grocer just deceased; and the father of the deficient girl, for whom Miss Dempsey had made herself responsible, received Winnington with a lightening of his tired eyes, and taking him out of earshot of Delia, told him how Bessie "had got through her trouble," and was now earning money at some simple hand-work under Miss Dempsey's care.

"I didn't know you were doing all this!" said Delia, remorsefully, as they walked along the village street. "Why didn't you tell me?"