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

appeal. Never had she seemed to him so fascinating. Never had he felt himself so powerless. He thought, despairingly--"If I had her to myself, I could take her in my arms, and make her give way!"

But here were the first signs of arrival--a narrow Westminster street--a towering group of flats. The taxi stopped, and Winnington jumped out.


Chapter XVII

Delia's luggage was brought in by the hall porter, and she and Winnington stood waiting for the lift. Meanwhile Winnington happened to notice, through the open door of the mansions, a couple of policemen standing just outside, on the pavement, and two others on the further side of the street. It seemed to him they were keeping the house which Delia and he had just entered under observation.

The lift descended. There were in it four women, all talking eagerly in subdued tones. One was grey-haired, the others were quite young girls. The strained, excited look on all their faces struck Winnington sharply as they emerged from the lift. One of the girls looked curiously at Delia and her tall companion. The grey-haired lady's attention was caught by the policeman outside. She gave a little chuckle.

"We shall have plenty to do with those gentry to-morrow!" she said to the girl beside her, drawing her cloak round her so that it displayed a black and orange badge.

Delia approached her.

"Is Miss Marvell here?"

They all stopped and eyed her.

"Yes, she's upstairs. She's just come back from the Central. But she's very busy," said the elder lady. "She won't see you without an appointment."

One of the girls suddenly looked at Delia, and whispered to the speaker.

"Oh, I see!" said that lady, vaguely. "Are you Miss Blanchflower?"

"Yes."

"I beg your pardon. Miss Marvell's expecting you of course. Do make her rest a bit if you can. She's simply _splendid_! She's going to be one of our great leaders. I'm glad you won't miss it after all. You've been delayed, haven't you?--by somebody's illness. Well, it's going magnificently! We shall make Parliament listen--at last. Though they'll protect themselves no doubt with any number of police--cowards!"

The eyes of the speaker, as her face came into the light of the hall lamp, sparkled maliciously. She seemed to direct her words especially to Winnington, who stood impassive. Delia turned to the lift, and they ascended.

They were admitted, after much ringing. A bewildered maid looked at Delia, and the luggage behind her, as though she had never heard of her before. And the whole flat in the background seemed alive with voices and bustle. Winnington lost patience.

"Tell this man, please, where to take Miss Blanchflower's luggage at once. And where is the drawing-room?"

"Are you going to stay, Miss?" said the girl. "There's only the small bedroom vacant."

Delia burst out laughing--especially at the sight of Winnington's irate countenance.

"All right. It'll do quite well. Now tell me where Miss Marvell is."

"I mustn't interrupt her, Miss."

"This is my flat," said Delia, good-humouredly--"so I think you must. And please shew Mr. Winnington the drawing-room."

The girl, with an astonished face, opened a door for Winnington, into a room filled with people, and then--unwillingly--led Delia along the passage.

Winnington looked round him in bewilderment. He had entered, it seemed, upon a busy hive of women. The room was full, and everybody in it seemed to be working at high pressure. A young lady at a central table was writing telegrams as fast as possible, and handing them to a telegraph clerk who was waiting. Two typewriters were busy in the further corners. A woman, with a sharply clever face, was writing near by, holding her pad on her knee, while a printer's boy, cap in hand, was sitting by her waiting for her "copy." Two other women were undoing and sorting rolls of posters. Winnington caught the head-lines--"Women of England, strike for your liberties!" "Remember our martyrs in prison!"--"Destroy property--and save lives!" "If violence won freedom for men, why not for women!" And in the distance of the room were groups in eager discussion. A few had maps in their hands, and others note-books, in which they took down the arrangements made. So far as their talk reached Winnington's ears, it seemed to relate to the converging routes of processions making for Parliament Square.

"How do you do, Mr. Winnington," said a laughing voice, as a daintily-dressed woman, with fair fluffy hair came towards him.

He recognised the sister of a well-known member of Parliament, a lady who had already been imprisoned twice for window-breaking in Downing Street.

"Who would have thought to see you here!" she said, gaily, as they shook hands.

"Surprising--I admit! I came to see Miss Blanchflower settled in her flat. But I seem to have stumbled into an office."

"The Central Office simply couldn't hold the work. We were all in each other's way. So yesterday, by Miss Marvell's instructions, some of us migrated here. We are only two streets from the central."

"Excellent!" said Winnington. "But it might perhaps have been well to inform Miss Blanchflower."

The flushed babyish face under the fashionable hat looked at him askance. Lady Fanny's tone changed--took a sharpened edge.

"Miss Blanchflower--you may be quite sure--will be as ready as anyone else to make sacrifices for the cause. But we don't expect _you_ to understand that!"

"Nobody can doubt your zeal, Lady Fanny."

"Only my discretion? Oh, I've long left that to take care of itself. What are you here for?"

"To look after my ward."

Lady Fanny eyed him again.

"Of course! I had forgotten. Well, she'll be all right."

"What are you really preparing to do to-morrow?"

"Force our way into the House of Commons!"

"Which means--get into an ugly scrimmage with the police, and put your cause back another few years?"

"Ah! I can't talk to you, if you talk like that! There isn't time," she threw back, with laughing affectation, and nodding to him, she fluttered off to a distant table where a group of girls were busy making black and orange badges. But her encounter with him seemed to have affected the hive. Its buzz sank, almost ceased.

Winnington indeed suddenly discovered that all eyes were fixed upon him--that he was being closely and angrily observed. He was conscious, quickly and strangely conscious, of an atmosphere of passionate hostility, as though a pulse of madness ran through the twenty or thirty women present. Meredithian lines flashed into memory--

"Thousand eyeballs under hoods Have you by the hair--"

and a shock of inward laughter mingled in his mind with irritation for Delia--who was to have no place apparently in her own flat for either rest or food--and the natural wish of a courteous man not to give offense. At the same moment, he perceived on one of the tables a heap of new and bright objects; and saw at once that they were light hammers, fresh from the ironmongers. Near them lay a pile of stones, and two women were busily casing the stones in a printed leaflet. But he had no sooner become aware of these things than several persons in the room moved so as to stand between him and them.

He went back into the passage, closing the door behind him.

The little parlour-maid came hurriedly from the back regions carrying a tray on which was tea and bread and butter.

"Are you taking that to Miss Blanchflower?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Shew me the way, please."

Winnington followed her, and she, after a scared look, did not attempt to stop him.

She paused outside a door, and instantly made way for him. He knocked, and at the "Come in" he entered, the maid slipping in after him with the tea.

Two persons rose startled from their seats--Delia and Gertrude Marvell. He had chanced upon the dining-room, which no less than the drawing-room had been transformed into an office and a store-room. Masses of militant literature, copies of the _Tocsin_, books and Stationery covered the tables, while, on the wall opposite the door, a large scale map of the streets in the neighbourhood of the Houses of Parliament had been hung over a picture.

It seemed to him that Delia looked ill and agitated. He walked up to her companion, and spoke with vivacity--

"Miss Marvell!--I protest altogether against your proceedings in this house! I protest against Miss Blanchflower's being drawn into what is clearly intended to be an organised riot, which may end in physical injury, even in loss of life--which will certainly entail imprisonment on the ringleaders. If you have any affection for Delia you will advise her to let me take her to my sister, who is in town to-night, at Smith's Hotel, and will of course most gladly look after her."

Gertrude, who seemed to him somehow to have dwindled and withered into an elderly woman since he had last seen her, looked him over from head to foot with a touch of smiling insolence, and then turned quietly to Delia.

"Will you go, Delia?"

"No!" said Delia, throwing back her beautiful head. "No! This is my place, Mr. Mark. I'm very sorry--but you must leave me here. Give my love to Mrs. Matheson."

"Delia!" He turned to her imploringly. But the softness she had shewn on the journey had died out of her face. She stood resolved, and some cold dividing force seemed to have rolled between them.

"I don't see what you can do, Mr. Winnington," said Gertrude, still smiling. "I have pointed that out to you before. As a matter of fact Delia will not even be living here on money provided by you at all. She has other resources. You have no hold on her--no power--that I can see. And she wishes to stay with me. I think we must bid you good night. We are very busy."

He stood a moment, looking keenly from one to the other, at Gertrude's triumphant eyes blazing from her emaciated face, at Delia's exalted, tragic air. Then, with a bow, and in silence, he left the room, and the house.

* * * * *

It was quite dark when he emerged on Milbank Street. All the neighbourhood of the Houses of Parliament and the Abbey seemed to be alive with business and traffic. But Palace Yard was still empty save for a few passing figures, and there was no light on the Clock Tower. A placard on the railings of the Square caught his notice--"Threatened Raid on the House of Commons. Police precautions." At the same moment he was conscious that a policeman standing at the corner of the House of Commons had touched his hat to him, grinning broadly. Winnington recognised a Maumsey man, whom he had befriended in various ways, who owed his place indeed in the Metropolitan force to Winnington's good word.

"Hullo, Hewson--how are you? Flourishing?"

The man's face beamed again. He was thinking of a cricket match the year before under Winnington's captaincy. Like every member of the eleven, he would have faced "death and damnation" for the captain.

They walked along the man's beat together. A thought struck Winnington.

"You seem likely to have some disturbance here tomorrow?" he said, as they neared Westminster Bridge.

"It's the ladies, Sir. They