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

had swept through the room.

"And so would you--if you knew what I do!"

"Well I do know a good bit!" protested Mrs. Marvell. "And I'm a married woman,--worse luck! and you're not. But you'll never see it any other way than your own, Gertie. You got a kink in you when you were quite a girl. Last week I was talking about you to a woman I know--and I said--'It's the girls ruined by the bad men that make Gertrude so mad'--and she said--'She don't ever think of the boys that are ruined by the bad women!--Has she ever had a son--not she!' And she just cried and cried. I suppose she was thinking of something."

Gertrude rose.

"Look here, mother. Can I go to bed? I'm awfully tired."

"Wait a bit. I'll make the bed."

Gertrude sat down by the fire again. Her exhaustion was evident, and she made no attempt to help her mother. Mrs. Marvell let down the chair-bed, drew it near the fire, and found some bed-clothes. Then she produced night-things of her own, and helped Gertrude undress. When her daughter was in bed, she made some tea, and dry toast, and Gertrude let them be forced on her. When she had finished, the mother suddenly stooped and kissed her.

"Where are you going to now, Gertrude? Are you staying on with that lady in Hamptonshire?"

"Can't tell you my plans just yet," said Gertrude sleepily--"but you'll know next week."

The lights were put out. Both women tried to sleep, and Gertrude was soon heavily asleep.

But as soon as it was light, Mrs. Marvell heard her moving, the splash of water, and the lighting of the fire. Presently Gertrude came to her side fully dressed--

"There, mother, I've made _you_ a cup of tea! And now in a few minutes I shall be off."

Mrs. Marvell sat up and drank the tea.

"I didn't think you'd go in such a hurry," she said, fretfully.

"I must. My day's so full. Well, now look here, Mother, I want you to know if anything were to happen to me, my thousand pounds would come to you first, and then to Winnie and her children. And it's my wish, that neither my brother nor Henry shall touch a farthing of it. I've made a will, and that's the address of my solicitors, who're keeping it." She handed her mother an envelope.

Mrs. Marvell put down her tea, and put her handkerchief to her eyes. "I believe you're up to something dreadful, Gertrude,--which you won't tell me."

"Nonsense," said Gertrude, not however unkindly. "But we mayn't see each other for a good while. There!--I'll open the windows--that'll make you feel more cheerful." And she drew up the blinds to the dull February day, and opened a window.

"I'll telephone to Winnie as I go past the Post Office to come and spend the day with you--and I'll send up the servant to do your room. Now don't fret."

"I'm a lonely old woman, Gertrude:--and I wish I was dead."

Gertrude frowned.

"You should try and read something, Mother--better than these trashy novels. When I've time, I'll send you a parcel of books--I've got a good many. And don't you let your work go--it's good for you. Now good-bye."

The two women kissed--Mrs. Marvell embracing her daughter with a sudden fierceness of emotion to which Gertrude submitted, almost for the first time in her life. Then her mother pushed her away.

"Good-bye, Gertrude--you'd better go!"

Gertrude went out noiselessly, closing the door behind her with a lingering movement, unlike her. In the tiny hall below, she found the "general" at work, and sent her up to Mrs. Marvell. Then she went out into the grey February morning, and the little girl of the landlady standing on the steps saw her enter one of the eastward-bound trams.

Monday afternoon came. Winnington had been called away to Wanchester by urgent County business; against his will, for there had been some bad rioting the day before at Latchford, and he would rather have gone to help his brother magistrates. But there was no help for it. Lady Tonbridge was at the little Georgian house, shutting it up for six months. Delia was left alone in the Abbey, consumed with a restless excitement she had done her best to hide from her companions. She suddenly made up her mind that she would go and see for herself, and by herself, what was happening at Monk Lawrence. She set out unobserved and on foot, and had soon climbed the hill and reached the wood walk along its crest where she had once met Lathrop. Half way through, she came on two persons whom she at once recognised as the science-mistress, Miss Jackson, and Miss Toogood. They were waiting slowly, and, as it seemed to Delia, sadly; the little dressmaker limping painfully, with her head thrown back and a face of fixed and tragic distress.

When they saw Delia, they stopped in agitation.

"Oh, Miss Blanchflower!--"

Delia who knew that Miss Jackson had been in town hoping for work at the Central Office of the League of Revolt, divined at once that she had been disappointed.

"They couldn't find you anything?"

The teacher shook her head.

"And the Governors have given me a month's salary here in lieu of notice. I've left the school, Miss Blanchflower! I was in the Square you know, that day--and at the Police Court afterwards. That was what did it. And I have my old mother to keep."

A pair of haggard eyes met Delia's.

"Oh, but I'll help!" cried Delia.--"You must let me help!--won't you?"

"Thank you--but I've got a few savings," said the teacher quietly. "It isn't that so much. It's--well, Miss Toogood feels it too. She was in town--she saw everything. And she knows what I mean. We're disheartened--that's what it is!"

"With the movement?" said Delia, after a moment.

"It seemed so splendid when we talked of it down here--and--it _was_--so horrible!" Her voice dropped.

"So horrible!" echoed Miss Toogood drearily. "It wasn't what we meant, somehow. And yet we'd read about it. But to see those young women beating men's faces--well, it did for me!"

"The police were rough too!" cried Miss Jackson. "But you couldn't wonder at it, Miss Blanchflower, could you?"

Delia looked into the speaker's frank, troubled face. "You and I felt the same," she said in a choked voice. "It was ugly--and it was absurd."

She walked back with them a little way, comforting them, as best she could. And her sympathy, her sweetness did--strangely--comfort them. When she left them, they walked on, talking tenderly of her, counting on _her_ good fortune, if there was none for them.

At the end of the walk, towards Monk Lawrence, another figure emerged from the distance. Delia started, then gathered all her wits; for it was Lathrop.

He hurried towards her, breathless, cutting all preliminaries--

"I was coming to find you. I arrived this morning. There is something wrong! I have just been to the house, and there is no one there."

"What do you mean?"

"No one. I went to Daunt's rooms. Everything locked. The house absolutely dark--everywhere. And I know that he has had the strictest orders!"

Without a word, she began to run, and he beside her. When she slackened, he told her that while in London he had made the most skilful enquiries he could devise as to the plot he believed to be on foot. But--like Delia's own--they had been quite fruitless. Those persons who had shared suspicion with him in December were now convinced that the thing was dropped. All that he had ascertained was that Miss Marvell was in town, apparently recovered, and Miss Andrews with her.

"Well--and were you pleased with your raid?" he asked her, half mockingly, as he opened the gate of Monk Lawrence for her.

She resented the question, and the tone of it, remembering his first grandiloquent letter to her.

"_You_ ought to be," she said, drily. "It was the kind of thing you recommended."

"In that letter I wrote you! I ought to have apologised to you for that letter long ago. I am afraid it was an exercise. Oh, I felt it, I suppose, when I wrote it."

There was a touch of something insolent in his voice.

She made no reply. If it had not been for the necessity which yoked them, she would not have spent another minute in his company, so repellent to her had he become--both in the inner and the outer man. She tried only to think of him as an ally in a desperate campaign.

They hastened up the Monk Lawrence drive. The house stood still and peaceful in the February afternoon. The rooks from the rookery behind were swirling about and over the roofs, filling the air with monotonous sound which only emphasized the silence below. A sheet of snowdrops lay white in the courtyard, where a child's go-cart upset, held the very middle of the stately approach to the house.

Delia went to the front door, and rang the bell--repeatedly. Not a sound, except the dim echoes of the bell itself from some region far inside.

"No good!" said Lathrop. "Now come to the back." They went round to the low addition at the back of the house, where Daunt and his family had now lived for many months. Here also there was nobody. The door was locked. The blinds were drawn down. Impossible to see into the rooms, and neither calling nor knocking produced any response.

Lathrop stood thinking.

"Absolutely against orders! I know--for Daunt himself told me--that he had promised Lang never to leave the house without putting some deputy he could trust in charge. He has gone and left no deputy--or the deputy he did leave has deserted."

"What's the nearest house--or cottage?"

"The Gardeners' cottages, beyond the kitchen garden. Only one of them occupied now, I believe. Daunt used to live there before he moved into the house. Let's go there!"

They ran on. The walled kitchen garden was locked, but they found a way round it to where three creeper-grown cottages stood in a pleasant lonely space girdled by beech-woods. One only was inhabited, but from that the smoke was going up, and a babble of children's voices emerged.

Lathrop knocked. There was a sudden sound, and then a silence within. In a minute however the door was opened, and a strapping black-eyed young woman stood on the threshold looking both sulky and astonished.

"Are you Daunt's niece?" said Lathrop.

"I am, Sir. What do you want with him?"

"Why isn't he at Monk Lawrence?" asked Lathrop roughly. "He told me himself he was not to leave the house unguarded."

"Well, Sir, I don't know I'm sure what business it is of yours!" said the woman, flushing with anger. "He got bad news of his son, whose ship arrived at Portsmouth yesterday, and the young man said to be dying, on board. So he went off this afternoon. I've only left it for ten minutes and I'm going back directly. Mrs. Cresson here had asked the children to tea, and I brought them over. And I'll thank you, Sir, not to go spying on honest people!"

And she would have slammed the door in his face, but that Delia came forward.

"We had no intention of spying upon you, Miss Daunt--indeed we hadn't. But I am Miss Blanchflower, who came here before Christmas, with Mr. Winnington, and I should have