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

a queer customer!"--the good-natured Captain dropped his voice. "Well, good-bye, my train's just coming. I hope I may come and see you soon?"

Delia nodded assent, and they drove off.

"By George, she's a beauty!" said the Captain to himself as he turned away. "Nothing wrong with her that I can see. But there are some strange tales going about. I wonder who that other woman is. Marvell--Gertrude Marvell?--I seem to have heard the name somewhere.--Hullo, Masham, how are you?" He greeted the leading local solicitor who had just entered the station, a man with a fine ascetic face, and singularly blue eyes. Masham looked like a starved poet or preacher, and was in reality one of the hardest and shrewdest men of business in the southern counties.

"Well, did you see Miss Blanchflower?" said the Captain, as Masham joined him on the platform, and they entered the up train together.

"I did. A handsome young lady! Have you heard the news?"

"No."

"Your neighbor, Mr. Winnington--Mark Winnington--is named as her guardian under her father's will--until she is twenty-five. He is also trustee, with absolute power over the property."

The Captain shewed a face of astonishment.

"Gracious! what had Winnington to do with Sir Robert Blanchflower!"

"An old friend, apparently. But it is a curious will."

The solicitor's abstracted look shewed a busy mind. The Captain had never felt a livelier desire for information.

"Isn't there something strange about the girl?"--he said, lowering his voice, although there was no one else in the railway carriage. "I never saw a more beautiful creature! But my mother came home from London the other day with some very queer stories, from a woman who had met them abroad. She said Miss Blanchflower was awfully clever, but as wild as a hawk--mad about women's rights and that kind of thing. In the hotel where she met them, people fought very shy of her."

"Oh, she's a militant suffragist," said the solicitor quietly--"though she's not had time yet since her father's death to do any mischief. That--in confidence--is the meaning of the will."

The adjutant whistled.

"Goodness!--Winnington will have his work cut out for him. But he needn't accept."

"He has accepted. I heard this morning from the London solicitor."

"Your firm does the estate business down here?"

"For many years. I hope to see Mr. Winnington to-morrow or next day. He is evidently hurrying home--because of this."

There was silence for a few minutes; then the Captain said bluntly:

"It's an awful pity, you know, that kind of thing cropping up down here. We've escaped it so far."

"With such a lot of wild women about, what can you expect?" said the solicitor briskly. "Like the measles--sure to come our way sooner or later."

"Do you think they'll get what they want?" "What--the vote? No--not unless the men are fools." The refined, apostolic face set like iron.

"None of the womanly women want it," said the Captain with conviction. "You should hear my mother on it." The solicitor did not reply. The adjutant's mother was not in his eyes a model of wisdom. Nor did his own opinion want any fortifying from outside.

Captain Andrews was not quite in the same position. He was conscious of a strong male instinct which disavowed Miss Blanchflower and all her kind; but at the same time he was exceedingly susceptible to female beauty, and it troubled his reasoning processes that anybody so wrong-headed should be so good-looking. His heart was soft, and his brain all that was wanted for his own purposes. But it did not enable him-it never had enabled him--to understand these extraordinary "goings-on," which the newspapers were every day reporting, on the part of well-to-do, educated women, who were ready--it seemed--to do anything outrageous--just for a vote! "Of course nobody would mind if the rich women--the tax-paying women--had a vote--help us Tories famously. But the women of the working-classes--why, Good Lord, look at them when there's any disturbance on--any big strike--look at Tonypandy!--a deal sight worse than the men! Give them the vote and they'd take us to the devil, even quicker than Lloyd George!"

Aloud he said--

"Do you know anything about that lady Miss Blanchflower had with her? She introduced me. Miss Marvell--I think that was the name. I thought I had heard it somewhere."

The solicitor lifted his eyebrows.

"I daresay. She was in the stone-throwing raid last August. Fined 20s. or a month, for damage in Pall Mall. She was in prison a week; then somebody paid her fine. She professed great annoyance, but one of the police told me it was privately paid by her own society. She's too important to them--they can't do without her. An extremely clever woman."

"Then what on earth does she come and bury herself down here for?" cried the Captain.

Masham shewed a meditative twist of the lip.

"Can't say, I'm sure. But they want money. And Miss Blanchflower is an important capture."

"I hope that girl will soon have the sense to shake them off!" said the Captain with energy. "She's a deal too beautiful for that kind of thing. I shall get my mother to come and talk to her."

The solicitor concealed his smile behind his _Daily Telegraph_. He had a real liking and respect for the Captain, but the family affection of the Andrews household was a trifle too idyllic to convince a gentleman so well acquainted with the seamy side of life. What about that hunted-looking girl, the Captain's sister? He didn't believe, he never had believed that Mrs. Andrews was quite so much of an angel as she pretended to be.

Meanwhile, no sooner had the fly left the station than Delia turned to her companion--

"Gertrude!--did you see what that man was reading who passed us just now? Our paper!--the _Tocsin_."

Gertrude Marvell lifted her eyebrows slightly.

"No doubt he bought it at Waterloo--out of curiosity."

"Why not out of sympathy? I thought he looked at us rather closely. Of course, if he reads the _Tocsin_ he knows something about you! What fun it would be to discover a comrade and a brother down here!"

"It depends entirely upon what use we could make of him," said Miss Marvell. Then she turned suddenly on her companion--"Tell me really, Delia--how long do you want to stay here?"

"Well, a couple of months at least," said Delia, with a rather perplexed expression. "After all, Gertrude, it's my property now, and all the people on it, I suppose, will expect to see one and make friends. I don't want them to think that because I'm a suffragist I'm going to shirk. It wouldn't be good policy, would it?"

"It's all a question of the relative importance of things," said the other quietly. "London is our head quarters, and things are moving very rapidly."

"I know. But, dear, you did promise! for a time"--pleaded Delia. "Though of course I know how dull it must be for you, when you are the life and soul of so many things in London. But you must remember that I haven't a penny at this moment but what Mr. Winnington chooses to allow me! We must come to some understanding with him, mustn't we, before we can do anything? It is all so difficult!"--the girl's voice took a deep, passionate note--"horribly difficult, when I long to be standing beside you--and the others--in the open--fighting--for all I'm worth. But how can I, just yet? I ought to have eight thousand a year, and Mr. Winnington can cut me down to anything he pleases. It's just as important that I should get hold of my money--at this particular moment--as that I should be joining raids in London,--more important, surely--because we want money badly!--you say so yourself. I don't want it for myself; I want it all--for the cause! But the question is, how to get it--with this will in our way. I--"

"Ah, there's that house again!" exclaimed Miss Marvell, but in the same low restrained tone that was habitual to her. She bent forward to look at the stately building, on the hill-side, which according to Captain Andrews' information, was the untenanted property of Sir Wilfrid Lang, whom a shuffle of offices had just admitted to the Cabinet.

"What house?"--said Delia, not without a vague smart under the sudden change of subject. She had a natural turn for declamation; a girlish liking to hear herself talk; and Gertrude, her tutor in the first place, and now her counsellor and friend, had a quiet way of snubbing such inclinations, except when they could be practically useful. "You have the gifts of a speaker--we shall want you to speak more and more," she would say. But in private she rarely failed to interrupt an harangue, even the first beginnings of one.

However, the smart soon passed, and Delia too turned her eyes towards the house among the trees. She gave a little cry of pleasure.

"Oh, that's Monk Lawrence!--such a lovely--lovely old place! I used often to go there as a child--I adored it. But I can't remember who lives there now."

Gertrude Marvell handed on the few facts learned from the Captain.

"I knew"--she added--"that Sir Wilfrid Lang lived somewhere near here. That they told me at the office."

"And the house is empty?" Delia, flushing suddenly and vividly, turned to her companion.

"Except for the caretaker--who no doubt lives some where on the ground-floor."

There was silence a moment. Then Delia laughed uncomfortably.

"Look here, Gertrude, we can't attempt anything of that kind _there_: I remember now--it was Sir Wilfrid's brother who had the house, when I used to go there. He was a great friend of Father's; and his little girls and I were great chums. The house is just wonderful--full of treasures! I am sorry it belongs to Sir Wilfrid--but nobody could lift a finger against Monk Lawrence!"

Miss Marvell's eyes sparkled.

"He is the most formidable enemy we have," she said softly, between her closed lips. A tremor seemed to run through her slight frame.

Then she smiled, and her tone changed.

"Dear Delia, of course I shan't run you into any--avoidable--trouble, down here, apart from the things we have agreed on."

"What have we agreed on? Remind me!"

"In the first place, that we won't hide our opinions--or stop our propaganda--to please anybody."

"Certainly!" said Delia. "I shall have a drawing-room meeting as soon as possible. You seem to have fixed up a number of speaking engagements for us both. And we told the office to send us down tons of literature." Then her face broke into laughter--"Poor Mr. Winnington!"

* * * * *

"A rather nice old place, isn't it?" said Delia, an hour later, when the elderly housekeeper, who had received them with what had seemed to Delia's companion a quite unnecessary amount of fuss and family feeling, had at last left them alone in the drawing-room, after taking them over the house.

The girl spoke in a softened voice. She was standing thoughtfully by the open window looking out, her hands clasping a chair behind her. Her thin black dress, made short and plain, with a white frill at the open neck and sleeves, by its very meagreness emphasized the young beauty of the wearer,--a beauty full of significance, charged--over-charged--with character. The attitude should have been one of repose; it was on the contrary