Delia Blanchflower Part 14

Winnington's grey eyes fixed on the trees outside shewed a man trying to retrace his own course.

"He wrote me a very touching letter. And I have always thought that men--and women--ought to be ready to do this kind of service for each other. I should have felt a beast if I had said No, at once. But I confess now that I have seen Miss Delia, I don't know whether I can do the slightest good."

"Hold on!" said Lady Tonbridge, sharply,--"You can't give it up--now."

Winnington laughed.

"I have no intention of giving it up. Only I warn you that I shall probably make a mess of it."

"Well"--the tone was coolly reflective--"that may do _you_ good--whatever happens to the girl. You have never made a mess of anything yet in your life. It will be a new experience."

Winnington protested hotly that her remark only shewed how little even intimate friends know of each other's messes, and that his were already legion. Lady Tonbridge threw him an incredulous look. As he sat there in his bronzed and vigorous manhood, the first crowsfeet just beginning to shew round the eyes, and the first streaks of grey in the brown curls, she said to herself that none of her young men acquaintance possessed half the physical attractiveness of Mark Winnington; while none--old or young--could rival him at all in the humane and winning spell he carried about with him. To see Mark Winnington _aux prises_ with an adventure in which not even his tact, his knowledge of men and women, his candour, or his sweetness, might be sufficient to win success, piqued her curiosity; perhaps even flattered that slight inevitable malice, wherewith ordinary mortals protect themselves against the favourites of the G.o.ds.

She was determined however to help him if she could, and she put him through a number of questions. The girl then was as handsome as she promised to be? A beauty, said Winnington--and of the heroic or poetic type. And the Fury? Winnington described the neat, little lady, fashionably Pressed and quiet mannered, who had embittered the last years of Sir Robert Blanchflower, and firmly possessed herself of his daughter.

"You will see her to-morrow, at my house, when you come to tea. I carefully didn't ask her, but I am certain she will come, and Alice and I shall of course have to receive her."

"She is not thin-skinned then?"

"What fanatic is? It is one of the secrets of their strength."

"She probably regards us all as the dust under her feet," said Lady Tonbridge. "I wonder what game she will be up to here. Have you seen the _Times_ this morning?"

Winnington nodded. It contained three serious cases of arson, in which Suffragette literature and messages had been discovered among the ruins, besides a number of minor outrages. An energetic leading article breathed the exasperation of the public, and pointed out the spread of the campaign of violence.

By this time Lady Tonbridge had carried her visitor into the garden, and they were walking up and down among the late September flowers.

Beyond the garden lay green fields and hedgerows; beyond the fields rose the line of wooded hill, and, embedded in trees, the grey and gabled front of Monk Lawrence.

Winnington reported the very meagre promise he had been able to get out of his ward and her companion.

"The comfort is," said Lady Tonbridge, "that this is a sane neighbourhood--comparatively. They won't get much support. Oh, I don't know though--" she added quickly. "There's that man--Mr. Lathrop, Paul Lathrop--who took Wood Cottage last year--a queer fish, by all accounts. I'm told he's written the most violent things backing up the militants generally. However, his own story has put _him_ out of Court."

"His own story?" said Winnington, with a puzzled look.

"Don't be so innocent!" laughed Lady Tonbridge, rather impatiently. "I always tell you you don't give half place enough in life to gossip-'human nature's daily food.' I knew all about him a week after he arrived. However, I don't propose to save you trouble, Mr. Guardian!

Go and look up a certain divorce case, with Mr. Lathrop's name in it, some time last year--if you want to know. That's enough for that."

But Winnington interrupted her, with a disturbed look. "I happened to meet that very man you are speaking of--yesterday--in the Abbey drive, going to call."

Lady Tonbridge shrugged her shoulders.

"There you see their freemasonry. I don't suppose they approve his morals--but he supports their politics. You won't be able to banish him!--Well, so the child is lovely? and interesting?"

Winnington a.s.sented warmly.

"But determined to make herself a nuisance to you? Hm! Mr. Mark--dear Mr. Mark--don't fall in love with her!"

Winnington's expression altered. He did not answer for a moment. Then he said, looking away--

"Do you think you need have said that?"

"No!"--cried Madeleine Tonbridge remorsefully. "I am a wretch. But don't--_don't_!"

This time he smiled at her, though not without vexation.

"Do you forget that I am nearly old enough to be her father?"

"Oh that's nonsense!" she said hastily. "However--I'm not going to flatter you--or tease you. Forgive me. I put it out of my head. I wonder if there is anybody in the field already?"

"Not that I am aware of."

"Of course you know this kind of thing spoils a girl's prospects of marriage enormously. Men won't run the risk."

Winnington laughed.

"And all the time, you're a Suffragist yourself!"

"Yes, indeed I am," was the stout reply. "Here am I, with a house and a daughter, a house-parlourmaid, a boot-boy, and rates to pay. Why shouldn't I vote as well as you? But the difference between me and the Fury is that she wants the vote this year--this month--_this minute_--and I don't care whether it comes in my time--or Nora's time--or my grandchildren's time. I say we ought to have it--that it is our right--and you men are dolts not to give it us. But I sit and wait peaceably till you do--till the apple is ripe and drops. And meanwhile these wild women prevent its ripening at all. So long as they rage, there it hangs--out of our reach. So that I'm not only ashamed of them as a woman--but out of all patience with them as a Suffragist! However for heaven's sake don't let's discuss the horrid subject. I'll do all I can for Delia--both for your sake and Bob's--I'll keep my best eye on the Fury--I feel myself of course most abominably responsible for her--and I hope for the best. Who's coming to your tea-party?"

Winnington enumerated. At the name of Susy Amberley, his hostess threw him a sudden look, but said nothing.

"The Andrews'--Captain, Mrs. and Miss--," Lady Tonbridge exclaimed.

"Why did you ask that horrid woman?"

"We didn't! Alice indiscreetly mentioned that Miss Blanchflower was coming to tea, and she asked herself."

"She's enough to make any one militant! If I hear her quote 'the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world' once more, I shall have to smite her. The girl's _down-trodden_ I tell you! Well, well--if you gossip too little, I gossip too much. Heavens!--what a light!"

Winnington turned to see the glow of a lovely afternoon fusing all the hill-side in a glory of gold and amethyst, and the windows in the long front of Monk Lawrence taking fire under the last rays of a fast-dropping sun.

"Do you know--I sometimes feel anxious about that house!" said Madeleine Tonbridge, abruptly. "It's empty--it's famous--it belongs to a member of the Government. What is to prevent the women from attacking it?"

"In the first place, it isn't empty. The Keeper, Daunt, from the South Lodge, has now moved into the house. I know, because Susy Amberley told me. She goes up there to teach one of my cripples--Daunt's second girl.

In the next, the police are on the alert. And last--who on earth would dare to attack Monk Lawrence? The odium of it would be too great. A house bound up with English history and English poetry--No! They are not such fools!"

Lady Tonbridge shook her head.

"Don't be so sure. Anyway you as a magistrate can keep the police up to the mark."

Winnington departed, and his old friend was left to meditate on his predicament. It was strange to see Mark Winnington, with his traditional, English ways and feelings--carried, as she always felt, to their highest--thus face to face with the new feminist forces--as embodied in Delia Blanchflower. He had resented, clearly resented, the introduction--by her, Madeleine--of the s.e.x element into the problem.

But how difficult to keep it out! "He will see her constantly--he will have to exercise his will against hers--he will get his way--and then hate himself for conquering--he will disapprove, and yet admire,--will offend her, yet want to please her--a creature all fire, and beauty, and heroisms out of place! And she--could she, could I, could any woman I know, fight Mark Winnington--and not love him all the time? Men are men, and women are women--in spite of all these 'isms,' and 'causes.' I bet--but I don't know what I bet!--" Then her thoughts gradually veered away from Mark to quite another person.

How would Susan Amberley be affected by this new interest in Mark Winnington's life? Madeleine's thoughts recalled a gentle face, a pair of honest eyes, a bearing timid and yet dignified. So she was teaching one of Mark's crippled children? And Mark thought no doubt she would have done the like for anyone else with a charitable hobby? Perhaps she would, for her heart was a fount of pity. All the same, the man--blind bat!--understood nothing. No fault of his perhaps; but Lady Tonbridge felt a woman's angry sympathy with a form of waste so common and so costly.

And now the modest worshipper must see her hero absorbed day by day, and hour by hour, in the doings of a dazzling and magnificent creature like Delia Blanchflower. What food for torment, even in the meekest spirit!

So that the last word the vivacious woman said to herself was a soft "Poor Susy!" dropped into the heart of a September rose as she stooped to gather it.