Delia Blanchflower Part 29

Daunt apologised.

"The gardener'll be here directly, Sir. He knows how to manage it better than I."

And in spite of protests from the two visitors he ran off again to see what could he done to better the light. Delia turned impetuously on her companion.

"I know you think I have no business to be here!"

Winnington paused a moment, then said--

"I was rather astonished to see you here, certainly."

"Because of what we said at Latchford the other day?"

"_You_ didn't say it!"

"But I agreed with it--I agreed with every word of it!"

"Then indeed I _am_ astonished that you should wish to see Sir Wilfrid Lang's house!" he said, with energy.

"My recollections of it have nothing to do with Sir Wilfrid. I never saw him that I know of."

"All the same, it belongs to him."

"No!--to history--to the nation!"

"Then let the nation guard it--and every individual in the nation! But do you think Miss Marvell would take much pains to protect it?"

"Gertrude said nothing about the house." "No; but if I had been one of the excitable women you command, my one desire after that speech would have been to do some desperate damage to Sir Wilfrid, or his property.

If anything does happen, I am afraid everyone in the neighbourhood will regard her as responsible."

Delia moved impatiently. "Can't we say what we think of Sir Wilfrid--because he happens to possess a beautiful house?"

"If you care for Monk Lawrence, you do so,--with this campaign on foot--only at great risk. Confess, Miss Delia!--that you were sorry for that speech!"

He turned upon her with animation.

She spoke as though under pressure, her head thrown back, her face ivory within the black frame of the veil.

"I--I shouldn't have made it."

"That's not enough. I want to hear you say you regret it!"

The light suddenly increased, and she saw him looking at her, his eyes bright and urgent, his att.i.tude that of the strong yet mild judge, whose own moral life watches keenly for any sign of grace in the accused before him. She realised for an angry moment what his feeling must be--how deep and invincible, towards these "outrages"

which she and Gertrude Marvell regarded by now as so natural and habitual--outrages that were calmly planned and organised, as she knew well, at the head offices of their society, by Gertrude Marvell among others, and acquiesced in--approved--by hundreds of persons like herself, who either shrank from taking a direct part in them, or had no opportunity of doing so. "But I shall soon make opportunities!--" she thought, pa.s.sionately; "I'm not going to be a shirker!" Aloud she said in her stiffest manner--"I stand by my friends, Mr. Winnington, especially when they are ten times better and n.o.bler than I!"

His expression changed. He turned, like any courteous stranger, to playing the part of showman of the house. Once more a veil had fallen between them.

He led her through the great suite of rooms on the ground-floor, the drawing-room, the Red Parlour, the Chinese room, the Library. They recalled her childish visits to the house with her grandmother, and a score of recollections, touching or absurd, rushed into her mind--but not to her lips. Dumbness had fallen on her;--nothing seemed worth saying, and she hurried through. She was conscious only of a rich confused impression of old seemliness and mellowed beauty,--steeped in fragrant and famous memories, English history, English poetry, English art, breathing from every room and stone of the house. "In the Red Parlour, Sidney wrote part of the 'Arcadia.'--In the room overhead Gabriel Harvey slept.--In the Porch rooms Chatham stayed--his autograph is there.--Fox advised upon all the older portion of the Library"--and so on. She heard Winnington's voice as though through a dream. What did it matter? She felt the house an oppression--as though it accused or threatened her.

As they emerged from the library into a broad pa.s.sage, Winnington noticed a garden door at the north end of the pa.s.sage, and called to Daunt who was walking behind them. They went to look at it, leaving Delia in the corridor.

"Not very secure, is it?" said Winnington, pointing to the glazed upper half of the door--"anyone might get in there."

"I've told Sir Wilfrid, Sir, and sent him the measurements. There's to be an iron shutter."

"H'm--that may take time. Why not put up something temporary?--cross-bars of some sort?"

They came back towards Delia, discussing it. Unreasonably, absurdly, she held it an offence that Winnington should discuss it in her presence; her breath grew stormy.

Daunt turned to the right at the foot of a carved staircase, and down a long pa.s.sage leading to the kitchens, he and Winnington still talking.

Suddenly--a short flight of steps, not very visible in a dark place.

Winnington descended them, and then turned to look for Delia who was just behind--

"Please take care!--"

But he was too late. Head in air--absorbed in her own pa.s.sionate mood, Delia never saw the steps, till her foot slipped on the topmost. She would have fallen headlong, had not Winnington caught her. His arms received her, held her, released her. The colour rushed into his face as into hers. "You are not hurt?" he said anxiously. "I ought to have held a light," said Daunt, full of concern. But the little incident had broken the ice. Delia laughed, and straightened her Cavalier hat, which had suffered. She was still rosy as they entered Daunt's kitchen, and the children who had seen her silent and haughty entrance, hardly recognised the creature all life and animation who returned to them.

The car stood waiting in the fore-court. Winnington put her in. As Delia descended the hill alone in the dark, she closed her eyes, that she might the more completely give herself to the conflict of thoughts which possessed her. She was bitterly ashamed and sore, torn between her pa.s.sionate affection for Gertrude Marvell, and what seemed to her a weak and traitorous wish to stand better with Mark Winnington. Nor could she escape from the memory--the mere physical memory--of those strong arms round her, resent it as she might.

As for Winnington, when he reached home in the moonlight, instead of going in to join his sister at tea, he paced a garden path till night had fallen. What was this strong insurgent feeling he could neither reason with nor silence? It seemed to have stolen upon him, amid a host of other thoughts and pre-occupations, secretly and insidiously, till there it stood--full-grown--his new phantom self--challenging the old, the normal self, face to face.

Trouble, self-scorn overwhelmed him. Recalling all his promises to himself, all his a.s.surances to Lady Tonbridge, he stood convicted, as the sentry who has shut his eyes and let the invader pa.s.s.

Monstrous!--that in his position, with this difference of age between them, he should have allowed such ideas to grow and gather head.

Beautiful wayward creature!--all the more beguiling, because of the Difficulties that bristled round her. His common sense, his judgment were under no illusions at all about Delia Blanchflower. And yet--

This then was _pa.s.sion_!--which must be held down and reasoned down.

He would reason it down. She must and should marry a man of her own generation--youth with youth. And, moreover, to give way to these wild desires would be simply to alienate her, to destroy all his own power with her for good.

The ghostly presence of his life came to him. He cried out to her, made appeal to her, in sackcloth and ashes. And then, in some mysterious, heavenly way she was revealed to him afresh; not as an enemy whom he had offended, not as a lover slighted, but as his best and tenderest friend. She closed no gates against the future:--that was for himself to settle, if closed they were to be. She seemed to walk with him, hand in hand, sister with brother--in a deep converse of souls.

Chapter XI

Gertrude Marvell was sitting alone at the Maumsey breakfast-table, in the pale light of a December day. All around her were letters and newspapers, to which she was giving an attention entirely denied to her meal. She opened them one after another, with a frown or a look of satisfaction, cla.s.sifying them in heaps as she read, and occasionally remembering her coffee or her toast. The parlourmaid waited on her, but knew very well--and resented the knowledge--that Miss Marvell was scarcely aware of her existence, or her presence in the room.

But presently the lady at the table asked--

"Is Miss Blanchflower getting up?"

"She will be down directly, Miss."

Gertrude's eyebrows rose, unconsciously. She herself was never late for an 8:30 breakfast, and never went to bed till long after midnight. The ways of Delia, who varied between too little sleep and the long nights of fatigue, seemed to her self-indulgent.