Delia Blanchflower Part 37

"If I could have kept her to myself for another year, he could have done nothing. But he has intervened before her opinions were anything more than the echoes of mine;--and for the future I shall have less and less chance against him. What shall we ever get out of her as a married woman? What would Mark Winnington--to whom she will give herself, body and soul,--allow us to get out of her? Better break with her now, and disentangle my own life!"

With such thoughts, a pale and brooding woman pursued the now distant figure of Delia. At the same time Gertrude Marvell had no intention whatever of provoking a premature breach which might deprive either the Cause or herself of any help they might still obtain from Delia in the desperate fight immediately ahead. She, personally, would have infinitely preferred freedom and a garret to Delia's flat, and any kind of dependence on Delia's money. "I was not born to be a parasite!" she angrily thought. But she had no right to prefer them. All that could be extracted from Delia should be extracted. She was now no more to Gertrude than a p.a.w.n in the game. Let her be used--if she could not be trusted!

But if this had fallen differently, if she had remained the true sister-in-arms, given wholly to the joy of the fight, Gertrude's stern soul would have clasped her to itself, just as pa.s.sionately as it now dismissed her.

"No matter!" The hard brown eyes looked steadily into the future.

"That's done with. I am alone--I shall be alone. What does it signify?--a little sooner or later?"

The vagueness of the words matched the vagueness of certain haunting premonitions in the background of the mind. Her own future always shaped itself in tragic terms. It was impossible--she knew it--that it should bring her to any kind of happiness. It was no less impossible that she should pause and submit. That active defiance of the existing order, on which she had entered, possessed her, gripped her, irrevocably. She was like the launched stone which describes its appointed curve--till it drops.

As for any interference from the side of her own personal ties and affections,--she had none.

In her pocket she carried a letter she had received that morning, from her mother. It was plaintive, as usual.

"Winnie's second child arrived last week. It was an awful confinement.

The first doctor had to get another, and they only just pulled her through. The child's a misery. It would be much better if it had died.

I can't think what she'll do. Her husband's a wretched creature--just manages to keep in work--but he neglects her shamefully--and if there ever is anything to spend, _he_ spends it--on his own amus.e.m.e.nt. She cried the other day, when we were talking of you. She thinks you're living with a rich lady, and have everything you want--and she and her children are often half-starved. 'She might forgive me now, I do think--' she'll say sometimes--'And as for Henry, if I did take him away from her, she may thank her stars she didn't marry him. She'd have killed him by now. She never could stand men like Henry. Only, when he was a young fellow, he took her in--her first, and then me. It was a bad job we ever saw him.'

"Why are you so set against us, Gertrude?--your own flesh and blood.

I'm sure if I ever was unkind to you I'm sorry for it. You used to say I favoured Albert at your expense--Well, he's as good as dead to me now, and I've got no good out of all the spoiling I gave him. I sit at home by myself, and I'm a pretty miserable woman. I read everything I can in the papers about what you're doing--you, who were my only child, seven years before Albert came. It doesn't matter to you what I think--at least, it oughtn't. I'm an old woman, and whatever I thought I'd never quarrel with you. But it would matter to me a good deal, if you'd sometimes come in, and sit by the fire a bit, and chat. It's three years since I've even seen you. Winnie says you've forgotten us--you only care about the vote. But I don't believe it. Other people may think the vote can make up for everything--but not you. You're too clever. Hoping to see you,"

"Your lonely old mother, JANET MARVELL."

To that letter, Gertrude had already written her reply. Sometime--in the summer, perhaps, she had said to her mother. And she had added the mental proviso--"if I am alive." For the matters in which she was engaged were no child's play, and the excitements of prison and hunger-striking might tell even on the strongest physique.

No--her family were nothing to her. Her mother's appeal, though it should not be altogether ignored, was an insincere one. She had always stood by the men of the family; and for the men of the family, Gertrude, its eldest daughter, felt nothing but loathing and contempt.

Her father, a local government official in a western town, a small-minded domestic tyrant, ruined by long years of whisky-nipping between meals; her only brother, profligate and spendthrift, of whose present modes of life the less said the better; her brother-in-law, Henry Lewison, the man whom, in her callow, ignorant youth, she was once to have married, before her younger sister supplanted her--a canting hypocrite, who would spend his day in devising petty torments for his wife, and begin and end it with family prayers:--these types, in a brooding and self-centred mind, had gradually come to stand for the whole male race.

Nor had her lonely struggle for a livelihood, after she had fled from home, done anything to loosen the hold of these images upon her. She looked back upon a dismal type-writing office, run by a grasping employer; a struggle for health, warring with the struggle for bread; sick headache, sleeplessness, anaemia, yet always within, the same iron will driving on the weary body; and always the same grim perception on the dark horizon of an outer gulf into which some women fell, with no hope of resurrection. She burnt again with the old bitter sense of injustice, on the economic side; remembering fiercely her own stinted earnings, and the higher wages and larger opportunities of men, whom, intellectually, she despised. Remembering too the development of that new and ugly temper in men--men hard-pressed themselves--who must now see in women no longer playthings or sweethearts, but rivals and supplanters.

So that gradually, year by year, there had strengthened in her that strange, modern thing, a woman's hatred of men--the normal instincts of s.e.x distorted and embittered. And when suddenly, owing to the slow working of many causes, economic and moral, a section of the Woman Suffrage movement had broken into flame and violence, she had flung her very soul to it as fuel, with the pa.s.sion of one to whom life at last "gives room." In that outbreak were gathered up for her all the rancours, and all the ideals of life, all its hopes and all its despairs. Not much hope!--and few ideals. Her pa.s.sion for the Cause had been a grim force, hardly mixed with illusion; but it had held and shaped her.

Meanwhile among women she has found a few kindred souls. One of them, a fellow-student, came into money, died, and left Gertrude Marvell a thousand pounds. On that sum she had educated herself, had taken her degree at a West Country University, had moved to London and begun work as a teacher and journalist. Then again, a break down in health, followed by a casual acquaintance with Lady Tonbridge--Sir Robert's offer--its acceptance--Delia!

How much had opened to her with Delia! _Pleasure_, for the first time; the sheer pleasure of travel, society, tropical beauty; the strangeness also of finding herself adored, of feeling that young loveliness, that young intelligence, all yielding softness in her own strong hands--

Well, that was done;--practically done. She cheated herself with no vain hopes. The process which had begun in Delia would go forward. One more defeat to admit and forget. One more disaster to turn one's back upon.

And no disabling lamentations! Her eyes cleared, her mouth stiffened.

She went quietly back to her packing.

"Gertrude! What _are_ you doing?" The voice was Delia's. She stood on the threshold of Gertrude's den, looking with amazement, at the littered room and the packing-cases.

"I find I must go up at once--They want help at the office." Gertrude, who was writing a letter, delivered the information over her shoulder.

"But the flat won't be ready!"

"Never mind. I can go to a hotel for a few days."

A cloud dropped over the radiance of Delia's face, fresh from the sun and frost outside.

"I can't bear your going alone!"

"Oh, you'll come later," said Gertrude indifferently.

"Did you--did you--have such urgent letters this morning?"

"Well--you know things _are_ urgent! But then, you see, you have made up your mind to stay with Weston!"

A slight mocking look accompanied the words.

"Yes--I must stay with Weston," said Delia, slowly, and then perceiving that the typist showed no signs of leaving them together, and that confidential talk was therefore impossible, she reluctantly went away.

Weston that morning was in much pain, and Delia sat beside her, learning by some new and developing instinct how to soothe her. The huntress of the Tyrolese woods had few caressing ways, and pain had always been horrible to her; a thing to be shunned, even by the spectator, lest it should weaken the wild natural energies. But Weston was very dear to her, and the maid's suffering stirred deep slumbering powers in the girl's nature. She watched the trained Nurse at her work, and copied her anxiously. And all the time she was thinking, thinking, now of Gertrude, now of her letter to Winnington. Gertrude was vexed with her, thought her a poor creature--that was plain. "But in a fortnight, I'll go to her,--and they'll see!--" thought the girl's wrestling mind. "And before that, I shall send her money. I can't help what she thinks. I'm not false!--I'm not giving in! But I must have this fortnight,--just this fortnight;--for Weston's sake, and--"

For her proud sincerity would not allow her to pretend to herself. What had happened to her? She felt the strangest lightness--as though some long restraint had broken down; a wonderful intermittent happiness, sweeping on her without reason, and setting the breath fluttering. It made her think of what an old Welsh nurse of her childhood had once told her of "conversion," in a Welsh revival, and its marvellous effects; how men and women walked on air, and the iron bands of life and custom dropped away.

Then she rose impatiently, despising herself, and went downstairs again to try and help Gertrude. But the packing was done, the pony-cart was ordered, and in an hour more, Gertrude was gone. Delia was left standing on the threshold of the front door, listening to the sound of the receding wheels. They had parted in perfect friendliness, Gertrude with civil wishes for Weston's complete recovery, Delia with eager promises--"I shall soon come--_very_ soon!"--promises of which, as she now remembered, Gertrude had taken but little notice.

But as she went back into the house, the girl had a queer feeling of catastrophe, of radical change. She pa.s.sed the old gun-room, and looked in. All its brown paper bundles, its stacks of leaflets, its books of reference were gone; only a litter of torn papers remained here and there, to shew what its uses had been. And suddenly, a swell of something like exultation, a wild sense of deliverance, rushed upon her, driving out depression. She went back to the drawing-room, with little dancing steps, singing under her breath. The flowers wanted freshening. She went out to the greenhouse, and brought in some early hyacinths and violets till the room was fragrant. Some of them she took up to Weston, chatting to the patient and her nurse as she arranged them, with such sweetness, such smiles, such an abandonment of kindness, that both looked after her amazed, when, again, she vanished.

What had become of the imperious absent-minded young woman of ordinary days?

Delia lunched alone. And after lunch she grew restless.

He must have received her letter at breakfast-time. Probably he had some tiresome meetings in the morning, but soon--soon--

She tried to settle to some reading. How long it was since she had read anything for the joy of it!--anything that in some shape or other was not the mere pemmican of the Suffrage Movement; dusty arguments for, or exasperating arguments against. She plunged into poetry--a miscellaneous volume of modern verse--and the new world of feeling in which her mind had begun to move, grew rich, and deep, and many-coloured about her.

Surely--a sound at the gate! She sat up, crimson. Well?--she was going to make friends with her guardian--to bury the hatchet--for a whole fortnight at least. Only that. Nothing more--nothing--nothing!

Steps approached. She hastily unearthed a neglected work-basket, and a very ancient piece of half-done embroidery. Was there a thimble anywhere--or needles! Yes!--by good luck. Heavens!--what shamming! She bent over the dingy bit of silk, her cheeks dimpling with laughter.

Their first greetings were done, and Winnington was sitting by her--astride a chair, his arms lying along the top of it, his eyes looking down upon her, as she made random st.i.tches in what looked like a futurist design.

"Do you know that you wrote me a very, _very_ nice letter?" and as he spoke, she heard in his voice that tone--that lost tone, which she had heard in it at their very first interview, before she had chilled and flouted him, and made his life a burden to him. Her pulses leapt; but she did not look up.

"I wonder whether--you quite deserved it? You were angry with me--for nothing!"

"I am afraid I can't agree!" The voice now was a little dry, and a pair of very keen grey eyes examined her partially hidden face.

She pushed her work away and looked up.

"You ought!" she said vehemently. "You accused me--practically--of flirting with Mr. Lathrop. And I was doing nothing of the kind!"

He laughed.

"I never imagined that you were--or could be--flirting with Mr.

Lathrop."