Delia Blanchflower Part 52

He waited in the drawing-room for Delia. She came at last, with a cold and alien face. "Don't come again, please! Leave us to ourselves. I shall have doctors--and nurses. We'll let you know."

He took her hands tenderly. But she drew them away--shivering a little.

"You don't know--you can't know--what it means to me--to _us_--to see what she has suffered. There must be no one here but those--who sympathise--who won't reproach--" Her voice failed her.

There was nothing for it but to go.

Chapter XVIII

Great is the power of martyrdom!--of the false no less than the true--and whether the mind consent or no.

During the first week of Gertrude Marvell's recovery--or partial recovery--from her prison ordeal, both Winnington and Delia realised the truth of this commonplace to the full. Winnington was excluded from the flat. Delia, imprisoned within it, was dragged, day by day, through deep waters of emotion and pity. She envied the heroism of her friend and leader; despised herself for not having been able to share it; and could not do enough to soothe the nervous suffering which Gertrude's struggle with law and order had left behind it.

But with the beginning of the second week some strange facts emerged.

Gertrude was then sufficiently convalescent to be moved into the drawing-room, to see a few visitors, and to exchange experiences. All who came belonged to the League, and had been concerned in the Parliamentary raid. Most of them had been a few days or a week in prison. Two had been hunger-strikers. And as they gathered round Gertrude in half-articulate worship, Delia, pa.s.sing from one revealing moment to another, suddenly felt herself superfluous--thrust away! She could not join in their talk except perfunctorily; the violence of it often left her cold and weary; and she soon recognised half in laughter, half bitterly, that, as one who had been carried out of the fray, like a naughty child, by her guardian, she stood in the opinion of Gertrude's visitors, on a level altogether inferior to that of persons who had "fought it out."

This, however, would not have troubled her--she was so entirely of the same opinion herself. But what began to wound her to the quick was Gertrude's own att.i.tude towards her. She had been accustomed for so long to be Gertrude's most intimate friend, to be recognised and envied as such, that to be made to feel day by day how small a hold--for some mysterious reason--she now retained on that fierce spirit, was galling indeed. Meanwhile she had placed all the money realised by the sale of her jewels,--more than three thousand pounds--in Gertrude's hands for League purposes; her house was practically Gertrude's, and had Gertrude willed, her time and her thoughts would have been Gertrude's also. She would not let herself even think of Winnington. One glance at the emaciated face and frame beside her was enough to recall her from what had otherwise been a heavenly wandering.

But she was naturally quick and shrewd, and she soon made herself face the fact that she was supplanted. Supplanted by many--but especially by one. Marion Andrews had not been in the raid--Delia often uneasily pondered the why and wherefore. She came up to town a week after it, and was then constantly in Gertrude's room. Between Delia, and this iron-faced, dark-browed woman, with her clumsy dress and brusque ways, there was but little conversation. Delia never forgot their last meeting at Maumsey; she was often filled with dire forebodings and suspicions; and as the relation between Gertrude and Miss Andrews became closer, they grew and multiplied.

At last one morning Gertrude turned her back on invalid ways. She got up at her usual time; she dismissed her nurse; and in the middle of the morning she came in upon Delia, who, in the desultory temper born of physical strain, was alternately trying to read Marshall's "Economics of Industry," and writing to Lady Tonbridge about anything and everything, except the topics that really occupied her mind.

Delia sprang up to get her a shawl, to settle her on the sofa. But Gertrude said impatiently--

"Please don't fuss. I want to be treated now as though I were well--I soon shall be. And anyway I am tired of illness." And she took a plain chair, as though to emphasize what she had said.

"I came to talk to you about plans. You're not busy!"

"Busy!" The scornful tone was a trifle bitter also, as Gertrude perceived. Delia put aside her book, and her writing-board, and descended to her favourite place on the hearth rug. The two friends surveyed each other.

"Gertrude, it's absurd to talk as though you were well!" cried Delia.

"You look a perfect wreck!"

But there was more in what she saw--in what she felt--than physical wreck. There was a moral and spiritual change, subtler than any physical injury, and probably more permanent. Gertrude Marvell had never possessed any "charm," in the sense in which other leaders of the militant movement possessed it. A clear and narrowly logical brain, the diamond sharpness of an astonishing will, and certain pa.s.sions of hate, rather than pa.s.sions of love, had made the strength of her personality, and given her an increasing ascendancy. But these qualities had been mated with a slender physique--trim, balanced, composed--suggesting a fastidious taste, and nerves perfectly under control; a physique which had given special accent and emphasis to her rare outbreaks of spoken violence. Refinement, seemliness, "ladylikeness,"--even Sir Robert Blanchflower in his sorest moments would scarcely have denied her these.

In a measure they were there still, but coupled with pathetic signs of some disintegrating and poisonous influence. The face which once, in its pallid austerity, had not been without beauty, had now coa.r.s.ened, even in emaciation. The features stood out disproportionately; the hair had receded from the temples; something ugly and feverish had been, as it were, laid bare. And composure had been long undermined. The nurse who had just left had been glad to go.

Gertrude received Delia's remark with impatience.

"Do please let my looks alone! As if you could boast!" The speaker's smile softened as she looked at the girl's still bandaged arm, and pale cheeks. "That in fact is what I wanted to say, Delia. You ought to be going home. You want the country and the garden. And I, it seems--so this tiresome Doctor says--ought to have a fortnight's sea."

"Oh--" said Delia, with a sudden flush. "So you think we ought to give up the flat? Why can't I come with you to the sea?"

"I thought you had begun to do various things--cripples--and cottages--and schools--for Mr. Winnington," said Gertrude, drily.

"I wanted to--but Weston's illness stopped it--and then I came here."

"Well, you 'wanted to.' And why shouldn't you?"

There was a silence. Then Delia looked up--very pale now--her head thrown back.

"So you mean you wish to get rid of me, Gertrude!"

"Nothing of the sort. I want you to do--what you clearly wish to do."

"When have I ever shown you that I wished to desert you--or--the League?"

"Perhaps I read you better than you do yourself," said Gertrude, slightly reddening too. "Of course you have been goodness--generosity--itself. But--this cause wants more than gifts--more than money-it wants a woman's _self_!"

"Well?" Delia waited.

Gertrude moved impatiently.

"Why should we play the hypocrite with each other!" she said at last.

"You won't deny that what Mr. Winnington thinks--what Mr. Winnington feels--is infinitely more important to you now than what anybody else in the world thinks or feels?"

"Which I shewed by coming up here against his express wishes?--and joining in the raid, after he had said all that a man could say against it, both to you and to me?"

"Oh, I admit you did your best--you did your best," said Gertrude sombrely. "But I know you, Delia!--I know you! Your heart's not in it--any more."

Delia rose, and began slowly to pace the room. There was a wonderful virginal dignity--a suppressed pa.s.sion--in her att.i.tude, as though she wrestled with inward wound. But she said nothing, except to ask--as she paused in front of Gertrude--

"Where are you going--and who is going with you?"

"I shall go to the sea, somewhere--perhaps to the Isle of Wight. I daresay Marion Andrews will come with me. She wants to escape her mother for a time."

"Marion Andrews?" repeated Delia thoughtfully. Then, after a moment--"So you're not coming down to Maumsey any more?"

"Ask yourself what there is for me to do there, my dear child! Frankly, I should find the society of Mr. Winnington and Lady Tonbridge rather difficult! And as for their feelings about me!"

"Do you remember--you promised to live with me for a year?"

"Under mental reservation," said Gertrude, quietly. "You know very well, I didn't accept it as an ordinary post."

"And now there's nothing more to be got out of me? Oh, I didn't mean anything cruel!" added the girl hastily. "I know you must put the cause first."

"And you see where the cause is," said Gertrude grimly. "In ten days from now Sir Wilfrid Lang will have crushed the bill."

"And everybody seems to be clamouring that we've given them the excuse!"

Fierce colour overspread Gertrude's thin temples and cheeks.

"They'll take it, anyway; and we've got to do all we can--meetings, processions, way-laying Ministers--the usual things--and any new torment we can devise."

"But I thought you were going to Southsea!"