Delia Blanchflower Part 7

Then at a bound she sprang out of bed, and stood upright in the autumn dawn.

"I hate myself!" she said fiercely--as she ran her hands through the ma.s.s of her dark hair, and threw it back upon her shoulders. Hurrying across the room in her night-gown, she threw back the curtains. A light autumnal mist, through which the sun was smiling, lay on the garden.

Stately trees rose above it, and ma.s.ses of flowers shewed vaguely bright; while through the blue distances beyond, the New Forest stretched to the sea.

But Delia was looking at herself, in a long pier-gla.s.s that represented almost the only concession to the typical feminine needs in the room.

She was not admiring her own seemliness; far from it; she was rating and despising herself for a feather-brained waverer and good-for-nothing.

"Oh yes, you can _talk_!" she said, to the figure in the gla.s.s--"you are good enough at that! But what are you going to _do_!--Spend your time at Maple's and Waring--matching chintzes and curtains?--when you've _promised_--you've _promised_! Gertrude's right. There _are_ all sorts of disgusting cowardices and weaknesses in you! Oh! yes, you'd like to go fiddling and fussing down here--playing the heiress--patronising the poor people--putting yourself into beautiful clothes--and getting heaps of money out of Mr. Winnington to spend.

It's in you--it's just in you--to throw everything over--to forget everything you've felt, and everything you've vowed--and just _wallow_ in luxury and selfishness and sn.o.bbery! Gertrude's absolutely right.

But you shan't do it! You shan't put a hand to it! Why did that man take the guardianship? Now it's his business. He may see to it! But _you_--you have something else to do!"

And she stood erect, the angry impulse in her stiffening all her young body. And through her memory there ran, swift-footed, fragments from a rhetoric of which she was already fatally mistress, the formulae too of those sincere and goading beliefs on which her youth had been fed ever since her first acquaintance with Gertrude Marvell. The mind renewed them like vows; clung to them, embraced them.

What was she before she knew Gertrude? She thought of that earlier Delia as of a creature almost too contemptible to blame. From the maturity of her twenty-one years she looked back upon herself at seventeen or eighteen with wonder. That Delia had read nothing--knew nothing--had neither thoughts or principles. She was her father's spoilt child and darling; delighting in the luxury that surrounded his West Indian Governorship; courted and flattered by the few English of the colonial capital, and by the members of her father's staff; with servants for every possible need or whim; living her life mostly in the open air, riding at her father's side, through the sub-tropical forests of the colony; teasing and tyrannising over the dear old German governess who had brought her up, and whose only contribution to her education--as Delia now counted education--had been the German tongue.

Worth something!--but not all those years, "when I might have been learning so much else, things I shall never have time to learn now!--things that Gertrude has at her finger's end. Why wasn't I taught properly--decently--like any board school child! As Gertrude says, we women want everything we can get! We _must_ know the things that men know--that we may beat them at their own game. Why should every Balliol boy--years younger than me--have been taught his cla.s.sics and mathematics,--and have everything brought to him--made easy for him--history, political economy, logic, philosophy, laid at his lordship's feet, if he will just please to learn!--while I, who have just as good a brain as he, have had to pick up a few sc.r.a.ps by the way, just because n.o.body who had charge of me ever thought it worth while to teach, a girl. But I have a mind!--an intelligence!--even if I am a woman; and there is all the world to know. Marriage? Yes!--but not at the sacrifice of everything else--of the rational, civilised self."

On the whole though, her youth had been happy enough, with recurrent intervals of _ennui_ and discontent. Intervals too of poetic enthusiasm, or ascetic religion. At eighteen she had been practically a Catholic, influenced by the charming wife of one of her father's aides-de-camp. And then--a few stray books or magazine articles had made a Darwinian and an agnostic of her; the one phase as futile as the other.

"I knew nothing--I had no mind!"--she repeated with energy,--"till Gertrude came."

And she thought with ardour of that intellectual awakening, under the strange influence of the apparently reserved and impa.s.sive woman, who had come to read history with her for six months, at the suggestion of a friend of her father's, a certain cultivated and clever Lady Tonbridge, "who saw how starved I was."

So, after enquiry, a lady who was a B.A. of London, and had taken first-cla.s.s honour in history--Delia's ambition would accept nothing less--had been found, who wanted for health's sake a winter in a warm climate, and was willing to read history with Governor Blanch-flower's half-fledged daughter.

The friendship had begun, as often, with a little aversion. Delia was made to work, and having always resented being made to do anything, for about a month she disliked her tutor, and would have persuaded Sir Robert to send her away, had not England been so far off, and the agreement with Miss Marvell, whose terms were high, unusually stringent. But by the end of the month the girl of eighteen was conquered. She had recognised in Gertrude Marvell accomplishments that filled her with envy, together with an intensity of will, a bitter and fiery purpose, that astounded and subdued a young creature in whom inherited germs of southern energy and pa.s.sion were only waiting the touch that starts the ferment. Gertrude Marvell had read an amazing amount of history, and all from one point of view; that of the woman stirred to a kind of madness by what she held to be the wrongs of her s.e.x. The age-long monopoly of all the higher forces of civilisation by men; the cruel and insulting insistence upon the s.e.xual and maternal functions of women, as covering the whole of her destiny; the hideous depreciation of her as an inferior and unclean creature, to which Christianity, poisoned by the story of Eve, and a score of barbarous beliefs and superst.i.tions more primitive still, had largely contributed, while hypocritically professing to enfranchise and exalt her; the unfailing doom to "obey," and to bring forth, that has crushed her; the labours and shames heaped upon her by men in the pursuit of their own selfish devices; and the denial to her, also by men, of all the higher and spiritual activities, except those allowed by a man-made religion:--this feminist gospel, in some respects so bitterly true, in others so vindictively false, was gradually and unsparingly pressed upon Delia's quick intelligence. She caught its fire; she rose to its call; and there came a day when Gertrude Marvell breaking through the cold reserve she had hitherto interposed between herself and the pupil who had come to adore her, threw her arms round the girl, accepting from her what were practically the vows of a neophyte in a secret and revolutionary service.

Joyous, self-dedicating moment! But it had been followed by a tragedy; the tragedy of Delia's estrangement from her father. It was not long before Sir Robert Blanchflower, a proud self-indulgent man, with a keen critical sense, a wide acquaintance with men and affairs, and a number of miscellaneous acquirements of which he never made the smallest parade, had divined the spirit of irreconcilable revolt which animated the slight and generally taciturn woman, who had obtained such a hold upon his daughter. He, the G.o.d of his small world, was made to feel himself humiliated in her presence. She was, in fact, his intellectual superior, and the truth was conveyed to him in a score of subtle ways.

She was in his house simply because she was poor, and wanted rest from excessive overwork, at someone else's expense. Otherwise her manner suggested--often quite unconsciously--that she would not have put up with his household and its regulations for a single day.

Then, suddenly, he perceived that he had lost his daughter, and the reason of it. The last year of his official life was thenceforward darkened by an ugly and undignified struggle with the woman who had stolen Delia from him. In the end he dismissed Gertrude Marvell. Delia shewed a pa.s.sionate resentment, told him frankly that as soon as she was twenty-one she should take up "the Woman's movement" as her sole occupation, and should offer herself wherever Gertrude Marvell, and Gertrude's leaders, thought she could be useful. "The vote _must_ be got!"--she said, standing white and trembling, but resolute, before her father--"If not peaceably, then by violence. And when we get it, father, you men will be astonished to see what we shall do with it!"

Her twenty-first birthday was at hand, and would probably have seen Delia's flight from her father's house, but for Sir Robert's breakdown in health. He gave up his post, and it was evident he had not more than a year or two to live. Delia softened and submitted. She went abroad with him, and for a time he seemed to throw off the disease which had attacked him. It was during a brighter interval that, touched by her apparent concessions, he had consented to her giving the lecture in the Tyrolese hotel the fame of which had spread abroad, and had even taken a certain pleasure in her oratorical success.

But during the following winter--Sir Robert's last--which they spent at Meran, things had gone from bad to worse. For months Delia never mentioned Gertrude Marvell to her father. He flattered himself that the friendship was at an end. Then some accident revealed to him that it was as close as, or closer than ever; that they were in daily correspondence; that they had actually met, unknown to him, in the neighbourhood of Meran; and that Delia was sending all the money she could possibly spare from her very ample allowance to "The Daughters of Revolt," the far-spreading society in which Gertrude Marvell was now one of the leading officials.

Some of these dismal memories of Meran descended like birds of night upon Delia, as she stood with her arms above her head, in her long night-gown, looking intently but quite unconsciously into the depths of an old rosewood cheval gla.s.s. She felt that sultry night about her once more, when, after signing his will, her father opened his eyes upon her, coming back with an effort from the bound of death, and had said quite clearly though faintly in the silence--

"Give up that woman, Delia!--promise me to give her up." And Delia had cried bitterly, on her knees beside him--without a word--caressing his hand. And the cold fingers had been feebly withdrawn from hers as the eyes closed.

"Oh papa--papa!" The low murmur came from her, as she pressed her hands upon her eyes. If the Christian guesses were but true, and in some quiet Elysian state he might now understand, and cease to be angry with her! Was there ever a great cause won without setting kin against kin?

"A man's foes shall be they of his own household." "It wasn't my fault--it wasn't my fault!"

No!--and moreover it was her duty not to waste her strength in vain emotion and regret. Her task was _doing_, not dreaming. She turned away, banished her thoughts and set steadily about the task of dressing.

"Please Miss Blanchflower, there are two or three people waiting to see you in the servants' hall."

So said the tall and gentle-voiced housekeeper, Mrs. Bird, whose emotions had been, in Miss Marvell's view, so unnecessarily exercised on the evening of Delia's home-coming. Being a sensitive person, Mrs.

Bird had already learnt her lesson, and her manner had now become as mildly distant as could be desired, especially in the case of Miss Blanchflower's lady companion.

"People? What people?" asked Delia, looking round with a furrowed brow.

She and Gertrude were sitting together on the sofa when the housekeeper entered, eagerly reading a large batch of letters which the London post had just brought, and discussing their contents in subdued tones.

"It's the cottages, Miss. Her Ladyship used always to decide who should have those as were vacant about this time of year, and two or three of these persons have been up several times to know when you'd be home."

"But I don't know anything about it"--said Delia, rising reluctantly.

"Why doesn't the agent--why doesn't Mr. Frost do it?"

"I suppose--they thought--you'd perhaps speak a word to Mr. Frost, Miss," suggested Mrs. Bird. "But I can send them away of course, if you wish."

"Oh no, I'll come"--said Delia. "But it's rather tiresome--just as"--she looked at Gertrude.

"Don't be long," said Miss Marvell, sharply, "I'll wait for you here."

And she plunged back into the letters, her delicate face all alive, her eyes sparkling. Delia departed--evidently on a distasteful errand.

But twenty minutes later, she returned flushed and animated.

"I _am_ glad I went! Such tyranny--such monstrous tyranny!" She stood in front of Gertrude breathing fast, her hands on her hips.

"What's the matter?"

"My grandmother had a rule--can you imagine anything so cruel!--that no girl--who had gone wrong--was to be allowed in our cottages. If she couldn't be provided for in some Home or other, or if her family refused to give her up, then the family must go. An old man has been up to see me--a widower with two daughters--one in service. The one in service has come to grief--the son of the house!--the usual story!"--the speaker's face had turned fiercely pale--"and now our agent refuses to let the girl and her baby come home. And the old father says--'What am I to do, Miss? I can't turn her out--she's my own flesh and blood. I've got to stick to her--else there'll be worse happening. It's not _justice_, Miss--and it's not Gospel.'

Well!"--Delia seated herself with energy,--"I've told him to have her home at once--and I'll see to it."

Gertrude lifted her eyebrows, a gesture habitual with her, whenever Delia wore--as now--her young prophetess look. Why feel these things so much? Human nerves have only a certain limited stock of reactions.

Avenge--and alter them!

But she merely said--

"And the others?"

"Oh, a poor mother with eight children, pleading for a cottage with three bedrooms instead of two! I told her she should have it if I had to build it!--And an old woman who has lived fifty-two years in her cottage, and lost all her belongings, begging that she mightn't be turned out--for a family--now that it's too big for her. She shan't be turned out! Of course I suppose it would be common sense"--the tension of the speaker's face broke up in laughter--"to put the old woman into the cottage of the eight children--and put the eight children into the old woman's. But human beings are not cattle! Sentiment's something!

Why shouldn't a woman be allowed to die in her old home,--so long as she pays the rent? I hate all this interference with people's lives!

And it's always the women who come worst off. 'Oh Mr. Frost, he never pays no attention to us women. He claps 'is 'ands to his ears when he sees one of us, and jest runs for it.' Well, I'll make Mr. Frost listen to a woman!"

"I'm afraid Mr. Winnington is his master," said Gertrude quietly.

Delia, crimson again, shrugged her shoulders.

"We shall see!"

Gertrude Marvell looked up.

"Look here, Delia, if you're going to play the part of earthly Providence to this village and your property in general--as I've said to you before--you may as well tell the 'Daughters' you can't do anything for them. That's a profession in itself; and would take you all your time."

"Then of course, I shan't do it," said Delia, with decision. "But I only want to put in an appearance--to make friends with the people--just for a time, Gertrude! It doesn't do to be _too_ unpopular.

We're not exactly in good odour just now, are we?"