Delia Blanchflower by Mrs. Humphry Ward (good beach reads TXT) 📕

field path leading to her brother's house, and was immediately out of sight.

Delia went on, smarting and bewildered. How clear it was that she was no longer trusted--no longer in the inner circle--and that Gertrude herself had given the cue! The silent and stubborn Marion Andrews was of a very different type from the three excitable or helpless women gathered in Miss Toogood's parlour. She had ability, passion, and the power to hold her tongue. Her connection with Gertrude Marvell had begun, in London, at the "Daughters" office, as Delia now knew, long before her own appearance at Maumsey. When Gertrude came to the Abbey, she and this strange, determined woman were already well acquainted, though Delia herself had not been aware of it till quite lately. "I have been a child in their hands!--they have _never_ trusted me!" Heart and vanity were equally wounded.

As she neared the Maumsey gate, suddenly a sound--a voice--a tall figure in the twilight.

"Ah, there you are!" said Winnington. "Lady Tonbridge sent me to look for you."

"Aren't you back very early?" Delia attempted her usual voice. But the man who joined her at once detected the note of effort, of tired pre-occupation.

"Yes--our business collapsed. Our clerk's too good--leaves us nothing to do. So I've been having a talk with Lady Tonbridge."

Delia was startled; not by the words, but by the manner of them. While she seemed to Winnington to be thinking of something other than the moment--the actual moment, her impression was the precise opposite, as of a sharp, intense consciousness of the moment in him, which presently communicated its own emotion to her.

They walked up the drive together.

"At last I have got a horse for you," said Winnington, after a pause. "Shall I bring it to-morrow? Weston is going on so well to-night, France tells me, that he may be able to say 'out of danger' to-morrow. If so, let me take you far afield, into the Forest. We might have a jolly run."

Delia hesitated. It was very good of him. But she was out of practice. She hadn't ridden for a long time.

Winnington laughed aloud. He told--deliberately--a tale of a young lady on a black mare, whom no one else could ride--of a Valkyrie--a Brunhilde--who had exchanged a Tyrolese hotel for a forest lodge, and ranged the wide world alone--

"Oh!"--cried Delia, "where did you hear that?"

He described the talk of the little Swedish lady, and that evening on the heights when he had first heard her name.

"Next day came the lawyers' letter--and yours--both in a bundle." "You'll agree--I did all I could--to put you off!"

"So I understood--at once. You never beat about the bush."

There was a tender laughter in his voice. But she had not the heart to spar with him. He felt rather than saw her drooping. Alarm--anxiety--rushed upon him, mingled in a tempest-driven mind with all that Madeleine Tonbridge, in the Maumsey drawing-room, had just been saying to him. That had been indeed the plain speaking of a friend!--attacking his qualms and scruples up and down, denouncing them even; asking him indignantly, who else could save this child--who else could free her from the sordid entanglement into which her life had slipped--but he? "You--you only, can do it!" The words were still thundering through his blood. Yet he had not meant to listen to his old friend. He had indeed withstood her firmly. But this sad and languid Delia began, again, to put resistance to flight--to tempt--to justify him--driving him into action that his cooler will had just refused.

Suddenly, as they walked under the overshadowing trees of the drive, her ungloved hand hanging beside her, she felt it taken, enclosed in a warm strong clasp. A thrill, a shiver ran through her. But she let it stay. Neither spoke. Only as they neared the front door with the lamp, she softly withdrew her fingers.

There was no one in the drawing-room, which was scented with early hyacinths, and pleasantly aglow with fire-light. Winnington closed the door, and they stood facing each other. Delia wanted to cry out--to prevent him from speaking--but she seemed struck dumb.

He approached her.

"Delia!"

She looked at him still helplessly silent. She had thrown off her hat and furs, and, in her short walking-dress, she looked singularly young and fragile. The change which had tempered the splendid--or insolent--exuberance of her beauty, which Lathrop had perceived, had made it in Winnington's eyes infinitely more appealing, infinitely more seductive. Love and fear, mingled, had "passed into her face," like the sculptor's last subtle touches on the clay.

"Delia!" How all life seemed to have passed into a name! "I'm not sure that I ought to speak! I'm not sure it's fair. It--it seems like taking advantage. If you think so, don't imagine I shall ever press it again. I'm twenty years older than you--I've had my youth. I thought everything was closed for me--but--" He paused a moment--then his voice broke into a low cry--"Dear! what have you done to make me love you so?"

He came nearer. His look spoke the rest.

Delia retreated.

"What have I done?" she said passionately.

"Made your life one long worry!--ever since you saw me. How can you love me?--you oughtn't!--you oughtn't!"

He laughed.

"Every quarrel we had I loved you the better. From our very first talk in this room--"

She cried out, putting up her hands, as though to protect herself against the power that breathed from his face and shining eyes.

"Don't--don't!--I can't bear it."

His expression changed.

"Delia!"

"Oh, I do thank you!" she said, piteously, "I would--if I could. I--I shall never care for any one else--but I can't--I can't." He was silent a moment, and then said, taking her hands, and putting them to his lips--

"Won't you explain?"

"Yes, I'll try--I ought to. You see"--she looked up in anguish--"I'm not my own--to give--and I--No, no, I couldn't make you happy!"

"You mean--you're--you're too deeply pledged to this Society?"

He had dropped her hands, and stood looking at her, as if he would read her through.

"I must go up to town next week," she said hurriedly. "I must go, and I must do what Gertrude tells me. Perhaps--I can protect--save her. I don't know. I daresay I'm absurd to think so--but I might--and I'm bound. But I'm promised--promised in honour--and I can't--get free. I can't give up Gertrude--and you--you could never bear with her--or accept her. And so--you see--I should just make you miserable!"

He walked away, his hands in his pockets, and came back. Then suddenly he took her by the shoulders.

"You don't imagine I shall acquiesce in this!" he said passionately--"that I shall endure to see you tied and chained by a woman whom I know you have ceased to respect, and I believe you have ceased to love!"

"No!--no!--" she protested.

"I think it is so," he said, steadily. "That is how I read it!"

She gave a sob--quickly repressed. Then she violently mastered herself.

"If it were true--I can't marry you. I won't be treacherous--nor a coward. And I won't ruin your life. Dear Mr. Mark--it's quite, quite impossible. Let's never talk of it again."

And straightening all her slender body, she faced him with that foolish courage, that senseless heroism, which women have so terribly at command.

So far, however from obliging her, he broke into a tempest of discussion bringing to bear upon her all the arguments that love or common sense dictated. If she really cared for him at all, if she even thought it possible she might care, was she going to refuse all help--all advice--from one to whom she had grown so dear?--to whom everything she did was now of such vital, such desperate importance? He pleaded for himself--guessing it to be the more hopeful way.

"It's been a lonely life, Delia, till you came! And now you've filled it. For God's sake, listen to me! Let me protect you, dear--let me advise you--trust yourself to me. Do you imagine I should want to dictate to you--or tyrannise over you? Do you imagine I don't sympathise with your faiths, your ideals--that I don't feel for women--what they suffer--what they endure--in this hard world? Delia, we'd work together!--it mightn't be always in the same way--nor always with the same opinions--but we'd teach--we'd help each other. Your own conscience--your own mind--I see it plainly--have turned against this horrible campaign--and the woman who's led you into it. How she's treated you! Would any friend, any real _friend_ have left you alone through this Weston business? And you've given her everything--your house, your money, yourself! It makes me _mad_. I do implore you to break with her--as gently, as generously as you like--but _free yourself_! And then!"--he drew a long breath--"what a life we'd make together!" He sat down beside her. Under the strong overhanging brows, his grey eyes still pleaded with her--silently.

But she was just strong enough, alas!--the poor child!--to resist him. She scarcely replied; but her silence held the gate--against his onslaughts. And at last she tottered to her feet.

"Mr. Mark--dear Mr. Mark!--let me go!"

Her voice, her aspect struck him dumb. And before he could rally his forces again, the door shut, and she was gone.


Chapter XVI

"So I mustn't argue any more?" said Lady Tonbridge, looking at Delia, who was seated by her guest's fire, and wore the weary aspect of one who had already been argued with a good deal.

Madeleine's tone was one of suppressed exasperation. Exasperation rather with the general nature of things than with Delia. It was difficult to be angry with one whose perversity made her so evidently wretched. But as to the "intolerable woman" who had got the girl's conscience--and Winnington's happiness--in her power, Lady Tonbridge's feelings were at a white heat. How to reason with Delia, without handling Gertrude Marvell as she deserved---there was the difficulty.

In any case, Delia was unshakeable. If Weston were really out of danger--Dr. France was to bring over the Brownmouth specialist on Monday--then that very afternoon, or the next morning, Delia must and would go to London to join Gertrude Marvell. And six days later Parliament would re-assemble under the menace of raids and stone-throwings, to which the _Tocsin_ had been for weeks past summoning "The Daughters of Revolt," throughout the country, in terms of passionate violence. In those proceedings Delia had apparently determined to take her part. As to this Lady Tonbridge had not been able to move her in the least.

The case for Winnington seemed indeed for the moment desperate. After his scene with Delia, he had left the Abbey immediately, and Lady Tonbridge, though certain that something important--and disastrous--had happened, would have known nothing, but for a sudden confession from Delia, as the two ladies sat together in the drawing-room after dinner. Delia had abruptly laid down her book, with which she was clearly only trifling--in order to say--

"I think I had better tell you at once that my guardian asked me to marry him, this afternoon, and I refused."

Since this earthquake shock, Madeleine Tonbridge could imagine nothing more unsatisfactory than the conversations between them which had begun in the drawing-room, and lingered on till, now, at nearly midnight, sheer weariness on both sides had brought them to an end. When Madeleine had at last thrown up argument as hopeless, Delia with a face of carven wax, and so handsome through it all that Lady Tonbridge could have beaten her for sheer vexation, had said a