Delia Blanchflower — Chapter 15

"Do you know anything more?"

The voice was Delia's; and the man who had just met her in the shelter of the wooded walk which ran along the crest of the hill above the Maumsey valley, was instantly aware of the agitation of the speaker.

"Nothing--precise.

As I told you last week--you needn't be afraid of anything immediate.

But my London informants assure me that elaborate preparations are certainly going on for some great _coup_ as soon as Parliament meets--against Sir Wilfrid.

The police are uneasy, though puzzled.

They have warned Daunt, and Sir Wilfrid is guarded."

"Then of course our people won't attempt it!

It would be far too dangerous."

"Don't be too sure!

You and I know Miss Marvell.

If she means to burn Monk Lawrence, she'll achieve it, whatever the police may do."

The man and the girl walked on in silence.

The January afternoons were lengthening a little, and even under the shadow of the wood Lathrop could see with sufficient plainness Delia's pale beauty--strangely worn and dimmed as it seemed to him.

His mind revolted.

Couldn't the jealous gods spare even this physical perfection?

What on earth had been happening to her?

He supposed a Christian would call the face "spiritualised."

If so, the Christian--in his opinion--would be a human ass.

"I have written several times to Miss Marvell--very strongly," said Delia at last.

"I thought you ought to know that.

But I have had no reply."

"Why don't you go--instead of writing?"

"It has been impossible.

My maid has been so terribly ill."

Lathrop expressed his sympathy.

Delia received it with coldness and a slight frown.

She hurried on-- "I've written again--but I haven't sent it.

Perhaps I oughtn't to have written by post."

"Better not.

Shall I be your messenger?

Miss Marvell doesn't like me--but that don't matter."

"Oh, no, thank you."

The voice was hastily emphatic; so that his vanity winced.

"There are several members of the League in the village.

I shall send one of them."

He smiled--rather maliciously.

"Are you going to tackle Miss Andrews herself?"

"You're still--quite _certain_--that she's concerned?"

"Quite certain.

Since you and I met--a fortnight ago isn't it?

--I have seen her several times, in the neighbourhood of the house--after dark.

She has no idea, of course, that I have been prowling round."

"What have you seen?

--what can she be doing?"

asked Delia.

"Of course I remember what you told me--the other day."

Lathrop's belief was that a close watch was now being kept on Daunt--on his goings and comings--with a view perhaps to beguiling him away, and then getting into the house.

"But he has lately got a niece to stay with him, and help look after the children, and the house.

His sister who is married in London, offered to send her down for six months.

He was rather surprised, for he had quite lost sight of his sister; but he tells me it's a great relief to his mind.

"So you talk to him?"

"Certainly.

Oh, he knows all about me--but he knows too that I'm on the side of the house!

He thinks I'm a queer chap--but he can trust me--in _that_ business.

And by the way, Miss Blanchflower, perhaps I ought to let you understand that I'm an artist and a writer, before I'm a Suffragist, and if I come across Miss Marvell--engaged in what you and I have been talking of--I shall behave just like any other member of the public, and act for the police.

I don't want to sail--with you--under any false pretences!"

"I know," said Delia, quietly.

"You came to warn me--and we are acting together.

I understand perfectly.

You--you've promised however"--she could not keep her voice quite normal--"that you'd let me know--that you'd give me notice before you took any step."

Lathrop nodded.

"If there's time--I promise.

But if Daunt or I come upon Miss Marvell--or any of her minions--torch in hand--there would not be time.

Though, of course, if I could help her escape, consistently with saving the house--for your sake--I should do so.

I am sure you believe that?"

Delia made no audible reply, but he took her silence for consent.

"And now"--he resumed--"I ought to be informed without delay, whether your messenger finds Miss Marvell and how she receives your letter."

"I will let you know at once."

"A telegram brings me here--this same spot.

But you won't wire from the village?"

"Oh no, from Latchford."

"Well, then, that's settled.

Regard me, please, as your henchman.

Well!

--have you read any Madame de Noailles?"

He fancied he saw a slight impatient movement.

"Not yet, I'm afraid.

I've been living in a sick room."

Again he expressed polite sympathy, while his thoughts repeated--"What waste!

--what absurdity!"

"She might distract you--especially in these winter days.

Her verse is the very quintessence of summer--of hot gardens and their scents--of roses--and June twilights.

It takes one out of this leafless north."

He stretched a hand to the landscape.

And suddenly, while his heavy face kindled, he began to recite.

His French was immaculate--even to a sensitive and well-trained ear; and his voice, which in speaking was disagreeable, took in reciting deep and beautiful notes, which easily communicated to a listener the thrill, the passion, of sensuous pleasure, which certain poetry produced in himself.

But it communicated no such thrill to Delia.

She was only irritably conscious of the uncouthness of his large cadaverous face, and straggling fair hair; of his ragged ulster, his loosened tie, and all the other untidy details of his dress.

"And I shall have to go on meeting him!"

she thought, with repulsion.

"And at the end of this walk (the gate was in sight) I shall have to shake hands with him--and he'll hold my hand."

She loathed the thought of it; but she knew very well that she Was under coercion--for Gertrude's sake.

The recollection of Winnington--away in Latchford on county business--smote her sharply.

But how could she help it?

She must--_must_ keep in touch with this man--who had Gertrude in his power.

While these thoughts were running through her mind, he stopped his recitation abruptly.

"Am I to help you any more--with the jewels?"

Delia started.

Lathrop was smiling at her, and she resented the smile.

She had forgotten.

But there was no help for it.

She must have more money.

It might be, in the last resort, the means of bargaining with Gertrude.

And how could she ask Mark Winnington!

So she hurriedly thanked him, naming a tiara and two pendants, that she thought must be valuable.

"All right," said Lathrop, taking out a note-book from his breast pocket, and looking at certain entries he had made on the occasion of his visit to Maumsey.

"I remember--worth a couple of thousand at least.

When shall I have them?"

"I will send them registered--to-morrow--from Latchford."

"_ Très bien_!

I will do my best.

You know Mr. Winnington has offered me a commission?"

His eyes laughed.

Delia turned upon him.

"And you ought to accept it, Mr. Lathrop!

It would be kinder to all of us."

She spoke with spirit and dignity.

But he laughed again and shook his head.

"My reward, you see, is just _not_ to be paid.

My fee is your presence--in this wood--your little word of thanks--and the hand you give me--on the bargain!"

They had reached the gate, and he held out his hand.

Delia had flushed violently, but she yielded her own.

He pressed it lingeringly, as she had foreseen, then released it and opened the gate for her.

"Good-bye then.

A word commands me--when you wish.

We keep watch--and each informs the other--barring accidents.

That is, I think, the bargain."

She murmured assent, and they parted.

Half way back towards his own cottage, Lathrop paused at a spot where the trees were thin, and the slopes of the valley below could be clearly seen.

He could still make out her figure nearing the first houses of the village.

"I think she hates me.

Never mind!

I command her, and meet me she must--when I please to summon her.

There is some sweetness in that--and in teasing the stupid fellow who no doubt will own her some day."

And he thought exultantly of Winnington's letter to him, and his own insolent reply.

It had been a perfectly civil letter--and a perfectly proper thing for a guardian to do.

But--for the moment-- "I have the whip hand--and it amuses me to keep it,--Now then for Blaydes!"

For there, in the doorway of the cottage, stood the young journalist, waiting and smoking.

He was evidently in good humour.

"Well?

She came?"

"Of course she came.

But it doesn't matter to you."

"Oh, doesn't it!

I suppose she wants you to sell something more for her?"

Lathrop did not reply.

Concerning Gertrude Marvell, he had not breathed a word to Blaydes.

They entered the hut together, and Lathrop rekindled the fire.

The two men sat over it smoking.

Blaydes plied his companion with eager questions, to which Lathrop returned the scantiest answers.

At last he said with a sarcastic look-- "I was offered four hundred pounds this afternoon--and refused it."

"The deuce you did!"

cried Blaydes, fiercely.

"What about my debt--and what do you mean?"

"Ten per cent.

commission," said Lathrop, drawing quietly at his cigar.

"Sales up to two thou.

, a fortnight ago.

I shall get the same money--or more--for the next batch."

"Well, that's all right!

No need to get it out of the lady, if you're particular.

Get it out of the other side.

Any fool could manage that."

"I shall not get a farthing out of the other side.

I shall not make a doit out of the whole transaction!"

"Then you're a d----d fool," said Blaydes, in a passion.

"And a dishonest fool besides!"

"Easy, please!

What hold should I have on this girl--this splendid creature--if I were merely to make money out of her?

As it is, she's obliged to me--she treats me like a gentleman.

I thought you had matrimonial ideas."

"I don't believe you've got the ghost of a chance!"

grumbled Blaydes, his mind smarting under the thought of the lost four hundred pounds, out of which his debt might have been paid.

"Nor do I," said Lathrop, coolly.

"But I choose to keep on equal terms with her.

You can sell me up when you like."

He lounged to the window, and threw it open.

The January day was closing, not in any glory of sunset, but with interwoven greys and pearls, and delicate yellow lights slipping through the clouds.

"I shall always have _this_"--he said to himself, passionately, as he drank in the air and the beauty--"whatever happens."

Recollection brought back to him Delia's proud, virginal youth, and her springing step as she walked beside him through the wood.

His mind wavered again between triumph and self-disgust.

His muddy past returned upon him, mingled, as always, with that invincible respect for her, and belief in something high and unstained in the depths of his own nature, to which his weakened and corrupt will was yet unable to give any effect.

"What I have done is not 'me'"--he thought.

"At any rate not all 'me.'

I am better than it.

I suspect Winnington has told her something--measuring it chastely out.

All the same--I shall see her again."

* * * * * Meanwhile Delia was descending the hill pursued by doubts and terrors.

The day was now darkening fast, and heavy snow-clouds were coming down over the valley.

The wind had dropped, but the heavy air was bitter-cold and lifeless, as though the earth waited sadly for the silencing and muffling of the snow.

And in Delia's heart there was a like dumb expectancy of change.

The old enthusiasms, and ideals and causes, seemed for the moment to lie veiled and frozen within her.

Only two figures emerged sharply in the landscape of thought--Gertrude--and Winnington.

Since that day, the day before Weston's operation, when Paul Lathrop had brought her evidence--collected partly from small incidents and observations on the spot, partly from information supplied him by friends in London--which had sharpened all her own suspicions into certainties, she had never known an hour free from fear.

Her letters had remained wholly unanswered.

She did not even know where Gertrude was; though it seemed to her that letters addressed to the head office of the League of Revolt must have been forwarded.

No!

Gertrude was really planning this hateful thing; the destruction of this beautiful and historic house, with all its memories and its treasures, in order to punish a Cabinet Minister for his opposition to Woman Suffrage, and so terrorise others.

Moreover it meant the risking of human life--Daunt--his children, complete indifference also to Delia's feelings, Delia's pain.

What was she to do?

Betray her friend?

--go to Winnington for help?

But he was a magistrate.

If such a plot were really on foot--and Lathrop was himself convinced that petroleum and explosives were already stored somewhere in the neighbourhood of the house--Winnington could only treat such a thing as a public servant, as a guardian of the law.

Any appeal to him to let private interests--even _her_ interests--interfere, would, she felt certain, be entirely fruitless.

Once go to him, the police must be informed--it would be his clear duty; and if such proofs of the plot existed as Lathrop believed, Gertrude would be arrested, and her accomplices.

Including Delia herself?

That possibility, instead of frightening her, gave the girl some momentary comfort.

For that _might_ perhaps secure Winnington's silence?

But no!

--her common sense dismissed the notion.

Winnington would discover at once that she had had no connection whatever with the business.

Lathrop's evidence alone would be enough.

And that being so, her confession would simply hand Gertrude over to Winnington's conscience.

And Mark Winnington's conscience was a thing to fear.

And yet the yearning to go to him--like the yearning of an unhappy child--was so strong.

Traitor!

--yes, _traitor_!

--double-dyed.

And pausing just outside the village, at a field gate, Delia leant over it, gazing into the lowering sky, and piteously crying to some power beyond--some God, "if any Zeus there be," on whom the heart in its trouble might throw itself.

Her thought ran backwards and forwards over the past months and years.

The burning moments of revolt through which she had lived--the meetings of the League with their multitudes of faces, strained, fierce faces, alive, many of them, with hatreds new to English life, new perhaps to civilised history,--and the intermittent gusts of pity and fury which had swept through her own young ignorance as she listened, making a hideous thing of the future and of human fate:--she lived through them all again.

Individual personalities recurred to her, the wild looks of delicate, frenzied women, who had lost health, employment, and the love of friends--suffered in body, mind and estate for this "cause" to which she too had vowed herself.

Was she alone to desert, to fail--both the cause and her friend, who had taught her everything?

"It's not my will--not my _will_--that shrinks"--she moaned to herself.

"If I _believed_--if I still believed!"

But why was the fire gone out of the old faiths, the savour from the old hopes?

Was she less moved by the sufferings, the toils, the weakness of her sex?

She could remember nights of weeping over the wrongs of women, after an impassioned evening with Gertrude.

And now--had the heart of flesh become a heart of stone?

Was she no longer worthy of the great crusade, the vast upheaval?

She could not tell.

She only knew that the glamour of it all was gone--that there were many hours when the Movement lay like lead upon her life.

Was it simply that her intelligence had revolted, that she had come to see the folly, the sheer, ludicrous folly of a "physical force" policy which opposed the pin-pricks of women to the strength of men?

Or was it something else--something far more compelling--more convincing--more humiliating!

"I've just fallen in love!

--_fallen in love!

_"--the words repeated themselves brazenly, desperately, in her mind:--"and I can't think for myself--judge for myself any longer!

It's abominable--but it's true!"

The very thought of Winnington's voice and look made her tremble as she walked.

Eternal weakness of the eternal woman!

She scorned herself, yet a bewildering joy sang through her senses.

Nevertheless she held it at bay.

She had her promised word--her honour--to think of.

Gertrude still expected her in London--on the scene of action.

"And I shall go," she said to herself with resolute inconsistency, "_I shall go_!"

What an angel Mark Winnington had been to her, this last fortnight!

She recalled the day of Weston's operation, and all the long days since.

The poor gentle creature had suffered terribly; death had been just held off, from hour to hour; and was only now withdrawing.

And Delia, sitting by the bed, or stealing with hushed foot about the house, was not only torn by pity for the living sufferer, she was haunted again by all the memories of her father's dying struggle--bitter and miserable days!

And with what tenderness, what strength, what infinite delicacy of thought and care, had she been upheld through it all!

Her heart melted within her.

"There are such men in the world--there are!

--and a year ago I should have simply despised anyone who told me so!"

Yet after these weeks of deepening experience, and sacred feeling, in which she had come to love Mark Winnington with all the strength of her young heart, and to realise that she loved him, the first use that she was making of a free hour was to go, unknown to him--for he was away on county business at Wanchester--and meet Paul Lathrop!

"But he would understand," she said to herself, drearily, as she moved on again.

"If he knew, he would understand."

* * * * * Now she must hurry on.

She turned into the broad High Street of the village, observed by many people, and half way down, she stopped at a door on which was a brass plate, "Miss Toogood, Dressmaker."

The lame woman greeted her with delight, and there in the back parlour of the little shop she found them gathered,--Kitty Foster, the science-mistress, Miss Jackson, and Miss Toogood,--the three "Daughters," who were now coldly looked on in the village, and found pleasure chiefly in each other's society.

Marion Andrews was not there.

Delia indeed fancied she had seen her in the dusk, walking in a side lane, that led into the Monk Lawrence road, with another girl, whom Delia did not know.

It was a relief, however, not to find her--for the moment.

The faces of the three women in the back parlour, were all strained and nervous;

they spoke low, and they gathered round Delia with an eagerness which betrayed their own sense of isolation--of being left leaderless.

"You will be going up soon, won't you?"

whispered Miss Toogood, as she stroked the sleeve of Delia's jacket.

"The _Tocsin_ says there'll be great doings next week--the day Parliament meets."

"I've got my orders!"

--said Kitty Foster, tossing her red hair mysteriously.

"Father won't keep me down here any longer.

I've made arrangements to go up to-morrow and lodge with a cousin in Battersea.

She's as deep in it as I am."

"And I'm hoping they'll find room for me in the League office," said the science-mistress.

"I can't stand this life here much longer.

My Governors are always showing me they think us all criminals, and they'll find an excuse for getting rid of me whenever they can.

I

daren't even put up the 'Daughters' colours in my room now."

Her hollow, anxious eyes, with the fanatical light in them clung to Delia--to the girl's noble head, and the young face flushed with the winter wind.

"But we shall get it this session, shan't we?"

said Miss Toogood eagerly, still stroking Delia's fur.

"The Government will give in--they must give in."

And she began to talk with hushed enthusiasm of the last month's tale of outrages--houses burnt, windows broken, Downing Street attacked, red pepper thrown over a Minister, ballot-boxes spoiled-- Suddenly it all seemed to Delia so absurd--so pathetic-- "I don't think we shall get the Bill!"

she said, sombrely.

"We shall be tricked again."

"Dear, dear!"

said Miss Toogood, helplessly.

"Then we shall have to go on.

It's war.

We can't stop."

And as she stood there, sadly contemplating the "war," in which, poor soul, she had never yet joined, except by sympathy, a little bill-distributing and a modest subscription, she seemed to carry on her shoulders the whole burden of the "Movement"--herself, the little lame dressmaker, on the one side--and a truculent British Empire on the other.

"We'll make them smart anyway!"

cried Kitty Foster.

"See if we don't!"

Delia hurriedly opened her business.

Would one of them take a letter for her to London--an important letter to Miss Marvell that she didn't want to trust to the post.

Whoever took it must go to the League office and find out where Miss Marvell was, and deliver it--personally.

She couldn't go herself--till after the doctors' consultation, which was to be held on Monday--if then.

Miss Jackson at once volunteered.