He had spoken with firm emphasis, his eyes sparkling.
"Everybody in the neighbourhood believes anything bad, about him--and us!" cried Delia.
"Don"t, for Heaven"s sake, couple yourself, and the man--together!"
said Winnington, flushing with anger. "I know nothing about him, when you first arrived here. Mr. Lathrop didn"t matter twopence to me before. Now he does matter."
"Why?" Delia"s eyes were held to his, fascinated.
"Simply because I care--I care a great deal--what happens to you," he said quietly, after a pause. "Naturally, I must care."
Delia looked away, and began twisting her black sash into knots.
"Bankruptcy--is not exactly a crime."
"Oh, so you knew that farther fact about him? But of course--it is the rest that matters. Since we spoke of this before, I have seen the judge who tried the case in which this man figured. I hate speaking of it in your presence, but you force me. He told me it was one of the worst he had ever known--a case for which there was no defence or excuse whatever."
"Why must I believe it?" cried Delia impetuously. "It"s a man"s judgment! The woman may have been--Gertrude says she was--horribly unhappy and ill-treated. Yet nothing could be proved--enough to free her. Wait till we have women judges--and women lawyers--then you"ll see!"
He laughed indignantly--though not at all inclined to laugh. And what seemed to him her stubborn perversity drove him to despair.
"In this case, if there had been a woman judge, I am inclined to think it would have been a good deal worse for the people concerned. At least I hope so. Don"t try to make me believe, Miss Delia, that women are going to forgive treachery and wickedness more easily than men!"
"Oh, "treachery!"--" she murmured, protesting. His look both intimidated and drew her. Winnington came nearer to her, and suddenly he laid his hand on both of hers. Looking up she was conscious of a look that was half raillery, half tenderness.
"My dear child!--I must call you that--though you are so clever--and so--so determined to have your own way. Look here! I"m going to plead my rights. I"ve done a good deal for you the last three months--perhaps you hardly know all that has been done. I"ve been your watch-dog--put it at that. Well, now give the watch-dog, give the Early-Victorian, his bone! Promise me that you will have no more dealings with Mr. Lathrop.
Send him back his books--and say "Not at Home!""
She was really distressed.
"I can"t, Mr. Winnington!--I"m so sorry!--but I can"t."
"Why can"t you?" He still held her.
A score of thoughts flew hither and thither in her brain. She had asked a great favour of Lathrop--she had actually put the jewels into his hands! How could she recall her action? And when he had done her such a service, if he succeeded in doing it--how was she to turn round on him, and cut him the very next moment?
Nor could she make up her mind to confess to Winnington what she had done. She was bent on her scheme. If she disclosed it _now_ everything might be upset.
"I really _can"t!_" she repeated, gravely, releasing her hands.
Winnington rose, and began to pace the drawing room. Delia watched him--quivering--an exquisite vision herself, in the half lights of the room.
When he paused at last to speak, she saw a new expression in his eyes.
"I shall have to think this over, Miss Blanchflower--perhaps to reconsider my whole position."
She was startled, but she kept her composure.
"You mean--you may have--after all--to give me up?"
He forced a very chilly smile.
"You remember--you asked me to give you up. Now if it were only one subject--however important--on which we disagreed, I might still do my best, though the responsibility of all you make me connive at is certainly heavy. But if you are entirely to set at defiance not only my advice and wishes as to this illegal society to which you belong, and as to the violent action into which I understand you may be led when you go to town, but also in such a matter as we have just been discussing--then indeed, I see no place for me. I must think it over. A guardian appointed by the Court might be more effective--might influence you more."
"I told you I was a handful," said Delia, trying to laugh. But her voice sounded hollow in her own ears.
He offered no reply--merely repeating "I must think it over!"--and resolutely changing the subject, he made a little perfunctory conversation on a few matters of business--and was gone.
After his departure, Delia sat motionless for half an hour at least, staring at the fire. Then suddenly she sprang up, went to the writing-table, and sat down to write--
"Dear Mr. Mark--Don"t give me up! You don"t know. Trust me a little! I am not such a fiend as you think. I am grateful--I am indeed. I wish to goodness I could show it. Perhaps I shall some day. I hadn"t time to tell you about poor Weston--who"s to have an operation--and that I"m not going to town with Gertrude--not for some weeks at any rate. I shall be alone here, looking after Weston. So I can"t disgrace or worry you for a good while any way. And you needn"t fret about Mr.
Lathrop--you needn"t _really_! I can"t explain--not just yet--but it"s all right. Mayn"t I come and help with some of your cripple children?
or the school? or something? If Susy Amberly can do it, I suppose I can--I"d like to. May I sign myself--though I _am_ a handful-"
"Yours affectionately, DELIA BLANCHFLOWER."
She sat staring at the paper, trembling under a stress of feeling she could not understand--the large tears in her eyes.
Chapter XIII
"Pack the papers as quickly as you can--I am going to town this afternoon. Whatever can"t be packed before then, you can bring up to me tomorrow."
A tired girl lifted her head from the packing-case before which she was kneeling.
"I"ll do my best, Miss Marvell--But I"m afraid it will be impossible to finish to-day." And she looked wearily round the room laden with papers--letters, pamphlets, press-cuttings--on every available table and shelf.
Gertrude gave a rather curt a.s.sent. Her reason told her the thing was impossible; but her will chafed against the delay, which her secretary threatened, of even a few hours in the resumption of her work in London, and the re-housing of all its tools and materials. She was a hard mistress; though no harder on her subordinates than she was on herself.
She began to turn her own hand to the packing, and missing a book she had left in the drawing-room the night before, she went to fetch it. It was again a morning of frosty sunshine, and the garden outside lay in dazzling light. The drawing-room windows were open, and through one of them Gertrude perceived Delia moving about outside on the whitened gra.s.s. She was looking for the earliest snowdrops which were just beginning to bulge from the green stems, pushing up through the dead leaves under the beech trees. She wore a blue soft shawl round her head and shoulders, and she was singing to herself. As she raised herself from the ground, and paused a moment looking towards the house, but evidently quite unconscious of any spectators, Gertrude could not take her eyes from the vision she made. If radiant beauty, if grace, and flawless youth can "lift a mortal to the skies," Delia stood like a young G.o.ddess under the winter sun. But there was much more than beauty in her face. There was a fluttering and dreamy joy which belongs only to the children of earth. The low singing came unconsciously from her lips, as though it were the natural expression of the heart within.
Gertrude caught the old lilting tune:--
"For oh, Greensleaves was all my joy-- For oh, Greensleaves was my heart"s delight-- And who but my lady Greensleaves--"
The woman observing her did so with a strange mixture of softness and repulsion. If Gertrude Marvell loved anybody, she loved Delia--the captive of her own bow and spear, and until now the most loyal, the most single-minded of disciples. But as she saw Delia walk away to a further reach of the garden, the mind of the elder woman bitterly accused the younger. Delia"s refusal to join the militant forces in London, at this most critical and desperate time, on what seemed to Gertrude the trumpery excuse of Weston"s illness, had made an indelible impression on a fanatical temper. If she had cared--if she had _really_ cared--she could not have done any such thing. "What have I been wasting my time here for?" she asked herself; and reviewing the motives which had induced her to accept Delia"s proposal that they should live together, she accused herself sharply of a contemptible lack of judgment and foresight.
For no mere affection for Delia Blanchflower would have influenced her, at the time when Delia, writing to tell her of the approaching death of Sir Robert, implored her to come and share her life. "You know I shall have money, dearest Gertrude,"--wrote Delia--"Come and help me to spend it--for the Cause." And for the sake of the Cause,--which was then sorely in want of money--and only for its sake, Gertrude had consented.
She was at that time rapidly becoming one of the leading spirits in the London office of the "Daughters," so that to bury herself, even for a time, in a country village, some eighty miles from London, was a sacrifice. But to secure what seemed likely to be some thousands a year from a willing giver, such a temporary and modified exile had appeared to her worth while; and she had at once planned a campaign of "militant" meetings in the towns along the South Coast, by way of keeping in touch with "active work."
But, in the first place, the extraordinary terms of Sir Robert"s will had proved far more baffling than she and Delia had ever been willing to believe. And, in the next place, the personality of Mark Winnington had almost immediately presented itself to Gertrude as something she had never reckoned with. A bl.u.s.tering and tyrannical guardian would have been comparatively easy to fight. Winnington was formidable, not because he was hostile, resolutely hostile, to their whole propaganda of violence; that might only have spurred a strong-willed girl to more pa.s.sionate extremes. He was dangerous,--in spite of his forty years--because he was delightful; because, in his leisurely, old-fashioned way, he was so loveable, so handsome, so inevitably attractive, Gertrude, looking back, realised that she had soon perceived--vaguely at least--what might happen, what had now--as she dismally guessed--actually happened.
The young, impressionable creature, brought into close contact with this charming fellow--this agreeable reactionary--had fallen in love!
That was all. But it was more than enough. Delia might be still unconscious of it herself. But this new shrinking from the most characteristic feature of the violent policy--this new softness and fluidity in a personality that when they first reached Maumsey had begun already to stiffen in the fierce mould of militancy--to what could any observer with eyes in their head attribute them but the influence of Mark Winnington--the daily unseen presence of other judgments and other ideals embodied in a man to whom the girl"s feelings had capitulated?