"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 pa.s.sionately--"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 G.o.d"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-a.s.semble 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 pa.s.sionate 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 quiet goodnight and departed.
But she was _in love with him_, the foolish, obstinate child!--wildly, absorbingly in love with him! The fact was tragically evident, in everything she said, and everything she left unsaid.
The struggle lay then between her loyalty to her friend, the pa.s.sionate loyalty of woman to woman, so newly and strangely developed by the Suffrage movement, and Winnington"s advancing influence,--the influence of a man equipped surely with all the means of victory--character, strength, charm--over the girl"s heart and imagination. He must conquer!
And yet Madeleine Tonbridge, staring into the ashes of a dwindling fire, had never persuaded herself--incorrigible optimist that she was--to so little purpose.
What _was_ there at the back of the girl"s mind? Something more than appeared; though what appeared was bad enough. One seemed at times to catch a glimpse of some cloaked and brooding Horror, in the dim background of the girl"s consciousness, and overshadowing it. What more likely indeed, with this wild campaign sweeping through the country?
She probably knew or suspected things that her moral sense condemned, to which she was nevertheless committed.
"We shall end by proving all that the enemy says of us; we shall give our chance away for a generation!"
"Do for Heaven"s sake keep the young lady at home!"
The speaker was Dr. France. After seeing his patient, dismissing the specialist, and spending half an hour _tete-a-tete_ with Delia, he came down to see Lady Tonbridge in a state that in any one else would have been a state of agitation. In him all that appeared was a certain hawkish glitter in the eye, and a tendency to pull and pinch a scarcely existing moustache. But Madeleine, who knew him well, understood that he was just as much at feud with the radical absurdity of things as she was.
"No one can keep her at home. Delia is of age," she said, rising to meet him, with a face as serious as his own.
"If she gets into prison, and hunger-strikes, she"ll injure herself!
She"s extraordinarily run down with this business of Weston"s. I don"t believe she could stand the sheer excitement of what she proposes to do."
"She"s told you?"
"Quite enough. If she once goes up to town--if she once gets into that woman"s clutches, no one can tell what will happen. Oh, you women--you women!" And the doctor walked tigerishly up and down the room. "That some of the cleverest and wisest of you can stoop to dabbling in a business like this! Upon my word it"s an eye-opener!--it pulls one up.
And you think you can drive men by such antics! The more you smash and burn, the more firmly goes down the male foot--yes, and the female too!"
And the doctor, with a glare, and a male foot as firm as he could make it, came to a stop beside Lady Tonbridge--who looked at him coolly.
"Excellent!--but no concern of mine. I"m not a militant. I want the vote just as much as Delia does!" said Lady Tonbridge, firmly. "Don"t forget that."
"No, you don"t--you don"t! Excuse me. You are a reasonable woman."
"Half the reasonable women in England want the vote. Why shouldn"t I have a vote--as well as you?"
"Because, my dear lady--" the doctor smote the table with his hand for emphasis--"because the parliamentary vote means the government _of men by men_--without which we go to pieces. And you propose now to make it include the government of men by women--which is absurd!--and if you try it, will only break up the only real government that exists, or can exist!"
"Oh!--"physical force,"" said Madeleine, contemptuously, with her nose in the air.
"Well--did I--did you--make the physical difference between men and women? Can we unmake it?" "We are governed by discussion--not by force."
"Are we? Look at South Africa--look at Ulster--look at the labour troubles that have been, and are to be. And then you women come along with your claim to the vote! What are you doing but breaking up all the social values--weakening all the foundations of the social edifice!