Two men sat smoking and talking with Paul Lathrop in the hook-littered
sitting-room of his cottage. One was a young journalist, Roger Blaydes,
whose thin, close-shaven face wore the knowing fool's look of one to
whom the world's his oyster, and all the bricks for opening it
familiar. The other was a god-like creature, a poet by profession, with
long lantern-jaws, grey eyes deeply set, and a mass of curly black
hair, from which the face with its pallor and its distinction, shone
dimly out like the portrait of a Cinquecento. Lathrop, in a kind of
dressing-gown, as clumsily cut as the form it wrapped, his reddish hair
and large head catching the firelight, had the look of one lazily at
bay, as wrapped in a cloud of smoke, he twined from one speaker to the
other.
"So you were at another of these meetings last night?" said Blaydes,
with a mouth half smiling, half contemptuous.
"Yes. A disgusting failure! They didn't even take the trouble to pelt
us." The poet--Merian by name--moved angrily on his chair. Blaydes
threw a sly look at him, as he knocked the ash from his cigarette.
"And what the deuce do you expect to get by it all?"
Paul Lathrop paused a moment--and at last said with a lift of the
eyebrows:--
"Well!--I have no illusions!"
Merian broke out indignantly--
"I say, Lathrop--why should you try and play up to that cynic there? As
if he ever had an illusion about anything!"
"Well, but one may have faith without illusions," protested Blaydes,
with hard good temper.
"I doubt whether Lathrop has an ounce of either!"
Lathrop reached out for a match.
"What's the good of 'faith'--and what does anyone mean by it?
Sympathies--and animosities: they're enough for me."
"And you really are in sympathy with these women?" said the other.
The tone was incredulous. Merian brought his hand violently down on the
table.
"Don't you talk about them, Blaydes! I tell you, they're out of your
ken."
"I daresay," said Blaydes, composedly. "I was only trying to get at
what Lathrop means by going into the business."
Paul Lathrop sat up.
"I'm in sympathy with anything that harasses, and bothers and stings
the governing classes of this country!" he said, with an oratorical
wave of his cigarette. "What fools they are! In this particular
business the Government is an ass, the public is an ass, the women, if
you like, are asses. So long as they don't destroy works of art that
appeal to me, I prefer to bray with them than with their enemies."
Merian rose impatiently--a slim, dark-browed St. George towering over
the other two.
"After that, I'd rather hear them attacked by Blaydes, than defended by
you, Lathrop!" he said with energy, as he buttoned up his coat.
Lathrop threw him a cool glance.
"So for you, they're all heroines--and saints?"
"Never mind what they are. I stand by them! I'm ready to give them what
they ask."
"Ready to hand the Empire over to them--to smash like the windows in
Piccadilly?" said Blaydes.
"Hang the Empire!--what does the Empire matter! Give the people in
these islands what they _want_ before you begin to talk about the
Empire. Well, good-bye, I must be off!"
He nodded to the other two, and opened the door of the Hermitage which
led directly into the outer air. On the threshold he turned and looked
back, irresolutely, as though in compunction for his loss of temper.
Framed in the doorway against a background of sunset sky, his dark head
and sparely-noble features were of a singular though melancholy beauty.
It was evident that he was full of speech, of which he could not in the
end unburden himself. The door closed behind him, and he was gone.
"Poor devil!" said Blaydes, tipping the end of his cigarette into the
fire-"he's in love with a girl who's been in prison three times. He
thinks she'll kill herself--and he can't influence her at all. He
takes it hard. Well, now look here"--the young man's expression changed
and stiffened--"I understand that you too are seeing a good deal of one
of these wild women--and that she's both rich--and a beauty?"
He looked up, with a laugh.
Lathrop's aspect was undisturbed.
"Nothing to do with it!--though your silly little mind will no doubt go
on thinking so."
The other laughed again--with a more emphatic mockery. Lathrop
reddened--then said quietly--
"Well, I admit that was a lie. Yes, she is handsome--and if she were
to stick to it--sacrifice all her life to it--in time she might make a
horrible success of this thing. Will she stick to it?"
"Are you in love with her, Paul?"
"Of course! I am in love with all pretty women--especially when I
daren't shew it."
"You daren't shew it?"
"The smallest advance on my part, in this quarter, brings me a rap on
the knuckles. I try to pitch what I have to say in the most impersonal
and romantic terms. No good at all! But all egg-dancing is amusing, so
I dance--and accept all the drudgery she and Alecto give me to do."
"Alecto? Miss Marvell?"
"Naturally."
"These meetings must be pretty boring."
"Especially because I can't keep my temper. I lose it in the vulgarest
way--and say the most idiotic things."
There was a pause of silence. The eyes of the journalist wandered round
the room, coming back to Lathrop at last with renewed curiosity.
"How are your affairs, Paul?"
"Couldn't be worse. Everything here would have been seized long ago, if
there had been anything to seize. But you can't distrain on trout--dear
slithery things. And as the ponds afford my only means of sustenance,
and do occasionally bring in something, my creditors have to leave me
the house and a few beds and chairs so that I may look after them."
"Why don't you write another book?"
"Because at present I have nothing to say. And on that point I happen
to have a conscience--some rays of probity, left."
He got up as he spoke, and went across the room, to a covered basket
beside the fire.
"Mimi!" he said caressingly--"poor Mimi!"
He raised a piece of flannel, and a Persian kitten lying in the
basket--a sick kitten--lifted its head languidly.
"_Tu m'aimes_, Mimi?"
The kitten looked at him with veiled eyes, already masked with death.
Lathrop stooped for a saucer of warm milk standing by the fire. The
kitten refused it, but when he dipped his fingers in the milk, it made
a momentary effort to lick them, then subsiding, sank to sleep again.
"Poor little beast!" said Blaydes--"what's the matter?"
"Some poison--I don't know what. It'll die tonight."
"Then you'll be all alone?"
"I'm never alone," said Lathrop, with decision. And rising he went to
the door of the cottage--which opened straight on the hill-side, and
set it open.
It was four o'clock on a November day. The autumn was late, and of a
marvellous beauty. The month was a third gone and still there were
trees here and there, isolated trees, intensely green as though they
defied decay. The elder trees, the first to leaf under the Spring, were
now the last to wither. The elms in twenty-four hours had turned a pale
gold atop, while all below was still round and green. But the beeches
were nearly gone; all that remained of them was a thin pattern of
separate leaves, pale gold and faintly sparkling against the afternoon
sky. Such a sky! Bands of delicate pinks, lilacs and blues scratched
across an inner-heaven of light, and in the mid-heaven a blazing
furnace, blood-red, wherein the sun had just plunged headlong to its
death. And under the sky, an English scene of field and woodland,
fading into an all-environing forest, still richly clothed. While in
the foreground and middle distance, some trees already stripped and
bare, winter's first spoil, stood sharply black against the scarlet of
the sunset. And fusing the whole scene, hazes of blue, amethyst or
purple, beyond a Turner's brush,
"What beauty!--my God!"
Blaydes came to stand beside the speaker, glancing at him with eyes
half curious, half mocking.
"You get so much pleasure out of it?"
For answer, Lathrop murmured a few words as though to himself, a sudden
lightening in his sleepy eyes--
L'univers--si liquide, si pur!--
Une belle eau qu'on voudrait boire.
"I don't understand French"--said Blaydes, with a shrug--"not French
verse, anyway."
"That's a pity," was the dry reply--"because you can't read Madame de
Noailles. Ah!--there are Lang's pheasants calling!--his tenants I
suppose--for he's left the shooting."
He pointed to a mass of wood on his left hand from which the sound
came.
"They say he's never here?"
"Two or three times a year,--just on business. His wife--a little
painted doll--hates the place, and they've built a villa at Beaulieu."
"Rather risky leaving a big house empty in these days--with your wild
women about!"
Lathrop looked round.
"Good heavens!--who would ever dream of touching Monk Lawrence! I bet
even Gertrude Marvell hasn't nerve enough for that. Look here!--have
you ever seen it?"
"Never."
"Come along then. There's just time--while this light lasts."
They snatched their caps, and were presently mounting the path which
led ultimately through the woods of Monk Lawrence to the western front.
Blaydes frowned as he walked. He was a young man of a very practical
turn of mind, who in spite of an office-boy's training possessed an
irrelevant taste for literature which had made him an admirer of
Lathrop's two published volumes. For some time past he had been
Lathrop's chancellor of the exchequer--self-appointed, and had done his
best to keep his friend out of the workhouse. From the tone of Paul's
recent letters he had become aware of two things--first, that Lathrop
was in sight of his last five pound note, and did not see his way to
either earning or borrowing another; and secondly, that a handsome girl
had appeared on the scene, providentially mad with the same kind of
madness as had recently seized on Lathrop, belonging to the same
anarchial association, and engaged in the same silly defiance of
society; likely therefore to be thrown a good deal in his company; and
last, but most important, possessed of a fortune which she would no
doubt allow the "Daughters of Revolt" to squander--unless Paul cut in.
The situation had begun to seem to him interesting, and having already
lent Lathrop more money than he could afford, he had come down to
enquire about it. He himself possessed an income of three hundred a
year, plus two thousand pounds left him by an uncle. Except for the
single weakness which had induced him to lend Lathrop a couple of
hundred pounds, his principles with regard to money were frankly
piratical. Get what you can--and how you can. Clearly it was Lathrop's
game to take advantage of this queer friendship with a militant who
happened to be both rich and young, which his dabbling in their
"nonsense" had brought about. Why shouldn't he achieve it? Lathrop was
as clever as sin; and there was the past history of the man, to shew
that he could attract women.
He gripped his friend's arm as they passed into the shadow of the wood.
Lathrop looked at him with surprise--
"Look here, Paul"--said the younger man in a determined voice--"You've
got to pull this thing off."
"What thing?"
"You can marry this girl if you put your mind to it. You tell me you're
going about the country with her speaking at meetings--that you're one
of her helpers and advisers. That is--you've got an A1 chance with her.
If you don't use it, you're a blithering idiot."
Paul threw back his head and laughed.
"And what about other people? What about her guardian, for
instance--who is the sole trustee of the property--who has a thousand
chances with her to my one--and holds, I venture to say--if he knows
anything about me--the strongest views on the subject of _my_ moral
character?"
"Who is her guardian?"
"Mark Wilmington. Does that convey anything to you?"
Blaydes whistled.
"Great Scott!"
"Yes. Precisely 'Great Scott!'" said Lathrop, mocking. "I may add that
everybody here has their own romance on the subject. They are convinced
that Winnington will soon cure her of her preposterous notions, and
restore her, tamed, to a normal existence."
Blaydes meditated,--his aspect showing a man checked.
"I saw Winnington playing in a county match last August," he said--with
his eyes on the ground--"I declare no one looked at anybody else. I
suppose he's forty; but the old stagers tell you that he's just as much
of an Apollo now as he was in his most famous days--twenty years ago."
"Don't exaggerate. He _is_ forty, and I'm thirty--which is one to me.
I only meant to suggest to you a _reasonable_ view of the chances."
"Look here--_is_ she as handsome as people say?"
"Blaydes!--this is the last time I shall allow you to talk about
her--you get on my nerves. Handsome? I don't know."
He walked on, muttering to himself and twitching at the trees on either
hand.
"I am simply putting what is your duty to yourself--and your
creditors," said Blaydes, sulkily--"You must know your affairs are in
a pretty desperate state."
"And a girl like that is to be sacrificed--to my creditors! Good Lord!"
"Oh, well, if you regard yourself as such an undesirable, naturally,
I've nothing to say. Of course I know--there's that case against you.
But it's a good while ago; and I declare women don't look at those
things as they used to do. Why don't you play the man of letters
business? You know very well, Paul, you could earn a lot of money if
you chose. But you're such a lazy dog!"
"Let me alone!" said Lathrop, rather fiercely. "The fact that you've
lent me a couple of hundred really doesn't give you the right to talk
to me like this."
"I won't lend you a farthing more unless you promise me to take this
thing seriously," said Blaydes, doggedly.
Lathrop burst into a nervous shout of laughter.
"I say, do shut up! I assure you, you can't bully me. Now then--here's
the house!"
And as he spoke they emerged from the green oblong, bordered by low yew
edges, from which as from a flat and spacious shelf carved out of the
hill, Monk Lawrence surveyed the slopes below it, the clustered
village, the middle distance with its embroidery of fields and trees,
with the vaporous stretches of the forest beyond, and in the far
distance, a shining line of sea.
"My word!--that is a house!" cried Blaydes, stopping to survey it and
get his townsman's breath, after the steep pitch of hill.
"Not bad?"
"Is it shown?"
"Used to be. It has been shut lately for fear of the militants."
"But they keep somebody in it?"
"Yes--in some room at the back. A keeper, and his three children. The
wife's dead. Shall I go and see if he'll let us in? But he won't. He'll
have seen my name at that meeting, in the Latchford paper."
"No, no. I shall miss my train. Let's walk round. Why, you'd think it
was on fire already!" said Blaydes, with a start, gazing at the house.
For the marvellous evening now marching from the western forest, was
dyeing the whole earth in crimson, and the sun just emerging from one
bank of cloud, before dropping into the bank below, was flinging a
fierce glare upon the wide grey front of Monk Lawrence. Every window
blazed, and some fine oaks still thick with red leaf, which flanked the
house on the north, flamed in concert. The air was suffused with red;
every minor tone, blue or brown, green or purple, shewed through it, as
through a veil.
And yet how quietly the house rose, in the heart of the flame! Peace
brooding on memory seemed to breathe from its rounded oriels, its mossy
roof, its legend in stone letters running round the eaves, the carved
trophies and arabesques which framed the stately doorway, the sleepy
fountain with its cupids, in the courtyard, the graceful loggia on the
northern side. It stood, aloof and self-contained, amid the lightnings
and arrows of the departing sun.
"No--they'd never dare to touch that!" said Lathrop as he led the way
to the path skirting the house. "And if I caught Miss Marvell at it,
I'm not sure I shouldn't hand her over myself!"
"Aren't we trespassing?" said Blaydes, as their footsteps rang on the
broad flagged path which led from the front court to the terrace at the
back of the house.
"Certainly. Ah, the dog's heard us."
And before they had gone more than a few steps further, a burly man
appeared at the further corner of the house, holding a muzzled dog--a
mastiff--on a leash.
"What might you be wanting, gentlemen?" he said gruffly.
"Why, you know me, Daunt. I brought a friend up to look at your
wonderful place. We can walk through, can't we?"
"Well, as you're here, Sir, I'll let you out by the lower gate. But
this is private ground, Sir, and Sir Wilfrid's orders are strict,--not
to let anybody through that hasn't either business with the house or an
order from himself."
"All right. Let's have a look at the back and the terrace, and then
we'll be off; Sir Wilfrid coming here?"
"Not that I know of, Sir," said the keeper shortly, striding on before
the two men, and quieting his dog, who was growling at their heels.
As he spoke he led the way down a stately flight of stone steps by
which the famous eastern terrace at the back of the house was reached.
The three men and the dog disappeared from view.
Steadily the sunset faded. An attacking host of cloud rushed upon it
from the sea, and quenched it. The lights in the windows of Monk
Lawrence went out. Dusk fell upon the house and all its approaches.
Suddenly, two figures--figures of women--emerged in the twilight from
the thick plantation, which protected the house on the north. They
reached the flagged path with noiseless feet, and then pausing, they
began what an intelligent spectator would have soon seen to be a
careful reconnoitering of the whole northern side of the house. They
seemed to examine the windows, a garden door, the recesses in the
walls, the old lead piping, the creepers and shrubs. Then one of them,
keeping close to the house wall, which was in deep shadow, went quickly
round to the back. The other awaited her. In the distance rose at
intervals a dog's uneasy bark.
In a very few minutes the woman who had gone round the house returned
and the two, slipping back into the dense belt of wood from which they
had come, were instantly swallowed up by it. Their appearance and their
movements throughout had been as phantom-like and silent as the shadows
which were now engulfing the house. Anyone who had seen them come and
go might almost have doubted his own eyes.
* * * * *
Daunt the Keeper returned leisurely to his quarters in some back
premises of Monk Lawrence, at the southeastern corner of the house. But
he had but just opened his own door when he again heard the sound of
footsteps in the fore-court.
"Well, what's come to the folk to-night"--he muttered, with some
ill-humour, as he turned back towards the front.
A woman!--standing with her back to the house, in the middle of the
forecourt as though the place belonged to her, and gazing at the piled
clouds of the west, still haunted by the splendour just past away.
A veritable Masque of Women, all of the Maenad sort, had by now begun
to riot through Daunt's brain by night and day. He raised his voice
sharply--
"What's your business here, Ma'am? There is no public road past this
house."
The lady turned, and came towards him.
"Don't you know who I am, Mr. Daunt? But I remember you when I was a
child."
Daunt peered through the dusk.
"You have the advantage of me, Madam," he said, stiffly. "Kindly give
me your name."
"Miss Blanchflower--from Maumsey Abbey!" said a young, conscious voice.
"I used to come here with my grandmother, Lady Blanchflower. I have
been intending to come and pay you a visit for a long time--to have a
look at the old house again. And just now I was passing the foot of
your hill in a motor; something went wrong with the car, and while they
were mending it, I ran up. But it's getting dark so quick, one can
hardly see anything!"
Daunt's attitude showed no relaxation. Indeed, quick recollections
assailed him of certain reports in the local papers, now some ten days
old. Miss Blanchflower indeed! She was a brazen one--after all done and
said.
"Pleased to see you, Miss, if you'll kindly get an order from Sir
Wilfrid. But I have strict instructions from Sir Wilfrid not to admit
anyone--not anyone whatsoever--to the gardens or the house, without his
order."
"I should have thought, Mr. Daunt, that only applied to strangers." The
tones shewed annoyance. "My father, Sir Robert Blanchflower, was an old
friend of Sir Wilfrid's."
"Can't help it, Miss," said Daunt, not without the secret zest of the
Radical putting down his "betters." "There are queer people about. I
can't let no one in without an order."
As he spoke, a gate slammed on his left, and Daunt, with the feeling of
one beset, turned in wrath to see who might be this new intruder. Since
the house had been closed to visitors, and a notice to the effect had
been posted in the village, scarcely a soul had penetrated through its
enclosing woods, except Miss Amberley, who came to teach Daunts
crippled child. And now in one evening here were three assaults upon
its privacy!
But as to the third he was soon reassured.
"Hullo, Daunt, is that you? Did I hear you telling Miss Blanchflower
you can't let her in? But you know her of course?" said a man's easy
voice.
Delia started. The next moment her hand was in her guardian's, and she
realised that he had heard the conversation between herself and Daunt,
realised also that she had committed a folly not easily to be
explained, either to Winnington or herself, in obeying the impulse
which--half memory, half vague anxiety,--had led her to pay this
sudden visit to the house. Gertrude Marvell had left Maumsey that
morning, saying she should be in London for the day. Had Gertrude been
with her, Delia would have let Monk Lawrence go by. For in Gertrude's
company it had become an instinct with her--an instinct she scarcely
confessed to herself--to avoid all reference to the house.
At sight of Winnington, however, who was clearly a privileged person in
his eyes, Daunt instantly changed his tone.
"Good evening, Sir. Perhaps you'll explain to this young lady? We've
got to keep a sharp lookout--you know that, Sir."
"Certainly, Daunt, certainly. I am sure Miss Blanchflower understands.
But you'll let _me_ shew her the house, I imagine?"
"Why, of course, Sir! There's nothing you can't do here. Give me a few
minutes--I'll turn on some lights. Perhaps the young lady will walk
in?" He pointed to his own rooms. "So you still keep the electric
light going?"
"By Sir Wilfrid's wish, Sir,--so as if anything did happen these winter
nights, we mightn't be left in darkness. The engine works a bit now and
then."
He led the way towards his quarters. The door into his kitchen stood
open, and in the glow of fire and lamp stood his three children, who
had been eagerly listening to the conversation outside. One of them, a
little girl, was leaning on a crutch. She looked up happily as
Winnington entered.
"Well, Lily--" he pinched her cheek--"I've got something to tell Father
about you. Say 'how do you do' to this lady." The child put her hand in
Delia's, looking all the while ardently at Winnington.
"Am I going to be in your school, Sir?"
"If you're good. But you'll have to be dreadfully good!"
"I am good," said Lily, confidently. "I want to be in your school,
please Sir."
"But such a lot of other little girls want to come too! Must I leave
them out?"
Lily shook her head perplexed. "But you promithed," she lisped, very
softly.
Winnington laughed. The child's hand had transferred itself to his, and
nestled there.
"What school does she mean?" asked Delia.
At the sound of her voice Winnington turned to her for the first time.
It was as though till then he had avoided looking at her, lest the
hidden thought in each mind should be too plain to the other. He had
found her--Sir Robert Blanchflower's daughter--on the point of being
curtly refused admission to the house where her father had been a
familiar inmate, and where she herself had gone in and out as a child.
And he knew why; she knew why; Daunt knew why. She was a person under
suspicion, a person on whom the community was keeping watch.
Nevertheless, Winnington entirely believed what he had overheard her
say to the keeper. It was no doubt quite true that she had turned aside
to see Monk Lawrence on a sudden impulse of sentiment or memory. Odd
that it should be so!--but like her. That _she_ could have any designs
on the beautiful old place was indeed incredible; and it was equally
incredible that she would aid or abet them in anyone else. And
yet--there was that monstrous speech at Latchford, made in her hearing,
by her friend and co-militant, the woman who shared her life! Was it
any wonder that Daunt bristled at the sight of her?
He had, however, to answer her question.
"My county school," he explained. "The school for invalid
children--'physical defectives'--that we are going to open next summer.
I came to tell Daunt there'd be a place for this child. She's an old
friend of mine." He smiled down upon the nestling creature--"Has Miss
Amberley been to see you lately, Lily?"
At this moment Daunt returned to the kitchen, with the news that the
house was ready. "The light's not quite what it ought to be, Sir, but I
daresay you'll be able to see a good deal. Miss Amberley, Sir, she's
taught Lily fine. I'm sure we're very much obliged to her--and to you
for asking her."
"I don't know what the sick children here will do without her, Daunt.
She's going away--wants to be a nurse."
"Well, I'm very sorry, Sir. She'll be badly missed."
"That she will. Shall we go in?" Winnington turned to Delia, who
nodded assent, and followed him into the dim passages beyond the
brightly-lighted kitchen. The children, looking after them, saw the
beautiful lady disappearing, and felt vaguely awed by her height, her
stiff carriage and her proud looks.
Delia, indeed, was again--and as usual--in revolt, against herself and
circumstances. Why had she been such a fool as to come to Monk Lawrence
at all, and then to submit to seeing it--on sufferance!--in
Winnington's custody? And how he must be contrasting her with Susy
Amberley!--the soft sister of charity, plying her womanly tasks, in the
manner of all good women, since the world began! She saw herself as the
anarchist prowling outside, tracked, spied on, held at arm's length by
all decent citizens, all lovers of ancient beauty, and moral tradition;
while, within, women like Susy Amberley sat Madonna-like, with the
children at their knee. "Well, we stand for the children too--the
children of the future!" she said to herself defiantly.
"This is the old hall--and the gallery that was put up in honour of
Elizabeth's visit here in 1570--" she heard Winnington saying--"One of
the finest things of its kind. But you can hardly see it."
The electric light indeed was of the feeblest. A dim line of it ran
round the carved ceiling, and glimmered in the central chandelier. But
the mingled illumination of sunset and moonrise from outside contended
with it on more than equal terms; and everything in the hall,
tapestries, armour, and old oak, the gallery above, the dais with its
carved chairs below, had the dim mystery of a stage set ready for the
play, before the lights are on.
Daunt apologised.
"The gardener'll be here directly, Sir. He knows how to manage it
better than I."
And in spite of protests from the two visitors he ran off again to see
what could he done to better the light. Delia turned impetuously on her
companion.
"I know you think I have no business to be here!"
Winnington paused a moment, then said--
"I was rather astonished to see you here, certainly."
"Because of what we said at Latchford the other day?"
"_You_ didn't say it!"
"But I agreed with it--I agreed with every word of it!"
"Then indeed I _am_ astonished that you should wish to see Sir Wilfrid
Lang's house!" he said, with energy.
"My recollections of it have nothing to do with Sir Wilfrid. I never
saw him that I know of."
"All the same, it belongs to him."
"No!--to history--to the nation!"
"Then let the nation guard it--and every individual in the nation! But
do you think Miss Marvell would take much pains to protect it?"
"Gertrude said nothing about the house." "No; but if I had been one of
the excitable women you command, my one desire after that speech would
have been to do some desperate damage to Sir Wilfrid, or his property.
If anything does happen, I am afraid everyone in the neighbourhood will
regard her as responsible."
Delia moved impatiently. "Can't we say what we think of Sir
Wilfrid--because he happens to possess a beautiful house?"
"If you care for Monk Lawrence, you do so,--with this campaign on
foot--only at great risk. Confess, Miss Delia!--that you were sorry for
that speech!"
He turned upon her with animation.
She spoke as though under pressure, her head thrown back, her face
ivory within the black frame of the veil.
"I--I shouldn't have made it."
"That's not enough. I want to hear you say you regret it!"
The light suddenly increased, and she saw him looking at her, his
eyes bright and urgent, his attitude that of the strong yet mild
judge, whose own moral life watches keenly for any sign of grace in
the accused before him. She realised for an angry moment what his
feeling must be--how deep and invincible, towards these "outrages"
which she and Gertrude Marvell regarded by now as so natural and
habitual--outrages that were calmly planned and organised, as she knew
well, at the head offices of their society, by Gertrude Marvell among
others, and acquiesced in--approved--by hundreds of persons like
herself, who either shrank from taking a direct part in them, or had no
opportunity of doing so. "But I shall soon make opportunities!--" she
thought, passionately; "I'm not going to be a shirker!" Aloud she said
in her stiffest manner--"I stand by my friends, Mr. Winnington,
especially when they are ten times better and nobler than I!"
His expression changed. He turned, like any courteous stranger, to
playing the part of showman of the house. Once more a veil had fallen
between them.
He led her through the great suite of rooms on the ground-floor, the
drawing-room, the Red Parlour, the Chinese room, the Library. They
recalled her childish visits to the house with her grandmother, and a
score of recollections, touching or absurd, rushed into her mind--but
not to her lips. Dumbness had fallen on her;--nothing seemed worth
saying, and she hurried through. She was conscious only of a rich
confused impression of old seemliness and mellowed beauty,--steeped in
fragrant and famous memories, English history, English poetry, English
art, breathing from every room and stone of the house. "In the Red
Parlour, Sidney wrote part of the 'Arcadia.'--In the room overhead
Gabriel Harvey slept.--In the Porch rooms Chatham stayed--his autograph
is there.--Fox advised upon all the older portion of the Library"--and
so on. She heard Winnington's voice as though through a dream. What did
it matter? She felt the house an oppression--as though it accused or
threatened her.
As they emerged from the library into a broad passage, Winnington
noticed a garden door at the north end of the passage, and called to
Daunt who was walking behind them. They went to look at it, leaving
Delia in the corridor.
"Not very secure, is it?" said Winnington, pointing to the glazed upper
half of the door--"anyone might get in there."
"I've told Sir Wilfrid, Sir, and sent him the measurements. There's to
be an iron shutter."
"H'm--that may take time. Why not put up something
temporary?--cross-bars of some sort?"
They came back towards Delia, discussing it. Unreasonably, absurdly,
she held it an offence that Winnington should discuss it in her
presence; her breath grew stormy.
Daunt turned to the right at the foot of a carved staircase, and down a
long passage leading to the kitchens, he and Winnington still talking.
Suddenly--a short flight of steps, not very visible in a dark place.
Winnington descended them, and then turned to look for Delia who was
just behind--
"Please take care!--"
But he was too late. Head in air--absorbed in her own passionate mood,
Delia never saw the steps, till her foot slipped on the topmost. She
would have fallen headlong, had not Winnington caught her. His arms
received her, held her, released her. The colour rushed into his face
as into hers. "You are not hurt?" he said anxiously. "I ought to have
held a light," said Daunt, full of concern. But the little incident had
broken the ice. Delia laughed, and straightened her Cavalier hat, which
had suffered. She was still rosy as they entered Daunt's kitchen, and
the children who had seen her silent and haughty entrance, hardly
recognised the creature all life and animation who returned to them.
The car stood waiting in the fore-court. Winnington put her in. As
Delia descended the hill alone in the dark, she closed her eyes, that
she might the more completely give herself to the conflict of thoughts
which possessed her. She was bitterly ashamed and sore, torn between
her passionate affection for Gertrude Marvell, and what seemed to her a
weak and traitorous wish to stand better with Mark Winnington. Nor
could she escape from the memory--the mere physical memory--of those
strong arms round her, resent it as she might.
* * * * *
As for Winnington, when he reached home in the moonlight, instead of
going in to join his sister at tea, he paced a garden path till night
had fallen. What was this strong insurgent feeling he could neither
reason with nor silence? It seemed to have stolen upon him, amid a host
of other thoughts and pre-occupations, secretly and insidiously, till
there it stood--full-grown--his new phantom self--challenging the old,
the normal self, face to face.
Trouble, self-scorn overwhelmed him. Recalling all his promises
to himself, all his assurances to Lady Tonbridge, he stood convicted,
as the sentry who has shut his eyes and let the invader pass.
Monstrous!--that in his position, with this difference of age between
them, he should have allowed such ideas to grow and gather head.
Beautiful wayward creature!--all the more beguiling, because of the
Difficulties that bristled round her. His common sense, his judgment
were under no illusions at all about Delia Blanchflower. And yet--
This then was _passion_!--which must be held down and reasoned down.
He would reason it down. She must and should marry a man of her own
generation--youth with youth. And, moreover, to give way to these wild
desires would be simply to alienate her, to destroy all his own power
with her for good.
The ghostly presence of his life came to him. He cried out to her, made
appeal to her, in sackcloth and ashes. And then, in some mysterious,
heavenly way she was revealed to him afresh; not as an enemy whom he
had offended, not as a lover slighted, but as his best and tenderest
friend. She closed no gates against the future:--that was for himself
to settle, if closed they were to be. She seemed to walk with him, hand
in hand, sister with brother--in a deep converse of souls.