"Take me home!--take me home quick! I want to talk to you. Not
now--not here!"
The car flew along. Mark barely looked at Delia. His face was set and
pale. As for her, while they ran through the village and along the
country road between it and Maumsey, her mind had time to adjust itself
to that flashing resolution which had broken down a hundred scruples
and swept away a hundred fears, in that moment on the hill when she had
met his eyes, and the look in them. What must he think of her? An
assignation with that man, on the very first afternoon when his tender
watchfulness left her for an hour! No, it could not be borne that he
should read her so! She must clear herself! And thought, leaping
beacon-like from point to point told her, at last, that for Gertrude
too, she had chosen wrongly. Thank Heaven, there was still time! What
could a girl do, all alone--groping in such a darkness? Better after
all lay the case before Mark's judgment, Mark's tenderness, and trust
him with it all. Trust her own power too--see what a girl could do with
the man who loved her!
The car stopped at the Abbey door, and Winnington, still absolutely
silent, helped her to alight. She led the way, past the drawing-room
where Lady Tonbridge sat rather anxiously expecting her, to that bare
room on the ground floor, the little gun-room, which Gertrude Marvell
had made her office, and where many signs of her occupation still
remained--a calendar on the wall marking the "glorious" dates of the
League--a flashlight photograph of the first raid on Parliament some
years before--a faded badge, and scattered piles of newspapers. A
couple of deal tables and two chairs were all the furniture the room
contained, in addition to the cupboards, painted in stone-colour, which
covered the walls.
Delia closed the door, and threw off her furs. Then, with a gesture of
complete abandonment, she went up to Winnington, holding out her
hands--
"Oh, Mark, Mark, I want you to help me!"
He took her hands, but without pressing them. His face, frowning and
flushed, with a little quivering of the nostrils, began to terrify
her--
"Oh, Mark,--dear Mr. Mark--I went to see Mr. Lathrop--because--because
I was in great trouble--and I thought he could help me."
He dropped the hands.
"You went to _him_--instead of to me? How long have you been with him?
Did you write to him to arrange it?"
"No, no--we met by accident. Mark, it's not myself--it's a fear I
have--a dreadful, dreadful fear!"
She came close to him, piteously, just murmuring--
"It's Monk Lawrence!--and Gertrude!"
He started, and looked at her keenly--
"You know something I don't know?"
"Oh yes, I do, I do!" she said, wringing her hands. "I ought to have
told you long ago. But I've been afraid of what you might do--I've been
afraid for Gertrude. Can't you see, Mark? I've been trying to make Mr.
Lathrop keep watch--enquire--so that they wouldn't dare. I've told
Gertrude that I know--I've written to people--I've done all I could.
And this afternoon I felt I must go there and see for myself, what
precautions had been taken--and I met Mr. Lathrop--"
She gave a rapid account of their visit to the house,--of its complete
desertion--of the strange behaviour of the niece--and of the growing
alarm in her own mind.
"There's something--there's some plot. Perhaps that woman's in it.
Perhaps Gertrude's got hold of her--or Miss Andrews. Anyway, if that
house can be left quite alone--ever--they'll get at it--that I'm sure
of. Why did she take the children away? Wasn't that strange?"
Then she put her hands on the heart that fluttered so--and tried to
smile--
"But of course till the Bill's thrown out, there can be no danger, can
there? There _can't_ be any!" she repeated, as though appealing to him
to reassure her.
"I don't understand yet," he said gravely. "Why do you suspect Miss
Marvell, or a plot at all? There was no such idea in your mind when we
went over the house together?"
"No, none!--or at least not seriously--there was nothing, really, to go
on"--she assured him eagerly. "But just after--you remember Mr.
Lathrop's coming--that day--?--when you scolded me?"
He could not help smiling a little--rather bitterly.
"I remember you said you couldn't explain. Of course I thought it was
something connected with Miss Marvell, or your Society--but--"
"I'm going to explain"--she said, trying hard for composure. "I'm going
to tell it all in order."
And sitting down, her head resting on her hand, with Winnington
standing before her, she told the whole story of the preceding
weeks--the alternations of fear and relief--Lathrop's
suspicions--Gertrude's denials--the last interview between them.
As for the man looking down upon her beautiful bowed head, his heart
melted within him as he listened. The sting remained that she should
have asked anyone else than he to help her--above all that she should
have humbled herself to ask it of such a man as Lathrop. Anxiety
remained, for Monk Lawrence itself, and still more for what might be
said of her complicity. But all that was further implied in her
confession, her drooping sweetness, her passionate appeal to him--the
beauty of her true character, its innocence, its faith, its
loyalty--began to flood him with a feeling that presently burst its
bounds.
She wound up with most touching entreaties to him, to save and shield
her friend--to go himself to Gertrude and warn her--to go to the
police--without disclosing names, of course--and insist that the house
should be constantly patrolled.
He scarcely heard a word of this. When she paused--there was silence a
moment. Then she heard her name--very low--
"Delia!"
She looked up, and with a long breath she rose, as though drawn
invisibly. He held out his arms, and she threw hers round his neck,
hiding her face against the life that beat for her.
"Oh, forgive me!"--she murmured, after a little, childishly pressing
her lips to his--"forgive me--for everything!"
The tears were in his eyes.
"You've gone through all this!--alone!" he said to her, as he bent over
her. "But never again, Delia--never again!"
She was the first to release herself--putting tears away.
"Now then--what can we do?"
He resumed at once his ordinary manner and voice.
"We can do a great deal. I have the car here. I shall go straight back
to Monk Lawrence, and see Daunt to-night. That woman's behaviour must
be reported--and explained. An hour--an hour and a half?--since you
were there?"--he took out his watch--"He's probably home by now--it's
quite dark--he'd scarcely risk being away after dark. Dearest, go and
rest!--I shall come back later--after dinner. Put it out of your mind."
She went towards the hall with him hand in hand. Suddenly there was a
confused sound of shouting outside. Lady Tonbridge opened the
drawing-room door with a scared face--
"What is it? There are people running up the drive. They're shouting
something!"
Winnington rushed to the front door, Delia with him. With his first
glance at the hill-side, he understood the meaning of the cries--of the
crowd approaching.
"My God!--_too late_!"
For high on that wooded slope, a blaze was spreading to the skies--a
blaze that grew with every second--illuminating with its flare the
woods around it, the chimneys of the old house, the quiet stretches of
the hill.
"Monk Lawrence is afire, Muster Winnington!" panted one of Winnington's
own labourers who had outstripped the rest. "They're asking for you to
come! They've telephoned to Latchford for the engines, and to
Brownmouth and Wanchester too. They say it's burning like tow--there
must be petrol in it, or summat. It's the women they say!--spite of Mr.
Daunt and the perlice!"
Then he noticed Delia standing beside Winnington on the steps, and held
his tongue, scowling.
Winnington's car was still standing at the steps. He set it going in a
moment.
"My cloak!" said Delia, looking round her--"And tell them to bring the
car!"
"Delia, you're not going?" cried Madeleine, throwing a restraining arm
about her.
"But of course I am!" said the girl amazed. "Not with him--because I
should be in his way."
Various persons ran to do her bidding. Winnington already in his place,
with a labourer beside him, and two more in the seat behind him,
beckoned to her.
"Why should you come, dearest! It will only break your heart. We'll do
all that can be done, and I'll send back messages."
She shook her head.
"I shall come! But don't think of me. I won't run any risks."
There was no time to argue with her. The little car sped away, and with
it the miscellaneous crowd who had rushed to find Winnington, as the
natural head of the Maumsey community, and the only magistrate within
reach.
Delia and Madeleine were left standing on the steps, amid a group of
frightened and chattering servants--gazing in despairing rage at the
ever-spreading horror on the slope of the down, at the sudden leaps of
flame, the vast showers of sparks drifting over the woods, the red
glare on the low hanging clouds. The garnered beauty of four centuries,
one of England's noblest heirlooms, was going down in ruin, at the
bidding of a handful of women, hurling themselves in disappointed fury
on a community that would not give them their way.
Sharp-toothed remorse had hold on Delia. If she had only gone to
Wilmington earlier! "My fault!--my fault!"
When the car came quickly round, she and Lady Tonbridge got into it. As
they rushed through the roads, lit on their way by that blaze in the
heart of the hills, of which the roaring began to reach their ears,
Delia sat speechless, and death-like, reconstructing the past days and
hours. Not yet two hours since she had left the house--left it
untouched. At that very moment, Gertrude or Gertrude's agents must have
been within it. The whole thing had been a plot--the children taken
away--the house left deserted. Very likely Daunt's summons to his dying
son had been also part of it. And as to the niece--what more probable
than that Gertrude had laid hands on her months before, guided perhaps
by the local knowledge of Marion Andrews,--and had placed her as spy
and agent in the doomed house till the time should be ripe? The blind
and fanatical devotions which Gertrude was able to excite when she set
herself to it, was only too well known to Delia.
Where was Gertrude herself? For Delia was certain that she had not
merely done this act by deputy.
In the village, every person who had not gone rushing up the hill was
standing at the doors, pale and terror-stricken, watching the glare
overhead. The blinds of Miss Toogood's little house were drawn close.
And as Delia passed, angry looks and mutterings pursued her.
The car mounted the hill. Suddenly a huge noise and hooting behind
them. They drew into the hedge, to let the Latchford fire-engine
thunder past, a fine new motor engine, just purchased and equipped.
"There'll be three or four more directly, Miss"--shouted one of her
own garden lads, mounting on the step of the car. "But they say there's
no hope. It was fired in three places, and there was petrol used."
At the gate, the police--looking askance especially at Miss
Blanchflower--would have turned them back. But Delia asked for
Winnington, and they were at last admitted into the circle outside the
courtyard, where beyond reach of the sparks, and falling fragments, the
crowd of spectators was gathered. People made way for her, but Lady
Tonbridge noticed that nobody spoke to her, though as soon as she
appeared all the angry or excited attention that the crowd could spare
from the fire was given to her. Delia was not aware of it. She stood a
little in front of the crowd, with her veil thrown back, her hands
clasped in front of her, an image of rapt despair. Her face, like all
the faces in the crowd, was made lurid--fantastic--by the glare of the
flames; and every now and then, as though unconsciously, she brushed
away the mist of tears from her eyes.
"Aye she's sorry now!"--said a stout farmer, bitterly, to his
neighbour--"now that she's led them as is even younger than herself
into trouble. My girl's in prison all along of her--and that woman as
they do say is at the bottom of this business."
The speaker was Kitty Foster's father. Kitty had just been sentenced to
six months' imprisonment for the burning of a cricket pavilion in the
Midlands, and her relations were sitting in shame and grief for her.
"Whoever 'tis as did it 'ull have a job to get away"--said the man he
addressed. "They've got a lot o' police out. Where's 'Liza Daunt, I
say? They're searching for her everywhere. Daunt's just come upon the
engine from Latchford--saw the fire from the train. He says he's been
tricked--a put-up job he says. There wasn't nothing wrong with his son,
he says, when he got to Portsmouth. If they do catch 'em, the police
will have to guard 'em safe. It won't do to let the crowd get at 'em.
They're fair mad. Oh, Lord!--it's caught another roof!"
And a groan rose from the fast-thickening multitude, as another wall
fell amid a shower of sparks and ashes, and the flames, licking up and
up, caught the high-pitched roof of the great hall, and ran along the
stone letters of the parapet, which spelt out the motto--"Except the
Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it." The fantastic
letters themselves, which had been lifted to their places before the
death of Shakespeare, seemed to dance in the flame like living and
tormented things.
Meanwhile in the courtyard, and on the side lawns, scores of persons
were busy removing furniture, pictures and tapestries. Winnington was
leading and organising the rescue parties, now inside, now outside the
house. And near him, under his orders, worked Paul Lathrop, in his
shirt sleeves, superhumanly active, and superhumanly strong--grinding
his teeth with rage sometimes, as the fire defeated one effort after
another to check it. Daunt, also was there, pouring out incoherent
confidences to the police, and distracted by the growing certainty that
his niece had been one of the chief authors of the plot. His children
naturally had been his first thought. But the Rector, who had just been
round to enquire for them at Mrs. Cresson's cottage, came back
breathless, shouting "all safe!"--and Daunt rushed off to help the
firemen; while Amberley reported to Susy the pitiable misery of Lily,
the little cripple, who had been shrieking for her father in wild
outbursts of crying, refusing to believe that he was not in the fire.
Susy, who loved the child, would have gladly gone to find her, and take
her home to the Rectory for the night. But, impossible to leave her
post at Delia's side, and this blazing spectacle that held the
darkness! Two village women, said the Rector, were in charge of the
children.
"No chance!" said Lathrop, bitterly, pausing for a moment beside
Winnington, while they both took breath--the sweat pouring from their
smoke-blackened faces.
"If one could get to the top of that window with the big hose--one
could reach the roof better"--panted Winnington, pointing to the still
intact double oriel which ran up through two stories of the building,
to the east of the doorway.
"I see!" Lathrop dashed away. And in a few seconds he and a fireman
could be seen climbing from a ladder upon a ledge, a carved
string-course, which connected the eastern and western oriels above the
main doorway. They crawled along the ledge like flies, clinging to
every projection, every stem of ivy, the fireman dragging the hose.
The crowd watched, all eyes. Winnington, after a rapid look or two,
turned away with the thought--"That fellow's done some rock-climbing in
his day!"
But against such a doom as had now gripped Monk Lawrence, nothing
availed. Lathrop and his companion had barely scaled the parapet of the
window when a huge central crash sent its resounding din circling round
the leafless woods, and the two climbing figures disappeared from view
amid a fresh rush of smoke and flame.
The great western chimney-stack had fallen. When the cloud of smoke
drifted away, a gaping cavity of fire was seen just behind the two men;
it could only be a matter of minutes before the wall and roof
immediately behind them came down upon them. The firemen shouted to
them from below. A long ladder was brought and run up to within twenty
feet of them. Lathrop climbed down to it over the scorched face of the
oriel, his life in jeopardy at every step. Then steadying himself on
the ladder,--and grasping a projection in the wall, he called to the
man above, to drop upon his shoulders. It was done, by a miracle--and
both holding on, the man above by the projections of the wall and
Lathrop by the ladder, descended, till the two were within reach of
safety.
A thin roar of cheers rose from the environing throng, scarcely audible
amid the greater roar of the flames. Lathrop, wearied, depressed, with
bleeding hands, came back to Winnington's side. Winnington looked
round. For the first time Lathrop saw through Mark's grey eyes the
generous heart within--unveiled.
"Splendid! Are you hurt?"
"Only scorched and scratched. Give me another job!"
"Come along then."
And thenceforward the two worked side by side, like brothers, in the
desperate attempt to save at least the Great Hall, and the beautiful
rooms adjoining; the Porch Room, with its Chatham memorials; the
library too, with its stores of seventeenth-century books, its busts,
and its portraits. But the flames rushed on and on, with a fiendish and
astounding rapidity. Fragments of news ran back to the onlookers. The
main staircase had been steeped in petrol--and sacks full of shavings
had been stored in the panelled spaces underneath it. Fire-lighters
heaped together had been found in the Red Parlour--to be dragged out by
the firemen--but again too late!--for the fire was already gnawing at
the room, like a wild prowling beast. A back staircase too had been
kindled with paraffin--the smell of it was everywhere. And thus urged,
a very demon of fire seemed to have seized on the beautiful place.
There was a will and a passion of destruction in the flames that
nothing could withstand. As the diamond-paned windows fell into
nothing-ness, the rooms behind shewed for a brief space; carved roofs,
stately fireplaces, gleaming for a last moment, before Time knew them
no more, and all that remained of them was the last vision of their
antique beauty, stamped on the aching memories of those who watched.
"Why did you let her come!" said France vehemently in Lady Tonbridge's
ear, with his eyes on Delia. "It's enough to kill her. She must know
who's done it!"
Lady Tonbridge shook her head despairingly, and both gazed, without
daring to speak to her, on the girl beside them. Madeleine had taken
one cold hand. France was torn with pity for her--but what comfort was
there to give! Her tears had dried. But there was something now in her
uncontrollable restlessness as she moved ghost-like along the front of
the spectators, pressing as near to the house as the police would
permit, scanning every patch of light or shadow, which suggested to
those who followed her, possession by some torturing fear--some terror
of worse still to come.
Meanwhile the police were thinking not only of the house, but still
more of its destroyers. They had a large number of men on the spot, and
a quick-witted inspector in charge. It was evident from many traces
that the incendiaries had only left the place a very short time before
the outbreak of the fire; they could not be far away. Scouts were flung
out on all the roads; search parties were in all the woods; every
railway station had been warned.
On the northern side, the famous Loggia, built by an Italianate owner
of the house, in the first half of the sixteenth century--a series of
open arches, with twisted marble pillars--ran along the house from
front to rear. It was approached on the south by a beautiful staircase,
of which the terra-cotta balustrading had been copied from a famous
villa on Como, and a similar staircase gave access to it from the
garden to the north. The fight for the Great Hall which the Loggia
adjoined, was being followed with agonised anxiety by the crowds. The
Red Parlour, with all its carvings and mouldings had gone, the porch
room was a furnace of fire, with black spars and beams hanging in
ragged ruin across it. The Great Hall seemed already tottering, and in
its fall, the Loggia too must go.
Then, as every eye hung upon the work of the firemen and the play of
the water, into the still empty space of the Loggia, and illumined by
the glare of the flames, there emerged with quiet step, the figure of a
woman. She came forward: she stood with crossed arms looking at the
crowd. And at the same moment, behind her, there appeared the form of a
child, a little fair-haired girl, hobbling on a crutch, in desperate
haste, and wailing--"Father!"
Delia saw them, and with one wild movement she was through the cordon
of police, and running for the house.
Winnington, at the head of his salvage corps, perceived her, and ran
too.
"Delia!--go back!--go back!"
"Gertrude!" she said, gasping--and pointed to the Loggia. And he had
hardly looked where all the world was looking, when a part of the roof
of the Hall at the back, fell suddenly outwards and northwards, in a
blaze of flame. Charred rafters stood out, hanging in mid air, and the
flames leapt on triumphant. At the same moment, evidently startled by
some sound behind her, the woman turned, and saw what the crowd
saw--the child, limping on its crutch, coming towards her, calling
incoherently.
Her own cry rang out, as she ran towards the cripple, waving her back.
And as she did so, came another thundering fall, another upward rush of
flame, as a fresh portion of the roof fell eastwards, covering the
Loggia and blotting out the figures of both woman and child.
With difficulty the police kept back the mad rush of the crowd. The
firemen swarmed to the spot.
But the child was buried deep under flaming ruin, where her father,
Daunt, who had rushed to save her, was only restrained by main force
from plunging after her, to his death. The woman they brought
out--alive. France, Delia and Winnington were beside her.
"Stand back!" shouted the mild old Rector--transformed into a
prophet-figure, his white hair streaming--as the multitude swayed
against the cordon of police. "Stand back! all of you--and pray--for
this woman!"
In a dead silence, men, shivering, took off their hats, and women
sobbed.
"Gertrude!" Delia called, in her anguish, as she knelt beside the
charred frame, over which France who was kneeling on the other side had
thrown his coat.
The dark eyes opened in the blackened face, the scorched lips unlocked.
A shudder ran through the dying frame.
"The child!--the child!"
And with that cry to heaven,--that protesting cry of an amazed and
conquered soul--Gertrude Marvell passed away.
* * * * *
Thus ended the First Act of Delia's life. When three weeks later, after
a marriage at which no one was present except the persons to be
married, Lady Tonbridge, and Dr. France, Winnington took his wife far
from these scenes to lands of summer and of rest, he carried with him a
Delia ineffaceably marked by this tragedy of her youth. Children, as
they come, will sometime re-kindle the natural joy in a face so lovely.
And till that time arrives Winnington's tenderness will be the
master-light of all her day. But there are sounds once heard that live
for ever in the mind. And in Delia's there will reverberate till death
that wail of a fierce and childless woman--that last cry of nature in
one who had defied nature--of womanhood in one who had renounced the
ways of womanhood: "_the child--the child_!"
Not long after the destruction of Monk Lawrence and the marriage of
Delia, Paul Lathrop left the Maumsey neighbourhood. His debts had been
paid by some unknown friend or friends, and he fell back into London
literary life, where he maintained a precarious but--to himself--not
unpleasant existence.
Miss Jackson, the science-mistress, went to Vancouver, married the
owner of a lumber camp, and so tamed her soul. Miss Toogood lived on,
rarely employed, and seldom going outside the tiny back parlour, with
its pictures of Winchester and Mr. Keble. But Lady Tonbridge and Delia
do their best to lighten the mild melancholy which grows upon her with
age; and a little red-haired niece who came to live with her, keeps her
old aunt's nerves alive and alert by various harmless vices--among them
an incorrigible interest in the Maumsey and Latchford youth. Marion
Andrews and Eliza Daunt disappeared together. They were not captured on
that terrible night when Gertrude Marvell, convinced that she could not
escape, and perhaps not much caring to escape, came back to look on the
ruin she had so long and carefully prepared, and perished in the heart
of it--not alone.
But such desperate happenings as the destruction of Monk Lawrence, to
whatever particular calamities they may lead, are but a backward ripple
on the vast and ceaseless tide of human efforts towards a new and
nobler order. Delia must still wrestle all her life with the meaning of
that imperious call to women which this century has sounded; and of
those further stages, upwards and onwards, to which the human spirit,
in Man or Woman, is perennially urged by the revealing forces that
breathe through human destiny. Two days after the death of Gertrude
Marvell, the immediate cause on which she and her fellows had wrought
such havoc, went down in Parliament to long and bitter eclipse. But the
end is not yet. And for that riddle of the Sphinx to which Gertrude and
her fellows gave the answer of a futile violence, generations more
patient and more wise, will yet find the fitting key.
THE END