Delia Blanchflower Part 22

The sister's mild tone trembled with indignation.

"She isn't!" laughed Winnington. "I never knew anyone less so. But we can't have her ill treated. Expect me back when you see me!"

And kissing his hand to his sister, he went out into a dark and bl.u.s.tering evening. Something had just gone wrong with the little motor car he generally drove himself, and there was nothing for it but to walk the mile and a half to the railway station.

He had spent the whole day in County Council business at Wanchester, was tired out, and had now been obliged to leave home again without waiting even for a belated cup of tea. But there was no help for it. He had only just time to catch the Latchford train.

As he almost ran to the station he was not conscious however of any of these small discomforts; his mind was full of Delia. He did not encourage anyone but Madeleine Tonbridge to talk to him about his ward; but he was already quite aware, before his old friend laid stress on it, of the hostile feeling towards Delia and her chaperon that was beginning to show itself in the neighbourhood. He knew that she was already p.r.o.nounced heartless, odious, unprincipled, consumed with a love of notoriety, and ready for any violence, at the bidding of a woman who was probably responsible at that very moment--as a prominent organiser in the employ of the society contriving them--for some of the worst of the militant outrages. His condemnation of Delia's actions was sharp and unhesitating; his opinion of Miss Marvell not a whit milder than that of his neighbours. Yet he had begun, as we have seen, to discover in himself a willingness, indeed an eagerness to excuse and pity the girl, which was wholly lacking in the case of the older woman.

Under the influence, indeed, of his own responsive temperament, Winnington was rapidly drifting into a state of feeling where his perception of Delia's folly and unreason was almost immediately checked by some enchanting memory of her beauty, or of those rare moments in their brief acquaintance, when the horrid shadow of the "Movement" had been temporarily lifted, and he had seen her, as in his indulgent belief she truly was--or was meant to be. She flouted and crossed him perpetually; and he was beginning to discover that he only thought of her the more, and that the few occasions when he had been able to force a smile out of her,--a sudden softness in her black eyes, gone in a moment!--were constantly pleading for her in his mind. All part no doubt of his native and extreme susceptibility to the female race--the female race in general. For he could see himself, and laugh at himself, _ab extra_, better than most men.

At the station he came across Captain Andrews, and soon discovered from that artless warrior that he also was bound for Latchford, with a view to watching over Delia Blanchflower.

"Can't have a lot of hooligans attacking a good-looking girl like that--whatever nonsense she talks!" murmured the Captain, twisting his sandy moustache; "so I thought I'd better come along and see fair play.

Of course I knew you'd be there."

The train was crowded. Winnington, separated from the Captain, plunged into a dimly-lighted third cla.s.s, and found himself treading on the toes of an acquaintance. He saluted an elderly lady wearing a bonnet and mantle of primeval cut, and a dress so ample in the skirt that it still suggested the days of crinoline. She was abnormally tall, and awkwardly built; she wore cotton gloves, and her boots were those of a peasant. She carried a large bag or reticule, and her lap was piled with brown parcels. Her large thin face was crowned by a few straggling locks of what had once been auburn hair, now nearly grey, the pale spectacled eyes were deeply wrinkled, and the nose and mouth slightly but indisputably crooked.

"My dear Miss Dempsey!--what an age since we met! Where are you off to?

Give me some of those parcels!"

And Winnington, seizing what he could lay hands on, transferred them to his own knees, and gave a cordial grip to the right hand cotton glove.

Miss Dempsey replied that she had been in Brownmouth for the day, and was going home. After which she smiled and said abruptly, bending across her still laden knees and his--so as to speak unheard by their neighbours--

"Of course I know where you're going to!"

"Do you?"

The queer head nodded.

"Why can't you keep her in order?"

"Her? Who?"

"Your ward. Why don't you stop it?"

"Stop these meetings? My ward is of age, please remember, and quite aware of it."

Miss Dempsey sighed.

"Naughty young woman!" she said, yet with the gentlest of accents. "For us of the elder generation to see our work all undone by these maniacs!

They have dashed the cup from our very lips."

"Ah! I forgot you were a Suffragist," said Winnington, smiling at her.

"Suffragist?" she held up her head indignantly--"I should rather think I am. My parents were friends of Mill, and I heard him speak for Woman Suffrage when I was quite a child. And now, after the years we've toiled and moiled, to see these mad women wrecking the whole thing!"

Winnington a.s.sented gravely.

"I don't wonder you feel it so. But you still want it--the vote--as much as ever?"

"Yes!" she said, at first with energy; and then on a more wavering note--"Yes,--but I admit a great many things have been done without it that I thought couldn't have been done. And these wild women give one to think. But you? Are you against us?--or has Miss Delia converted you?"

He smiled again, but without answering her question. Instead, he asked her in a guarded voice--

"You are as busy as ever?"

"I am there always--just as usual. I don't have much success. It doesn't matter."

She drew back from him, looking quietly out of window at the autumn fields. Over her wrinkled face with its crooked features, there dawned a look of strange intensity, mingled very faintly with something exquisite--a ray from a spiritual world.

Winnington looked at her with reverence. He knew all about her; so did many of the dwellers in the Maumsey neighbourhood. She had lived for half-a-century in the same little house in one of the back-streets of Latchford, a town of some ten thousand inhabitants. Through all that time her life had been given to what is called "rescue work"--though she herself rarely called it by that name. She loved those whom no one else would love--the meanest and feeblest of the outcast race. Every night her door stood on the latch, and as the years pa.s.sed, thousands knew it. Scarcely a week went by, that some hand did not lift that latch, and some girl in her first trouble, or some street-walker, dying of her trade, did not step in to the tiny hall where the lamp burnt all night, and wait for the sound of the descending footsteps on the stairs, which meant shelter and pity, warmth and food. She was constantly deceived, sometimes robbed; for such things she had no memory. She only remembered the things which cannot be told--the trembling voices of hope or returning joy--the tenderness in dying eyes, the clinging of weak hands, the kindness of "her poor children."

She had written--without her name--a book describing the condition of a great seaport town where she had once lived. The facts recorded in it had inspired a great reforming Act. No one knew anything of her part in it--so far as the public was concerned. Many persons indeed came to consult her; she gave all her knowledge to those who wanted it; she taught, and she counselled, always as one who felt herself the mere humble mouthpiece of things divine and compelling; and those who went away enriched did indeed forget her in her message, as she meant them to do. But in her own town as she pa.s.sed along the streets, in her queer garb, blinking and absently smiling as though at her own thoughts, she was greeted often with a peculiar reverence, a homage of which her short sight told her little or nothing.

Winnington especially had applied to her in more than one difficulty connected with his public work. It was to her he had gone at once when the Blanchflower agent had come to him in dismay reporting the decision of Miss Blanchflower with regard to the half-witted girl whose third illegitimate child by a quite uncertain father had finally proved her need of protection both from men's vileness, and her own helplessness.

Miss Dempsey had taken the girl first into her own house, and then, persuading and comforting the old father, had placed her in one of the Homes where such victims are sheltered.

Winnington briefly enquired after the girl. She as briefly replied.

Then she added:--as other travellers got out and they were left to themselves.

"So Miss Blanchflower wanted to keep her in the village?"

Winnington nodded, adding--

"She of course had no idea of the real facts."

"No. Why should she?--_Why should she_!--" the old lips repeated with pa.s.sion. "Let her keep her youth while she can! It's so strange to me--how they will throw away their youth! Some of us must know. The black ox has trodden on us. A woman of thirty must look at it all. But a girl of twenty! Doesn't she see that she helps the world more by _not_ knowing!--that her mere unconsciousness is _our_ gain--_our_ refreshment."

The face of the man sitting opposite her, reflected her own feeling.

"You and I always agree," he said warmly. "I wish you'd make friends with her."

"Who? Miss Blanchflower? What could she make out of an old stager like me!" Miss Dempsey's face broke into amus.e.m.e.nt at the notion. "And I don't know that I could keep my temper with a militant. Well now you're going to hear her speak--and here we are."

Winnington and Captain Andrews left the station together. Latchford owned a rather famous market, and market day brought always a throng of country folk into the little town. A mult.i.tude of booths under flaring gas jets--for darkness had just fallen--held one side of the square, and the other was given up to the hurdles which penned the sheep and cattle, and to their attendant groups of farmers and drovers.

The market place was full of people, but the crowd which filled it was not an ordinary market-day crowd. The cattle and sheep indeed had long since gone off with their new owners or departed homeward unsold. The booths were most of them either taken down or were in process of being dismantled. For the evening was falling fast; it was spitting with rain; and business was over. But the shop windows in the market-place were still brilliantly lit, and from the windows of the Crown Inn, all tenanted by spectators, light streamed out on the crowd below. The chief illumination came however from what seemed to be a large shallow waggon drawn up not far from the Crown. Three people stood in it; a man--who was speaking--and two women. From either side, a couple of motor lamps of great brilliance concentrated upon them threw their faces and figures into harsh relief.

The crowd was steadily pressing toward the waggon, and it was evident at once to Winnington and his companion that it was not a friendly crowd.

"Looks rather ugly, to me!" said Andrews in Winnington's ear. "They've got hold of that thing which happened at Wanchester yesterday, of the burning of that house where the care-taker and his children only just escaped."

A rush of lads and young men pa.s.sed them as he spoke--shouting--

"Pull 'em down--turn 'em out!"