Part 20 (1/2)
”None--except that the ordinary bills I don't pay, and can't pay, will now all go in to my guardian, who will of course be curious to know what I have done with the money. Naturally there'll be a row.”
”Oh, a row!” said Gertrude Marvell, indifferently. ”It's your own money, Delia. Spend it as you like!”
”I intend to,” said Delia. ”Still--I do rather wish I'd given him notice. He may think it a mean trick.”
”Do you care what he thinks?”
”Not--much,” said Delia slowly. ”All the same, Gertrude”--she threw her head back--”he is an awfully good sort.”
Gertrude shrugged her shoulders.
”I daresay. But you and I are at war with him and his like, and can't stop to consider that kind of thing. Also your father arranged that he should be well paid for his trouble.”
Delia turned back to the writing-table, and wrote the cheque.
”Thank you, dearest,” said Gertrude Marvell, giving a light kiss to the hand that offered the cheque. ”It shall go to headquarters this evening--and you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you've financed all the three bye-election campaigns that are coming--or nearly.”
Gertrude had gone away to her own sitting-room and Delia was left alone. She hung over the fire, in an excited reverie, her pulses rus.h.i.+ng; and presently she took a letter from the handbag on her wrist, and read it for the second time by the light of the blaze she had kindled in the grate.
”I will be at the Rose and Crown at least half an hour before the meeting. We have got a capital waggon for you to speak from, and chosen the place where it is to stand. I am afraid we may have some rough customers to deal with. But the police have been strongly warned--that I have found out--though I don't know by whom--and there will be plenty of them. My one regret is that I cannot be in the crowd, so as both to see and hear you. I must of course stick to the waggon. What a day for us all down here!--for our little down-trodden band! You come to us as our Joan of Arc, leading us on a holy war. You shame us into action, and to fight with you is itself victory. When I think of how you looked and how you talked the other night! Do you know that you have a face 'to launch a thousand s.h.i.+ps?' No, I am convinced you never think of it--you never take your own beauty into consideration. And you won't imagine that I am talking in this way from any of the usual motives.
Your personal charm, if I may say so, is merely an item in our balance sheet; your money--I understand you have money--is another. You bring your beauty and your money in your hand, and throw them into the great conflagration of the Cause--just as the women did in Savonarola's day.
You fling them away--if need be--for an idea. And because of it, all the lovers of ideas, and all the dreamers of great dreams will be your slaves and servants. Understand!--you are going to be loved and followed, as no ordinary woman, even with your beauty, is ever loved and followed. Your footsteps may be on the rocks and flints--I promise you no easy, nor royal road. There may be blood on the path! But a cloud of witnesses will be all about you--some living and some dead; you will be carried in the hearts of innumerable men and women--women above all; and if you stand firm, if your soul rises to the height of your call, you will be wors.h.i.+pped, as the saints were wors.h.i.+pped.
”Only let nothing bar your path. Winnington is a good fellow, but a thickheaded Philistine all the same. You spoke to me about him with compunction. Have no compunctions. Go straight forward. Women have got to shew themselves ruthless, and hard, and cunning, like men--if they are to fight men.”
”Yours faithfully, PAUL LATHROP.”
Delia's thoughts danced and flamed, like the pile of blazing wood before her. What a singular being was this Paul Lathrop! He had paid them four or five visits already; and they had taken tea with him once in his queer hermitage under the southern slope of the Monk Lawrence hill--a one-storey thatched cottage, mostly built by Lathrop himself with the help of two labourers, standing amid a network of ponds, stocked with trout in all stages. Inside, the roughly-plastered walls were lined with books--chiefly modern poets, with French and Russian novels, and with unframed sketches by some of the ultra clever fellows, who often, it seemed, would come down to spend Sunday with Lathrop, and talk and smoke till dawn put out the lights.
She found him interesting--certainly interesting. His outer man--heavy mouth and lantern cheeks--dreamy blue eyes, and fair hair--together with the clumsy power in his form and gait, were not without a certain curious attraction. And his story--as Gertrude Marvell told it--would be forgiven by the romantic. All the same his letter had offended Delia greatly. She had given him no encouragement to write in such a tone--so fervid, so emotional, so intimate; and she would shew him--plainly--that it offended her.
Nevertheless the phrases of the letter ran in her mind; until her discomfort and resentment were lost in something else.
She could not quiet her conscience about that cheque! Not indeed as to giving it to the ”Daughters.” She would have given everything she possessed to them, keeping the merest pittance for herself, if fate and domestic tyranny had allowed. No!--but it hurt her--unreasonably, foolishly hurt her--that she must prepare herself again to face the look of troubled amazement in Mark Winnington's eyes, without being able to justify herself to herself, so convincingly as she would have liked to do.
”I am simply giving my own money to a cause I adore!” said one voice in the mind.
”It is not legally yours--it is legally his,” said another. ”You should have warned him. You have got hold of it under false pretences.”
”Quibbles! It _is_ mine--equitably,” replied the first. ”He and I are at war. And I _have_ warned him.”
”At war?” Her tiresome conscience kicked again. Why, not a day had pa.s.sed since her settlement at Maumsey, without some proof, small or great, of Winnington's consideration and care for her. She knew--guiltily knew, that he was overwhelmed by the business of the executors.h.i.+p and the estate, and had been forced to put aside some of his own favourite occupations to attend to it.
”Well!--my father made it worth his while!”
But her cheek reddened, with a kind of shame, as the thought pa.s.sed through her mind. Even in this short time and because of the daily contact which their business relations required, she was beginning to know Winnington, to realise something of his life and character. And as for the love borne him in the neighbourhood--it was really preposterous--bad for any man! Delia pitied herself, not only because she was Winnington's ward against her will, but because of the silent force of public opinion that upheld him, and must necessarily condemn her.