Part 30 (1/2)
After her letters had been put aside and the ordinary newspapers, she took up a new number of the _Tocsin_. The first page was entirely given up to an article headed ”How LONG?” She read it with care, her delicate mouth tightening a little. She herself had suggested the lines of it a few days before, to the Editor, and her hints had been partially carried out. It gave a scathing account of Sir Wilfrid's course on the suffrage question--of his earlier coquettings with the woman's cause, his defection and ”treachery,” the bitter and ingenious hostility with which he was now pursuing the Bill before the House of Commons. ”An amiable, white-haired nonent.i.ty for the rest of the world--who only mention him to marvel that such a man was ever admitted to an English Cabinet--to us he is the 'smiler with the knife,' the a.s.sa.s.sin of the hopes of women, the reptile in the path. The Bill is weakening every day in the House, and on the night of the second reading it will receive its 'coup de grace' from the hand of Sir Wilfrid Lang. Women of England--_how long_!--”
Gertrude pushed the newspaper aside in discontent. Her critical sense was beginning to weary of the shrieking note. And the descent from the ”a.s.sa.s.sin of the hopes of women” to ”the reptile in the path” struck her as a silly bathos.
Suddenly, a reverie--a waking dream--fell upon her, a visionary succession of sights and sounds. A dying sunset--and a rising wind, sighing through dense trees--old walls--the light from a kitchen window--voices in the distance--the barking of a dog....
”Oh Gertrude!--how late I am!”
Delia entered hurriedly, with an anxious air.
”I should have been down long ago, but Weston had one of her attacks, and I have been looking after her.”
Weston was Delia's maid who had been her constant companion for ten years. She was a delicate nervous woman, liable to occasional onsets of mysterious pain, which terrified both herself and her mistress, and had hitherto puzzled the doctor.
Gertrude received the news with a pa.s.sing concern.
”Better send for France, if you are worried. But I expect it will be soon over.”
”I don't know. It seems worse than usual. The man in Paris threatened an operation. And here we are--going up to London in a fortnight!”
”Well, you need only send her to the Brownmouth hospital, or leave her here with France and a good nurse.”
”She has the most absurd terror of hospitals, and I certainly couldn't leave her,” said Delia, with a furrowed brow.
”You certainly couldn't stay behind!” Gertrude looked up pleasantly.
”Of course I want to come--” said Delia slowly.
”Why, darling, how could we do without you? You don't know how you're wanted. Whenever I go up town, it's the same--'When's she coming?' Of course they understood you must be here for a while--but the heart of things, the things that concern _us_--is London.”
”What did you hear yesterday?” asked Delia, helping herself to some very cold coffee. Nothing was ever kept warm for her, the owner of the house; everything was always kept warm for Gertrude. Yet the fact arose from no Sybaritic tendency whatever on Gertrude's part. Food, clothing, sleep--no religious ascetic could have been more sparing than she, in her demands upon them. She took them as they came--well or ill supplied; too pre-occupied to be either grateful or discontented. And what she neglected for herself, she equally neglected for other people.
”What did I hear?” repeated Gertrude. ”Well, of course, everything is rus.h.i.+ng on. There is to be a raid on Parliament as soon as the session begins--and a deputation to Downing Street. A number of new plans, and devices are being discussed. And there seemed to me to be more volunteers than ever for 'special service'?”
She looked up quietly and her eyes met Delia's;--in hers a steely ardour, in Delia's a certain trouble.
”Well, we want some cheering up,” said the girl, rather wearily. ”Those two last meetings were--pretty depressing!--and so were the bye-elections.”
She was thinking of the two open-air meetings at Brownmouth and Frimpton. There had been no violence offered to the speakers, as in the Latchford case; the police had seen to that. Her guardian had made no appearance at either, satisfied, no doubt, after enquiry, that she was not likely to come to harm. But the evidence of public disapproval could scarcely have been more chilling--more complete. Both her speaking, and that of Gertrude and Paul Lathrop, seemed to her to have dropped dead in exhausted air. An audience of boys and girls--an accompaniment of faint jeers, testifying rather to boredom than hostility--a sense of blank waste and futility when all was over:--her recollection had little else to shew.
Gertrude interrupted her thought.
”My dear Delia!--what you want is to get out of this backwater, and back into the main stream! Even I get stale here. But in those great London meetings--there one catches on again!--one realises again--what it all _means_! Why not come up with me next week, even if the flat's not ready? I can't have you running down like this! Let's hurry up and get to London.”
The speaker had risen, and standing behind Delia, she laid her hand on the waves of the girl's beautiful hair. Delia looked up.
”Very well. Yes, I'll come. I've been getting depressed. I'll come--at least if Weston's all right.”
”I'm afraid, Miss Blanchflower, this is a very serious business!”