Delia Blanchflower Part 5

Meanwhile Delia had been accosted by another gentleman, who had been sitting reading his _Morning Post_ on the sunny platform, as the train drew up. He too had examined the new arrivals with interest, and while Delia was still talking to the station-master, he walked up to her.

"I think you are Miss Blanchflower: But you won't remember me." He lifted his hat, smiling.

Delia looked at him, puzzled.

"Don't you remember that Christmas dance at the Rectory, when you were ten, and I was home from Sandhurst?"

"Perfectly!--and I quarrelled with you because you wouldn't give me champagne, when I'd danced with you, instead of lemonade. You said what was good for big boys wasn't good for little girls--and I called you a bully--"

"You kicked me!--you had the sharpest little toes!"

"Did I?" said Delia composedly. "I was rather good at kicking. So you are Billy Andrews?"

"Right. I'm Captain now, and they've just made me adjutant down here for the Yeomanry. My mother keeps house for me. You're coming here to live? Please let me say how sorry I was to see your sad news." The condolence was a little clumsy but sincere.

"Thank you. I must go and see to the luggage. Let me introduce you to Miss Marvell--Captain Andrews--Miss Marvell."

That lady bowed coldly, as Delia departed. The tall, soldierly man, whose pleasant looks were somewhat spoilt by a slightly underhung mouth, and prominent chin, disguised, however, by a fine moustache, offered a.s.sistance with the luggage.

"There is no need, thank you," said Miss Marvell. "Miss Blanchflower and her maid will see to it."

And the Captain noticed that the speaker remained entirely pa.s.sive while the luggage was being collected and piled into a fly by the porters, directed by Miss Blanchflower and her maid. She stood quietly on the platform, till all was ready, and Delia beckoned to her. In the intervals the soldier tried to make conversation, but with very small success. He dwelt upon some of the changes Miss Blanchflower would find on the estate; how the old head-keeper, who used to make a pet of her, was dead, and the new agent her father had put in was thought to be doing well, how the village had lost markedly in population in the last few years--this emigration to Canada was really getting beyond a joke!--and so forth. Miss Marvell made no replies. But she suddenly asked him a question.

"What's that house over there?"

She pointed to a grey facade on a wooded hill some two miles off.

"That's our show place--Monk Lawrence! We're awfully proud of it--Elizabethan, and that kind of thing. But of course you've heard of Monk Lawrence! It's one of the finest things in England."

"It belongs to Sir Wilfrid Lang?"

"Certainly. Do you know him? He's scarcely been there at all, since he became a Cabinet Minister; and yet he spent a lot of money in repairing it a few years ago. They say it's his wife's health--that it's too damp for her. Anyway it's quite shut up,--except that they let tourists see it once a month."

"Does anybody live in the house?"--

"Oh--a caretaker, of course,--one of the keepers. They let the shooting. Ah! there's Miss Blanchflower calling you."

Miss Marvell--as the gallant Captain afterwards remembered--took a long look at the distant house and then went to join Miss Blanchflower. The Captain accompanied her, and helped her to stow away the remaining bags into the fly, while a small concourse of rustics, sprung from nowhere, stolidly watched the doings of the heiress and her friend. Delia suddenly bent forward to him, as he was about to shut the door, with an animated look--"Can you tell me who that gentleman is who has just walked off towards the village?"--she pointed.

"His name is Lathrop. He lives in a place just the other side of yours.

He's got some trout-hatching ponds--will stock anybody's stream for them. Rather a queer customer!"--the good-natured Captain dropped his voice. "Well, good-bye, my train's just coming. I hope I may come and see you soon?"

Delia nodded a.s.sent, and they drove off.

"By George, she's a beauty!" said the Captain to himself as he turned away. "Nothing wrong with her that I can see. But there are some strange tales going about. I wonder who that other woman is.

Marvell--Gertrude Marvell?--I seem to have heard the name somewhere.--Hullo, Masham, how are you?" He greeted the leading local solicitor who had just entered the station, a man with a fine ascetic face, and singularly blue eyes. Masham looked like a starved poet or preacher, and was in reality one of the hardest and shrewdest men of business in the southern counties.

"Well, did you see Miss Blanchflower?" said the Captain, as Masham joined him on the platform, and they entered the up train together.

"I did. A handsome young lady! Have you heard the news?"

"No."

"Your neighbor, Mr. Winnington--Mark Winnington--is named as her guardian under her father's will--until she is twenty-five. He is also trustee, with absolute power over the property."

The Captain shewed a face of astonishment.

"Gracious! what had Winnington to do with Sir Robert Blanchflower!"

"An old friend, apparently. But it is a curious will."

The solicitor's abstracted look shewed a busy mind. The Captain had never felt a livelier desire for information.

"Isn't there something strange about the girl?"--he said, lowering his voice, although there was no one else in the railway carriage. "I never saw a more beautiful creature! But my mother came home from London the other day with some very queer stories, from a woman who had met them abroad. She said Miss Blanchflower was awfully clever, but as wild as a hawk--mad about women's rights and that kind of thing. In the hotel where she met them, people fought very shy of her."

"Oh, she's a militant suffragist," said the solicitor quietly--"though she's not had time yet since her father's death to do any mischief.

That--in confidence--is the meaning of the will."

The adjutant whistled.

"Goodness!--Winnington will have his work cut out for him. But he needn't accept."

"He has accepted. I heard this morning from the London solicitor."

"Your firm does the estate business down here?"

"For many years. I hope to see Mr. Winnington to-morrow or next day. He is evidently hurrying home--because of this."

There was silence for a few minutes; then the Captain said bluntly:

"It's an awful pity, you know, that kind of thing cropping up down here. We've escaped it so far."

"With such a lot of wild women about, what can you expect?" said the solicitor briskly. "Like the measles--sure to come our way sooner or later."

"Do you think they'll get what they want?" "What--the vote? No--not unless the men are fools." The refined, apostolic face set like iron.

"None of the womanly women want it," said the Captain with conviction.

"You should hear my mother on it."

The solicitor did not reply. The adjutant's mother was not in his eyes a model of wisdom. Nor did his own opinion want any fortifying from outside.

Captain Andrews was not quite in the same position. He was conscious of a strong male instinct which disavowed Miss Blanchflower and all her kind; but at the same time he was exceedingly susceptible to female beauty, and it troubled his reasoning processes that anybody so wrong-headed should be so good-looking. His heart was soft, and his brain all that was wanted for his own purposes. But it did not enable him-it never had enabled him--to understand these extraordinary "goings-on," which the newspapers were every day reporting, on the part of well-to-do, educated women, who were ready--it seemed--to do anything outrageous--just for a vote! "Of course n.o.body would mind if the rich women--the tax-paying women--had a vote--help us Tories famously. But the women of the working-cla.s.ses--why, Good Lord, look at them when there's any disturbance on--any big strike--look at Tonypandy!--a deal sight worse than the men! Give them the vote and they'd take us to the devil, even quicker than Lloyd George!"

Aloud he said--

"Do you know anything about that lady Miss Blanchflower had with her?

She introduced me. Miss Marvell--I think that was the name. I thought I had heard it somewhere."