But, in the first place, the extraordinary terms of Sir Robert's will had proved far more baffling than she and Delia had ever been willing to believe. And, in the next place, the personality of Mark Winnington had almost immediately presented itself to Gertrude as something she had never reckoned with. A blustering and tyrannical guardian would have been comparatively easy to fight. Winnington was formidable, not because he was hostile, resolutely hostile, to their whole propaganda of violence; that might only have spurred a strong-willed girl to more passionate extremes. He was dangerous,—in spite of his forty years—because he was delightful; because, in his leisurely, old-fashioned way, he was so loveable, so handsome, so inevitably attractive, Gertrude, looking back, realised that she had soon perceived—vaguely at least—what might happen, what had now—as she dismally guessed—actually happened.
The young, impressionable creature, brought into close contact with this charming fellow—this agreeable reactionary—had fallen in love! That was all. But it was more than enough. Delia might be still unconscious of it herself. But this new shrinking from the most characteristic feature of the violent policy—this new softness and fluidity in a personality that when they first reached Maumsey had begun already to stiffen in the fierce mould of militancy—to what could any observer with eyes in their head attribute them but the influence of Mark Winnington—the daily unseen presence of other judgments and other ideals embodied in a man to whom the girl's feelings had capitulated?
"If I could have kept her to myself for another year, he could have done nothing. But he has intervened before her opinions were anything more than the echoes of mine;—and for the future I shall have less and less chance against him. What shall we ever get out of her as a married woman? What would Mark Winnington—to whom she will give herself, body and soul,—allow us to get out of her? Better break with her now, and disentangle my own life!"
With such thoughts, a pale and brooding woman pursued the now distant figure of Delia. At the same time Gertrude Marvell had no intention whatever of provoking a premature breach which might deprive either the Cause or herself of any help they might still obtain from Delia in the desperate fight immediately ahead. She, personally, would have infinitely preferred freedom and a garret to Delia's flat, and any kind of dependence on Delia's money. "I was not born to be a parasite!" she angrily thought. But she had no right to prefer them. All that could be extracted from Delia should be extracted. She was now no more to Gertrude than a pawn in the game. Let her be used—if she could not be trusted!
But if this had fallen differently, if she had remained the true sister-in-arms, given wholly to the joy of the fight, Gertrude's stern soul would have clasped her to itself, just as passionately as it now dismissed her.
"No matter!" The hard brown eyes looked steadily into the future. "That's done with. I am alone—I shall be alone. What does it signify?—a little sooner or later?"
The vagueness of the words matched the vagueness of certain haunting premonitions in the background of the mind. Her own future always shaped itself in tragic terms. It was impossible—she knew it—that it should bring her to any kind of happiness. It was no less impossible that she should pause and submit. That active defiance of the existing order, on which she had entered, possessed her, gripped her, irrevocably. She was like the launched stone which describes its appointed curve—till it drops.
As for any interference from the side of her own personal ties and affections,—she had none.
In her pocket she carried a letter she had received that morning, from her mother. It was plaintive, as usual.
"Winnie's second child arrived last week. It was an awful confinement. The first doctor had to get another, and they only just pulled her through. The child's a misery. It would be much better if it had died. I can't think what she'll do. Her husband's a wretched creature—just manages to keep in work—but he neglects her shamefully—and if there ever is anything to spend, he spends it—on his own amusement. She cried the other day, when we were talking of you. She thinks you're living with a rich lady, and have everything you want—and she and her children are often half-starved. 'She might forgive me now, I do think—' she'll say sometimes—'And as for Henry, if I did take him away from her, she may thank her stars she didn't marry him. She'd have killed him by now. She never could stand men like Henry. Only, when he was a young fellow, he took her in—her first, and then me. It was a bad job we ever saw him.'