But with the beginning of the second week some strange facts emerged. Gertrude was then sufficiently convalescent to be moved into the drawing-room, to see a few visitors, and to exchange experiences. All who came belonged to the League, and had been concerned in the Parliamentary raid. Most of them had been a few days or a week in prison. Two had been hunger-strikers. And as they gathered round Gertrude in half-articulate worship, Delia, passing from one revealing moment to another, suddenly felt herself superfluous—thrust away! She could not join in their talk except perfunctorily; the violence of it often left her cold and weary; and she soon recognised half in laughter, half bitterly, that, as one who had been carried out of the fray, like a naughty child, by her guardian, she stood in the opinion of Gertrude's visitors, on a level altogether inferior to that of persons who had "fought it out."
This, however, would not have troubled her—she was so entirely of the same opinion herself. But what began to wound her to the quick was Gertrude's own attitude towards her. She had been accustomed for so long to be Gertrude's most intimate friend, to be recognised and envied as such, that to be made to feel day by day how small a hold—for some mysterious reason—she now retained on that fierce spirit, was galling indeed. Meanwhile she had placed all the money realised by the sale of her jewels,—more than three thousand pounds—in Gertrude's hands for League purposes; her house was practically Gertrude's, and had Gertrude willed, her time and her thoughts would have been Gertrude's also. She would not let herself even think of Winnington. One glance at the emaciated face and frame beside her was enough to recall her from what had otherwise been a heavenly wandering.
But she was naturally quick and shrewd, and she soon made herself face the fact that she was supplanted. Supplanted by many—but especially by one. Marion Andrews had not been in the raid—Delia often uneasily pondered the why and wherefore. She came up to town a week after it, and was then constantly in Gertrude's room. Between Delia, and this iron-faced, dark-browed woman, with her clumsy dress and brusque ways, there was but little conversation. Delia never forgot their last meeting at Maumsey; she was often filled with dire forebodings and suspicions; and as the relation between Gertrude and Miss Andrews became closer, they grew and multiplied.
At last one morning Gertrude turned her back on invalid ways. She got up at her usual time; she dismissed her nurse; and in the middle of the morning she came in upon Delia, who, in the desultory temper born of physical strain, was alternately trying to read Marshall's "Economics of Industry," and writing to Lady Tonbridge about anything and everything, except the topics that really occupied her mind.
Delia sprang up to get her a shawl, to settle her on the sofa. But
Gertrude said impatiently—
"Please don't fuss. I want to be treated now as though I were well—I soon shall be. And anyway I am tired of illness." And she took a plain chair, as though to emphasize what she had said.
"I came to talk to you about plans. You're not busy!"
"Busy!" The scornful tone was a trifle bitter also, as Gertrude perceived. Delia put aside her book, and her writing-board, and descended to her favourite place on the hearth rug. The two friends surveyed each other.
"Gertrude, it's absurd to talk as though you were well!" cried Delia.
"You look a perfect wreck!"
But there was more in what she saw—in what she felt—than physical wreck. There was a moral and spiritual change, subtler than any physical injury, and probably more permanent. Gertrude Marvell had never possessed any "charm," in the sense in which other leaders of the militant movement possessed it. A clear and narrowly logical brain, the diamond sharpness of an astonishing will, and certain passions of hate, rather than passions of love, had made the strength of her personality, and given her an increasing ascendancy. But these qualities had been mated with a slender physique—trim, balanced, composed—suggesting a fastidious taste, and nerves perfectly under control; a physique which had given special accent and emphasis to her rare outbreaks of spoken violence. Refinement, seemliness, "ladylikeness,"—even Sir Robert Blanchflower in his sorest moments would scarcely have denied her these.