Delia Blanchflower eBook

An easy-going husband—­a beautiful wife, not vicious, but bored to death—­the inevitable third, in the person of a young and amorous cavalry officer—­and a whole Indian station, waiting, half maliciously, half sadly, for the banal catastrophe:—­it was thus he remembered the situation.  Winnington had arrived on the scene as a barrister of some five years’ standing, invalided after an acute attack of pneumonia, and the guest for the winter of his uncle, then Commissioner of the district.  He discovered in the cavalry officer a fellow who had been his particular protege at Eton, and had owed his passionately coveted choice for the Eleven largely to Winnington’s good word.  The whole dismal little drama unveiled itself, and Winnington was hotly moved by the waste and pity of it.  He was entertained by the Blanchflowers and took a liking to them both.  The old friendship between Winnington and the cavalryman was soon noticed by Major Blanchflower, and one night he walked home with Winnington, who had been dining at his house, to the Commissioner’s quarters.  Then, for the first time, Winnington realised what it may be to wrestle with a man in torment.  The next day, the young cavalryman, at Winnington’s invitation, took his old friend for a ride, and before dawn on the following day, the youth was off on leave, and neither Major nor Mrs. Blanchflower, Winnington believed, had ever seen him again.  What he did with the youth, and how he did it, he cannot exactly remember, but at least he doesn’t forget the grip of Blanchflower’s hand, and the look of deliverance in his strained, hollow face.  Nor had Mrs. Blanchflower borne her rescuer any grudge.  He had parted from her on the best of terms, and the recollection of her astonishing beauty grows strong in him as he thinks of her.

So now it is her daughter who is stirring the world!  With her father’s money and her mother’s eyes,—­not to speak of the additional trifles—­eloquence, enthusiasm, &c.—­thrown in by the Swedish woman, she ought to find it easy.

The dressing-gong of the hotel disturbed a rather sleepy reverie, and sent the Englishman back to his Times.  And a few hours later he went to a dreamless bed, little guessing at the letter which was even then waiting for him, far below, in the Botzen post-office.

Chapter II

Winnington took his morning coffee on a verandah of the hotel, from which the great forests of Monte Vanna were widely visible.  Upwards from the deep valley below the pass, to the topmost crags of the mountain, their royal mantle ran unbroken.  This morning they were lightly drowned in a fine weather haze, and the mere sight of them suggested cool glades and verdurous glooms, stretches of pink willow herb lighting up the clearings—­and in the secret heart of them such chambers “deaf to noise and blind to light” as the forest lover knows.  Winnington promised himself a leisurely climb to the top of Monte Vanna.  The morning foretold considerable heat, but under the pines one might mock at Helios.