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Updated: May 16, 2025
Great Maumsey had a vast belief in itself, and was reckoned exclusive and clannish by other places. It was proud of its old Georgian houses, with their white fronts, their pillared porches, and the pediment gables in their low roofs.
That "Miss Blanchflower" was with them, seemed to reflect a glory on their little despised coterie. They admired her and listened to her, loath to let her go. But at last Delia said Good-bye, and stepped out again into the lights of the village street. As she walked rapidly towards Maumsey, and the village houses thinned and fell away, she suddenly noticed a dark figure in front of her.
Winnington recognised a Maumsey man, whom he had befriended in various ways, who owed his place indeed in the Metropolitan force to Winnington's good word. "Hullo, Hewson how are you? Flourishing?" The man's face beamed again. He was thinking of a cricket match the year before under Winnington's captaincy. Like every member of the eleven, he would have faced "death and damnation" for the captain.
Alarm anxiety rushed upon him, mingled in a tempest-driven mind with all that Madeleine Tonbridge, in the Maumsey drawing-room, had just been saying to him.
"DEAR MR. WINNINGTON, As you please. I am however shortly leaving for Maumsey with Miss Marvell, who, as I told you, has undertaken to live with me as my chaperon. "We shall hope to see you at Maumsey." Yours faithfully, "DELIA BLANCHFLOWER."
As to the causes of Delia's depression, why, she had lost her friend, or at any rate, to judge from the fact that Delia was at Maumsey, while Miss Marvell remained, so report said, in London had ceased to agree or act with her. Susy divined and felt for the possible tragedy involved.
She went to bed early, and Delia spent the hours after dinner in packing, with her maid. In the middle of it came a line from Winnington "Good news indeed! I go down to Maumsey early, to see that the Abbey is ready for you. Don't bother about the flat. I have spoken to the Agents. They will do everything. Au revoir!" The commonplace words somehow broke down her self-control.
But there were no insanitary cottages, and no obvious scandals of any sort. The Maumsey estate had always been well managed; there were a good many small gentlefolk who lived in the Georgian houses, and owing to the competition of the railways, agricultural wages were rather better than elsewhere.
But she realised, of course, that it would be unkind to Delia to plunge her into possible trouble, or to run the risk herself of arrest or imprisonment during the early days of Delia's mourning; and of her own accord she graciously offered the assurance that neither she nor Delia would commit any illegality during the two months or so that they might be settled at Maumsey.
Then she turned with energy to practical affairs arrangements for giving up the flat, dismissing some servants, despatching others to Maumsey. She had something of a gift for housekeeping, and on this evening of all others she blessed its tasks. When they met at dinner, Gertrude was perfectly placid and amiable.
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