Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Yes.” said Louis in an expressionless voice. I will tell you all you want to hear. Marianne: but pray try and — and be brave now. I will send for Zella.”

  “How is she?” said his sister-in-law, wiping her eyes.

  The servant entered.

  “Will you bring tea, and tell Miss Zella that Mrs. Lloyd-Evans has arrived?”

  “How is the poor child?” again inquired her aunt.

  “She is very much overwrought.” said Louis calmly, and has cried herself almost ill. I shall be very grateful. Marianne, if you will help her through the next two or three days, and induce her to eat and sleep properly, and try to check her tears. Her mother would not wish her to cry so, and make herself ill.”

  “It is far more natural that she should cry, and will be better for her in the end.’ said Marianne Lloyd-Evans almost resentfully. “And how Can she not cry, unless she were utterly heartless and callous — her own mother, and, oh, what a devoted one!” Louis remembered the number of times that Marianne had accused Esmee of spoiling her only child, and said nothing.

  When Zella entered, her aunt sprang up with a cry of pity, and clasped the little forlorn figure in her arms.

  Zella’s tears began afresh at the tenderness, and they wept together. Louis de Kervoyou gazed again out of the window, where darkness was falling over the garden, and presently left the room.

  He did not again see his sister-in-law until they met at dinner.

  At the sight of Esmee’s empty chair she started a little and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. They spoke very little while the servants were in the room. The strange awe that fills a house visited by death hung heavy in the silence.

  Once Louis asked. “Has Zella gone to bed? and her aunt said. ‘Yes, she is worn out. I gave her a little something that will put her to sleep.”

  When dinner was over, and they were again in the drawing-room, Marianne said rather nervously:

  “I shall be glad to go to bed early to-night, but I wanted to ask you first, Louis, about arrangements.”

  “The funeral is to be on Thursday. There is no reason to make it any later. It will be here, of course.”

  “She would have wished that,” murmured Marianne “ — to lie in the little churchyard so near her own home. Oh, Louis, Louis! I can’t realize she’s gone.”

  Louis listened to her as in a dream, but spoke very gently:

  “It has been a terrible shock to you. I wish you could have had more preparation, but no one anticipated it until the very day before, when I sent you the first telegram.”

  “I know — I know. Can you bear to tell me how it all was?”

  There was little enough to tell, but Louis told her briefly of his wife’s short illness and painless death. She had died unconscious.

  “No words — no message” sobbed Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.

  “She did not know that she was dying.”

  “The clergyman?”

  “I did not send for him,” replied Louis quietly.

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had long known that her brother-in-law was “nothing,” as she phrased it, with regard to religious convictions, and she had often feared that poor Esmee, since her marriage, had given up even going to church, which, to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, was synonymous with atheism. She said no more, but bade Louis an emotional good-night, and went slowly up to her room, although it was very little after nine.

  Louis, left alone at last, went out into the dusk of the garden.

  “Esmee! Esmee!”

  He wondered if he could retain his sanity.

  “Zella, my child, have you nothing black to put on?” Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had never addressed her niece as “my child before, and had she done so Zella would have resented it extremely, but now it appeared to them both as appropriately solemn.

  Next morning, looked at her aunt with vague, dark-circled eyes. She was still in her white petticoat, and looked pathetically small and childish.

  “I hadn’t thought of that, Aunt Marianne,” she faltered. “Must I put on black things?”

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans thought that the gentlest of hints might not come amiss, in order to counteract any possible unconventional ideas on the part of poor Louis, who, after all, was far more French than English.

  “You see, dear,” she said very gently, “it is as a mark of respect. One doesn’t want anyone — the servants or anybody — to think one doesn’t care. You will wear mourning a year for your dear, dear mother. That is what is customary.”

  “Will papa want me to?” asked Zella unexpectedly.

  “He will want you to do what is right, darling. Aunt Marianne will talk to him about it.”

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans habitually spoke of herself in the third person when addressing children.

  “Now let me see what you’ve got,” she continued, in the same gentle, inflexible voice.

  “I have a black serge skirt, but not any blouses,” said Zella, pulling open a drawer.

  “Perhaps a white one would do for to-day. Or look, dear, this check one is black and grey: that will do better still; it is nice and dark.”

  “It is one that — that — she hated. I have hardly ever worn it,” said Zella, beginning to cry again.

  “You mustn’t give way, Zella dear. That blouse and skirt must do for to-day, and I will telegraph for real mourning at once. You see, my poor darling, you must have it for Thursday; but there will just be time for it to arrive. To-day is Tuesday.”

  “Only Tuesday,” thought Zella miserably, as she put on the check blouse and black skirt. “It was only Sunday evening that mother died, and it feels like days and days.”

  She wondered drearily if all her life she would be as miserable as she was now, and if so how she should bear it.

  Presently she mechanically took up the broad scarlet ribbon that habitually tied back her brown hair.

  “Haven’t you a black ribbon, dear?” asked her aunt softly.

  Zella had no black ribbon, and Mrs. Lloyd-Evans told her to plait her hair instead of tying it. It altered her appearance and made her look older.

  They went slowly downstairs. Mrs. Lloyd-Evans holding her nieces hand as though she were a small child, and squeezing it convulsively as they passed the dosed door of the room which had been Esmee’s.

  “It’s so dreadful to have meals and everything just the same.” said poor Zella as they passed through the hall to the dining-room.

  “One must be brave, dear.” replied her aunt.

  Louis de Kervoyou was in the dining-room when they entered, and Mrs. Lloyd-Evans thought that he looked ten years older. When he had spoken the briefest of good-mornings, he looked rather strangely at Zella in her dark clothes and the unaccustomed plaited-back hair, but he said nothing. Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who had rather dreaded some eccentric objection to conventional mourning, felt relieved, and the moment the silent breakfast was over she hastened to write out a telegraphic order to London for the blackest of garments on Zella’s behalf.

  This done, she again sought her niece.

  “Zella, dear child,” she said tremulously, “you know that — that it” — she could not bring herself to use the word “funeral “—” is to be on Thursday. Don’t you wish to come with Aunt Marianne and see dearest mother for the last time? I’m afraid that a little later on it won’t be possible any longer.”

  Zella did not understand, and looked up with miserable bewildered eyes.

  “Papa said not,” she faltered.

  “Darling, you must have misunderstood him! Surely he would wish you to go in just for a little while — surely you wish it yourself?”

  “Yes, oh yes! I did ask him, but he said not.”

  Zella felt a strange shame when she saw Aunt Marianne’s disapproval. Of course it was right that she should be allowed to go and say a last good-bye to her dear, dear mother, and evidently Aunt Marianne had expected it.

  “Wait here a moment, dear child,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.

  She went downstairs and found Louis de Kervoyou wearily
tearing open a number of telegrams of condolence.

  “I have put ‘No flowers ‘ in the obituary notice,” he said, “but one or two wreaths have arrived. Perhaps you would be good enough to see to them. And let Zella help you. Anything would be better for her than doing nothing.”

  “But why have you said ‘No flowers,’ Louis? It is such a beautiful idea, to give flowers as a token of love and remembrance. I know that Henry is bringing down a cross of lilies on Thursday, for I particularly told him to write for one from Soloman’s at once.”

  “Yes — yes. Of course yours and Henry’s shall be there,” said poor Louis patiently. “That is not the same thing as a quantity of wreaths, which, though kindly meant, give a good deal of extra trouble.”

  “She would have liked one from Henry and me,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans tearfully. “But, Louis, I came to speak to you about Zella. I want you to let me take the poor little thing with me into her room, before — before the men come to — to”

  “No!” cried Louis almost violently. “Esmee” — his sister-in-law drew in her breath with a sharp sound of pain at the name—” would not wish the child to remember her lying there, perhaps frightening her and making her ill.”

  “But Zella wishes to come, and I think she ought to,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with characteristically unmoved persistence.

  “I refuse to allow it. You may take her in there, if you must, when the coffin is closed.” His tone was absolutely final. “But, Marianne, I wish that you would take Zella out into the garden, at the back of the house, before eleven o’clock this morning.”

  “Oh, Louis! out so soon! the servants”

  “Marianne, I do not want her in the house either then or to-morrow afternoon, and I beg that you will do as I ask.”

  Marianne, against her better judgment, as she afterwards told her husband, felt that one could only yield. And so Zella knew nothing of the strange men who penetrated into the closed room that morning, and next day heard nothing of the heavy hammering that seemed to Louis de Kervoyou as though it would never cease.

  II

  On Wednesday afternoon Mrs. Lloyd-Evans saw her brother-in-law shut himself into the study, after a morning spent in necessary and painful business, and immediately said to Zella, who had been gazing hopelessly into the small fire for the last hour:

  “Will you come upstairs with Aunt Marianne now, darling?”

  Zella understood that she meant to visit her mother’s room, and her little drawn face became a shade more colourless than before.

  She had scarcely seen her father since Aunt Marianne’s arrival, and had clung to the weeping, demonstrative tenderness and ceaseless murmured recollections of dear, dear mother that alone seemed to make endurable the endless hours. She crept upstairs with her little shaking hand in Aunt Marianne’s, but at the familiar door, which had suddenly grown terrible, Zella began to sob hysterically.

  Aunt Marianne tightened her hold on Zella’s hand and gently opened the door.

  Such a curious hush pervaded the darkened room that Zella instinctively ceased sobbing. At the foot of the bed was a light oak coffin placed upon trestles. It was closed.

  In the gloom Zella could make out the familiar shapes of the dressing-table and the big bed and the old armchair she had always known in the bow-window.

  Her aunt moved gently forward, fumbling for her handkerchief as she went.

  “Wouldn’t you like to kneel down and say a little prayer?” she whispered to Zella, who stood as though stupefied.

  Zella’s mother had taught her to pray as a baby, but for the last three years she had dropped the custom, which was meaningless to her. But, thus prompted, she fell upon her knees beside the strange hard coffin, and leant her aching head against the wood. She felt too sick and bewildered to cry any more.

  But what was there to pray for, if God would not bring mother back to life again?

  Zella looked across at her aunt, whose head was dropped upon her hands.

  Suddenly Zella felt that it must all be a nightmare, and that she would presently wake up and find that mother was here and this dreadful dream gone. It couldn’t be true. A horrible sort of impatient fury seized her — the fury of the undisciplined soul against pain. She clenched her hands to prevent herself from screaming aloud, and suddenly found that she wanted to go away from this darkened room as she had never wanted anything before. She looked across at her Aunt Marianne with a kind of suppressed rage, and began to pray wildly and half unconsciously:

  “O God, let us go — let Aunt Marianne get up and go — I can’t bear it — make her get up — make us go away from here — oh, make her get up and go!”

  It seemed to her that she had been calling so, madly and agonizedly, upon an unheeding God for hours, when her aunt rose at last and laid a hand upon her shoulder. Zella’s little tense form relaxed suddenly, and she felt curiously weak and spent.

  Aunt Marianne stooped solemnly and pressed her lips upon the lid of the coffin. Then she paused a moment, and Zella, rising trembling to her feet, bent also and passionately kissed the senseless wood.

  “It is good-bye to mother,” she thought desperately; but she did not really feel that the hard wood of the coffin and this cold, darkened room had any connection with the sweet, laughing mother whom she had last seen leaning back against her pillows, and saying gaily:

  “I shall be quite well again to-morrow.”

  When they had left the room, Aunt Marianne had said, as she seemed to have said so very often since she came:

  “Now, if I were you, I should go and lie down for a little while upon your bed, Zella dear. It will do you good. Let Aunt Marianne come and arrange you comfortably.”

  Zella mechanically followed Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, and passively allowed herself to be divested of her shoes, helped on to her bed, and covered with a quilt. Mrs. Lloyd-Evans kissed her very kindly, said, “Try and have a little sleep now, darling, just till five o’clock,” and rustled softly away.

  Zella lay still. She had gone to bed very early the evening before, and had slept all night with the heavy slumber of a child exhausted from crying, and she felt no inclination to sleep again now.

  She traced the pattern of the wall-paper idly with her finger. When the funeral was over, would things be as dreadful as they were now? Zella felt that, somehow, it would be terrible to be left alone with her father, who must be so very, very unhappy, poor papa! although he had not cried and did not talk about mother like Aunt Marianne did. Would he never talk about her anymore? Some people did not ever talk of their relations who were dead.

  Mother was dead.

  Zella came back to that thought with an aching wonder that it should bring no greater pang of realization with it. Perhaps that was what people meant by being stunned with grief. Perhaps one only realized later, when one had got used to being without No, no! it would be impossible ever to get accustomed to it, ever to be happy again, all one’s life long.... “And I’m only fourteen, and perhaps I may live to be very old,” thought Zella, and tears of self-pity welled into her eyes.

  She cried a little, but her swollen eyelids burnt and smarted so that presently she stopped.

  She had been here a long while; it must be five o’clock, and tea would break the miserable monotony of the day. Zella looked at her watch, and thought, as so often during those unspeakably wretched days of inaction, that it must have stopped. It was not yet a quarter ‘past four. She held the watch despairingly to her ear, but it was still going.

  It seemed unbearable.

  Zella tried to make herself cry again by thinking of all the early recollections of her mother that had made her sob so unrestrainedly when she and Aunt Marianne had talked of them yesterday. But the tears would not come.

  She turned over and buried her face in the pillow, unspeakably wretched. Only the third day since her mother’s death, and she felt as though this life of strained misery had lasted for years. Would nothing ever bring it to an end?

  It must be at leas
t ten minutes since she had looked at: her watch. It couldn’t be less than twenty-five minutes past four now, thought Zella, half expecting to see that it was even later. She looked at her watch again, and held it to her ear.

  Four minutes had passed.

  Her eyes fell upon a half-read copy of “Treasure Island” on her bookshelf. She had looked at it that morning and remembered how much excited she had been over reading it only three days ago, and then turned away her eyes with a feeling of shame that she should be capable of such a thought at such a time.

  Now she felt that, if only she might read, it would make the time ‘ less unbearably long. Confusedly she craved any relaxation of the emotional tension to which her mind had been strung during the last three days.

  For a few moments Zella battled against the suggestion. It was wicked and heartless to want to read a story-book when mother How dreadful Aunt Marianne would think it!

  But, then, Aunt Marianne needn’t know — no one would ever know — and to read for a little while would help her to forget her misery....

  Zella crept to the bookshelf in her stockinged feet, casting terrified glances at the door, and pulled down the brightly bound blue and gold book. Then she fled back on to the bed with it.

  At first she could understand nothing of what she read, and was only conscious of a sickening sense of guilt and the heavy pounding of her own heart as she strained her ears for the sound of Aunt Marianne’s possible approach. But presently the excitement of the story revived, and Zella read eagerly, dimly conscious that unhappiness was waiting in the background to seize upon her, but knowing it to be kept at bay for so long as she should be held absorbed by her book.

  When at last she heard the unmistakable rustle of Mrs. Lloyd-Evans’s new mourning at the door, Zella, a patch of colour blazing in each pale cheek, thrust “Treasure Island” beneath her pillow.

  After that she read eagerly and furtively whenever she could. It was the only means of forgetting for a little while the dull pervading sense of grief which was making life so strange and unbearable.