Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Then poor Zella reproached herself bitterly for the heartlessness of even wishing to forget and be happy again. She strove passionately for a resigned, heartbroken attitude of mind, that should eventually find its chief comfort in memories of past happiness and in the tender cherishing of a widowed and heartbroken father.

  It was an intense relief to the hypersensitive child, though she did not own it to herself, to find, on the days following her mother’s funeral, that Mrs. Lloyd-Evans now deemed the first acute stages of grief to be left behind. She dwelt more upon the happiness of Zella’s dear, dear mother in heaven, and the tenderness with which she would watch over her little daughter, and the necessity for being brave and making the best of one’s life.

  “A change of scene will be very good for you, my poor child,” Mrs. Lloyd-Evans told her; “and poor papa will feel more free if he is alone just at present. I dare say he will go abroad for a little while;”

  “We were going to Paris this winter to see Grandmere and Tante Stephanie.”

  “That will hardly be possible now, darling. Paris is no place to go to when one is in mourning.”

  Notwithstanding this conviction, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who knew that gentlemen did not always quite realize, felt no certainty that her brother-in-law would defer or omit the annual visit that he never failed to pay to his stepmother. Therefore she lost no time in suggesting that Zella should come to Boscombe and spend the winter at her uncle’s house.

  “It will be good for her, and she and Muriel are of just the same age, and can do their lessons and play together. And you know, Louis, the poor child would be dreadfully moped alone with you in this great house; and yet if you travel you could hardly take her with you, just at the age when she ought to be doing her lessons and everything.”

  “I suppose not,” replied Louis in rather bewildered accents. It is very kind of you, Marianne. I had not given Zella much thought, I am afraid, poor child! But my mother would take charge of her, I know, if you really think she ought to have a change.”

  “Louis,” said his sister-in-law earnestly, “not Paris. I implore you, for my dear sweet Esmee’s sake, not Paris. A motherless child of Zella’s age in Paris — a town without religion, and such a town! The modern Babylon!”

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had only once spent a fortnight in the Modern Babylon, but she had read one or two novels on the subject, and her horror of the Ville Lumiere was only equalled by her ignorance.

  “But, my dear Marianne,” said Louis de Kervoyou, almost laughing, “Zella would be as well looked after at my mother’s as she-would be anywhere; in fact, young girls in France are given very much less liberty than in England. She would never be allowed to go anywhere by herself.”

  “That is distinct proof of what I say, Louis. A town where such precautions are necessary can be no place for a young girl,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with triumphant logic....

  “My mother and sister would look after her,” repeated Louis patiently.

  “I do not, naturally, wish to say one word against your stepmother, my dear Louis, or her daughter. But can you deny that they are Roman Catholics?”

  “I have no wish to deny it, Marianne.”

  “Then I implore you, for her mother’s sake, do not risk the loss of your daughter’s faith. Foreigners and Jesuits are more artful than words can say — though, of course, I don’t mean all. And I know some French people — you yourself, dear Louis”

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans became entangled in a painful confusion of words as she suddenly remembered that Louis himself laboured under the double misfortune of being by birth both a foreigner and a Frenchman. She wisely extricated herself by the unanswerable conclusion: “And I know you want what is best for dear little Zella.”

  “I will think it over.”

  “Louis! surely you cannot hesitate! One does not want to be interfering, but, after all — my own sister’s only child, and Paris! A Roman Catholic household!”

  Louis de Kervoyou listened without hearing. The stifling weight of pain seemed to be pressing on him with an intolerable heaviness, and he leant back in his chair, wondering if that soft, monotonous, rapid speech would never cease. He was a short, square-shouldered man, with thick light brown beard and hair, and eyes of the same dark grey as his daughter’s. The habitual laugh in them was quenched now, and a keener physiognomist than Mrs. Lloyd-Evans might have read the hopeless misery in their depths.

  When her low, relentless eloquence had at length ceased, he said wearily:

  “I see what you mean. I will speak to Zella. She can do as she wishes.”

  He spoke English perfectly, with no trace of accent.

  “No, Louis,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans inexorably, “I cannot think that right. Zella must do as she is told, not merely as she wishes. Remember that one must be doubly careful about instilling really high principles into her, now that she no longer has a mother’s influence to watch over her. She really needs the discipline of a good school, and later on”

  “Marianne, I am very grateful to you and Henry and if Zella wishes it she shall go back with you tomorrow,” Louis interrupted decisively. “But I can make no further plans for the moment. I will write to you later.”

  He wished she would go.

  “Are you going away, dear Louis?”

  “I don’t suppose so. Why should I?”

  “A change of scene would distract your mind a little, and this place, so full of associations”

  Louis de Kervoyou, the limits of his endurance reached, rose and opened the door.

  “I will send for Zella now,” he said, making way for her to pass.

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans saw nothing for it but to leave the room. But her resources were not easily exhausted, and she made it so clear to the miserable and bewildered Zella how fully appropriate a visit to Boscombe would be, that the child, half hypnotized, felt that such calm, gentle assurance must necessarily be right.

  Her father did not seem hurt, as Zella had half feared he might be, that she should prefer Mrs. Lloyd-Evans’s house to his stepmother’s little apartement in the Rue des ficoles where the Baronne de Kervoyou had offered to receive her. He said to Zella:

  “You did not get on with your cousins last time you stayed at Boscombe.”

  “It will be different now; I am older,” Zella replied faintly. Aunt Marianne had used the argument that morning. She wondered if her father was angry that she should elect to go to Boscombe. But if she had asked to be taken to Paris to her grandmother, of whom she was rather afraid, Aunt Marianne would have been vexed and thought it wrong. And Aunt Marianne would have been vexed, and called it morbid and unnatural, if Zella had asked to remain at Villetswood. Now that mother was no longer there, a sure refuge, and always certain to understand and approve, it had suddenly become of enormous importance to do what Aunt Marianne and everyone would think right and appropriate.

  Zella looked timidly at her father.

  “Do as you like, pauvre mignonne.” But, in spite of the old term of endearment, he was not thinking very much about her.

  The next day Zella thought that she would have given everything in the world not to be going away from Villetswood. But, with the new cowardice that seemed to have taken possession of her, she did not dare to change her mind.

  She said good-bye, crying, to the maids who had been so kind to her, and ran sobbing upstairs at the last moment to seek the room which had been her mother’s. But Mrs. Lloyd-Evans met her on the stairs, and said:

  “Where are you going, darling? The carriage is at the door, and we must start in a minute.”

  Zella felt that her aunt’s voice held the slightest possible tinge of disapproval, and she instinctively choked back her tears.

  “I have forgotten something — in my room,” she gasped.

  “Then fetch it quickly, dear, while I wait for you.” Mrs. Lloyd-Evans stood, inexorable, on the stairs. Zella ran into her own room, slamming the door to behind her, and stood for a moment looking half wildly round her, blinded
with tears, and shaking with pain and a sort of senseless, unreasoning rebellion, against what or whom she hardly knew. She only knew that it had become impossible for her to go to her mother’s room. She felt that she hated Aunt Marianne, that she was going away with her, and that nobody would ever understand or comfort her any more. She wrung her hands with a mad, foreign gesture.

  The strange minute of agony passed, and Zella went downstairs with her hand clasped in Mrs. Lloyd-Evans’s black-gloved one.

  Louis de Kervoyou was in the hall.

  Zella did not hear his low, rapidly spoken thanks and farewell to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. She looked round her, at the familiar oak staircase, the pictures hung upon the walls, the pieces of furniture she had known all her life. With a child’s sense of finality, she felt as though she must be leaving Villetswood for ever.

  “Adieu, mignonne!”

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans was getting into the carriage now.

  “Papa,” said Zella, clinging to him.

  He looked at her compassionately.

  “I’m not going away for always — you’ll let me come back?” she gasped, almost inarticulate.

  “Whenever you like, of course, my poor little angel!” cried Louis vigorously, in tones more like his own than any Zella had yet heard from him since her mother’s death.

  “Write to me the very day and moment you want to come home, and you shall come.”

  The reassuring words and the kiss he gave her brought a feeling of warmth to Zella’s heart. It was like a return to the old familiar atmosphere of petting and security, to which she had been accustomed all her life.

  IV

  “Time is a great healer” was a platitude that very much recommended itself to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. It gave, as it were, a sanction to a sort of modified forgetfulness, and to the resumption of everyday interests and occupations!

  “Time is a great healer,” thought Zella after a fortnight in the house at Boscombe, when she was anxiously taking her own spiritual temperature, and wondering miserably if it was heartless and forgetful not to cry in bed every night, as she had done at first after her mother’s death.

  But Aunt Marianne did not now encourage crying, and scarcely ever spoke of Zella’s mother. Only on the rare occasions when Zella was introduced to visitors did she hear a subdued murmur of my dear sister’s only child — poor Esmee, you know;” and then she would move out of hearing, acutely conscious of the pathos of her own deep mourning and of the visitor’s compassionate glances.

  James and Muriel Lloyd-Evans had at first been rather overawed by Zella’s black frock. In a few days, however, the old relations between the cousins were resumed. James at sixteen still bore unmoved the reputation of being a prig. A species of civil taciturnity was his habitual shield for an intense sensitiveness, of which Zella, precociously intelligent, was already more than half aware. Muriel, pretty, kind-hearted, essentially unimaginative, thought that she and Zella must be great friends because they were first cousins and of the same age. It was very sad that poor Aunt Esmee had died, and it was very dreadful for poor Zella; but it was very nice to think that she could pay them a long visit and share Muriel’s lessons with Miss Vincent when the holidays were over.

  Zella did not like Muriel, whom she often heard spoken of as “such a nice, bright, unaffected little girl.” Zella, almost unawares, felt that praise of Muriel was an oblique reflection upon herself, because they were so different. Muriel did not want to read story-books, as Zella did, but liked long walks and outdoor games, and the care of pet animals. She also possessed accomplishments, which Zella did not, and could do skirt-dancing very prettily, and sometimes played Thome’s “Simple Aveu” on her violin before visitors. Zella, who would have been very willing to display accomplishments on her own account, could do nothing except talk French; and even then Muriel’s schoolroom lingua franca was apparently supposed by everyone to be on the same level as Zella’s finished Parisian accent.

  Zella, though not humble-minded, began for the first time to mistrust herself. She was humiliated at her own lack of superiority. Yet in her heart she considered Muriel stupid, and despised her because she never read a book and possessed a limited and childish vocabulary. James was not stupid. He yearly brought back a pile of prizes from school, and was known to have passed examinations brilliantly. But Zella admitted to herself, with some naive surprise, that she did not understand James, nor appear to have much in common with him.

  It seemed to her that he had been nicer as a solemn little boy at Villetswood, when they had played imaginative games together from the “Arabian Nights,” always leaving out an invariably tearful Muriel because she did not know how to “pretend.”

  James nowadays took little notice of Zella’s existence, and she unconsciously resented it. He spent his days over a book whenever his mother was not within sight, and one day, about a fortnight after her arrival, Zella said to him rather wistfully: “Are you fond of reading? I like reading better than anything.”

  James raised his head from his book. His dark, melancholy face resembled that of his father, but the brow bore the unmistakable stamp of intellect.

  “I like it,” he said slowly.

  “What is your book? May I see? Oh, ‘Lorna Doone.’”

  “Have you ever read it?”

  Zella had not, but she had once heard it discussed at Villetswood, and was at no loss.

  “Why, it’s the Devonshire story,” she said rather proudly, “and, of course, I am from Devonshire.”

  Zella sometimes thought of herself as a Devonshire maid, sometimes as the loyal descendant of a titled French family, and sometimes as a widely travelled, rather Bohemian young cosmopolitan.

  “Did you like it?” asked James.

  “Yes. Girt Jan Ridd has always been a hero of mine, and I like Lorna too,” replied Zella glibly.

  “I like Tom Faggus and his Winnie better. I’ve just come to where he’s wounded, and she comes to look for help.”

  “Yes, that’s splendid!”

  Had Zella stopped there, all would have been well; but she was determined to prove her familiarity with the world of literature, and with “Lorna Doone” in particular. She continued pensively:

  “But I think that Lorna is really a more attractive character than Winnie, on the whole.”

  James looked at her rather oddly.

  “Do you remember the book well?” he asked at last.

  “Not very,” hesitated Zella, suddenly unsure of herself. “I read it a long while ago.”

  “But you remember Winnie?”

  “Oh yes, and how she found Tom wounded and went for help,” said Zella, trusting that James would not perceive whence she had just derived her information. Then she rushed unconsciously on to her doom.

  “I should call Winnie a typical Devonshire girl,” she said.

  It seemed a safe enough observation to make about a book that was admittedly all about Devonshire people, and Zella was utterly confounded when James remarked without any change of expression:

  “Winnie was Tom Faggus’ strawberry mare.”

  Zella became scarlet with mingled confusion and anger. Her tears, like those of most over-sensitive people, were always near the surface, and her voice failed her as she tried to stammer out something about having forgotten — mixed up Winnie with some other name....

  James looked at his pretty, pathetic-looking little cousin with an expression of greater interest than his dark eyes had as yet displayed towards her.

  “It’s all right, Zella,” he said quite gently and in curiously unboyish tones of compassion. “There’s nothing for you to be upset about. I was an ass not to tell you sooner that you were — making a mistake.”

  Zella looked at him with a sudden inexplicable feeling of being understood, and immediately spoke fearlessly:

  “I haven’t read ‘Lorna Doone,’ as a matter of fact; but I do know something about the story, and it seemed stupid to say I hadn’t read it. Besides, it would have put an end to the con
versation,” she added, with an indescribable expression that could have proclaimed her French ancestry aloud.

  “It was bad luck,” remarked James impartially. “Nine times out of ten that kind of thing comes off all right.”

  Zella was secretly astounded at his matter-of-fact acceptance of “that kind of thing.”

  “It’s rather a horrid sort of thing to do, I know,” she said, looking candid, and thinking that James might possibly contradict her.

  “And, what’s more, I don’t believe other people are taken in by it half as often as one thinks,” was all the satisfaction she received.

  “Of course, Muriel would simply call it telling lies,” ventured Zella, who would have called it much the same thing herself, but was by now emboldened to think that James might perhaps take a more tolerant view.

  “It isn’t telling a downright lie for its own sake. It’s motive that matters in that sort of thing,” affirmed James, frowning. “But it’s misrepresenting the truth, so as to make oneself out what one wants to be thought, instead of what one really is.”

  “Se faire valoir!” eagerly exclaimed the girl, who had been brought up in an atmosphere of abstract discussions such as were unknown in the Lloyd-Evans household.

  “Yes. Most people seem to do that kind of thing one way or another, that would think it wrong to tell a lie outright, and yet consider themselves more or less truthful.”