Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “You shall, mignonne. We will all go to Paris together at the end of the month, and then you and I will go home for a week or two, and you can start when the Easter holidays are over.”

  Zella was excited and pleased, and only wished that her father could have told her then and there which convent was to be the scene of her future successes.

  An added cause for satisfaction, though Zella would not have admitted it to herself, was the sense that she was about to enter an atmosphere which her Aunt Marianne, at a safe distance where remonstrance could be of little avail, would certainly consider pernicious, alike to her niece’s temporal and spiritual welfare.

  X

  While Zella’s Tante Stephanie was devoutly burning candles before every shrine in Rome, in humble and ardent thanksgiving for the immense grace of a convent education which was to be bestowed on Zella — in direct reply, no doubt, to her many prayers — Zella’s Aunt Marianne was indignantly demanding of the Almighty an instant reversal of the horrible decision that should introduce her niece into the artful snare laid for her by the devil, well known as the instigator of all Roman Catholic plots.

  But it was not Mrs. Lloyd-Evans’s way to leave Providence unsupported by efforts of her own.

  “Henry,” she said, “I can see only one thing to be done. This is a case for personal influence.”

  “However much you may influence Zella, my dear, I do not believe it would make Louis alter his mind.”

  “Zella! she is a child — I am not thinking of her. Or, rather, it is of her that I am thinking, only you are positively making me contradict myself, Henry, by arguing like this.”

  Henry wisely became silent.

  “The fact is, I am unstrung by such a piece of news,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, laying her hand for a moment upon her husband’s in order to indicate that her momentary irritation had no deeper underlying cause. “My poor Esmee’s only child sent to a convent! It is very wrong of Louis, when he has not even the excuse of being a Roman Catholic himself.”

  “His relations are Roman Catholics, though.”

  “That is exactly it, and he is very weak and easily influenced, as I have always said. That is why I see quite plainly that the only thing to do is to get at that old Baronne. It is she who is pulling all these strings, you may depend upon it, with a whole cabal of artful priests and people behind her, as likely as not, hoping to get Louis and his money into their Church through Zella. I can see through the whole thing,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans warmly.

  Such penetration alarmed her husband.

  “Hadn’t you better keep clear of it?” he demanded rather anxiously.

  “My own sister’s only child, Henry!”

  Henry, who had heard that argument before, had never yet found a suitable rejoinder to it, and again took refuge in silence.

  “No. The only hope is to show the artful old lady quite plainly that one sees through the whole plot, and that may frighten her out of it.”’

  “Do you mean to write to her?”

  “A letter in French would not be very satisfactory, Henry,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with great truth, “and I don’t suppose she would understand much English. Foreigners are always so badly educated. No; I think there is nothing for it but to see her.”

  “She is in Rome, though.”

  “She went back to Paris when Louis took Zella to Villetswood last week. We shall have to go there,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with great determination.

  Henry, who had not perceived whither her remarks were tending, looked protesting, “It is a journey, I know, and the crossing will be very tiresome, for I am always ill, as you know,” said his wife, rapidly disposing of all Henry’s arguments before he had time to formulate them; “but this is not a matter in which one can think of expense or one’s own health or comfort, and I am convinced it is the only thing to do.”

  “Why not try what you can do with Louis himself first?”

  “What would be the use of that, Henry? What I did with one hand, the Baronne would undo with the other. Louis is like a reed between two winds,” said the agitated Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.

  “And do you think,” asked Henry rather doubtfully, “that you will be able to make the old woman see reason?”

  “One may be enabled to show her how very dreadful it would be to tamper with the faith of an innocent child,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans piously; “and at all events she will see that Zella’s English relations — her only real relations, since those De Kervoyous can only be called connections, whatever they and Louis may choose to pretend — are not going to let the child be inveigled into Romanism simply because she no longer has a mother’s hand to guide her.”

  If Henry remembered utterances of his wife’s, in former years, that had implied anything but approval of the guiding hand exercised by Zella’s mother, he did not think fit to recall them now.

  “Will Louis like your attacking his relations like this?” he demanded gloomily.

  “Louis will know nothing whatever about it, dear. If I choose to go over to Paris on business, nothing could be more natural than that I should pay a little call on the Baronne de Kervoyou, since she is a connection of Zella’s, however distant. If Louis ever comes to hear of it, he will probably be gratified at our having paid the old thing a little attention,” retorted Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with more spirit than conviction in her tones.

  “Then, you don’t mean to let her know that we are coming?” said Henry, the full extent of his wife’s Machiavellian diplomacy gradually dawning upon him, and reducing him to acute depression.

  “Certainly not. We might go over for two nights, Henry, and stay quietly at some little hotel, and I will send the Baronne a diplomatic note saying that, as we are passing through Paris, I thought I would come and call on her.”

  “I think, Marianne,” said Henry slowly, goaded into more opposition to his wife’s schemes than he generally displayed, by a sense of being involved in international complications, “I think you had far better content yourself with writing again to Louis, and the old woman, too, if you like. Or else leave the whole thing alone.”

  The eagerness with which this last suggestion was made was obvious, but Marianne, with great tact and sweetness, told her husband that in these matters gentlemen did not always quite understand, and Henry knew better than to dispute the aphorism.

  The diplomatic note was accordingly written, and posted five days before the Lloyd-Evanses left home, in order to insure its arriving when they did, since Mrs. Lloyd-Evans knew that the postal arrangements in all countries except England are defective and never to be relied upon.

  In consequence of this foresight, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans found awaiting her at the hotel a courteous letter from the Baronne, written in admirable English, and assuring her of the pleasure she would confer by a visit to the Rue des Ecoles at any hour most convenient to herself on the following day. There was also a bouquet of pink roses, accompanied by a card inscribed in Stephanie’s most pointed handwriting and violet ink, with an elaborate little message of welcome from the Baronne de Kervoyou and her daughter, provoking from Mrs. Lloyd-Evans the astute comment:

  “Dear me, Henry, this is very foreign and artful. I wonder if they imagined that I shouldn’t see through it.”

  Henry, wrapped in deepest gloom and reflecting that all foreign cooking was bad, made no reply, and was monosyllabic throughout the evening, until his wife suddenly exclaimed:

  “I see what it is, Henry. You are depressed. I can always read your mind like an open book, dear — you know I can.”

  Henry looked much alarmed.

  “But, Henry dear, there is really no reason for depression. I think a little tact, and at the same time plain-speaking, will put things before the old lady in quite a new light. She is a foreigner, after all, and has probably Evans indulgently. “But I feel certain I shall be able to manage her, and, through her, Louis.”

  “You do not wish me to come with you, I suppose?”

  “No, dear. This is a woman’
s mission.” Mrs. Lloyd-Evans accordingly set forth on her woman’s mission that next afternoon, leaving a profoundly dejected never thought much about Henry to pace through the spring brightness of the Bois, and heartily wish himself back again in his own turnip fields.

  Having a rooted distrust of French cabmen, who are well known to ply their trade principally with a view to decoying and robbing unwary Englishwomen, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans elected to walk to the Rue des Ecoles, and, having several times taken a wrong turning, found herself at the Baronne de Kervoyou’s appartement well after five o’clock.

  Having rehearsed to Henry on the previous evening her determination to open the campaign with a perfectly self-possessed bow and the almost idiomatically French greeting, “Bon jour, Baronne, est-ce que vous allez bien?” it slightly disconcerted poor Mrs. Lloyd-Evans to be received by the Baronne and her daughter with a most English-sounding “How do you do?” and extended hand, and “It is a good many years since we last met,” from the Baronne. The occasion of their last meeting having been the wedding of Louis de Kervoyou and Mrs. Lloyd-Evans’s poor dear Esmee, she thought that the reference might well have been omitted, but replied by instantly banishing the conventional smile of greeting from her features, and saying, “Ah yes, indeed!” in a subdued voice.

  The conversation proceeded in English, smoothly guided by the unperturbed Baronne, who was dispensing excellent coffee and indifferent tea from the small silver equipage in front of her.

  The Baronne trusted Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had had a good crossing?

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had, on the contrary, been extremely ill.

  The Baronne and Stephanie regretted simultaneously.

  And Mr. Lloyd-Evans? He was well? They had hoped to have the pleasure of seeing him to-day.

  Oh yes, he was very well, but a short visit, on business only — the Baronne would understand.

  The Baronne understood perfectly.

  Moreover, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had thought that for a little conversation, such as she would wish to hold with the Baronne, a gentleman would perhaps have been —

  The Baronne again said “Perfectly” and waited.

  But Mrs. Lloyd-Evans belonged to the numerous class of persons that hold no conversation of any but the most surface description without first insisting upon a formal tête-à-tête.

  She looked at Stephanie.

  The Baronne, through her spectacles, deliberately intercepted the look.

  “It was perhaps of our little Zella that you desired news?” she inquired blandly.

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans laughed in a manner judiciously designed to convey a mingling of superior amusement and slight annoyance.

  “As to news of my niece, I naturally get that direct,” she declared lightly; “but I should not be sorry to have a little chat with you, since we are on the subject.”

  The Baronne raised her eyebrows and looked full at Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with a pleasant but expectant expression.

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans paused, anticipating a question.

  The Baronne, quite unembarrassed, remained silent, obviously waiting for the little chat to begin.

  Stephanie, who was as usual bent over her old-fashioned embroidery frame, raised her head in surprise at the sudden silence which had fallen upon the room.

  She found the visitor’s eyes fixed upon her with a meaning expression that the bewildered Stephanie was quite at a loss to interpret.

  But Mrs. Lloyd-Evans did not lack determination, and, moreover, saw no more objection to requesting her hostess’s thirty-five-year-old daughter to leave her mother’s drawing-room, than she would have to dismissing her own Muriel to the nursery when her presence became inconvenient.

  The astounded Stephanie heard the guest’s low, voluble tones saying to her with amiable firmness:

  “I know you will not think me rude if I tell you that I believe we had really better talk things over a deux — just your mother and I, you know. I feel certain you understand.”

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans’s certainty was hardly shared by the Baronne, who sat in grim amusement watching her daughter’s surprised face. As soon, however, as Stephanie had grasped what was required of her, she rose quite readily and removed herself with her embroidery to the only other sitting-room in the tiny flat, the dining-room, slightly marvelling at the strange difference between Mrs. Lloyd-Evans and dear Louis’s wife.

  Stephanie thus disposed of, nothing remained but for Mrs. Lloyd-Evans to fulfil the object of her mission.

  She began with gentle persuasiveness:

  “I hear from Louis that poor little Zella is to be sent to a convent to be educated — a very unexpected departure.”

  “Unexpected?” said the Baronne, delicately implying that Mrs. Lloyd-Evans must have been alone in finding it anything of the sort.

  “Certainly unexpected. One could hardly have foreseen that Louis would select a Roman Catholic convent, of all places, for his daughter’s education. Of course,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, suddenly remembering her policy of conciliation, “a Roman Catholic convent is very nice for Roman Catholics; but for anyone else”

  “You need have no fears on that score, I assure you,” said the Baronne kindly. “The nuns are always quite willing to receive non-Catholic children. There will be no difficulty.”

  “I never supposed there would be,” Mrs. Lloyd-Evans returned, with some heat. “Of course they will, no doubt, be delighted to take my niece as a boarder. It is of the child herself that I am thinking. I fear a convent is far from being the place that my poor dear sister would have selected for her.”

  The Baronne’s expression was one of courteous concern.

  “Esmee was, naturally, very devoted to her own — to the Church,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with some stretch of imagination, “and one can’t help feeling that, if only she were here to look after her only child, there would be no idea of such places as convents for Zella.”

  “No doubt, if Zella’s mother were still alive, the question of her leaving Villetswood would not have arisen,” assented the Baronne quietly.

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans saw her opportunity.

  “I do not know how it Ms arisen,” she said meaningly, fixing a penetrating eye on the totally unmoved Baronne. “Louis had no thought of such a thing when he left England. Some influence must have been at work to put the idea into his mind.”

  “Ah!” said the Baronne, shrugging her shoulders, “as you will readily understand, I ask no questions. A stepson is but a stepson, and even of one’s nearest relations one has no right to ask intrusive questions. Louis is well of an age to make up his own mind.”

  “No doubt, but the question is, Has he made it up, or has someone been making it up for him? I can understand that, to a member of the Roman Church, it might even appear a good thing for Zella to be sent to a convent,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans broad-mindedly, “and I am afraid some mistaken influence may have been at work on Louis. I quite see that, from their point of view, the best thing that could happen would be for Zella to be made into a Roman Catholic — as she certainly will be, if she goes into a convent.”

  “Dear me!” said the Baronne, looking politely shocked, “has her own faith, then, so light a hold upon her? I thought the child had been better grounded.”

  “So she has,” agitatedly retorted Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. “But you forget what a child she is — only fifteen, and very impressionable. She has inherited her father’s temperament.”

  “Her father’s temperament has not yet led him to change his religion, although he is forty years old.”

  “Louis was never—” sharply began Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, and then perforce stopped.

  “Convents do not, indeed, admit pupils of the opposite sex,” the Baronne mildly informed her.

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans hastily turned to another branch of the subject.

  “Why not a good school?” she demanded plaintively. “Zella has been very badly educated up to the present. She did lessons with my little daughter for a while in the winter, and the governess was quite sho
cked to see how backward that child is with arithmetic and geography, and, in fact, all that thorough groundwork which is so indispensable. She knows practically nothing, compared to Muriel. Now, the Sisters at the convent may teach plain sewing and perhaps embroidery or illumination very nicely,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, whose conceptions of a convent did not appear to extend beyond the Middle Ages, “but what about a modern, up-to-date English education?”

  “Ah, happily, there is no need to discuss that, even,” said the Baronne airily. “There is a class to which your admirable women workers belong — highly trained governesses and the like — all of whom have great need of the up-to-date education of which you speak, and profit by it fully, to their infinite credit. But when Zella goes into the world to which she naturally belongs, who will require of her a demonstration in algebra, or the latitude and longitude of Peru? Reading and her own intelligence will supply her with that general information which is so agreeable an adjunct to well-bred conversation; and for the rest, the essential is that she should carry herself well, and, needless to add, speak and understand one or two languages besides her own,” said the Baronne in remarkably fluent English.

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who had been given no opportunity for a display of her halting French, looked suspicious.

  “But Louis surely will not leave Zella in a foreign country,” she said at last.

  “There are many convents in your hospitable country,” said the Baronne pleasantly, “so no doubt he will easily find a suitable one in England. In a large community many nationalities are, naturally, represented, and Zella will have the advantage of learning Italian, or German, from teachers of those nationalities.’

  “And who will her school companions be, pray?” demanded Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. “One would wish her to make some nice friends who would be useful to her later on, girls whose mothers will be giving dances in London, when Zella comes out.”

  “As to London,” negligently replied the Baronne, “no doubt Louis will pick up many old threads, should he wish to do so, when Zella makes her debut. But at the convent,’ I need not point out to you, she will have the inestimable advantage of finding herself among girls of many nationalities besides English and Irish.”