Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “What, to be going to be married!” laughed Muriel, blushing perceptibly for the first time.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh!” — she paused a moment at the door—” it’s a weird sort of feeling, but perfectly lovely when you get the right person.”

  XX

  “Marriage is a Sacrament,” thought Zella, fresh from the Catechisme de Trente as expounded by Reverend Mother, and unaware that the particular Bishop conducting the ceremony did not regard it as anything of the sort.

  She stood in the blue and white cloud of tulle and flowers and shaded azure feathers that represented Muriel’s bridesmaids, at the end of the long aisle.

  They were waiting for the bride.

  Chumps, erect, scarlet, immaculate, was hovering between the chancel steps and the front row of reserved prie-dieus — had, indeed, been hovering there for some time, exchanging a furtive grin every now and then with the humorously inclined best man, who made facetious remarks in an undertone of the “This won’t be the last time you’ll be kept waiting, my boy” type.

  The church was full, and James had ceased to pilot elaborate women and black-coated men into their seats.

  The organ was being tempestuously played, and did not succeed in drowning the ceaseless rustle and murmur all along the church.

  The bridesmaids were whispering together, and examining the expensive sapphire and diamond brooches that interlaced the initials of the bride and bridegroom in a conventional cipher.

  Zella, who scarcely knew any of them, stood slightly apart, feeling weary already, and trying to think that her isolation, which she supposed as patent to everyone else as she felt it to be, was due to her superior sense of the solemnity of the occasion, which these other girls regarded merely as a slightly hushed social function.

  From the cool darkness of the aisle she could just see a corner of the pavement, a broad strip of red carpet, and the feet of a rapidly collecting crowd.

  Then there was a sudden stir outside.

  The bride had come.

  She was in the church now, and Zella caught her breath.

  Was it Muriel? that white, veiled figure, bearing a great sheaf of lilies, standing there a moment against the great dark doors that had closed behind her?

  She was the Bride, aloof, mysterious, symbolical of eternal union.

  A real silence had fallen suddenly, instantly, upon the church.

  The white slender figure moved slowly forward, the crown of golden hair bent under the falling veil. Her long heavy train lay on the ground, and was skilfully flung into position by unseen hands.

  The organ was pealing triumphantly now.

  Zella felt a sudden tightening of her throat, and her heart was hammering. And this time it was not the accessories only that had moved her ready emotionalism, but the sudden vision of a strangely familiar symbol that yet symbolized she knew not what.

  But as they moved in procession slowly up the aisle, she resumed the consciousness of her own identity. Muriel became a misty figure at the chancel steps, separated from the bridesmaids by the immense length of her own train, and Zella shifted the bouquet, which she had unconsciously been grasping, to a more graceful angle.

  The responses were more or less audible; Uncle Henry’s bald head moved forward at the moment when “Who giveth this woman?” was asked; the Bishop gave an address in the course of which he apostrophized the bride and bridegroom a number of times as “Muriel and Archibald,” with sonorous distinctness; the choir burst into “O perfect Love “; and there was a slow movement into the vestry, followed by a sort of civilized rush from the occupants of the first half-dozen seats, anxious to show that they had every right to witness the bride’s signature in preference to anybody else.

  Muriel’s veil was flung back, and she was paler than usual, but laughing and saying “Thanks awfully!” to the many kind, smiling ladies pressing round her, each striving with shrill good wishes to attract attention to herself and her intimacy with the bride.

  Presently there was a murmur that the Bishop seemed to think, as everything was signed, hadn’t we better make a move? and everyone filtered back into the church, smiling violently at less favoured guests who had been obliged to remain there.

  The organ crashed into Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” blatantly hackneyed, and the procession reformed.

  This time, however, Muriel was on her husband’s arm, and her veil was thrown back, and both he and she exchanged radiant smiles and greetings with the thronging occupants of the seats on either side.

  The hired electric brougham, the chauffeur unsightly with an immense white favour, was at the steps. The bride was handed in, yards of white satin carefully folded in after her, and followed by her husband, pursued by many humorous injunctions as to treading on it.

  In the midst of “What a pretty wedding!” and “How sweet she looked!” Zella found herself in another electric brougham with three other bridesmaids, and then in a flash of time at the hotel selected by Muriel and her mother for the wedding reception.

  It was very like any other afternoon party, Zella thought, except for the monotony of hearing and repeating, “What a pretty wedding!” and “How delightful to see them so happy!”

  Amid a little modified screaming Muriel cut the cake, and shortly afterwards vanished upstairs with her mother, and everyone asked, “What time are they starting?” and “Where are they going?” with the same reiteration as everyone had said, “What a pretty wedding!”

  “You looked charming, mignonne!” said Louis de Kervoyou to his daughter in her blue and white, standing rather forlornly amongst the crowd. She flashed into instant pleasure and animation.

  “Thank you. I am so glad you like it.”

  “May I admire it too?” said James Lloyd-Evans, joining them.

  “Do,” smiled Zella. “Admire everything except the wedding. You must be tired of hearing how pretty it was.”

  “A stock formula saves one a certain amount of trouble,” he returned, “and some people mean it kindly, I dare say.”

  Louis de Kervoyou laughed.

  “My dear young cynics,” he said with some kindly amusement, “why should they not mean it altogether? The wedding was pretty, as such things go, and it is only our extremely limited vocabulary that tinges all comment with the same banality.”

  “Was it pretty?” said James morosely. “Muriel was pretty, I grant you; but the wedding paraphernalia seems to me distressing, and — I can’t find the word I want, and ‘uncivilized’ sounds affected and absurd in this connection, but it’s more or less that.”

  Louis looked very kindly at the young man.

  “The dream altogether merged in the business,” he said. “But that is rather an effect of over-civilization.”

  “No,” said Zella suddenly. “I know what you mean, James. The word is really ‘barbaric’”

  “Yes,” said her cousin, it is.”

  They looked at one another for a moment.

  Zella was so much elated at her own intuition that she immediately began to cast about in her own mind for a second expression of it that would excite James’s appreciation still further. It may reasonably be doubted whether she would have attained her object, when Louis de Kervoyou said to James:

  “Come down and discuss the matter at Villetswood one of these days.”

  Zella was pleased at the invitation and at James’s ready acceptance, but she marvelled a little, for Louis did not often invite a guest to Villetswood.

  “Is James what you expected him to be?” she asked when her cousin had moved away.

  “He is rather a remarkable specimen of the modern youth,” replied her father indirectly.

  “He is very clever,” said Zella profoundly.

  “Yes; but a lot of them are that. James has the positively disconcerting peculiarity of being absolutely sincere.

  Zella wondered rather uncomfortably why she disliked the idea. It seemed to furnish an explanation of the many times that a conversation
with James had left her with no other sensation than that unsatisfactory one of being just exactly what her father had said — disconcerted.

  “Why, it’s Louis de Kervoyou!”

  They both turned at the soft exclamation, and Louis cried joyously:

  “Cecily! Why, I never was so pleased to see anyone!”

  The joyous unconventionality of the greeting made one or two people near smile, and Zella coloured hotly, conscious for the first time that she understood what Aunt Marianne meant when she lamented the foreignness of poor Louis.

  Presently he said:

  “Let me present my daughter to you. Zella, I want to present you to Lady St. Craye, a very great friend of mine whom I have not met for years.”

  Lady St. Craye was a tall, slender woman, exquisitely dressed but with a sort of fluffy, whispy outline that looked as though only the strenuous efforts of a vigilant maid would save her from downright untidiness. Her china-blue eyes looked vaguely and kindly at Zella, and her smile, which had a sort of child-like pathos, was irritatingly unmeaning form its frequency.

  “She is very like you, Louis. I am so glad to meet you; your mother was a great friend of mine,” she murmured. “You must come and see me, and know my daughter. Louis, you remember Alison?”

  “Quite well,” he answered readily. “But last time I saw her she was a mite in a white frock, about six years old.”

  “Ten,” she answered eagerly. “You won’t know her again, Louis. Wait a moment.”

  She wandered a step or two forward, putting up a huge tortoiseshell pince-nez. Vague though her search was, as were all her movements, it was successful almost at once.

  A tall girl, looking taller by reason of an enormous white aigrette that towered above every hat in the room, came slowly towards them.

  “My dear mother” Zella heard her say to Lady St. Craye, with that exceedingly distinct enunciation which generally carries farther than the most penetrating of screams, “are you really bent on waiting for the last scene of this appallingly commonplace drama? or, having assisted at the sacrifice, may we depart in peace?”

  “I’ve just been talking to a very old friend of mine — Louis de Kervoyou; and I want you to come and speak to him, dear, if you will.”

  Miss St. Craye slightly shrugged her shoulders in a foreign manner, and raised her eyebrows, murmuring in sub-audible tones, “Encore!”

  But she followed her mother, and bestowed a gracious smile and bend upon Louis, who looked up at her in amused consternation.

  “You are indeed right, Cecily. I should not have known her. I am very glad to see you again, although, no doubt, you do not remember our first meeting?”

  “I do not.”

  Zella wondered if Alison St. Craye always put so much emphasis into a simple negative or affirmative.

  “This is my daughter. I hope you will see something of one another.”

  “Ah,” said Miss St. Craye appraisingly. Her large eyes fixed themselves penetratingly upon Zella, her head slightly inclined to one side.

  “You must come and speak French with me,” she said. “I feel certain that you are more French than English.”

  Zella felt slightly gratified, divining instinctively that the words were meant as a compliment.

  “I saw you in church,” continued Miss St. Craye, “forming an integral part of the procession. What a curious idea all this is, is it not?”

  She waved a comprehensive white kid glove around her.

  Zella was not certain of her meaning, and made a diplomatic gesture of amused assent.

  “All, you feel it too.”

  Alison St. Craye laid her hand for a moment on Zella’s shoulder, regardless of the unconventionally of the attitude, and looked at her, nodding her plumed head once or twice.

  “You must come and see me, little one,” she said in her full, deliberate voice. The words, as she uttered them, seemed charged with an almost sacramental import, and Zella was unable to think of any adequate formula of acceptance.

  Lady St. Craye’s plaintive tones broke with an odd sound of conventionality upon the moment’s weighty silence.

  “That will be very nice, dear. How much longer are you going to be in town?” Zella looked at her father.

  “We are going to Villetswood to-morrow, but perhaps another day or two “he began.

  “This child must come to us,” said Alison St. Craye, once more laying a proprietory hand on Zella. “Let her come to-morrow, and we will send her home to you at the end of the week.”

  The surprised Louis looked at Lady St. Craye.

  “Yes, Louis,” she said eagerly, do let her come. Alison would like it. You know she has no one of her own age, and”

  “My dear parent,” broke in Alison with a laugh, in which annoyance and superiority were mingled, “please don’t drag in the conventional ‘companion of my own age ‘ myth. I dislike the companionship of the average young woman intensely, as you know, and the dislike is perfectly mutual. But if this little one spent two or three days with us, I fancy we should find that we had something in common.”

  She smiled at Zella, who smiled back rather confusedly, not in the least knowing what to say, but feeling flattered.

  “It is more than good of you, Cecily,” said Louis, determinedly addressing Lady St. Craye, and ignoring the compelling gaze fixed upon him by her daughter’s heavy-lidded hazel eyes.

  “Will you let me write you a line to-night, when I shall know better what our plans are?”

  “That is shirking,” Alison told him with serious directness. She turned her back upon them with no further farewells, saying over her shoulder to Zella, “I count upon you,” and swept into the throng of people now congregating near the door for the bride’s departure.

  -” Louis, do let her come, if you can manage it,” said Lady St. Craye plaintively. “Alison does not often take a fancy to other girls, and I should so like them to be friends.”

  “And I, my dear Cecily,” he said courteously.

  He looked at Zella, who nodded imperceptibly. “Then since you are really so kind, I will bring her to you tomorrow; and perhaps you would see her off on Saturday, to rejoin me at Villetswood.”

  Lady St. Craye looked pleased, and said to Zella:

  “That will be so nice, dear. We must do a theatre one night. Here comes the bride at last.”

  They moved into the entrance, where Muriel, in blue silk and elaborate hat, was making her radiant farewells.

  The humorously inclined best man was tying a satin shoe on to the back of the electric brougham with the help of a giggling bridesmaid, and a shower of rice at the last moment sent Muriel and her husband into the shelter of the brougham shrieking with laughter. It drove off rapidly, and James said to Zella:

  “Come back with us. My mother will be upset, and want somebody to talk to.”

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had, indeed, reached the stage of replying to all congratulations with a faint smile and choked “my only daughter,” and had discarded her lace handkerchief for one of larger dimensions.

  James put her into the carriage very kindly, and said:

  “Would you like Zella, mother? I thought father and I would walk home across the Park.”

  “Yes, my dear boy. Remember that you are all that your mother has now, for it will never be quite the same thing again.”

  Her agitation increased so much that James said to Zella:

  “Get in with her, quick! And let her talk. She hasn’t been able to get anyone to look at it her way, and it’s frightfully hard on her.”

  The words were not spoken with James’s habitual precision of utterance, and, as Zella got into the carriage beside her weeping Aunt Marianne, she heard him add rather incomprehensibly:

  “My mother seems to me the only real thing about this whole show.”

  She looked back, wondering to whom he had made the odd remark. It was to Louis de Kervoyou, who replied quietly:

  “I know what you mean, and I agree. Come down to Villetswo
od as soon as you can spare the time, James.”

  XXI

  “Yes, Zella dear,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, “I quite understand that poor papa liked the idea of your staying on in London for a day or two with the St. Crayes; though, as you know, darling, you could quite well have stayed on here if you had only asked me, and I should have been glad of your help in packing up all the presents. But I thought you had quite settled to go back to Villetswood with poor papa, as was originally arranged.”

  “It was only that Lady St. Craye was so kind as to ask me, and it would have been rather difficult to refuse,” faltered Zella, with the old childish feeling of guilt strong upon her, under Mrs. Lloyd-Evans’s mild implacability.

  “Of course, dear, and it would have been very dull for you here with Muriel gone, and all the excitement over, and only the tiring job of tidying up left.”

  “Oh, Aunt Marianne! Now you are making me feel horrid. Do let me stay and help you,” said Zella, wondering what on earth she should do if Aunt Marianne accepted the offer.

  But Mrs. Lloyd-Evans as a martyr was determined.

  “Oh no, dear, of course it is quite out of the question for you to throw over Lady St. Craye, since you have accepted her invitation. Very kind of her to ask you, when you had only just been introduced; but she is an odd, impulsive woman.”

  “Of course, she is an old friend of papa’s,” said Zella, annoyed.

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans raised her eyebrows slightly.

  “Let me see,” she mused: “it must be quite fifteen years since they met. I was reminding Lady St. Craye of it not so very long ago, oddly enough. I dare say that brought it to her mind, and helped her to recognize poor papa, who has changed a good deal since those days. I am glad you are going to spend a day or two with her, Zella; though I can’t say that I think you will like the girl, Alison, as she calls herself,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with the inference in her tone that Alison was to blame for so calling herself.

  ‘What is she like?” asked Zella mechanically, attaching no value whatever to her aunt’s judgment, and perfectly capable of forming one of her own, but adapting herself, as ever, to what was evidently expected of her.