Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “Very.”

  “I’m so glad you like him, dear,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, skilfully appearing to have deduced the information from the foregoing reply.

  “I hoped you would, when I knew he was coming here. I said to myself, ‘He’s very good-looking, and just about the right age for a man; and he and Zella have a great deal in common, since he’s fond of books and quite keen about all that sort of thing.’ I know quite well that a man like Muriel’s husband wouldn’t have suited you, Zella dear, any more than you’d have satisfied him. He and Muriel have all the same tastes in common, and simply care about being out of doors and living in the country; and I’m sure they would never dream of discussing a book, either of them, as you or I might. Aunt Marianne, as you know, is very fond of reading, and in some ways it was a little disappointing that Muriel shouldn’t care about it; but, after all, it’s more natural at her age to care about riding and hunting and animals, and, as I always say, James has taken after me. And when you think how very happy Muriel is, I’m sure you’ve often wondered when your turn would come, dear. Of course one doesn’t want to say anything indiscreet or premature in any way, but X thought perhaps, having no mother to advise you, you might like a little talk with Aunt Marianne.”

  “Yes,” faltered Zella, her heart beating faster at the conviction that Stephen’s admiration was evidently not only the work of her imagination.

  “Well, darling,” said Aunt Marianne more kindly than ever, and evidently enjoying herself, “I don’t know, of course, whether you feel that you could really care about this man. Marriage is a most serious thing, and no one should be in a hurry to decide. But here is a good man, of a suitable age and family and everything, who evidently wishes to ask you to become his wife, and one can’t help feeling you might be very happy together. After all, Zella dear,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with emotion, “marriage is the natural sphere of every woman.”

  “I think he was once in love with somebody else,” said Zella, on whom the episode of the Scotch moors still weighed.

  “He may have had boyish fancies, dear. All young men go through something of that sort,” asserted her aunt sweepingly; “but it is all over long ago, you may depend upon it. Remember the line I am so fond of:

  “Let the dead Past bury its dead!’”

  “Do you really think he cares for me, Aunt Marianne?” asked Zella, looking out into the summer darkness of the garden.

  “Well, dear, you must judge for yourself. He certainly admires you a great deal, and you have spent hours talking together on the terrace. I’m sure he is much too honourable to be anything but in earnest, after paying such very obvious attention to an extremely young and inexperienced girl.”

  Both adjectives annoyed Zella considerably. One apparently on the verge of receiving a proposal of marriage could hardly be so very young and inexperienced as her aunt’s tone implied.

  “He and I have a great deal in common intellectually, of course,” she observed haughtily. “He says I am the only person who has ever really understood him.”

  Well, dear, as his mother and father are still alive and particularly devoted to him, that is probably an exaggeration; but it was a natural enough thing to say, I dare say, if he thought it would please you. It shows I am right in feeling sure that he is very much in love with you. I am not very often mistaken about that sort of thing.”

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans smiled a pensively reminiscent smile, and Zella continued to gaze out of the open window, with her thoughts in a strange tumult “I can’t help thinking he means to propose to you, somehow. Of course, one doesn’t want to advise you rashly, and, after all, it is your first proposal, and you are not twenty yet — though look at Muriel!”

  Zella was again conscious of some vexation, and would have liked to hint at past conquests of which her aunt had heard nothing, but before anything of a convincing nature could be evolved Mrs. Lloyd-Evans began again.

  “Of course there is the question of religion. I felt at the time, Zella, that it might be a great drawback to you later on, when the Sisters persuaded you into becoming a Roman Catholic, and it was very weak of poor papa to allow it. No, dear, I don’t blame you in the least, and never did. As I said to Uncle Henry at the time, ‘Zella is only an ignorant, impressionable child, and it is perfectly natural that she should be worked upon by all those priests and nuns; in fact, it was to be expected, especially with no mother to watch over her.’ But all that is past and gone, and I don’t want to speak about it. Only it does seem a pity, when husband and wife do not belong to the same Church, or, rather, when one of them belongs to the Church and the other does not. As I always say, How can two walk together unless they be agreed?”

  “I don’t think he would mind that a great deal. He is very broadminded, and quite sees that there may be good in every creed. He told me so the other day. And if I don’t object,” said Zella proudly, “I can’t see why he should.”

  “The cases are not at all the same,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans warmly. “He is a member of the True Church, and the Church of this country. You, my poor child, have let yourself be inveigled into a foreign affair, that one can hardly call a Church at all, without even the excuse of having been born into it. But I don’t want to say anything about that; what’s done is done, and, after all, these things can always be arranged.”

  “It certainly won’t be arranged by my changing my religion,” said Zella, with some spirit.

  “You are hardly in a position to talk like that, my dear child, since you have turned once already. And it would be much easier to come back into the Church than to go out of it, since you would have the approval of your own conscience, which I always think helps one more than anything. But it’s no use talking about a thing that can’t happen just yet.”

  “It will never happen,” Zella interrupted, the more resolutely for the absence of any real feeling of indignation such as Reverend Mother would certainly have expected of her at the mere suggestion of ever renouncing the Catholic Faith.

  “Even if it doesn’t,” pursued Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with perfect calm, “as I say, there are always ways of arranging these things. I don’t suppose that the Pope of Rome himself would have the face to say that any chopping and changing of Churches on the part of a girl under age would count for anything.”

  “Then why do you want me to come back to the Church of England?” shrewdly demanded Zella.

  But Mrs. Lloyd-Evans was not to be defeated in an argument, least of all by her niece.

  “That would be a very different matter. The Pope would have nothing to do with it then,” she truly observed, “and you would have your own friends and relations to help you. Blood is thicker than water, as you will find out as life goes on.”

  Zella could see no logic in these arguments, but neither could she think of any adequate reply with which to defeat them, beyond repeating feebly:

  “But I couldn’t ever be anything but a Catholic now, whatever happens; besides, I’m sure he wouldn’t want me to.”

  “Very well, dear, all the better,” said her aunt, apparently unaware that she was flatly contradicting all her previous conclusions. “Only, I do not think that Stephen Pontisbury is at all the sort of man to stand any nonsense from priests and people.”

  “There wouldn’t be any.”

  “You are too young to understand that there are certain questions which may arise later on, where one has seen a great deal of unhappiness and perplexity from the parents belonging to different Churches.”

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans having accidentally betrayed the subject of her theme by the inadvertent introduction of the word “parents,” there was nothing for it but to look slightly shocked, and continue in peculiarly hushed tones:

  “Naturally, I shouldn’t speak of these things, but that you have no mother, my poor child, and one longs to help you a little for your own sake and for that of dear Esmee. I feel that all these perplexities would not have arisen if she had been spared to us, since there would have been no q
uestion of that unfortunate business of your going to a convent. However, the ways of Providence are not our ways, and there may be some good purpose behind it all, odd though it seems,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans doubtfully.

  Zella reflected rather amazedly that the purpose for which Providence had led her to the convent would have seemed obvious to the point of blatancy, in the eyes of Reverend Mother. She asked herself for the hundredth time, “Which is really true? What is real?” and was aware that the very question would, to Catholic minds, have appeared as a temptation.

  Her eyes grew introspective and unseeing, and Mrs. Lloyd-Evans said firmly:

  “Darling, it is very late, and I can see you are getting sleepy. Go to bed, and don’t worry about the question of religion. These things can always be arranged; a little something in the priest’s pocket, and there will probably be no more question of coming between you and a happy marriage. Aunt Marianne can’t help feeling that everything is going to come right.”

  The optimist rose from the armchair and went to the door.

  “I’m very glad we’ve had a little talk, Zella dear, and you know Aunt Marianne is always there to help you when you want her.”

  Zella was too responsive not to say affectionately:

  “Thank you, dear Aunt Marianne. I do know it, and I — I’m very glad you like him.”

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans kissed her.

  “Good-night, dear, or rather good-morning, since I always feel that the next day has begun after it has struck midnight. You must go to sleep quickly.”

  “I do want to decide rightly, if I have to decide,” spoke Zella wistfully, feeling that, after all, Aunt Marianne was leaving no very substantial help behind her.

  “I should say a little prayer about it, dear, if I were you. Now I must go, or Uncle Henry will be wondering if I mean to keep you up all night. Good-night, Zella dear.”

  Aunt Marianne vanished, but reappeared next moment at the door in order to add, in a slightly Scriptural tone which she would not have employed had she been aware that she was quoting no more sacred authority than the poet Shakespeare:

  “Remember, Zella, that one is expressly told to go down upon one’s knees and thank Heaven fasting for a good man’s love.”

  Upon which Zella heard her footsteps finally retreating down the passage.

  She did not go down upon her knees, but went slowly to the window and seated herself upon the broad cushioned sill.

  Zella wanted to think.

  The habit of introspection was far too strong for her not to be aware that this was the appropriate frame of mind for the occasion, but she could tell herself with truth that uncertainty was amongst her predominant emotions.

  She did not know if she loved Stephen. That he was in love with her she felt certain, and she wondered vaguely if the exultation raised in her at the thought was due to vanity or to a love that answered his.

  The latter explanation was naturally the more gratifying of the two, and that both might be true did not enter into Zella’s calculations.

  She saw herself listening to Stephen’s voice making love to her, heard herself replying, wisely, tenderly, yet with judgment, reserving her final decision until they should have known one another longer; no silly girl, blinded by the glamour of first love, but a thoughtful, self-controlled woman, whose surrender, when it came, should prove worth the waiting.

  She lingered for some time over this fancy portrait. A formal troth-plighting between herself and Stephen. The interest, congratulations, excitement, that Muriel’s engagement had provoked, multiplied a thousandfold. The engagement-ring — certainly a diamond marquise engagement-ring; a trousseau; a choice of bridesmaids. A wedding that even Aunt Marianne should see to be far prettier than Muriel’s, although with a distinctive touch of unconventionality. A honeymoon in Egypt; or it would be slightly original to suggest Japan. And then Zella abandoned side-issues, and suddenly found herself envisaging the endless series of tête-à-têtes with Stephen, of which she supposed marriage would consist.

  “But we have all our interests in common,” she told herself, and her own instinctive use of the qualifying “but” conveyed nothing to her. “Even Aunt Marianne says that he cares for my sort of things — books and poetry and — and Nature. And I’m not as young and childish as Aunt Marianne thinks me, or in the least romantic, and I know perfectly well that being in love doesn’t last, whereas intellectual companionship does. That, and love, is the ideal foundation for marriage. And I think Stephen is in love with me.”

  The thought suddenly became overwhelming, and she hid her face in her hands.

  Then the old feeling of distrust came over her:

  “Would he love me if he really knew me — knew all about the times that I have told lies, and pretended to be nicer than I am? If I told him he probably wouldn’t believe me; he’d think I was being humble, or exaggerating my faults to myself.”

  And the old conviction rushed upon her once more.

  “No one could ever know me absolutely, and then love me just the same.”

  She did not dwell upon the conviction, which was, however, the most fundamental one that her undeveloped nature was to know.

  She thought instead: “Stephen would trust me, and that would make me true. I should really become all that he thinks I am; it would-be the beginning of a new life. I could get away from everyone and everything, and start quite fresh. Up till now I’ve always been in the wrong atmosphere — at Aunt Marianne’s, and at the convent, and even here, where I am still looked upon as a child.”

  The words produced in her an unexpected and rather disconcerting phenomenon. The days of her childhood, which during the last four years had become infinitely more remote than they would ever be again, sprang into sudden life, and became the only reality in the world.

  Stephen — love — marriage: all were words standing for shadowy fancies and remote possibilities, and the actualities of life took shape in the common everyday trivialities that she had always known. Early morning rides with her father; the small plot of earth where she and James and Muriel had dug a hole that was to reach through to Australia; the old Wedgwood blue vase that had stood in the hall ever since she could remember — these were the real things that made up life, after all.

  Zella sat amazed.

  “What is truth?” she asked despairingly, and dropped on to her knees by the open window.

  As though in answer to her question, there was a sudden sound on the terrace below, and she saw the red light of a cigar moving up the flight of stone steps.

  With a violently beating heart, Zella bent forward and swiftly extinguished the candles burning on the dressing-table. Then, secure of being herself unseen, she gazed out into the moonlit garden.

  Stephen came slowly up the steps and on to the terrace. His fair head was bent, and he was plainly visible in the streaming moonlight.

  Zella drew back farther into the shadow of the curtains, her gaze still riveted on the tall figure of the man below.

  Almost opposite her window he stopped, and she saw him throw away the unfinished cigar with the abrupt gesture of dismissal that already seemed to her characteristic of him.

  “Why is he there, and what is he thinking about?” she wondered wildly, at the same time stifling the conjecture that had instantly occurred to her as to the reason for Stephen’s presence and the subject of Stephen’s thoughts.

  But his next movement answered both questions almost as she asked them. Raising his head with a sudden gesture, Stephen looked straight up at the darkened window, and raised both his arms towards it, outstretched. He remained so for perhaps the space of a second, then let his arms drop to his sides, and turned slowly upon his heel.

  Zella heard the sound of the gravel beneath his feet as he moved away.

  “He does love me,” she thought with triumphant, chaotic joy, and a violent excitement possessed her.

  She lit the candles again, and moved rapidly and aimlessly about the room, finally halting before th
e looking-glass.

  Her brown hair was tumbled over her shoulders, and her eyes were gleaming like stars.

  “He does love me,” she repeated to her own image in the glass, and then she suddenly turned and flung herself upon her knees by the bed, hiding her face against it.

  For what seemed a long time she was conscious of nothing definite, but presently she found herself deliriously repeating again and again, “He does love me.”

  Gradually the chaos, into which the world seemed flung, abated. And she stammered the words of the old prayer that alone seemed to come to her: “Oh God, let it be all right. Stephen does love me. I don’t deserve for anyone to love me. I will marry Stephen and begin again. Let it be all right.”

  Later on in the night, as she lay sleepless and wide-eyed in the semi-darkness, Zella told herself that no words of Stephen’s could ever prove more eloquent than that mute gesture when he had thought himself unseen.

  “And to think I wasn’t sure, and wondered if it was real!” she thought. “Love is the realest thing, and I know that I shall marry Stephen.”

  She remained unaware that her decision had been taken at the moment when Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had applied to her the adjectives “young” and “inexperienced.”

  XXVIII

  It was on the night of Zella’s birthday that St. Algers was allowed to indulge his peculiar desire for a fancy dress dinner. Hurried notes were sent to the houses within possible distance of a drive, and an impromptu dance organized.

  “It is only for once in a way, after all, and one must amuse young people,” Mrs. Lloyd-Evans felt impelled to observe apologetically to her brother-in-law, who replied candidly:

  “I admit to you, Marianne, that it also amuses me, though I am not a young person. It will be most entertaining to devise these costumes.”

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans became slightly reserved in manner.

  “I quite see what you mean, dear Louis. A little fun and nonsense is harmless from time to time, as I always say; and though it may seem silly enough to us, all this dressing-up amuses these boys and girls, I suppose.”