Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

It was impossible not to desire Miss Stellenthorpe’s approval. She was so spaciously generous in her appreciations, so gravely despondent in her well-weighed condemnations.

  It was true that Lily was sometimes surprised at the courses taken by appreciation or condemnation alike.

  There was the case of the village girl, Carla. Nothing could be more evident than that Aunt Clo’s impassioned interest in her situation amounted to positive enjoyment. Lily heard her aunt’s voice in fluent rhetoric, morning after morning, encouraging and upholding Carla, exhorting and rebuking Carla’s tearful mother, eloquently proclaiming her championship of Carla to her own servant, to the young man who brought the milk, to the postman, in fact to anyone of the little community of peasantry at Genazzano who would listen to her.

  “Of course the man is the parish priest at Sta. Lucia — I don’t doubt it. So, thank God, there can be no question of making him marry her. Thank God for that, say I!” Aunt Clo fervently told Lily at breakfast one morning. “But wouldn’t it be better if she was married before — before — ?” Lily blushed again, bewildered.

  “Never!” said Miss Stellenthorpe, striking the table with her open hand. “It would be a far greater wrong than the first, to compel that poor child to marriage.”

  The point of view implied was so new to Lily that she immediately felt, in her complete reaction from the standards set before her in her childhood, that it was probably the right point of view.

  But as, for some inexplicable reason, she very much objected to those prolonged dissections of the affaire Carla in which Aunt Go was so ready to indulge, Lily gently turned the conversation to a christening which she had seen take place in the cathedral on the previous afternoon. Aunt Go was always ready to be intensely interested in ceremonies celebrated by the Catholic or other alien denominations, that would have bored her extremely in the Church to which she belonged.

  But on this occasion, she showed but little enthusiasm on the subject of the postmaster’s twins.

  “Ah, and they’ve a child not a year old yet — and Heaven alone knows how many Augustino and Maria have had altogether. Criminal, criminal! When will they learn the folly and wickedness of breeding in that reckless way!” Lily could suggest no helpful solution to a problem of which she scarcely grasped the outline.

  To her it merely seemed as if Aunt Clo had no approbation to spare for babies unless they were illegitimate ones.

  Staying at Genazzano, Lily began for the first time to experience in some slight degree what is meant by the liberty of the individual.

  Aunt Clo showered books and opinions upon her, but encouraged her to form her own judgments of either. Not only was there no disloyalty in differing from Aunt Clo, but she seemed positively to prefer argument to acquiescence. Certainly, to adduce an opposite point of view, generally led to a lucid and eloquent exposition, embellished by many polished French phrases, of Aunt Clo’s opinions of the subject in question, but she always said— “Aha?” and “So!” very kindly indeed to Lily’s diffident interpolations.

  There were certain, quite trivial, little things, nevertheless, which Lily felt that her aunt would despise in her, and the compulsion under which she thought herself to conceal these kept alive in her the old guilty feeling that she was not really like other people and was only pretending to be grown up.

  She would rather have been detected by Miss Stellenthorpe in a forgery, than in the infantile practice of eating sweets, so insistent was her certainty that Aunt Go would be far less contemptuous of the former predilection than of the latter.

  Yet they had never discussed the matter, although Aunt Clo, in the midst of reminiscences of a day spent in Paris in company of a wealthy American friend, once said, in her emphatically descriptive style:

  “He was so full of petits soins intimes, clear person! There we were in one of those enormous glittering pâtisseries shops, and I couldn’t prevent him from loading me with great boxes of pâtes de guimauve, and huge Easter eggs of pink crystallized sugar... and all the while there was the most heavenly riot of scent and colour in a flower-shop next door. If only one could have exchanged all the bonbons for one single bunch of violets!” Aunt Clo heaved a sigh of retrospective regret, and not for the world would Lily have owned to her own degraded preference for pâtes de guimauve and pink crystallized sugar above all the bunches of violets that Parma could produce.

  Lily reflected impatiently that when she was a child it had been naughty to want sweets, and now that she was grown up, it would be childish. It seemed that there was no time of life at which such a desire could ever be laid claim to honourably. As for Aunt Clo, she often seemed to be quite unaware that such a thing as food existed.

  When they went for expeditions, and visited Roman churches and museums, Lily was greatly ashamed of the undoubted fact that her enjoyment was constantly haunted by the fear that Aunt Go, towards twelve o’clock, would exclaim in a breezy manner:

  “II Palatino, now, my Lily! Shall we take a base advantage of the Germans and Americans, who will all be flocking in search of food, and have the glory of the place to ourselves?”

  And Aunt Go would spring vigorously up the steepest paths, under the hottest sun, and very likely remember nothing more about luncheon at all until it was time to take the tram to the station for their train, when she might observe with one of her most negligent gestures:

  “Have we eaten? I forget! But qu’importe, in the midst of this — and this — and this!”

  Once they even missed the train that should at least have returned them to Genazzano in time for tea, because Aunt Clo leaped out of the tram just before the station was reached at the sudden realization that Lily had never been inside the Church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli.

  Impervious alike to hunger, thirst, and fatigue, she remained on her feet for nearly an hour in the dim cool church, pointing out in an impassioned undertone the reasons why certain frescoes were to be admired, and shuddering away from others to which the chief drawback appeared to be that all tourists always looked at them first.

  Aunt Clo’s knowledge of Art in all its branches seemed to be almost illimitable, and she gave Lily a copy of a thin book of her own, that bore upon the title-page: “Beauty: a Finger-post. By Clotilde Stellenthorpe. Privately printed.”

  The Finger-post pointed to the great necessity for surrounding oneself with Spaces, and Silences, and occasional Splashes — of light or colour, or sound — and also indicated deleterious features in many hitherto accepted standards. It rather inclined to leave the reader with the impression that Beauty, as a whole, had received a thorough revision at the hands of the author of the book, and would henceforth be found to be within the range of the book’s appreciators. There was an underlying suggestion that those outside this circle had not yet reached the stage of development at which Beauty could be of any advantage to them.

  Nowadays, Aunt Clo no longer wrote about Beauty. She told Lily that she tried to live it, instead. Everything in the tiny house at Genazzano had been chosen for the sake of either form or colour, and the little bronze mirror that hung, sloping, over Miss Stellenthorpe’s writing- table possessed a further qualification.

  “I like to go through life le sourire aux lévres,” said Aunt Clo, markedly accentuating the habitual pleasantness of her expression as she spoke. “It is pleasing, refreshing — to look up and meet a smile. What will you, if it happens to be one’s own?”

  Aunt Go laughed outright at her own quaint fancy. “When I raise my head from my writing, I see reflected in my little mirror a pair of steady eyes, a face that holds the lines graven by many experiences, some grave, some gay, and a smile — I hope a strong, steadfast, humorous smile. Time was, my Lily, when the face that I saw in the mirror was that of a tragic muse. Thank God, the phase has passed!”

  Aunt Clo not infrequently threw out similar sombre indications that her past had held some deep, unspecified cause for woe.

  She was very kind to Lily, although frequently deploring in her th
e traces of her upbringing.

  “You must learn to say Yes to Life!” she cried ringingly from time to time, her hand upon her niece’s shoulder, her handsome head tilted backwards. “You know your Nietzsche?”

  Lily shook her head, feeling much abashed and conscious that Aunt Clo thought her very young indeed.

  “Courage!” said Miss Stellenthorpe. “Ah, jeunesse, jeunesse!”

  Lily reflected quite irritably that Aunt Clo might just as well have said: “Youth, youth!” and have done with it.

  IX

  “To-day — I give battle!”

  Aunt Clo’s voice sounded as though the prospect filled her with mingled elation and concern.

  “Can you amuse yourself, my Lily, if I leave you for the day? Books — piano — flowers — birds” Aunt Clo enumerated the resources of her establishment with large and expressive wavings of her well-shaped hands over the breakfast-table.

  “I can write some letters, and you have lent me so many books. I shall have plenty to do.”

  “Benissimo!”

  “Shall you be away all day?” said Lily tentatively. She had already learnt that Miss Stellenthorpe rather welcomed enquiries on subjects of which the importance apparently required an extreme reticence of reply.

  A shade of gravity at once fell across her face. “Ah! who can tell? If the mission is to be successful, a day is not too long... but I am very much afraid. Not fearful, you understand, cara, but — let me say — aware of responsibility — immense responsibility.”

  Lily felt that she too must look serious, in sympathy, and regretfully realized that Aunt Clo was about to rise abstractedly from the table, although her niece greatly desired another breakfast roll. Sometimes, interested in discussion. Aunt Go would sit over a meal interminably, her elbows on the table, her hands supporting her keen, handsome face. At others, she would rise impatiently, flinging her napkin to the ground, and appearing regardless of the incompleteness of her niece’s meal.

  Lily had never yet found the necessary courage to remain in her place and continue stolidly to eat. Aunt Clo had a curious faculty for throwing into relief the grossness of material needs.

  She now stood at the open window and addressed Lily slowly and sadly.

  “Little one, do you know what it is to see a frail, foolish, lovely butterfly dashing itself against a lighted globe? To seek desperately to turn it elsewhere, to set it free into the cool, dark night outside — and yet to see it return again and again in search of its own destruction?”

  Lily nodded. She always found it difficult to reply adequately in words when Aunt Clo became, as she often did, metaphorical.

  “I go,” said Miss Stellenthorpe, her hands extended, palms uppermost, “I go to try and deliver the butterfly from the lamp to-day. I can tell you no more, my Lily.” She left the house with the same mixture of portentous foreboding and exhilaration in her bearing, saying to Lily in farewell, as though her new simile still pleased her: “Who knows but that I myself may come back with singed wings! Not for nothing has one the privilege of spending oneself upon others!”

  “I hope it will be all right,” said Lily — inadequately, she felt, as usual.

  Aunt Clo also appeared to be conscious of the inadequacy, for she replied very gravely indeed:

  “Ah! That is what it can never be. Addio!” She waved her hand above her head and strode away, clad in the blue jersey and the knickerbockers which she never discarded in the day-time, except when proceeding on a sight-seeing expedition to Rome.

  Lily turned back into the house, and felt rather guilty because she was relieved by the prospect of spending a whole day in solitude, free from the slight tension of spirit that always assailed her in the lofty atmosphere wherein Aunt Clo seemed usually to exist. She felt still more guilty a little later on, when she went in search of a book.

  Aunt Clo had recommended several volumes to her niece from the many, bearing the stamp of the London Library, that lay about the house.

  “Pater,” had said Aunt Clo. “Incredible that you have not yet made acquaintance with the beloved Pater! Or Fenelon. Do you know Fenelon? Then there is the little ‘Cinque-cento’ series — light, of course, but full of appeal. Or you may care for old friends, perhaps — I have Froissard, Ruskin, d’Annunzio — but not in a translation, I fear. Take your choice, bambina mia — I make you free of all my most precious companions.”

  Lily tried hard not to remember Aunt Clo’s generous suggestions as she made her way to a small and remote bookcase that she had observed, on the first evening of her arrival at Genazzano, in a corner of the passage. The books were small and old-fashioned looking, and Lily had had no difficulty in discovering that almost all were children’s books, that no doubt dated from Aunt Clo’s incredible childhood. And Lily liked children’s books, just as she liked toys, and sweets, and other babyish diversions, and she was just as profoundly ashamed of the one predilection as of the other.

  She had read the volumes pressed upon her by Aunt Clo, and had liked one or two of them, whilst finding the majority strangely wearisome, but all the time there had lurked at the back of her mind a longing recollection of those children’s books that were never taken from the shelf.

  She knew that she would really enjoy them much more than even the novels conceded to her youthful tastes by Aunt Clo: “Jude the Obscure,”

  “Daisy Miller,” and “Sandra Belloni,” none of which she had felt herself able to appreciate, or even to understand.

  It was all part of that old sense that she was not a real, live person at all, but only a little girl pretending.

  The relief of dropping the pretence was undeniable. Lily chose “The Little Duke” because it had pictures, a book called “The Magic Beads” because she liked the name, and a volume of fairy-tales because she always loved fairy-tales. She took them out into the garden.

  She was a little bit ashamed of herself, because she felt so happy, knowing that it was childish pleasure in the story-books, and the sunniness of the day and her own feeling of freedom, that made her happy.

  She had so often been told that happiness is the attribute of youth that she believed it, although she herself was young and not particularly happy. And as she had also heard youth spoken of contemptuously, or else with amused patronage, Lily had retained an impression that happiness was something slightly to be despised, especially when springing from trivial causes.

  She had lunch by herself and kept “The Magic Beads” propped open on the table in front of her, and ate several more of the enormous purple figs than she would have eaten had Aunt Clo, with her superhuman indifference to food, been sitting, very erect and animated, opposite to her.

  The afternoon was even lazier and more blissful than the morning had been, the joy of it somehow enhanced as it became more liable to interruption. But Miss Stellenthorpe had not returned by five o’clock. Evidently the butterfly was showing determination, in its pursuit of the flame.

  It was nearly six o’clock when Lily heard sounds that caused her to bestow the three small and shabby volumes into her work-bag, which she had guiltily extracted from disuse from the bottom of her trunk for the purpose, and hasten to the little iron gate in welcome.

  Aunt Clotilde was not alone, and she looked, if possible, even more exhilarated than she usually looked after some particularly strenuous exertion.

  “Ecco! I return with a friend, my Lily!”

  Was this the butterfly, or the lamp?

  Lily at once rejected the former hypothesis, and felt doubtful even of the latter, as she exchanged greetings with Aunt Go’s friend.

  He was a very tall Englishman, in whose long face Lily discovered some freakish resemblance to a good-looking camel, and he had small, tawny eyes that twinkled, and very crisp curly hair, touched with iron-grey. His shoulders were so broad and his carriage so erect that even Aunt Go seemed unimposing beside him.

  Lily did not learn his name at once, since Miss Stellenthorpe had merely waved their introduction wi
th both hands, and since throughout the evening she called the visitor either “Amico,”

  “my very dear Friend,” or “Mon cher.”

  It appeared that Aunt Clo’s very dear friend was serving on a Royal Commission for the investigation of something unspecified, that compelled him to sojourn in Rome, now a hot and arid desert.

  “But della Torre, you know the young Marchese della Torre, of course? Well, he is actually kind enough to stay on in a corner of the Palazzo della Torre, and make me his guest. What a good fellow lie is — I met him once or twice in England, that’s all — and now he turns up trumps like this! Isn’t he a brick?”

  The hearty English colloquialisms positively rang through the little room still vibrant with the cosmopolitan inversions and polished elegancies of Aunt Clo’s habitual speech. Aunt Clo, however, was more animated than ever, and commented vivaciously several times upon the good fortune that had brought about the encounter with her friend.

  “Would that I could offer you the hospitality of mon toit de chaumière, amico! But alas! even my grey hairs would not protect me from the tongues of ce bon Genazzano. I dare not do it,” cried Aunt Clo in humorous despair. “But we meet again, is it not so?”

  “I hope so! I should hope so indeed. Won’t you and your niece come in one morning, and let us do some sight-seeing together, and then perhaps you will allow me to have the pleasure of giving you lunch at the Grand Hotel?”

  He addressed himself to Miss Stellenthorpe, but after her gracious and sprightly acceptance of the invitation, the Englishman’s kindly, twinkling gaze turned triumphantly to Lily.

  She smiled at him shyly and almost involuntarily, attracted by his eagerness and simplicity, and perhaps by the manifest admiration in his glance. “Why not tomorrow?” he cried. “Do come in to-morrow. What could we go and look at to-morrow?”

  “Why not San Pietro?” said Aunt Go.

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve been there already,” said the guest with great simplicity. “But by all means.”