E. Delafield - The Collected Works of E. M. Delafield (Illustrated Edition)

"Where is poor, poor little Zella?" inquired Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.

"I will send for her: come into the drawing-room."

In the drawing-room a fresh paroxysm of sobbing overtook her, as she raised the heavy veil and looked around her.

"Last time I was here—how different! Oh, her workbox—her piano!" Louis rang the bell.

"It must have been fearfully sudden—your letter gave me no idea; and the shock of the telegram was terrible. You were with her ?"

"Yes," said Louis in an expressionless voice. "I will tell you all you want to hear, Marianne; but pray try and —and be brave now. I will send for Zella."

"How is she ?" said his sister-in-law, wiping her eyes.

The servant entered.

"Will you bring tea, and tell Miss Zella that Mrs. Lloyd-Evans has arrived ?"

"How is the poor child ?" again inquired her aunt.

"She is very much overwrought," said Louis calmly, "and has cried herself almost ill. I shall be very grateful, Marianne, if you will help her through the next two or three days, and induce her to eat and sleep properly, and try to check her tears. Her mother would not wish her to cry so, and make herself ill."

"It is far more natural that she should cry, and will be better for her in the end," said Marianne Lloyd-Evans almost resentfully. "And how can she not cry, unless she were utterly heartless and callous—her own mother, and, oh, what a devoted one!" Louis remembered the number of times that Marianne had accused Esmée of spoiling her only child, and said nothing.

When Zella entered, her aunt sprang up with a cry of pity, and clasped the little forlorn figure in her arms.

Zella's tears began afresh at the tenderness, and they wept together. Louis de Kervoyou gazed again out of the window, where darkness was falling over the garden, and presently left the room.

He did not again see his sister-in-law until they met at dinner.

At the sight of Esmée's empty chair she started a little and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. They spoke very little while the servants were in the room. The strange awe that fills a house visited by death hung heavy in the silence.

Once Louis asked, "Has Zella gone to bed ?" and her aunt said, "Yes, she is worn out. I gave her a little something that will put her to sleep."

When dinner was over, and they were again in the drawing-room, Marianne said rather nervously:

"I shall be glad to go to bed early to-night, but I wanted to ask you first, Louis, about arrangements."

"The funeral is to be on Thursday. There is no reason to make it any later. It will be here, of course."

"She would have wished that," murmured Marianne "—to lie in the little churchyard so near her own home. Oh, Louis, Louis! I can't realize she's gone."

Louis listened to her as in a dream, but spoke very gently:

"It has been a terrible shock to you. I wish you could have had more preparation, but no one anticipated it until the very day before, when I sent you the first telegram."

"I know—I know. Can you bear to tell me how it all was?"

There was little enough to tell, but Louis told her briefly of his wife's short illness and painless death. She had died unconscious.

"No words—no message?" sobbed Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.

"She did not know that she was dying."

"The clergyman?"

"I did not send for him," replied Louis quietly.

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had long known that her brother-in-law was "nothing," as she phrased it, with regard to religious convictions, and she had often feared that poor Esmée, since her marriage, had given up even going to church, which, to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, was synonymous with atheism. She said no more, but bade Louis an emotional good-night, and went slowly up to her room, although it was very little after nine.

Louis, left alone at last, went out into the dusk of the garden.

"Esmée! Esmée!"

He wondered if he could retain his sanity.

"Zella, my child, have you nothing black to put on?" Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had never addressed her niece as "my child before, and had she done so Zella would have resented it extremely, but now it appeared to them both as appropriately solemn.

next morning, looked at her aunt with vague, dark circled eyes. She was still in her white petticoat, and looked pathetically small and childish.

"I hadn't thought of that, Aunt Marianne," she faltered. "Must I put on black things?"

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans thought that the gentlest of hints might not come amiss, in order to counteract any possible unconventional ideas on the part of poor Louis, who, after all, was far more French than English.

"You see, dear," she said very gently, " it is as a mark of respect. One doesn't want anyone—the servants or anybody—to think one doesn't care. You will wear mourning a year for your dear, dear mother. That is what is customary."

"Will papa want me to ? asked Zella unexpectedly.

"He will want you to do what is right, darling. Aunt Marianne will talk to him about it."

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans habitually spoke of herself in the third person when addressing children.

"Now let me see what you've got," she continued, in the same gentle, inflexible voice.

"I have a black serge skirt, but not any blouses," said Zella, pulling open a drawer.

"Perhaps a white one would do for to-day. Or look, dear, this check one is black and grey: that will do better still; it is nice and dark."

"It is one that—that—she hated. I have hardly ever worn it," said Zella, beginning to cry again.

"You mustn't give way, Zella dear. That blouse and skirt must do for to-day, and I will telegraph for real mourning at once. You see, my poor darling, you must have it for Thursday; but there will just be time for it to arrive. To-day is Tuesday."

"Only Tuesday," thought Zella miserably, as she put on the check blouse and black skirt. "It was only Sunday evening that mother died, and it feels like days and days."

She wondered drearily if all her life she would be as miserable as she was now, and if so how she should bear it.

Presently she mechanically took up the broad scarlet ribbon that habitually tied back her brown hair.

"Haven't you a black ribbon, dear ?" asked her aunt softly.

Zella had no black ribbon, and Mrs. Lloyd-Evans told her to plait her hair instead of tying it. It altered her appearance and made her look older.

They went slowly downstairs, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans holding her niece's hand as though she were a small child, and squeezing it convulsively as they passed the closed door of the room which had been Esmée's.

"It's so dreadful to have meals and everything just the same," said poor Zella as they passed through the hall to the dining-room.

"One must be brave, dear," replied her aunt.

Louis de Kervoyou was in the dining-room when they entered, and Mrs. Lloyd-Evans thought that he looked ten years older. When he had spoken the briefest of good-mornings, he looked rather strangely at Zella in her dark clothes and the unaccustomed plaited-back hair, but he said nothing. Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who had rather dreaded some eccentric objection to conventional mourning, felt relieved, and the moment the silent breakfast was over she hastened to write out a telegraphic order to London for the blackest of garments on Zella's behalf.

This done, she again sought her niece.

"Zella, dear child," she said tremulously, "you know that—that it"—she could not bring herself to use the word "funeral "—" is to be on Thursday. Don't you wish to come with Aunt Marianne and see dearest mother for the last time? I'm afraid that a little later on it won't be possible any longer."

Zella did not understand, and looked up with miserable bewildered eyes.

"Papa said not," she faltered.

"Darling, you must have misunderstood him! Surely he would wish you to go in just for a little while—surely you wish it yourself ?"