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

"Perhaps afterwards," she faltered, " not now."

"No, darling, now is best," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with the soft-voiced inflexibility, totally unfounded on reason, characteristic of her where her own opinions were concerned. "Papa is all alone in the study; it is your place to comfort him."

It must be the right thing to do, then.

Zella left the room slowly, and as she crossed the hall she discovered that a little pulse was throbbing in her throat and that her hands had suddenly become cold. She clasped them nervously together, and told herself that papa, who had never been angry with her in her life, could not be anything but comforted if she came to him now. She was his only child—all that he had left to him; it was right that she should try and be a comfort.

She did not know why she felt so frightened.

Suddenly she turned the door handle.

"Come in," said her father's familiar tones, with the weary sound that was new to them.

He was sitting at the writing-table, much as Zella had pictured him in her mental rehearsal, and the fact suddenly gave her courage to carry out her own roje.

Crossing the room swiftly, she knelt down besidenim, and repeated faithfully, though with a nervous catch in her voice, the sentiments deemed appropriate to the occasion by Aunt Marianne.

"Darling papa, please don't be so dreadfully unhappy. Darling mother is in heaven now, and she is happy, and— and I will try and be a comfort to you always, as she would have wished."

The hurried, gasping accents, which were all that Zella's thumping heart allowed her to produce, died away into silence, and she felt that the performance had been absurdly inadequate. She had not even dared to raise her eyes to his, with a beautiful look of trust and tenderness; on the contrary, they were cast down as though from shame.

Still the appalling silence continued. Her father had not moved. At last he spoke, but it was in a tone that Zella had never heard from him before:

"I don't want any play-acting now, Zella. You can go back to your Aunt Marianne."

The words cut her like a knife, few though they were and quietly spoken. In such an agony of pain and humiliation as she had never known in all her short life before, Zella sprang to her feet and rushed to her own room.

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans found her there half an hour later, crying convulsively, and soothed her very affectionately, supposing that it was the thought of her mother's funeral which had renewed her tears. But the tears were bitterer and more painful than all those Zella had shed from grief, for they came from her passionate and deeply wounded self-esteem.

That afternoon the body of Esmée de Kervoyou was laid in the grave, while her only child, crouching upon the floor in her room, pressed her fingers into her ears that she might not hear the tolling of the bell.

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had said rather half-heartedly,

"My poor child, you cannot stay here alone. Shall Aunt Marianne stay with you?" but Zella had begged to be left alone, and, as Mrs. Lloyd-Evans afterwards said to her husband:

"I was torn in two, Henry. I couldn't have borne not to follow my poor Esmée to her last resting-place, and, besides, it would have looked so very odd if I, her only sister, had not been there."

So she had tenderly told Zella to lie down upon her bed and rest a little, and had left a Prayer-Book, with the Burial Service carefully marked, and a Bible, beside her.

While the sound of heavy, careful feet, staggering downstairs under the weight of an awkward burden, was still audible, Zella lay with clenched hands, wishing that she could cry or pray, and feeling utterly unable to do either.

When all the sounds had died away, she took up the Bible and Prayer-Book desperately, but both were unfamiliar to her and she could not command her attention. She had had very little orthodox religious teaching, and had never known the need of a definite creed. She always supposed that her father and mother were Protestants, just as she knew that her grandmother and aunt in France were Catholics, but of the devout practice of either religion Zella knew nothing. In fact, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who called herself a Catholic and was a member of the Church of England, had given Zella a greater insight into the orthodox practices of religion during the last few days than any she had as yet received. But in her present overwrought condition Zella found the Bible incomprehensible and the Prayer-Book intolerable.

When the sound of the church bell came, faint and distant from the valley, Zella, shuddering, rose and locked her door, then snatched the copy of "Treasure Island" from the bookshelf, and, crouching against the bed, with her hands over her ears, read furiously.

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"HENRY, if we walk up and down the drive, no one need see us from the village; though, after all, now that it's all over . . . one must take up one's ordinary life again sooner or later, and dear Esmée herself would wish one to be brave. Besides, I want to talk to you, and since poor Louis is again shut up in the study, and I have persuaded Zella to lie down, we may as well get some fresh air before it grows dark."

"Come along," said Henry Lloyd-Evans thankfully.

He was a tall, melancholy-looking man, who had been depressed and uncomfortable all day, and was heartily relieved to get out of the house of mourning.

"First of all," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, taking her husband's arm, "how did you leave the children ?"

"All right. They were going to bicycle to Redhill this afternoon, and have tea in the woods."

"Henry dear, I don't think you should have allowed that. The servants will think it so odd. You may be sure they know perfectly well that the funeral was to-day. If Miss Vincent had been there, she would not have allowed such a thing, and the children must have known that perfectly well. It was very naughty and artful of them."

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans often suspected other people of artfulness, and it was a continual distress to her that she so frequently discovered traces of it in her own children.

"Muriel asked me if it would be all right, and I said yes; it really didn't seem to matter, so far away, and you couldn't expect the poor kids to stick indoors on a fine day like this," said her husband apologetically.

"Of course not, Henry—I am not so unreasonable as to expect anything of the kind; but they could quite well have stayed in the garden, and I think it showed great callousness to have gone tearing about the country on bicycles while their aunt, my only sister :"Mrs. Lloyd-Evans showed a tendency to become tearful.

"My dear," protested Henry, "I don't suppose they can even remember your poor sister."

"Nonsense! James was eight and Muriel nearly seven last time they stayed here. And little Zella has always been like a sister to them."

A sister with whom they had quarrelled so violently that Zella's last visit to the Lloyd-Evans's, two years ago, had been brought to an untimely end at her own request. Henry remembered the occurrence grimly, and how quietly voluble his wife had been upon the subject of Zella's deplorable upbringing, which she had stigmatized in one breath as foreign, pagan, and new-fangled.

But he had long ago learnt the futility of arguing against his Marianne's discursive inconsequence and gentle obstinacy, and he was at all times a man who preferred silence to speech.

"I wanted to ask you about Zella," continued Mrs. Lloyd-Evans—" whether it wouldn't be a good idea to take the poor little thing back with us on Saturday. It will cheer her up to be with companions of her own age, and the change will do her good. I don't know what poor Louis is going to do with her, I'm sure."

"To do with her ?" echoed Henry uncomprehendingly.