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

"Yes. I don't suppose he'll keep a girl of fourteen alone with him, in this great lonely place. She has had no proper education—only what poor Louis himself has taught her, instead of engaging a good sensible governess —and the best thing he could do would be to send her to some first-rate school."

"He may—eventually—-marry again."

"Henry," said his wife with gentle impressiveness, "do not say things that sound unfeeling."

Henry became silent.

"For my poor Esmée's sake," continued Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, after a suitable pause, " I want to be a mother to her child. And I can't help feeling, Henry, how dreadful it would be if Zella got into the hands of her father's French relations."

"I didn't know he had any."

"Henry! I have spoken of them to you myself times out of number. You can't have forgotten. There is that dreadful old Baronne, as she calls herself—though I always think those foreign titles sound very fishy—who pretends to be Zella's grandmother."

"How can she pretend to be? Either she is or she isn't," Henry, not unnaturally, remarked.

"She is Louis's stepmother, don't you remember? and consequently no relation whatever to Zella," explained Mrs. Lloyd-Evans resentfully. "And I must say, Henry, it seems to me very extraordinary that neither she nor her daughter should have taken the trouble just to cross the Channel, when they heard of this dreadful tragedy. Dearest Esmée was always perfectly sweet to the artful old thing, and Zella was taught to call her Granny and everything; and now this is the result."

This logical summing up of the situation was received by Mr. Lloyd-Evans in silence. Presently, however, he said tentatively:

"I suppose they are Roman Catholics?"

"Indeed they are, and I always think it is a most special mercy of Providence that poor Louis was not brought up to be one too. Luckily, his father made some wise stipulation or other before he died, that his son must be brought up in a good old-fashioned Huguenot religion; and the Baronne could not get out of it, although she and her Jesuits must have had a good try."

"Perhaps," said Henry, wisely avoiding the burning topics of the Baronne de Kervoyou and her hypothetical Jesuits—" perhaps Louis will want to keep Zella with him for the time being."

"I mean to talk to him about it, Henry. I know that gentlemen do not always quite understand; but I shall tell him that it would be the best thing possible for Zella to let me mother her for a few months, and perhaps choose a really nice school for her later on. Louis will feel much more free without her, too."

"Do you know what his immediate plans are?"

"He will certainly travel for a little while," instantly replied Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who had no grounds whatsoever for the assertion, beyond her own conviction that this would be the proper course of conduct for her brother-in-law to pursue.

"Then, in that case, Marianne, do as you think best about offering to let Zella come to us.".

Marianne had every intention of doing as she thought best, but she said:

"Yes, Henry dear, one must do all in one's power at these sad times to help. Don't you remember the quotation I'm so fond of ?—

"' Life is mostly froth and bubble;

Two things stand like stone:

Kindness in another's trouble,

Courage in one's own.'"

Henry, who was always rendered vaguely uncomfortable by the most distant allusion to what he collectively termed "poetical effusions," said that it was growing very dark, and Marianne had better come in before it became any colder.

"It's not a moment when one thinks of one's own health or comfort," Marianne murmured sadly, but she followed her husband indoors.

Meanwhile Zella, kneeling at her bedroom window, with elbows on the sill and chin resting on her clasped hands, wondered miserably what was to become of her. Her mother's funeral, the culminating episode of those dreadful few days which had been as years, was over. Zella felt dully that there was nothing more to wait for, and found herself thinking vaguely that surely now mother would come soon and make everything all right again and comfort her.

But it was mother who was dead!

Her thoughts wandered drearily to her father. There had been no more silent times alone with him; since Aunt Marianne's arrival, and since that brief episode in the study that morning, every word of which seemed burnt into her brain for ever, she had not seen him at all. She wondered if he would always be broken-hearted, never to laugh and joke again, like the kind, jovial father she had always known. Were all widowers always unhappy for ever? Zella tried to recall any that she had ever known, and could only remember old Mr. Oliver, who had come with his daughter that afternoon. He was a kind, cheerful old man, who always talked a great deal and laughed at his own jokes; but, then, he was nearly seventy years old, and his wife had died a great many years ago.

"Perhaps when papa is quite old," thought Zella despairingly: "But how dreadful it will be during all the years and years before he is as old as Mr. Oliver, if he goes on being unhappy all the time! Will there be this dreadful silence all through the house, and nothing to do, and everything reminding us all the time, and never being able to say anything about mother. . . . Aunt Marianne says he mustn't be reminded of his loss. One doesn't talk about people who have died.

Uncle Henry never speak about poor little cousin Archie who died, except Aunt Marianne sometimes, in a sort of very solemn religious way. But how could one speak like that about mother? And yet we couldn't ever talk about her in an ordinary way, as if she were still here. Oh, how can I ever bear it? To think that I shall never be happy any more!"

Then poor Zella reproached herself bitterly for the heartlessness of even wishing to forget and be happy again. She strove passionately for a resigned, heartbroken attitude of mind, that should eventually find its chief comfort in memories of past happiness and in the tender cherishing of a widowed and heartbroken father.

It was an intense relief to the hypersensitive child, though she did not own it to herself, to find, on the days following her mother's funeral, that Mrs. Lloyd-Evans now deemed the first acute stages of grief to be left behind. She dwelt more upon the happiness of Zella's dear, dear mother in heaven, and the tenderness with which she would watch over her little daughter, and the necessity for being brave and making the best of one's life.

"A change of scene will be very good for you, my poor child," Mrs. Lloyd-Evans told her; "and poor papa will feel more free if he is alone just at present. I dare say he will go abroad for a little while;"

"We were going to Paris this winter to see Grand-mère and Tante Stéphanie."

"That will hardly be possible now, darling. Paris is no place to go to when one is in mourning."

Notwithstanding this conviction, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who knew that gentlemen did not always quite realize, felt no certainty that her brother-in-law would defer or omit the annual visit that he never failed to pay to his stepmother. Therefore she lost no time in suggesting that Zella should come to Boscombe and spend the winter at her uncle's house.

"It will be good for her, and she and Muriel are of just the same age, and can do their lessons and play together. And you know, Louis, the poor child would be dreadfully moped alone with you in this great house; and yet if you travel you could hardly take her with you, just at the age when she ought to be doing her lessons and everything."

"I suppose not," replied Louis in rather bewildered accents. It is very kind of you, Marianne. I had not given Zella much thought, I am afraid, poor child! But my mother would take charge of her, I know, if you really think she ought to have a change."