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

"Louis," said his sister-in-law earnestly, "not Paris. I implore you, for my dear sweet Esmée's sake, not Paris. A motherless child of Zella's age in Paris—a town without religion, and such a town! The modern Babylon!"

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had only once spent a fortnight in the Modern Babylon, but she had read one or two novels on the subject, and her horror of the Ville Lumiere was only equalled by her ignorance.

"But, my dear Marianne," said Louis de Kervoyou, almost laughing, " Zella would be as well looked after at my mother's as she-would be anywhere; in fact, young girls in France are given very much less liberty than in England. She would never be allowed to go anywhere by herself."

"That is distinct proof of what I say, Louis. A town where such precautions are necessary can be no place for a young girl," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with triumphant logic. ...

"My mother and sister would look after her," repeated Louis patiently.

"I do not, naturally, wish to say one word against your stepmother, my dear Louis, or her daughter. But can you deny that they are Roman Catholics?"

"I have no wish to deny it, Marianne."

"Then I implore you, for her mother's sake, do not risk the loss of your daughter's faith. Foreigners and Jesuits are more artful than words can say—though, of course, I don't mean all. And I know some French people—you yourself, dear Louis"

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans became entangled in a painful confusion of words as she suddenly remembered that Louis himself laboured under the double misfortune of being by birth both a foreigner and a Frenchman. She wisely extricated herself by the unanswerable conclusion: "And I know you want what is best for dear little Zella."

"I will think it over."

"Louis! surely you cannot hesitate! One does not want to be interfering, but, after all—my own sister's only child, and Paris! A Roman Catholic household!"

Louis de Kervoyou listened without hearing. The stifling weight of pain seemed to be pressing on him with an intolerable heaviness, and he leant back in his chair, wondering if that soft, monotonous, rapid speech would never cease. He was a short, square-shouldered man, with thick light brown beard and hair, and eyes of the same dark grey as his daughter's. The habitual laugh in them was quenched now, and a keener physiognomist than Mrs. Lloyd-Evans might have read the hopeless misery in their depths.

When her low, relentless eloquence had at length ceased, he said wearily:

"I see what you mean. I will speak to Zella. She can do as she wishes."

He spoke English perfectly, with no trace of accent.

"No, Louis," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans inexorably, "I cannot think that right. Zella must do as she is told, not merely as she wishes. Remember that one must be doubly careful about instilling really high principles into her, now that she no longer has a mother's influence to watch over her. She really needs the discipline of a good school, and later on"

"Marianne, I am very grateful to you and Henry and if Zella wishes it she shall go back with you to morrow," Louis interrupted decisively. "But I can make no further plans for the moment. I will write to you later-"

He wished she would go.

"Are you going away, dear Louis?"

"I don't suppose so. Why should I?"

"A change of scene would distract your mind a little, and this place, so full of associations"

Louis de Kervoyou, the limits of his endurance reached, rose and opened the door.

"I will send for Zella now," he said, making way for her to pass.

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans saw nothing for it but to leave the room. But her resources were not easily exhausted, and she made it so clear to the miserable and bewildered Zella how fully appropriate a visit to Boscombe would be, that the child, half hypnotized, felt that such calm, gentle assurance must necessarily be right.

Her father did not seem hurt, as Zella had half feared he might be, that she should prefer Mrs. Lloyd-Evans's house to his stepmother's little apartement in the Rue des ficoles where the Baronne de Kervoyou had offered to receive her. He said to Zella:

"You did not get on with your cousins last time you stayed at Boscombe."

"It will be different now; I am older," Zella replied faintly. Aunt Marianne had used the argument that morning. She wondered if her father was angry that she should elect to go to Boscombe. But if she had asked to be taken to Paris to her grandmother, of whom she was rather afraid, Aunt Marianne would have been vexed and thought it wrong. And Aunt Marianne would have been vexed, and called it morbid and unnatural, if Zella had asked to remain at Villetswood. Now that mother was no longer there, a sure refuge, and always certain to understand and approve, it had suddenly become of enormous importance to do what Aunt Marianne and everyone would think right and appropriate.

Zella looked timidly at her father.

"Do as you like, pauvre mignonne." But, in spite of the old term of endearment, he was not thinking very much about her.

The next day Zella thought that she would have given everything in the world not to be going away from Villetswood. But, with the new cowardice that seemed to have taken possession of her, she did not dare to change her mind.

She said good-bye, crying, to the maids who had been so kind to her, and ran sobbing upstairs at the last moment to seek the room which had been her mother's. But Mrs. Lloyd-Evans met her on the stairs, and said:

"Where are you going, darling? The carriage is at the door, and we must start in a minute."

Zella felt that her aunt's voice held the slightest possible tinge of disapproval, and she instinctively choked back her tears.

"I have forgotten something—in my room," she gasped.

"Then fetch it quickly, dear, while I wait for you." Mrs. Lloyd-Evans stood, inexorable, on the stairs. Zella ran into her own room, slamming the door to behind her, and stood for a moment looking half wildly round her, blinded with tears, and shaking with pain and a sort of senseless, unreasoning rebellion, against what or whom she hardly knew. She only knew that it had become impossible for her to go to her mother's room. She felt that she hated Aunt Marianne, that she was going away with her, and that nobody would ever understand or comfort her any more. She wrung her hands with a mad, foreign gesture.

The strange minute of agony passed, and Zella went downstairs with her hand clasped in Mrs. Lloyd-Evans's black-gloved one.

Louis de Kervoyou was in the hall.

Zella did not hear his low, rapidly spoken thanks and farewell to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. She looked round her, at the familiar oak staircase, the pictures hung upon the walls, the pieces of furniture she had known all her life. With a child's sense of finality, she felt as though she must be leaving Villetswood for ever.

"Adieu, mignonne!"

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans was getting into the carriage now.

"Papa," said Zella, clinging to him.

He looked at her compassionately.

"I'm not going away for always—you'll let me come back ?" she gasped, almost inarticulate.

"Whenever you like, of course, my poor little angel!" cried Louis vigorously, in tones more like his own than any Zella had yet heard from him since her mother's death.

"Write to me the very day and moment you want to come home, and you shall come."

The reassuring words and the kiss he gave her brought a feeling of warmth to Zella's heart. It was like a return to the old familiar atmosphere of petting and security, to which she had been accustomed all her life.

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"TIME is a great healer " was a platitude that very much recommended itself to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. It gave, as it were, a sanction to a sort of modified forgetfulness, and to the resumption of everyday interests and occupations!