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

"Time is a great healer," thought Zella after a fortnight in the house at Boscombe, when she was anxiously taking her own spiritual temperature, and wondering miserably if it was heartless and forgetful not to cry in bed every night, as she had done at first after her mother's death.

But Aunt Marianne did not now encourage crying, and scarcely ever spoke of Zella's mother. Only on the rare occasions when Zella was introduced to visitors did she hear a subdued murmur of " my dear sister's only child— poor Esmée, you know ;" and then she would move out of hearing, acutely conscious of the pathos of her own deep mourning and of the visitor's compassionate glances.

James and Muriel Lloyd-Evans had at first been rather overawed by Zella's black frock. In a few days, however, the old relations between the cousins were resumed. James at sixteen still bore unmoved the reputation of being a prig. A species of civil taciturnity was his habitual shield for an intense sensitiveness, of which Zella, precociously intelligent, was already more than half aware. Muriel, pretty, kind-hearted, essentially unimaginative, thought that she and Zella must be great friends because they were first cousins and of the same age. It was very sad that poor Aunt Esmée had died, and it was very dreadful for poor Zella; but it was very nice to think that she could pay them a long visit and share Muriel's lessons with Miss Vincent when the holidays were over.

Zella did not like Muriel, whom she often heard spoken of as "such a nice, bright, unaffected little girl." Zella, almost unawares, felt that praise of Muriel was an oblique reflection upon herself, because they were so different. Muriel did not want to read story-books, as Zella did, but liked long walks and outdoor games, and the care of pet animals. She also possessed accomplishments, which Zella did not, and could do skirt-dancing very prettily, and sometimes played Thome's "Simple Aveu " on her violin before visitors. Zella, who would have been very willing to display accomplishments on her own account, could do nothing except talk French; and even then Muriel's schoolroom lingua franca was apparently supposed by everyone to be on the same level as Zella's finished Parisian accent.

Zella, though not humble-minded, began for the first time to mistrust herself. She was humiliated at her own lack of superiority. Yet in her heart she considered Muriel stupid, and despised her because she never read a book and possessed a limited and childish vocabulary. James .was not stupid. He yearly brought back a pile of prizes from school, and was known to have passed examinations brilliantly. But Zella admitted to herself, with some naive surprise, that she did not understand James, nor appear to have much in common with him.

It seemed to her that he had been nicer as a solemn little boy at Villetswood, when they had played imaginative games together from the "Arabian Nights," always leaving out an invariably tearful Muriel because she did not know how to "pretend."

James nowadays took little notice of Zella's existence, and she unconsciously resented it. He spent his days over a book whenever his mother was not within sight, and one day, about a fortnight after her arrival, Zella said to him rather wistfully: "Are you fond of reading? I like reading better than anything."

James raised his head from his book. His dark, melancholy face resembled that of his father, but the brow bore the unmistakable stamp of intellect.

"I like it," he said slowly.

"What is your book? May I see? Oh, 'Lorna Doone.' "

"Have you ever read it ?"

Zella had not, but she had once heard it discussed at Villetswood, and was at no loss.

"Why, it's the Devonshire story," she said rather proudly, "and, of course, I am from Devonshire."

Zella sometimes thought of herself as a Devonshire maid, sometimes as the loyal descendant of a titled French family, and sometimes as a widely travelled, rather Bohemian young cosmopolitan.

"Did you like it ?" asked James.

"Yes. Girt Jan Ridd has always been a hero of mine, and I like Lorna too," replied Zella glibly.

"I like Tom Faggus and his Winnie better. I've just come to where he's wounded, and she comes to look for help."

"Yes, that's splendid!"

Had Zella stopped there, all would have been well; but she was determined to prove her familiarity with the world of literature, and with "Lorna Doone" in particular. She continued pensively:

"But I think that Lorna is really a more attractive character than Winnie, on the whole."

James looked at her rather oddly.

"Do you remember the book well ?" he asked at last.

"Not very," hesitated Zella, suddenly unsure of herself. "I read it a long while ago."

"But you remember Winnie ?"

"Oh yes, and how she found Tom wounded and went for help," said Zella, trusting that James would not perceive whence she had just derived her information. Then she rushed unconsciously on to her doom.

"I should call Winnie a typical Devonshire girl," she said.

It seemed a safe enough observation to make about a book that was admittedly all about Devonshire people, and Zella was utterly confounded when James remarked without any change of expression:

"Winnie was Tom Faggus' strawberry mare."

Zella became scarlet with mingled confusion and anger. Her tears, like those of most over-sensitive people, were always near the surface, and her voice failed her as she tried to stammer out something about having forgotten—mixed up Winnie with some other name. . . .

James looked at his pretty, pathetic-looking little cousin with an expression of greater interest than his dark eyes had as yet displayed towards her.

"It's all right, Zella," he said quite gently and in curiously unboyish tones of compassion. "There's nothing for you to be upset about. I was an ass not to tell you sooner that you were—making a mistake."

Zella looked at him with a sudden inexplicable feeling of being understood, and immediately spoke fearlessly:

"I haven't read 'Lorna Doone,' as a matter of fact; but I do know something about the story, and it seemed stupid to say I hadn't read it. Besides, it would have put an end to the conversation," she added, with an indescribable expression that could have proclaimed her French ancestry aloud.

"It was bad luck," remarked James impartially. "Nine times out of ten that kind of thing comes off all right."

Zella was secretly astounded at his matter-of-fact acceptance of "that kind of thing."

"It's rather a horrid sort of thing to do, I know," she said, looking candid, and thinking that James might possibly contradict her.

"And, what's more, I don't believe other people are taken in by it half as often as one thinks," was all the satisfaction she received.

"Of course, Muriel would simply call it telling lies," ventured Zella, who would have called it much the same thing herself, but was by now emboldened to think that James might perhaps take a more tolerant view.

"It isn't telling a downright lie for its own sake. It's motive that matters in that sort of thing," affirmed James, frowning. "But it's misrepresenting the truth, so as to make oneself out what one wants to be thought, instead of what one really is."

"Se faire valoir!" eagerly exclaimed the girl, who had been brought up in an atmosphere of abstract discussions such as were unknown in the Lloyd-Evans household.

"Yes. Most people seem to do that kind of thing one way or another, that would think it wrong to tell a lie outright, and yet consider themselves more or less truthful."

"But, James, there are degrees. The blackness of a lie does depend on what it is about," said Zella confusedly.

"I call self-deception worse than telling lies—a great deal."

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans entered the room, and the conversation between the boy and girl ceased abruptly. But there was more animation and interest in Zella's little colourless face than there had been since her arrival at Boscombe.