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

In the garden at the Frascati convent, on the first Sunday evening they spent there, Zella leant upon the little stone parapet that overlooked so wide a stretch of the Roman Campagna, and gazed at the distant lights of the city, just beginning to tremble through the quickly falling dusk.

An agreeable melancholy filled her. Zella's eyes filled slowly and luxuriously with tears.

Ah, church bells recalling a happy, infinitely far-away past. ... A wistful yearning, of which Zella made no attempt to discover the cause, took possession of her. Her eyes overflowed.

A line read somewhere floated vaguely through her mind with-a beautiful sense of appropriateness:

"Sunset and evening bell,

And after that the dark. . . ."

She could not formulate any very definite cause for her tears, but moaned vaguely to herself of Villetswood—dear, dear mother—a long time ago—dear old days that would never come back again. . . .

She almost felt it a pity that no one should be there to witness grief so artistic in so appropriate a setting, when her father's dismayed voice beside her caused her to turn hastily, the tears still sparkling on her thick lashes.

"Zella, my dear ! what is the matter? Why are you crying?"

Zella had reached the stage when it becomes easier to cry harder still than to stop.

"Oh," she sobbed, clinging to him, "Villetswood— home! I want to go home. It all reminded me so—' the church bells—dear, dear Villetswood!"

It mattered nothing to Zella that the church bells had never been audible at Villetswood except from one particular corner of the stables when the wind was in a peculiarly favourable quarter.

But her father was not a prey to similar oblivion. He looked at his weeping daughter with a dismay that was not devoid of humour.

"Is it that you want to go back to Villetswood ? " he demanded gently.

"Yes—no," incoherently sobbed Zella, who would have been hard put to it indeed to say exactly what it was that she did want.

"But are you unhappy here with me ?" asked poor Louis, a good deal perplexed.

"No—oh no !" A flash of genuine distress shot through Zella at the idea that she might be hurting her father's feelings. She looked up at him with wet grey eyes, feeling that an adequate reason for her grief must be produced without further delay.

"It is only," she said, summoning all her courage, "that I was thinking of dear mother and home. We never speak of her, but I never, never forget her."

A fresh burst of tears accompanied the announcement. "Why won't you ever let me speak of her I"

Hardly had Zella spoken the words than she wished them unsaid. A sort of fright checked her sobs, and there was a moment's dead silence, which seemed to her incredibly long.

The latent amusement had altogether faded from Louis de Kervoyou's face, and he looked older than Zella had ever seen him. She suddenly noticed two little lines at the corners of his mouth that she had not seen before.

"My dear child," he said at last very gravely, "if I have not spoken to you of your mother, it is because I dislike a display of emotionalism almost as much as she did. If it has been putting a strain upon you, I am very sorry for it."

He paused a moment, but Zella was crying in good earnest now, and could not speak, nor had she any reply to offer.

"I had concluded that you were unable to speak naturally of your mother, and consequently had very wisely decided not to do so until you could command yourself. Do you suppose that she would wish to see you overcome in this manner every time her name is mentioned ?"

Louis's tone was weary rather than angry, but Zella's tears redoubled.

"How can I help minding ?" she sobbed resentfully.

"'Minding,' as you call it, is not the question. I am speaking of self-control. I do not very well know how to discuss it with you," said Louis perplexedly. "You are very young, but surely you know that to give way to outbursts of emotion, merely because one does not take the trouble to overcome them, is—is not done. Ça ne sefait pas," he concluded, smiling again.

"Grand'mère never speaks of anything—anything real—or hardly ever. She would like one to be always exactly the same, with good manners and smiling," said Zella shrewdly enough.

"She is perfectly right," returned her father quickly. "My good child, do you suppose that those De Kervoyous who went to the guillotine in the Reign of Terror went there smiling and composed because they did not mind or were not afraid? It was, on the contrary, because they had these emotions under control that they made so fine an exit. Your grandmother's great-aunt, Berthe de la Claudiere de Marincourt, was the first woman to mount the guillotine in Calais. She was a child of nineteen and went up to the scaffold smelling a rose, and with a deep reverence to the mob that was watching her, and another one to the three noblemen who were awaiting a similar fate. That is the meaning of breeding, Zella— self-control and consideration for other people."

Zella had never heard anything so nearly approaching a lecture from her father, and it struck her, dimly, as curious that it should be on such a subject.

"I do understand," she said quaveringly.

Her father kissed her, and said, "Yes, my dear child," very gently, and they went slowly towards the house.

Zella had the old childish sense of having been naughty strong upon her; but when she went to bed and thought over the evening, she could only tell herself that her father's first approach to a scolding had been because she had broken down and cried, and, when interrogated, had spoken of her dead mother.

Zella wept again a little in self-pity at having had her confidence so strangely received, but her last waking thought was a vision of herself, youthful and white-clad, fearless and smiling, awaiting the stroke of the guillotine before a sobbing and awe-stricken crowd.

Louis de Kervoyou, however, took his daughter back to Rome two days earlier than he had originally intended to, and sought the one person from whom he had always asked counsel—his stepmother.

"So," said the Baronne, "the little one has une crise d'emotion at the sound of a church bell, weeps a few harmless and no doubt mildly enjoyable tears, and you, my poor Louis ! read her a long lecture upon self-control—all, I make no doubt, au grand serieux—and send her away with some reasonable grounds for feeling herself misunderstood and her natural feelings repressed."

"What else could I do ?"

"You could have treated it more lightly, mon ami— laughed at her a little. A sense of humour is the great cure for these attacks of youthfulness," said the Baronne hopefully.

"No," said Louis gravely. "The child was speaking to me of her mother, almost for the first time since Esmée's death."

"True. Poor child! her grief may well be sincere enough, though that little demonstration of it was prompted by what might be qualified as a sense of the appropriate."

But, my dear mother, a sense of the appropriate should not govern these things; for if it does so, then they cease to be genuine and entitled to respect."

"Louis," said the Baronne, "in spite of your grey hairs, I perceive that you are still young. I, who am seventy, can assure you that you will find most things in the world to be a mixture. As for Zella, she has merely the failings incidental to her age and temperament. I have become aware of them during these last two months, and do not like the child any the less for being true to type."

"But there is such a thing as excess," observed Louis dryly.

"No doubt, and that is why, since you pay me the compliment of asking for my advice, I am going to suggest that Zella should be sent to school."

"Surely you do not advise that!"

"I think the society of her contemporaries will do more for her than we can, at her present stage of development; and, indeed, I believe you will agree with me when you consider the alternatives: Villetswood, where she must of necessity be left a good deal to her own introspective tendencies; or that terrible Lloyd-Evans household," said the Baronne with considerable candour.