THE COLLECTED NOVELS OF E. M. DELAFIELD (6 Titles in One Edition). E. M. Delafield
pas."
Zella, who would in this case undoubtedly have asked questions had she possessed sufficient moral courage to break through her father's reserve, replied meekly, "No, Grand'mère," and felt that the conversation was ended.
But she was acutely aware that the Baronne looked at her two or three times in the course of the day with great kindness, and shrewdly suspected that her little confidence had touched and interested the old lady.
At Midnight Mass in San Silvestro she willingly took her place in the crowded church between her father and grandmother. Tante Stéphanie knelt beyond the Baronne, a slight, devoutly bent figure, never moving from her knees throughout the long service, until the congregation rose together and filed, in rather aimless and very crowded procession, towards the Crib at a small shrine next to the High-Altar.
The Baronne got on to her knees on the stone floor with difficulty, and Zella knelt beside her, so tightly wedged on either side that it would have been impossible to move. She could just see the brilliantly lighted Crib, across a sea of heads, with the large wax figure of the Bambino, dwarfing all the other figures in the group, raised on a straw-decked manger. „
The organ pealed into the Adeste Fidelis, and the worshippers, with the shrill, nasal, and yet indescribably devotional intonation peculiar to an Italian congregation, began to sing.
The air was familiar enough to Zella, and vaguely recalled memories of carol-singers at Villetswood.
She hid her face in her hands, and was not ungratified to find tears trickling slowly through her slight fingers.
She felt that her grandmother was looking at her, and raised her wet eyes to the Crib with an unconscious expression, half expecting to feel the pressure of the hand which Aunt Marianne would certainly have deemed suitable to the occasion.
But the Baronne remained impassive, and, when Zella at last ventured to steal a look at her, her eyes were devoutly shut and her rosary beads slipping rapidly through her fingers.
It was nearly half-past two in the morning before they got back to the Via Gregoriana, where Zella and her father left the Baronne and Stéphanie, with a mutual interchange of "Bonnes fetes " and "Heureux Noels."
The next morning Zella's father gave her an amber necklace, and she received two or three letters from England; and the day was much the same as other days, except that Tante Stéphanie in the morning inquired whether she wished to attend the English Church.
Zella felt that it would be almost unendurable if she were expected to attend the services of both the Protestant and Catholic churches, and, moreover, conjectured that her grandmother and aunt would think none the worse of her for being contented with the Catholic edition of Christmas worship only; so she answered very prettily that she had loved going to the Midnight Mass, and wished for nothing further.
At which reply Stéphanie de Kervoyou appeared better pleased than her mother, who merely said:
"No doubt, if Louis wishes Zella to attend the English Church, he will himself take her there."
But Louis made no such suggestion.
Zella, always sensitive to every faint shade of alteration in the feelings with which she was regarded by her surroundings, thought that she discerned a slight lessening of the added warmth of manner which the Baronne had displayed towards her since their conversation on Christmas Eve.
An uneasy instinct made her wonder whether this might be attributed to her delicate display of emotion at the Midnight Mass. If so, thought Zella, it argued a degree of unfeelingness on the part of the Baronne that would certainly prevent her (Zella) from ever again indulging too freely in a demonstration of her deepest feelings that yet surely was so natural as to be almost commendable.
Zella's deepest feelings, accordingly, were not again allowed to come into play until the first warm days in March sent Zella and her father for a week's visit to Frascati.
There they stayed at the tall white convent of San Carlo, and went for daily drives and excursions that were to Zella a secret relief from the endless churches visited in Rome by her and Tante Stéphanie.
Her father appeared delighted with her companionship, and only when she received an occasional letter from her Aunt Marianne did it strike Zella as strange that he should have regained so entirely his old jovial good spirits.
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