THE COLLECTED NOVELS OF E. M. DELAFIELD (6 Titles in One Edition). E. M. Delafield
Mdlle. de Kervoyou returned calmly:
"Maman was very good, a saint if you will, but she anticipated her little bit of Purgatory like the rest of us, and we must pray for her, Zella, my dear child. But I need not ask it of you."
"No, indeed," said Zella, with a fervour in her tones entirely due to her ardent hope that Tante Stéphanie would only indulge in these aspirations when they were alone.
But Mdlle. de Kervoyou, being a gentlewoman, and, moreover, one of more experience than her niece gave her credit for, did not shame Zella's youthful sensitiveness by any ill-timed allusion to her parent's probable sojourn in Purgatory.
The gentle French lady made herself beloved of the servants and of the village, but assumed none of the prerogatives of mistress of Villetswood, which position she apparently took for granted to belong to Zella.
Zella was pleased to find that she still sat at the head of her father's table, and, while holding in reserve a graceful tableau of unselfish sweetness rendering up the keys to a domineering intruder, was yet relieved to find that no such display was needed. But the keys, left in her undisputed possession, gradually became more burdensome than gratifying, and Zella almost found herself wishing that Mdlle. de Kervoyou would realize more nearly Mrs. Lloyd-Evans's ideal of a resident aunt.
The absence of a dramatic element in her fife began to depress her, as it must all natures accustomed to feed upon artificial emotions, and Zella began to long for any incident, however disturbing, that should mar the peace of Villetswood.
Louis did not, like a father in a book, remain absorbed in melancholy reflection, locked in his study, for hours together. On the contrary, he rode with his daughter almost daily, read French aloud to her and to his sister in the evenings, and listened gladly to her music.
Tante Stéphanie, not content. with a definite thought unspoken refusal to play the part of petty tyrant towards her niece, also gracefully avoided the role of intellectual wet-blanket that seemed so obviously assigned to her by all literary conventions, and proved herself the most cultivated of companions, with literary and artistic tastes and education that were not unnaturally considerably wider and deeper than those of her niece.
Finally, the unfortunate Zella was deprived of her last possible grievance, the monotony of life in the depths of the country, by the indulgence of her father, who took her to London on every possible excuse, and gave her carte blanche to invite anyone she pleased to Villetswood as soon as the first months of Tante Stéphanie's deep mourning were over.
Zella felt that life had become uninteresting to an unbearable degree.
Her religious experiences had lost their novelty, and her intercourse with the Almighty was now confined to a tepid and unthinking formula uttered night and morning when she remembered, and a hasty, ejaculatory "Oh, please let it be all right " in any sudden crisis. This, in letters to the convent, was gratefully referred to as "the habit learnt at the dear convent, of raising my heart and mind to God at any difficult moment during the day."
The Catholic Church, whereof she had now been a member for nearly three years, had become an institution represented by the unwelcome appearance of plats maigres on days when she least expected or desired them, and the effort involved by an early drive on Sundays and holidays of obligation to the Catholic church, five miles away. Tante Stéphanie, who might, Zella considered, have reasonably been expected to take an absorbing interest in the paths by which her niece had been led into the true fold, showed no disposition to encourage the recital of Zella's spiritual experiences. Her only recognition of any deeper bond between them took the form of frequent requests that Zella would mention the names of various defunct French relatives in her prayers, and a matter-of-course taking for granted that she would prefer to attend a Low Mass as well as a High one on Sundays.
Zella was bored.
She wrote verses about her impassioned and sorrowful soul, which she sent to Alison St. Craye with a wistful hopefulness. Alison replied on a postcard: "Little one, you do not know how to use words yet. To me, they always present themselves as splashes of yellow sunlight on a cold marble floor."
Zella felt as though the cold marble floor might serve as analogy in another capacity. Discouraged, she thought of writing a book. With one eye, as it were, on Alison's approbation, she decided that a prose idyll would be her best form of self-expression.
She would write of the blue sky, the whispering trees of the forest, God's innocent woodland creatures. Drawing a leather arm-chair close to the library fire, she did so.
Local colour abounded.
She skimmed two or three volumes of Richard Jefferies, and kept a copy of the " Pageant of Summer " on a small table beside her bed in company with the "Imitation of Christ" given her by Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, and a small edition de luxe of Omar Khayyam. But after a very little while the prose idyll languished, was half heartedly resumed at lengthening intervals, then ceased altogether. Zella sent the fragment to Alison St. Craye and wrote, with some subtlety:
"I do not feel certain that you will, (forgive me, Alison), altogether understand all that this incompleted fragment means to me. It has no literary merit, no attempt at completeness, even, but I hope that just its sincerity may make an appeal to those who know. You see, I was born in the country, and the love of Nature is in my blood. I sometimes wonder whether that love can ever be quite the same thing to those not born within sight and sound of the rustling forest."
Thus Zella, aware that Miss St. Craye's eyes had first opened to the glare of London lights. But if she had hoped by this subtle allusion to force the hand of Alison, she speedily discovered her fallacy. A second postcard, even briefer than the first one had been, revealed to Zella with some bitterness that her literary offspring was ill-timed—had, in fact, launched itself upon Miss St. Craye's attention in one of her rare moods of rather ponderous humorousness.
She read in Alison's large square handwriting, that studiously sloped downhill in accordance with the general belief that this is characteristic of those who have known much trouble and suffering, the disconcerting message:
"ZELLA,—No, you are right; I do not understand your 'fragment.' Neither do you; for there is nothing to understand. Find yourself, little one, is my advice, and until you have done so do not write. Your well-wisher— do you know that quaint old term, I wonder?—A. ST. C."
Zella, feeling bitterly disgusted at her well-wisher's lack of insight, put Richard Jefferies into the bookcase again, and, after a month of desultory novel-reading of the lightest kind, discovered that she was a realist of the most passionate description.
She underlined several passages in "Anna Karenina," bought a cheap edition of Galsworthy's plays, and began to write another book. This time she really did achieve half a dozen chapters before the desire for an audience obsessed her too strongly to be resisted.
But Alison St. Craye should be given no further opportunity for unworthy facetiousness.
Zella read over her own production critically, thought that it was good, and wondered if Tante Stéphanie would understand it. It did not occur to her to test her father.
"Tante Stéphanie, I should rather like to read you something, when you have time, and if it wouldn't bore you."
"Something you have written?" hazarded Stéphanie, looking pleased.
"Yes. Just the beginning, you know. And I want you to tell me exactly what you think," said Zella eagerly and quite untruly.
"Very well, my dear. I shall like to hear it, and it is very nice of you to let me. I know that maman always said you would write one of these days."
"It's nothing very much, of course, and you must criticize hard. When would you like it? Any time will do, of course—there's naturally no hurry."
"I am in a hurry," smiled the tactful Stéphanie; "there is no time like the present. Won't you fetch it now?"
"Oh, are you sure?" said Zella, getting up and moving towards her writing-table. "Yes, indeed, if you will."
"Let me see . . ." said Zella, one hand on the drawer of the writing