The Greatest Works of E. M. Delafield (Illustrated Edition). E. M. Delafield
my poor child, you want to see your dear, dear mother laid to rest, don't you ? near the little church
where "Mrs. Lloyd-Evans stopped rather abruptly,
as she discovered that she could not recall any possible connection between the little church and Esmée's memory.
"Her mother is dead," cried Louis, low and vehemently. "What they are taking to the churchyard is not her. I will not have any false sentiment introduced into the child's mind. Zella, you can decide for yourself. Do you wish to go or not?"
"No," murmured Zella, who was frightened at a tone which she had never heard before from her merry, kindly father.
Louis de Kervoyou, as he left the room, made a gesture of acquiesence that was supremely un-English, and served to remind Mrs. Lloyd-Evans that one must make allowances for a brother-in-law who was practically a Frenchman.
"Poor papa is very much overwrought, darling, and no wonder," she murmured. "Besides, gentlemen do not always think quite as we do about these things."
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans always spoke of "gentlemen," never of " men," unless they definitely belonged to the lower classes of the social scale.
"Gentlemen do not always quite understand," was one of her favourite generalizations, and she told Zella gently that gentlemen did not always quite understand the comfort that was to be found in the Church.
Zella thought that her aunt would be shocked if she said that she had-very seldom been to church, and had not liked it when she had gone, so she answered tearfully:
"Poor papa! he is dreadfully unhappy."
"You must try and comfort him, dear child."
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, not in general prodigal of endearments, now seemed unable to address her niece without some such expression. Zella felt vaguely that it must be appropriate to her new black frock and bereaved condition.
"Why not go to him in the study, darling, and tell him that dear mother is in heaven and happy, and he must try and not grieve for her, and that you mean to be his little comfort?"
Zella, at this suggestion, mechanically saw her own slender black-garbed figure kneeling beside her father's chair in the study, and heard her own clear, unfaltering voice uttering tender sentiments of faith and consolation. It seemed appropriate enough, and Aunt Marianne evidently thought it so. A certain subtle discomfort at the back of her mind, however, warned her that the project, for some reason which she could not quite analyze, might prove difficult to execute.
"Perhaps afterwards," she faltered, " not now."
"No, darling, now is best," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with the soft-voiced inflexibility, totally unfounded on reason, characteristic of her where her own opinions were concerned. "Papa is all alone in the study; it is your place to comfort him."
It must be the right thing to do, then.
Zella left the room slowly, and as she crossed the hall she discovered that a little pulse was throbbing in her throat and that her hands had suddenly become cold. She clasped them nervously together, and told herself that papa, who had never been angry with her in her life, could not be anything but comforted if she came to him now. She was his only child—all that he had left to him; it was right that she should try and be a comfort.
She did not know why she felt so frightened.
Suddenly she turned the door handle.
"Come in," said her father's familiar tones, with the weary sound that was new to them.
He was sitting at the writing-table, much as Zella had pictured him in her mental rehearsal, and the fact suddenly gave her courage to carry out her own roje.
Crossing the room swiftly, she knelt down besidenim, and repeated faithfully, though with a nervous catch in her voice, the sentiments deemed appropriate to the occasion by Aunt Marianne.
"Darling papa, please don't be so dreadfully unhappy. Darling mother is in heaven now, and she is happy, and— and I will try and be a comfort to you always, as she would have wished."
The hurried, gasping accents, which were all that Zella's thumping heart allowed her to produce, died away into silence, and she felt that the performance had been absurdly inadequate. She had not even dared to raise her eyes to his, with a beautiful look of trust and tenderness; on the contrary, they were cast down as though from shame.
Still the appalling silence continued. Her father had not moved. At last he spoke, but it was in a tone that Zella had never heard from him before:
"I don't want any play-acting now, Zella. You can go back to your Aunt Marianne."
The words cut her like a knife, few though they were and quietly spoken. In such an agony of pain and humiliation as she had never known in all her short life before, Zella sprang to her feet and rushed to her own room.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans found her there half an hour later, crying convulsively, and soothed her very affectionately, supposing that it was the thought of her mother's funeral which had renewed her tears. But the tears were bitterer and more painful than all those Zella had shed from grief, for they came from her passionate and deeply wounded self-esteem.
That afternoon the body of Esmée de Kervoyou was laid in the grave, while her only child, crouching upon the floor in her room, pressed her fingers into her ears that she might not hear the tolling of the bell.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had said rather half-heartedly,
"My poor child, you cannot stay here alone. Shall Aunt Marianne stay with you?" but Zella had begged to be left alone, and, as Mrs. Lloyd-Evans afterwards said to her husband:
"I was torn in two, Henry. I couldn't have borne not to follow my poor Esmée to her last resting-place, and, besides, it would have looked so very odd if I, her only sister, had not been there."
So she had tenderly told Zella to lie down upon her bed and rest a little, and had left a Prayer-Book, with the Burial Service carefully marked, and a Bible, beside her.
While the sound of heavy, careful feet, staggering downstairs under the weight of an awkward burden, was still audible, Zella lay with clenched hands, wishing that she could cry or pray, and feeling utterly unable to do either.
When all the sounds had died away, she took up the Bible and Prayer-Book desperately, but both were unfamiliar to her and she could not command her attention. She had had very little orthodox religious teaching, and had never known the need of a definite creed. She always supposed that her father and mother were Protestants, just as she knew that her grandmother and aunt in France were Catholics, but of the devout practice of either religion Zella knew nothing. In fact, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who called herself a Catholic and was a member of the Church of England, had given Zella a greater insight into the orthodox practices of religion during the last few days than any she had as yet received. But in her present overwrought condition Zella found the Bible incomprehensible and the Prayer-Book intolerable.
When the sound of the church bell came, faint and distant from the valley, Zella, shuddering, rose and locked her door, then snatched the copy of "Treasure Island" from the bookshelf, and, crouching against the bed, with her hands over her ears, read furiously.
III
"HENRY, if we walk up and down the drive, no one need see us from the village; though, after all, now that it's all over . . . one must take up one's ordinary life again sooner or later, and dear Esmée herself would wish one to be brave. Besides, I want to talk to you, and since poor Louis is again shut up in the study, and I have persuaded Zella to lie down, we may as well get some fresh air before it grows dark."
"Come along," said Henry Lloyd-Evans thankfully.
He was a tall, melancholy-looking man, who had been depressed and uncomfortable all day, and was heartily relieved to get out of the house