“I don’t see why it need spoil things for you,” said Zella unsympathetically. She despised Muriel, and thought her point of view very childish and imitative.
“Of course it does. Look what a happy day Sunday ought to be, all going to church together like this, and yet it won’t be a bit if James is tiresome.”
Walking down the drive, Zella wondered why going to church together should be imbued with any special happiness. Her Uncle Henry looked rather more depressed than usual in his top-hat and black coat, and walked ahead with a now monosyllabic James; and Muriel, whose black Sunday boots were hurting her, lagged a few steps behind them.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, bearing a muff and a large Prayer Book bound in ivory, with a gilt clasp, struggled to keep her black skirts out of the mud, and told Zella to look where she was going to and not splash the puddles.
“Let me take your book, Aunt Marianne,” said Zella obligingly.
“Where is your own, dear?”
Zella’s ready flush sprang to her sensitive face. She did not possess a Prayer-Book.
In a flash she saw how shocking such an admission would sound. A Christian child, fourteen years of age, without a Prayer-Book, implying a past of churchless Sundays.... What would not be Aunt Marianne’s horror at the revelation!
“Oh,” she hesitated confusedly, “I — I must have forgotten it. How stupid of me!”
“Run back and fetch it at once, then,” was the obvious rejoinder. Zella, who had not foreseen it, stood rooted to the spot.
“I — I don’t always use one, and I don’t suppose I shall need it,” she stammered, scarlet and disconcerted.
“Not need your Prayer-Book in church!” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, in scandalized accents. “Nonsense, my dear child! Run back for it at once; and be quick, or we shall be late.”
Flight seemed so much easier than anything else that the unhappy Zella turned and hurried up the drive again without further words.
“Idiot that I am!” she thought to herself furiously. “What shall I do now? How can I find a Prayer-Book?”
She ran into the house and into her own room, and stood there with an impotent feeling of anger, and a despairing sense of being at once deceitful and inadequate to deceive.
The importance of producing a Prayer-Book began to assume monstrous proportions, and every second that flew by was keeping Aunt Marianne waiting.
“Perhaps Muriel has another one, and I can take it and tell Aunt Marianne I couldn’t find mine.”
She dashed into her cousin’s room, and looked at the very small shelf where stood the slender stock of Muriel’s literary possessions.
Nothing. A large Children’s Bible with illustrations was the nearest approach to a work of devotion, and even in such an extremity was not to be regarded in the light of a possible companion for church.
Zella, in despair, wondered for an insane moment whether she could pretend sudden illness and declare herself unable to leave the house at all, but even as the idea crossed her mind she rejected it.
Rushing aimlessly back into her own room, she was horrified to see from the window her Aunt Marianne hastening up the drive towards the house.
Zella flew down the stairs and out at the door.
As she reached Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who had relievedly turned back at the sight of her, Zella thrust both empty hands into her muff.
“I’m so sorry,” she gasped breathlessly; “I’ve been ages.”
“We shall be late,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, hurrying rapidly down the drive. “I particularly started early, as it is your first Sunday here, and I am not at all anxious to walk into church in deep mourning with everybody looking on. It was very careless of you, Zella, and irreverent too, dear, though I dare say you didn’t quite realize that.”
“No,” said Zella faintly, with a growing hope that she might yet escape any further reference to the absent Prayer-Book.
“You see,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, speaking almost in snatches as she hastened along the muddy road, “to be late for church is an irreverence, dear. I know that a great many people are very careless, and gentlemen especially don’t always quite realize. Perhaps you’ve not been accustomed to thinking very much about these things, but one wouldn’t care to arrive late at the house of a friend, would one? So how much worse — take care of that puddle, dear — to be late at the house of God, which is what one may well call the church. You see what Aunt Marianne means, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“We will say no more about it, dear, only let it make you more thoughtful.”
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans paused a moment, both to regain breath and to let the necessity for thoughtfulness sink in, before modulating the conversation into a lighter key.
“Couldn’t you find the Prayer-Book, that you were so long fetching it? I always think that things seem to lose themselves when one is in a hurry.”
Conscious of the emptiness of the hands within her muff, Zella said, with an inspiration born of despair:
“Aunt Marianne, I — I am afraid I’ve not got it, after all. I simply couldn’t find it anywhere.”
“Couldn’t find your Prayer-Book?”
“No.”
“When did you last use it?” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, suddenly suspicious.
“I can’t remember,” said Zella, with a sense of being trapped. Her confusion was patent and she was on the verge of tears.
“Did you use it last Sunday?”
“No; don’t you remember I didn’t go to church?” said Zella, relieved at having found what she supposed to be so unanswerable a reply. But her relief was short-lived.
“I should have thought,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans in a low tone of condemnation that made Zella feel acutely shamed—” I should have thought one would want to follow the service quietly at home, when one was kept from church for such a reason as yours, Zella.”
Zella struggled with herself not to burst into tears.
As they neared the church, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans said rapidly:
Aunt Marianne knows what it is, dear. You forgot to bring your Prayer-Book from Villetswood, and were ashamed to say so; so you have been all these days without it, hoping that no one would find it out. It was very naughty and artful indeed, and it must have been God who arranged that Aunt Marianne should find out all about it. Go straight into church, dear — the second pew on the left hand side at the top. Aunt Marianne is not at all pleased with you.”
Zella, who had previously thought with some self-complacency of her first entry into church, a slender figure attracting much pitying interest in her deep mourning, went up the aisle with a burning face, and feeling as though she must either choke or burst into sobs.
Unable to do either, she sat and stood and knelt through the service, not heeding a word of it, looking fixedly at the floor and pinching the back of her own hand as hard as she could, to keep back her tears, and feeling certain that the eyes of the clergyman and of all the congregation were fixed upon her Prayer-Book-less condition.
On leaving the church, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans began to speak to her husband in a low voice, and they moved on ahead with James; while Zella, though certain that Aunt Marianne could be telling him nothing but the dreadful explanation of why she had arrived so late, was thankful to dawdle behind with Muriel, whose boots were now doing their best to spoil Sunday for their wearer.
It was not until after tea that Mrs. Lloyd-Evans called Zella into the drawing-room. The child had spent the afternoon in a sick agony of shame and apprehension that would hardly have been justified if she had been about to be tried for her life.
Aunt Marianne, grave but gentle, made her sit down upon a sofa under the shadow of the In Memorial table. It was the corner consecrated to the Sunday talks to which James had taken exception.
“My poor child!” said Aunt Marianne, “have you been thinking what a dreadful thing it is not to be quite open and truthful — and especially about such a thing as a Prayer-Book?”
She took her niece’s hand in
hers as she spoke, and the kindness made the thoroughly overwrought Zella burst into tears.
“There, don’t cry, dear. Aunt Marianne quite sees that you are sorry, but such a tendency must be fought against very seriously. It’s very dreadful to be artful, but we can all cure ourselves of our faults if we like, and Aunt Marianne will help you.”
“I didn’t mean,” sobbed Zella resentfully.
“Hush, dear! don’t say that, because it’s not quite true. You see, by running in to fetch the Prayer-Book when you knew it wasn’t there, you were deceiving Aunt Marianne, or trying to. So it was acting a lie, if it wasn’t actually telling one.”
Zella, utterly bewildered and conscious of guilt somewhere, was also conscious of misunderstanding, but it seemed useless to try and explain.
Aunt Marianne was still speaking, with soft, relentless fluency:
“There is a little saying about a half-truth being ever the worst of lies. So you see that it doesn’t make it any better to make excuses. You must think about it a great deal, dear, and say a little prayer every night that you may have the courage to be truthful. It would have made your dear, dear mother very sad to think that her little daughter could say what was not true — and only such a short time after losing her.”
The appositeness of this conclusion struck Zella with a renewed sense of her guilt — heartless, deceitful, and disloyal to the memory of her mother, who, as Aunt Marianne had often said, was always watching over her little daughter from the skies.
“Now don’t cry any more, dear, but think it over,” her aunt concluded. “Go upstairs now, and send James and Muriel to me. I thought you’d rather have your little talk with Aunt Marianne quite alone, but I must not rob them of their Sunday half-hour. Jimmy’s last Sunday,” she added with a sigh.
Zella crept upstairs and gave the message to Muriel with averted, tear-stained face. James was nowhere to be seen.
Then she rushed to her own room and threw herself on the bed in a renewed agony of tears. At first she said to herself between her sobs: “I’m not artful — I’m not deceitful; it’s unjust.” But afterwards she thought: “It’s no use — I did tell lies! though not the one Aunt Marianne thought. I am a liar — James would despise me if he knew. And the worst of it was that it was all no use.”
VI
If a certain air of sadness was worn by Mrs. Lloyd-Evans and Muriel in alluding to “Jimmy’s last Sunday,” it may readily be conjectured that the last evening of the holidays did not pass unmourned.
A suggestion of James’s to the effect that he, Zella, and Muriel, should be allowed to go to the cinematograph on the Tuesday evening before his return to Harrow was quashed by his mother’s reproachful “On your last evening at home, my boy!” and Muriel whispered something to her brother which Zella easily guessed to be a reminder of her own deep mourning.
She tried to look unconscious and to keep down a certain feeling of gratified melancholy, but when Tuesday evening actually came, Zella heartily wished that James’s plan had been a feasible one.
She wondered why all suggestion of occupation should have been tacitly negatived, since it did not appear that the evening held anything definite in view. Even the perfunctory game played almost every night, in which children came down to the drawing-room after dinner, was not suggested.
Mr. Lloyd-Evans sat over-the paper with his profoundest ail-’of dejection;’ James lounged unwillingly on the sofa to which his mother had silently beckoned him beside her; Muriel, seated on the hearthrug, looked gloomily into the fire; and Zella sat in an arm-chair wishing that Aunt Marianne were not certain to think reading a book in the drawing-room unsociable and ill-mannered.
Presently Mr. Lloyd-Evans put down his paper, looked uncomfortably round at his speechless family, and began to ask James perfunctory questions as to his journey.
The sympathetic Zella, intensely aware of the feeling that had caused Uncle Henry to break the silence, was emboldened to say:
“Shan’t we do something? Why don’t you play your new piece, Muriel?”
James and his father welcomed the suggestion so heartily that Mrs. Lloyd-Evans’s weighty silence was overborne.
“I’ll do your accompaniment,” said James with unwonted amiability. His mother’s low-toned “That’s right, dear: my good boy, to make a little effort!” sent him scowling to the piano, which he opened with a bang that made everybody jump, and elicited from his mother a sigh and a murmur of Jimmy! Jimmy!”
Zella knew that her cousin was considered musical, but had never heard him play, nor did his accompaniment to Muriel’s “Chaconne” seem to her in any way remarkable.
She played the piano herself, and would have liked to perform in the drawing-room; but Aunt Marianne had said that she quite understood Zella would not want to do any music just at present, so the suggestion had never been made.
When the “Chaconne” had been duly applauded, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans said: “Muriel dear, can you play that pretty Viennoise of Kreisler that mother is so fond of?”
“I’ve learnt it,” Muriel replied doubtfully, “but Monsieur Pire says it is too difficult for me.”
“So it is,” said James flatly.
“Nonsense, -darling!” You can play it very nicely. I should hear in a moment if there were any wrong notes; I have a very good ear” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans firmly.
James got up from the piano.
“Sit down again, Jimmy, and play the Kreisler with Muriel.”
“I can’t play it.”
“Oh, James, you can!” cried Muriel in perfect good faith. “I’ve heard you play that very accompaniment in the schoolroom, only putting in all the fiddle part with your right hand.”
James looked furious.
Muriel found the music, put her own part on the stand, and handed the accompaniment timidly to her brother.
“I tell you I can’t play it.”
“James, why are you so cross?” said Muriel, wholly perplexed, but speaking under her breath lest her mother should hear.
“I’m not cross, idiot,” muttered James; “but I know I can’t play the beastly thing, any more than you can. If you’d heard Kreisler play it, as I have, you wouldn’t want to try.”
“Of course I know I can’t play it as well as he can.” began Muriel, utterly bewildered.
Zella, who had been summoning up all her courage for the last few seconds, said with a beating heart: “Shall I try it, Muriel?”
“But you don’t know it, do you?”
“I can read music,” said Zella eagerly. She was exceedingly proud of her ability to read music at sight, and longed for an opportunity of showing her relatives that she also was not ungifted. But Mrs. Lloyd-Evans said very decidedly:
“Nonsense, dear! I expect it is much too difficult for you to read without a great many wrong notes, which Aunt Marianne wouldn’t like at all; and, besides, you haven’t been practising lately, and one ought never to play a piece unless one has been having a good hour of scales and exercises first.”
Zella flushed scarlet.
“I can read anything,” she muttered defiantly and with some elasticity of statement.
“Don’t boast, dear; it is a very bad habit, and not quite truthful, either,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans placidly.
“Now, Muriel. Are you ready, dear?”
“I can’t play it,” James once more remarked obstinately.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans gave her husband the look which he knew to mean that there are moments when the authority of a gentleman is needed to supplement a mother’s influence.
He cleared his throat nervously and said: “Come, come, my boy. We don’t pay extra for your piano lessons only to hear that you can’t play a piece which your little cousin says she could manage at first sight.”
The remark, intended facetiously, roused Zella’s wrath as well as James’s, but the latter only said gruffly, “Come on, then, Muriel,” and opened the music.
Muriel was nervous, and played worse than usual. Her broth
er kept down the loud pedal throughout, and released it with a bang as he crashed on to the final chord.
“There! you see it wasn’t so difficult. You would play it quite nicely with a little practice,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.
“I think I was a little out of tune,” murmured Muriel nervously.
“About time you found it out too,” was James’s muttered comment, as he flung himself into a chair next to Zella’s.
“Are you fond of music?” she asked in an undertone. “Yes” he said briefly. “Not that sort, though.”
“That wasn’t music,” Zella remarked calmly. He hoped to excite in making the remark.
It certainly wasn’t. I say, do you play a lot?”
“A good deal,” said Zella easily.
“Why haven’t you played to us?”
“I — I haven’t been practising. Besides,” she could not resist adding, “I haven’t been asked.”
“I’d have asked you fast enough, if I’d known you were any good. It’s too late now, just when I’m going away.”
“Are you sorry you’re going?” she asked, half mischievously.
“No,” said James gruffly. “It’s heresy to say so, of course. Home, sweet Home, and all the rest of the sickening tosh. As a matter of fact, Harrow’s a very decent place, though they’re a bit too keen on games for my taste.”
“Oh,” cried Zella eagerly, “I do so agree with you. I hate games.”
“Girls’ games are rot, anyhow,” said the mannerless James.
“Yes, I suppose they are.”
Zella’s idea of making herself agreeable at this time was to agree with any and every opinion offered her.
“Zella,” said her Aunt Marianne’s voice, “it is bedtime, dear. Run along with Muriel.”
It was a cause of never-ending resentment to Zella that her aunt should so frequently tell her to “run.”
She rose very slowly, said her good-nights, and moved towards the door with some dignity.
“Don’t dawdle like that, dear,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. “Jimmy, you must stop and have a little talk with father and mother, as it is your last evening.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 6