James wondered, from long experience, whether a reference to little Archie or to poor Esmee would follow.
“I shall never forget those first few days at Villetswood after the loss of Esmee — how one’s only comfort was in dwelling together on the past.”
His mother’s construction of a sentence always made the Oxford prig in James writhe.
She continued with sad but serene volubility:
“Poor Louis had got over his grief in the most extraordinary manner, considering that in his own way he really was devoted to poor Esmee. But I am afraid that this may reopen the old wound. After all, Jimmy, no one can take a mother’s place. A man may find another wife, but never another mother.”
“In this case, however,” dryly observed James, “the Baronne de Kervoyou was Uncle Louis’s stepmother.”
“Very likely, dear,” retorted the undefeated Mrs. Lloyd-Evans; “that only shows the force of my words, that a man can never have two mothers. And however devoted a stepmother may be, it is not the same thing, though in this case I know poor Louis feels as though it were, since he can never remember any other mother than the Baronne. He has often told me that he can never recollect feeling the want of a mother’s love.”
This apocryphal quotation reduced James to an appalled silence, which lasted until they had almost reached the St. Crayes’ door.
“Are you coming in, dear?” inquired his mother. “It might be cousinly just to see poor little Zella for a moment — unless, as is very likely, she is lying down quietly in her own room. I often think that to be quite alone and silent is a great comfort in grief. But she might come downstairs to the drawing-room for a few minutes, I dare say.”
“I don’t think I’ll come in, mother.”
“Ah, my dear boy, I can tell just how you are feeling. Boys are always so shy of any emotion, and you feel afraid of a little scene, I dare say. But there really would be no need for you to say much. I often think,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with earnest discursiveness, one foot on the St. Crayes’ doorstep—” I often think that one can convey more sympathy with just one look than by any number of words. Words are so meaningless, somehow, in grief. You will find that out as you grow older.”
“My dear mother, they will be answering the bell in another minute,” said James in some agitation.
“I dare say, dear, though in these big houses the servants are often very badly trained. And I don’t think Lady St. Craye is a woman who would manage a household at all well; there is something very frivolous and shallow about her, I always think.”
“Good-bye, mother. Give Zella my love. I shan’t see you to-night, as I am dining out.”
“Where, Jimmy? I wish you would not make petty mysteries, my dear boy; why not say quite simply and openly”
“Is Lady St. Craye at home?” was what James did say, as the door was opened noiselessly behind Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.
“Yes? Good-bye, then, mother.”
He was gone, and Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who had had no intention of asking to see anyone but her niece, resentfully found herself ushered into the drawing-room.
Lady St. Craye trailed forward, appealingly pretty, with outstretched hand.
“How is Zella?”’ demanded Mrs. Lloyd-Evans without preliminary greeting. “I knew you would understand my coming straight round on hearing this sad news from my poor brother-in-law this morning, and of course it came as a shock. The Baronne was a very old friend of ours, and though, of course, she was over seventy, no one expected the end to be so near.”
“I’m so sorry,” murmured Lady St. Craye regretfully. “Do sit down, and of course Zella must be told you are here. I think she is in Alison’s sitting-room; they are great friends, you know.”
She ended with her habitual half-timid, little lingering smile.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans looked with reproachful eyes at the smile, and forcibly dragged the conversation back from this lighter vein by repeating wearily:
“One feels how true it is, that in the midst of life we are in death.”
“Was it quite unexpected?” hazarded Lady St. Craye.
“One knew it must come some day,” returned her guest with an air of prescience. “But she was really no worse than she had often been, with these bronchial attacks. Then quite suddenly my poor brother-in-law got a telegram from his sister saying that — well, it was really a curiously worded telegram. One hardly knows how to repeat it, except that one makes allowances for foreigners. But, of course, it is all very odd to our English reserve on those subjects.”
Lady St. Craye looked at her with wondering eyes.
“Yes!”
“I believe,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans mournfully, “that the telegram said she had received the Last Sacraments, such as they are, of the Roman Catholic Church. Of course one is glad she had the consolations of her religion at the end; but it was a strange thing to put in a telegram, especially when the post-office people at Villetswood naturally know my brother-in-law quite well, and all about his relations. And it seems to me very reckless to have done all that anointing to an old lady ill with bronchitis; I dare say, if one knew the truth, it was probably the last straw,” concluded Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, apparently with some confusion between the Last Sacraments of the Catholic Church and the ceremony of Baptism by immersion.
“Was that the only intimation, though?” asked Lady St. Craye after a slight pause.
“There was a second telegram, I believe, to say that she had passed away quite peacefully. Or, rather, since foreigners word these things very oddly, it just said that she had died that morning. Of course, poor Louis has gone straight over to Paris.”
“He must let Zella stay on with us,” said Lady St. Craye warmly. “She is a perfect darling, and so pretty.”
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans recalled her hostess, by a grieved look, to the fact that such a remark ill-befitted the occasion.
Before Lady St. Craye could think of a more suitable one, Zella came in.
Her appearance hardly justified the suppressed emotion with which Mrs. Lloyd-Evans clasped her for a long moment with a sub-audible “My poor child!”
Zella had not been affected very deeply by the death of the old Baronne. It seemed perfectly natural to her that her grandmother, whom she regarded as aged in the extreme, should die, and her sympathy for pauvre tante Stephanie had found ample vent in the graceful wording of a very prettily turned lettre de condoleance. Even her father’s loss did not present itself to her as very real or vivid, since she knew that only youth can plumb the depths of suffering or attain to the heights of happiness, and that a capacity for feeling vanishes with the early twenties, leaving a matter-of-fact attitude of acceptance in its stead. From this point of view, therefore, Zella had felt in no way disposed to admit of interference with the pleasantly self-absorbed train of thought induced in her by the St. Craye household, and in the depths of her heart regarded the advent of death as an ill-timed intrusion.
She had communicated her loss to Alison and her mother with a mingling of slight awe and chastened grief, but laying stress upon the lapse of years since she had seen the Baronne, and even feeling slightly struck by her own candour in not affecting a conventional grief which she could not feel.
Lady St. Craye had been affectionately sympathetic, and, on learning that Louis did not wish his daughter to accompany him to Paris, had warmly begged her to remain with her for the present, and neither she nor Alison had appeared to expect any excessive display of sorrow on the part of their visitor.
Consequently, it was with no sensations of gratitude that Zella heard the low, grief-stricken accents of her Aunt Marianne pouring out a consoling stream of resignation and tender reminiscences in Lady St. Craye’s drawing-room.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had had time to say, “In the midst of life we are in death, darling, and one feels that this must remind you of those sad, sad days at Villetswood when your dear mother was taken from us Aunt Marianne could not help coming to you, dear, knowing how one feels these things at you
r age, or, indeed, at any age; for, as you know, it is a great grief to Uncle Henry and Aunt Marianne, too,” before, to Zella’s intense relief, Lady St. Craye slipped out of the room, murmuring that she knew Mrs. Lloyd-Evans and Zella would like a little talk together, and that, of course, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans must stay to luncheon. Without other spectators, Zella felt more able to cope with the role that was evidently assigned her.
She even shed a few quiet tears after Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had said with mild surprise: “You look better than I expected, dear, for I know it must have been a shock to you.”
But it was no small relief to her when the peal of Swiss cow-bells, substituted by Alison for a gong, clanged through the house, and she exclaimed with a good deal more eagerness than she had meant to put into her voice: “There’s luncheon, Aunt Marianne. You are staying, aren’t you?”
Aunt Marianne gave a little start, as of one suddenly recalled from another plane, and for a moment Zella feared that her bereavement came under the heading of those in which “one does not think of one’s own health or comfort, dear, and food would be impossible “; but Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, after a moment’s debate with herself, apparently decided otherwise.
“Come then, Zella dear,” she said resignedly. “One does not want to disappoint poor Lady St. Craye or hurt her feelings, and I dare say she meant very kindly in asking me to stay for luncheon.”
Perhaps Lady St. Craye thought her kindness excessive, for luncheon was a cheerless meal. Zella was as self-conscious as youth always is in the combined presence of friends and relations, to each of whom she had half unconsciously presented a totally different aspect of herself, and Mrs. Lloyd-Evans determinedly led the conversation into a depressed minor key and sustained it there.
Alison, to whom unpunctuality at meals always symbolized a victory of the spirit over the flesh, came in twenty minutes late, just as Mrs. Lloyd-Evans observed dejectedly:
“No, thank you, nothing cold. One must be reasonable and eat, of course, and I am very glad dear little Zella is so sensible, but it does go against the grain at such a time.”
Zella, who had been flattering herself that her very modest helping of chicken came fully within the limits allowed by grief, coloured angrily, and felt bound to refuse the cold tongue which she would have liked.
“Here is Alison!” exclaimed Lady St. Craye in the glad tone in which she always acclaimed her daughter’s entry.
Alison looked repression at her mother, shook hands from the elevation of her five foot ten inches with Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, and laid a kindly patronizing hand on Zella’s shoulder as she passed to her place.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans’s gloom did not allow of any further concession to social conventions than an unsmiling inclination of the head, and she pursued the mournful tenor of her conversational way unmoved by Alison’s hostile gaze.
“One feels,” she observed, absently crumbling her bread, “that it is all so sad for the poor daughter. One ought really to pity those that are left, not those that are gone, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” said Lady St. Craye gently, and looking down at the table.
“There is no such thing as death,” said Alison, in a voice made carefully matter-of-fact.
Zella wished rather uncomfortably that she did not know the writings of Maeterlinck to be Alison’s most recent discovery.
“That would be a most impious thought if it was held in earnest,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans firmly, “when we are distinctly told, both by a Higher Authority and by the sad things we see all round us every day, that in the midst of life we are in death.”
“Ah, your grand old prophets left many phrases of that sort to survive them; but we of to-day have learnt to read a deeper, truer meaning into their words, have we not?” said Alison, smiling at Zella as at a soul of similar enlightenment.
Zella was aware with what feelings Mrs. Lloyd-Evans would view a declaration that her niece read a deeper and truer meaning into the Scriptures than had originally been infused there, and was thankful to Lady St. Craye for sparing her the necessity of a reply.
“Have you seen that very charming play of Maeterlinck’s, I wonder? I am sure that is what Alison was thinking of—’ The Blue Bird.’ And there is a pretty idea running through it that”
“My dear mother,” Alison ruthlessly interrupted, “Maeterlinck’s children’s play was pretty enough — though I consider it no compliment to use such an adjective, since personally I abhor prettiness — but do not suppose for an instant that he has done more than voice the theory which all serious thinkers of the present generation must hold: there is no such thing as death.”
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans fixed Alison with a calmly hostile eye.
“Young people nowadays very often say that sort of thing, which sounds clever, and are attracted by that sort of free-thinking idea; but when you have entered into the realities of life it will all seem very different. I remember quite well, when I was a child, actually thinking that I should like to experience a great sorrow — little knowing how in after-life I dare say I was an original child — I know I used to think a great deal; and I dare say that is why I understand young people so well now, since I remember the queer ideas in my own little brain. Young people never realize what sorrow is till they have experienced it, and that is why I always say that experience is the best teacher. Don’t you think, Lady St. Craye, that when these girls are a little older, and really know what life is, it will all seem quite different to them?”
Lady St. Craye, who justly surmised that only her daughter’s stupefaction at the impeachment of youthfulness, and hearing her theories compared to the queer ideas of Mrs. Lloyd-Evans’s own little brain in the days of her childhood, kept her silent, rose hurriedly before the storm should have time to burst verbally.
“Let us have coffee upstairs; it is so much cooler in the drawing-room.”
As she passed Alison’s chair, where the outraged Miss St. Craye still sat as though turned to stone, she whispered beseechingly:
“Don’t smoke, dearest, please; I am sure it would shock her dreadfully.”
“Nothing shall induce me to come into the drawingroom at all,” said Alison through her teeth, “until that woman has left it.”
Lady St. Craye meekly followed her unpopular visitor upstairs. In the drawing-room a telegram was brought to Zella.
“Not again,” murmured Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, one hand making a vague movement towards the region of her heart.
It not being clear whether the aspiration expressed a protest at the idea of a second demise on the part of the Baronne, and the contingency appearing, to say the least of it, a remote one, Lady St. Craye wisely remained silent while Zella tore open the yellow envelope.
She flushed as with a sudden emotion while reading it, but merely said, “There is no answer, thank you.”
An expression of such mild determination came over Mrs. Lloyd-Evans’s face as the servant left the room that Lady St. Craye hastily rose and glided downstairs with a murmur about looking for Alison.
Upon which Mrs. Lloyd-Evans laid her hand on Zella’s, and said tenderly:
“Darling, I know very well I need not tell you that Aunt Marianne has no wish to pry, and no one has less curiosity about other people. But one thing you must tell me. There is no bad news about poor papa? I am so much afraid of his breaking down.”
“Oh no; he had a very good journey, and arrived last night in Paris.”
“Then, your telegram is from him, dear?”
“Yes,” said Zella reluctantly.
“Very well, Zella dear. I am glad you have heard; I have been very, very anxious for news myself,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with a shade of reserve in her manner, and withdrawing the hand laid upon Zella’s. “You would know better, I am quite certain, than to make petty mysteries without reason if you had any real news.”
She smiled so resignedly that Zella, always dominated by Aunt Marianne’s kindness, handed over the telegram, murmuring weakly:
“Of course it is not p
rivate from you, Aunt Marianne.”
“I felt sure it could not be, dear; your father and I have no secrets from one another. But, remember, I do not ask to see this, dear child,” said her aunt, putting on her glasses and unfolding the telegram. “It must be exactly as you like. Just pull up the blind a little, dear; it is so dark I can hardly see to read.”
She perused the message, which was a long one.
“Shall he ask your Aunt Stephanie to make her home at Villetswood?” she murmured. “Why telegraph to you about that, dear? Surely a letter would have done as well; indeed, it seems to me very soon to be thinking about that sort of arrangement at all. But I see the answer is prepaid.”
“Yes,” said Zella unwillingly. “I must send it this afternoon, but there is no hurry.”
She was far from sure of her own wishes, and had no desire to hear Aunt Marianne’s advice.
But she was not to escape.
“Well, dear, since poor papa has telegraphed like this, I think you must send back a nice affectionate answer to say how glad you will be. Of course he must have settled it already, but I dare say he thought a kind message from you would be a comfort just now. So often a little thing is a comfort, in grief. People don’t always realize that. I think you could get quite a nice little message into a few words. Let us see.... The address takes up six words, so that only leaves us five, and one for your name at the end. How would it do:’ Delighted to see dear Aunt Stephanie Villetswood ‘? Only, that’s one word too many, and yet one doesn’t quite like to take out the ‘ dear.’”
“Aunt Marianne,” said Zella rather desperately, “I am not sure that I do want Tante Stephanie to live with us.”
“Then, darling, it is very selfish of you. Besides, it is probably all settled.”
I think papa really meant me to decide.”
“No, dear; you are too young to decide such a thing,” said her aunt with immutable firmness. “There is no question of deciding, but I feel sure that poor papa hopes you will send a cordial, affectionate message to poor Aunt Stephanie in her sorrow. One does not think of oneself at a time of mourning like this.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 24