Louis wondered rather grimly what adjectives Mrs. Lloyd-Evans would have selected had her desire been to wound.
“But this is beside the point,” she resumed with renewed briskness of utterance.
“Zella is not even engaged, nor likely to be at this rate, which is what I really wanted to speak to you about.”
“She is very young,” said Louis dreamily. “Of course, in time, some suitable arrangement”
He was sufficiently of a Frenchman to feel that some suitable arrangement might well prove to be for his daughter’s ultimate happiness.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans disapprovingly formulated the thought into words.
“That is one of those very foreign ideas that one hoped was dying out,” she observed rather severely. “A mariage de convenance can never be a success; and the idea of young people marrying without love is terrible. How can you even suggest it, Louis! The most important question any woman can ever be called upon to decide....”
“To my mind that is a fallacy. The most important question differs for almost every one of us: why should it always be assumed that marriage must be the thing that really matters most? Only the privileged can say that marriage has been the one supreme fact in life; to most of us it is merely an incident.”
The scandalized Mrs. Lloyd-Evans for once found herself positively deprived of utterance.
“The conventions forbid us to acknowledge it,” observed Louis, apparently talking to the flowers in the Park, “but it is perfectly true.”
“No one can be less conventional than I am, Louis, as you very well know; but when it comes to these terrible Continental ideas of Free Love and things, I — I have simply nothing to say.”
She said it at considerable length, and concluded:
“And when all this is applied to an innocent child like Zella, one almost feels as though poor dear Esmee must rise from the grave, as it were.”
The mention of Esmee’s name succeeded in silencing Louis at once, and Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with characteristic perseverance, returned to her original theme:
“Besides, one does want to see the child happily settled. Look at my Muriel — who could be happier? A devoted husband, a really thoroughly good man to take care of her, and a charming home of her very own.”
Louis being a gentleman, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans refrained from mentioning Muriel’s most recent cause for rejoicing, which would not for some months to come form part of that strictly limited multitude of things which may be freely talked about.
“I am glad she is so happy,” said Louis gently.
“She is indeed, and I don’t wonder it makes you wish Zella were the same. But she will enjoy a little gaiety this summer, and, after all, a girl must have her youth and a little fun before she settles down. But I do not advise a London season, Louis; indeed, it is almost too late to think of it this year. And, besides, that is not the thing.”
Her mysterious emphasis almost hypnotized Louis.
“A country-house is really what one wants. Let a man see a girl in her own home, pouring out tea and doing little odd jobs in the house and garden — you know exactly the sort of thing I mean, and how one gets to know one another really well, staying in the same house, far better than just meeting at a dance or a dinner-party here and there.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said the fascinated Louis, walking faster and faster to keep up with his sister-in-law’s excited pace.
“I am very, very glad that we see it all in the same light, dear Louis, but you and I always understand one another. And a little house-party at Villetswood just about the end of July will be delightful. I don’t know what you think about dates?”
With a sense of fatality, Louis resigned himself.
“You had better settle it all with Zella — and my sister, of course — since you are so kind, Marianne. I should like James to come down, you know.”
“Thank you, Louis; then I will bring him. That will be very nice. I think Zella might ask one or two of her own friends; and James shall bring a friend from Oxford, if he may.”
“Oh, certainly.”
“Louis, it is just as I said to Henry this morning. You only need rousing. Henry said to me that he knew just how it was. You shut yourself up in your study and forget all about everything, but the moment one puts it before you in the right light, there you are.”
Louis wondered what conclusion she thought she had reached.
“And here is Sloane Street,” exclaimed Mrs. Lloyd-Evans in an introductory tone. There indeed was Sloane Street.
“I hope I have my key safely in my little bag. I always think that in London one never knows, which is why I twist the strap round my wrist like that. Louis, I will write to you about plans. I have several — several,” repeated Mrs. Lloyd-Evans abstractedly as she fumbled in her little bag.
Louis felt oddly dismayed.
“Yes, do write to me,” he said; “and we shall be very glad to see you and Henry any time you can come — and James, of course.”
“Thank you very much. It is so good of you to have listened to all my little schemes,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who had carefully refrained from mentioning them.
“I am more than grateful to you for thinking so much of Zella’s future,” returned Louis with a Frenchman’s almost mechanical courtesy.
“Then,” exclaimed Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with an air of suppressed triumph that irresistibly reminded Louis of a conjurer suddenly producing a hitherto concealed rabbit— “then I may ask poor Mr. Pontisbury?”
Louis very nearly exclaimed, “I knew it!” but demanded instead:
“And who, in the name of fortune, is poor Mr. Pontisbury, Marianne?”
“I do not know why I call him poor, for he is very well off indeed, and a really nice man. He admired Zella very much at Muriel’s wedding, and is most anxious to meet her again. I did tell him that I would try and arrange something,” said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with an air of abstraction, and trying to look as though she did not remember having definitely assured Mr. Pontisbury that he should receive an invitation to Villetswood in the course of the summer.
“But who is he?” gloomily demanded Louis.
“The eldest son of Sir Charles Pontisbury. Yorkshire people. They have a most delightful place near Harrogate, and this boy has only two sisters, both of them married. They are a most charming family.”
“What sort of age is he?”
“Between twenty-seven and thirty, I should say, which I always think is just the right age for a man.”
On this cryptic assurance they arrived at the Lloyd-Evans’s flat.
“Good-bye, Louis; I won’t ask you to come in, as the servants went down to Boscombe to-day, and it is all most uncomfortable. But I will write and tell you as soon as I hear from James as to what date he can get away — and from Stephen Pontisbury, too,” added Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with a playful smile, and skilfully interposing the swinging glass door of the entrance hall between this assumption of an invitation to Mr. Pontisbury and any possible protest on the part of his prospective host.
Waving her hand brightly, she disappeared into the lift.
“Marianne is too much for me. I cannot cope with such diplomacy,” Louis said to himself as he walked away.
“Pontisbury! Ce nom-la ne me dit rien. That boy James was right: there is no romance left. If I had my time over again, and admired a pretty young lady, I should take steps of my own, and promptly too, towards meeting her; I should not be content to leave it to the manoeuvres of an ingenious aunt.”
Thus Louis, talking to himself after the fashion of a lonely man, in a manner that to the penetrating Mrs. Lloyd-Evans would have denoted nothing less than insanity.
The final conclusion he attained to was that poor Marianne was always finding mare’s-nests, and the possible intentions of Mr. Pontisbury need not be taken into consideration until he had given some tangible evidence of their existence.
While Mrs. Lloyd-Evans told her Henry, with some triumph, that she had a great many little
schemes for dear Zella’s happiness, all of which, under Providence, were now on the highroad to success; and, moreover, issued instructions to her Maker that same evening as to the further movements of Mr. Pontisbury. After which she was able to fall asleep in the comfortable security of having made assurance doubly sure.
Her triumph was not diminished when Mr. Pontisbury sent a civil if placid acceptance to the invitation which she eagerly despatched, with her brother-in-law’s reluctant sanction, for the last week in July.
Zella viewed these schemes for her entertainment with an indifference that was mostly real until a few days before the arrival of the house-party, when it became almost entirely simulated. Not altogether, since she had arrived at the stage of discovering Robert Louis Stevenson, and was absorbed in the cultivation of a new attitude of mind, which necessitated much outward and visible expression of the peace and courage within, in the shape of a bright, free smile and gaily courteous demeanour towards her fellow-creatures.
“The little one is egayee at the prospect of her birthday party,” said the guileless Stephanie to her brother, who replied that he rejoiced to hear that this was so, and would Stephanie see that Zella had any new frocks she might require?
“I want her to enjoy herself,” he said rather wistfully, “and I suppose all these people will amuse her.”
“But yes, Louis, and she likes her Cousin James,” shrewdly remarked Mdlle de Kervoyou; “of that I can assure you.”
“Tant mieux! You know that he and I are friends, though I am elderly and he is young — at all events in years. James is of an unusual personality; I look forward to seeing what he will make of life.”
“He is very different to the few specimens I have met of jeunesse anglais,” agreed Stephanie.
She looked up with one of the quietly intuitive remarks that occasionally surprised Louis:
“He should have been your son, Louis.”
“Yes, that is true,” he said with a quick sigh.
Then suddenly he laughed a little.
“How would it be if some day”
“Zella and he?”
Louis shrugged his shoulders.
“I do not know that it would answer. They are first cousins,” said Stephanie doubtfully.
“Yes; and, besides, think of Marianne as a mother-in-law!”
They both laughed a little.
“It is, at all events, not to be thought of yet. Zella is not ready for marriage at all,” said Mdlle de Kervoyou with quiet conviction.
She so seldom uttered an opinion that Louis looked up in surprise.
“She must not be brought into contact with anything so real, I mean, until she has learnt a little more about reality. Is it not so?”
“I think it is,” replied Louis rather grimly. “She has the dramatic temperament to excess, poor I had hoped that experience would teach her a little about relative values, self-control, and such trifles.”
“So it will,” placidly said his sister. “But I do not think that your James — forgive me, Louis — is the man to teach her. It would need one with infinite tolerance, experience, and intuition. I do not see James tolerant — yet.”
“Nor I,” Louis admitted with a short laugh. “But that will come. And, after all, at the moment I do not think that he is at all interested in individuals. It is all ideals, theories, and passionate convictions, with James at present.”
“Ah, jeunesse!” smiled Stephanie, half wistfully and half admiringly.
XXVI
Robert Louis Stevenson fell into abeyance. It was so abundantly clear that the cultivation of Robert Louis Stevenson was in no way necessary for the furthering of Mr. Pontisbury’s admiration — nay, might not impossibly detract from it.
Robert Louis Stevenson, after all, stood for an idea — to be quite accurate, for an attitude — though Zella did not admit this to herself; whereas the homage of Mr. Pontisbury was a gratifying fact that coloured Zella’s days, and brought her well into the limelight in full view of an admiring audience.
Zella’s lack of perspective was never more apparent than in the brilliant summer days before her birthday, when she acted as triumphant hostess to half a dozen people.
James brought his Oxford friend, having selected, with characteristic perversity and to the indignation of his mother, a penniless young man who could gain scholarships with ease, but could not play tennis.
Alison St. Craye, who had accepted Zella’s rather diffident invitation, determinedly sustained her character for unconventionality by demanding an invitation for her friend the Comte de St. Algers, and was accordingly followed by a small dark-eyed Frenchman who spoke half a dozen languages with equal facility, and sang French songs with incredible verve and admirable discrimination.
And Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, warmly as she disapproved of almost every guest in the house, could afford to patronize the Comte, repress Alison with gentle firmness, and put James’s friend in his place — a socially ignominious one — with perfect politeness, in the triumphant success of her schemes for Zella’s welfare.
Providence had ably seconded her efforts, and Stephen Pontisbury had definitely fallen in love with Zella, From his height of six foot one, in a strange aloof way that was most oddly characteristic of the man, he had fallen in love with Zella’s brown hair, her pretty, delicate face, and her ready adaptability, which he instantly and irrevocably mistook for an intellectual affinity with himself.
Zella admired his physique, which was magnificent, knew that he must be of those who Understand (with a capital U) when he told her that they had met one another in a former life, and enjoyed the outward and visible signs of his devotion the more for the half-dozen spectators to whom she was the central figure on her little stage.
Stephen told her a good deal about his boyhood, and so little about his manhood, and that little in tones of such skilfully indicated cynicism, that Zella knew instantly that he needed a woman in his life.
“Given that one is fearless and strong-willed, there is such a thing as influence,” said Zella to herself.
The influence of a mother and two adoring sisters she naturally discounted.
“My relations, after the manner of relations, do not understand me,” Stephen told her, sitting on the terrace one evening. “I was horribly lonely as a child; I remember talking to the moon, from the window of my nursery, when I was a small kid. More congenial than the people inside, I suppose.” He gave a curt laugh, slightly bitter.
Zella looked up at him with expressive, sympathetic grey eyes.
“Tell me what you used to say to the moon when you were small,” she said softly.
“Oh, a lonely child’s fancies, I suppose.” He threw away his unfinished cigarette with an abrupt gesture of dismissal, and accidentally caught his knuckles on the edge of the step where he sat.
“(Confound!) You can imagine the sort of thing, I dare say — needn’t put it into words.” He flapped his injured hand to and fro behind his back.
“One knows,” Zella murmured gently; “I was very lonely too.”
Perhaps the last words were so softly spoken that Mr.Pontisbury did not hear them. At all events, he began to recapitulate the thoughts of his solitary infancy in abrupt, almost saccades phrases for Zella’s benefit.
“Wondering if anybody would ever care to understand a little chap of my sort, I suppose. The others were, somehow, so awfully different, don’t you know; absolute dears, my sisters, both of them, but just thinking about their lessons, and dolls, and being good little girls, you know — just as now they think about their housekeeping and their babies... they’ve never grown up, I sometimes think. Why, I believe at ten years old I was older than they are now.”
“Some children are like that.”
“By Jove, it’s wonderful how you understand! Why didn’t you and I know each other sooner, I wonder — just so that we could have lent one another a hand at the bad bits — though, I expect, I’ve known more of those than you have,” he added, looking tenderly at
her drooping profile.
Zella, not altogether flattered by the implication that only sheltered ways had been hers, chose to ignore the latter part of his speech, but answered the former by a graceful, expressive French gesture, the merest hint of shrugged shoulders and extended palms.
“Fate, I suppose,” she murmured.
“That’s it,” said Stephen with conviction. “Fate.” He repeated the word thoughtfully, as though he had been searching for it. “Fate’s always been against me, somehow. As a boy I used to think I’d make a fine thing of my life — fame and glory, don’t you know, all that sort of romantic day-dream.”
“I know,” said Zella eagerly. “One plans splendid adventures, and always oneself as the hero or heroine. And I’ve always wondered if anybody else did that too.”
“I expect so. Anyhow, I did. I expect that’s one reason why we understand one another so well.”
He looked at her, and Zella’s subconscious self noted with satisfaction that her heart was beating a shade faster than usual.
“I believe in affinities, don’t you? Not that I’ve met mine — yet,” he added with a short laugh and a sideglance which Zella saw without raising her eyes.
“I once thought I had, for a little while, and lived in a fool’s paradise.”
“I know,” gently said Zella, who didn’t.
“It’s beastly egotistical of me really, I expect, to go on jawing about my own concerns like this. Do forgive me. It’s the worst of being born a reserved sort of chap, that sooner or later there’s bound to be a reaction. Breaking point, I suppose.”
Zella lifted sympathetic grey eyes to Stephen’s cold steel-blue ones, which could only express two emotions — complacency or discontent. For the moment the latter was in the ascendant.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?” she inquired with a pleasing sense of daring. “I — I think, somehow, that I should understand.”
“You’d always understand,” uttered Stephen emotionally.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 27