Things had been very different for her. Grandpapa was very strict with all his children, and Grandmamma thought nothing of giving her daughter a good whipping from time to time. How would Lily like to be shut up in her bedroom on bread and water, after receiving a hearty box on the ears, because she could not say her Duty to her Neighbour?
“Never,” said Eleanor emphatically, “never have I laid a finger upon either of you.”
The stories of Grandpapa’s severity were terrible, and so far removed from anything in Lily’s experience was his system of blows and deprivations that sometimes, in the depths of her heart, she found herself wondering if all the stories could be perfectly true?
She stifled the disloyal thought, suppressing it. Suppression was in fact the only recognized method for dealing with any and every form of naughtiness.
It was naughty, obviously, since it was forbidden, for Lily and Yvonne to buy sweets.
“You don’t want to spend your money on nasty, cheap sweets, my dear children” was Philip’s fashion of discouraging a propensity to which he himself happened never to have been liable.
Yvonne and Lily did want to spend their money on buying the sweets very often, but they were successfully debarred from doing so by the unpleasant conviction that the wish, for some quite unexplained reason, was something degrading and to be concealed with shame.
Even expensive chocolates, occasionally bestowed by visitors, were kept in the drawing-room and decorously handed round after tea when the children came downstairs.
“Don’t they want to take them upstairs and finish the box in the nursery?” jovial Cousin Charlie Hardinge had once enquired, looking on with surprise.
“Oh dear no, this is quite an old-established custom. They like this way of doing it, don’t you, Lily my pet?”
“Yes,” said Lily, smiling happily.
She was far too responsive not to know instinctively just how terribly hurt and disconcerted Father and Mother would have been if she had answered otherwise.
Vonnie was at once less intuitive and more honest. But then she was very seldom appealed to, and even when both were impartially addressed, it was always Lily who made reply, partly from the old instinct of safeguarding Vonnie. It was so certain that Vonnie would blindly sacrifice Father’s and Mother’s feelings to her own truthfulness, and find herself in tacit disgrace thereby!
Lily herself seldom made such mistakes, although one or two terrible lapses stood out in her memory for years, as being amongst the worst and most devastating naughtinesses of a childhood that was perpetually haunted by a sense of uncomprehended sin.
There was the time when she had suddenly, and most disastrously, found courage to protest against the appellation of “little pet,” that was bestowed upon her, so she considered, in and out of season.
“I’m not so very little,” said Lily at nine years old, “and I’m not a pet when I’m being naughty. You say ‘my little pet’ even when you’re scolding me.”
“Lily! When did I ever scold you?”
Eleanor’s tone was heart-rending, and she entirely disregarded the point at issue.
Not so her husband, frowning heavily.
“That’s not at all a good way of talking,” said he — and very nearly added, “my little pet.” The consciousness of checking himself gave an additional force to his pained tones. “You will always be our little Lily, and God has given you kind and loving parents, and you are insulting Him when you jeer like that at things which ought to be sacred to you.”
The magnitude of the indictment, no less than the sorrowful silence maintained for the rest of the evening by both her parents, reduced Lily to tears and a sense of crushing disgrace.
Things were always worse when God became involved in them — and besides, there was the earache menace if He grew angry.
But in that respect, God had stayed His hand of late. Lily, however, put no confidence in this forbearance, and felt herself thoroughly justified of her distrust when, quite suddenly, Vonnie fell ill.
At first, there was no such prolonged misery involved in this calamity as in one of the dreaded earache nights, and Lily was more surprised and gratified than rendered anxious, when Vonnie’s bed was taken out of the night nursery and placed in the dressing-room adjoining Mother’s room, whilst Father and his bed went away into the Blue Room.
She spent a whole Sunday afternoon with Vonnie, and they played a long, quiet, interminable game, involving the recital of low-voiced and mysterious stories by Lily, and sleepy, pleased acquiescent nods and murmurs from Vonnie. She did not seem very ill, and Lily was allowed to kiss her, which was usually forbidden in times of illness because “it might be catching.”
“Good-night, Vonnie. We’ll play some more tomorrow.”
“Oh yes, I shall be quite well to-morrow.”
They kissed one another.
When to-morrow came, however, Lily learnt, for the most part indirectly from the servants’ talk amongst themselves, that Vonnie had become much worse during the night. The doctor had actually been sent for before breakfast.
“Has she got earache?” asked Lily, feeling very much frightened and voicing the deepest fear that she knew.
“You run along, Miss Lily, and don’t ask questions,” said the parlour-maid. “Your Mamma particularly said as no one was to frighten you.”
As usual, Eleanor, solicitously guarding her darling from others, had made no allowance for Lily’s powers of cither induction or imagination.
Miss Cleeve came as usual, but she sent Lily out of the room while she had a short conversation with the housemaid, bringing up some coals.
Lily felt convinced that Clara was telling Miss Cleeve something about Vonnie.
“What’s the matter with Vonnie? When can I go and see her?” she asked instantly on being readmitted.
“Dear me, what an imperious little person this is!” said Miss Cleeve very brightly indeed. “Gently, gently, Lily, if you please. If you do your lessons very nicely and are a good little girl, perhaps you’ll go and sec Vonnie later on. We shall see.”
Miss Cleeve looked very wise and very decided, and Lily distrusted her violently.
“Why haven’t I seen Mother this morning?”
“She’s busy, dear.”
“But Nurse is with Vonnie too. Is Vonnie so very, very ill?”
“Ha, ha!” said Miss Cleeve with a laugh that rang singularly untrue. “What a silly little girl to talk like that, now! Come and sit down, and you shall choose which lesson you’d like to begin with, for a treat.”
Miss Cleeve’s brightness and Miss Cleeve’s treats inspired Lily with a sickening sense of fear.
She was kept in the schoolroom all the morning, and when she and Miss Cleeve went downstairs to luncheon, Miss Cleeve held her hand with unnecessary tightness all the way. But Lily was alert, and she saw the doctor’s little carriage going away down the drive from the window of the hall, and she also saw her mother standing, with head uncovered at the front door, and her mother did not look at all as usual.
Lily wrenched her hand away from Miss Cleeve’s and ran to her.
“Can’t I see Vonnie?” she cried urgently.
Her mother kissed her silently.
“I hope?” said Miss Cleeve hesitatingly.
There was an interchange of glances between the two grown women that the child’s strained, anxious gaze sought desperately to interpret.
“Is Vonnie very ill, Mother?”
“There’s nothing for you to worry your little self about, my darling.” said Eleanor in a soothing voice, kissing her again.
A choking sense of her own impotence, resentment at their futile evasions, and above all a growing horror of all this mystery, made Lily burst into loud, unrestrained crying.
“Hush!” cried Miss Cleeve sharply, pulling her into the dining-room.
“Lily, Lily,” said her mother. “Oh don’t, my little pet.”
She sank into a chair, looking overwhelmed.
“My dear child,” said her father, suddenly emerging from the embrasure of the dining-room window, “you mustn’t add to your mother’s troubles just now. You must be a good little girl, and not think of yourself at all. Do your little lessons, and play about in the sunshine, and don’t give any trouble, but be a good, happy little child.”
It all sounded very kind and easy. The flood of misery that overwhelmed one must be some form of obscure, but extreme, naughtiness.
Luncheon was eaten almost in silence, and Eleanor went away before it was finished, stroking Lily’s long brown hair as she passed behind her chair.
“Play in the garden this afternoon,” she whispered, “and Mother will try and come to you in the drawingroom after tea.”
Then a telegram was brought in and Philip, after reading it, said to the parlour-maid:
“The carriage will be wanted to meet the 3.30 train this afternoon. Tell Fowler.”
Miss Cleeve looked up and said: “Is it?” and raised her eyebrows.
“Yes. A second opinion will be a relief to us, though I’m afraid” He checked himself.
Lily, not daring to glance at them, knew very well that it was because of her that they left all their sentences unfinished.
“Probably a trained nurse, if he recommends it” said her father, very low and rapidly.
What was a Train-Nurse?
Miss Cleeve went away, as usual on Saturdays, as soon as lunch was finished, saying warningly to Lily: “Now mind you go and play in the terrace garden as your mother told you. I think I should stay on the nice front terrace all the afternoon, if I were you. It’ll be nice and sunny there.”
“Yes, Miss Cleeve,” said Lily forlornly.
There was probably something to be seen or heard from the other part of the garden, overlooking the drive, that they did not want her to know about.
In spite of this conviction, however, Lily went to the terrace, and looked up at the windows of the room where Vonnie was.
The blinds of both windows were drawn down so as to admit the least possible light into the bedroom and there was nothing to be learnt. Lily went into the potting- shed and sat there in the obscurity and cried.
She heard two of the servants walking down the path outside, as though on their way to the stables, and caught fragmentary words and phrases.... “It’s awful — so quick, too.”
“That’s the way with tumours... don’t you remember me telling you about my poor Aunt Gertie .. just the same way it was.”
“Why, they may have to operate...”
“They say the pain’s cruel... and for a poor little child, too!”
Lily put her fingers in her ears and cast herself upon the ground.
It was Vonnie they were talking about, and they said the pain was cruel — and no one would tell her anything, or let her go to Vonnie.
“I wish I was dead, oh, I wish I was dead!” sobbed Lily.
A child with an intense capacity for feeling can suffer to a degree that is beyond any degree of adult suffering, because imagination, ignorance, and the conviction of utter helplessness are untempered either by reason or by experience. Nothing in all Lily’s life ever again held for her the bitterness of that afternoon in the potting-shed, when she had been sent out to be a good, happy little child, and play about in the sunshine.
After a long while, the housemaid Clara came and called her, and exclaimed with compassion at the sight of her when she appeared.
“Are you missing poor Miss Vonnie? There, never mind, dear, come along in now and have your tea.”
Clara had tea with her instead of Nurse, and was very kind, and Lily, unable to cry any more, felt dumbly grateful to her and did not ask any of those questions which she felt sure that Clara would somehow contrive not to answer.
“Come and wash your face before you go downstairs,” said Clara encouragingly, “so that your Mamma won’t think you’ve been crying.”
But Lily’s mother was not in the drawing-room, when she went there with the traces of her tears carefully removed.
Her father was reading and he greeted Lily in a grave, depressed way, and told her to look at a picture-book. They sat in silence for what seemed a very long time. Lily only spoke once, and then she said quite suddenly:
“Father, please, what is a tumour?”
Philip cast a startled look at her, that added to the effect of rebuke in his shocked reply:
“Hush, hush, my child. That will do. You must not ask questions like that, you know.”
Lily was conscious that he looked furtively and uneasily at her at intervals during the remainder of the evening.
“Shall I see Mother?” she asked wistfully when she went to bed.
“I will ask her to come and say good-night to you.” Waiting in bed for the redemption of this promise, Lily grew frightened again, and pictured Vonnie victimized by some terrible and magnified form of earache, wondering miserably why Lily had not come to play with her again, or at least to kiss her good-night.
She cried again, and dozed, and at intervals murmured some angry, urgently worded formula addressed to God, because her father had said to her very gravely that she must say her prayers, and ask God to bless everybody — Father and Mother and Vonnie. Lily had understood that he would not seem to attach special importance to Vonnie’s need, by naming her only.
It was the middle of the night when she woke with a sudden start, and a new, compelling sense of terror.
Instinctively, she sprang, trembling, out of bed and groped her way to the door. There were lights and subdued voices without, and Lily ran out on to the stairs in her night-gown and caught at her mother’s person. Dazed by the light and her own violent wakening from a heavy sleep, Lily hardly knew what happened next, or how she was taken back to her bed again.
But it was her mother who knelt by the bedside, with tears streaming down her face.
“Oh! Tell me what’s happened?” said Lily. “Is it Vonnie?”
She did not know what it was that she feared.
“You oughtn’t to know — I never meant you to be told till morning” Eleanor was sobbing violently.
“What can I say? — God — she’s very happy with God, darling — gone to heaven.”
Amongst the disjointed words, Lily suddenly caught a flash of meaning.
“Is Vonnie dead?” she asked incredulously.
“Hush!” cried Eleanor in a sort of stifled shriek. But her head bent itself in assent.
Then Vonnie wasn’t unhappy, wasn’t ill — would never be cither again, but always happy and well! It was like a dream come true.
Lily, after the long misery of the day, felt nothing but a rush of relief and comfort at the knowledge that Vonnie was dead.
The relief which is the outcome of a violent emotional reaction, however, cannot be expected to endure.
In any case, even had Lily not awakened to a changed world, in which she hourly missed Yvonne, the inseparable companion of all her nursery days, Philip Stellenthorpe could never have rested content until the strange callousness manifested by his younger daughter had been explained away. “The want of realization of a little, sheltered child,” he forbearingly called it.
But it had shocked him, all the same.
Whilst Eleanor was only blindly anxious to shield Lily from any fright or grief, where she herself considered that fright or grief might threaten, Philip was unable to refrain from exacting the due meed of conventionality that he took for a tribute to Yvonne’s memory.
Yvonne’s belongings disappeared mysteriously, and one day when Lily asked if she mightn’t have Vonnie’s paintbox now, her father, overhearing her, was gravely displeased.
“My dear child,” said he, “you don’t want to be a heartless little girl, do you?”
Lily did not want to be a heartless little girl at all, and still less did she want to be called one. Therefore she did not attempt to restrain showers of pitiful tears whenever she missed Vonnie most, and to cry in church whenever she saw her m
other doing so.
After a time. Philip and Eleanor ceased to speak of Vonnie at all, although a great many photographs of her now pervaded the drawing-room and Eleanor’s dressing- table.
It soon became impossible for Lily to connect the object of so much that was in reality a kind of exploited sacredness, with the real Vonnie whose impotent champion she had been, to whom she had always been preferred against her will, who had been of so little significance save to Lily herself, in her tiny world during her short lifetime.
The Yvonne of the photographs, of Mother’s occasional Sunday evening low-voiced talks, of Father’s still more occasional, solemnly mournful references, gradually acquired a meaning for Lily, albeit a purely sentimental one, that had nothing to do with Vonnie, whom she really only remembered, after a little while, in occasional vivid flashes.
Nevertheless it was actually many years before, at the most casual mention of a cold east wind, Lily ceased to feel a sudden irrational rush of sheer jubilant triumph, because the east wind could never give Vonnie earache any more.
III
“There are some gypsies on the common, Father.”
“Are there, my pet? You and Miss Cleeve had better keep to the road, for the present, then. Very likely they have illness about. Those people are not very careful.”
“There was such a thin little boy. He looked as though he didn’t get much to eat,” said Lily tentatively.
“Well, well, my darling, we’ll hope he does. Did you find any blackberries on your walk this morning?”
“Only a few. They’re not yet ripe. But, Father.”
Lily was ten years old, and nowadays when she saw that her father and mother were deliberately evading a subject upon which she desired information, something that seemed stronger than herself drove her on to urge the point, with an affectation of being unaware of their disapproval.
“Do you think that little boy was really starving, perhaps?”
“No, no, my child.” Philip moved uneasily and glanced at his wife. “People don’t starve in England nowadays.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 188