Collected Works of E M Delafield Read online

  The Collected Works of

  E. M. DELAFIELD

  (1890-1943)

  Contents

  The Novels

  ZELLA SEES HERSELF

  THE WAR WORKERS

  THE PELICANS

  CONSEQUENCES

  TENSION

  THE HEEL OF ACHILLES

  HUMBUG

  THE OPTIMIST

  MRS. HARTER

  MESSALINA OF THE SUBURBS

  THE WAY THINGS ARE

  DIARY OF A PROVINCIAL LADY

  CHALLENGE TO CLARISSA

  THANK HEAVEN FASTING

  THE PROVINCIAL LADY GOES FURTHER

  GAY LIFE

  THE PROVINCIAL LADY IN AMERICA

  FASTER! FASTER!

  NOTHING IS SAFE

  THE PROVINCIAL LADY IN WARTIME

  NO ONE NOW WILL KNOW

  LATE AND SOON

  The Shorter Fiction

  THE PHILISTINE: A STORY

  WOMEN ARE LIKE THAT

  LOVE HAS NO RESURRECTION AND OTHER STORIES

  The Short Stories

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Play

  TO SEE OURSELVES

  The Non-Fiction

  GENERAL IMPRESSIONS

  PEOPLE YOU LOVE

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2016

  Version 1

  The Collected Works of

  E. M. DELAFIELD

  By Delphi Classics, 2016

  COPYRIGHT

  Collected Works of E. M. Delafield

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2016.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  ISBN: 9781786560490

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

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  The Novels

  Steyning, a small rural town and civil parish in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England — Delafield’s birthplace

  ZELLA SEES HERSELF

  E. M. Delafield was born in Steyning, West Sussex. She was the elder daughter of Count Henry Philip Ducarel de la Pasture, of Llandogo Priory, Monmouthshire, and Elizabeth Lydia Rosabelle, daughter of Edward William Bonham, who as Mrs Henry de la Pasture was also a well-known novelist. The pen name Delafield was a thin disguise suggested by her sister Yoe. After Count Henry died, her mother married Sir Hugh Clifford GCMG, who governed the colonies of the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Ceylon and the Malay States.

  At the outbreak of World War I, Delafield worked as a nurse in a Voluntary Aid Detachment in Exeter, under the formidable command of Georgiana Buller (daughter of a general who held the Victoria Cross, and later a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire). Delafield’s first novel, Zella Sees Herself, was written while she was posted in Exeter and published in 1917. The eponymous character serves time in a convent in Rome, based on Delafield’s own experiences as a novice nun. The narrative features an array of unusual and lively characters — a feature that would come to dominate all of Delafield’s novels, offering a rich and intriguing study of varying personalities.

  The first edition’s title page

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  I.

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  PROLOGUE

  The French window of the dining-room at Villetswood stood wide open, disclosing a glittering perspective of white cloth laden with silver and flowers and gilt candlesticks crowned by pink shades.

  Gisele de Kervoyou, aged seven, balanced herself on one foot upon the threshold of the window.

  She was gazing eagerly at the beautiful, gleaming vista, repeated in the great mirror at the far end of the room. With a gesture that was essentially un-English, the child shrugged her shoulders together, stepped very daintily into the dining-room, and approached the table. Her dark grey eyes were narrowed together, her head thrown back as though to catch any possible sound, and she moved as gracefully and as soundlessly as a kitten.

  With tiny dexterous fingers she abstracted some three or four chocolate bon-bons from as many little silver dessert-dishes thrust one into her mouth, and the others into the diminutive pocket of her white frock. Then for the first time she looked guilty, flung a terrified glance round her and fled noiselessly across the room and out into the garden again.

  “Zella! aren’t you coming?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  Zella ran across the terrace to the big oak-tree where her cousins. James and Muriel Lloyd-Evans were earnestly engaged in digging a passage through the earth to Australia.

  “Where have you been?” Muriel inquired.

  On to the top terrace, said Zella glibly; “and I saw a big white horse, trampling on all the flowers.”

  “Where, where?” shrieked Muriel, flinging down her spade. James, a quiet little boy who bore unmoved the reputation of being a prig, looked up inquiringly.

  “It’s gone now.” said Zella. “Papa shot it.”

  “Shot it dead” said Muriel, awestruck.

  “I don’t believe it.” remarked James, and resumed his digging.

  Zella felt a wave of fury pass over her at this insult. It made her so angry to be disbelieved that she completely lost sight of the entire justification for James attitude.

  “It is true.” she cried passionately; “I did see it!” And across her mental vision there passed a very distinct picture of a mammoth white horse destroying the geraniums with plunging hooves, and then suddenly stilled for ever by a gun-shot.

  Muriel, who hated quarrels, said: Don’t be angry, Zella. Let’s go on digging.”

  And the governess, who had followed the conversation with what attention she could spare from a novel, looked up and remarked, “James, you are not to tease your cousin.” while inwardly thanking Providence that she was not responsible for the upbringing of
that untruthful little half-foreign child, Zella de Kervoyou.

  But Zella, who was hurt by a suspicion of her truthfulness as by nothing else, rushed away to sob and cry behind the laurel hedge, and wish that she was dead.

  “Was it really an untruth?” Muriel asked with a horrified face as her cousin fled in tears.

  “I am afraid so dear,” replied Miss Vincent with some asperity, thinking it worthwhile to improve the occasion. ‘Your little cousin is very young; when she grows older she will see how very naughty it is to tell stories.”

  “I don’t believe Zella tells stories.” muttered James, in a tone inaudible to the governess.

  “But you said she did just now.”

  “No. I didn’t. I said I didn’t believe about the horse, that’s all.

  Muriel loosed bewildered.

  “But then, it was an untruth,” she reiterated helplessly.

  “It’s an untruth when you or me say what isn’t true, but not Zella,” said James, with psychological insight far beyond his powers of grammatical expression.

  “But why?”

  “Because she’s different, that’s all. Let’s go on digging.”

  Meanwhile Zella cried and sobbed, crouching on the ground behind the laurel hedge, convinced that nobody loved her, and with a terrible feeling that she was the naughtiest little girl in the whole world. This dreadful state of affairs had all been brought about by the theft of the chocolates, and now that she was confronted by some of the results of her crime Zella felt an unendurable remorse. At least she mistook it for remorse, though it was chiefly a passionate desire to regain her own self-esteem. She rose and went slowly towards the house, a pathetic tiny figure, in her crumpled white frock, with tear-stained face and quivering mouth.

  From the top terrace her mother was advancing slowly. At sight of the woe-begone figure of her only child. Madame de Kervoyou sprang forward.

  “What is the matter, my darling?” Zella immediately began to cry again, was lifted on to her mother’s lap, and asked if she had hurt herself.

  “No — no.”

  “Oh, my pet, you haven’t quarrelled with the others again, have you? said poor Madame de Kervoyou, who knew that her sister would place any dissension among the children to the credit of that French blood of Zella s, which she owed entirely to her father.

  “Have you been naughty?”

  “Yes”, wailed Zella with an awful sense of the relief to be found in confession; “I’ve been most dreadfully wicked.”

  “What have you done?”

  “I went into the dining-room, and — and — I took”

  Zella gasped.

  The clasp of her mother’s arms was intensely comforting, and she dreaded the loosening of that clasp at the revelation of her iniquity.

  “I took — I took” — her courage failed her—” one chocolate off the table, and I ate it.”

  “My darling! you know you must never take what isn’t yours like that. It’s stealing, said Madame de Kervoyou, with an utter absence of conviction in her tone that was not lost upon Zella.

  “But it was very brave of you to come and tell me, and when you are honest like that you know mother never punishes you.”

  The most intense relief of which seven-years-old is capable filled Zella’s heart. Her partial confession had brought her comfort, absolution, and even a sense of complacency at her own voluntary revelation of a sin that might have remained hidden for ever. When her mother said. ‘Were you crying so sadly about that, my poor little baby?’ it was with perfect conviction that Zella replied. ‘Yes; I was so miserable after I’d done it.’ It was the orthodox attitude of a sinner, and riled Zella with a feeling of self-righteousness.

  It was with a pang of undiluted dismay that she remembered, half an hour afterwards, the other stolen chocolates in her pocket. Before she went to bed Zella had buried them in the garden, and felt herself noble because she did not eat one of them.

  The episode of the white horse amongst the flower-beds was allowed to drop, and never penetrated to the ears of the authorities. Nor was it mentioned amongst the children during the rest of James and Muriel’s visit. Muriel forgot the incident, but retained a general impression that Zella was by nature untruthful, and therefore never to be quite trusted again. James, who never forgot things, remembered all about it, but thought it profoundly unimportant. Zella forgot everything but that she had courageously confessed a great sin to her mother, and had been pardoned, and that night she fell asleep with tears still sparkling on her thick lashes and her lips parted in The attitude of mind thus denoted remained typical of Zella de Kervoyou.

  I.

  When Zella de Kervoyou was fourteen her mother died.

  She died at Villetswood, towards evening, after a week’s illness, when September reds and golds were staining the trees and a species of Indian summer had set in. The day after her death, her only sister. Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, telegraphed to Zella’s father: “Heartbroken at terrible news of dearest Esmee. Shall be with you this evening.”

  Louis de Kervoyou crumpled the telegram into the waste-paper basket. He sat at the writing-table in the bay-window of the study, where the blind was not drawn, and looked out at the garden, still brilliant with autumn flowers.

  The door opened, and his only child, Zella, came in.

  She was a slender little thing, very small for her age, with beautiful grey eyes and thick soft hair of a peculiarly pale brown colour. Her face was pale and stained with tears. Louis had hardly seen her since the preceding evening, when he had himself told her of her mother’s death.

  She crept towards him now, half timidly, and he held out his hand. Zella flung herself on the floor beside him, and leant her head, that ached from crying, against his knee.

  Poor child!” said Louis very gently, and stroked the brown hair. But his gaze was far away over the distant hills.

  “Papa — may I — may I “said Zella, half choked.

  “‘May you what, my dear?” Louis’s voice was as usual, though Zella spoke in a half-whisper, but there was an underlying note of despairing weariness in his level tones. “Come with you and see her?” said Zella, with a fresh outburst of tears.

  “Why?”

  The question startled Zella, and jarred upon her, gently though it had been spoken.

  “Because.” she sobbed—” because — oh, don’t you understand? — to say good-bye to her?”

  “She is not there.” said Louis very steadily. “Your mothers spirit is not there. All that was her is gone. She would not wish you to see what is left, my poor little child!”

  There was a silence. Zella was crying again. Presently he spoke to her softly:

  “Zella, try and stop crying. You will make yourself ill.”

  “I can’t — I can’t — I wish I was dead, too.”

  Louis spoke no more. Presently a servant came in half hesitatingly, and announced that the clergyman was waiting; and he rose instantly and went into the hall, where Zella heard a subdued murmur of voices. Only one sentence reached her, spoken by her father.

  “I wish it to be at once. To-day is Monday — on Thursday afternoon, then.”

  Zella guessed, with a pang that made her feel physically sick, that they were speaking of her mother’s funeral. She fled away through the other door of the study, and gained her own room, where she lay on the bed unable to cry any more, until a pitying maid brought her a cup of tea.

  “Try and drink it. Miss Zella dear; it’ll do you good. Said the maid, sobbing.

  I can’t — take it away.” moaned Zella, although she was faint from crying and want of food.

  “Oh. Miss Zella dear, you must. Whatever will your poor papa do if you’re ill! you’ve got to be a comfort to him now.”

  Zella sobbed drearily.

  Do try and take just a drop, like a dear. Sophia!” cried the maid in a sort of subdued call, as another servant went past the open door, and cast a pitying look at the little prone figure on the bed.

  “
Sophia! whatever can I do with Miss Zella if she won’t eat nor drink? I tell her she’ll be ill — won’t she? — if she goes on crying so.”

  “And she didn’t eat a morsel of breakfast, either.” chimed in Sophia.

  “Come. Miss Zella, do have a try, like a dear!”

  The two servants coaxed and implored the child, the violence of whose sobs had now redoubled, until she at length sat up and chocked over a few mouthfuls of the tea, long since grown cold.

  “That’s a brave young lady,’ said the kind maids admiringly as they went away, whispering to one another that poor Miss Zella had a terrible amount of feeling, and had been crying all night.

  “The master, he hasn’t shed a tear yet. Stunned. I believe.” said Sophia.

  And they descended to the lower regions, to join in the innumerable comments on the awful suddenness of it all, and the ‘ dreadful feeling produced by a death in the house. Towards six o’clock the wheels of the carriage were heard, and Louis came out of his wife’s room with his set face of resolute composure, and went into the hall to greet his sister-in-law.

  Mrs. Lloyd-Evans was a tall, good-looking woman, still under forty, and looking even younger than she was. She resembled Esmee de Kervoyou in nothing.

  Her face was swollen with tears, and she was in black, with a heavy crepe veil.

  “Louis! Louis!” she wrung her brother-in-laws hand: “I can’t believe it — our poor, poor darling!”... Her voice died away under the crepe veil.

  It was very good of you to come so quickly, said Louis gently. “Have you had tea, Marianne?”

  She shook her head and negatived the suggestion by a quick movement.

  “Where is poor, poor little Zella?” inquired Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.

  “I will send for her: come into the drawing-room.”

  In the drawing-room a fresh paroxysm of sobbing overtook her, as she raised the heavy veil and locked around her.

  Last time I was here — how different! Oh, her workbox — her piano!” Louis rang the bell. It must have been fearfully sudden — your letter gave me no idea; and the shock of the telegram was terrible. You were with her?”