E. M. Delafield

“ Nowadays, Aunt Clo no longer wrote about Beauty. She told Lily that she tried to live it, instead. Everything in the tiny house at Genazzano had been chosen for the sake of either form or colour, and the little bronze mirror that hung, sloping, over Miss Stellenthorpe's writing-table possessed a further qualification.
"I like to go through life le sourire aux lèvres," said Aunt Clo, markedly accentuating the habitual pleasantness of her expression as she spoke. "It is pleasing, refreshing—to look up and meet a smile. What will you, if it happens to be one's own?" ”

“ 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." ”

“ He understood, as Nicholas would never understand, but she knew that she did not want him to make love to her. When the things that he said to her made her heart beat faster she wondered why she was all the time so certain that she did not love him.
He made love openly to her, with a suddenness and a fervour that totally disconcerted her.
"But may I not tell you that I adore you?" he asked piteously. "You have never been loved as you should be loved, most Beautiful. Let me show you."
Lily's sense of her own invulnerability was strong, even if it was also unconsciously wistful. ”

“ The headmistress smiled—an omniscient smile. "I thought so—I thought so. Well, Lily, although I haven't married myself, I always advocate marriage for the majority of my girls. Most women are happier in the beaten track, and I don't think you're one of those that are called upon to stand alone. Oh, there's nothing derogatory in that. Marriage is a very high calling, child, and there's a great deal to it—a great deal of responsibility, Lily."
Miss Melody's arch smile underlined the word, as though it had become a catchword, used to denote their dual consciousness of Lily's weakness. ”

“ Philip kissed Lily once upon the forehead, instead of as usual, two or three times all over her face and said deeply:
"My poor little child! Good-night."
Lily went upstairs in tears, indescribably guilty.
She had been naughty again, and oh! how like God it was, to have arranged things like that. If Vonnie didn't get to bed and to sleep before the earache gained its hold, then they must both suffer through one of those black nights of misery that Lily so dreaded. ”

“ My own bigger, wider, clearer vision was what I strove to teach her."
"You gave Lily a most delightful visit to Italy," said Philip in measured tones. "She is very much beholden to you, and so am I. Nicholas Aubray, of course, is an old friend of yours."
"Aha! we turn the conversation!" cried Aunt Clo, with an air of greater shrewdness than was altogether warranted by her penetration of Philip's exceedingly obvious manœuvre.
"Ce bon Nicholas! He will widen the little one's views. You have never taught her to seek for the great things of life, Philip. ”

“ Lily felt unutterably naughty.
"My dearest," said Eleanor at last, "how can a grown-up person not understand a little child? You're talking nonsense, you know. There can be nothing in a little girl of ten years old that's beyond the understanding of a grown-up, experienced person. And to say that a mother doesn't understand her own child, is to suggest something that can't possibly be. Some day you'll know what I mean."
"When?" said Lily.
Eleanor's absolute belief in the creed that she had enunciated perforce carried a certain conviction to Lily's bewildered and undeveloped mind. ”

“ Lily was startled, but she was too young and too disconsolate to reject the subtle flattery.
"I feel very old, sometimes."
She felt afraid for a moment that he might laugh at her, kindly, as Nicholas would have done, from the height of the years that separated them. But della Torre said quickly:
"I know. People laugh a little, sometimes, when one says that, but it is only because they themselves have either never grown up at all, or have done so insensibly. They do not know anything about the short cut to knowledge that is traversed by some of us." ”

“ Aunt Clo shrugged her shoulders.
"She is singularly ill-equipped to encounter life. You ask me why I come to such a conclusion, what I find in our Lily? I find in her an invincible ignorance of the true facts of life, the tendency of an ostrich to hide her head from the light, an entire absence of that frank, free outlook that is the birthright of every thinking soul. I find her wrapped in the conventionalities and sentimentalities of a bygone age."
Philip remained perfectly silent, but Miss Stellenthorpe was not thereby debarred from carrying on a spirited conversation. ”

“ Lily looked at her with a faint stirring of hope. Miss Stellenthorpe's fine eyes were glowing.
"Lose all, and you shall find all!" she declared. "The old Prophets knew much, my Lily. Listen, child. It will cost you, to break through the old traditions—who knows it better than I? But you must have courage. You must break free. Your soul asks it of you. And that other—your rightful mate—how can he fulfil himself without you?"
Lily was paralyzed. How difficult, how impossible to stop Aunt Clo in mid-career with the startling commonplace: "There is no other." ”

“ Vonnie, who had died, was the child that had hurt and perplexed Philip Stellenthorpe least; the child that he had loved least. When Lily knew that she might herself be about to have a child, the last resentment against her father was slowly eliminated from her heart.
A strange certainty possessed her that this time the blossom would come to maturity.
Of later years, she had hoped never to have a child, asking herself:
"Why should I want to bring a child into the world, for it to suffer as I suffer?" ”

“ What a good thing it would be if Vonnie were to die! Lily was horrified at her own wickedness, but dwelt upon this solution with a sort of unwilling fascination.
She knew instinctively that Vonnie would never grow up like other people—would never be able either to take care of herself, or to find people who would take care of her. She would never be very happy, she would always have earache, and be left out of treats, and chidden for being so slow.
Whereas, if Vonnie died, there was an end of earache, of scoldings, of everything that was unkind or unfair. ”

“ Lily herself derived unforeseen excitement and pleasure from all these accessories to her engagement, her father's intense gratification and pride in her, the warmly-worded congratulations that she received, and the admiring welcome that her youth and prettiness met with from the bewildering number of new friends and relations to whom Nicholas presented her, even the trousseau frocks and the jewels and the wedding presents, all gave her a dream-like feeling of astonished delight. ”

“ A man is young just as long as he retains his capacity for falling in love. What does it matter if he loves successfully or unsuccessfully? It is the hope, the fears, the despairs, that count—the meetings and partings, the misunderstandings, the beautiful pretence that the most ephemeral of emotions will endure for ever."
"You don't think that love is lasting?"
Lily was smiling a little, but there was disappointment in her heart.
"The Blue Rose is the only one that never fades," said Giulio della Torre. ”

“ Lily knew the choice to be Ethel's.
The insistence upon abrupt translation from life on earth into a world of perfect joy and peace, where "all is pure and all is holy," again bewildered and almost distressed Lily.
Could such violent dislocation as was implied really take place?
A child did not, in the space of a night, become a man. Learning, even on the lowest plane, was not acquired in an hour. Did God, then, reverse all His laws as manifested upon earth, whenever a soul left its body?
If so, the spirit now in heaven was not Cousin Charlie at all. ”

“ Miss Melody's eye was at once penetrating and melancholy, as she fixed it upon her pupil.
"Now, childie dear, if you know what that weakness of yours is, fight against it. Fight against it, dearie, and pray. Don't forget what prayer can do for us all. The very weakest can be made strong, you know...."
Lily listened with a sense of disquiet. She felt vaguely that Miss Melody, so kind and wise and helpful, had somehow evolved a preconceived idea that did not altogether fit the reality. ”

“ She was faintly shocked at the criticism of Philip, although her reason admitted its justice.
"You do like Father, Nicholas dear, don't you?"
"My dear child, because one likes a person it needn't make one blind and deaf and dumb to their short-comings," said her husband cheerfully.
Lily assimilated in silence the obvious common-sense of the dictum, that all the same came to her as something almost new, and entirely revolutionary. ”

“ All the nicest men are generally married long before they're anywhere near his age."
"I suppose," said Lily, remembering Janet, "that I oughtn't to expect, perhaps, to be his first love?"
She looked at Mrs. Hardinge, hoping for reassurance.
"My dear child! Of course, there's love and love, you know. Men have their fancies, but it's the woman they want to marry who really counts. Has he ever told you about—about anything of that sort, in his life?"
"He told me he'd never asked anyone to marry him before."
"There!" cried Ethel in a tone of relief. "What more can you want? ”

“ There is an unhappy child whose supreme moment is drawing very near. I have told you of my Carla? They are trying to persuade her that she has sinned—ah, the horrible folly and cruelty of it all!"
Miss Stellenthorpe hastened away, and Nicholas Aubray, after a moment, exclaimed, as he not infrequently did:
"What a splendid person your aunt is! I can't tell you how much I admire her."
"She is very kind," said Lily, trying to atone by the fervour of her voice for a certain blankness that invaded her at this fresh example of Nicholas Aubray's enthusiasm. ”

“ Now I'm going to talk to you just as though it were Dorothy or Janet. You see, dear, men aren't the same as women and we mustn't expect it. Nicholas is—is a good man, you know, or your father wouldn't let you marry him. But no man can be expected to tell his wife everything, as you call it—especially when there is a difference in age."
Lily began to feel as though they were talking at cross-purposes.
"You must trust your husband, you know, dear," said Cousin Ethel. ”

“ The art of definition: everyone is everyone, she supposes! Ha, ha!"
"One talks carelessly, sometimes," Lily said, strongly inclined to laugh.
"But not at all," graciously exclaimed her aunt; "if by 'one' you allude to yourself, carina, I can assure you that it is not so. Your vocabulary, your originality, the extent of your reading, all combine to render your conversation stimulating. How I revel in the clash of wits! My niece and I between us must teach you the use of words, my little Dickenson."
Aunt Clo's little Dickenson appeared to be far from delighted at the proposition. ”

“ Lily was glad to think that they would have the occupation of preparing for, and receiving, the visitors. Anything would surely be better than sitting, sick with crying, repeating over and over again all that they had said already.
She felt very tired, and full of remorse for her own inadequacy. She knew that there had been no conviction behind any of the commonplace utterances with which she had striven to convey consolation. Only her sympathy with their sorrow had been real. Even sympathy, however, seemed to fail her when Philip Stellenthorpe spoke of personal loss to himself. ”

“ A true Italian, the merely perfunctory admiration accorded by him to Lily Stellenthorpe as a young and pretty English girl, and a Protestant, became lively and acute directly he met her as the wife of another man.
He kept his dark eyes reverently fixed upon her face, and did not venture upon personalities until he had many times seen both Lily and her husband. Then one evening at the theatre he said to her, "You have changed a great deal, in these few years. Although your face is as young as ever, the soul that looks out of your eyes is that of a woman—no longer that of a child." ”

“ Ghost of Miss Melody's laugh, floating on the air! Lily smiled, herself, very faintly.
The reductio ad absurdum is not an argument.
"Should I have the courage, if I had children? The courage never to grudge them the experience of suffering, to let them say 'Yes' to Life? To realize, and let them realize, from the very beginning, that no created soul belongs to another—that each must stand alone?"
She dropped her face into her hands, shuddering—realizing something of that ultimate abnegation that imposes nothing, but holds all in reserve.
Would Nicholas have helped her? ”

“ How I have been loved! And I—I, in my turn have loved, carina. Once—and once only. I cannot tell you the whole story, little one. Some day, perhaps, when you, too, have lived and loved—though may you never touch the depths that I have plumbed! I had rejected many loves—lesser loves, as they seemed to me. Then came one—there is only one, in a woman's life. Our souls rushed together—une veritable fusion d'âmes. There was one summer——"
Aunt Clo became lost in retrospect, her fine eyes fixed upon some point of the horizon far above Lily's head. ”

“ She was very kind to Lily, although frequently deploring in her the traces of her upbringing.
"You must learn to say Yes to Life!" she cried ringingly from time to time, her hand upon her niece's shoulder, her handsome head tilted backwards. "You know your Nietzsche?"
Lily shook her head, feeling much abashed and conscious that Aunt Clo thought her very young indeed.
"Courage!" said Miss Stellenthorpe. "Ah, jeunesse, jeunesse!"
Lily reflected quite irritably that Aunt Clo might just as well have said: "Youth, youth!" and have done with it. ”

“ It had mattered whether or no Colin had the place next to hers at the picnics—whether, in exchanging good-nights at the end of a moonlight walk, his last "good-night" had been for her—whether they were partners in the tennis tournament or not—whether they danced the last waltz of the evening together. If he was in the garden while the rest of them were clustered round Lily at the piano, she acknowledged a slight feeling of restlessness that consciously vanished at his footstep—which she could always distinguish—on the threshold of the French window. ”

“ It's not fair!" when Vonnie was left at home, and Father and Mother were kind enough to take Lily out for a treat, such as a neighbouring garden-party, or a wedding, and it was naughtiest of all, when Vonnie was laughed at or admonished for not understanding things quickly, to interfere and cry out: "She can't help it—she is trying—it isn't fair to scold her!"
Lily knew that all these things were naughty, because she had always been told so, but the spirit of frenzy that possessed her always drove her on, the consciousness of naughtiness notwithstanding. ”

“ A year after Dorothy Hardinge's marriage, her father died suddenly.
"It seems so incredible, somehow," said Lily.
"My dear, none of us can live for ever. But I know what you mean."
The face of Nicholas was abnormally grave, perhaps in decorous concealment of the indubitable fact that Charlie Hardinge's unexpected death could hardly affect him very deeply, save through concern for its effect upon Lily.
"I don't know why it's so difficult to associate some people with death. Cousin Charlie, somehow, seems part of all the things I've always known, all my life. ”