Thank Heaven Fasting (4 page)

“I can't thank you and mother enough, I know,” murmured Monica.

Her father waved her embarrassed gratitude aside.

“We don't want any thanks, dear child. We just want you to enjoy yourself, and be a good, happy little girl. I'm looking forward to seeing you in your new dress to-night, very much indeed. You've had a little talk with your mother, as to dancing with people whom we know, and like, and not too many times with any one partner, eh?”

“Yes, father, mother has told me.”

“That's right, that's right. I'm sure you'll be a very good child, and enjoy yourself very much. Have you seen anything of your friends, Frederica and Cecily, to-day?”

“Not to-day, father. I shall to-night, of course.”

“Yes, yes. Well, we must see if you can't cut them both out in looks and dancing and everything else,” said Ingram with simplicity. Then he sat down and took up the new
Cornbill Magazine,
and Monica perceived that the conversation was over.

She picked up a book from the table, and pretended to be reading it, but was quite unable to fix her attention. Her father's last words, echoing the thought that was never really out of her own mind, thrilled her with its implication that she might achieve triumphs of masculine admiration beyond those accorded to others.

Every now and then she looked anxiously up at the enormous ormulu clock on the marble mantelpiece, and its hands seemed to her to be moving so slowly that she several times wondered whether it had stopped.

At last, however, it was six o'clock and she could go up to her room again, and begin to dress.

It was really
beginning.

Presently she was sitting in her white frilled flannel dressing-gown, waiting for Parsons. The new white satin dress lay on the bed, and on the floor were pointed, high-heeled, white satin shoes, that Monica knew only too well would hurt her long before the end of the evening.

There was a knock at the door, and she called “Come in!”

“Now,
Miss!” said Parsons, full of sympathetic excitement.

Monica took off her dressing-gown, and the white satin dress was carefully lifted over her head, whilst she held her hair out of the way with one hand.

“Pin it up, Miss Monica—anyhow. Just to get it out of the way.”

Monica drew in her breath while Parsons fastened the double rows of hooks and eyes, and smoothed down the ample skirts.

“There! It's lovely.”

Monica had no long glass in her room. She surveyed herself in the mirror on the dressing-table, unable to keep herself from a smile of gratified pleasure and astonishment at the sight of her reflection, but saying to Parsons in as critical and detached a tone as she could command:

“It's not fair, of course, to judge with my hair not yet done. But I must say I think it looks very nice.”

“Lovely, Miss Monica. And madam's silver sequins are beautiful, too. Now let me put on your dressing-gown again, miss, to keep everything quite safe. There! That's the bell. That'll be the hairdresser.”

“Parsons! Ask if I can come in and sit with madam while he's doing her.”

“Yes, Miss Monica.”

In five minutes Parsons was back with the necessary permission, and Monica, with the dressing-gown gathered round her, and one hand carefully holding up the folds of the white satin beneath, had gone down to her mother's room.

Mrs. Ingram sat before the dressing-table, her head held motionless, whilst the tall, yellow-headed assistant from the Maison André Leroy in Sloane Street swiftly and vigorously twisted the hot irons in and out of her hair.

“Sit down, my pet. Are you all ready except for your hair?”

“Yes, mother.”

“You're burning me—be
careful—
——” squeaked Mrs. Ingram suddenly.

“I'm very sorry, madam, I beg your pardon.” The young man, with an air of acute concern, snatched the tongs out of Mrs. Ingram's hair and held them up to his own face.

“I
beg
your pardon, madam. I don't think it's done any real harm, madam—the hair is not scorched. I'm extremely sorry it should have happened.”

“Well.”

The young man, looking deeply contrite, resumed his operations, and Mrs. Ingram muttered to her daughter:

“Il est aussi stupide que possible.”

Monica nodded intelligently.

“Darling, look on my writing-table, and you'll find a menu card. It's one I spoilt. Just read it through, and then you'll know how dinner is getting on, and be ready to jump up directly I catch Lady Margaret Miller's eye. It's such a bore if one person doesn't realize and goes on talking.”

Monica fetched the stiff white card, with its narrow gilt edge, and read the items, although without any very great feelings of interest, from soups—thick and clear—turbot sauce madère, and sole meunière, entrée and joint, hot and cold sweets, savoury—canapés à I'indienne, of course—to bombe glacée—which was the only item that aroused in her a faint anticipation of enjoyment.

“I see, mother. It ought to be very nice.”

“Of course it'll be very nice, darling. I didn't ask you for your little opinion on the menu—what can you possibly know about it?” said her mother, laughing. “But you must learn how these things are done, of course. Directly dessert is finished, I shall make the move.

“Mr. Ashe will take you into dinner, and you'll have Lady Margaret's son, young Peter Miller, on the other side of you. The one you met at lunch the other day, at the Marlowes'.”

“I don't remember which one he was,” admitted Monica, with a confused recollection of a large Sunday lunch-party,
and an indistinguishable herd of black-coated, grey-trousered men, and introductions performed in Cecily's shyest and most inaudible manner.

Mrs. Ingram made a sound with her tongue against the roof of her mouth, indicating dismay and disapproval.

“Darling, that's one of the things you'll have to learn—and as quickly as possible. You've
got
to remember who people are, and recognize them when you see them again, and not look blank and uninterested. A man is very quickly put off, if he thinks that a girl hasn't even taken the trouble to remember what he looks like.”

“I'll try,” said Monica meekly.

“Mr. Miller is in the Foreign Office, and he's the second son of Lady Margaret Miller, who was a Farren of Earlswick, and an heiress. He'll be quite well off some day. The one who'll take you into dinner, and to whom you must talk most, of course, is Claude Ashe. His father and mother have a place in Wales, and very seldom come to London. I used to know his mother quite well, and she wrote and told me that this boy—he's the second son—was going to be in London for a bit. So I'm very glad to have a chance of doing something for him. Perhaps, if we like him, we could suggest his coming to a little theatre-party one night. Anyway, he'll call, after the dinner-party. You can let him know—and the other man too, of course—that I'm always at home on Sunday afternoons. Just mention it casually, you know.”

“Very well, mother.”

The hairdresser's work with the tongs was completed. He stepped backwards and surveyed Mrs. Ingram's reflection in the mirror with respectful admiration.

“Shall I dress it, madam?”

“My maid will do it, thank you, whilst you're waving the young lady.—Monica, run up to your room, darling, and—let me see—ring for Mary, and tell her that mother says she's to sit with you until Parsons is free.”

Mary, the housemaid, was as busy as possible, but it was
clear that she must leave her work in order that Miss Monica should not be alone in her bedroom with the assistant from the Maison André and his curling-tongs. He, too, evidently appreciated the delicacy of the situation, for he did not knock at Monica's door until five minutes after Mary had breathlessly appeared there, and had been installed in a chair with a stocking to darn.

When Monica's hair had been tonged into waves of the stiffest and most uniform regularity, it was drawn backwards through the comb in order to fluff it out on either side of her head, and the ends were rolled into curls, and transfixed by two hairpins to the pad securely pinned on the back of her head. One or two short pieces of hair on the back of her neck were twisted up in the tongs until Monica winced in the apprehension of being burnt, and then the hairdresser silently handed her the looking-glass.

“Very nice indeed. Thank you so much,” graciously said Monica, imitating her mother's phrasing and intonation of a kind especially reserved for such occasions.

“Thank you very much, Miss. Good evening, Miss.”

He was gone, and Monica threw off her dressing-gown, and took the full effect of her appearance.

“It's lovely, Miss Monica. The dress suits you most beautiful,” said Mary, with respectful warmth. “I'm sure there won't be a prettier young lady anywhere in the ballroom.”

Monica's mother, sweeping into the room without warning, dismissed Mary to her duties downstairs, and inspected her daughter.

“Very nice—yes, very nice indeed, my darling. Hold yourself up—you don't want to poke like Frederica Marlowe. Let me see—you want a brooch just in front, there.”

“I'll put on my blue swallow brooch.”

“No, that won't do at all. You can't wear turquoises with a ball-dress. I'll lend you my little pearl heart. Just lean over the banisters, darling, and call to Parsons, and tell her to bring it up here. It's in my silver tray.”

The brooch was found, and brought upstairs by Parsons, and Mrs. Ingram herself pinned it on the little white tulle edging of Monica's dress.

Then she said: “You want another hairpin—just
there.”

“Oh, mother, please let me put it in for myself,” cried Monica impatiently.

“No, darling. You can't possibly tell where it's needed. Bend your head down.”

Monica had to obey.

“That's perfect. Come along.”

Mrs. Ingram, her dark head, with a diamond crescent twinkling on it, held high, preceded her daughter downstairs.

Vernon Ingram was waiting for them, standing in front of the flower-filled fireplace in the drawing-room.

“Well, well, well. Let's have a look at you. Turn round, Monica. … I declare, I'm very proud of my wife and my grown-up daughter.”

He spoke lightly, but there was an emotional quality in the look with which he surveyed them. And it pierced, also, through the half-humorous tones of his voice, as he turned to his wife and indicated Monica by the smallest of gestures.

“I'm not sure, now that I look at her in full fig, that we shall be keeping her with us so very much longer, eh?”

Mr. Ashe was slight, tall, and very blond. His white eyelashes flickered a little when he spoke. Monica thought him nice-looking, and particularly liked his smile. It did not occur to her that he was shy, but she noticed, and was attracted by, the diffidence of his manner.

They began by exchanging the usual commonplaces of conversation, to which Monica was by this time getting accustomed. Later on, he asked her to keep some dances for him. Monica was startled and flattered, but mindful of her mother's injunction that to betray gratification at any advances from a man was to risk cheapening oneself, and thus lose his favour, she replied rather coldly that she did not think she would be able to dance until quite late in the evening.

“You see, my mother and Lady Marlowe are giving the ball, and I shall have to stay with them and help to receive people.”

“Oh yes, of course. I see.”

Rather to her disappointment, he said nothing more. Presently Monica, in response to a swift telegraphic look from her mother's end of the table, turned to her other neighbour, Mr. Miller, whom she had met at the Marlowes' and had not remembered.

She still did not remember him, for he seemed to her to look exactly like a number of other young men—dark and thin, with a nondescript face, and very little expression.

“I think we met at Lady Marlowe's house at lunch one Sunday,” she began shyly.

Young Miller responded suitably, although without enthusiasm—he did not sound as though he would ever be enthusiastic about anything—and Monica did not find it
difficult to sustain a conversation with him, continuous, even if rather disjointed owing to the rapidity with which they both seemed to come to an end of all that they had to say about the Academy, the season's dances, and such theatres as each had visited. It was with a little secret relief that Monica saw Mr. Miller, at a suitable pause, turn to the girl, unknown to Monica except as the daughter of one of her mother's friends, sitting on his other side. Mr. Ashe was still politely inclined towards his left-hand neighbour, a talkative and animated Mrs. St. George, whom Monica naively thought of as being necessarily uninteresting to young men because she had a thin, bald-headed husband sitting on the opposite side of the welter of smilax and red roses that lay all over the shining white of the tablecloth.

With a sense of drawing breath for a moment in the midst of some dangerous enterprise, Monica relaxed from the strain of being bright and animated, and looked about her.

Everybody seemed to be talking at once.

Lady Margaret Miller was laughing at something that her host was telling her.

The table looked lovely.

Monica herself was easily the youngest person in the room. It humiliated her slightly, to feel that this was so. Perhaps, however, her mother had done it on purpose. She always seemed to think it an asset, socially, to be young, although she also always emphasized to Monica the crudeness and ignorance of youth.

The ice-pudding was being handed round, followed by its accompanying
biscuits glacés,
little brown bundles tied together like faggots with red ribbon. The ice-pudding had come from Gunter's. Mrs. Horben could not have risen to such heights, although Monica's father always declared that her soufflés were incomparable. How did mother explain to Mrs. Horben, without hurting her feelings, that Gunter would have to supply the ice-pudding? Involuntarily Monica glanced towards the foot of the table. Mrs. Ingram was smiling and nodding, her whole attention apparently fixed upon the words
of the grey-haired husband of Lady Margaret Miller. Yet, with scarcely the flicker of an eyelid—certainly without turning her head—she contrived to send a wordless injunction to her child.