Thank Heaven Fasting (6 page)

She looked expectantly at him, then hastily looked away again. It never answered to let them see one was interested.

“I hope,” said Mr. Ashe, in a slightly husky voice, “that perhaps one of these days, if you're not too busy, you'll let me arrange a little party, and go down there. I'm supposed to be eating my dinners in the Temple just now, but I've got plenty of time on my hands—Saturday afternoons, and all that, you know.”

“I'd love to,” said Monica prettily.

She hoped that he would suggest a date, and make the invitation definite, for she could not help feeling that it would establish her at once as a success if she could only tell her mother that the young man who had sat next to her at dinner wanted to meet her again.

But at that moment the first bars of the next dance sounded. The atmosphere changed: there was a general movement all round them, and after moment they both stood up.

“Would you like to find Mrs. Ingram?” said Ashe rather uncertainly.

“Well—I expect my next partner is looking for me,” Monica replied, anxious to let him know that she was in demand.

“Oh, of course.”

“Miss Ingram, may I have the pleasure of a dance with you?” It was Mr. Pelham, and as Monica turned towards him Claude Ashe bowed, and went away.

Later on in the evening he asked her for another dance, but she had none left. Monica was disappointed, but felt that it might be all for the best. As her mother always said, it made a man
much
keener if he didn't see quite as much of a girl as he wanted to. If things were made too easy for them, they lost interest.

Once or twice as she was dancing, Monica caught sight of Mr. Ashe, also dancing. He was so tall that it was easy to distinguish him, even before the ball-room began to grow empty. Once they exchanged a smile.

“Well, my darling, enjoying yourself?” Mrs. Ingram asked fondly, as her child paused for a moment beside her.

“Yes, thank you, I'm having a lovely time,” Monica replied fervently. She would have said that in any case, but in actual fact the fervour was quite real. She was enjoying herself very much indeed.

“Don't get too hot, darling—and hold yourself up.”

“Yes, mother.”

“Have you been down to supper yet?”

“Oh yes.”

“I hope you ate a proper meal. It's silly to think you can dance all night without anything to keep you going. Girls are so foolish,” said Mrs. Ingram, turning in smiling appeal to the nearest chaperon.

“Oh, very foolish indeed.”

Monica was well accustomed to hearing it said that the young were foolish. She knew that such was the opinion of her parents and of all their contemporaries, and she vaguely looked forward to the day when she should have left youth behind and become superior and experienced and infallible, herself.

None of her other partners proved quite as interesting as Claude Ashe had been, and there was a certain sameness about their conversation.

The theatres, the band, the floor, the dances that she was going to—did she know the Marlowe girls well?

To all of these questions, Monica returned the expected replies. To the enquiry about the Marlowes she carefully answered that they were both great friends of hers. The imprudence of ever saying anything derogatory about anybody had always been impressed upon Monica. If she could find nothing pleasant to say about a person, then it was wiser to keep silence altogether. One never knew that one's words might not be repeated.

So Monica proclaimed her friendship with Frederica and Cecily.

Towards the end of the evening she exchanged a few words with Cecily, standing waiting for the last dance on the programme to begin.

“Nearly everyone's going now. I think it's been a great success, don't you?”

“Oh yes,” said Cecily listlessly.

“Are you tired?”

“No, not a bit, thanks,” hastily answered Cecily, flushing and straightening herself.

Monica remembered that Cecily, living under the daily
and hourly tyranny of Frederica's morbid solicitude, never could endure a personal question, especially with reference to her own well-being. Vaguely it crossed her mind that intercourse with the Marlowes was terribly hampered by intangible restrictions and mysterious under-currents, and that it was no wonder they both seemed unhappy…. Almost directly a glow of satisfaction in her own greater freedom of mind took the place of her compassionate impulse.

“I'm not a bit tired either,” she said brightly. “But one of my shoes is hurting like anything. I knew it would. I had it off during dinner, but I thought I was never going to get it on again in time.”

“How awful!”

“Yes, wasn't it? Who are you dancing the last dance with, Cecily?”

“Mr. Pelham.”

How dull, thought Monica. She herself was rather disappointed that Mr. Ashe had not asked her for the last dance. He had, in fact, gone away without saying good-bye to her, although she had seen him making a polite farewell speech to her mother.

The band broke into a galop, and Monica's partner—rather an uninteresting young man whose name she had not heard when he was introduced—claimed her.

“Straight home to bed after this, my darling,” she heard her mother murmur as she went past.

Mrs. Ingram was sitting on a gilt chair near the door, every now and then obliged to jump up in order to receive the thanks and good-nights of departing guests.

The room was nearly empty.

Cecily Marlowe, trailing, rather than dancing, drooped over Mr. Pelham's shoulder. He was shorter by an inch or so than she was.

Frederica was standing beside her mother. Evidently no one had asked her for the last dance.

Suddenly the band broke into quick time. Monica's partner dashed with her across the room—then down, then
up again—It was exhilarating, in spite of the agony of her pinched toes.

Breathless, they stopped when the music stopped.

It was all over.

“Good-night—it's been
too
delightful.”

“Good-night, dear Mrs. Ingram—thank you for such a delightful evening. My girl has loved every minute of it.”

One woman, in a black velvet dress that Monica thought much too
décolletée,
said to Mrs. Ingram:

“Such a success, Imogen darling! I've heard
everyone
saying how sweet your girl is.”

Monica blushed and looked away.

“Now, my pet——” Mrs. Ingram hurried her daughter

to the nearly empty cloak-room, and redeemed their wraps.

“Mother, I never said good-night to Lady Marlowe!”

“Never mind, I said it for you. She's probably half-way home by now. I must say it's hard on her that those two girls are so heavy in hand. They've had every chance—and yet look at them!”

“I think they danced most of the evening,” Monica could afford to say, with conscious superiority.

“I should hope so, at their mother's ball! Though I saw both of them sitting out once or twice. Let it be a lesson to you, darling,
never
to let yourself seem bored and tired and listless. Nothing puts men off more quickly. Well, did you have a lovely time?”

“Oh, lovely, mother. I did enjoy it.”

“That's right, darling. Now—into bed as quickly as possible. Parsons is sitting up—she can undo you first, before she comes down to me. And let her take down your hair and brush it out
thorougbly,
Monica. Otherwise it'll be all tangles to-morrow.”

“I'm not really a bit sleepy, mother. Couldn't Parsons do you first?”

“No, darling. You heard what mother said. You're to sleep as late as you can in the morning, and ring for your breakfast to be brought up to you.”

Monica had known that there would be no escaping this. She did not argue, aware that it would be useless, and feeling also the burden of obligation laid upon her by her mother, who had taken so much trouble and spent so much money in order that Monica might have a really good start, and meet as many young men as possible.

At the foot of the stairs, just before going up to bed, she kissed her parents and made them a rather embarrassed little speech, thanking them, and saying how much she had enjoyed herself.

Her mother answered as she always did, “I don't want any thanks, my child. Run along now.”

Her father, more graciously, said:

“That's right, my dear little girl. I'm sure you'll show your gratitude by being very good and obedient and cheerful.”

Monica said, “Yes, father,” and went upstairs, stopping, directly she was out of sight, to take off her tight shoes.

She was actually in bed in the dark, before she remembered, with a slight pang, that no one, after all, had proposed to her at her first ball.

The Season continued.

Monica, now launched, was taken to balls, to dinner parties and theatre-parties, to Hurlingham to watch the polo on Saturdays, and to the Days of all her mother's friends.

Twice her mother gave a girls' luncheon-party, explaining that this was very important and necessary, since it was by making friends with other girls that Monica would receive invitations to pay country-house visits.

“A girl gets far more chances in one house-party than at a dozen London balls,” declared Mrs. Ingram.

Monica, of course, understood what her mother meant.

The luncheon-parties, with Mrs. Ingram at the head of the table—talking very brightly and carefully and not at all naturally—and herself at the foot, were not very amusing, but they led to her being asked to various tea-parties, and even to an occasional matinée.

Monica's mother was, comparatively, liberal-minded. She allowed her child to go out to matinées with only another girl, and to walk in the streets of Belgravia—
not
the Pimlico end and
not
beyond Harvey Nicholls at the top of Sloane Street—escorted only by a maid. Monica might go in cabs, even hansoms, although not in omnibuses, and she might travel alone by train, first-class, if her mother's maid went in the carriage with her.

Frederica and Cecily Marlowe, especially Frederica, envied Monica her emancipation.

They had no freedom at all.

Monica still saw more of the Marlowes than of anybody else, and because of the old schoolroom intimacy, felt more at home with them than with girls nearer to her own age.
She was fond of Cecily, and sorry for her, although contemptuous of her supineness and of her terrified evasions of personal contacts. Frederica, Monica did not really like at all, but she had a kind of unwilling admiration for a force of character that she felt, rather than understood, whilst at the same time she experienced a definite gratification, of which she was slightly ashamed, because she knew that Frederica was unpopular with men.

It would, indeed, have been impossible not to know this, for Lady Marlowe had taken up the line of jesting about it openly. She was half-Italian, and had a reputation for caustic wit. It was generally recognized that her daughters were a disappointment to her. Like almost every woman of her generation, she had wished to have sons, and regarded the sex of her two girls as being something between a disgrace and a calamity—and it was felt that she showed at least courage and originality, even if indifferent taste, in jeering, lightly and amusingly, at their failure to attract.

“If Frederica hasn't succeeded in finding a husband by the time she's twenty-five, I shall give her what she'd have had if she'd married and let her go and live where she likes and do what she likes,” declared Lady Marlowe, laughing merrily. “Why not? It's ruining any chances Cecily may have, for men to see Fricky trailing about the place, with never even a nibble.”

She had given up the fiction, once offered to her friends, that Frederica, once at least, could have married. She now shrugged her shoulders and said instead that it was very odd she should have unattractive daughters.

So indeed it was, for Lady Marlowe, already twice widowed, could very easily have married again had she chosen to do so. Men liked her, and were amused by her.

When she gave small dinner-parties, they wanted to talk to her, and listen to her—not to either of the girls. Even at balls she attracted far more attention, with her sparkle and vitality, than did her two joyless, drooping daughters, trailing silently in her wake.

“Can't you be natural and bright?” Lady Marlowe sometimes despairingly, and yet half humorously, enquired of Frederica. But Frederica continued to be neither natural nor bright. It was she who sometimes revolted against their mother. Cecily never did. But it was part of Cecily's misery that Frederica's revolts were, so often, on her behalf.

For Frederica's warped and thwarted individuality had thrown out a strange, one-sided growth in the form of a violently protective and possessive solicitude for her sister.

“Have you got a headache?”

She could never let Cecily alone.

“Are you tired?”

“You won't care for that book, Cecily. Have this one instead.”

She could not even bear to let Cecily read a novel that might bring her into vicarious contact with life. It might mean that she would be hurt. It might mean that she would escape, or wish to escape, from Frederica's domination.

Frederica, at twenty-four, would manæuvre elaborately to keep the newspaper out of Cecily's view, because she did not like her to read it. She wanted Cecily to remain a child. Cecily had once, under the pressure of Lady Marlowe's mockery and of Frederica's imperative cross-questionings, admitted that she did think that, really, women ought to have the vote.

“You can't really think that. You don't know enough about it,” Frederica declared, instantly terrified by vague and irrational previsions of Cecily wanting to join the movement, falling under strange influences, perhaps being sent to prison.

And Lady Marlowe, with her clear, unkind laugh, told Cecily not to be a silly little goose.