Thank Heaven Fasting (8 page)

Monica hoped ardently that she was neither of these things.

Claude Ashe, at all events, did not think so. She was sure that he liked her very much. Perhaps, even, he was falling in love with her. If he was, would he say so—and when?

The season was nearly over, and Monica and her parents were to pay two country-house visits, spend a month in Scotland, and after that, said Mrs. Ingram, Monica could go to the Marlowes—Lady Marlowe was taking a furnished house near Oxford for the whole of September—whilst her parents went to join a large house-party where Royalty was to be met.

“I wish you'd been asked too, my pet,” said Mrs. Ingram, “but naturally people don't want young girls about. It limits conversation, and everything. When you're married, it'll be quite different.”

Girlhood was indeed, Monica felt, an inferior state from which escape was desirable at any cost.

What a pity that one couldn't accept Claude Ashe, even
if he did propose! Probably, however, he never would, for no really nice and honourable man proposed to a girl unless he was in a position to offer her a home at least as comfortable as the one from which he was taking her.

A week before she was to leave London, Monica was invited by Lady Margaret Miller to dine, and go with a large party of young people—chaperoned by Lady Margaret's married daughter—to the White City.

“Yes, of course you may go,” said Mrs. Ingram. “I certainly shouldn't allow you to go to dinner-parties without me in the ordinary way, but an old friend like Lady Margaret is different. It's very kind of her indeed. Write a nice little note and accept, Monica. You'd better let me see it.”

Monica did not like her mother's spasmodic supervision of her correspondence, but there was no escaping from it. As though, she thought, she did not know all the rules about letter-writing, that had been impressed upon her ever since she could write at all!

“Never begin a letter with 'I'——”

“Put
‘My
dear So-and-so' to a person older or more important than yourself.”

“Always read through a letter before closing it, and if anything has been left out, rewrite the letter—don't add it in.”

“Never put a P.S. It's vulgar.”

Avoiding these and other pitfalls, Monica wrote her acceptance to Lady Margaret.

Next evening, a telephone message came from her kind hostess. A young man had failed, for the White City party—was there anybody whom Monica would specially like asked, whom Lady Margaret could invite in place of the defaulter?

The Ingrams were finishing dinner when Mrs. Ingram was called to the telephone, and Monica could hear, from the little room next door, her own name and her mother's proper expressions of gratitude and assurances that it really was
mucb
too kind.

Presently Mrs. Ingram returned and explained.

“Oh, really, that's
too
good of her,” said Vernon Ingram. “I never heard of anything so kind. Monica, do you understand that Lady Margaret is good enough to be suggesting that you should submit to her the name of some young man whom you'd like her to invite to her house?”

Monica felt embarrassed by her father's excessive sense of the privilege conferred upon her.

“Well, really,” said Mrs. Ingram, “I don't quite know what to do. I told Lady Margaret I'd telephone to her the first thing to-morrow morning. Of course Monica must write a note as well. Now, we must think——”

Monica had thought already, but she knew better than to say so.

The butler placed the dessert dishes on the table, and approached Mr. Ingram with the port decanter.

Neither Mrs. Ingram nor Monica ever drank any, and they watched Palter's measured progress with impatience.

The moment the door had shut behind him, Monica's mother spoke.

“It must be someone we know fairly well, otherwise it becomes rather too marked. What about Claude Ashe, darling?”

Monica nearly jumped.

She looked at her mother, but there was no sign of any special significance to be seen.

“I think he'd do very well,” she replied carefully.

“Well, then, you'd better ring him up to-morrow—or, wait a minute; I think it would come better from me, perhaps.
I'll
ring him up.”

“A very good idea,” said Vernon Ingram approvingly. “A nice young fellow, and not at all likely to think any young lady is running after him.”

He laughed a little as he spoke.

“Why, father?”

“Why, my dear child? Because I hope he's a modest young man, and because, as he's not in a position to marry at all, at present, he can't suppose that he is being pursued with that end in view.”

Vernon Ingram pushed back his chair from the table.

“It's quite pleasant to have a quiet evening at home together, once in a while,” he remarked, as he opened the door for his wife and daughter.

They left him, as usual, for his customary quarter of an hour in the dining-room, whilst they sat in the drawing-room.

Mrs. Ingram picked up the newspaper, and Monica went to the piano. She would not have been encouraged to read the newspaper, even had she wished to do so, and it would have been bad manners to read a book unless her mother had also been doing the same.

So she opened “The Star Folio” and played Beethoven's
Adieux
and a waltz,
Sobre les Olas.

“That will do now, darling,” said Mrs. Ingram. “I can hear father coming, and he may want to talk. Ring for coffee.”

Monica obeyed.

She was not really particularly interested in either the
Adieux
or
Sobre les Olas,
although she vaguely liked the idea of herself, in a simple white frock, dreamily playing under the lamplight, and it always rather annoyed her that her conception of her own appearance had to be spoilt by the fact that, having no faculty for playing by ear, she was obliged always to keep her eyes fixed upon her music.

All the time she had been playing she had been thinking about Claude Ashe. It made a person much more interesting and exciting, somehow, if you thought about him to the sound of music.

Neither of her parents mentioned Ashe again. The evening, to Monica's dismay, was spent in trying to learn Bridge. Her father was teaching her mother as well as herself. Mrs. Ingram got on fairly well—she had played whist for many years—but Monica, as usual, forgot what were trumps, mixed clubs with spades, and persistently failed to return her partner's lead.

At ten o'clock she went up to bed in tears.

“Miss Mary Collier—Miss Monica Ingram—Mr. David IVX Collier—Miss Monica Ingram—Captain Christopher Lane—Miss Collier, Miss Ingram. There—I think you all know each other now. Oh—I'm sorry—Mr. Ashe, Captain Lane—You know Miss Ingram, of course?”

Mr. Ashe bowed, and Monica smiled.

She was enjoying herself already, although she had only just arrived at Lady Margaret's house in South Audley Street. All the guests were young, even the chaperon of the party, Lady Margaret's married daughter, and her husband.

“It was most awfully nice of you and your mother to suggest my being asked,” said Claude Ashe, in a low voice.

“I'm so glad you were able to come,” rejoined Monica. She was thinking how tactful it had been of him to include her mother in his gratitude. Like that, it didn't look as if he thought that Monica had—odious phrase!—been running after him.

They were to have dinner at the Exhibition.

“Let me see——”

Lady Margaret—kind, short-sighted, and incurably matchmaking——was peering at her youthful friends, only anxious to please them all, and to make sure that those who wanted to be together should be together.

“Mary, supposing you and Joan”—Joan was Lady Margaret's unmarried daughter—” go with David and—let me see—Ronald in his car. And, Captain Lane, will you take care of my daughter Dorothy, if you don't mind a taxi-cab? Now, what about you, Monica? Will you and Mr. Ashe go in the carriage with Peter and Rachel? I dare say it'll get there just as soon as they will, in their machines.”

It was quite certain that it would do nothing of the kind, and everyone laughed politely at Lady Margaret's little joke. Everyone also agreed—naturally-—to her suggestions.

Monica looked at the other girls.

Rachel Modbury's engagement to Peter Miller had just been announced, and Monica gazed at her eagerly. She was not pretty, but had a fresh, cheerful face, with a slightly open mouth, no chin, and candid-looking hazel eyes. Every time that Peter spoke to her she giggled. On the fourth finger of her left hand was an enormous emerald. Monica did not care for her dress—a fussy affair of pink tulle, with a broad pink scarf, matching the pink
bandeau
that was bound round her fuzzy fair hair.

Joan Miller, who was much prettier, wasn't engaged to anybody, and she must be older than the Rachel girl. Monica wondered whether she minded.

The girl who had been introduced as Mary Collier, Monica had never seen before. She was very tall and dark, with a slightly underhung jaw, and straight black eyebrows over a pair of deep grey eyes. She wore a very plain satin dress, of an unusual shade of green, and her thick black hair was parted in the middle, and had not been fluffed out at all. Monica decided that she
certainly
wasn't pretty, although she might be called interesting-looking.

It really did seem, although one hardly liked even to think such a thing, as if she herself were the prettiest girl there. Monica could not help wondering if anybody else thought so too.

She had on a new frock, that her mother had said was exactly right for this kind of occasion. Not too much of an evening-dress, yet with a charming little V-neck, of very palest blue satin, covered with blue net, and with a little bunch of forget-me-nots at the waist.

Did Claude Ashe think hei pretty? However many times Monica reminded herself, and was reminded, of her mother's axiom, that prettiness was
not
the thing that counted most, she still wanted Claude Ashe to think her pretty. She felt
self-conscious whenever she caught his eye, and looked resolutely away from him and at the other men.

Peter Miller was not in the least interesting since he was now engaged to be married; but David Collier might be nice—tall and dark, like his sister, but younger-looking. The remaining man (Lady Margaret's son-in-law—like Peter—did not count) was Captain Lane, and Monica had neither met him nor heard of him before.

She was, without quite knowing it, at once prepared to like him because he was very big—a tall young man, heavily built, and with fair hair already receding from his temples at twenty-nine—and had a deep, loud, masculine voice, and a habit of staring down into the eyes of any woman with whom he shook hands.

The drive was most amusing. It was the first time that Monica had been allowed to go anywhere, unchaperoned, with young men and girls of her own age, all of whom knew one another and one another's world, and in whose freemasonry she felt herself to be immediately included. She found herself talking and laughing quite naturally even with Claude Ashe—presently, indeed, it was especially with Claude Ashe.

Although he was so quiet he could say amusing things, gently and unexpectedly, and Monica noticed with a thrill of pleasure that it was her eyes that he sought with his own, when they all laughed together.

The party had arranged to meet at the entrance and to have dinner on arrival. Monica wondered if Claude Ashe would take the chair next to hers at dinner. Surely, surely, if he
did,
that would almost amount to a proof.

“Ladies and gentlemen, sort yourselves, as the parson said at the double wedding,” cried Dorothy humorously, and they all laughed again.

“May I come here?” said Claude, and he put his hand on the chair next to Monica's.

She felt more and more excited and happy as the gay, noisy dinner went on. Dorothy's husband had ordered champagne,
and although Monica, who still hated the unaccustomed taste, only sipped at hers, she felt that her face was becoming flushed, and her voice and her laughter much readier than usual.

On her other side sat Captain Lane, and presently he was rallying her about her bunch of forget-me-nots, as though they had known one another for years.

“When are you going to stop talking to that fellow, and talk to me instead?” Claude murmured jealously.

Monica was intoxicated with success.

After dinner, they all wandered about together for a little while, then gradually drifted to the Amusements.

“Let's go on the switchback.”

“The water-chute is ripping.”

“Oh yes, do let's go on the water-chute!”

It was Claude who helped Monica into the boat, and sat next to her. She was aware of his presence, even in the tense excitement of approaching the steep slope down which the boat was to dash….

“Oh—oh—I'm terrified. … Is it safe?”

“It's all right!”

They all screamed as the boat shot over the edge.

Monica, clutching the edge of the boat as it rocked madly into smoothness again, felt what a mercy it was that she had retained presence of mind enough not to grasp at her neighbour, which would have been embarrassing.

“Did you like it?”

“Oh, it was glorious!”

“Come on; let's go down again! They say it's more fun when you're used to it.”

“Well, I shan't. I think it's simply awful,” declared Joan Miller. “I'm going on the switchback. I'm sure it's a much more painless death.”

Laughing with and at one another, they formed into small, separate parties. Monica, with Claude Ashe, Captain Lane, and Mary Collier, prepared to enjoy again the thrill of the water-chute.

This time she shared her small seat in the boat with Captain Lane. He took up a great deal more room than Claude Ashe had done, she could not help noticing.