Thank Heaven Fasting (16 page)

The faintest possible hesitation, preceding Mrs. Ingram's reply, warned Monica's abnormally sharpened perceptions that the answer was not altogether what she would have liked it to be.

“There's a child—a boy—by the second wife. Still—it might make no difference——”

Monica made no reply to the elliptical statement. It was not difficult to understand the implications that it carried, and she resented them the more bitterly because exactly the same train of thought had flashed through her own mind.

When she woke on Sunday morning, it was to the instant recollection that Carol Anderson had said he was coming that afternoon to Eaton Square.

Perhaps he wouldn't come, though, after all. Young men were not reliable. Monica strove to arm herself against the possibility of acute disappointment.

Neither she nor her mother made any reference whatever to the expected visitor.

The day followed its customary routine: church at St. Peter's in the morning, a walk across the Park—cold and unexhilarating in the raw chilliness of February—Sunday roast beef, apple-tart, Stilton cheese and celery, at home, and, soon afterwards, Vernon Ingram's announcement that he was going round to the Club.

“We're not expecting anyone, or going anywhere, this evening?” he enquired.

“No, dear. There's nothing.”

“Then I shall try and get a rubber or two and perhaps dine at the Club.”

His wife and daughter were not unaccustomed to such an announcement on Sundays. Mrs. Ingram always ordered a
cold supper that night, so that the servants might go to church, and there was a certain monotony about the weekly menu of cold beef, cold tart, and cold bundles of cheese-straws.

Monica often thought that her father's Club, where he could meet his friends, play cards, see all the latest illustrated papers, and order as varied a dinner as he chose, whatever the day of the week, must serve him as an agreeable refuge. She herself, of course, did not belong to a Club, and even had she done so, women's Clubs were usually uncomfortable and dingy, with badly cooked and served meals, and fires that refused to burn up.

At half-past three Mrs. Ingram, who had been leaning back in a corner of the sofa, with a Mudie novel open upon her lap, sat up very erect and said that Monica had better go and change her dress.

“In case anyone turns up.”

“Won't this do?”

“No, darling. The collar is crumpled. Tell Parsons to wash it for you to-morrow morning—and the cuffs, too. And run upstairs and put on the green velveteen. It suits you.”

Monica also thought that the green velveteen dress suited her, and felt grateful to her mother for having suggested it. She sighed with pretended reluctance and went upstairs.

It was cold in her bedroom, and Monica wished that she were allowed to have a fire there. There was always a fire in Mrs. Ingram's bedroom from four o'clock onwards, but she said that in Monica's case it was quite unnecessary, except in illness or very cold weather.

Monica unfastened her blue-serge dress, stepped out of it so as not to disturb her hair, and left it on the floor for the housemaid to put away. She went across to the wardrobe, shivering in her short-sleeved petticoat-bodice and silk underskirt. The petticoat-bodice wouldn't do under the velveteen frock, which had a rather low-cut neck. It's bow of blue baby-ribbon had a way of appearing above the opening of her frock that compelled her to tuck it in again continually. Monica
decided that it was too cold to divest herself of anything at all, so after pinning down the recalcitrant blue bow, she put on a princess petticoat over all the rest, and then the green velveteen.

It certainly was a very pretty dress, and it was extraordinarily comfortable, as well as becoming, not to wear a high collar.

Monica looked at herself in the glass.

It occurred to her sometimes that she was not as pretty as she had been at eighteen. Her face was certainly paler and much thinner, and the loss of a tooth showed a gap when she smiled. But her hair was a satisfaction to her—brown and abundant, puffed out on either side of her head, and regularly and carefully waved at least once a fortnight.

This afternoon she was looking nice. The frock suited her, there was no sign of any spot on her chin, and her hair had “gone” successfully.

From far below, she thought she heard faintly the whirr of the front-door bell, for which she had, almost without knowing it, been listening all the afternoon. Monica kicked off her shoes and hastily pulled on a narrow, pointed pair of bronze ones with tiny gold beads on the toes, and went out to the landing.

Leaning over the banisters she could hear, distantly but unmistakably, the sound made by the baize-covered door at the head of the basement stairs, as it was pushed open.

Palter, going to open the door.

Monica rushed noiselessly down two flights of stairs, steadied herself outside the drawing-room and assumed an expression, then walked in quickly.

“Very nice, darling. Just catch up that piece of hair at the back—no, the other side—that's right. I think I heard the bell just a minute ago.”

“Oh, did you?”

“It may very likely be poor cousin Blanche. She said she might come round.”

It was cousin Blanche.

Monica, feeling acutely all her mother's disconcertment as well as her own, moved forward to receive the greeting of her ancient relative, whose sealskin coat always smelt faintly of camphor, reminding Monica invariably of her childhood.

Cousin Blanche never seemed to alter at all. She was now said, although a little uncertainly, to be nearly seventy; but Vernon Ingram, whose relation she was, always declared that she looked just as she had looked in his little boyhood—gaunt, aquiline, high-coloured, and with entirely unconvincing bright-brown hair closely curled round her head beneath the meshes of a net.

She had never married.

It was on that account, Monica had always taken for granted, that Mrs. Ingram invariably referred to her as “poor cousin Blanche,” for cousin Blanche, in the literal sense of the term, was far from poor. She owned a house in Queen's Gate, and a box at the Opera, and some magnificent pearls, and she had quite recently bought a motor-car and engaged a chauffeur.

“Well, Imogen—well, Monica. You're looking very well, Monica. No, thanks, I'll keep my coat a little while, till I'm thawed. I should never be surprised if we had snow. How's Vernon?”

“Very well indeed, thank you, Blanche. He's not in just now, but I dare say presently ——Monica, give cousin Blanche a screen to hold in front of the fire.”

They began to talk about relations. It was a topic that automatically arose in cousin Blanche's company. She was interested in all her relations, however distant, and always seemed to know what all of them were doing.

“You've heard about Sylvia, I suppose?”

Mrs. Ingram raised her eyebrows and glanced quickly at Monica, and then away again.

“Has it——?”

“She's got a little girl. Born yesterday morning.”

“Is everything——?”

“Oh yes, quite, I believe. Her mother telephoned to me
last night. She said the baby was a lovely little thing, very healthy, weighed nearly eight pounds.”

“I suppose they're very disappointed that it isn't a boy.”

“Well, of course it's a disappointment, naturally, but Daisy said Sylvia was very sweet about it and said she didn't mind.”

“I expect her husband had set his heart on its being a son.”

“Naturally, they both hoped for a son, but after all—it's the first one, and they're young. Think of poor Adeline Ingram who had three daughters, one after another, and
then
twin girls.”

“Dreadful, poor thing! Just imagine having to find husbands for them all!”

“That's what she says. She's most amusing about it—so brave of her I always think. She says she'll give them each a London season, one at a time, and the moment the eldest has had her chance, the second one comes out and the eldest one goes in again—and so on. But she's never going to be seen about with more than one daughter at a time.”

“I don't blame her. It ruins a girl's chances to go about with two or three sisters. Men never know which is which, and besides, it's always such a bore for hostesses; they don't like to be unkind and only ask one sister, but of course nobody
wants
extra girls.”

Monica was only partially attending to the conversation. She had heard similar conversations very often, and agreed in a tepid way with everything that had been said.

She was really thinking of little Sylvia, years younger than herself, who was safely married and had a baby. Monica was ashamed of herself for the furious jealousy that gnawed at her, and the secret, mean relief that at least Sylvia's triumph was only partial, since she had not achieved the supreme glory of giving birth to a boy. The door opened again: this time she had not heard the bell.

Palter announced sonorously:

“Mr. Pelham.”

His frock-coat tightly fastened across increasing girth, his air of wooden impassivity scarcely disturbed by the slight,
grave smile that accompanied his handshake, Mr. Pelham sat down on a low chair beside the sofa, carefully drawing up his trousers at the knees as he did so.

He called on the Ingrams quite often, and had done so ever since Monica's first season. He could not possibly be thought interesting, and his rather clammy hands, the few streaks of dark hair brushed across his baldness, and his heavy paunch, made him slightly disagreeable to Monica. But she was, obscurely, grateful to him, because he still went to balls and could always be counted upon to ask her for a dance. She tried not to remember that the younger girls laughed at him behind his back, and asserted that he had been refused by half a dozen different heiresses.

This afternoon she was definitely glad to see Mr. Pelham. It would show cousin Blanche that men came to call. And if Carol Anderson
did
turn up….

She tried to steel herself against disappointment by asserting inwardly that he would not come.

If she made herself believe that, perhaps she could cheat the fates. By five o'clock hope was sinking within her.

A taxi came down the quiet street and stopped outside.

Monica kept her eyes fixed upon Mr. Pelham, and repeated “Yes” and “I see” to all that he was painstakingly telling her about the Highlands.

She heard the slam of the street door.

Suspense was making her feel sick.

“Ring for some hot water, darling,” said Mrs. Ingram.

“I think Palter's just coming, mother.”

The butler threw open the door.

“Mr. Anderson.”

The room, for an instant, reeled round Monica.

It was as from a distance that she heard her mother's exclamation: “How d'y do—this is very nice,” uttered in a high, pleased, artificial voice.

It did not take long for Monica to make friends with Carol Anderson.

She found that he asked nothing better than to sit and talk to her for as long as she would listen, and after that first Sunday afternoon call he came often to Eaton Square.

Mrs. Ingram's early strictness, in the days when her daughter had first been grown-up, had long since relaxed, and when Mr. Anderson asked at the door for Miss Ingram, he was taken direct to Monica's sitting-room.

They sat, one on either side of the fire, and talked.

Almost at once he seemed to want to go below the surface of conversation and talk intimately.

Monica responded, deeply moved. She admitted to him that she had been lonely for years.

“I thought perhaps you had,” he replied simply. “So have I.”

Once or twice it seemed to her that he was hovering on the verge of a confidence, but she was so much afraid of risking any check to their friendship that she pretended unawareness. For the same reason, she dared not talk to him very much about herself.

“Men get very quickly bored with a woman who talks about herself,” was one of Mrs. Ingram's axioms.

Not that she quoted it now, or gave Monica any advice at all. Only the daughter knew, as well as if she had been told so, that the mother was quivering with anxiety and with a hope that she hardly ventured to acknowledge, even to herself.

Perhaps—perhaps—
it
might be going to happen at last! Spring, coming early that year, seemed to waft new hope and happiness into the house in Eaton Square. Even Vernon
Ingram smiled proudly at Monica once or twice, and gave her one day an unexpected five-pound note, telling her to go and choose a pretty new hat for Easter.

Monica got the hat, and gloves, and a silk blouse as well. She wanted to wear them for an expedition that Carol Anderson had proposed.

He wanted her to drive with him into the country and spend an afternoon there. He had a motor-car. The day that they had chosen, towards the end of March, was a lovely one.

They went to Hindhead.

Monica, happier than she had been for years, knew that she was looking pretty, that Carol admired her, and that she need no longer feel inferior to other women. She was being sought out by a man, and not only that, but he was good-looking, tall, and a gentleman. It seemed too good to be true.

They left the car at the big new hotel after lunch, saying that they would return for tea, and began to walk down the long hill, branching off presently on to common land.

“Isn't it wonderful?” said Carol suddenly. He looked round at her, smiling. “The day, I mean, and having this weather, and knowing you, and everything.”

Monica's heart leapt.

“I feel like that too.”

“Should you be cold if we sat down for a little while?”

“Not a bit. It's so mild—and besides I've got quite warm walking.”

Monica really hardly knew what she was saying, but there were a number of felled trees lying by the side of a deep ditch, and she took her seat upon one of them. Carol sat beside her.