Thank Heaven Fasting (3 page)

“You can help me best by doing what you're told,
directly
you're told,” said Mrs. Ingram firmly.

Monica went upstairs.

She did wish that her mother would not talk to her as though she were still a child. Once, she had ventured to say so, in a moment of intimacy, and Mrs. Ingram had kissed her and answered gently: “To me, you can never be anything but my baby, even if you live to be a hundred.”

To the irrational tenderness of such a declaration, no dutiful and affectionate daughter could make any reply.

Monica's bedroom was on the fourth floor, a flight of stairs higher than that of anybody else—except, of course, the servants, who didn't count. They were at the very top of the house, next door to the boxroom. Indeed, Monica
had a dim idea that the kitchen-maid actually did sleep in the box-room, but dressed and undressed with one of the other maids, in another room. Her window looked out on to the Square, and she gazed down for a moment at the striped awning already lowered over the balcony. It hid from her any view of the street, but she knew that another awning was in process of being put up, at the front door, and that strange men in dirty white aprons were hurrying up and down the steps, carrying in cardboard boxes and pots of azaleas and smilax.

Really, the ball might almost have been taking place at Mrs. Ingram's own house. But it was only a dinner-party before the ball.

Monica slowly drew the green blind half-way down between the rose-pink silk curtains, filling the room with a soft, summery gloom.

The pink silk eiderdown quilt had already been turned back over the brass rail at the foot of the bed, and the crisp, smooth linen sheet folded a little away from the pillow. Evidently Mary, the housemaid, had guessed that Miss Monica would be told to rest, before the tremendous excitement of the evening. Slowly Monica began to undress. Sometimes, in order to save herself trouble, she tried to lie down without taking off her stays, but it was never endurable. In the same way, it wasn't worth while trying to avoid the business of taking one's hair down. The hairpins hurt, and sooner or later they fell out, and, in any case, it had all to be done again as soon as one got up.

So Monica went to the dressing-table, and took down her hair altogether, laying the thick black hairpins, and the thin “invisibles” into two tidy little heaps beside the pad that supported her sausage-curls. Hastily she brushed back her hair, wishing that it were longer—it only reached to her shoulders—and plaited it in a small tail. For a moment or two she gazed earnestly at the reflection in the glass.

The Viyella nightgown—her mother did not think anything but Viyella really ladylike—thick things in the winter
and thin in the summer—made her look very childish, with its little frills at neck and wrists, and neat row of buttons down the front. It was cut so as to fall in ample folds, and reminded Monica of a choir-boy's surplice. Moved by a sudden, incomprehensible impulse, she drew it tightly round her from the back, until the outline of her figure—rounded breasts, flat waist, and curving hips—was startlingly visible.

Shame assailed her, and she released the flannel folds abruptly and sprang into bed.

Anxious not to analyse her own immodest impulse, and indeed to forget it as quickly as might be, Monica looked round her room, consciously dwelling on the decoration, the arranging and furnishings that she and her mother had decided upon together as soon as Monica “grew up.”

The wallpaper was a pattern of pink roses, crawling luxuriantly in and out of a silver-grey trellis work. Monica was not entirely satisfied with it. Her first idea had been to have a yellow room, but neither her father nor her mother had thought that at all a good idea, so that it had had to be abandoned. Still, after all, pink was pretty.

The china on the wash-stand was pink—little bouquets of roses tied with pink ribbon, on a white background—and the mats of the dressing-table were of pink Roman satin, covered with white spotted muslin. One lay beneath each of the bottles, brushes, trays, and boxes belonging to the embossed silver “dressing-table set” that Monica's father had given her on her sixteenth birthday. The back of each silver piece showed a raised reproduction of Sir Joshua Reynolds' “Heads of Angels.”

The furniture itself was all painted white, so was the narrow little mantelpiece on which stood the collection of china animals, dating from nursery days. The pictures were framed in gilt—mostly “copies from the flat” of Swiss scenery, and Italian peasantry, but there were also reproductions of one or two “really
good”
pictures. These had been given to Monica from time to time, usually on birthdays,
and she always felt that she ought to have liked them much better than she really did.

Her books, in a small open bookcase by the bed, she viewed with a much more real satisfaction. There was a set of Dickens, a set of Scott, a set of Ruskin, and several volumes of poetry. The storybooks—she was a little bit ashamed of all the L. T. Meades, and the Fifty-two Stories for Girls series—Monica still kept in the schoolroom. She was allowed, now, to read the books from Mudie's in the drawing-room, provided that she asked her mother's leave first, as to each one. The most individual thing in the room, Monica always felt, was the large coloured picture of the Emperor Napoleon that hung over the fireplace.

She had bought it with her own money, after deciding that Napoleon was her favourite hero. Mrs. Ingram had not, at first, been very pleased at this act of independence. She had not, however, forbidden the hanging of the picture, saying only: “It's a phase, darling. All girls go through it, I suppose.”

Monica had felt foolish, but had stuck to Napoleon. She liked the feeling of having originated a cult for herself.

Beside the bed stood a little table with a framed photograph of Monica's father and mother, taken almost before she could remember them, a Bible and Prayer-book, and a copy of the Imitation of Christ, bound in limp green leather. A reproduction of the Sistine Madonna hung over the bed.

There had been a moment when Monica, really doubtful whether she was not at heart an atheist, had wished to take this down, and to substitute yet another Napoleon, but she had never found courage to do anything so entirely likely to lead to disaster. Besides, it wouldn't have been of any use. She would never have been allowed to take down the Madonna and Child. And after all, it was—like the pink wallpaper—very pretty, and reminded her of her childhood.

In these virginal surroundings, Monica lay and thought about her first ball.

She was deeply excited.

Nobody knew what might happen at a first ball.

There were stories about girls who had received proposals at their first balls, or even actually become engaged. Mrs. Ingram had many times told her daughter of the almost historic case of the aunt of Frederica and Cicely.

“She was Claire Bell—the youngest of all the family—and she went to her first ball when she was seventeen. She was very pretty, as they all were, and, of course, she had the advantage of two sisters who were already out, and could introduce men to her. Well, Sir Felix Craner saw her, and asked to be introduced, and he danced with her once or twice, and the
very next morning
he called on her father, and asked if he might propose. You can imagine how delighted the Bells were—three daughters still unmarried, and they weren't at all well off. And Claire married this very rich man before she was eighteen! Of course,” Mrs. Ingram was apt to conclude the story with a sigh, “things like that don't happen every day.”

“She must have been awfully pretty.”

“She
was
pretty, I must say. But it isn't always prettiness that does it. As a matter of fact, Claire lost her looks very soon after. Still, what did that matter? There she was, married and settled at seventeen.”

It seemed an almost unrealizable ideal.

One could not hope to be as brilliantly successful as all that. Still, it would be glorious to dance every dance, and to feel that one's partners were admiring one's dress, and one's dancing, and one's looks. Monica knew that she was, for instance, prettier than either Frederica or Cecily, who were both so much too tall, and held themselves so badly. It certainly was not
only
because she was a visitor that Mr. Pelham had talked so much more to her than to either of them. Mr. Pelham might be elderly, and not very good-looking, but still, he was a man.

Monica, dozing, dreamed that she was wearing an engagement ring, and that Frederica was jealous.

At four o'clock, her mother's maid brought her a cup of tea and a plate of sponge-fingers.

Parsons was good-natured, and fond of Monica. Otherwise she would certainly never have stumped up from the pantry, right down in the basement, but would have sent Mary.

“Thank you very much, Parsons,” said Monica politely. She sat up in bed.

“What's mother doing?”

“Resting, Miss Monica. She's been on her feet all day long, and the master's just come in, and said she was to have a lay-down if it's only for half an hour.”

“Oh, is father downstairs?”

“Yes, Miss Monica. He's just come in,” repeated Parsons.

“Well, I should think I might get up now, and go downstairs, wouldn't you? The hairdresser isn't coming till seven.”

“I don't know what madam's orders were, Miss Monica, but if she didn't say nothing special, then I' should think you might go down.”

“It isn't as if I hadn't had a doze. I went right off. I know I did, because I had a dream.”

Monica gave a self-conscious little laugh, at the remembrance of the dream.

She had an absurd feeling that a dream like that might be a kind of good omen. It might even mean that she really
was
going to be engaged quite soon.

“Can I help you, Miss Monica?”

“No, thank you, Parsons. I can manage.”

“Then, please Miss, could I come and fasten your dress for you not a minute later than half-past six?”

“But the hairdresser?”

“You'll want your dress on before he does your hair, Miss Monica, otherwise you'll never be able to get it over your head safely.”

“No, of course, I shan't. All right, I'll be up here at halfpast six.”

Twenty minutes later, Monica ran down to the drawing-room, pausing for a moment to admire the gilt pot of marguerites that had suddenly appeared on a small table on the drawing-room landing, just below the pleated pale-blue curtains of the window. Then she opened the door and went in.

Her father stood by the window, as usual agreeably doing nothing. Presumably his occasional activities at the Bank of which he was a director exhausted Vernon Ingram's energies, for, outside the hours of business, he was seldom seen to do anything at all. Good-looking and imperturbable, he merely existed, politely and blandly, knowing everybody whom he considered to be worth knowing, and never making a mistake as to those who might, or might not, be included in the category. He smiled when he saw Monica, and lightly brushed her face with his pointed brown moustache.

“This is a great occasion, eh?”

“I'm awfully excited,” exclaimed Monica. She would have said something of the kind, even had it been less than perfectly true, knowing that he expected it of her. Her relations with her father were almost entirely governed by her knowledge of what he would expect.

“That's right,” Ingram murmured approvingly. “Mother has gone to have a little rest before dressing. She's been doing a very great deal lately, and we mustn't let her knock herself up, eh?”

“No, of course not.”

Monica assumed an expression of dutiful concern, but in reality a faint, familiar pang of vexation shot through her, as it always did at every fresh proof of her father's solicitude for her mother.

It was not that she was so especially devoted to her father. Monica believed herself to love her mother better than anybody else. But there was a feeling of resentment, that she never sought to define, at knowing her mother to be the object of an exclusive affection such as Monica herself could not, as yet, claim from anyone.

“Have you been to play whist at the Club, father?”

The question dated from Monica's nursery days. She asked it several times weekly, and never realized that the reply was a matter of complete indifference to her.

“Yes, I had a couple of rubbers. One or two people were very amused to hear that I was taking my daughter to her coming-out ball to-night.”

“Why?” asked Monica innocently.

Vernon Ingram laughed self-consciously.

“Perhaps they didn't quite realize that I
had
a grown-up daughter,” he suggested.

Monica did not altogether understand. She often rode in the Park with her father, and had met a number of his friends. Why should they have failed to realize that of course she was grown-up?

But she said, “Oh, I see!” and laughed a little.

“I hope the new frock has arrived safely, and that you and your mother are very pleased with it all,” said Ingram kindly.

“Very pleased, thank you, father.”

“I want you to realize, dear child, that father and mother have taken a very great deal of trouble, and gone to a lot of expense, over this ball. Your mother, especially—I'm quite afraid that she's worn herself out.”

“Oh, I hope not!” interjected Monica uncomfortably. Her father held up a long, beautifully shaped hand, and she perceived that she had interrupted him.

“You mustn't think that because Lady Marlowe is—is joining forces with us to-night that the brunt of it has not fallen upon your dear mother. It has. Naturally, we don't grudge any of it—we want you to have everything that we can give you. And I'm sure that you realize that, and will never—never disappoint us, in any way.”

“No, father, I won't.”

“That's right, darling. We hope that you're going to make a number of very nice friends, and prove that we were quite justified in this—this expense, and trouble, over your first ball.”