Although the possibility of falling in love with him had been killed, Monica felt that she could have loved Carol warmly and maternally had she become his wife, and that his weakness would neither have angered her nor have roused her contempt. Perhaps, as his sense of security strengthened, he might even have grown away from his childish posturings and pretences….
“…so that, having made my little confession, I ask you, Monica, most earnestly, if you will become my wife.”
Monica was so much startled at the realization that Mr. Pelham was actually proposing to her, and that she had failed to hear anything he had said excepting the last few words, that she nearly fainted.
For an instant, everything swayed round her, and she felt intensely sick.
In a blind, feeble gesture, seeking to steady herself, she put out one hand.
Mr. Pelham gently took it into one of his own, and patted it with the other.
His earnest, prawn-like eyes were fixed upon Monica’s face.
“I would do everything I possibly could to try and make you happy. I’ve thought for some time that we — we should be very well suited to one another, if I may say so. Won’t you say Yes, Monica?”
With a flood of incredulous joy and relief, that such a moment should have come to her after all, Monica, in a strangely unsteady voice, answered him.
“Yes.”
“You have made me very happy, and done me a great honour,” said Mr. Pelham solemnly.
He stood up.
His movements, although lacking in spontaneity, were not uncertain.
After an instant’s pause, he bent and kissed Monica’s lips once, very deliberately.
The contact neither pleased nor displeased her, although it faintly startled her.
She was thinking of the rapture with which her mother would receive their announcement.
“You have made me very happy,” Mr. Pelham repeated.
Monica smiled up at him tremulously.
“I’m very happy too,” she said simply.
“Shall we stroll a little further? I mustn’t let you catch a chill. I shall be taking care of you now, you know.”
He helped her up from the log, and then drew her hand through his arm.
“There,” said Mr. Pelham, in a tone of satisfaction. “Quite like an old married couple already.”
Chapter III
NOW THAT she was no longer either unhappy, anxious, or continually conscious of humiliation and failure, Monica was astonished at the rapidity with which she regained a great measure of her lost prettiness.
Life seemed too good to be true.
The days flew by, filled with shopping expeditions, visits to dressmakers, photographers and jewellers, and inspections of possible flats and houses.
Mrs. Ingram was even more radiant than Monica.
She was anxious that the wedding should take place as soon as possible, and a day was fixed, six weeks from the date of Monica’s engagement, and announced at the same time.
For a week before the announcement appeared Monica was busy writing to relations, or old friends, who must not be allowed to learn the news first from the columns of The Morning Post.
One of the earliest letters that she wrote was to Carol Anderson, in Scotland.
Although she had been faintly in love with him, it was with pure relief that Monica told him of her impending marriage thankfully realizing that she need no longer depend upon the tenuous link that bound them for her sole hope of credit in the eyes of the world.
Carol’s answer startled her very much.
He wrote with great brevity, the merest conventional phrase of congratulation, and announced that he should be in London the following week, and must see her immediately.
Could it be possible, she thought, that he was jealous? Monica’s newly revived vanity expanded further at the thought, and she allowed her mind to dwell on it for a moment, wondering what on earth she should do if Carol came and told her that he loved her, and would not allow her to marry anybody else.
At once, the question answered itself.
Carol might say, and even believe, that he loved her, but how far was he to be relied upon?
Herbert Pelham had asked her to marry him. He was in earnest. He stood for security and, above all, for the removal of Monica’s reproach amongst women.
The years of anxiety and suspense had taught her their lesson. Not for Carol Anderson, or for anyone or anything in this world, would Monica relinquish the blessed certainty of becoming a wife.
She saw Carol alone, in the Eaton Square drawing-room, about a month before her wedding-day.
She noticed at once that he looked ill, and very unhappy.
“Monica!”
“Carol — I’m so glad to see you.”
She hesitated nervously.
“Your letter — didn’t seem like you, somehow.”
Carol sank into a chair. All his movements, always, were in keeping with his mood of the moment. His attitude, now, was plainly intended to denote exhaustion, the lassitude of a profound discouragement.
He shaded his face with his hand, and said nothing.
“Were you surprised at my news?” Monica enquired, anxious to come quickly to the issue.
“Naturally. You’d said nothing about it, had you?”
“Carol! How could I? There was no question — I didn’t really know anything about it myself, till it happened.”
Carol took down his hand and looked at Monica with a look that she could not help thinking he himself felt to be a peculiarly piercing one.
“Is that the truth?”
“Of course it is.”
He threw himself back again in his arm-chair and said abruptly:
“I believe you. I didn’t know before — but I do believe you now.”
“I should hope you do. Will you tell me what’s the matter, please?”
Monica’s new-born self-assurance had unconsciously communicated itself to her voice and manner. For the first time she was speaking to Carol without regard for his susceptibilities, or his supposed reaction to her words.
“What do you imagine is the matter?” Carol enquired bitterly. “You’ve let me down utterly, Monica — you’ve failed me — and I trusted you.”
She felt dizzy with surprise and perplexity.
“How? How have I failed you?”
“Monica! Don’t pretend. How can we go on being friends, as we have been, once you’re married? You know perfectly well it will be out of the question. It wouldn’t be fair on Pelham to begin with, and I don’t suppose he’d even allow it. Naturally.”
“But, Carol — of course we can still be friends. I don’t see why it need make any difference.”
Monica spoke without conviction, partly because she did not really believe what she was saying, and partly because she was still utterly undecided as to whether Carol did, or did not, mean that he had wanted to marry her himself.
Carol was very quick to see, and take, the advantage that her uncertainty gave him.
“You’re not being honest with me. You know perfectly well that on the day you promised to marry another man you were virtually giving me up.”
“But I — —” Monica hesitated, helpless.
“You can’t possibly deny it,” Carol asserted. “And I think that you do, at least, owe me absolute sincerity, Monica. That’s why your letter hurt me so frightfully. You wrote, didn’t you, pretending to think that I shouldn’t mind, that I could let you go quite easily and happily. Yet you must have known that it wasn’t so.”
“Honestly, Carol, I — —”
“My dear, I know exactly what you’re going to say. I know just how you’ve reasoned it out, in your own thoughts, persuading yourself that it would be all right, and that we could go on as before. You may be able to deceive yourself, Monica, but it’s impossible for you to deceive me. That’s a thing that nobody has ever succeeded in doing.”
Monica stared at him, utterly impotent in the face of his astonishi
ng belief in himself and his own words.
“I’m pretty certain,” Carol went on, “that I understand you a great deal better than you understand yourself. I can see, for instance, how this has happened. We hadn’t seen each other for some weeks, and you’re the sort of person — and I’m not saying this at all unkindly — with whom it’s rather, Out of sight out of mind. Your friendship for me probably weakened, simply because I wasn’t there, beside you.”
“You’ve no right to — —”
“Yes, I have. I’ve every right. We’ve been friends all this time, I’ve given you more of my confidence than I ever have to any other woman, and I’ve helped you to the very best of my ability. I’m not going to pretend to you that I don’t know I’ve done something for you, in the past two years. I’ve given you the very best I had to give, Monica, and you’re flinging it all back in my face.”
His voice broke.
“But Carol,” said Monica desperately, “you don’t mean that — you weren’t ever — you wouldn’t ever have fallen in love with me yourself, would you?”
She felt that she was expressing herself crudely, and even grossly, and gave the words a downward inflection that made them sound like an assertion, rather than a question.
He turned and looked at her quickly, and Monica realized that for a moment she had disconcerted him. He had not yet acquired an attitude of mind with which to meet her suggestion.
He spoke only after an uncomfortable moment’s pause.
“It’s perfectly impossible, my dear, to say what might or might not have happened. You must know that, as well as I do. There’s only one woman in the world that I love, or ever shall love. I’ve always told you so. Other people may change; I never shall. I’m like that. But what you’re doing is hurting me abominably. You’re not only taking yourself away from me, you’re taking away my faith in women. Monica, ask yourself honestly if you think you have any right to do that.”
Monica understood that Carol was willing to relinquish neither his original claim to a grande passion for Viola Lester, nor his newly evolved grievance against herself. With an ingenuity that only a flawless degree of self-deception could have achieved, he had contrived to reconcile two aspects of himself that must, under less skilful handling, have appeared as mutually destructive one of the other.
It would be not only useless, but also very nearly impossible, to try and make him face reality.
Monica stood up.
“I’m very, very sorry,” she said, with finality.
Carol stood up too, and he had, under the stress of his self-induced emotion, turned white.
“You understand that it’s good-bye, Monica?”
“If you feel that it must be. I don’t. And perhaps some day — —”
“If I go now, you won’t see me again.”
Monica hesitated for a moment, and then held out her hand to him.
“Very well,” said Carol hoarsely.
With knit brows and compressed lips he gazed at her, and then, unexpectedly, kissed her forehead, with a long, solemn kiss.
“Good-bye, Monica. God bless you.”
She made no answer, and, with squared shoulders, Carol Anderson marched out of the room, without looking back. Monica felt sure that he was making exactly the exit that he visualized himself as making.
She did not feel convinced that his farewell was destined to be a final one, and in effect she received three letters from him, in quick succession, within the week. All were long, involved, reproachful, and conceived in a spirit of ardent self-pity.
In the midst of her new preoccupations and interests there was but little time to write replies. Monica sent one answer, that she herself felt to be a cursory and uninspired production, and then wrote no more. She forgot Carol so readily and so completely, that it did not even occur to her as strange that she should have done so.
Nothing, now, was of the least importance excepting her wedding preparations, and the long-desired and despaired-of honour that was now hers.
Her mother’s happiness was almost as great as Monica’s, and far more freely expressed.
“It’s everything that I could have wished,” she declared to all her oldest friends and numerous relations. “We’ve known Herbert for years, and dear Vernon used to like him, and say how sound he was in all his views. I’ve no doubts whatever about his making Monica happy, and of course it’s too delightful that she’ll be living in London, so that I shan’t feel I’ve lost her in the least.”
“Very unselfish of you, Imogen,” observed old cousin Blanche. “I’m afraid you’ll be lonely, all the same, when she’s gone, even if it’s only into the next street.”
“Never mind,” said Mrs. Ingram radiantly. “It’s the fate of a mother, isn’t it? I always knew I couldn’t hope to keep Monica always with me, though she’s been a very devoted, unselfish child. I daresay you’ve guessed that there have been one or two little episodes, before this happened — but she wouldn’t hear of leaving me. And, of course, one felt that none of them were quite the real thing, so far as she herself was concerned. This, I’m thankful to say, is very different.”
The days rushed by, filled with appointments, letters, presents, preparations.
“I hope you’re not wearing yourself out,” said Mr. Pelham solicitously, two days, before the wedding.
Monica laughed and shook her head.
“You certainly look remarkably well.”
A faint expression of admiration was visible in his bulging, prawn-eyes, and Monica felt a rush of gratitude, and of trembling pride at having inspired it.
A house had been found in Beaufort Gardens, and was to be painted and decorated whilst the bridal couple were spending their honeymoon in Italy. Monica and Mr. Pelham, tacitly and without discussion, had agreed that Beaufort Gardens was quite near enough to Eaton Square.
They looked forward to furnishing their house and installing themselves in it on their return.
“Why, we shall be quite an old married couple by that time,” Mr. Pelham playfully observed.
Monica found it difficult to believe.
One night she dreamed that it had all been a mistake about her marriage, and that she was not engaged at all. She woke, sweating and sobbing, to an intense wave of relief as her fingers sought and found the big half-hoop of diamonds on her left hand.
It was on the following night, the one before her wedding day, that her mother came softly into her room, after Monica had already been in bed for nearly an hour.
Monica, who had not been to sleep, sat up.
“Lie down again, darling. I didn’t want to disturb you — we want you to look your best to-morrow, and you must get plenty of sleep to-night.”
As she spoke, Mrs. Ingram took her accustomed seat on the side of the bed.
“My pet, I can scarcely believe it’s your wedding-day to-morrow. It seems only the other day that you were a little thing in the nursery, peeping at me through the bars of your cot when I came upstairs to see you before going out to a dinner-party.”
“I can remember a lovely pink evening dress you used to wear, with puffed sleeves,” said Monica smiling.
She found it easier to speak of her baby days to her mother than of the later years.
“If only dear father could have known about this — it would have made him so happy!” mourned Mrs. Ingram.
“I wish he had,” said Monica, with the pang that would always come at the recollection of her father’s unspoken disappointment and mortification that his daughter had not been sought in marriage.
“But after all, he did know Herbert, and liked him very much.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Ingram quickly. “I always think it’s such a good sign when a man is popular with other men. You see, they can judge of one another so much better than we can.”
“I suppose they can.”
“I feel that Herbert is so absolutely reliable.”
“Yes,” Monica agreed, “that’s one of the things one likes so muc
h about him.”
“You needn’t be nervous, with a man of his kind — and one whom you’ve known so long. Though I must say, I rather like a bride to look nervous. Your dress is perfect, Monica.”
“I can’t believe,” said Monica, “that it’s really there, hanging up in the wardrobe — my wedding-dress.”
Her mother pressed her hand.
“I hope the little bridesmaids will behave nicely, and manage your train properly.”
Monica had decided to have child-attendants. Almost all her contemporaries were married, and she did not want grown-up bridesmaids who would yet be several years younger than she was herself. It had all been understood between herself and her mother without any need for words. Two little Ingram cousins had been invited to officiate, and their father was to give Monica away.
Mrs. Ingram began to enumerate various small aspects of the great event — Monica’s new jewel-case, that had been promised from the shop for that afternoon and hadn’t yet arrived — the bunches of roses for the bridesmaids — her own toilette of silver-grey and lavender — and the arrangements made for the breakfast after the ceremony.
Although she had been living in the atmosphere of exactly such preparations for days past, Monica listened with a sense of incredulous astonishment that they should concern herself. It still seemed absolutely impossible that the miracle should have happened.
“I’m glad poor Fricky and Cecily are coming down for your wedding,” pursued Mrs. Ingram, in a tone of indulgent superiority.
“I hope it won’t upset Cecily.”
“Well, darling, she had her chance, and didn’t know how to make the most of it. I’m sorry for poor Theodora, I must say. Neither of them will ever marry now, of course.”
“I wish they could. I’d like them to be happy.” Monica, now, could afford to be generous.
“In a country where there aren’t enough men to go round girls have got to take trouble if they want lives of their own,” observed Mrs. Ingram simply. “Frederica and Cecily never took the least trouble to attract men, even when they were quite young — and look at the result! I’m sorry for their poor mother.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 363