Mr. Pelham laughed politely.
“Hardly so bad as that, perhaps. But I really must be going. I’ve paid you a regular visitation, I’m afraid.”
“You’ve been most interesting,” Mrs. Ingram declared emphatically. “Do let us know if you hear anything more—though I feel sure Monica will get a letter. They were all three practically brought up together.”
“Oh, of course you’ll hear. That is, if there really is anything to hear. But I feel sure there’s something in it personally. Well—I really must——”
Mr. Pelham shook hands, turned in the doorway to bow slightly once more, and took his departure.
“What a gossiping old woman he is,” said Mrs. Ingram ungratefully. “Ring the bell, Monica.”
“I have rung it.”
For the remainder of the evening Mrs. Ingram seemed cheerful and interested, returning continually to the topic of Cecily Marlowe.
“Of course, it’s a very bad match,” she repeated several times, with unconscious satisfaction. And once she added: “I couldn’t bear you to do anything like that, my darling.”
Monica wondered bitterly whether her mother still really entertained any serious hope or expectation of seeing her married to anybody at all.
For her own part, she felt that there was little but despair in her heart.
The next morning she received a letter from Cecily. It merely said, in stilted and childish phraseology, that she was engaged to John Corderey, whom Monica would remember, and that they hoped to be married very soon but it wasn’t quite settled when. Cecily hoped that Monica would come to her wedding. Not a word about Frederica.
There was a formal announcement of the engagement in The Morning Post.
“I’m glad she’s had the decency to write,” said Mrs. Ingram, rather indignantly; “but do you mean to say she hasn’t asked you to be her bridesmaid?”
“I’m very glad she hasn’t. I’m getting past the age for that kind of thing.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Mrs. Ingram curtly.
“I think Cecily might have told me rather more about it. She doesn’t say anything at all except the bare fact.”
“I suppose you’ll be seeing her directly. She’ll want to do her shopping here, even if the actual wedding is to be in Yorkshire. Doesn’t she say anything about coming to London?”
“Nothing at all.”
“How like a Marlowe to make unnecessary mysteries! Well, I suppose I must write to her mother, and try not to say ‘Better late than never.’ I wonder how Frederica is taking it.”
Monica also wondered.
She wrote reproachfully to Cecily.
“I do think you might have told me some of the really interesting things about your engagement. After all the ages we’ve known each other, and talked about getting married! And you don’t say a word about Fricky. I suppose that means she’s been making the most terrible fuss about it all. I do hope you’ll be happy, Cecily, and that he’s very, very nice. I expect he is.”
Monica felt that in writing thus to Cecily she was reverting to the outlook and the phraseology of their schoolroom days. She could neither help it nor understand why it should be so.
She was acutely miserable at the thought that Cecily was going to be married and that she herself was not. It added to her misery that she was ashamed of it, and despised and reproached herself for her unworthy jealousy. But nothing that she could do made it any less.
It surprised her vaguely that her mother, beyond saying once or twice that such a marriage as Cecily was making would have been out of the question for Monica, showed no signs of any similar distress.
A few days later, she understood.
Mrs. Ingram, in an access of midnight misery, such as she still occasionally indulged herself with, roamed up to Monica’s bedroom, woke her by flashing on the light, and—after saying: “Don’t wake up, darling; go to sleep again, it’s nothing”—sat down on the foot of her bed.
She said that Monica was her only child—all that she had left in the world. Sometimes she thought that Monica might want to leave her, and she couldn’t bear it.
“Not that I’d ever grudge you your happiness, my precious one, but just for a few years more—I don’t suppose it’ll be for very long.”
Monica, sick with pity, understood.
Her mother wanted to save her face.
She wanted both of them to be able to say that Monica had deliberately chosen not to marry, so that she might devote herself to her mother.
“Mother!”
“What, dear?”
“Cecily’s engagement is broken off again!”
Mrs. Ingram almost snatched the newspaper out of Monica’s hands.
“Good Heavens! I always said the Marlowes were as mad as hatters. It was quite extraordinary enough to get engaged to her doctor without going and breaking it off, surely?”
“Do you suppose that Lady Marlowe——?”
“No, I don’t,” declared Mrs. Ingram energetically. “I’m sure she realized perfectly well that any marriage would be better than none, at this time of day. Besides, she’s not at all the kind of person to change her mind—you know that as well as I do. If she once agreed to the marriage, which she did, the very last thing she’d want would be to let Cecily make a public fool of herself by breaking it all off again.”
“Then,” said Monica, “it’s Fricky’s doing.”
“Could even Cecily be so idiotic as to let her elder sister prevent her from getting married? Besides, why should Frederica do a thing like that?”
“I don’t know. Jealousy, perhaps. She never has wanted Cecily to have a life of her own. And if she made enough fuss about it, and said how dreadful it would be for her to be left alone, I think Cecily would give in.”
“Then all I can say is, that if Cecily is as weak-minded as all that, she deserves all she’ll get,” said Mrs. Ingram.
Monica did not feel that her mother’s arbitrary condemnation, justified though it might be, wholly covered the case.
She herself was perplexed and uneasy, and faintly ashamed of the definite relief that it occasioned her to know that Cecily, after all, was not going to be married. She neither wrote to Cecily nor received any letter from her, but a few weeks later Lady Marlowe suddenly appeared in London and came to see Mrs. Ingram. She spent a short quarter of an hour on conventional condolences, allowed Mrs. Ingram to talk about herself and her sorrow for ten minutes, and then, true to her reputation, began to be amusing.
“My dear, be thankful that your girl doesn’t play you the tricks that mine play me. (Monica, I’ve always told Fricky and Cecily that you’re worth both of them put together.) Imagine, if you can, my feelings at the way Cecily’s made a laughing-stock of herself and me!”
“Oh, but of course not,” Mrs. Ingram protested politely. “It’s really such a mercy to have discovered that it wouldn’t do, before the wedding-day instead of after.”
She said it without much conviction, and Lady Marlowe laughed frankly.
“Nonsense, my dear. It’s too sweet of you to put it like that, but you know my brutal frankness, and as I said to Cecily, when it turned out that the Corderey person had actually proposed—which I believe he did by letter—if you were eighteen, I said, and in your first season, it would be another thing altogether. One would simply tell one’s nearest male relation to send him off with a flea in his ear. But when you’ll never see thirty again, and there’s never been so much as a nibble, from anybody, by far the best thing you can do is to accept him, and marry him as quickly as you decently can before he changes his mind.”
“Did Cecily—care for him?” asked Monica.
“Oh yes, I think she thought herself very much in love,” said Lady Marlowe, looking amused. “He was quite presentable, too—much better manners than one has oneself—that kind of person always has, I believe. But of course, you know him.”
“I’ve always felt so guilty,” Mrs. Ingram declared, “at having been respons
ible, in the first place, for his ever coming to you.”
“But, my dear Imogen, not at all. Who, in Heaven’s name, could have foreseen what happened? In fact, it couldn’t have happened with anyone’s daughter except mine. I’m sure I often wonder what sins in my past incarnations I must be expiating to have had only daughters—and such daughters!”
“You’re always so amusing, Theodora, but it really is too bad of you to talk like that. Poor Cecily!”
“My dear, I think it’s poor me. First of all I can’t get either of them engaged to anyone, either for love or money, then Cecily says she wants to marry the doctor, then Frederica takes to her bed and has hysterics, and finally Cecily says she doesn’t want to get married after all and breaks the whole thing off again.”
“Then it was Frederica,” said Monica, half under her breath.
Lady Marlowe heard, and gave her a shrewd look.
“You guessed, did you? How dreadfully poor Fricky does give herself away, doesn’t she? Well, of course she’s always bullied Cecily within an inch of her life, and Cecily has let her do it, and this is the result. Frederica simply wouldn’t let her marry.”
“Oh, my dear Theodora,” Mrs. Ingram protested, “oughtn’t you to have interfered?”
Lady Marlowe shrugged her shoulders.
“If it had been a really good marriage—but one wasn’t too keen on it, after all, and as I said to them both, If Cecily is so completely under Frederica’s thumb as all that, I really don’t think she’s fit to marry anybody. She ought to be old enough to know her own mind by this time.”
“Do you mean that she just gave it up because Fricky told her to?” Mrs. Ingram asked incredulously.
“Practically. At least I believe there was a tragic scene or two, and the young man was perpetually asking for interviews with me—which I need hardly say he didn’t get. Miss Batten saw him, several times—you remember poor old Batten, who’s been with us for years and years—and said he was most earnest and melodramatic, and threatened her with Cecily’s committing suicide or going off her head. As I said when she told me, he must have a considerably exaggerated idea of his own value!”
Monica moved uneasily.
“Did he—Dr. Corderey—say anything to Frederica?”
“Say anything to Frederica!” echoed Lady Marlowe derisively. “My dear, according to Batten, it was Frederica who did all the saying. She made a fearful scene, and appealed to Cecily in front of him, and told her she’d got to choose between them. Naturally, as Batten said, anyone who knew Cecily would have known perfectly well that she’d never fail Frederica in front of anybody else. It simply isn’t in her to do it. She’s had this morbid dependence on Fricky all her life and it isn’t going to vanish into nothingness at the word of a man she hasn’t known more than a few months, as you may suppose. It’s been the ruin of Fricky and Cecily,” said Lady Marlowe calmly, “that they were never forcibly separated when they were children.”
“Then Dr. Corderey was right,” Monica said.
Both her seniors stared at her in astonishment.
Then Mrs. Ingram said, “Don’t be silly, darling,” and Lady Marlowe, raising her eyebrows, asked for another cup of tea.
“Oh, I’m so sorry—do forgive me, Theodora. But really, I’ve been so absorbed in what you were telling us … Well, my dear, what’s going to happen now?”
Lady Marlowe emitted her high, unfeeling laugh.
“My dear, all the excitement having died down, and Corderey having been got rid of, the faithful Batten wrote to me—I need not tell you that I’d left the house and gone to stay with the Evelyns, and various other congenial people—and so back I went.
“Cecily was looking like death—but she’s always done that at intervals, after all—and Fricky was quite unbearably sulky and injured—God knows why, having got her own way! I simply read them the Riot Act. This, I said, is the last straw. I’m not going to give either of you any more chances. It’s no pleasure to me, I said, to be seen about with two young women of nearly six foot high who can’t smile, can’t talk, can’t dance, can’t hold themselves properly, and in fact can’t do anything at all except make absurd scenes and be intense about one another. It’s the thoroughly unnatural, I said, and I’m not in the least surprised that between you, you’ve managed to put off every man who’s ever looked in your direction.
“I’m going to let each of them have an allowance, and they can stay where they are, in the country, with Batten to pick up the pieces when they fight.”
Lady Marlowe began to draw on her gloves.
Monica watched her with a kind of dreadful fascination.
Did she know that she was cruel?
“Good-bye, Imogen. Of course, all this is entirely private. I know I can trust you and Monica.”
“Of course. We’ve thought so much about it all.”
“Sweet of you, my dear. Well, now you know the whole story. Monica, you must go and stay with them when the weather gets rather nicer, if you wouldn’t be too bored. They’d love to have you, I know, and I’m sure you could put a little sense into them if you tried.”
She laughed again.
“Really, one’s daughters! Not that you’re anything but extremely lucky in yours, Imogen—I’ve a very soft corner for dear little Monica, as you know. I’ve always said she should have a diamond bracelet as a wedding-present, and so you shall, Monica. Don’t leave it too long, my dear.”
Lady Marlowe kissed Mrs. Ingram, adjusted her veil in front of the glass, and was seen downstairs to the waiting motor-car by Monica.
When Monica returned to her mother Mrs. Ingram said thoughtfully: “What a cat she is!”
Both of them knew that the reference was to Lady Marlowe’s final injunction to Monica, not to leave it too long.
“What utter nonsense, her telling us that it was private about Cecily. As if I didn’t know perfectly that Theodora will make a thoroughly good story of it wherever she goes for months to come!”
“I don’t see how she can,” Monica observed.
“Well, really, I don’t know that it isn’t the wisest thing she can do. Everyone knows perfectly well how disgusted she is that both the girls have been failures, and so she may just as well make a joke of it. People are anyhow going to say spiteful things, whatever line she takes.”
“Yes,” said Monica, “I suppose so.”
Mrs. Ingram began to replace the cushions on the sofa.
“Ring, darling. This room needs tidying; the newspaper seems to be up here instead of in the library. There’s one thing, anyway. Those wretched girls needn’t feel that neither of them has ever had a look-in of any kind. Even though it didn’t come to anything, Cecily can always tell people that there has been a man who definitely did ask her to marry him.”
Chapter II
One day Mrs. Ingram unexpectedly said to Monica:
“Is Carol Anderson at all in earnest, darling?”
Monica, startled, did not know how to reply, although she understood perfectly what her mother meant.
“Because if he’s not, there’s no real use in his continually coming here, and in your going about with him. It may put off other men who might really mean something.”
“What other men?” Monica demanded with sudden bitterness. It was Mrs. Ingram’s turn to look startled.
“Don’t talk like that, darling,” she began automatically, and then checked herself as though realizing the futility of her own admonition.
They looked at one another in silence for a moment.
Then Mrs. Ingram turned her eyes away from Monica, and said, in a tone so unwonted that Monica scarcely recognized it as an expression of timidity:
“Naturally I’m only too glad you should have him here. And he’s very nice in many ways, though I’m not sure dear father would have thought him good enough for you, quite——I was only just wondering if, perhaps, if he was taking up your time rather unfairly, and not going to be of any real use at the end of it all.”
/> “We’re friends, mother. That’s all.”
“Darling, there’s no such thing as friendship between an unmarried man and woman.”’
Monica knew very well that from that Victorian stronghold her mother could never be moved.
She reflected gloomily how true it was that she saw a great deal of Carol, and that it had not led, and probably never would lead, to his asking her to marry him. He was continually inviting her to accompany him to picture-galleries, concerts, plays, and even on expeditions to the country.
He was an agreeable companion, especially when he forgot to try and impress her, and as he became more assured of her liking and sympathy he became more natural with her, and therefore more likeable. Sometimes Monica could succeed in forgetting that she was a woman and Carol a man, and that if she could not make him fall in love with her, it was something between a disgrace and a misfortune.
Nothing could be more evident than that, if he was at all in love with her—which Monica doubted—he did not know it himself, nor ever intend to know it. He was introspective, vain, and imaginative, and not passionate, and his idealization of his affair with Viola Lester appeared to satisfy him emotionally. He still spoke of it, although less frequently, and from time to time worked up a recrudescence of despair, convincing to himself if not to Monica.
It sometimes vaguely crossed her mind that it would be satisfactory to tell Carol the truth about himself, and even to laugh—frankly, and with friendliness—at his childlike self-deceptions, but she was afraid of losing his friendship, and would not risk it. He was her chief outside interest in life, even though she had almost given up hope that he would ever want to marry her.
Monica did not, nowadays, know many unmarried men. She no longer went to dances, and her mother had ceased to entertain.
Mr. Pelham and one or two other middle-aged men still called faithfully upon the widow and her daughter on Sunday afternoons, and once Monica met Claude Ashe, whom she had not seen for years, in the Park.
He talked to her for a little while, looking curiously unaltered, but they had nothing to say to one another, and although she knew that he was not married she felt no wish to meet him again.
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