Thank Heaven Fasting (20 page)

“I don't know what I should do,” said Carol Anderson very seriously, “if anything was the matter with you, and I couldn't see you. It makes such a tremendous difference to me, having you to talk to. Writing could never be the same thing.”

“I like to think I'm a help to you,” said Monica, quite truly.

“If ever you disappointed me in any way, Monica, you'd be
doing something worse than you probably have any idea of. I take things much, much more seriously than the average man does. I think you know that. Very probably I shouldn't reproach you at all. I might say nothing to you whatever. But the effect would be there—beyond your control or mine.”

For the first time, she felt a little impatient with Carol's solemnities.

“I hope neither of us will disappoint the other,” she returned tritely.

No one could be quicker than Carol Anderson to detect the finest shade of difference in a meaning, in an intonation even. He looked at her quickly.

“Do you say that because you
are
disappointed in me? If so, I'd much rather you told me so. Don't be afraid of hurting me. I can stand being hurt. I've borne a great deal already—and without letting anyone know it—and I can bear more, if necessary.”

He squared his shoulders in his favourite gesture.

“But it isn't necessary, Carol. Truly. Don't be silly,” said Monica rather timidly. “Of course I'm not disappointed in you.”

It did not even occur to her for a moment that she was, actually, speaking an untruth. Her only preoccupation was the ingrained one: not to run any risk of losing her hold, however tenuous, on the interest of an unmarried male.

“I'm glad,” said Carol, apparently accepting her reassurance. And he added, smiling a little:

“I didn't exactly see how you
could
be disappointed in me, I must say, because I've never given my confidence to anybody as I have to you.”

He continued to give her his confidence.

Monica's frail self-respect continued to derive sustenance from his continual demands upon her. She wanted the Marlowes to see Carol, with his evident liking for her, and dependence on her, but it was not easy to arrange.

Lady Marlowe took some little while to recover from her influenza, and before she was out of her room, Frederica was suddenly and violently attacked by the same germ.

“Serve her right,” said Mrs. Ingram unsympathetically. “The idiot might just as well have left her mother to Rouse and the nurse. I'm sure she was no use whatever, and now look at all the extra trouble she's giving! I suppose Cecily will want to go and nurse Fricky, and then she'll get it, and the whole thing will go on and on like a merry-go-round.”

“I should think that if Cecily tries to nurse Fricky, or go near her,” said Monica, “Fricky will be perfectly frantic. You know the fuss she made before—wanting her out of the house, and all that.”

“I've no patience with her. Still, better ring up to-night and find out how she is, and if we can do anything.”

Monica rang up Cecily, and made all enquiries. Cecily, her voice expressionless, said that the hospital nurse was looking after Frederica, and that she was sleeping most of the time.

“Are you—do you—sit with her?” hazarded Monica.

“No.”

That was all. Cecily offered no explanation. It was entirely characteristic of her life-long allegiance to her tyrant not even to comment upon a circumstance of which Monica knew the inner cause as well as she did herself.

She only added that Dr. Corderey was being very kind.

“He thinks we ought to go away for a change after all this.”

“Abroad? That would be nice.”

“Yes. Of course it all depends on mamma. She hasn't said anything about it yet.”

Cecily sounded neither more nor less dreary than usual. Monica, hanging up the receiver, reflected that to go abroad with Lady Marlowe as one of two unmarriageable daughters would probably be worse than to remain at home as usual.

Mr.Ingram, who was not nervous where infection was concerned, was quite ready to let Monica go round to Belgrave Square whenever she liked.

The London routine of parties and visits had long ago been dropped. It was better, the Ingrams tacitly decided, that Monica should have her own friends, and her own occupations, rather than that she should strenuously fulfil the obligations of season after season amongst a crowd of younger girls.

She had friends—not very intimate ones, for most of her contemporaries had married, and Monica could not bear to see them too often—and she manufactured occupations. There were always small shopping errands to be done, the flowers to be arranged, occasional visits to picture galleries and Exhibitions, and Sunday afternoon concerts. At one time Monica had attended a series of Red Cross lectures, with a view to learning First Aid. The classes were attended entirely by women, and she found them very dull. As Mrs. Ingram said, they led to nothing.

It was really a relief to Monica to go and sit with Cecily in the dreary Belgrave Square drawing-room, or to walk round the Square garden with her.

They had known one another so long that they could be almost natural together, and it was easier still in the absence of Frederica's bitter, scornful tongue and perpetual air of tragedy.

“How is Fricky?” Monica enquired perfunctorily every afternoon, and even more perfunctorily: “How is Lady Marlowe?”

Lady Marlowe was taking her time. She liked the hospital nurse who was looking after her, and had turned the care of
Frederica over to the severe and elderly maid, Rouse. Cecily did not see her sister, and only paid her mother a short visit morning and evening.

She appeared to have nothing whatever to do, but she was not unhappy. It seemed to Monica, on the contrary, that Cecily was looking less miserable. Once or twice she made suggestions, such as she would not have ventured on in Frederica's presence, for a walk in Kensington Gardens, to watch the children playing there. Monica, obscurely moved, always avoided the sight of young children, and she was surprised that Cecily should care to go and look at them. But Cecily seemed happier than usual, watching the shouting, running, woolly-clad babies, and their smart, uniformed nurses.

On a mild afternoon in late autumn, they walked across the Park together, returning to Belgrave Square for tea.

The small, neat car of Dr. Corderey stood at the door.

“Shall I go?” suggested Monica.

“Oh no. He only stays a few minutes. He'll just come in and tell me everything's all right,” said Cecily.

She stood by the table in the hall, listlessly opening a couple of circulars. There was a rapid tread on the stairs above, and Dr. Corderey came quickly down.

Although he had been moving so rapidly, he did not seem to be in a hurry, but stood and talked cheerfully, giving an excellent account of both patients.

“Your mother talks of Brighton on Saturday, and I think that would be a very good idea. I've persuaded her to take her maid with her, and leave Nurse Hopkins here for Miss Marlowe.”

“Shall we join her later, then—my sister and I?”

“I think it would be a very good idea if your sister had a change—and you too.”

Something in Dr. Corderey's tone struck Monica, and she looked at him. He was watching Cecily with the same air of close professional attention that she had observed once before.

“Are you particularly busy just now?” he suddenly enquired.

“Not at all,” said Cecily, startled.

“Then may I have a word with you? About this change of air, and so on,” he added, as if to reassure her.

“Won't you come up to the drawing-room? Will you—will you have some tea?” Cecily asked doubtfully.

Monica, too, would have felt doubtful at making such a suggestion, but Dr. Corderey was apparently not doubtful at all, and he accepted the offer briefly and matter-of-factly.

Cecily poured out tea with fumbling, ill-assured gestures, and the doctor handed tea-cakes and bread-and-butter. He talked quietly on indifferent subjects.

Monica began to feel that she liked him. Not quite—quite, of course, but he seemed nice, and very kind, and she had an idea, for which she could have offered no reasonable grounds, that he must be clever.

He began to speak, about books, and she found, to her great surprise, that he had been lending books to Cecily. Poetry. He asked Cecily's opinion, and she gave it. Monica realized that it was almost the only time she had ever heard Cecily assert an independent view of her own. Perhaps she had held independent views in her own mind—but she had not hitherto dared to put them into words.

“Do you read a great deal, Miss Marlowe?”

“Not a great deal—I garden—at home,” said Cecily.

“At home—that's in Yorkshire. Are you there most of the time?”

“Yes. We like it better than London,” said Cecily quickly.

“You and your sister. Tell me, have you ever been separated from your sister?”

“No,” said Cecily, colouring deeply, her hands moving uneasily.

“You were never sent to school, either of you?”

“Oh no.”

“Well,” said the doctor abruptly, “it's a great pity.”

Monica felt as though he had suddenly caused a bomb to explode at their feet.

In the mysterious world of morbid reticences, artificial loyalties, and tortured nervous sensibilities that made up life for Frederica and Cecily Marlowe it was never admitted that they could ever have been better apart.

“You see,” said the doctor, and he now addressed himself to Monica rather than to Cecily, “the very best thing for Miss Marlowe, when she's a little stronger, would be to get right away. She's not in a satisfactory condition, as regards her nerves. In fact, I should very much like to persuade Lady Marlowe to let her take a—kind of rest-cure, in the country, at a place I know well. But Miss Marlowe is a difficult patient, and she's got
you——
——” he indicated Cecily, “very much on her mind. So what I want to be able to tell her, is that you've arranged a pleasant change of some kind for yourself. Then perhaps her mind would be at rest, and we could get her to pay rather more attention to what we want for her.”

“Is Frederica very ill?” said Monica, puzzled. “Is there much wrong with her?”

“She's getting over her influenza very nicely.”

“But is there something else?”

The nervous movements of Cecily's hands had ceased, and at Monica's question she lifted her head, and met Dr. Corderey's gaze in full.

“I think, please, I'd like to know exactly what you mean.”

“Really?”
he asked, with a peculiar emphasis.

Monica did not understand what he meant, but she saw that Cecily did.

“Yes, really.”

Dr. Corderey, never taking his eyes off Cecily's face, began to speak very slowly and evenly.

“Your sister is not very far off a bad nervous breakdown. We can stave it off, of course—this illness has probably done
so. But sooner or later, it'll happen, if she goes on living this kind of life. She's a naturally nervous, highly-strung subject, and from what I can tell she has had no emotional outlet for years—if ever.”

“Except—me,” said Cecily, very low.

“Except you. I'm glad you spoke of that because, you see,” said Dr. Corderey, very cheerfully, “I want to save you, if I possibly can, from her.”

“But you can't,” said Cecily. “No one can.” She began to cry.

“Cecily! Don't!” Monica cried anxiously. She only half understood what was happening.

“Don't stop her. Let her cry, if she wants to,” said the doctor.

He got up and stood beside Cecily's shaking figure, huddled on the sofa, and took her wrist professionally between his finger and thumb.

“Let her have it out. It won't do her any harm. Do you know anything about sick nursing?”

“No,” said Monica.

“I suppose you were never sent to school either, and you live at home, and have nothing to do—except what you make for yourself—and if you were forced to earn your own living to-morrow, you'd have to starve.”

Monica, for an instant, felt offended, because she knew that her mother would think she ought to be offended. But he had spoken with so much sincerity that she could not pretend to disagree.

“It's quite true.”

“It's true of hundreds of others too. Thousands, I expect. Women come to me with every sort and kind of trouble—insomnia, and indigestion, and other things—and I do what I can for them. But what's really the matter with them is that they're unhappy. It's mind, not body.”

He released Cecily's hand, and pushed her gently back amongst the sofa-cushions.

“It's all right. Keep still for a few minutes. Tell me, Miss
Ingram, could you get away from London for a week or two?”

“I think so.” Monica considered. “Go somewhere with Cecily, you mean?”

“Yes. Abroad if you like. Switzerland—any bracing places.”

Monica felt no certainty of obtaining her mother's permission. As long as she remained unmarried she would be regarded by her parents as requiring supervision.

Cecily raised her disfigured face.

“We shouldn't be allowed to go abroad, I don't think,” she said simply. “Not by ourselves.”

“Do you never do anything that you're not allowed to do?” the doctor enquired.

“Not often,” Cecily admitted, smiling faintly.

“Then it's a very great pity. I'd like to see you rebel against everything that you've ever been told and defy everyone and—and generally throw your cap over the windmill. Perhaps,” suggested Dr. Corderey, “some day, I shall?”

Cecily shook her head.

The tear-stains on her face, curiously enough, made her look very young.

“Well, think about what I've said. I want you to go right away somewhere with a friend of your own, and have a thorough change.”