Thank Heaven Fasting (24 page)

“I believe so. There was a great deal of talk about it in the house-party at Cressfield—in fact, one or two of the younger people were laying bets about it—but no one knew anything definite. The—the principal source of information was the married daughter, Clemmie Godwin—she married Ingleton's eldest son about five years ago, if you remember—she's by way of being a friend of Frederica's.”

“I suppose Frederica's tearing her hair. Really, I often wonder if she's quite all there,” said Mrs. Ingram casually. “Do tell us some more, Mr. Pelham. It's really too amusing. What does poor dear Theodora think about it?”

“The general impression seems to be that she began by being perfectly furious, and then saw the funny side of it—she has such a wonderful sense of humour, of course—and now she's going about telling everyone that Cecily is quite old enough to know her own mind——”

“That's true, at all events!” ejaculated Mrs. Ingram.

“—And that if she likes to go and pour medicines out of bottles and help mix powders—she puts it in the most amusing way—why, nobody can very well forbid her to.”

“Theodora is a very clever woman. She's thankful to get one of them off her hands at any price, and she knows how to make the best of a bad job. I must say, I should have thought Cecily would have written to you, Monica.”

“So should I,” said Monica coldly.

She was bewildered, bitterly jealous, and rather angry.

“Do you know how it happened?” she enquired of Mr. Pelham, who sat turning his head from one to the other of his listeners, his face immobile as ever, but a certain triumphant glistening in his prominent eyes, betokening satisfaction with himself and the sensation that he was creating.

“That's another very queer thing. I believe they met in London—he attended the house professionally——”

“Good Heavens, it was I who sent him!” cried Mrs. Ingram, with more animation in her voice and manner than had been there for many weeks.

“Not really?”

“Practically. He's partner to our own doctor, and went instead of him when they all had influenza.”

“He went to some purpose,” Mr. Pelham observed, with portentous humour.

“I should think so indeed! But do go on.”

Mr. Pelham went on.

“I suppose that he was—attracted—then. He apparently made the most desperate efforts to get Cecily sent abroad or somewhere. Saying, you see, that it would be good for her health. Well, of course, she always has looked most terribly delicate—they both have, for that matter—but, as Lady Marlowe said, there's never been anything the matter with her all these years, so why should she suddenly have to go abroad? Especially as he was insistent about her going alone, without Frederica.”

“He said once, in front of me, that they ought to be separated,” put in Monica suddenly. “That it would be the best thing for them.”

“Darling, I suppose Dr. Corderey doesn't know better than God Almighty,” said her mother humorously.
“He
gave Cecily a sister, and as long as two sisters remain unmarried it seems only natural that they should be together, under the same roof. Blood is thicker than water, after all.”

“I know, but——”

Mrs. Ingram made a quick gesture, silencing her. Monica's opinion was of no value, it was not respectful to argue with one's mother, and in any case she wanted to hear what more Mr. Pelham had to say.

“Most strangely,” said Mr. Pelham impressively,
“most
strangely, it seems that Cecily and this fellow entered into a correspondence. He lent her books, or something, and I
suppose that led to their being sent back, and acknowledged, and so on. Not that I mean to say that there was anything in the least odd about that, if it had been someone in our own world, but really, as it was——”

“Did Fricky aid and abet her?”

“I'm certain Fricky didn't know anything about it,” asserted Monica, at the risk of being told, in one of Mrs. Ingram's favourite phrases, not to lay down the law. She was remembering the passionate urgency with which Frederica had invariably sought to stand between her sister and experience in almost any shape.

Mr. Pelham nodded in assent.

“You're quite right, Miss Ingram. Absolutely right. Frederica was told nothing whatever about it, I believe. But as a matter of fact, she's acute, as you probably know, and she apparently guessed there was something up, so to speak, and moved heaven and earth to find out from Cecily what it was.”

Monica shuddered slightly. Momentarily, she had an imaginative glimpse of that inquisition….

“In fact it was the incessant friction between the two that led to the whole thing coming out.”

“And then he proposed?” Mrs. Ingram suggested.

“He came straight up to Yorkshire. Unfortunately, nobody seems to know exactly what happened next. Clemmie Godwin was in Paris just then. Nothing has been given out, formally, but there's a general idea that something will be, quite soon.”

“Certainly there's nothing to wait for. Very much the contrary. I dare say it's a very good thing, after all. He can't be marrying her for money, because every penny of it belongs to Theodora, and she needn't leave any of it to the girls unless she wants to, I believe. But I suppose she'll give Cecily an allowance.”

“The rumour is,” Mr. Pelham observed in surprised tones, “that the young man is quite well off himself. Private means, I suppose.”

“All the better. Are they going to get married immediately, or announce the engagement, or what?”

“I don't quite know,” repeated Mr. Pelham helplessly. “Nobody knows. But if it's true they're engaged, it's bound to be announced soon.”

“I must say, I never expected either of those girls to get a husband. I don't mean to say a word against them—they're not bad-looking, or at least they weren't before they grew—how can I put it politely?—shall we call it, rather long in the tooth? But they've always been thoroughly odd, and unlike anybody else. I might have guessed that if either of them ever did marry, it would be certain to be the family grocer or somebody of that kind.”

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.