“And he’s a barrister, or something. Like Mr. Pelham.”
“Yes. That would mean living in London if——”
“Would you mind that?”
“Oh no. One can always pay visits,” said Monica cheerfully.
“It would be awfully exciting if one of us got engaged,” said Cecily.
“Yes, wouldn’t it. The other two would have to be bridesmaids, of course.”
“How, exactly, would you have your bridesmaids dressed, and what colour would you choose for your going-away frock?” said Frederica thoughtfully. “Let’s all say in turns.”
It was an imaginative exercise of which they were never tired—discussing the details of a wedding, each one visualizing herself as its central figure. Even Mrs. Ingram, Monica’s mother, would sometimes indulge in the same pastime, alone with her daughter.
It was not very long before Claude Ashe, calling on Mrs. Ingram only a very few days after the expedition to Kew, was smilingly told to go and find Monica in the back drawing-room. Monica, pleased, but rather nervous, jumped up. As she came forward through the looped-back blue satin curtains that divided the big room, she saw, behind Claude Ashe, her mother’s quick frown and shake of the head.
She guessed that she had shown too much eagerness in her rapid movement to greet the young man, and felt more self-conscious than ever. However after a few moments it wore off, and she was talking almost naturally about the little drawings that strewed the table.
They were bad little drawings, copied, as Monica had been taught to copy, from picture-books, or Christmas cards, or an occasional magazine illustration. Children in Dutch peasant costumes, thatched cottages crouching behind rampant herbaceous borders—even ducks, carrying umbrellas, or emerging from improbable-looking eggs.
These copies, carefully and brightly painted with watercolour paint by Monica, adorned her mother’s menucards.
“I don’t mean her to be idle, just because she’s ’out,’” Mrs. Ingram always said. “At least one hour at some little job, every day, is one of my rules.”
“I say, did you do those? How awfully clever of you,” cried Mr. Ashe. He was most appreciative and Monica felt, with complete satisfaction, that it wasn’t really the painting he was admiring—he said at once that he knew nothing whatever about Art—but herself.
They were talking very happily—from Art they had passed on to politics, and Monica had admitted that she often felt inclined to read up Socialism, although it would shock her parents most dreadfully if they ever guessed it—when Mrs. Ingram summoned Monica to the other room.
“You must tell me some more another time,” said Claude Ashe earnestly, as he rose to his feet.
“I expect I’ve been boring you most frightfully, really,” Monica murmured insincerely.
“I’ve simply loved it. You know I have. I only hope you haven’t been bored.”
“Oh no. I’ve loved it too.”
Avoiding the young man’s eye, and blushing a good deal, Monica preceded him into the further room.
There were several other callers there now, and she had no more conversation with Claude, although she was all the time acutely aware of his presence in the room. She could tell by the quick way her mother looked at her, and then away again, that she was eager to know exactly how the tête-à-tête had progressed.
Sure enough, as soon as the last visitor had gone—Claude went away quite soon, and at a moment when Monica, helping an elderly lady on with her feather boa, could only smile and bow—Mrs. Ingram turned to her daughter.
“How did you and young Ashe get on, darling?”
“Quite nicely, thank you, mother.”
“I couldn’t leave you chatting alone with him in the back drawing-room any longer. It would have been much too marked.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Besides——”
Mrs. Ingram paused so long that Monica, rather anxiously, ventured to ask:
“Besides what, mother?”
“Besides, though he may be a very nice young man, we’ve got to remember that he isn’t, really, very much use. He’s too young, for one thing, and there’s no money at all, even if he hadn’t got an elder brother.”
Monica, disconcerted and disappointed, did not quite know how to reply. She was afraid that her mother was going to say that she would not be allowed to be friends with Claude Ashe any more.
“It’s quite all right, darling,” said Mrs. Ingram very kindly. “I like you to make friends of your own age, and one wants people to see that—well, that there’s someone running after you, more or less. Only I want you to realize that you mustn’t take anything at all seriously, just yet.”
“Oh, I won’t, mother,” said Monica, quite relieved.
“It’s only your first season, after all, and you’re very young. Though I wasn’t much older than you are now when I married.”
Monica had very often been told that Mrs. Ingram had married at eighteen, and the information always vaguely annoyed her.
“I suppose you must have been very pretty when you were young,” she said politely, trying not to know too consciously that she was saying something very nasty indeed.
Imogen Ingram laughed curtly.
She was not yet forty, and although her complexion had faded, her hair, eyes, and teeth were still beautiful. It was, of course, natural and suitable that she should display ample curves both above and below her tightly corseted waist. Men always preferred a full figure to a skinny one.
“You’re a little goose, Monica,” she said kindly. “I had the freshness of youth, of course, as a girl, but I don’t suppose otherwise I’ve altered so very much. And prettiness isn’t really very important, darling. A great many very pretty girls never get a chance of marrying at all, and some quite plain ones turn out attractive to men. One never can tell. Father always said that he first fell in love with me because he thought I was natural, and unaffected, and didn’t think about myself all the time. No really nice man ever cares about a girl who’s affected, or self-conscious.”
Monica hoped ardently that she was neither of these things.
Claude Ashe, at all events, did not think so. She was sure that he liked her very much. Perhaps, even, he was falling in love with her. If he was, would he say so—and when?
The season was nearly over, and Monica and her parents were to pay two country-house visits, spend a month in Scotland, and after that, said Mrs. Ingram, Monica could go to the Marlowes—Lady Marlowe was taking a furnished house near Oxford for the whole of September—whilst her parents went to join a large house-party where Royalty was to be met.
“I wish you’d been asked too, my pet,” said Mrs. Ingram, “but naturally people don’t want young girls about. It limits conversation, and everything. When you’re married, it’ll be quite different.”
Girlhood was indeed, Monica felt, an inferior state from which escape was desirable at any cost.
What a pity that one couldn’t accept Claude Ashe, even if he did propose! Probably, however, he never would, for no really nice and honourable man proposed to a girl unless he was in a position to offer her a home at least as comfortable as the one from which he was taking her.
A week before she was to leave London, Monica was invited by Lady Margaret Miller to dine, and go with a large party of young people—chaperoned by Lady Margaret’s married daughter—to the White City.
“Yes, of course you may go,” said Mrs. Ingram. “I certainly shouldn’t allow you to go to dinner-parties without me in the ordinary way, but an old friend like Lady Margaret is different. It’s very kind of her indeed. Write a nice little note and accept, Monica. You’d better let me see it.”
Monica did not like her mother’s spasmodic supervision of her correspondence, but there was no escaping from it. As though, she thought, she did not know all the rules about letter-writing, that had been impressed upon her ever since she could write at all!
“Never begin a letter with ’I’——”
“Put ‘My dear So-and-so’ to a person older or more important than yourself.”
“Always read through a letter before closing it, and if anything has been left out, rewrite the letter—don’t add it in.”
“Never put a P.S. It’s vulgar.”
Avoiding these and other pitfalls, Monica wrote her acceptance to Lady Margaret.
Next evening, a telephone message came from her kind hostess. A young man had failed, for the White City party—was there anybody whom Monica would specially like asked, whom Lady Margaret could invite in place of the defaulter?
The Ingrams were finishing dinner when Mrs. Ingram was called to the telephone, and Monica could hear, from the little room next door, her own name and her mother’s proper expressions of gratitude and assurances that it really was mucb too kind.
Presently Mrs. Ingram returned and explained.
“Oh, really, that’s too good of her,” said Vernon Ingram. “I never heard of anything so kind. Monica, do you understand that Lady Margaret is good enough to be suggesting that you should submit to her the name of some young man whom you’d like her to invite to her house?”
Monica felt embarrassed by her father’s excessive sense of the privilege conferred upon her.
“Well, really,” said Mrs. Ingram, “I don’t quite know what to do. I told Lady Margaret I’d telephone to her the first thing to-morrow morning. Of course Monica must write a note as well. Now, we must think——”
Monica had thought already, but she knew better than to say so.
The butler placed the dessert dishes on the table, and approached Mr. Ingram with the port decanter.
Neither Mrs. Ingram nor Monica ever drank any, and they watched Palter’s measured progress with impatience.
The moment the door had shut behind him, Monica’s mother spoke.
“It must be someone we know fairly well, otherwise it becomes rather too marked. What about Claude Ashe, darling?”
Monica nearly jumped.
She looked at her mother, but there was no sign of any special significance to be seen.
“I think he’d do very well,” she replied carefully.
“Well, then, you’d better ring him up to-morrow—or, wait a minute; I think it would come better from me, perhaps. I’ll ring him up.”
“A very good idea,” said Vernon Ingram approvingly. “A nice young fellow, and not at all likely to think any young lady is running after him.”
He laughed a little as he spoke.
“Why, father?”
“Why, my dear child? Because I hope he’s a modest young man, and because, as he’s not in a position to marry at all, at present, he can’t suppose that he is being pursued with that end in view.”
Vernon Ingram pushed back his chair from the table.
“It’s quite pleasant to have a quiet evening at home together, once in a while,” he remarked, as he opened the door for his wife and daughter.
They left him, as usual, for his customary quarter of an hour in the dining-room, whilst they sat in the drawing-room.
Mrs. Ingram picked up the newspaper, and Monica went to the piano. She would not have been encouraged to read the newspaper, even had she wished to do so, and it would have been bad manners to read a book unless her mother had also been doing the same.
So she opened “The Star Folio” and played Beethoven’s Adieux and a waltz, Sobre les Olas.
“That will do now, darling,” said Mrs. Ingram. “I can hear father coming, and he may want to talk. Ring for coffee.”
Monica obeyed.
She was not really particularly interested in either the Adieux or Sobre les Olas, although she vaguely liked the idea of herself, in a simple white frock, dreamily playing under the lamplight, and it always rather annoyed her that her conception of her own appearance had to be spoilt by the fact that, having no faculty for playing by ear, she was obliged always to keep her eyes fixed upon her music.
All the time she had been playing she had been thinking about Claude Ashe. It made a person much more interesting and exciting, somehow, if you thought about him to the sound of music.
Neither of her parents mentioned Ashe again. The evening, to Monica’s dismay, was spent in trying to learn Bridge. Her father was teaching her mother as well as herself. Mrs. Ingram got on fairly well—she had played whist for many years—but Monica, as usual, forgot what were trumps, mixed clubs with spades, and persistently failed to return her partner’s lead.
At ten o’clock she went up to bed in tears.
Chapter V
“Miss Mary Collier—Miss Monica Ingram—Mr. David IVX Collier—Miss Monica Ingram—Captain Christopher Lane—Miss Collier, Miss Ingram. There—I think you all know each other now. Oh—I’m sorry—Mr. Ashe, Captain Lane—You know Miss Ingram, of course?”
Mr. Ashe bowed, and Monica smiled.
She was enjoying herself already, although she had only just arrived at Lady Margaret’s house in South Audley Street. All the guests were young, even the chaperon of the party, Lady Margaret’s married daughter, and her husband.
“It was most awfully nice of you and your mother to suggest my being asked,” said Claude Ashe, in a low voice.
“I’m so glad you were able to come,” rejoined Monica. She was thinking how tactful it had been of him to include her mother in his gratitude. Like that, it didn’t look as if he thought that Monica had—odious phrase!—been running after him.
They were to have dinner at the Exhibition.
“Let me see——”
Lady Margaret—kind, short-sighted, and incurably matchmaking——was peering at her youthful friends, only anxious to please them all, and to make sure that those who wanted to be together should be together.
“Mary, supposing you and Joan”—Joan was Lady Margaret’s unmarried daughter—” go with David and—let me see—Ronald in his car. And, Captain Lane, will you take care of my daughter Dorothy, if you don’t mind a taxi-cab? Now, what about you, Monica? Will you and Mr. Ashe go in the carriage with Peter and Rachel? I dare say it’ll get there just as soon as they will, in their machines.”
It was quite certain that it would do nothing of the kind, and everyone laughed politely at Lady Margaret’s little joke. Everyone also agreed—naturally-—to her suggestions.
Monica looked at the other girls.
Rachel Modbury’s engagement to Peter Miller had just been announced, and Monica gazed at her eagerly. She was not pretty, but had a fresh, cheerful face, with a slightly open mouth, no chin, and candid-looking hazel eyes. Every time that Peter spoke to her she giggled. On the fourth finger of her left hand was an enormous emerald. Monica did not care for her dress—a fussy affair of pink tulle, with a broad pink scarf, matching the pink bandeau that was bound round her fuzzy fair hair.
Joan Miller, who was much prettier, wasn’t engaged to anybody, and she must be older than the Rachel girl. Monica wondered whether she minded.
The girl who had been introduced as Mary Collier, Monica had never seen before. She was very tall and dark, with a slightly underhung jaw, and straight black eyebrows over a pair of deep grey eyes. She wore a very plain satin dress, of an unusual shade of green, and her thick black hair was parted in the middle, and had not been fluffed out at all. Monica decided that she certainly wasn’t pretty, although she might be called interesting-looking.
It really did seem, although one hardly liked even to think such a thing, as if she herself were the prettiest girl there. Monica could not help wondering if anybody else thought so too.
She had on a new frock, that her mother had said was exactly right for this kind of occasion. Not too much of an evening-dress, yet with a charming little V-neck, of very palest blue satin, covered with blue net, and with a little bunch of forget-me-nots at the waist.
Did Claude Ashe think hei pretty? However many times Monica reminded herself, and was reminded, of her mother’s axiom, that prettiness was not the thing that counted most, she still wanted Claude Ashe to think
her pretty. She felt self-conscious whenever she caught his eye, and looked resolutely away from him and at the other men.
Peter Miller was not in the least interesting since he was now engaged to be married; but David Collier might be nice—tall and dark, like his sister, but younger-looking. The remaining man (Lady Margaret’s son-in-law—like Peter—did not count) was Captain Lane, and Monica had neither met him nor heard of him before.
She was, without quite knowing it, at once prepared to like him because he was very big—a tall young man, heavily built, and with fair hair already receding from his temples at twenty-nine—and had a deep, loud, masculine voice, and a habit of staring down into the eyes of any woman with whom he shook hands.
The drive was most amusing. It was the first time that Monica had been allowed to go anywhere, unchaperoned, with young men and girls of her own age, all of whom knew one another and one another’s world, and in whose freemasonry she felt herself to be immediately included. She found herself talking and laughing quite naturally even with Claude Ashe—presently, indeed, it was especially with Claude Ashe.
Although he was so quiet he could say amusing things, gently and unexpectedly, and Monica noticed with a thrill of pleasure that it was her eyes that he sought with his own, when they all laughed together.
The party had arranged to meet at the entrance and to have dinner on arrival. Monica wondered if Claude Ashe would take the chair next to hers at dinner. Surely, surely, if he did, that would almost amount to a proof.
“Ladies and gentlemen, sort yourselves, as the parson said at the double wedding,” cried Dorothy humorously, and they all laughed again.
“May I come here?” said Claude, and he put his hand on the chair next to Monica’s.
She felt more and more excited and happy as the gay, noisy dinner went on. Dorothy’s husband had ordered champagne, and although Monica, who still hated the unaccustomed taste, only sipped at hers, she felt that her face was becoming flushed, and her voice and her laughter much readier than usual.
On her other side sat Captain Lane, and presently he was rallying her about her bunch of forget-me-nots, as though they had known one another for years.
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