Thank Heaven Fasting

by E M Delafield

  She did not make the suggestion sincerely, for Mrs. Ingram was very jealous of her own supremacy in the sickroom, and did not allow Monica to share it.

  “No, darling, no. Thank you. Dear father likes me to be there, when he comes to himself a little. I think I must go back now.”

  She rustled slowly from the room.

  For the first time in her life, perhaps, thought Monica, her mother seemed really unaware that she was leaving her alone in the room with an eligible young man.

  “She’s wonderful, isn’t she,” said Carol respectfully.

  He pushed an arm-chair closer to the fire.

  “Sit down and rest, Monica. May I stay a few minutes longer?”

  “Oh, please do.”

  Monica’s habitual self-consciousness was loosened, in the relaxed mood following on the shock of the accident, and she was neither startled nor alarmed when Carol Anderson drew a small chair very close to hers, and took her hand in his.

  “I’m so awfully sorry for you, dear. I do so understand what you’re going through. Quite apart from the fact that I’ve had a good deal of personal experience of illness and anxiety, I seem to know by intuition exactly what my friends feel, when they’re in great trouble. It’s a most extraordinary thing, Monica, but it’s as if I could see inside their minds. For instance, I know exactly what your mother is experiencing, when she sits upstairs, watching him. I know what you’re feeling now, perhaps almost better than you know yourself.”

  Monica was accustomed to Carol’s strange conviction of his own infallibility, and still stranger candour in proclaiming it. She was, in fact, deriving a warm and blessed sense of comfort from the close hold of his hand over hers, and listening very little to what he was saying.

  Presently she understood that he was telling her about the illness and death of a friend at Cambridge. It was Carol, it seemed, who had nursed him, remained with him to the end, and been the only person responsible for the trying formalities connected with sending the young man’s body to his home in the North of Ireland.

  “I was only twenty-one, actually, but I seemed able to do it all somehow. It had to be done, and I was the only person available, and so I simply went through with it. After it was all over I thought: Well, if I can do a thing like that I can do anything. It showed me my own strength, I suppose. That was lucky, perhaps, if I’d only known it.”

  In the silence that followed, Monica seemed to hear Viola Lester’s name as clearly as though it had been spoken.

  She sighed, moved restlessly, and broke the spell.

  “I’m going to leave you, now. Are you a little bit less unhappy than when I came?”

  “Yes,” she replied with truth.

  “I can nearly always do that,” said Carol very gently, as he rose to his feet. “It’s something—I don’t exactly know what—that goes out from me to the other person. I’m glad I’ve helped you, Monica.”

  A week from the day of his accident, Vernon Ingram died, scarcely recovering consciousness.

  Examination had revealed the hopelessness of the case, and Mrs. Ingram had been prepared by the doctors for her husband’s death. She had, at first, seemed very brave.

  “If only he doesn’t have to suffer, I can bear anything,” she kept on repeating.

  Vernon Ingram did not have to suffer. The internal injuries that he had sustained were of such a nature as to make the case hopeless, and there was no attempt to do more than save him, as far as possible, from pain. The doctors used morphia freely.

  Monica went in to see him, and he did not know her.

  “Perhaps to-morrow,” said the nurse compassionately.

  She was an elderly woman, and—taking her cue from Mrs. Ingram—evidently regarded Monica as an utterly inexperienced girl, to be kept in ignorance as long as possible of the shadow that was hourly drawing closer to the house.

  Monica, in fact, felt unable to realize the approach of death. Ever since she could remember, her father and mother had been there—part of the fabric of existence. She could not imagine one of them without the other.

  She went up to bed on the night of her father’s death, in obedience to her mother’s injunction, believing still in a childish way that in the morning, somehow, there would be hope.

  Even the familiar bedroom, that had been hers ever since she had outgrown a nurse and a night-nursery, offered a silent testimony that violent and radical change held no place in her life. Pink silk, brass, and white-painted furniture still predominated. The wall-paper, originally a pattern of pink roses and silver trellis-work, had been replaced by a very modern one—birds, of an unspecified variety, hovering amongst branches from which hung clusters of a fruit that Monica always supposed, rather vaguely, to be some kind of pomegranate. The colour of these “toned in” with the pink curtains and the china on the wash-stand.

  The embossed silver set of brushes and boxes, with the heads of angels on the backs, still lay on the dressing-table.

  The picture of Napoleon, that had once testified to Monica’s first act of independence, had long ago disappeared. It had been replaced, in fact, several times, as different cults had taken Monica’s fancy. For a long while, now, she had had hanging against the wall a reproduction of The Laughing Cavalier. There was a faint resemblance to Carol Anderson in the set of the head.

  The thought of Carol comforted her, for he had shown her great affection and sympathy, and had been to the house continually.

  Perhaps, she thought dimly, her trouble would bring him closer to her. She did not expect to take Viola Lester’s place in Carol’s imagination, for it was evident enough that only the unattainable could ever really satisfy his yearnings for romance, but she would have been more than content to accept anything that he cared to offer her.

  Nobody wanted to marry her, and Monica’s deepening terror and dismay told her that, if she could not marry—and the chances of it were lessening year by year—there was very little left for her in life.

  She pushed the thought away from her with all her might, and went to bed.

  A familiar dream visited her.

  She was in the dining-room downstairs, and reading a copy of The Morning Post, and saw in it the announcement of her own forthcoming marriage. As usual, in the dream, the name of the man she was to marry was a blurr. She was conscious of dismay and disappointment because she could not remember having received a proposal, nor an engagement ring, but at the same time she felt glad, because she was going to be married at last and her parents would be so pleased. She could hear her father coming downstairs, step by step, and turned to the door, waiting to see him come in and to greet him with her joyful tidings. The steps grew louder and louder, and it seemed as if the house shook with them….

  “Miss Ingram—Miss Ingram….”

  Someone was knocking at her door.

  “What is it?” Monica, confused and startled, sprang out of bed, switching on the light as she did so.

  “Better come down. Quickly, my dear—he’s going fast.” The feet of the nurse retreated swiftly down the stairs again.

  Monica threw on her dressing-gown and followed her. The lights on both landings were burning, and the door of her father’s room stood open.

  Her mother was kneeling by the bed and the nurse stood beside her. The bandaged figure on the pillows lay quite still, but the sound of heavy breathing was loud in the dim room. Monica, trembling violently, went close to the head of the bed.

  “Can’t anything be done?” she whispered, agonizedly.

  The nurse shook her head.

  “He can’t feel anything. He’s not conscious,” she said.

  The tiny clock on the mantelpiece chimed two. Another sound mingled with it and then ceased.

  For a moment Monica did not understand what had happened.

  Then she saw her mother’s dark head—still with its elaborate coils and curls dressed as she wore it every day—sink to the pillow.

  “She’s fainted—the very best thing she could have done
,” said the nurse, in hushed tones. “I should like to get her on to her bed before she comes round.”

  Between them, they took Mrs. Ingram into her room, and Monica rang the upstairs bell for Parsons.

  “Had we better send for the doctor?” she whispered piteously.

  “No, no. He can’t do anything for——” the nurse signed with her head towards the other room. “Your mother’s worn out, that’s what it is, with the strain. She’ll be round in a few minutes. I want a hot drink for her, and for you too, Miss Ingram.”

  Parsons came down, and although she at once began to cry, she was practical and helpful, knew where to find a small flask of brandy, and heated some milk on the spirit-lamp.

  The nurse occupied herself with Mrs. Ingram, who came to, shivering and moaning, and presently broke into hysterical screaming and sobbing.

  It took the nurse a long while to quiet her, and to persuade her to let herself be undressed and put into bed.

  “Stay with her, Miss Ingram. I must go back,” said the nurse.

  “Shall I come and lie down beside you, mother?”

  “If you like. It’s dreadful—dreadful! I can’t believe it. Oh, Monica—Monica——!’’

  She was screaming again, stifling the sound in the pillow, throwing herself about, and clutching wildly at Monica.

  The hours passed, hideous as a nightmare. Mrs. Ingram would not rest for an instant, nor allow Monica to do so. When she was not crying and exclaiming hysterically, she poured out a torrent of words, partly reminiscences of her married life, and partly a series of assertions to the effect that she could not live, Monica must not expect her to survive the agony of her loss.

  The self-control that she had manifested throughout the past week had deserted her completely.

  Monica tried hard to cry, and could not. She was principally conscious of feeling sick, and continued to shiver spasmodically.

  Time passed with incredible slowness. Monica thought that it must be nearly six o’clock and that the servants would soon be stirring, and then turned on the light to look at the clock, and saw that it was barely four. She wondered if the clock could have stopped, but the hands of her mother’s watch pointed to the same hour.

  Presently the nurse came in, asked if she could do anything, and said that she had sent Parsons back to bed and would get some sleep herself.

  “You’ll be having your tea brought in at eight,” she said hopefully. “Try and get some sleep, won’t you. Why not let me give you some aspirin, Mrs. Ingram?”

  She fetched the aspirin, and Mrs. Ingram took it, protesting and sobbing all the time. The nurse soothed her, speaking with an assumption of professional authority that quieted Mrs. Ingram for a little while.

  Afterwards, when the nurse had left them, she lay back in the bed, but continued to turn and twist restlessly, every now and then breaking into fresh sobs, and ceaselessly talking without pausing for any reply.

  Two or three times between four o’clock and six Monica fell into an uneasy doze, but always to be roused by the sobbing, tossing woman at her side.

  At last, as soon as she heard sounds of movement in the house, Monica got up and went to her own room.

  She felt stiff and chilled, as though she had been up and dressed all night long.

  As she dressed, she remembered with startled astonishment that she ought to put on a black dress. She could only find a black serge skirt and a grey satin blouse, with a black bow in the front of the square sailor collar. She found that she dreaded a return to her mother, but she was ashamed of the feeling, and went down at once. To her intense relief, Mrs. Ingram had fallen into a heavy sleep. She did not wake until the arrival of the doctor, summoned by telephone soon after eight o’clock.

  Chapter VI

  “You must be your mother’s comfort now, Monica. You’re all she has left.”

  Almost every relation and friend of the Ingrams said that to Monica.

  They had attended Vernon Ingram’s funeral, and had sent quantities of expensive wreaths and crosses and anchors made of flowers, and many of them had come back to the house afterwards and had gone, one by one, to sit for a few minutes with the widow, in her small boudoir on the second floor, while Monica remained, with the throng of black-clad relations, in the library downstairs.

  The day after the funeral she and her mother went away, to rooms on the south coast.

  It was early in the year, and bitterly cold. Cousin Blanche, who had suggested the place and had recommended the rooms, assured them that it would be much warmer than in London, and that it was quiet a place where they would see nobody, and could go for walks in the sun and breathe the sea air.

  Monica, ever afterwards, remembered that fortnight as one of perpetual physical misery. It seemed to her that they spent all their time in trying to coax an unwilling fire to burn, and finding tepid water in their rooms at night. Twice they changed their lodgings, but nowhere could they find warmth. Parsons caught a heavy cold and was so miserable that Mrs. Ingram sent her back to London, but obstinately refused to return there herself. She said that she could not face the changed house.

  Day after day, in the sitting-room where the window-frames rattled wildly under the onslaughts of a perpetual north-east wind, Monica and Mrs. Ingram sat, with black-edged notepaper and envelopes strewing the tables and chairs, and answered innumerable letters of condolence, continually interrupted by outbursts of tears from the widow.

  There was a great similarity in all the letters that they had received. Monica felt that it could hardly be otherwise. Some of the writers made the mistake of referring to their own experience of loss and sorrow.

  “Your feet are now treading the thorny path that mine trod nearly ten years ago….”

  “I think you know that I too have known what it is to lose all that I held most dear in life——”

  Those letters Mrs. Ingram read with tightened lips and an air of unspoken resentment. She replied to them, however, as to all the others—long, long answers that covered several sheets of the black-bordered paper, and that were frequently blotted with tears, so that she had to write them, or part of them, over again.

  Monica had letters of her own to answer, but the ones written by friends of her own generation were a good deal shorter than those of the older people.

  “These young things who have never known sorrow,” said Mrs. Ingram, with a kind of pitying superiority.

  She saw most of Monica’s replies; indeed it would have been almost impossible to avoid doing so in the vast accumulation of correspondence that seemed to flood their small sitting-room and single writing-table.

  Monica did not resent it. She realized that these days of bereavement belonged exclusively to her mother, and that Mrs. Ingram took for granted her priority right in everything that concerned their loss.

  The only letters that Monica was at pains to keep to herself were those that she received from Carol Anderson.

  They were affectionately worded letters—he always began, Monica, my dear, and signed himself, Yours with love, Carol—but they often strayed into curiously unconvincing dissertations on books that he had been reading, plays that he had seen, or abstract questions that he declared himself to have analysed and answered. It was difficult to avoid the conclusion that he wrote hoping to impress his correspondent, and perhaps himself as well.

  Monica felt a certain tenderness for Carol’s vanity, when she permitted herself to recognize it. But if she sought, as she sometimes did, to idealize him, and endow him with qualities of strength, generosity, and sincerity, she was forced to admit that very often he chilled and disappointed her. It was evident that he would always take everything, and give very little in return. Monica continued to write to him, to think of him very often, and to wish despairingly that he would ask her to marry him.

  The fortnight at the sea was the longest one that she had ever known. It seemed to become more impossible to achieve warmth every day. Mrs. Ingram was not accustomed to walking, and twenty mi
nutes’ slow progress along the sea front, battling against an icy wind, usually tired her out without improving the state of her circulation.

  “Monica, I can’t bear this wind any longer. It’s not doing either of us any good—your face is blue, my child. Come indoors.”

  They went indoors, but except for the absence of the cutting wind it did not seem to be much warmer there. Draughts came in beneath doors, and through window-sashes, and the stairs and bedrooms achieved a degree of iciness that surpassed the sitting-room. It was only possible to keep warm in bed, each with a hot-water bottle, and all their heaviest coats spread over the blankets. Mrs. Ingram, however, was sleeping badly, and very often called Monica from the adjoining room in order that she might listen to an outpouring of despair, ending in a storm of sobs and tears.

  By the time she had wept and talked herself into a state of exhaustion, and Monica could leave her, the hot-water bottle in the deserted bed had grown tepid and Monica, chilled and distressed, found it difficult to regain any degree of comfort.

  It sometimes seemed to her as though, in the accumulated miseries of the moment, she almost lost her sense of personal sorrow at her father’s death.

  When she thought of him now, it was of him as he had seemed to her in her baby-days—a beneficent and omnipotent being of herculean proportions—rather than as the remote, conventionally affectionate father, of whose secret disappointment in his only child she had so long been bitterly aware.

  Yet it seemed strange and sad, almost impossible indeed, to resume life in the familiar Eaton Square house without him. Mrs. Ingram continually repeated that nothing could ever, ever, be the same again.

  It was a bitterly cold day when they travelled back to London, and Monica continually found herself looking forward eagerly to the warmth and comfort of their own house. The anticipation of physical well-being, actually, overpowered any sense of distress in returning to the sight of her father’s vacant place.

  At Victoria, a hat-box belonging to Mrs. Ingram was found to be missing.