Thank Heaven Fasting

Thank Heaven Fasting by E. M. Delafield Page A

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continued.
    Monica, now launched, was taken to balls, to dinner parties and theatre-parties, to Hurlingham to watch the polo on Saturdays, and to the Days of all her mother’s friends.
    Twice her mother gave a girls’ luncheon-party, explaining that this was very important and necessary, since it was by making friends with other girls that Monica would receive invitations to pay country-house visits.
    â€œA girl gets far more chances in one house-party than at a dozen London balls,” declared Mrs. Ingram.
    Monica, of course, understood what her mother meant.
    The luncheon-parties, with Mrs. Ingram at the head of the table—talking very brightly and carefully and not at all naturally—and herself at the foot, were not very amusing, but they led to her being asked to various tea-parties, and even to an occasional matinée.
    Monica’s mother was, comparatively, liberal-minded. She allowed her child to go out to matinées with only another girl, and to walk in the streets of Belgravia—
not
the Pimlico end and
not
beyond Harvey Nicholls at the top of Sloane Street—escorted only by a maid. Monica might go in cabs, even hansoms, although not in omnibuses, and she might travel alone by train, first-class, if her mother’s maid went in the carriage with her.
    Frederica and Cecily Marlowe, especially Frederica, envied Monica her emancipation.
    They had no freedom at all.
    Monica still saw more of the Marlowes than of anybody else, and because of the old schoolroom intimacy, felt more at home with them than with girls nearer to her own age.She was fond of Cecily, and sorry for her, although contemptuous of her supineness and of her terrified evasions of personal contacts. Frederica, Monica did not really like at all, but she had a kind of unwilling admiration for a force of character that she felt, rather than understood, whilst at the same time she experienced a definite gratification, of which she was slightly ashamed, because she knew that Frederica was unpopular with men.
    It would, indeed, have been impossible not to know this, for Lady Marlowe had taken up the line of jesting about it openly. She was half-Italian, and had a reputation for caustic wit. It was generally recognized that her daughters were a disappointment to her. Like almost every woman of her generation, she had wished to have sons, and regarded the sex of her two girls as being something between a disgrace and a calamity—and it was felt that she showed at least courage and originality, even if indifferent taste, in jeering, lightly and amusingly, at their failure to attract.
    â€œIf Frederica hasn’t succeeded in finding a husband by the time she’s twenty-five, I shall give her what she’d have had if she’d married and let her go and live where she likes and do what she likes,” declared Lady Marlowe, laughing merrily. “Why not? It’s ruining any chances Cecily may have, for men to see Fricky trailing about the place, with never even a nibble.”
    She had given up the fiction, once offered to her friends, that Frederica, once at least, could have married. She now shrugged her shoulders and said instead that it was very odd she should have unattractive daughters.
    So indeed it was, for Lady Marlowe, already twice widowed, could very easily have married again had she chosen to do so. Men liked her, and were amused by her.
    When she gave small dinner-parties, they wanted to talk to her, and listen to her—not to either of the girls. Even at balls she attracted far more attention, with her sparkle and vitality, than did her two joyless, drooping daughters, trailing silently in her wake.
    â€œCan’t you be natural and bright?” Lady Marlowe sometimes despairingly, and yet half humorously, enquired of Frederica. But Frederica continued to be neither natural nor bright. It was she who sometimes revolted against their mother. Cecily never did. But it was part of Cecily’s

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