After Noon (Ertz)/Chapter 10
FOR some time things went on very quietly and normally. Caroline was rarely at home. She spent her days in the City and most of her evenings in Hampstead. Phil occasionally called on Charles in the City for a "chat." Their talk about money, which took place the day after Charles's visit to Hampstead, had been brief; there had been so little money for them to talk about. Charles found Caroline's future husband something between a kindly bore and a fanatic; he found his jokes clumsy and humourless, and his obvious liking for himself flattering in a sense, but tedious. He seemed to exercise a peculiar fascination for the young man. Phil was both attracted to and puzzled by him. What Charles knew he avoided talking about, unless he wished to oppose some misapprehension or fatuity. What Phil knew he couldn't help talking about, and his knowledge was too often vague and inaccurate. He never knew when Charles might not turn on him, politely, and rend him, and he appeared to take a fearful pleasure in being rent.
He said to Caroline one day:
"It's a great pity that a man with your father's intelligence should be on the wrong side." He added: "If he is on the wrong side."
"What do you mean?" she asked quickly.
"I sometimes think," he explained, "that he's on our side all the time and won't admit it."
But Caroline wouldn't hear of that.
"I'm afraid father has a definitely Tory mind," she said.
Venetia, on the other hand, was at home far more than usual. She declined invitation after invitation. Charles heard her at the telephone, saying:
"No, I don't think I will, thank you. I'm fed up with dancing at the moment. No, I've seen all the plays I want to see, and they hardly ever stand seeing twice. Oh, I think it's hardly worth while just dining. Yes, I expect it's only temporary, but it's the way I feel. Besides, I'm working rather hard just now. No, I promise you it's nothing to do with you. It's just me. Next week I may feel differently."
"Or next month or next year," he heard her say once as she hung up the receiver.
Charles was not much concerned at this, and did not think it in any way significant. She had been "off" dancing before, and had returned to it with renewed vigour. And doubtless it was possible to be temporarily surfeited with the attentions of young men. Besides, it was true that she was working very hard at the studio. The entire class had competed in a design for a fountain, destined for a small park in the Midlands. Hers had been selected, and she was now executing it. It was a figure of a boy struggling with a large fish. She had spent her month's allowance on the purchase of a whole salmon—she said that of all fish salmon had the best figures—and she explained to Charles how it was kept on ice at night and brought out to be clasped in the small boy's arms by day.
"I have to work on it very quickly," she said. "It won't last long in this weather. My model, who is seven, has got terribly attached to that fish, but I'm afraid we shall have to part with it to-morrow."
He did notice, however, that she was looking thinner and paler, and that she laughed less. When he commented on this she said it was the spring. She always felt a little run down in the spring.
One day Charles came back from the office an hour earlier than usual. The weather had turned delightfully warm, and as he opened the door of his library he saw that the sunlight was lying in a yellow pool on the floor, and that on the white-painted walls was a greenish, reflected light. At the same moment he saw that the black and bony fig tree in the garden—always a very backward tree—was dotted all over with little fans of brightest, vividest green. Charles, who loved the spring too passionately to be happy with it, winced at the sight. Whatever wishes, barely acknowledged, whatever secret mortifications he had, rose up in him and tormented him. Spring always found him unprepared, unequal to its incomparable beauties, unworthy of it. He stood with his hand on the knob of the door, stricken by some obscure pain; and although those gay green fans, and the sunlight lying so warmly on the floor, and the chatter of the birds outside, and the soft air that came in through the window all gave him exquisite pleasure, they reminded him at the same time that he was mortal, and forty-two, and that he needed a new suit, and that he was vulnerable and susceptible to a thousand pangs.
He decided that it would be best to ignore the fig tree and get to work. He had been finding some lovely prose somewhere—yes, he remembered now—in Green Mansions. He looked for it on his table, but it wasn't there. He thought he must have left in the drawing-room the night before. He ran lightly up the stairs and opened the door.
Venetia and Clive Cary were sitting on the sofa, their arms wound tightly about each other. They moved apart slowly, realising at once that it was useless to try to assume positions of greater propriety; useless to pretend they hadn't been clinging together like drowning people; useless to imagine that their feelings for each other were not, now, public property, so to speak.
Charles saw that he had surprised these two in the middle of a tragic scene. More tragic, he guessed, than amorous. Venetia's flushed cheeks glistened with tears; Clive's eyes looked large and dark and miserable, and his face was pale. He stood up, facing Charles, while Venetia remained on the sofa, clasping one of his hands in both of hers.
"I'm sorry," said Charles, unspeakably embarrassed. "I came up to get a book."
He felt that the situation was worse for him than for any of them. He hadn't the least desire to play the rôle of outraged parent and cry, theatrically, "What does this mean, sir?" He only wanted to apologise and go away, and shut himself up in his library until Venetia should come to him and put him out of his worst misery by telling him what it meant of her own accord.
But Clive had other plans.
"This requires explanations," he said, "and I mean to give them. I shall be glad to give them."
Venetia was on her feet in an instant.
"No, father, no!" she cried. "Don't listen to Clive. Clive, please go away now. I want to talk to father alone. Go away, please, please."
"That's quite impossible," said Clive quietly. He turned to Charles. "Would you mind asking Venetia to let us have a talk alone?"
"Father can ask me as much as he likes," she cried defiantly. "I'm not going. If there's any talking to be done, I mean to do it. Now go, Clive, please."
"All this was my fault, for bursting in," said Charles, backing toward the door, his book in his hand. "If you had left your hat and stick in the hall, Clive, instead of bringing them up here, it wouldn't have happened. No one is called upon to explain anything at the moment." He was sick with dread of what he might have to hear. He turned to the door, avoiding their eyes. "If you want me, later, you'll know where to find me."
But Venetia ran to him and caught his arm.
"No, father, don't go. I can explain everything, and I will, here and now. Clive is going out to India, soon, and I may not see him before he sails, as he'll be very busy. We were saying good-bye. I'm very fond of Clive, and I let him kiss me, and you saw us. That's all there is to tell." She held him by both arms and looked him straight in the face. "That's the truth, as true as my name's Venetia Lester."
"My God!" burst out Clive. "That's one of the best told lies I ever listened to."
Charles, standing by the door with his hands in his pockets and his book under his arm, looked from Venetia to Clive. He saw that the young man was angry and desperate. He knew that Venetia, for reasons of her own, was concealing much. Her eyes were flashing with indignation.
"Clive, how dare you? You've no business to interfere like this. This doesn't concern you, and you'd much better go away and leave me to talk to father alone. This is the third time I've asked you to go."
Clive suddenly sprang at her, pinioned her arms to her sides, and, after a short scuffle, pushed her out of the room.
"Father, father!" she cried, as the door was firmly shut on her. "Don't let him—don't"
"I've stood all I'm going to stand from that girl," said Clive, as he turned the key.
"Oh no, you haven't," Charles told him. "Not if you mean to marry her, and it looks as though you did."
Venetia continued to beat on the door and shake the knob.
"Let me come in! Please let me in, Clive! Father, unlock the door!" There were tears in her voice.
"She's not crying," Clive said. "She's only pretending to. I'll unlock the door in a minute." He was breathing fast. "I'd better tell you while I can. We're terribly in love with each other, and she won't marry me because she won't leave you. I've got to go out to India the end of this month, and I want her to come with me. She wants to come. She's making herself desperately unhappy. I wouldn't tell you this if I didn't know she loved me, but I do know it, and I adore her utterly, and for ever. I've got to marry her."
Charles walked to the mantelpiece and leaned on it. He couldn't refrain from glancing in the mirror to see if his face showed what he was feeling, and was gratified to find that it didn't. He saw Clive reflected in the glass. He was lighting a cigarette. His hands were shaking and it was plain that he was strung up to a very high pitch of excitement, like a man who knows he is fighting for his life.
"You'd better unlock the door," Charles said calmly. "I have the facts now. And then perhaps we can hear ourselves talk."
Clive turned the key and opened the door, and Venetia walked in. Her apprehensive eyes went at once to her father's face. She knew that he knew, and that it was useless to try to deceive him any more. Charles, his face immobile, left the mantel and took her hand. He led her to the sofa.
"Well?" he said.
She put her head on his shoulder with a long sigh.
"I'm so sick of pretending," she said. "I'm madly in love with Clive, and if I can't marry him I'll just slowly die. I know exactly what it must feel like to die of love."
"You'd be no good to me dead, my darling," said Charles.
Clive, who had been walking about as though he were too nervous to sit or stand, paused in front of them. "It was just a question," he said, "of who was to make the sacrifice. You, or us. I know what the sacrifice is. She's yours. She's a thousand times more yours than most men's daughters are. And you were only just beginning to get any real satisfaction out of her. And then I come and take her away, and reap all the benefits, and leave you with nothing. It's inevitable, but it's damned hard."
"I subscribe to that," said Charles quietly, "and sign it."
Clive resumed his pacing, every movement, Charles saw, watched by Venetia.
"At first," continued the young man, "I thought she was right, and that we ought to wait. And then when I heard that I was going to India, I knew I couldn't stand it, and she knew she couldn't. There are some sorts of hell no one should be called on to endure. Stupid, purposeless hells like that."
"There are," agreed Charles.
"Oh, father," Venetia cried, "what will you do if I go away and leave you?"
He saw her tears starting.
"Never mind me," he said quickly. "Man's an adaptable animal, after all. Let's keep to the business in hand."
"If you only liked people, or clubs . . ."
"Discussion of my personal peculiarities, while interesting, perhaps, is unprofitable," he observed. "I want to know what makes you so sure you want to marry Clive, and go out to India with him, and live the life of a soldier's wife, which, I have always understood, isn't all caviare."
Venetia raised her head and then sat up. She was beginning to be herself again.
"Now it just happens," she said, "that I can tell you exactly. Clive, stop walking for a minute, please. Now, father, look at him. Don't you see that he's the only man I could possibly marry? Look at the way his hair grows, look at his eyes and the shape of his nose, and that Clive-ish chin. Look at his height and his figure, and that beautiful back . . ."
"Shut up, Venetia," said Clive. "We were endeavouring to be reasonable."
"So am I. All those things are reasons. And, father, I shall never tire of the way his mind works. He thinks; he comes to conclusions about things, conclusions that I might come to, perhaps, ten years from now. I'm not nearly as clever as he is, and I know it, and I like it. I've got a lot of feeling and I'm intelligent, but I haven't got a really good brain. Very few of us have. But if I stick to Clive there's some hope for me."
"It looks as if I should have to put you out of the room again," warned Clive.
"Let me alone," she said. "Father asked me, and I'm telling him."
"Is there any more?" asked Charles.
"There's an awful lot more. I expect you thought, as Caroline did, that I'd go on having mild affairs with young men for years and years. Well, if I don't marry Clive, that's exactly what I will do, and it's just what I dread and want to avoid. I don't want to go any farther. Clive suits me perfectly. I love his way of thinking; I love his way of living; I love his absolutely uncanny understanding of women. He explains me to myself, and oh, how I needed that! He's thought a lot about women. Not in a silly way, but sensibly and clearly. And if we go wrong anywhere, it will be my fault, not his, because while he's thought things out and come to conclusions about them, I've only dreamed and wool-gathered."
"He has the advantage of you in years," said Charles.
"It's the only advantage I have or want," Clive answered.
"I'm sorry he's a soldier," Venetia went on, "because, although he admits it to very few people, he doesn't really like soldiering. He's too independent-minded. And that means that he won't be very happy in that way. But he'll have his music, which is a great satisfaction to him, and he'll have me. And those two things are enough to keep anybody interested."
"Perhaps Mr. Lester would like to say a few words now," Clive suggested.
"At the moment, only this," said Charles. "That I would like you to call me Charles."
"Thank you," said Clive, and was too much moved to say more.
Venetia seized her father's arm.
"Oh, if only we weren't going to India," she cried, "what fun we three could have!"
The sharp pain her words gave him made him wince, and for a moment he could say nothing. Then he turned to Clive.
"What would you say if I asked you not to marry Venetia until you come back from India?"
Clive sat down.
"It would mean waiting two or possibly three years," he said.
"What would you say, Venetia?"
"Why didn't you ask Caroline to wait?" she asked in a low voice.
"I knew she wouldn't wait."
"Do you think I will?"
"I know you will if I ask you to."
"Are you going to ask me to?"
"No," said Charles.
"If you had asked me," she said, "I would have waited."
"I know. That's why I couldn't ask."
"Oh, father! You didn't ask Caroline to wait because you knew she wouldn't, and you don't ask me because you know I would. What a beast I am to leave you . . . but I do want to marry Clive and go away with him so terribly."
"When do you sail, Clive?" Charles asked quietly.
"On the thirty-first of May."
"And this is the twelfth. Good God!"
"I can just do it," Venetia said. "I think Lydia Chalmers would help me with my clothes."
Charles asked, conscious of a twinge of jealousy:
"How much does she know?"
"Only that Clive and I adore each other. She guessed it. She wouldn't advise us, one way or the other, about telling you."
Charles felt the imperative need of action. He got up and walked to the mantel again, where he lit a cigarette.
"You and Caroline," he said, "might as well trip to the registry office hand in hand."
"Father, darling," cried Venetia, "don't be sarcastic. I intend to be married in church, very quietly. I only want the family, and Clive's father, of course. I don't want any of my young female friends. They're a horrible bore at a wedding."
"Venetia's done most of the talking, so far," said Clive, sitting on the arm of the sofa with a hand on her shoulder. "I would now like to make a few remarks. I won't go into the question of my feelings for your daughter, Charles. I wouldn't be such a damn fool as to marry her if I didn't adore her. This business of taking a young woman for duration is not a thing to be trifled with. So we'll just pass over all that and get down to business. Besides my pay, I am fortunate enough to have a thousand a year—alas! not exclusive of income-tax—which my mother left to me, and for a soldier, that's riches. And if Venetia ever gets fed up with army life, as she very likely will about the same time I do, I'll retire and find some other sort of job."
"Here in London," she said, "near you, father."
"I shall look forward to that," said Charles, "with great pleasure."
It was Clive who presently realised that they had said enough; that Charles could bear no more; that any emotion now on anyone's part would be unendurable for him.
He got up and took Venetia by the hand.
"This interview," he said lightly, "has gone on long enough for to-day. I'd be very glad, Charles, if you'd lunch with me to-morrow at my club. I hope you can. At one-thirty if that suits you. There are a lot of things I'd like to talk over with you."
"Without me?" asked Venetia.
"My club," said Clive, "is a very chaste club. No women are admitted."
Charles said he would come. He liked the way Clive had taken the initiative. It made him fell less parental, less like the author of his own agony.
"I suppose you two will be dining together to-night," he said.
"We'd like you to dine with us," answered Clive quickly.
"No," said Charles. "Thanks very much. I can't do that."
"Oh, father, why not? We do want you. Please," Venetia begged.
"I already have an engagement," he explained.
"Then," she said, "we'll dine together to-morrow night. The three of us."
"That," said Charles politely, "I should like very much indeed."
Venetia went to the front door with Clive, and Charles went to his library with his book. When Venetia presently looked in he pretended to be working. She came silently to the table, kissed him, and went away. Three-quarters of an hour later she came in again, dressed for dinner, kissed her hand to him, and said she would be home early. She hesitated at the door, and then said:
"If I say anything to you I'll cry and look hideous. I just want to tell you that I've never been so completely happy and so completely miserable."
She went out, closing the door quickly behind her.
Charles sat at his writing-table for some time after she had gone, his head resting on his hand. The other hand was busy making innumerable round noughts on a sheet of paper. Suddenly he dropped his pen, shot up out of his chair, seized his hat from the hall table and left the house. He walked rapidly in the direction of Buckingham Gate, through leafy Eaton Square; then, meeting an empty taxi, he got in and said:
"To the Café Royal, please."
The sun was just setting in a blue and flawless sky. The fine blooms of the rhododendrons in front of the Palace, the glimpses of smooth and shimmering water in St. James's Park, the fair trees that cast long shadows, the exquisite green grass, the wide beauty of the Mall, gave him a painful pleasure. When they were behind him, he allowed his mind to busy itself with similes that were still more painful. He told himself that he was like the conscientious driver of a train who had brought his load of perishable freight on a far and difficult journey, only to see the rails in front of him disappear into the sand of a limitless desert. He thought he was like a bird that had built its nest in a rainwater pipe during a brief and temporary drought. He thought he was like a man who had sunk his entire fortune in an oil well only to find salt water.
When he reached the Café Royal, he selected a table in a corner and sat down on one of the plush-covered seats against the wall. When he was in the Café Royal he always felt that he was on the Continent. At the Café Royal a man could sit with his hat on. A man could write letters and buy nothing more, if he wished, than a glass of soda-water and a stamp. Or he could order a six-course dinner, and find it excellent. He could bring his wife and children and his aunts and cousins, or he could come alone and sit gloomily. No one would remark him, either way.
When the waiter came he ordered a salmon-trout, a tournedos to follow, with peas and new potatoes, and a large whisky-and-soda. And then his spirits failed him utterly, and he ate half the salmon-trout, waved away the tournedos when it was brought to him, and ordered another whisky-and-soda. Presently, to keep his thoughts from himself and from his unhappy case, he began to observe, with an interest that was somewhat forced, the people about him. Opposite him were two women and a man. One of the women was vivacious, full of vitality, moderately good-looking, and supplied with comfortable and adequate curves. It was clear to Charles that if the man had been purchasable for the sum of twopence, she wouldn't have bought him, but she spared no pains to amuse him and to amuse herself. She lived for the moment; she would always have energy enough for the moment; she was the sort of woman who would never fail to attract males. The other woman, who had more heart, little vitality, and less charm, was clearly loving and unloved. She watched with a bitterness perfectly apparent to Charles the success of her companion. She tried to attract the man's attention; she interrupted their talk and tried to divert it to herself; she put her hand, now and again, on his arm. He responded briefly and turned back to the other woman again. Her forced smiles died abruptly, and her expression then was anxious and bitter.
But tragic though she was, he hardened his heart against her. Hers was a silly tragedy. She was an unsuccessful and peevish pursuer of worthless men.
"Give it up," Charles said to himself. "Pursuit of men . . . that's what brings the crows' feet. You'll be old and weary before your time. Give it up."
And then it struck him that he himself was very like that woman. He, too, was solicitous, pursuant, and rebuffed. The man was fate. Jovelike, he condescended, now and again, to be pleased. The other woman, buxom, careless, vital, heedless, was life. Was not he, like that tragic third, constantly putting out a solicitous and anxious hand?
"Look my way now. I am as deserving of happiness as anyone. That other woman is a scheming and worthless cat. Pay no attention to her."
He had been saying wheedlingly to fate: "You might just let me keep my daughters. They're really all I care about. Well, anyhow, five years more or ten years more. I don't come bothering you for favours very often. I am not an exigent fellow. You won't find me at all troublesome."
Ludicrous, this pursuit of happiness. No one knew it better than he. How often had he not dinned it into the minds of Caroline and Venetia?
"Don't ask me what we're here for, because I don't know. But what I do know is that in a chancy world like this, full of motor-buses that may mow you down when you least expect it, happiness isn't and can't be the object."
One thing, however, he did know. He knew what he was here in the Café Royal for. It was because his life had suddenly become entirely purposeless; and because he realised he would have to live it alone.
"Waiter, another large whisky-and-soda, please."
By ten o'clock he had had five.
His mind was extraordinarily clear by that time. He saw life in its entirety. He saw it as plainly as he saw the gilded and ornamented ceiling, the marble-topped tables, the pendant chandeliers with their three electric lights apiece, the herd-faces of the people about him.
There were two views to be taken of this business called life. The romantic-symbolic-mystic view, or the scientific view. He took the scientific view. He had always done so. It was the only view for a man of intelligence. Nine-tenths of the observations made about life were ignorant and romantic nonsense. Life was one of two things. It was either an ingenious invention for causing pain, or it was an interesting scientific phenomenon. The moment it ceased to be the second, it became the first. If you were wise, you diminished yourself out of existence with the comforting aid of science—an invention for putting man in his place. The romantic mind saw man as a Noble Creature born to subjugate the Lower Animals, and to take the chair at Directors' Meetings. The scientific mind regarded him as it regards something in a drop of sea-water. The moment you succeeded in looking upon yourself as something in a drop of sea-water, the fact that your two only daughters were about to leave you desolate became immaterial.
"Waiter, another large whisky-and-soda, please."
And then there were the stars. Good God! The stars, ether, atoms, protons and electrons. . . . The stars, from a God's-eye point of view, were very likely atoms. The atoms that composed our bodies, from the point of view of science, might be stars. Magnify them sufficiently, and they might be found to be worlds inhabited by beings like ourselves. Why not? A tedious conception, but quite possibly a true one. And then where was man, with his little pains?
He drank his whisky-and-soda, and knew that he comprehended the universe. To comprehend the universe and then empty one's mind of it was the act of a god. He was capable of that too. He took it in his stride.
The only thing he couldn't seem to do was to get drunk. Everything else was ridiculously simple. Although he was now about to embark on his sixth? seventh? eighth? large whisky-and-soda, he could solve, if confronted with it, the most difficult problem in accountancy ever accounted. Or encountered. Numbers were playthings, delightful little playthings, as amenable and friendly as tame mice. They had the same bright alertness as tame mice. Mice and numbers. There was a kinship between them he had never noticed before. They had the same furtive and mischievous way of nibbling at one's chequebook.
The pity of it was that a man as able as he couldn't get drunk when he wanted to. It was partly due, no doubt, to lack of practice. In fact, now that he came to think of it, he had never been really drunk in his life. That was the worst of not having had a University education.
"Waiter, another large whisky-and-soda, please."
"Sorry, sir, it's after hours."
"Ah," said Charles.
He realised that he was defeated. He had set out with the deliberate intention of getting drunk, and he was, instead, most exquisitely and significantly sober. He sat there in his corner, as lonely as a coral island, and waited for his sorrows, which had been damned back for a time, to rush upon him in a torrent, in a black spate, and overwhelm him.
But a curious thing happened. That cunning and noiseless servant, his subconsciousness, which had been busy searching for something its master could clutch at and cling to, now skilfully produced for him at this most crucial moment a vision of Lydia.
Smiling, soignée, charming, she now moved before his inward eye; she spoke, laughed, came and went, was lost, was recaptured again. He saw her entire, then certain of her more noticeable and best-remembered features. He saw her fair hair as it fell away in waves from its parting, her neat silken ankles, her little arched eyebrows and thick eyelids; he got, now and again, a quick and inquiring glance from her grey eyes. From a position somewhere in the background she now moved forward, grew larger, and occupied for the first time a place, if not in the forefront, at least in the middle distance of that dreary waste or emptiness he had been contemplating.
And very nice she looked there, he thought, very calming and comforting. He felt soothed and reassured. There she was. There she had been all along. There she would continue to be. He felt as a child feels when someone has dispersed the horrid dark by bringing in a nightlight.
He presently got up and walked to the door sedately and without haste. He asked the commissionaire, very formally, if he would be so kind as to get him a taxi. When it came he thanked him, tipped him generously, and gave the address to the driver with a certain pomposity agreeable to himself.
His head, he told himself, was bloody but unbowed.
The drive home seemed to take no more than a minute, but, short as it was, it struck Charles as being a drive of some significance, although just what that significance was he would have found it difficult to say. That return to Eaton Gardens marked, he felt certain, some turning-point in his life, no matter what. When the cab stopped in front of his house, he looked up at it and said to himself: "So this is home!" and felt that he had made a bon mot. But there was more to come. He couldn't send the taxi driver away without some recognition. He was a good fellow, and had conducted him there in safety. He gave him five shillings, which was more than double the correct fare. Generous, but just, he thought. But there was still something lacking, something in the nature of a fine gesture. With a flourish of the hand as he turned to enter the house, he said to the driver, who was preparing to depart:
"It would give me much pleasure if you were to call me Charles."