After Noon (Ertz)/Chapter 12
THEY dined pleasantly and quietly on the balcony. They talked about Venetia and Clive, and said what fortunate young people they were to love each other so passionately and understandingly, and to have come together early in life, without impediment or hindrance, and taste to the full those joys that might or might not last, but which, once had, nothing could take away from them.
"I envy them," said Lydia. "My marriage was arranged and overlooked and meddled with from the very beginning. Oh, it was my own fault, I know. I needn't have married when I did. I was young and weak and yielding."
"Were you?" asked Charles. "So was I weak and yielding and young. But I suppose I was happy in a way, if one can be happy when one is drugged, or feverish. When I look back on those years of matrimony, I feel as though I had had a temperature of 104.8 all the time."
"Venetia and Clive are sane enough," Lydia remarked.
"Passionately in love, but quite sane," agreed Charles. "An exquisite and enviable state."
"Would you call Caroline and Phil sane?" she asked.
"No, they're too earnest. They'll never make each other laugh, or laugh at one another, and there's no sanity like laughter. Still, from their point of view I dare say it will be a success. That is, twenty or thirty years from now will see them still together and still more earnest."
"With a row of earnest progeny," added Lydia.
"All wearing pince-nez," said Charles. "Poor Caroline. But she's very happy."
"Happier than we are."
"Well," said Charles, "I shall go through a very bad time for about a year. After that I expect I shall be reconciled to my lot."
"Which is probably the worst thing that could happen to you," she retorted.
"At any rate, I shan't marry, which is what everyone will urge me to do." He added, humorously, "I am an unfortunate fellow. All my wives leave me."
She saw that it would be best to pursue that subject no further, so changed it quickly. They sat there talking till after ten, then Lydia asked to be taken home, feeling that from her point of view the evening had been agreeable, but sterile.
Charles, on the other hand, had enjoyed it enormously and was grateful to her for coming. In the cab on the way back to her hotel he said to her impulsively and sincerely:
"What a nice woman you are! No one bears with me so patiently."
He leaned nearer to her as he said it, and their shoulders touched. Some little current of feeling ran through them both. Before he realised what he was doing he had passed an arm behind her in a sudden surge of liking and affection, and she, responding, swayed toward him. She was slender, fragrant, lovely. He held her in his arms, leaned his face to hers, kissed her smooth cheek, murmured "Lydia," touched her lips gently and experimentally, and then, on fire, off his guard, he kissed her again and again, lost his head completely—how long was it, how long, since he had kissed a woman like this?—held her, pressed her to him with wild violence, inexpressibly moved and carried away, and then as suddenly released her.
They were approaching the Berkeley, slowing down. Both of them were out of breath, bewildered, astounded. Lydia's heart was pounding. "He does love me. I knew it, I knew it," she was saying to herself. He was staring at her in the light from the street lamps, saying nothing, his eyes wide and troubled. They looked at each other in silence, their hands interlocked. He gripped one of hers painfully, raised it to his lips, dropped it and got out of the cab. He walked close beside her into the hotel.
"Lydia," he said in a low voice, as they stood in the hall. "Lydia, what have I done? Will you hate me to-morrow? May I ring you up in the morning, early? Before I go to see Venetia off? I must ring you up."
She had drawn her black evening wrap about her and looked tall and aloof, or she seemed so to him.
Far less calm than she looked, she said:
"It's all right. Yes, ring me up. Any time. Good-night." She turned quickly away, leaving Charles looking after her. He went out through the revolving doors again and got into the cab.
"To the Café Royal," he said. He couldn't go home yet. This wanted thinking out.
He found an empty table, ordered a whisky-and-soda, and tried to explain his own behaviour to himself. He had never intended to make love to her. She was damnably attractive, he was fond of her, and he was upset and overwrought by the loss of Venetia, and by the wedding. Lydia had offered immediate solace and forgetfulness, and to kiss her had been a lovely, an exquisite experience. The cab, he told himself, had gone too quickly, they had arrived too soon. There had been no anger in her face, only surprise. No, she was certainly not angry. She wasn't a child. She was a woman of the world, and he could rely on her to understand. What a darling she was. Heavenly, those kisses were, heavenly! He re-lived them. And then it suddenly struck him that she had returned them, kiss for kiss.
He started up as though the recollection stung him, paid the waiter, and walked toward home, crossing Regent Street, where the frames of new buildings stood black against the night sky, and went down Piccadilly as far as St. James's Street, and then through the Mall. It was a fine, clear evening, scarcely dark as yet, and he walked briskly.
Never had he been so carried away, so deliciously transported. And never, since Brenda had left him, had he been in such danger. What was he to do now? How was he going to make amends? He felt sure that with her unfailing and gracious tact she would make him feel that no amends need be made. She wouldn't begrudge him the comfort and the forgetfulness of those few delicious moments. They had saved him, probably, from wanting to blow his brains out.
She would understand all that. He needn't worry unduly. He was less perturbed, he told himself, about the kisses he had kissed than about the kisses she had kissed. Yes, she had kissed him, darling Lydia. Well, well. It mustn't, he supposed, happen again.
He got into bed, pleasantly tired after his walk, and, fearful that he wouldn't sleep, he slept.
He rang Lydia up at nine o'clock, before leaving the house to meet Venetia and Clive.
"Hello, is that you, Lydia? How are you this morning?"
"Very well, thank you," she said. "How are you? I hope you slept well."
"Much better than I expected to, thanks to our very delightful evening. I'm just off now to meet the children."
"Give them my good-byes and love. I sent them some books, to the steamer."
"What an angel you are!"
"And tell Venetia to write to me. She must write to me."
"She will, of course. I know she will."
A little pause followed.
"This isn't the moment to discuss what happened last night," Charles said, "but I just want to say I hope you don't like me less. I'm afraid I behaved badly, and you were perfectly adorable."
"Not at all," she said with sudden coldness. "There was no need to speak of it." Another pause. "I expect to go to Paris to-morrow, to stay with Grace de Ferrière."
"To Paris? How long will you stay? I don't like this. When did you make up your mind to go?"
"I don't know how long I shall stay. Several months probably." His last question remained unanswered.
"Lydia! I shall miss you horribly. Must you go?"
"There's no must about it. I want to go."
"Well, please don't stay too long, and do write to me from time to time. I must know how and where you are. This is all very distressing."
"I'll write. Don't forget to give Venetia my messages. Good-bye."
"Lydia, wait a minute. Oh, well, good-bye. Hell!" Charles said as he hung up the receiver. She was different and distant. He had hurt her in some way. He'd write her a long letter and explain everything. No, it was impossible to explain these things on paper. He put on his hat. He was losing everything and everybody, and the worst of his ordeals was still before him. Saying good-bye to Venetia was going to be the most intolerable anguish. He wouldn't see her, after to-day, for years and years. Years and years.
"Yes, I will, damn it all! I can go out to India myself, and I will. I won't be cut off from her like this. It's only a few weeks. There are plenty of steamers. India! It's nothing. It's just a bit of England, like Cornwall. A month on a ship. A little pleasure jaunt. If it were anybody else in the world but Clive, I'd snatch her back now. I wouldn't let her go. . . ."
But he couldn't deny to himself that Lydia's departure for Paris wasn't, on the whole, distinctly for the best. He would undoubtedly miss her, but her loss would be swallowed up in the greater loss of Venetia. When one is drowning, a shower of rain makes very little difference.