After Noon (Ertz)/Chapter 13
CHARLES heard the bell ring a second time, and the knock repeated. Where was that wretched woman? What was she there for but to answer the bell? He heard no footsteps on the stairs, no movement anywhere, and dropping his pen with a word expressive of his annoyance, he went to the door himself, leaving a half-written letter on the table. He had been writing to Venetia one of those cheerful letters it so delighted and comforted her to receive.
His hair still untidy—he had been toying with that lock—he opened the front door.
He was amazed to see Lydia's back vanishing into a taxi. He would have known that graceful and elegant back among a thousand. She had paused to shut up an umbrella, as it was raining, and had been impeded by the large, paper-wrapped bunch of flowers she was carrying. Charles dashed down the steps, crying:
"Lydia! Lydia!"
She turned a glad face toward him.
"Charles! Just in time. I thought there couldn't be anyone home. I was just going away."
She got out of the taxi again.
"How long had you been ringing that bell?"
"Oh, ages it seemed. And I'd been knocking, too."
"I only heard it twice. Go in. I'll pay for the taxi."
She demurred, fumbling in her purse, the umbrella and the flowers in her arms.
"Go in, out of the rain," he ordered, and she went. He paid the driver, followed her into the house and closed the door.
"In your library, I suppose," she inquired, placing her wet umbrella in the stand, and preceding him.
"Yes. It's the only room where there's a fire. When did you get back?"
"Only yesterday—last night. How is Marie? I was so sorry to hear about her operation."
Charles said she was better, and that she was coming back to him eventually, but not for some time.
"And how are you managing meanwhile? Who's looking after you now?"
"A middle-aged slattern. You'll see her presently. I don't know where she is. Dressing, probably. What have you got there?"
"Flowers," said Lydia, uncovering a bunch of deep red hot-house roses. "For you. It's your birthday, as I happened to know."
She spoke with some diffidence, avoiding his eyes.
"My forty-third. How did you know? I never told you."
"No," she said, "but Venetia did. She mentioned it in her last letter."
Charles said, lifting up the roses and smelling them:
"Well, she's forgotten it since. I haven't heard a word from her, nor from Caroline either, who's no further off than Hampstead. How lovely they are! How nice you are!" He seized her hand and kissed it. "They're the first flowers I've had in the house since Venetia went. Dear, kind Lydia. How adorable of you!"
"I'll put them in water presently," she said. She spoke as casually as she could. Both, remembering their last meeting, were aware of a tension trying to the nerves.
"Yes, presently. After tea." He went to the bell and rang it. "I left the office much earlier than usual to-day. I must have felt that you were coming, though as a matter of fact I believed you were still in your beloved Paris."
"I came back," she said, "because I loved London more."
"Honestly?"
"Honestly."
He looked at her critically and appraisingly.
"How do you look? Very well, I think, and as ravishing as ever. I suppose you've been spending a fortune on clothes, after the manner of your countrywomen."
She was wearing at the moment the same brown coat and skirt he had often seen her wear in the spring, and she reminded him of the fact.
"Well, it's the way you wear them. I don't pretend to understand clothes. One can't notice everything, and I notice other things. Lydia, I'm delighted to see you. I didn't realise, fortunately, how much I've missed you."
"Have you, really? I'm delighted to be back. I feel young and innocent here, and old and sophisticated on the other side of the Channel. Have you been very lonely?"
"Appallingly. But," he hastened to add, "not really unhappy. There's a kind of pleasure in loneliness, to an epicure. I've tried going out, but it doesn't amuse me. People don't amuse me enough, nor the things they say and do. They're too much like myself."
She considered this.
"I don't think I like meeting people, qua people, either," she said. "But I like watching them; and the people I do like interest me enormously. I've been watching a Franco-American marriage lately—my friend Grace de Ferrière, and her husband, Paul."
"What was so interesting about them?" Charles asked perversely. "I should imagine their marriage was precisely like any other—a battle in which neither contestant can hope to win a victory."
"There was no question of a battle there," she said. "They're very happy. But their ways interested and amused me; their ways to one another."
"Well, you have very morbid tastes," Charles said. "It's a spectacle that invariably fills me with pity and gloom."
"It's become a habit with you," she remarked, "to say these things."
"Heaven forbid that I should form habits. I don't like habits. I want to talk about you, now. What are you going to do? Venetia said she thought you were thinking of marrying someone—an American. Is that true?"
His directness made her laugh.
"No, Charles. Venetia met him, and she wants me to marry, so I imagine the wish was father to the thought. It was Arthur Templeton, an old friend—an old beau of mine, as we say. He asks me to marry him every now and then, but I should never dream of disconcerting him by accepting. It would completely upset his life."
"It does," said Charles, then added hastily, "but I mustn't say these things. Are you still at the Berkeley?"
She said she was, but that she was tired of hotels and thought of taking a small house or flat for a few months.
"A flat's the thing," Charles said. "I'll help you find one." He got up and rang the bell again. "Where the devil has that woman got to? She can't be out. It's not her day to be out, and she can't be dressing all this time."
"She might have run out to buy something," suggested Lydia. "Don't let's bother about tea."
"We'll have tea," said Charles, "if I have to get it myself." He went out of the room and, opening the door that led down to the basement, called, "Mrs. Transome! Mrs. Transome!"
There was no reply, neither was there any other sound. Lydia heard him go rapidly down the stairs. She picked up the roses and looked about for something to put them in, but as there was nothing in the room she went upstairs to the drawing-room, wondering as she went how Charles could bear to live alone in that deserted house, once bright with flowers and movement and girls' voices. The drawing-room was very cold and damp, so that she saw her own breath and felt chilled. She found an old-fashioned flower vase, with a stem, like an enormous ale-glass, and carried it downstairs. Charles was still in the basement, so she followed him there with the intention of filling the vase at the pantry sink. She had often been in the kitchen in Marie's time, and knew her way about. Not seeing Charles or hearing him, she called out, "Charles! Where are you?"
He suddenly emerged from a door at the back that she remembered as the door to Marie's bedroom.
"Look here," he said, beckoning.
She went to him and looked over his shoulder into the room.
A woman with a very red face lay sprawled on the bed. She was breathing loudly and regularly. Beside the bed, on a small table, lay an empty port bottle, on its side. A glass which had evidently fallen out of her hand lay unbroken on the floor.
"It's my 1876," Charles said in a low voice, and closed the door upon the spectacle.
"What are you going to do with her?" Lydia asked, as they looked at one another.
"Let her sleep it off and send her home as soon as she wakes up. She's only a daily. Poor creature," he added. Lydia saw that he was genuinely sorry for Mrs. Transome.
"Where did you get her? From an agency?"
"No. She's a friend of Caroline's. Anyhow, she got her for me, and vouched for her."
"How did she get the port?" Lydia asked as they returned to the kitchen. "You surely didn't leave it unlocked, did you?"
"The keys were in the wine-cellar door. I never bothered about the keys when Marie was here."
"Marie was different. She was one of the family."
He went to the door and glanced in.
"Well, it's no good counting the bottles now. If she's drunk my best port, she's drunk it. I'll have a look to-morrow." He locked the door and put the keys in his pocket. "Now we'll get tea. Or shall we go out somewhere?"
Lydia said she thought it would be unwise to leave the house while Mrs. Transome was in that state, and he agreed that it would, so they busied themselves getting the tea. Charles put water on the gas stove, and while it was heating cut bread and butter not unskilfully. Lydia searched vainly for a cake.
"There isn't one," she finally announced. "And I personally don't care. I don't want any."
"I don't want any either," said Charles, "but I know there was a large Dundee cake in the house yesterday." He added in explanation and extenuation, "She has five children at home."
"Well, you oughtn't to live this way," Lydia said. "It's all wrong. I'll find someone for you. A nice elderly woman who'll live here and take Marie's place till she comes back. I'll see to it at once."
"If you'll find her for me, I'll find you a flat," said Charles. He carried the tray upstairs, and Lydia followed with the brimming vase. She arranged the roses in it, set it on the table, and poured out the tea. Charles poked the fire into a flame and came and sat down close to her at the table.
"How domestic," he said.
"Very," she agreed. "But don't let it disturb you. I shall be gone in fifteen minutes."
Charles ignored this.
"Do you think it was an instinct for good wine that made her choose my 1876, or was it the first bottle she put her hand on?"
"I think she simply groped for something in the dark. Could she possibly have drunk that whole bottle this afternoon?"
Charles said that he thought it must have afforded her more than one afternoon's relaxation.
"I think," he said with a laugh, "that there's something eternally comic about a drunken cook. Well, I shall have to dine out to-night, that's plain. Will you dine with me?"
Lydia, after a second's hesitation, said:
"Yes, I will. I'd like to."
She handed him a cup of tea and he took it, wishing as he did so that her presence did not recall so vividly her kisses, the delicate odours of her hair and cheeks, and the faint, light perfume of the powder she used.
"Good," he said. "If Marie had been home we could have dined here. Or wouldn't you have come with Venetia and Caroline away?"
She said, looking at him with amused eyes:
"Oh, yes, I think I would. Why not?"
"I never know how women feel about these things. They seem to think it's correct to dine alone in a man's house, but incorrect to dine in his flat. I think it was Venetia who once made this distinction. For all I knew you might consider them both out of the question."
"It's absurd to make rules," she said. "I never do. It depends entirely on the circumstances."
"Perfectly true. How sensible women are nowadays. Well, where shall we dine to-night?"
They decided on the Café de Paris, where there was a cabaret performance.
"As it's my birthday," said Charles, "I wish to carouse and be gay." And then some impulse made him say, with amazing indiscretion:
"I warn you, I shall probably want to kiss you again."
She felt herself colouring. The sudden activity of her heart annoyed her. She was no young girl to be agitated by such words. And it flashed through her mind that had she been a young girl she could have dealt with them far more lightly.
"I wouldn't, if I were you," she said. "You'll only run the risk of spoiling things."
"I've kissed very few women," Charles said, "but I believe they invariably ask you not to spoil things."
"I'm sorry if I've said anything trite," she answered, "but you force me to. Besides, I think it's true."
Charles put down his cup.
"Women are very like ostriches. Only they don't put their heads in the sand because they don't want to be seen, but because they don't want to see. You know that in spite of all my principles and prejudices I'm in love with you, but you don't want to see it. You ignore it. You pretend it isn't so. I dare say you're right to do so."
"Even supposing it is so," said Lydia, "knowing you as I do, I can only assume that you regret it, and that you would rather we remained on terms of friendship merely."
"I see I shall have to talk to you about this," he said. "I shall have to tell you some things about myself. It's a confession few men make, but that more would make if they were honest. Women like you, Lydia, nice women, charming women, imagine that men enjoy their society—enjoy, that is, just being with them and hearing them talk, and swapping complexes, as one might say. No doubt there are men like that, but there is also a vast class like myself, who would far rather talk to a man than to a woman, and who would far rather kiss a woman than talk to a man. Lydia, dear, you're one in a million, and I consider you highly intelligent, but there's nothing you can say to me that can really interest me apart from the fact that it's you who say it. If I like a woman very much indeed, I want to more than like her. I want to love her. If I don't like her as much as that, I don't particularly want to be with her at all. I'd rather be alone. If it's conversation I want, I'd infinitely rather talk to a man, particularly a man who specialises in something—politics, or banking, or publishing, or what you like. That's the brutal truth, Lydia. That's why I'm a lonely man. That's why I'm totally unsatisfactory as a friend. I'm not a friend. I don't want women friends. I enjoy solitude. I like it. I enjoy my own thoughts. Women only matter to me at all when they matter very much."
Lydia's mind during this speech had undergone several complete revolutions. She hated what he was saying; she liked it. Such a point of view was incomprehensible to her; she understood it profoundly and admitted its truth. She was hurt by it, and she was deeply gratified.
"And where do I come in?" she asked, controlling her eyes and voice with care.
"What I'm saying I'm saying because you are one of those women—one of those very few women—who matter. I think it would be delicious to love you. I know it is delicious to kiss you. I very naturally want to go on kissing you. I want to talk to you as well, of course, but only after I've kissed you, because then we should have got past all the things that don't matter, and would have ceased, very largely, to posture and pretend. I don't want to talk to you about politics, nor about currency; I want to ask you intimate things about yourself, and tell you intimate things about myself, with some hope of getting at the truth on both sides. At first I wanted to see you because Rupert asked me to, and because it was my agreeable duty. Now I want to see you for quite other reasons."
He got up to light a cigarette.
"I wanted to explain all this to you before, but you didn't give me a chance. You dashed off to Paris."
"You apologised for that night," she said. "A stupid—nearly a fatal thing to do."
"You quite misunderstood me. I've no doubt I expressed myself badly and baldly, but I certainly didn't apologise, and don't intend to."
She held out her hand for a cigarette, which, a moment before, she had refused. She was unable at the moment to put her feelings into words.
"So I'm no good to you as a friend," she finally said.
"No," he replied. "And I pay you a compliment when I say I never thought you would be."
"But what are we to do?" she cried, distressed. "Friendship is a game that men and women play together. I believe that all you say is very true, though it's seldom said, but all the same there are plenty of men and women who do play it successfully."
"Tame cats, for the most part," Charles said. "Now I'm not posing to you as a cave-man, or a sort of Sheik. I'm very likely as tame a fellow as you'll meet anywhere, but women, to my mind, are either to be loved or left alone. There are, I'll admit, a few exceptions here and there. Miss Brewer, for instance, who's so ugly she's hardly a woman at all, but who has a fine mind—the best sort of masculine mind—and there's old Mrs. Mallison who looks upon me as a son, almost. I like to see them from time to time. But if one likes women as friends, one must be prepared to enjoy their activities—luncheons, teas, dinners, dances, all garnished with small talk. I, frankly, am not prepared to. There is another type of woman, the professional woman, who hasn't time for these things, and with her one can at least talk shop, which I like up to a point."
True as all this was, reasonable and honest as it was, it hurt Lydia inexplicably. She realised that Charles had summed up the eternal struggle between civilised men and women. He had set forth the male point of view, that point of view shied at by most women. It explained the popularity of the "tame cats," whom women never really like, but who help them to preserve their illusions about the relations between the sexes.
"You're making it very difficult for me," she cried. "You force me to say one of two things: either that I want you to make love to me, or that I can dispense with your society altogether."
"I don't want to force you to say anything, Lydia. I only want to tell you my own feelings. Candidly, I find you adorable, and I adore you. But I can't go on pretending that I like you as a female friend, because I don't. I have extremely little use for female friends, and I'm no good at amiable pretences."
"Take away my physical attractions," she said bitterly, "and there seems to be nothing left for you."
"You can't take them away," he said, "thank God. They're part of everything you do and say and think."
"It's not true," she said.
"Your voice," he told her, "is one of them."
She cried, exasperated:
"What is all this leading to, Charles? What do you want me to say? If we can't be friends we certainly cannot be lovers."
"I knew that," he told her quietly.
"Well, then," she said reproachfully, "you might better have said nothing. It was unkind."
"I told you," he said, "because I was in a quandary. I am in a quandary now."
She got up and walked to the fireplace.
"If you had thought of my feelings," she told him, "you would have said nothing."
He followed her.
"What are your feelings, Lydia? Tell me?"
He had the odd sensation that nothing he had said or done since she had come into the house was voluntary. The things he had said, he had had to say. For four months, for more than four months, he had thought about her, had wondered what he would say to her when they met, and on what terms they would meet, had resolved his feelings in his own mind, and had clarified them. What had happened that night was bound to happen. She was the sort of woman he more than liked, and it was inevitable that he should, sooner or later, give way to the impulse to make love to her. Now that he had done so, he knew that he could never again be with her without wanting to make love to her. It seemed to him best that he should tell her this. They were two reasonable people who could talk and think intelligently about their feelings. He was quite prepared, if she should think it best, to do without her altogether.
It was quite true that he wanted, and needed, the companionship of a woman like Lydia, but he believed that marriage was too high a price to pay for any companionship, however delightful. And lonely though he was, he had certain private consolations. A fundamentally happy nature was one of them; his still unfinished anthology another; Venetia's love, and the prospect of having her near him again in perhaps thirty months; Clive's affection for him; Caroline and Phil, and the amusement their ways afforded him; his work and his own thoughts. All these were consolations. And while the great majority of people go through life without examining it to see what it is made of, without that self-consciousness that makes man imagine himself superior to the animals, Charles was acutely self-conscious, and nothing delighted him more than to try to discover, with patience and exactitude, what he thought about life; what things he liked about it, and what things he disliked; what things really mattered to him, and of what stuff his existence was made up. He possessed, and he was happy in possessing, a critical intelligence, which, while it tore to shreds the world of easily accepted beliefs in which the majority of people live and move with a certain amount of comfort, built up for him a finer and more choice dwelling in which he took an artist's delight.
She turned and faced him. His nearness and the intensity of his look affected her deplorably. She felt unarmed and at bay, and already wounded. She had no crisp words ready for him, no quick answer that would hide the truth. Nothing came to her mind but the simple facts. Well, let him have them . . . she didn't care. If he had no use for her friendship, if he couldn't and wouldn't play that pretty game beloved of women, it was the end anyway. She had no intention of taking Venetia's father for a lover, even had he wished it. Or any other.
"I think you know what my feelings are, without asking me," she said, and her voice was full of passion. "You know very well that I've been weak enough and foolish enough to fall in love with you."
"Lydia!"
For a long time after, she remembered how his face had changed, and what a look came into it. His eyes widened and flashed a look at her that was either incredible joy or the uttermost amazement. He seized her wrists, pulled her to him, put his arms around her with the same hungry eagerness as before, kissed her with violence, and cried, in a sort of happy despair:
"Lydia, Lydia, I love you too, I love you too! What are we going to do about it, my sweetest, my darling?"
She made a sudden movement as though to escape from his arms, but he held her tighter.
"No, no, stay here. Let me kiss you again. How lovely you are. Do you really love me? How can you love me? Anyone would love you, you adorable woman. Lydia, you kissed me that night. Kiss me again."
She kissed him, then pushed him from her with a cry of: "Charles, oh, Charles!" and they stood staring at one another like children who have come upon a mystery. They had forgotten Mrs. Transome in her drunken stupor downstairs. They thought of nothing but each other. Into Charles's face had come a new look, a look of resolve, as though he had put his doubts and his prejudices behind him for ever.
"Lydia, darling, we're going to marry. Will you marry me? You must. You say you love me. Is it really true? Say it again."
He caught her to him once more. He was beside himself; it was as though he had suddenly discovered a new heaven.
"But you hate marriage," she cried. "You don't want to marry," she protested.
"I want to marry you. You're the only woman I could dream of marrying. You're the only woman I could possibly live with."