After Noon (Ertz)/Chapter 18
CHARLES received a letter from Venetia not long after this, containing the surprising news that Clive was to be sent home for a course at the Staff College, and that they expected to leave India the following October.
"If he hadn't been the studious and hard-working darling he is," wrote Venetia, "this wouldn't have happened. I love the life here, but by next October I shall have had enough. Just think, father, only eight months more and I shall see you again. It's too marvellous. It's rather a secret at present, the news having been, as you might say, whispered in Clive's ear, but he said I might tell you. It will suit him far better. He's got an active brain that wants plenty to do; and this has cheered him enormously."
Charles was in a perfect ecstasy of delight at this news. He had tried to accustom himself to the thought that he would be separated from Venetia for at least two and a half years unless he should decide to go to India. He said to Lydia:
"There's nothing on this earth that I would rather have had happen, short of the millennium."
Charles's devotion to his daughters had never caused her the least jealousy. It was one of the things that had first attracted her to him. This news of Venetia's gave her almost as much pleasure as it gave him, but at the same time she realised that even if she had not married Charles, his loneliness, which had seemed to her so distressing, would not have been of very long duration.
She was convinced that his protestations of love and of happiness were merely to spare her pain. She believed he said to himself, and would continue to say to himself, "At least I will keep her from knowing the truth about it as long as possible." She no longer confided in him; she hid her doubts and brooded over them, perfectly well aware that her pride would not allow this state of things to go on much longer. A climax must come that would either destroy such dubious happiness as she now enjoyed, or else clear her mind once and for all of the doubts and regrets that were torturing her. She alone was responsible for this state of affairs, and she alone could end it. There appeared to her to be only one possible solution to her problem, and that lay in flight.
She would go back to New York. Whether she ever returned or not depended entirely on Charles. If he wanted her he would have to come for her. He would have to convince her, once and for all, that he liked living with her better than living without her.
Once conceived, this idea seemed to her practical and sound. It simplified the whole question. It boiled it down, so to speak, to this: if he wanted her, he would come for her. If he preferred a solitary life, she would remain in New York. There would, of course, be no question of a divorce, as neither of them would ever want to marry again. There need be no scandal. They could explain the situation to their friends; and no one else mattered. Charles could say, to explain her departure, that she had gone back to see her mother; or, what was more probable, that she had been obliged to go to look after her property there. And as Charles had never been to New York and had often expressed a wish to do so, it would be natural enough for him to follow her and bring her back—always supposing that he wanted her to come back. If he failed to persuade her that he did, they could decide on some other course of action—a course that she couldn't and didn't attempt to visualise. But at the same time she meant to make her second surrender as difficult as her first surrender had been easy and rapid.
Her opportunity came late in February.
Charles was obliged to go to Edinburgh on business, and Edinburgh was, for Lydia's purposes, a convenient distance from London. He left on a Tuesday morning, to return on Thursday. A boat train left London at eight-forty-five on Wednesday morning, and by Wednesday night the Olympic would have sailed. Lydia went, a sorrowing and anxious conspirator, to the offices of the White Star Line, and had no difficulty whatever in obtaining a state-room. In fact, the ease with which this was accomplished seemed to her a decidedly good omen. No one, seeing her occupied in making these arrangements, would have guessed that she was in a state of extreme mental and emotional agitation. She seemed, as ever, composed and calm. Her outward appearance was perfect in every detail and gave no clue to the turmoil in her mind. Her shoes fitted her slim arched feet like gloves, her clothes were exquisitely suitable for a February morning in London, little wings of fair hair showed on either side of her simple and charming hat, and she carried the most carefully chosen, the neatest and most serviceable of handbags. But her mind, all this time, was a veritable battle-ground for contending armies. Love, pride, doubt, humiliation, self-pity, tenderness, recklessness, an anxiety to leave everything in perfect order and cause as little disturbance as possible by this step she was taking; a longing to shock, to frighten Charles into a complete and final realisation of what she was to him, whether it be nothing or everything—all these things were struggling in the arena of her thoughts.
She went home and told the servants that she was obliged to go out of town for a few days and wasn't sure when she would be back. It was possible that she might be detained, and they would, of course, take their orders from Mr. Lester. She packed a steamer trunk with the help of the housemaid, who was slavishly fond of her, and all those bright bottles that Charles liked to see on her dressing table went into her travelling case. She had few jewels, for she cared little for them, but those she had she put into a small jewel case. She was ready by ten o'clock Tuesday night. When she asked herself if she expected to return to that house she was obliged to admit that she did, and as a much happier woman. She wrote a note to Caroline and said that her father would explain her absence.
She then sat down to write the inevitable letter to Charles. She told him she would only explain her actions fully if and when he came to New York for her. She was leaving him not because she didn't love him, for she did, she adored him, but because he had never succeeded in persuading her that he didn't regret his marriage. If he wanted her, he must come for her. She wouldn't return otherwise.
She sealed it, wrote "For Charles" on it, and laid it on the writing-table in the drawing-room beside the note for Caroline. She looked about her and satisfied herself that everything was in perfect order. Things would go on quite smoothly without her, for a considerable time at least. She went into the dining-room, once Charles's library, to see what sort of a night it was. She could see a few stars. The light shone out on the bare branches of the fig tree, which would soon, she thought, be putting on green again. The sight of it moved her, for Charles was fond of it, and she drew down the blind and went upstairs to her room, passing her trunk which lay ready in the hall. She meant to put the labels on it when she reached the station, for she didn't want the servants to know her real destination.
She slept lightly but not badly, and when her breakfast was brought up at half-past six she woke feeling rested, and, strangely enough, with no remorse or regrets, but full, instead, of a sense of adventure and excitement.
But when she was in her bath a most unwelcome and disturbing thought came to her. It struck her, for the first time, that history was repeating itself, and that she was doing almost what Brenda had done. Extraordinary as it now seemed to her, she had never once thought of Brenda while she was writing that letter to Charles. She had completely and entirely forgotten her. And now the thought that she was about to do, twenty years later, what Brenda had done, was extremely distasteful to her. She was not, of course, doing it in the same way or for the same motives. Brenda had gone off with a lover, and with no intention of returning. The two things were completely different. And yet . . . they had both written him a letter of farewell, they had both taken advantage of his absence to slip away. That a man should twice in his lifetime be the recipient of such a letter seemed, to Lydia, grotesque. And yet she saw that it was unavoidable. She wished there were some other way, but she could think of none. She felt that the writing of that letter put her somewhat on a level with Brenda, and she felt humiliated and ashamed. Still, she had made up her mind to go, and she couldn't go without leaving some word for him. And after all, it was as different from Brenda's letter as it could well be. All the same, she could picture Charles's face as he picked it up and read it, and she weakened.
But everything was ready. The entire household was prepared and ready for her departure. It was better, it was necessary, that she should now carry the thing through. She dressed briskly, her courage returning to her. At least she could soften the letter a little. As soon as she was ready she went downstairs and ripped it open, adding at the bottom of the last page, "I'm miserable at leaving you, I love you so much, and it's because I love you so much that I am doing it."
She sealed it up again and replaced it, still dissatisfied. But the maid had already telephoned for a taxi, and she went into the hall and waited for it, drawing on her gloves and feeling excited and nervous. She gave a few last instructions.
"Don't forget to order some new electric light bulbs for the lamp in the drawing-room. You'd better get half a dozen. And pack the silver teapot carefully and send it to Mappin and Webb's to have the dents taken out. Mr. Lester will give you the address, or you'll find it in the telephone book."
It was a cold, rainy morning, and the rain had sleet in it. Lydia thought it would have been impossible to start on a more discouraging day. The maid stood by the door looking for the taxi, an open umbrella in one hand and Lydia's travelling-case in the other. Lydia herself, wearing her fur coat, carried a rug over her arm, and her jewel case. She glanced at her wrist watch and saw that it was time to start. At that instant, at eight o'clock exactly, a taxi drew up at the door.
"Here it is," she said with relief, and was about to descend the steps when the maid exclaimed:
"Why, it's Mr. Lester, madam," and advanced, holding the umbrella over her head, to open the door for Charles.
Lydia felt a sort of paralysis seize her. She literally couldn't move. Charles had already seen her and waved his hand, and she saw his look of surprise at finding her up and ready to go out so early. Also he had already observed her travelling-case, in its familiar purple cover, in the maid's hand, and in another minute he would see her trunk. She knew she was lost. There was nothing for it but to face him as best she could. She went into the drawing-room, her knees trembling, and sat down by the unlighted hearth. She didn't even trouble to conceal the letters that stared at her from the writing-table. It was no use, she felt, concealing anything. She formed no plan. The situation had now got beyond her and would have to take care of itself. She only felt a desire to laugh, hysterically, but she had a horror of hysteria and controlled herself, sitting rigidly upright in her chair. She heard Charles come into the room. He went straight to her and, putting a hand on her shoulder, bent down and kissed her.
"Lydia, darling, is anything wrong? Where were you going? Has anything happened?"
The maid came into the room.
"Your taxi's here now, madam," she said.
Lydia opened her purse and took out some money.
"Give him this," she said, "and send him away. I've changed my plans."
Charles looked at her strangely, took off his coat and flung it on a chair. His face had suddenly paled and altered. He went to the fireplace, and bending down, put a match to it.
"What made you come back to-day?" Lydia asked him in a low voice, avoiding his eyes.
He went to the door and shut it.
"The man I went to Edinburgh to see," he answered, speaking perfectly naturally, "died very suddenly yesterday of heart failure. I arrived at half-past six last night, heard the news, dined, and took the ten-fifty back. I got to King's Cross at seven-thirty this morning." He went to the writing-table and picked up the letters. "What are these?"
She made no answer, nor did she move. He looked at them, started to open the one addressed to him, then changed his mind and tossed it on the table. He came back to her, looked at her very closely, and took her hands. They were like ice, and he rubbed them. She was shivering.
"Lydia, where were you going?"
She shook her head.
"Read that letter," she said. "Read it, please."
"I don't want to read it. What does it say?"
"Read it."
"No."
The maid opened the door.
"Would you like your trunk taken upstairs, madam, and unpacked?"
"Leave it where it is for the present," Charles said. When the door was closed again, Lydia looked at him, and his face frightened her. His movements and his manner, however, were gentle. He sat down on the arm of her chair and drew her towards him. He took off her hat, threw it aside, and kissed her hair. His mind, she knew, was working furiously, and his actions gave her no clue to his thoughts.
"Lydia, where were you going, and why? Tell me."
"Oh, read that letter," she cried, despairingly. "Read it!"
He reached out for it, captured it, and without another look at it, put it on the fire. He held her against him, silently, looking over her head.
"Answer me, my darling. Where were you going?"
Tears started into her eyes then, and she pressed her face against his coat to hide them.
"To New York."
"Why?"
"You know why."
"I have no idea. Tell me."
"I couldn't bear to live with you any longer, knowing that you regretted it."
"Regretted what?"
"Regretted marrying me."
There was a moment's silence, during which her tears were running down her cheeks.
"I don't understand what you mean, Lydia. I might have imagined any reason in the world but that one. I don't know what you mean."
"You regret having married me. You regret having married at all. Charles," she cried, loosening his hold upon her, "ever since the first few weeks I've realised how you regretted it. You've tried to hide it, but you couldn't. I couldn't bear it any longer. You don't know what torture it's been. It's been agony, agony." She was sobbing now. "If you'd read my letter . . ."
"You dared to write me such a letter," he said passionately. He controlled himself almost immediately. "Never mind now. Only I think you might have spared me that." He got up from the chair. "Lydia, this is almost incredible. I believed we were two extraordinarily happy people. What do you mean by saying I regret our marriage? You seem to me to be talking wildly, insanely. I find it impossible to understand you."
"I have been terribly unhappy. I believed you hated being married to me. I had to find out."
"So you were going away. How would that have helped?"
Lydia flung out her hands in a sort of despair, as though her belief in her own actions, in her own rightness, was going from her.
"Oh, Charles, my darling, you don't know what I've suffered. I had to find out. I believed that if I went away you'd discover for yourself whether you really wanted me to live with you or not, and that if you did, you'd come for me. I was counting on that. I wanted you to come and persuade me that I was wrong. I wanted you to make me believe you wanted me."
"Have I ever made you believe I didn't want you?"
"Yes, yes. I have good reasons to think it. Oh, Charles, listen to me, listen to me! Whenever there was an opportunity for a jibe at marriage, you took it. You've always known how that hurt me, but you couldn't stop. You had to give expression to your real feelings, and those were your real feelings. You hated being married again, you resented it. Wait, listen to me. It's all my own fault. I don't blame you, I blame myself. You never wanted to marry. I knew it, and yet I married you. I shouldn't have done it, but I loved you, and I thought you'd be happy."
"Happy?" he cried. "Happy? But I am. As happy as any man can be."
"Oh, so you say, because you feel you must say it. But the truth comes out without your realising it. It comes out at odd moments, when you're talking to other people, and when you're off your guard. I've pretended lately that I didn't mind. I haven't said anything. But I've minded terribly. If the circumstances had been different . . ."
"What circumstances? What do you mean?"
She said, desperately:
"You've always said I had a complex. Well, I suppose I have. I thought you'd understand it without my telling you; it's not pleasant to have to tell you."
His anger was dying out. He came back to her chair again, and bent over it.
"Lydia, my darling, if you've got the slightest excuse for being the dirty dog I think you are, I may forgive you. If not I swear I'll send you away whether you want to go or not. What is it? Tell me."
She put her hands on his knees. She looked straight into his eyes.
"You never had the slightest intention of marrying me, until I gave myself away."
"What do you mean by giving yourself away?"
"Exactly what I say, Charles. It was the very last thing in your mind. That day I came here, on your birthday . . ."
"Yes, yes, I haven't forgotten it."
"You were going to say you wouldn't see me any more. You practically had said it. And then you asked me what my feelings were, and I gave myself away. I told you I had fallen in love with you. Let's be honest with each other, even if it's for the last time. You never intended to marry me, or anyone else. I practically forced you to. How can you wonder, then, that I've suffered when you've railed against marriage, how could I help applying the things you said to you, to us? How could I help believing that you meant them?"
Charles said quietly:
"It's true that I didn't want to marry. I never tried to hide that. I didn't want to run the risk of another such note as you have just written me, or such a note as Brenda wrote. The very thing I feared and dreaded has happened. But I loved you; I told you so. I have never ceased telling you so. And when you said you loved me, like the angel you were, I believed you, and I put all those old feelings behind me for ever. As for my remarks, regarding matrimony, I thought we had settled all that. I thought you understood. I've been a charming husband to you. I've been the most exemplary and delightful husband. I've been a model for all husbands, and without half trying. Deny it if you can, Lydia, you devil, you devil."
He got up and walked about the room, twisting his lock of hair.
"Brenda left me, Caroline left me, Venetia left me, and now you've practically left me. It was to avert some such final blow, some such foul blow, that I tried to avoid matrimony. My God, Lydia, I married you because I was so certain of your fairness, of your common sense, of your . . . your decency. And because I loved you so much that I was willing to put up with matrimony, yes, even matrimony, to get you."
"Oh, Charles, Charles!" She ran to him, and put her arms about his waist, under his coat, and pressed her face against him. "Don't, don't. I can't bear it. It's because I loved you so much that I was going. Can't you understand what it's like to live with someone you believe would rather live alone? It was only to find out, to make sure. I believed you'd come for me. I wanted you to come and say you wanted me. Thank God you came home when you did. In one more minute I'd have gone, and I didn't want to go. . . ."
"I'm not sure you won't go still," he said.
"Do you want me to go?"
She dropped her arms, and went back to her chair. Charles stood by the mantel, looking at her, and there was very little in his face to show her what he was feeling.
"You may decide to go when you've heard what I have to say. I don't mean to change my ways in the least. I don't admit that I did or said anything that I shouldn't have done or said. A certain amount of freedom of speech is absolutely necessary, both politically and domestically. You needn't expect a penitent husband, because I don't feel like one. If I'd come five minutes later, and found your note, I'm damned if I'd have come after you. Or if I did, out of curiosity, I'm damned if I'd have brought you back with me after hearing your reasons. They're perfectly futile."
"They're not futile. I've been miserable. I've suffered agonies of doubt and uncertainty."
"Well, people are far happier, really, when they're happy and miserable, than when they're only happy. And you can't deny that you've been happy, part of the time. Deny it, Lydia, if you dare, and look me in the face."
"I've been terribly happy," she cried, "when I haven't been wretched."
"Fortune woman. Thousands would envy you."
She burst into tears.
"Charles, you infuriate me. And you make me feel a fool."
"I want to," he answered, apparently unmoved.
She sprang up, her handkerchief to her eyes, and ran toward the door, but he barred her way.
"Lydia, suppose I'd gone to Canada or India, and left a note for you?"
"Do you want me to go or stay?" she cried.
"Which do you want to do?"
"I want to hear you say you want me to stay."
He put his arms about her and brought her back to the fire again.
"If I were given to generalising," he said, "I would comment on the terrible unfairness of women. I have hurt you by a few chance words that were never meant for you, and you retaliate by offering me a cup of cold poison. And you ask me to beg you to stay."
She dried her eyes.
"If I've hurt you intolerably," she said, controlling her voice, "if I've spoilt our marriage, I'll go."
"Lydia," Charles said, speaking as though he hadn't heard her, "if I were a woman and could choose between marrying a man who disliked marriage, disliked its ties and its rather terrible permanence, and its appalling difficulties, and realised them all, and yet wanted to marry me; and one who accepted the institution of marriage as he accepted the weather, unquestioningly, uncritically; or looked upon it as a sort of haven, or feather-bed, I would without a moment's hesitation marry the first. I tell you, Lydia, what I've often told you before. I dreaded marriage, and feared it. It's only the young who don't. I said to myself that I couldn't and wouldn't risk a second failure, because the first one had made me suffer too much. But you had suffered too, though in a different way. I thought that with the experience we each had had we could make something of this marriage. And to me the attempt so far has been adorable, enchanting, far, far more delightful than I would have dared to hope."
She put her hand over his mouth with a cry of pain.
"Don't, Charles, don't. I can't bear any more. I've spoilt it. I'd better go. Let me go!"
"Tell me your grievances, first," he said. "Every one of them. A woman doesn't buy a steamer ticket unless she's been tried pretty far. State your case. It shan't be said that I've condemned you without a hearing."
"I can't," she cried, "if you stand there like a judge. You must come here."
He came and sat, once more, on the arm of her chair, and waited. After a moment's silence, she exclaimed:
"No, I can't. All the doubts and miseries that possessed me are gone now. I can't recapture them. I don't want to remember them. But I can assure you I suffered so horribly that I welcomed the thought of any sort of release—death or separation, anything. And you may be as perfect a husband as you say you are, but I swear to you, Charles, that now, this morning, is the first time you've really made me believe you don't want to live without me."
He caught her close to him.
"Lydia, I adore this marriage of ours. I adore you for loving me like that and for being hurt by me. It's exquisite and wonderful. If you'd gone, I think it would have killed me. Let me say I hate marriage now and then, because it helps me to realise what a glorious exception ours is. Every happy marriage is an exception, darling Lydia. Remember that. It isn't nine o'clock yet, and I've travelled all night, or I could think of better things to say to you, but I'll say them yet. I'll say them again and again. I adore you for caring so much that you nearly left me. It'll make me very humble and very angry whenever I think of it. Say you love me, and forgive me."
She said it, passionately.
"No more misunderstandings," said Charles. "At our age, surely, they're avoidable. If youth knew, if age could," he quoted. "Well, middle-age knows and does, thank God. A perfect state of things. And now let's have breakfast."
The End.