# After Noon (Ertz)/Chapter 16

WHEN they had returned to the house in Eaton Gardens, Lydia found, as she had expected, that changes would have to be made if they were to live there with any comfort. Charles's modest bedroom was too small for her, and had she decided to occupy it, his dressing-room would have had to be on the floor above, a most inconvenient arrangement.
"Shall we look for another house," she asked him, "or will you give up your library so that we can use it as a dining-room?"
Of two evils, said Charles, he preferred that one. He was deeply attached to that little house and hated leaving it, so Lydia didn't urge it, but for several weeks they lived the lives of the hunted, moving from room to room as the painters took possession. The drawing-room was redecorated and turned into Lydia's bedroom, Charles's bedroom became his dressing-room, the dining-room was turned into a drawing-room, and Charles's library did duty for the dining-room, with double doors between, which could be thrown open at other than meal times. Lydia had doubts ​about the success of these changes, but decided it would be worth trying.
They experimented at first with temporary servants, in the hope that Marie would return from Normandy, but she presently wrote that she had decided to marry the propriétaire of the small inn—famous for its cooking, she said—in her native village, and she hoped that Monsieur and Madame Lester would, in the near future, pay them a visit. Her letter was well written, dignified, and full of the pride she felt in her new position. Since her serious illness, she wrote, she felt she wanted to be among her own people. She would remember, however, as long as she lived, the kindness of Monsieur Lester, and she would never lose the deep affection she had for him and for Mademoiselle Venice. She hoped that he might find in his marriage "une vraie satisfaction."
"That inn," Charles said, "will be worth a visit one of these days." But Marie's failure to return was something of a blow to him, for she was a link with the past and he hated losing her.
Lydia lost no time in installing a competent English cook and two maids, who occupied Venetia's and Caroline's rooms, and for the first time in his life Charles knew what it was to have his clothes expertly attended to, his things laid out for him, and his every want fulfilled. There was ​little Lydia didn't know about housekeeping, though certain differences between English and American ways puzzled her at times.
Charles felt, secretly, that it was a little absurd for two people to be waited on by three. He almost hoped when Caroline came to see them that she wouldn't notice the presence of a housemaid as well as a parlourmaid. He couldn't see, on the other hand, that any good purpose would be served by asking one woman to do the work of two. If the work were light, so much the better. They were giving employment and a comfortable home to three people. He could see no objection to that. But it was a relief to him that Lydia didn't feel the need of a personal maid as well. Only the very wealthy had them in America, she explained. She herself had never had one, and was well able to manage without.
He soon felt the loss of his library, but that, he realised, was his own fault, as he had persuaded Lydia to give up the idea of a larger house. His books remained where they were, but his writing-table had to go to give place to a small dining-table, and he never went into the room to write any more because it seemed to him that no sooner was he settled with his papers than the maid came in to set the table. So he cheerfully put aside his anthology and devoted himself to Lydia.
He began to discover that there were far more ​things he liked doing than he had previously suspected. He found he liked dining out and going to a play. It gave him pleasure to see her dressed and ready in the evening, with bare, slim arms and shining hair and graceful gown. He enjoyed making her laugh. It amused him to see the effect she had on other people. He loved to think she was there, with him, for good. There was no danger, as there had been with Venetia and Caroline, of some day having to suffer the pain of losing her. And he was not one of those men to whom a thing possessed is a thing with its bloom rubbed off. She was a being to be studied, learnt, wondered about, questioned, and intelligently loved. The sight of her gloves or fur lying on a table, her dresses hanging up in their cupboard, moved him. His life seemed to him richer and more romantic. It was more arduous, perhaps, less placidly happy than when his daughters were with him, because love, after all, was a sort of battle, a sham battle perhaps, like the manœuvres of an army in peace time, but it required constant alertness and efficiency for all that.
Occasionally, when his work was not pressing, he came home at five and went shopping with her for half an hour or so. He learnt to his surprise that she hated shopping. It was a punishment to her to buy clothes, much as she enjoyed wearing them. It was an odious business, she said. Had ​she been very rich, rich enough to be eccentric, she would like to have found a double, a woman of the same size and shape and colouring, to whom she would pay a salary to choose her clothes for her, and be fitted, and go to shoe-shops and dressmakers.
"And whenever she made a bad mistake," said Lydia, "I'd deduct something from her salary, and when she pleased me very much I should raise it."
"What an evil job," commented Charles.
She read a great deal and studied French assiduously, for on their honeymoon she had been very much ashamed of her halting speech. The house took up a good deal of her time; she had a passion for flowers, and loved arranging them; and she went three times a week to a crêche to wash babies. She had asked Caroline what she could do, saying that she liked best to work for children, and Caroline had directed her there. She always made Lydia feel a useless parasite, although she, on her part, thought little of Caroline's activities. She admired her most for her energy and for a sort of hard goodness she had. There were other sorts of goodness she preferred, but at least it could be said for Caroline that, whatever her faults, she wanted little for herself.
Venetia's first letter since his marriage gave ​Charles great pleasure. It was written from their bungalow, "The Croft," Lucknow.
Darling Father [she wrote],
Long before you get this you'll have wondered what it used to feel like not to have a wife, just as I often wonder what it was like not to have a husband. Did I really live and breathe and move and imagine myself to be happy before I married Clive? I suppose I did, poor purblind babe. And you, father darling, are a million times happier now; I know it. Lydia always seemed, from the very first, to be one of us. Do you remember that Sunday morning after you'd met her, when you told us we didn't know anything about America, and we tried to prove to you that we did? What fun it was. By the way, referring to what I said above, I don't want you to think I wasn't happy with you, because I was, of course, although in a very different way. But you'll understand all that. To continue, I thought that Sunday that you were rather thrilled with your Mrs. Chalmers, though I didn't say anything. I was too tactful. Clive liked her from the very first, so much so that it gave me, I remember, a nasty jealous twinge.
I long to see you together. How amusing it will be. What sort of a husband are you, I wonder? I hope Lydia will tell me. A darling, of course, but you'll have your little peculiarities. Even Clive has them. The latest one is that I'm not to rouge my lips. I don't mind here, as rouged lips and shorts don't go well together, but when I get back to London, if he's still of the same mind there'll be a battle. He's looking marvelously well and almost painfully good-looking, and so brown. I'm very brown too. Especially my knees. I love the life here. I find I get on very well even with ​people I don't like, and that's a valuable asset in a soldier's wife. I've been acting in a lot of amateur theatricals, which, of course, I adore.
Caroline's letters are full of Phil's activities. He seems to be doing a lot of speaking here and there. Do go and hear him some time, and tell me what he talks about, and if he's very red. She also told me that the offices of the Daily Vanguard were raided one day while she was there. It was in November some time. But she said that nothing was found that could possibly be used against them. Did she tell you this? If not, don't let her know that I told you.
Clive's Colonel is going to take us with him the next time he goes off duck shooting. I've been practising for weeks, and I'm not at all a bad shot, so Clive says I may have a try, bless him. He treats me like a reasonable being, just as you always did, but in addition he tries to make me believe I can do everything a little better than he can, and it makes me very humble.
Life, on the whole, isn't at all difficult here. Clive thinks I have taken to it with remarkable ease, but I don't think I deserve any credit for that. The native servants are good, my ayah a treasure, and the Punjabi Mahomedan "bearer," which as you doubtless know means "butler," is extremely efficient. So we've no worries. The little garden around the bungalow is quite pretty, and the gardener, who is of course a native too, brings me in roses for the house with great regularity.
We play a good deal of tennis at the Club, but we don't spend much time there otherwise as we find too many short drinks, chipped potatoes, and gossipy people somewhat tedious if taken in large doses. How you would hate the gossip! I'm longing to go to Agra and see the sights, the Taj Mahal and something or other Sikri—I ​can't remember its name at the moment—but Clive says we will all in good time. I know nothing about India, nothing, nothing, and thank goodness I realise it. I know a little about the army life here in this minute corner of it and that is all. But somehow the feel of the place, the atmosphere of it—hateful word!—soaks into one through the very pores of one's skin, so that if I felt like boring you, which I don't, I could write endless pages about it.
Write me lots of details about everything. Where and how will you live? Number Fourteen will be rather small for you now, I suspect, and if you want to give it up don't hesitate for sentimental reasons; because it was our old home, or anything of the sort. I'm so much happier about you. You can't think what a relief it is. Your letters have been wonderfully cheerful, and you wrote as though you were becoming or had become a sort of lounge-lizard or cake-hound, as Clive calls them, but it didn't deceive me at all. I know you too well. Tell Lydia that I will write to her soon and that I adore the idea of having her for a stepmother.
At first when I got your cable, I admit my feelings were rather mixed. I felt I had lost you, even while I thanked heaven you wouldn't be lonely any more. But the first feeling soon went. I know I haven't lost you, I know you'll be exactly the same, because people with characters like yours don't change. And I find it's easier to share you than I had thought it would be. I think you can trust men to divide themselves up fairly much more than you can women. Caroline, for instance, hasn't divided herself fairly at all. She's given nine-tenths of herself to the Robinsons, and has let us only one-tenth. I think I'm much fairer than that. It's fifty-fifty with me.
​There are no end of nice men out here, charming men, but I've found very few congenial women as yet. I'm obliged to confess that I'm glad it isn't the other way round. I find I like men far better than women, on the whole. I wonder if it's because I was entirely brought up by a man? Clive was talking the other day about the possibility of a sort of sex war, caused by the competition there is to-day, and will be, more and more, between men and women. I said if there ever were such a thing, I'd be the first woman to run up the white flag. "You," said Clive, rather rudely, I thought, "you'd hand over the keys, maps, ammunition and regimental plate before ever a shot was fired."
Well, I think this is all for the present. Kiss my stepmother for me. Thank goodness you didn't give us one earlier, while we were young and silly and intolerant—as I'm sure I should have been before I knew Clive—and when we might have resented it. And welcome her for me to Number Fourteen, if you decide to go there. She can do anything she likes with the house, as far as I'm concerned. I know she has perfect taste. See what a nice stepdaughter I am! Clive sends you both his love, and implores Lydia to leave her hair long. He says it will be a sight for sore eyes after the many inferior shingles to be seen here. He trims mine himself, so if he doesn't like it he has only himself to blame.
Adored parent, farewell.
Your loving and loveliest and favourite daughter,
Venetia.
Caroline sometimes came to lunch when she had a slack day at the office, and Phil came too when he could. They came by underground from the Temple Station to Sloane Square. They rarely ​journeyed into the "West End" by night, preferring the society of certain congenial spirits in Hampstead, and an occasional visit to the Everyman Theatre.
Caroline's clothes, even Charles observed, were deplorable. She made her own hats, and an impoverished woman friend in Hampstead now made her clothes with grateful but unskilled fingers. Lydia begged her to accept some of her hats, but with no success.
"I thought I liked myself in this," she would say, "but I see now that it doesn't suit me. It would suit you far better."
Caroline sweetly but firmly declined.
"Everyone should be able to make their own hats," she said one day. "After all, one knows one's own face best. Phil always prefers the things I make."
"But if everyone did that," protested Lydia, "what would become of all the thousands of girls and men and women in the millinery trade? They'd starve."
Caroline said it was too large and complicated a subject to go into just then. Well-to-do people imagined, or liked to believe, that they were acting for the best when they spent money for luxuries, but if they ceased to demand luxuries, thousands of people would be released for more important work.
​"They'd be released to walk the streets," said Lydia, "or so it seems to me."
Caroline explained that the changes that were coming would necessarily mean a tremendous amount of hardship, but that the workers themselves were ready and willing to face it in order that future generations might profit.
"That sort of altruism," said Charles, who was listening, "rarely flourishes on an empty stomach."
"You don't realise," Caroline told him, "the strength of purpose and the nobility and the self-sacrifice of the workers. You imagine that men—and women too—will only sacrifice themselves when you put them into a uniform and send them out to kill or help to kill their own kind. But there are other and better causes, and the workers know it."
"For people who hate war," said Charles, "you're extraordinarily warlike. The only war you seem to disapprove of is the patriotic war. Any other sort has your approval and support. You're damned inconsistent. Force is only permissible when it enables you to get something you want. For a country to seize territory is wrong; for a certain class of people to seize the property of another class seems to you right. Quite possibly it was seized in the first place, but you can't ​be so childish as to argue that two wrongs make a right."
"We're no worse than you," said Caroline. "We think it right to fight for some things, wrong to fight for others. If you can take it upon yourselves to say what things men may fight for and even kill for, why shouldn't we? And our aims are far wider and finer."
"It's all cant," said Charles, "either way. Nothing that's built on hate can succeed."
"People are sluggish, and ready to live and die in their troughs, for the most part," Caroline observed. "Instil hate into them and you set them in motion. Governments do it when they decide to make war. That's propaganda."
"I see no hope in you or in people like you, Caroline darling," Charles said. "You copy all the old errors, you cling to all the old evils. 'You do it, why shouldn't we?' you say. You take all our old sins and use them for your own ends and make virtues of them. What's wanted is a new spirit, but it isn't in you." He added: "My politics are boiled down to this; I would like everybody to be able to keep clean and smell nice. If I went into Parliament, my platform and battle-cry would be, 'Bath-salts for all.' But how best to go about it I don't know."
"Pretty, but unconstructive," remarked Caro​line, but it had made her smile, a thing she too seldom did.
She accepted from Lydia with eagerness a layette for her baby. She simply hadn't time, she said, to make baby clothes, and they were so expensive to buy. She thought them, if anything, rather too fine. She liked things to be plain, but good. Nevertheless, she accepted them gratefully and gladly.
"I envy you," Lydia once said when they were alone. "I wish it were happening to me."
"But won't it perhaps?" Caroline asked.
Lydia shook her head.
"I think it would be rather ridiculous for Charles to have a young family now."
"I don't see that at all," Caroline protested. "And if you're thinking of Venetia and me, I can assure you we wouldn't mind in the least. Why should we?"
Early in January Mr. and Mrs. Robinson went to Canada. Mr. Robinson had a brother there who had lately been stricken with partial paralysis, and as they had been separated for twenty years, he and his wife decided to go to Alberta to see him. Caroline said she hardly knew what she would do without "Mother Kate and Father Lewis," but that they had planned to come back before her baby was born.
Charles heard a good deal from her about their ​trip, and what they thought of Canada and the industrial conditions there. He wasn't much interested in anything the Robinsons thought or said, but he listened with a good grace. He never argued with Caroline nowadays, and avoided all mention of politics. He thought she was putting far too great a strain upon herself. She went daily to the office, doing a considerable amount of housework before she started—they had a daily "help," a stolid young girl called Miss Lightfoot—and she often cooked the dinner, with Phil's help, on her return. Phil was often away from London, giving talks here and there, generally to miners and workmen's clubs. Charles read some of his speeches and found they were intended to be educative rather than provocative, but he thought them on the whole unsound and unhelpful. While Phil was away, Miss Lightfoot slept in the flat so that Caroline shouldn't be alone. Charles's only criticism was that Caroline couldn't be doing herself any good by climbing the stairs of the office and the underground, and saw no reason why she couldn't continue her writing at home.
"If you protest," Lydia said to him one night as she dressed for dinner, "you'll only drive her to greater extremes. She's determined to prove that women can do men's work, nature or no nature." She added: "I've got a secret admira​tion for Caroline, foolish as I think she often is."
"So have I," admitted Charles. He had finished dressing, and now sat smoking and watching Lydia do up her hair. "She's a courageous young woman, and still only twenty-one. Think of it."
"I know," said Lydia. "When I was twenty-one I hadn't an idea of my own. I had never read anything but books like the 'Dolly Dialogues,' and Henry Seton Merriman's novels, and I thought I was rather advanced because I liked Kipling. I even let my mother choose my clothes."
Charles laughed at this.
"As a young girl," she went on, "I wore long, clinging skirts, and did my hair in an immense pompadour, with a sort of stuffing inside it. A rat I think we called it. We never discussed divorce, and my mother taught me that legs should be called limbs. I wore very tight gloves and tight shoes, and a high collar with little, uncomfortable bones in it that ran into my neck. The only thing I can remember to my credit is that I wore the first 'peek-a-boo' waist to be seen in Buffalo. That was a blouse with some lace let into it, and it created quite a scandal."
"You darling," said Charles. "Tell me some more."
"When I think of Venetia," she said, "I could cry with pity for myself. Edward and I were ​polite and friendly with each other, but we were both, I think, a little ashamed to show our real feelings. Anyway, we never did. If anyone ran away with anyone else's wife or husband, we never talked about it. We thought sex was a subject best left alone. Even after I was married, I wore nightdresses with long sleeves and high necks, made of the very best handkerchief linen, of course. Silk underclothes were hardly thought of. And I spent my time going to young women's luncheon parties and teas for engaged girls, and we never talked about anything but each other, and what we thought of this young man or that."
"Well, you're a very satisfactory product now," Charles said.
They dined at home the next evening before going to the play. Charles had had a very trying day at the office, and a very busy one, and he came home tired. He went, from sheer force of habit, straight into the room that had been his library and was now the dining-room, and he realised with something of a shock that he had temporarily forgotten his own marriage, and the changes it had made. It was late, and he hurried upstairs to dress for dinner; and thinking it would merely amuse Lydia, he told her of his slight mental aberration and the surprise he had had at not seeing his writing-table in the library. She didn't ​say very much, and as he had a bare twenty minutes in which to dress, he was too much occupied to notice her silence.
They sat down to dinner at a quarter to seven—a barbarous hour in Charles's opinion, but he agreed that it was better to do one's hurrying before dinner, and eat in comfort. He didn't realise how tired he was until he was seated at the table. He told Lydia that he was sorry they were going out, and she offered to give up the theatre and stay at home, but he wouldn't hear of it. He'd probably feel better after dinner, he said. They talked in a broken and desultory way. Charles said a number of things that happened to come into his mind. He said them in that challenging and half serious way he had, throwing back his head and giving utterance to them as a sort of protest against the universe. He was clearly overtired and somewhat out of sorts—a state of things so rare with him that to Lydia it seemed ominous and catastrophic. She told the maid to telephone for a taxi at ten minutes to eight, and said they would have their coffee in the drawing-room. As they were drinking it, some teasing devil prompted her to say:
"I think a woman needs to have a very thick skin to live with you, Charles."
"My dear Lydia, you talk as though I were a sort of human porcupine." He added: "I've ​hurt your feelings somehow. What have I done? I can tell by the expression of your mouth."
"You said to-night . . ." she began, but he interrupted her.
"My darling, you're not going to tell me that you've taken something I've said literally?"
"You said to-night," she went on, "within a space of twenty minutes, first, that the Lord little guessed, when he created them male and female, how he was complicating an existence that would otherwise have been simple and pleasant, and then, that in spite of all the struggles and difficulties you had, the happiest time of your life was when the children were little. Am I to believe you mean those things, Charles dear, or not? Because if you do mean them . . ."
"I apologise for the first remark," said Charles, "on the ground that it wasn't very amusing. I can make much better remarks than that when I'm in good form. The second was, I suppose, true in a way. I think you would say, Lydia, that the happiest time of your life was when you had Robert. But I wish you'd remember that the things one says at a given moment are only worth listening to, if they ever are, at the moment when they are said. It all depends, you see, on the context. And on the mood," he added.
She refastened some artificial carnations on the shoulder of her dark red dress.
​"I can't help remembering the things you say," she admitted, "especially when they hurt me. Balzac says somewhere that observation springs from suffering, and that our memory only registers what gives us pain." She dropped her arms. "I'm afraid that's true, in a way, of me, Charles. You make me so happy, and yet so miserable at times. I argue with myself, I call myself imaginative and over-sensitive and a fool, but I profoundly believe that you regret your marriage. I do, dearest, and it tortures me."
Charles, with a grave face, went to her and took her in his arms.
"You've got a complex," he said.
"Yes." Her eyes filled with tears.
"I don't know what it comes from, or how to deal with it. I'm completely in the dark. Do you know what it comes from?"
"No," she lied, "I wish I did."
"Well, will you try to find out?"
"Yes."
"Search your mind. There must be a reason somewhere. There's something worrying you, or frightening you. I'll have you psycho-analysed if you don't do it yourself. Do you honestly believe I regret having married you?"
"Yes, honestly, at moments. Not all the time."
"That's something. Is it, by any chance, because you regret having married me?"
​"No, no," she cried, with passion. "I've never regretted it for an instant. I adore you."
"Is it because I used to swear I'd never marry again, like the fool I was, and still occasionally make acid comments about marriage?"
"Yes, partly, only partly. But I feel you still——"
His kisses cut short what she was going to say.
"There's only one thing that can make me regret I married you. And that is the knowledge that I'm not making you happy."
She clung to him, and cried:
"Yes, I know, I know. And that applies to me, too."
"Your doubts," he said, "do me no credit, my lovely one."
"I'd give anything, anything, not to have them. Oh, I wish we were the age of Venetia and Clive, with nothing behind us, with no memories, or prejudices."
"I don't," he said. "I wouldn't be young again for anything in the world. I like what you are. I want you to like what I am. I want you to know what I am, to be certain of me. When will you know me, so that you won't have these doubts?"
"Do we ever know anyone?" she asked, pressing her cheek to his.
"Yes, yes," he answered. "A thousand times ​yes." They heard the maid's step in the hall, and drew apart. "We won't go to the theatre to-night," he said. "We must have this out. If the taxi's come, we'll send it away."
"I think it's the telephone," said Lydia. "I heard it ring."
The maid came into the room and addressed herself to Charles.
"Miss Lightfoot has just sent a message from Mrs. Robinson, sir, asking you to please come at once, as Mrs. Robinson is ill. And she says, have you seen the evening papers, sir?"