# After Noon (Ertz)/Chapter 14

CHARLES, who usually slept like a child, was awake most of the night. When he did sleep, his brain never ceased working, and it worked, to his disgust, like the brain of an idiot. So absurd and disturbing were these half-awake fancies that he decided he preferred the sanity of complete wakefulness, and turning on his reading lamp he propped himself up with a book on his knees and began to read. Had the telephone been in his bedroom instead of in the library, he would have rung up Lydia, for he thought it likely that she was undergoing the same treatment at the hands of her nervous system as himself.
He found the plays of Mr. Pirandello poor fare for a mind that had for some hours been darting down strange and unknown by-ways like a dog after a phantom cat, so he laid them aside and wondered how soon he would get a cable from Venetia in answer to his, sent late that afternoon, which had said:
Am marrying Lydia as soon as arrangements can be made. Very happy. Know you will both be pleased.
Charles.
It was the fear, he finally decided, that he might disappoint Lydia. She was so certain, so unwilling and unable to see obstacles, so ready to adapt herself to him in every way. And he—it was best that he should admit it—was a solitary, he had always been a solitary. He felt in his bones that there was no path wide enough for two to walk upon abreast, and in comfort. He ​liked to go alone, with critical axe and saw, making his own paths. Could he take Lydia with him on these excursions, or would he have to take to the open highway, where the rest of the world travelled? He loved her, he adored her, he longed for her, and her presence was a delight to him, but would she understand that there were times when it would be a sheer necessity for him to be alone? Few women, he imagined, felt this need. Could he avoid, owing to the peculiarities of his nature, the crime of hurting her?
It seemed to him a tremendous thing that she should be willing to leave her home, her country, her very nationality—women, poor devils, being required to wear their nationality as a snake wears its skin, and shed it in order to make simpler the machinery of law and government—in order to live with him. It seemed to him an exquisite sacrifice. And he was sacrificing nothing but his solitude, and that grudgingly. But wasn't it, his impudent mind inquired, the most precious possession of all?
He cursed his mind and thought of the moment when she had said to him, "You know very well that I've been weak enough and foolish enough to fall in love with you."
That she loved him had never seriously entered his head. She liked him, he believed. When he had challenged her to tell him what her ​feelings were he had expected her to say, "I like you, Charles. I'm quite fond of you in a way." And he would have said, "Exactly; and my loving you will only, as you yourself say, 'spoil things,' so you see it's best that I shouldn't be seeing much of you. I wish I were different, but there it is." And with that he would, not without poignant regrets, cease to play the part of amiable friend, half-loaves being to him more troublesome and tantalising than no bread at all.
He was now about to take into his life a nervous, critical, and sensitive being, like himself, complex, exacting, asking and ready to give much. It would make his life, which—since Brenda had so wisely left him—had had few complexities in it, a complex problem in itself, to be solved daily. He thought of Venetia and Clive, Caroline and Phil. The young don't hesitate because they don't know. Ignorance and inexperience make the road ahead seem smooth and desirable.
It was because he loved Lydia, because he knew she had a fine and sensitive nature, that he lay awake and tossed and wondered. That she was, like the majority of her countrywomen, extremely adaptable, he knew, and the thought gave him comfort. How far he would prove to be adaptable himself was less certain.
He thought, with pity and tenderness, of her boy, Robert, and the agony of her loss. Her life ​had been none too happy, none too satisfactory on the whole. Could he, he wondered, make it happier? But lack of confidence had long been one of his vices. He must try to do away with it.
Three marriages in the Lester family within five months! Incredible! Five months ago he had seen his life continuing as it was, happily and peacefully, for years. Then Caroline, then Venetia, and now himself. All these things had come upon him out of the blue, the last event being the most astounding and unlooked-for of all. Was it possible that he was marrying again, and soon?
He started up, fully awake again, out of a moment's half-consciousness. No, it wasn't true. Yes, it was true. It was. It had all happened that afternoon, that and Mrs. Transome's debauch. . . .
He re-lived it all, from the moment when he had realised that no one was answering the bell, which had been ringing for some time, to the moment when he had taken Lydia back to the hotel, after a late and long dinner. She had cried, from sheer happiness and overstrung nerves, going back in the taxi. A lump came into his throat as he thought of it. Hers was a far more ardent and passionate nature than he had at first suspected.
"God bless you, darling Lydia," he said aloud. ​He switched off the light, turned on his side and fell quietly asleep as the clock downstairs struck four.
Lydia was too tired to lie awake very long. The events and emotions of the day had exhausted her. She had seen her own tears glistening on Charles's cheeks as he said good-night to her in the hall. He had been exquisitely tender, and she felt, as she undressed, that mentally and physically fatiguing as these emotions were, they were nevertheless welcome and delicious. She was excited and intensely happy, and she had no doubts at all as to the future. She knew she could make Charles happy, and that in doing so she would be happy herself. The struggle he had had with his love for her made his final surrender all the more precious. She had known all along that he had wanted to love her, and now that his prejudice against a second marriage was swept away she felt that the road was easy and simple.
She was far less critical and less analytical than Charles. She was the child of a younger civilisation, and when she wished a thing to be, she already saw its accomplishment. That he loved her was sufficient guarantee of the future. She had never experienced anything like the wild hunger of his kisses. Both loved, when they loved, with intensity and passion. Both were able to abstain, fastidiously, from anything less than love.
​She thought of a thousand ways of pleasing him. She understood perfectly his dislike of meaningless social activities. They meant, fortunately, little to her, and she made up her mind never to urge him to take part in them. He would like, she felt sure, the few friends who mattered to her, and his she already liked.
They were going abroad somewhere for their honeymoon, avoiding Italy, and would then return to the house in Eaton Gardens for a while, to see how it suited them. Lydia suspected that it would prove to be too small, but in that case they could easily sell it and buy a larger one. She went over in her mind, as she got ready for bed, the necessary things to be done in connection with her flat in New York and other properties in America, but Charles, she decided, would arrange all that for her. How pleasant to have a second self once more, to have someone again who would put her interests and her welfare above his own. She wasn't, she admitted, an independent woman.
"American women are only independent," Charles had once said to her, "when they have a husband to be independent of."
As far as she was concerned, she thought, brushing her long fair hair before the mirror, there was a certain amount of truth in it. She tidied all the small, bright objects on her dressing-table, threw an embroidered cover over her ​underclothes, which lay neatly folded on a chair, slipped off her blue silk dressing-gown and got between the sheets of her narrow bed. The room was painted in green and silver, like the sitting-room, and on a small table beside her bed, the electric light bringing out the deep crimson of their petals, were some roses like the ones she had taken to Charles that afternoon. She leaned over and kissed one of them, switched off the light, and laid her head on the pillow.
"It's much more exquisite," she thought, using a word of which Charles was fond, "to be in love at thirty-seven than twenty-seven or seventeen."
Venetia's cable, which arrived twenty-four hours later, said:
Thank goodness. Perfectly delighted. Love to both from us both.
Caroline wrote to her father as soon as she got his letter the following morning.
Dear Father [she said],
I'm in bed with a very heavy cold, or I'd come to see you at once. I'm perfectly delighted at your news, and so is Phil. I've felt for some time that it would be far better for you to marry, and that you'd be much happier, and I can't think of anybody more suitable for you than Lydia Chalmers. I hope you'll marry soon, as long engagements are very unsatisfactory and trying.
I think you'll be pleased to hear that I'm expecting a ​baby in February. Phil and I both hope it will be a girl, as we feel that the world has never offered such opportunities to women as now, and it will offer more and more as time goes on. I'm overjoyed, of course, at the idea of becoming a mother, as it's an experience I've longed to have. I don't intend to let it interfere with my work in any way, and at the present moment, except for my cold, I never felt better in my life. Mother Kate and Father Lewis are thrilled, as it will be their first grandchild.
Phil joins me in heartiest congratulations. He's just off to Wales, where he's going to visit some of the coal mines and give talks to the miners. I hope to see you both very soon. Colds, as you know, have a way of getting on my chest if I'm not careful, so I thought I'd stay in bed to-day, though I expect to be at the office again to-morrow.
With much love
Your affectionate daughter,
Caroline Lester Robinson.
P.S.—I do hope I have a baby before Venetia does.
"Not a word," Charles observed to Lydia, "about it's being my first grandchild. And it isn't every man who succeeds in getting one at forty-three. I wonder," he said, thoughtfully, "what the record is?"
"But what a child she is, all the same," said Lydia, pointing to the postscript. "And I wonder what she means exactly by my being suitable for you?"
"Well, aren't you?" Charles asked.
​They were married on the seventeenth of October, at the registry office in Henrietta Street. Charles was snapshotted on coming out with Lydia, and in the illustrated papers next day were photographs of them under the headings, "City Man Takes American Bride." "Well-known Chartered Accountant Weds American Widow."
They went for a week to Paris, England having decided to begin the rainy season, and from Paris they went to stay with Lydia's friends, Grace and Paul de Ferrière. Lydia had spent a few weeks there in the summer, and she was anxious that Charles should stay there too, and he was willing to do whatever recommended itself to her. It was in the Province of Loir-et-Cher, a delightful part of France. They arrived there on a cold October evening, alighting from the train at the old town of Beaugency. Lydia, on looking up before getting into the waiting car, saw great bright stars that seemed to lean out of the sky towards her, and they looked so near that she felt she could have reached up and passed a hand behind them. Charles, after seeing their luggage into a bus, joined her, and they left Beaugency and sped at what seemed to them a dangerous pace along the straight, level roads cut through black woods that made a wall on either hand. It was frosty, and as they drove they smelt the rich ​autumnal smell of the leaves and the pungent odour of wood smoke.
St. Cyr was a formal château of red brick, built, Charles guessed, as he glanced up at its front, from a hundred to a hundred and fifty years ago. It was of moderate size, but its long windows, three floors and steep roof made it look very high. The door was opened by a tall, black-haired manservant, and in the hall Grace and Paul de Ferrière were waiting to receive them.
Charles had read several of Grace de Ferrière's letters, and had been amused by her blunt frankness. He had looked forward to meeting her, partly because she was Lydia's friend, and partly because she seemed to him an unusual character. She was a short, dark woman, with brilliant black eyes and short dark hair which seemed to curl naturally. Her face was strong and handsome; she looked somewhat, Charles thought, like a female Beethoven, and he was to discover later that she was steeped in a love of music. He might have guessed her to be French, Austrian, Italian, Russian, or even German; American never, but for her voice and her friendly and natural manner. Paul was tall, fair and blueeyed, and a Norman. His manner was distant and formal, though entirely amiable. Grace kissed Lydia and then Charles.
​"Lydia's my best friend, and if her husband isn't too, it won't be my fault."
It was half-past nine when they arrived, and they dined at once, without changing, in a high-ceilinged and somewhat empty dining-room lighted only by candles. A silver bowl in the centre of the table was filled with wild red and yellow berries. Louis, the black-haired butler, was an artist, and his arrangement of flowers and greens was a perpetual joy.
Paul spoke excellent English, with an occasional mistake which would be swiftly corrected by his wife—at his request, he explained. She herself spoke almost perfect French, being one of those rare beings—among English-speaking peoples—to whom languages are simple and easy.
She was a great talker, but she talked amusingly and rarely about herself. Another adaptable American, Charles observed. He was later to learn that her grandfather was a naturalised Hungarian and her mother of French descent. Her father had made a great deal of money out of successful operations on the New York Stock Exchange, and Grace, like the daughter of many another rich American, had had an expensive European upbringing. She had met Paul, who was five years younger than herself, in Paris three years ago, when he was thirty and she thirty-five. She had made up her mind that she would never ​marry. She had many interests, absolute freedom, and a morbid horror of fortune-hunters, but she was disarmed by Paul's gentleness, his admiration of all the qualities in her that she thought men must dislike, and by the fact that he cared nothing for society, but loved country life and had enough money himself to procure him most of the things he wanted. As soon as they were married she set to work to find a suitable house in the country, Paul's brother having inherited the family estates, and St. Cyr, in the centre of a hunting district, suited them admirably. At the first opportunity she took riding lessons with as much determination and purpose as she showed in her study of music, and she was now a fairly good horsewoman.
They hunted the stag and the boar, she explained to Charles, and there was a meet the next day to which he and Lydia must come. It was really a charming sight, the like of which could be seen nowhere but in France. She begged Lydia to let her mount her, but Lydia, although she rode a little, had no talent for sports—for which Charles was thankful—and declined. There was little or no jumping, Grace explained—just cantering up and down the long grassy or sandy rides through the forests, with an occasional plunge into the thicket, or across a stream, or a short dash along the open road.
​The house was, if anything, underfurnished. Grace had no use for modern French décor, and had bought all her furniture and stuffs in England. Gilt in a country house, except for an old mirror here and there, she thought indecent. Charles had a pleasant impression, when the evening was over, of simple but perfect food, excellent wines, spacious rooms, bare; polished floors, glowing chintzes or dull velvets, crackling fires, and the delicious odour of wood smoke with which he was ever after to associate that part of France.
He and Lydia had a large bedroom with an almost equally large dressing-room adjoining, and one of the six bathrooms Grace had installed when she bought the house. All the windows of these rooms overlooked a lake which was so near that Charles felt he could almost throw out a line and catch a pike or carp. Every now and then in the stillness he could heard the pleasant "plop" of a leaping fish. The lake looked silver grey under the night sky, and the woods surrounding it ebony black. A wood fire was burning in the bedroom, and on Lydia's dressing-table was a bowl of late autumn roses.
Charles felt extraordinarily light-hearted and happy as he sat smoking in an armchair watching Lydia brush her hair. When it was down it gave her a very girlish look, and made her face, with its thick eyelids and fine modelling of cheek and ​brow, look, he thought, like the face of some early Sienneese Madonna.
"How do you like them?" she asked, turning towards him.
"Immensely," said Charles, "especially Grace. She's got a lot of character and terrific energy and will. She's the sort of woman who's well worth studying."
"She's a great dear," she said. "I'm glad you like her."
"She's very dynamic and full of feeling. And him," he added, "I should describe as agreeable, superficial, and chiefly interested in hunting. He reads nothing, she everything; to her life's a painful but intensely instructive and perilous adventure; to him it's a matter of creature comforts, avoidance of unpleasantness, and good sport whenever possible. And yet they seem to live happily together. It's astounding. I wonder how long . . ."
"Charles!" she cried. "How outrageous you are! You imagine every marriage that comes under your observation to be on the verge of breaking up."
"I don't think this one is on the verge of breaking up. I think they're very happy, or moderately so. But their dissimilarities amaze me."
"They seem to me," protested Lydia, "two ​charming people who are very fond of one another."
"That," said Charles, "is a mere snapshot of them. They seem to me simply seething with hidden longings and impulses and divergent forces. In other words, they're two very interesting human creatures who are struggling to make their dissimilar natures fit comfortably into one groove. A process of delicate adjustment. And that, my darling, is matrimony."
"At its worst," she said.
"At its best, and all the time. Sometimes that adjustment is pleasant, sometimes it's unpleasant. But it goes on. It must."
Lydia got to her feet with a look of pain.
"You frighten me, sometimes," she said.
Charles sprang up and caught her in his arms.
"My sweetest, my darling, it isn't you and me I'm talking about. It's things in general, marriage in general, or other people. It's never you and me. When I want to talk about you and me, I will talk about you and me, and there'll be no mistake about it."
"I know, I know," she said, and then, as Venetia had once said to him, "but you tear things to shreds so."
"Only because it's fun to see what they're made of," he told her.
​"How long," she cried, her arms around him, "do you give us?"
"I utterly refuse to think of our happiness," he said, "in terms of time, or space either," and kissed her so adoringly and passionately that she presently forgot that the way his mind worked was different from the way her mind worked. Forgot, in his love for her and her love for him, all her little fears.