# After Noon (Ertz)/Chapter 6

DRIVING up Piccadilly and across Hyde Park Corner, Lydia said to herself, as she was often to say: "Now I'm getting the feel of it. Now I'm beginning to know what London is really like."
It was raining quietly, the first rain she had seen since her arrival. There was no wind; and the streets mirrored the lights of lamps and of passing cars and of shops. She felt a part of the great drama of London night life, a life that seemed to her quiet and subdued after New York, or Paris, and yet full of a mysterious undercurrent of excitement and anticipation. There was no noise or hurry; the cars and taxis slipped by one another with moderate speed, the buses hummed by like good-natured bees, seeking or returning home with honey. The calm dignity of the policemen seemed to have its effect everywhere. She felt it must regulate the very beat of London's heart.
Surely one of the pleasantest things in the world was to be en route for something that promised to be enjoyable; to be going somewhere​—to be taken somewhere—where one wanted to go.
She thought it a great mistake on the part of the Creator not to convince even the most doubting by conclusive evidence that we were all going somewhere, and that it only remained for us to ensure for ourselves a pleasant holiday—and, say, a warm welcome from an indulgent host—by behaving under all circumstances like reasonable people.
Then would vanish all human despair, a despair that she felt all the more keenly and cruelly because she had known the very depths of it herself. "If Robert had only lived!" It was a recurrent and never-fading agony. That very morning she had brought tears of exquisite anguish to her own eyes by thinking what it would have been like to have had him with her, to be taking him to see the Tower of London and the Zoo. A fury possessed her at such times, an impotent fury that left her weak with the sharp violence of her feelings.
They bore to the left at Hyde Park Corner, passed some big open squares, and drew up in a narrowish street full of moderate-sized houses. She looked about her with interest—for Charles Lester lived here—while the taxi driver heaved himself up and felt in inaccessible pockets for change he seemed not to possess.
​She thought the place suited Charles, for whom she already felt a warm regard. A whimsical, humorously assertive man, very clear about his own views and with plenty of character of a choice and independent sort. A charming nature, too, she imagined. She was amused by the way he threw back his head when he made a statement, and by his abrupt and nervous movements. She thought his face, too, amusing and attractive.
As she waited for the door to be opened, another guest arrived on foot.
He wore no hat, and his hair, which was arrogantly abundant, was raised and stirred by the night air. She saw that he was one of those people who do not wish to be like everybody else. His open coat displayed a black tie with long ends, and a collar of unusual shape. He had thin features and wore pince-nez.
She said: "Good-evening." It seemed pointless to stand there saying nothing to each other.
The young man turned a fixed gaze upon her.
"Good-evening. I had no idea it was going to be a party."
"Do two guests," Lydia asked smiling, "make a party?"
Before he could answer the door was opened and a maid received their wraps and led them upstairs. ​Lydia's first impression of 14, Eaton Gardens, was of roast duck. She was to find out later that, in that house, if one's nose was keen, one always knew what was on the menu. To Charles this was a matter of indifference, provided the smells were good ones; to Venetia it was extremely vexatious; while Caroline accepted it as a matter of course.
"The vast majority of people," she said, for she never hesitated to state the obvious, "cook their own food and use the kitchen as a living-room."
Lydia, following the maid into the drawing-room, heard her announce: "Mrs. Chalmers and Mr. Robinson."
Charles came forward first to welcome her, closely followed by a tall and lovely girl with dark hair, and a fair girl with an anxious abstracted look, who nevertheless greeted her very pleasantly.
"This is Venetia, this is Caroline," said Charles, with a hand on a shoulder of each: an unnecessary introduction, for Lydia had placed them easily enough. Venetia introduced a man named Captain Cary, to whose physical charms Lydia at once responded, with a mental footnote: "But he must be stupid if he's as good-looking as that." She was then introduced to the young man she had spoken to on the doorstep.
​"Mr. Robinson and I met at the front door," she said, with that quick and accurate pounce upon the name that is the gift of Americans alone. He had previously been introduced, she noticed, to Venetia and to Charles by Caroline. He looked an aggressive young man. Without his pince-nez he might have seemed more human, but all the aggressiveness and combativeness there was in him seemed to rush to that focal point and look out of those two windows rimmed with thin metal.
Lydia stood with her back to the fire talking to Charles. She wore black lace, but she had thrown over her shoulders a gold-coloured shawl which accentuated the pale gold of her hair.
"It was more than kind of you," she was saying, "to ring me up yesterday and ask me to that concert. But I felt you had me on your mind. You said to yourself: 'I must do something to try to amuse that woman on a Sunday afternoon.'"
"Then you didn't have a headache?"
"No. I thought the least I could do was to invent one. I'm certain that only one man in a million really likes concerts."
"But I am that man," said Charles.
"And here," said Venetia, indicating Captain Cary, "is another."
"Ah well, Cary," Charles said, with a gesture ​of the hand, "would have been a musician if he hadn't been a soldier. I don't think we need consider his case. Let us leave Cary out of it altogether."
Cary smiled and said that if he could spend three hours a day regularly on music, he would be willing to call soldiering the best profession in the world.
"Clive," said Venetia with an amused and affectionate look at him, "I never knew anyone like you. You order your life just as a good nurse orders the life of a child. So many hours for this, so many for that. You're too dreadfully well-balanced."
"Thank you," the young man replied. "All your stings have a compliment in their tails, Venetia."
Lydia saw their eyes flash messages to one another.
"There's something between them," she thought. She wondered if Charles knew.
Caroline and Mr. Robinson had left the group and were sitting on the sofa talking with restraint upon commonplace subjects. The maid brought in cocktails mixed expertly by Venetia, but two remained untouched upon the tray.
"No cocktail, Caroline?" Venetia asked. "This is highly unusual."
​Mr. Robinson rose and said that he had never seen Miss Lester drink anything at all.
"We think alike in that respect," he said, and looked fixedly through his pince-nez at Charles. "That healthy people cannot possibly require artificial stimulants."
"This is a sign of grace on Caroline's part," said Charles, "but a recent one. I welcome it."
Mr. Robinson then addressed himself to Lydia.
"You have done the right thing in your country," he said. "I can't tell you how tremendously we admire you for it."
Lydia was heartily sick of this subject and had hoped never to hear it discussed in England, or, at best, only touched upon lightly. She said with a smile:
"It's well to remember that we're a spirited and resourceful people. We don't submit tamely to virtue."
"Quite right," said Venetia. "I've no use for people who submit to virtue."
She thought she was going to like Mrs. Chalmers, and already admired her looks and poise. Caroline's young man she summed up after a hasty judgment as a sententious ass.
"How awful," she thought, "if Caroline decided one day to introduce something like that into our nice little family."
And then it flashed through her mind that a ​few days ago she had thought of introducing Frank Stoddard. Yes, incredible as it now seemed since Clive Cary's return from Gibraltar, she had thought quite seriously of it. She was more prepared to look tolerantly upon Mr. Robinson.
Caroline was feeling both nervous and defiant.
She told herself that she didn't care what any of them thought, and yet she was ashamed of the longing she had that Phil Robinson might impress them favourably. Unfortunately the subjects in which he was most interested were too controversial for a dinner party. They should hear him on Syndicalism, or listen to some of his talks on "The Coming Citizen" at one of his boys' clubs. He was a strange mixture, she knew, of sentimentality and violence. It was the sentimental side of his nature which pleased her least. But she saw that without it they might never have come together. If he had given himself up wholly to one aim, that of making war on existing conditions, there would have been no room in his life for her. But besides wanting to make war he wanted to make love, and to be loved. Caroline's fair face and fair body, her passionate adoption of his cause, her combativeness, and her sincere dislike of ease and softness roused in him the most extreme devotion. She was to him both a ​soul-mate and a mascot. She was, or would be, he believed, the Jeanne d'Arc of the New Crusade. He read into her simple and unconsciously plagiarised writings the utterings of a young high priestess. And while he flattered himself that he took a Freudian view of sex and love, he nevertheless melted into awe and tenderness at her approach.
All this she realised, young as she was. When they first met she hoped he would find in her a clear-eyed woman who had discarded all illusions and who took a purely cynical view of the ideas cherished by other girls of her age; as a fighter, even as a fanatic. Instead of that she found herself exalted and regarded as a symbol. Whenever Phil Robinson looked into the future and breathed the word "wife" she trembled at the brightness and beauty of his vision. Not even to her inmost consciousness did she whisper that it suggested to her the frosted angel on an old-fashioned Christmas card. He was the embodiment, the very expression of her secret self. So fearful had she been at first of losing him that she dared not breathe his name to a living soul. And now that he was hers, the knowledge that they loved was too dazzling to be shared. She wanted to gloat upon it in private a little longer.
Charles had not the faintest inkling of all this. He only thought that evening:
​"At last Caroline's taking an interest in a young man. He seems a decent sort, in his way. She had to begin somewhere, I suppose."
The dinner was excellent and went gaily. Mrs. Chalmers made herself agreeable to everyone alike. Charles greatly admired the elegant simplicity of her person, and her graceful blonde head. She would never, he thought, become a possessive woman; he feared no agile and winding tentacles put out feelingly in his direction. No, she was trustworthy and unacquisitive; not the sort of woman to lay traps. She would be too proud and too independent to lay traps. He hoped the girls liked her.
Caroline didn't classify people according to the countries in which they happened to be born, but according to their conditions. Mrs. Chalmers wasn't, to her, an American woman; she was one of a vast class of people who had never been obliged to work or to depend on their own efforts. Pleasant as she undoubtedly was, she was the product of an evil system. She had been kept in idleness first by a father and then by a husband. The world thought this respectable. Not so Caroline, who, since she was eighteen, had earned by her pen an average of thirty shillings a week, which she turned over to her reluctant father to help pay for her board and keep. Until the time ​when she would be wholly self-supporting, she felt herself to be a burden on the community.
Mr. Robinson introduced the subject of sculpture, with the idea of making himself pleasant to Venetia. He was of the opinion that there were only two sculptors who "mattered," and they were both of our own time—Rodin and Epstein. Epstein, in his "inspired" moments, he considered the greater of the two. Only Caroline saw eye to eye with him in his desire to sweep away all classic art. Lydia protested warmly, but, fearing to be drawn into an argument on a matter about which she knew little, she changed the subject and asked Charles if he would be good enough, some day, to take her to the National Gallery.
He said he would be delighted; that he often went there himself to look at the fifteenth and sixteenth century Italians.
"Mind you," he said, "I think all art is suspect."
This astonished Lydia. It might be merely another conversational gauntlet, but she felt obliged to stoop and pick it up.
"What do you mean? What an extraordinary thing to say."
"Not at all. I think as the world is now we would be better off without it. All this to-do that's made about art is out of all proportion to ​its value; and it's made, as a rule, by people who are mere sentimental hangers-on. The very word 'Art' moves them in some sickly way. They don't know how or why."
"But what would life be without it?" she asked.
"I can tell you. It would be far more rigorous and vital. The desire to create would find a better outlet, and be put to a more practical purpose. I would like all the things that are for daily use made pleasant to handle and to look upon, and let art exist in that way, domesticated, like the horse. It's ludicrous and paradoxical to have this craze for art flourishing in a world that's as full of sordid ugliness as this is. Ugly streets, ugly houses, ugly towns, ugly people, ugly morals. Art, under such conditions, is a mere growth, an excrescence. It might almost be called a disease. It's as unhealthy as the flush on the cheek of the consumptive."
"That's good, father," said Venetia approvingly. "That's very good."
"I know towns," went on Charles, ignoring her, "that are the very abomination of sordid hideousness, and yet possess deserted art galleries full of treasures. It makes me think of a dirty slut wearing diamonds."
"There is a great deal in what you say, Mr. Lester," said Phil Robinson. "Art, at the present ​moment, is merely the kept woman of the capitalist class."
"Oh, but he didn't say that," protested Lydia.
"He will to-morrow," said Caroline quickly.
Charles turned upon her to attack her. "Am I a man to say one thing to-day and another to-morrow?"
"Yes," cried Venetia breaking in excitedly. "For instance, if to-morrow you heard some City man with a red neck say that three good meals a day and a roof over his head were all that any man needed, you'd flay him alive."
"So I would," agreed Charles. "And if you listened to me then and now, you'd know exactly what I meant. Between the things you say when you attack a thing and the things you say in defence of it when it's attacked, lies the exact truth."
Lydia was amused at the way in which he held his own against these two flouting daughters. She was much drawn to all of them, and wished sincerely, and a little wistfully, that they might like her and make her feel one of them.
Upstairs in the drawing-room later Captain Cary played the piano. He played Mozart and Purcell and Brahms, drifting from one thing to another and stopping now and then to talk to Lydia, who sat near the piano. Mr. Lester was right, he told her. He would have been a pianist if his people hadn't thrust him into Sandhurst. ​No, he wasn't altogether sorry. During times of peace he managed to do a good deal of practising. He added that he thought the discipline of army life had probably been good for him. Lydia, on a closer inspection, decided this wasn't humbug, and thought his face sensitive and intelligent.
Venetia let her eyes rest with unspeakable satisfaction on his dark smooth head and shapely back.
"If I don't get him," she said to herself, "I shall die. I don't want anything or anyone else in this world."
She wondered if Mrs. Chalmers realised how wonderful he was. It seemed to her so obvious that he was in every way adorable and desirable. She looked speculatively at Mrs. Chalmers and wondered if she had loved her husband, and how much; and if she were now in love with anyone else. She couldn't, somehow, picture that charming face, animated though it was, under the spell of violent emotions.
"She looks almost too terribly a lady," she thought.
Mr. Robinson had at last got on to the subject of Russia. He was too young and too earnest to refrain. He agreed that in most respects the Russian Revolution had been a failure, but he attributed this to the peculiar conditions prevail​ing in Russia. Russia had attempted to pass from a semi-feudal society to a communistic one over-night, and the result had been the substitution of one dictatorship or oligarchy for another. Mr. Robinson didn't believe in dictatorships in any form. When pressed by Charles to define his politics he said he was a Guild Socialist or a Libertarian Syndicalist, if you preferred that.
He wanted to begin with Land Nationalisation and the appropriation, without compensation, of Economic Rent. Every child, he said, would receive his or her share from birth. While under sixteen the children's shares would be paid to the mother, thus endowing motherhood, or, in the case of the mother's death, to the father or legal guardian. He held forth with the fluency of the practised speaker. He had preached these things, Charles saw, a hundred times. He let him talk on, less concerned to refute any of his statements than to discover what manner of man he was.
Caroline's little airs of proprietorship both amused and distressed him. She "fed" Robinson; she gave him cues; she asked the right questions.
"She's been with him an awful lot," thought Charles. "When, where and how?"
Lydia went home at half-past eleven, and Captain Cary went with her. He lived, when he was in London, in rooms in Chapel Street. He said in a low voice to Venetia as he made his fare​wells: "I'll ring you up in the morning." She nodded, and again Lydia caught what seemed to her a significant look.
"They're in love," she said to herself. "Well, if I were either, I should be in love with the other."
As for Venetia, it seemed to her that things had progressed without anything having been said. She felt that some mutual wave of feeling was sweeping them nearer to that goal she so ardently desired. She envied Mrs. Chalmers, driving with him through the dark streets.
Mr. Robinson lingered till the clock struck twelve, and he caught Caroline's eye. There was nothing for it then but to say: "Well, I really must go," which he did, and the moment the front door closed behind him Venetia rushed off to bed. She wanted to be alone to think about Clive, and to recreate as much as she could of him for her greedy thoughts to feed upon. Before he went away to Gibraltar she had known her own feelings about him, but he hadn't said anything, he hadn't even written, and she had tried to put him out of her mind. Now he was back, and in his absence they had mysteriously drawn closer to each other, as though in their subconscious thoughts they had been together all the time.
Charles was at last alone with Caroline.
She was a greater lover of order than Venetia, ​and it was she who, at the end of the evening, always tidied the cushions, slapping them into shape, and pushed the chairs into their accustomed places. Charles, watching her, thought he had never seen her face look so mature. He stood by the fire, half expecting her to ask him what he thought of Robinson, but she said nothing.
"Not a bad fellow, Robinson," he said finally. "But rather too dogmatic, I thought."
Caroline emptied the contents of an ash tray into the fire. "We always think people who don't agree with us are dogmatic," she said.
"No, that's not true," Charles protested. "In the first place I agreed with a good deal of what he said, and in the second place . . ."
"Besides," she interrupted, straightening a lampshade, "if you feel strongly about a thing you must be dogmatic about it. You must be convinced you're right before you can accomplish anything in this world."
"His attitude toward me," said Charles, ignoring her statement of the obvious, "was that of a kind teacher toward a young and backward child. When he couldn't find a simple word of one syllable to convey his meaning that he felt I would understand, you, my darling, supplied it for him." He jingled some keys in his pocket and smiled. "But, as I say, not a bad fellow. He reminds ​me of myself at his age." As she made no answer, he asked: "How did you like Mrs. Chalmers?"
"I thought her very decorative," said Caroline, smoothing the loose cover of the sofa and tucking it in at the corners. "Superficially intelligent and, on the whole, very nice. But I can't feel any real enthusiasm for parasites."
"She has had a very sad life, I think," said Charles.
"Well," replied Caroline, "I can think of nothing sadder than having no occupation."
Charles decided to lead the conversation back to Mr. Robinson.
"Caroline, you haven't been very frank with me about this fellow Robinson. You never even mentioned him until yesterday. I don't like questioning you. I never did. But I do expect you to tell me about your friends. Hang it all, I won't be treated like an ordinary parent. You've been on the defensive lately. Why is it?"
There was nothing more for her to tidy, so she stood looking at Charles with a sort of hard frankness.
"Why? Because I knew you'd take up exactly the attitude you have toward Phil."
Charles was astounded. His hand strayed to his hair and began twisting a lock of it.
"But—my darling—I've taken up no attitude. ​I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings by criticising him. In this house we've always said pretty frankly what we thought about people. Perhaps it's a bad habit." Then something in her face struck into his heart. "Caroline!" He went toward her and turned her about so that she faced the light. "Caroline—good God—you're not in love, are you?"
"No!" she cried angrily, almost fiercely. "No!"
"Thank Heaven!" He let her go, unspeakably relieved.
"You'd better let me explain," she said, her colour rising, "now that we've got so far. The words 'to be in love' have no meaning for me or for Phil. But we prefer each other to anyone else, we care for the same things, and we mean to work for the same things, and as soon as we can we're going to marry."
"Caroline!"
He stood staring at, rather than into, those clear blue eyes, for he got no further than the surface of them.
"I didn't mean to tell you so soon. We can't be married for two months or more. When we do, it will be in a registry office, of course. And by that time I shall be over twenty-one, you know, father."
"Good God!" he cried again.
​He walked to the sofa and sat down, and for some seconds he neither moved nor spoke. Then he put out an arm toward her and she saw the emotion in his face.
"Please come here."
She went to him slowly, and sat down beside him. He put his arm about her. At last he said:
"Caroline, this hurts me terribly. Do you mean it?"
"Certainly I mean it. Why not?"
"You do love him then? Oh, damn it, don't trifle with words! You want him; you want to live with him; he wants to live with you. You want to spend your lives together."
"As to that," she said with a flicker of a smile, "we'll see."
"Oh, for God's sake, don't pose for a minute. I'm willing to concede you're everything that's advanced and modern. I don't give a damn for that. What are you going to live on? Can he support you? Yes, I know you'll help. Will you be happy? Will you be comfortable, even? Do you really care for him as much as all this? Enough to make you want to leave your home, and Venetia, and me? No, no, I don't want to be selfish. I'm trying not to be. But, my darling, you're barely twenty-one. It's so young. Will he be good to you? Can you depend on him?"
​"Father, father," said Caroline, smiling and softening a little, "you do run wonderfully true to form. As a parent, I mean. I know I'm young. So much the better. I do want to live with Phil, and work with him. He hasn't much money. Together we'll have about seven hundred a year, including what I'm earning at present. Then," she added, "there's my mother's allowance. I thought if you wanted to give me that or part of it . . ."
"Your mother's allowance stopped years ago."
She looked quickly at him.
"What do you mean?"
"She sent word through her lawyers that she would have to reduce it. She'd been very extravagant. I asked her to discontinue it altogether. I always hated having to take it, and for the last three years I haven't needed it."
"You ought to have told us," she said.
He admitted that he ought. "I don't know why I didn't. Except that I wanted you to go on thinking she was doing something for you."
"But I don't want to think it if it isn't true. Why should I? She's nothing to me." After a moment's silence she said: "Never mind. I don't want or expect you to give me any money after I'm married, so we'll manage on seven hundred. Phil is sub-editor of the Vanguard, and he says if I do well I may get a raise in about a year. And ​when we can find time we're going to write a book together. We don't care about clothes, nor about gaieties. High thinking and plain living," she added, "that's what we like."
Charles felt that she had drawn nearer to him. She was less hard and guarded. In her present mood he saw that he might easily have alienated her. And never had he loved her more than at this moment.
"Caroline, darling," he cried in a sort of despair, "I only want you to be happy. What else could I want?"
"You always said," she reminded him, "that it was childish to expect happiness. Well, I don't expect it. But I know I shall get the most out of my life by marrying Phil."
"I used the word in its relative sense," said Charles. "I couldn't bear to see you unhappy."
"If I ever am," she said, "you must look upon it as a necessary experience for me."
He was silent for a moment.
"Does Venetia know?" he presently asked.
"No. No one knows."
Charles said, staring in front of him:
"I hoped you wouldn't marry for years yet. Oh, Caroline, why must you rush into it? Wait. Wait. I've never tried to prejudice you against marriage, but I never could see that it was a ​suitable adventure for the very young. I dread it for you. I've always dreaded it."
"For us?" she asked. "Or for yourself because you don't want to lose us?"
"Both, both. I'm selfish. I admit it. I thought we were so happy."
"You dread it," she said, "partly because you had a very unfortunate experience yourself, but, father, you must blame yourself, not marriage, for that. I hold no brief for it as an institution, nor does Phil. I'm marrying him because I want his constant companionship, and I can't conveniently get it in any other way. But you must blame your own lack of judgment for the failure of your own marriage."
Charles said, defiantly:
"I don't regret it. I have you and Venetia." He added: "And if ever I have cause to accuse you of lack of judgment I hope I can refrain from doing so."
"But you may do so," she said with a bright look at him, "if it's true."
He got up. Caroline, he told himself, defeated him. It was impossible to say where her hardness and pose ended and her admirable honesty began.
"I must talk to this fellow," he said, harshly. "I must see his parents. You can't go off and get married as if you were a foundling."
​"You may see them, of course," she said. "They will want to see you." She added: "They're very fond of me."
He turned away from her toward the door, his face averted from her. Something in the look of his shoulders, in the strained turn of his head, touched her. She sprang up and flung an arm about his neck. She felt his grief, his deep hurt, and was moved by it. The tears rushed to her eyes.
"Dear father . . . you're so young somehow. I feel years older than you to-night. It's all right. Everything's all right. You'll like and admire Phil when you know him better. And I do love you . . ."
Her voice broke. Charles could say nothing at all. He held her tightly against his side for an instant, then, without showing her his face, pushed her gently from him and went out of the room and into his own bedroom. She heard him close his door softly.
There was absolute silence in the house. She stood with her hand on the electric light switch, listening. Charles, she knew, was standing in the middle of his room, stricken by this new thing, trying to realise what it was going to mean to him, and to all of them. This first break . . .
She snapped off the light and went slowly and very quietly upstairs.