# After Noon (Ertz)/Chapter 17

THEY found the doctor already with Caroline. She had been asking for her father, he said, and after a whispered talk in the hall he took Charles into her bedroom. Lydia, left alone in the living-room, as Caroline called her combined dining and drawing-room, again looked at the evening paper.
She read for the second time:
   Colliery Explosion in Durham. Eight Miners Trapped. Rescue Party Also Trapped by Falling Tunnel.
The article went on to say that one of the rescue party, Mr. P. L. Robinson, had been giving a lecture to the miners the night before. He had paid a visit to the mine at ten o'clock that morning and was about to return to London when the explosion occurred. He at once volunteered to go to the assistance of the entombed miners and joined the rescue party, which was formed within a few minutes. They were nearing the scene of the explosion when the falling of a tunnel cut off those members of the party who were in the rear ​from those in front. Frantic efforts were being made to reach both the rescue party and those they went down to help, but grave fears were entertained . . .
She put aside the paper, unable to read any more. She sat listening to the sounds in the next room, and wishing that Charles would come and give her news of Caroline.
It was very cold, and she drew her chair nearer to the practical and unbeautiful gas-fire, and held out her cold hands. Over the mantel was a picture of Caroline, painted by a girl friend who was an art student. She had seen Caroline's complexion as red-brown with vivid green shadows, and her hair as chrome yellow, but she had caught, by some odd chance, her look of youthful hardness and rebellion. On the opposite wall was a still life painted by the same hand. It represented a half loaf of bread, two onions and a cauliflower grouped upon a table that was covered with a checked tablecloth, and seemed outside the laws of perspective. It was a neat, cottagey room, and had plain distempered walls, sunproof curtains and covers, a couch or sofa that looked as if it could be inverted into a couch bed if required, and a round centre table.
She heard Miss Lightfoot's step in the hall and sprang to her feet. She beckoned the girl into ​the room and asked her, in a low voice, to tell her what had happened.
Mrs. Robinson, Miss Lightfoot told her, had read the news of the colliery accident as she was coming home from the City in the underground. She had fainted, or nearly fainted. A kind woman had helped her out at her station, had given her something to revive her at a chemist's, and, with the aid of the chemist's assistant, had brought her home. It was all most unfortunate, Miss Lightfoot said gravely, under the circumstances. She had rung up the doctor and Mr. Lester at once, and they were expecting a nurse at any moment. The doctor had wanted to take Mrs. Robinson to the hospital, but she had objected so strongly that he had had to give in to her.
"She wants to be here," Lydia said, "in case there is news of her husband."
Miss Lightfoot was very fair, almost an Albino, and her hair was cut like a Dutch girl's, square and straight. She seemed a sensible and competent young thing, the daughter, probably, Lydia thought, of a mechanic or of a poor professional man. It was difficult to classify her. She looked a bare seventeen, but Lydia guessed from her manner that she must be older. The bell rang then, and she went downstairs to the street door to let in the nurse.
Five minutes later Charles came in the room. ​He was pale, and his eyes looked restless and troubled.
The poor child, he said, was suffering horribly, and was racked with anxiety about Phil. Her baby might be born at any time during the night. He was going out to the underground station presently to telephone to one of the newspapers in the hope of getting further news. He intended to stay at the flat all night, of course.
"Now that the nurse has come," he said, "there'll be nothing for you to do, Lydia, so I think you had better go home. They're giving Caroline morphine now, thank God." He walked to the window and looked out, and then turned back. "This is a ghastly business. I've made fun of Phil, and I wish now I hadn't, though I realise it's illogical and absurd to feel that way. The fellow has courage. He's done a foolishly brave thing. Perhaps he oughtn't to have done it. Perhaps if he'd stopped to think of Caroline, he wouldn't have done it. I don't know. But it's terrible for her."
Lydia begged him to let her stay too. She didn't want to go home alone, she said. She knew she wouldn't sleep.
But Charles wouldn't hear of it. He presently went out with her and put her into a taxi. He kissed her and thanked her for coming with him and said he would ring her up in the morning ​early. When she was driving home she thought that she had never found him more lovable than now, in his double rôle of father and mother. She envied him because Caroline, in her trouble, needed him so desperately.
Their little after-dinner scene—if it could be called a scene—had completely gone from his mind, and for this she was thankful. She was ashamed of it, and she vowed that after this she would keep her hurts to herself. It was a little after ten when she reached home again, and as she opened the door she thought of the night, nine months ago, when she had first gone there to dine, and had met Phil on the doorstep. She had little guessed that she would one day be opening that door with her own latch-key. All that was such a short time ago, and yet since then her life and all their lives had been completely changed.
She rang for the maid and asked her to bring her some hot soup and some toast, for the thought of Phil's and Caroline's suffering made her feel faint and miserable. She drank the soup and felt better, but exceedingly wide awake, and she presently went to the piano and tried to quiet her nerves by singing and playing. She had taught herself to read accompaniments, and she had a small, clear voice. She never sang unless she was quite alone, but it gave her great pleasure and a ​feeling of duality as well, as though she were at the same time artist and audience. Before she knew Charles she had thought she had a nice taste in music, but she found that Charles didn't look upon music as an agreeable noise, but as something which required, or should require to be worth listening to, a certain intellectual effort.
She went over, several times, a song of which she was very fond—Roger Quilter's "To Daisies," with Herrick's words: "Shut not so soon, the dull-eyed night has not as yet begun . . ." and it soothed and quieted her. She presently returned to the fire, thinking of Charles and missing him. Her life with him, short as it was, had been full of sharp joys and pains. She compared it to her life with Edward, with its placid routine, broken by a single tragedy, and its uncritical, unintelligent relationship, like that of two travellers who know each other and the journey too well to talk.
She admitted to herself that she would rather spend one year of happiness and uncertainty with Charles than ten years of placidity and mental and emotional inertness with anyone else, provided she could convince herself that he derived almost as much satisfaction from their life together as she did. But her pains and doubts were becoming increasingly sharp and insistent. They had been married only a few months, and although he was ​the most charming and considerate and satisfactory of husbands, she found it impossible to believe that he was not playing a part which required continual watchfulness and effort, and that he was not, in reality, regretting his freedom. It was this thought that was constantly nibbling at her mind, destroying her content and the happiness of their joint life. Those caustic comments of his were thrown off almost automatically, she believed, by the discontent and rebellion in his spirit. This sharing of his life, she told herself, was irksome and distasteful to him. His desire to be alone at times—a desire with which she readily complied—was an added proof to her that this dual life to which he had been so long a stranger tried him unbearably.
The fault was entirely hers. She had taken the same view in regard to marriage that her mother had taken—that it was the natural thing, the inevitable thing, to marry. A purely sentimental viewpoint, she now told herself, and if a rule, one to which there were many exceptions. Charles was one of them. She hadn't believed his frequently repeated assertion that he didn't want to marry again because she hadn't wished to believe it. She had thought it a mere attitude, an amusing gesture, a sort of defence; for a man who is so clearly fair game needs some such defence in a world full of women. The egoist in her had ​said, "It isn't you he wants to defend himself against; he would be happy with you." She had longed to make him say, "You were right and I was wrong. The only possible happiness lies in marriage." She had looked into the future and seen some such sweet victory. She had pictured a close-up, she told herself ruthlessly, of their two blissful faces, and then a slow fade-out. Disgusting! She tore herself to shreds. She was ready to admit that she was her mother over again, full of false and sentimental generalisations.
Charles had been exquisitely happy with his daughters. Their leaving him had thrown him temporarily off his balance, but left to himself he would gradually have readjusted himself to his new conditions, and would have made for himself in time the sort of life that really suited him.
And she, because of her own loneliness and lack of a definite purpose in life, and because Charles interested her and pleased her more than other men, had deliberately brought about his downfall, first by lulling him into a wholly false sense of security, and then by suddenly and unexpectedly revealing her love for him. At that point she could bear her thoughts no longer, and picking up her wraps she turned out the lights and went upstairs to bed. She rarely prayed, or rarely assumed the attitude of prayer, but to-night she felt ​a childlike and desperate need of it. Her chief thought was for Phil and Caroline, both in imminent danger, but she urgently desired her own and Charles's happiness as well, and she presently got into bed feeling somewhat comforted. As she lay there in the dark, words of Charles's, caresses, little jokes, endearments, looks, came back to her, and she told herself that she was a fool to doubt, and the tears came to her eyes. He did love her and need her; she had expected, unreasonably, to make him happier than it was possible or natural for a man with a mind like his to be. She had not tricked him into marrying her, or, if she had, it was the best day's work she had ever done. To this thought she clung with hungry tenacity, and believing that she had never been farther from sleep, she slept.
The ringing of the telephone bell woke her at seven the next morning. She reached out to the small table beside her bed and lifted the receiver to her knee. It was Charles, as she had expected. His voice sounded tired and anxious.
"The news isn't any too good here," he said. "Caroline's baby, a boy, was born at four o'clock this morning. He's doing well enough, but Caroline isn't, poor child. She's very ill. It's this getting no news about Phil."
Lydia implored him to let her do something, but he assured her there was nothing she could ​do. He had lied to Caroline; he had told her that the rescue party were alive and well, and that the people who were trying to reach them could hear them talking.
"It's made a difference," he said, "so I shall go on lying." He added, "There's one thing you can do, if you will. Telephone to my office for me and tell them I won't be there to-day and may not be there to-morrow. I've asked for a consultation, and Wyndham Brooks is coming this morning. The nurse seems all right—a very capable woman."
"What's the baby like?" Lydia asked.
"A horrible little thing. All redness and thin howls. My God, why do people marry and bring these troubles on themselves? My poor Caroline!"
He was speaking from the underground station, he told her. He asked Lydia if she had slept. He hadn't slept at all, but he didn't care. He said he would telephone again after he had seen Wyndham Brooks.
Lydia got out of bed and twisted her long hair up into a knot before going to her bath. A ghastly day for everyone was in prospect. She could do nothing. She thought of hiring a car and going to Durham and awaiting events there, bringing Phil back as soon as he was released, but she soon discarded the idea. If Phil were saved, ​everything would be done for him on the spot that could be done. Doctors and nurses would be waiting. And he would far rather, she felt sure, travel back by train.
She sent flowers to Caroline knowing well enough they would not be allowed in her room, but the sending of them afforded her some pleasure. She knew Charles was going through a miserable and anxious time, and she grieved for him, but she felt he might have omitted to say, "Why do people marry and bring these troubles on themselves?" She wished, fervently, that he had omitted to say it.
At four he telephoned again to say that what he had told Caroline that morning was now true. The digging was going on rapidly, voices had been heard and shouts of encouragement. He said that Caroline was by no means out of danger, but that there was a distinct improvement. The baby—he supposed they would call the little horror Charles—seemed a good specimen of its kind.
"Anyhow," he said, "they'll never make a conscientious female citizen out of it; that's one good thing."
He intended to spend another night on the couch bed, and would be home, if all went well, on the following morning. Lydia felt that it was ironical and paradoxical that she, the only one ​who had experienced what Caroline was experiencing, should be able to do nothing.
The next morning he telephoned again to say that he had heard from a friend on the Daily Express that the rescue party had been rescued, but that they were suffering from extreme exhaustion, as they had been working, until their strength gave out, to get through to the miners. It would be an affair of a few hours only before they too were reached. Phil, Charles said, was unconscious when found, but he thought there were no serious injuries. Caroline showed some improvement, but had begged him not to leave her, so he would spend one more night on that sofa.
"The only one who isn't worn out," he said, "is my grandson."
Phil came home the next day, entirely unaware until he reached the flat, that he was a father. He looked very pale, ached in every joint and muscle, and was suffering from a scalp wound. But Caroline, he said, had gone through far more than he had. His emotion at the sight of her and of his child was almost too much for him.
"I've named him Charles," said his father-in-law, to whom this scene was peculiarly painful, "but you can change if it you like. I don't insist."
He was worn out when he returned to Eaton Gardens, and slept for fourteen hours. Caroline ​was entirely out of danger; she was weak but inexpressibly happy. The strain, however, had been great, and it had told on Charles's nerves.
"I feel every inch a grandfather," he said.
Caroline's illness, the baby, and the medical attendance required for some time by Phil was going to cost the young couple, Charles knew, far more than they could afford. Phil told him he didn't see how they could pay the doctor's bill for at least two years.
"People who can't pay doctors' bills shouldn't rush into matrimony," was Charles's mental comment, but he wouldn't have dreamt of saying it to Phil. Mr. and Mrs. Robinson had just enough to live on, and their trip to Canada was a great extravagance. And as Charles greatly preferred that the young couple should turn to him for help, he insisted on the bills being sent to him. His income was not large, and the financing of Brenda in her hat-shop in Albemarle Street had cost him more than he had anticipated. He was obliged, therefore, to sell some shares to cope with this second demand upon him, and when Lydia heard of it she was very indignant.
"Are you never going to let me feel I'm not a stranger or an outsider?" she asked. "You know how glad I'd be to help. I wanted to find half the money for Brenda, but you wouldn't let me. I think it's unkind, Charles."
​"Brenda happens to be my particular burden," Charles replied, "and your money, my dear, is yours, left to you by Edward. If you like to spend some of it for our mutual pleasure, that's one thing, but I don't propose to let you set my first wife up in business or pay my son-in-law's debts with it."
"I suppose it's partly because of your first marriage that you feel this sensitiveness about money," Lydia said.
"I don't admit I'm sensitive about it," Charles answered. "I'm merely reasonable and just. My burdens are my own. Besides, in the case of Phil, I like doing it. It's a small sign of my appreciation of his courage, exceedingly ill-timed though it was."
But Lydia said to herself:
"The fact that I have money of my own, as Brenda had, is only an added annoyance."
Caroline got back her strength slowly, but the baby, Charles Philip, made rapid progress, and Lydia often went to Hampstead now that Caroline was better and took care of him while the nurse went out.
One day Caroline said to her:
"Are you quite happy with father, if that isn't an impertinent question?"
Lydia, knowing that Caroline had few reticences herself and not very much patience with ​them in others, was not altogether surprised at her having asked it. She answered her, as casually as she could:
"Happy? Of course I am. What made you ask?"
"You haven't seemed so happy lately. I wondered if you were homesick, perhaps."
"Not a bit. I don't think I've ever been homesick."
"Well, homesickness for a certain country is a thing I can't understand," said Caroline, "but that's because I've no national feelings. We all live under the same sky, we're warmed by the same sun, we all have the same needs and the same emotions. If I had Phil and the baby with me, one country would be just the same as another to me. I think all human beings of equal importance and equal interest."
"I'm afraid I don't feel like that at all," said Lydia, "but certainly I've never felt homesick in London. In Paris I have. I hope," she added, "I haven't seemed unhappy."
Caroline was silent for a moment.
"I often wonder," she said, "how married people get on who haven't some tremendous mutual interest. Some strong tie, I mean, that would have kept them together even outside of marriage."
"Such as . . ." Lydia prompted her.
​"Such as Phil and I have."
"Are you suggesting," Lydia asked, smiling, "that your father and I haven't anything of the sort?"
"Well, you haven't a common aim, or purpose, have you?"
"I don't know what you mean exactly by an aim. We have a great deal in common." Then thinking she saw the drift of Caroline's words, she asked quickly, "Does that mean you think your father seems unhappy? Or not as happy as he might be?"
"I think," said Caroline slowly, "that he would be far happier if there were something in which he was deeply, vitally interested. I'm sorry he stopped work on his anthology. That was better than nothing."
"But he hasn't definitely stopped it. You see, as the house is arranged now there isn't a room for him to write in, comfortably. I wish there were. Then," she pursued with a feeling of dread, "you do think he doesn't seem very happy?"
Caroline had no idea that anything hung on this question. She had a passion for pointing out the aimlessness of other people's lives, and she was now indulging it. She wanted everybody to have a serious Aim, and it really distressed her that her father had none.
​"I wouldn't say that," she said, "but it seems to me he's lost a certain zest and enthusiasm that he used to have."
"He is working very hard at the office just now," said Lydia.
"What I mean is," began Caroline, but just then a cry from Charles Philip interrupted her. She listened to him for a moment, and when Lydia started up to go to him she restrained her.
"That's a peevish cry," she said. "I shan't take him up. He must learn that he can't get what he wants that way."
Lydia preferred not to return to the subject, and went home feeling that she had had one more proof of the fact that Charles was regretting his marriage. Other people saw it now. It was the most desperate blow her pride had ever received. Their life together was still a novelty, and already Charles was feeling the strain of it. The outlook was not a pleasant one for a proud and sensitive woman. What would he be feeling two, five, ten years from now? He was not to blame. He was what he was; a man who craved isolation and solitude. She had imposed upon him, in her optimism, a life for which he was not suited. She could blame no one but herself.
They were dining that night with Antoinette Brewer and her old friend Sir Walter Pickering, the artist. He had just been knighted—an ​honour he had never desired—and was a deservedly distinguished man. He was sixty and very tall, had fine features, curly grey hair, and a short grey beard. He dressed with extreme care, looked like almost anything but an artist, and looked it deliberately. He had married at an early age a common little woman who made his domestic life a farce, but he bore it patiently and humorously, consoling himself with the friendship of women like Miss Brewer. That lady had been heard to say that living alone had no terrors for her provided she was in no danger of dining alone, and this she very rarely did, for she enjoyed an immense popularity.
Charles and Sir Walter Pickering had the same light-hearted and cynical way of expressing themselves, and when they were together their talk was apt to become extravagant and fantastic. Life, they agreed, was either to be wept over or treated satirically, and they preferred to treat it satirically. Lydia was amused and entertained by Sir Walter, but Charles's remarks seemed to cut nearer to the bone, and hypersensitive as she had now become, they made her wince. She was in no mood to discount anything that he might say.
They dined in a grill room before going to the play, and their table, which was in an alcove, was an unusually large one for four. Miss Brewer, looking across at Charles, commented on the fact.
​"It's a married people's table," Charles answered gaily. "It's intended to keep them from laying violents hands on one another."
Sir Walter was ordering dinner, and gave this small jest no attention. Miss Brewer, throwing back her cloak, merely remarked that it would have to be even larger to accommodate some of her friends. But Charles had no sooner spoken than he was at once conscience-stricken. It was the sort of thing he had sworn not to say. He looked quickly at Lydia. She was speaking to Sir Walter, and there was no sign in her face that she had minded.
"She's got over all that," he said to himself. "I knew she would. She understands me better now."
And in that happy belief he gave free rein to his fancies.