# After Noon (Ertz)/Chapter 7

CAROLINE paused outside Venetia's door and listened. There, too, there was silence. After some hesitation she tapped very lightly with her finger-nail, and Venetia heard her at once and called out:
"Come in. I'm awake. I haven't been to sleep."
She felt for the light and switched it on.
"I didn't know whether you'd feel like talking or not. It's pretty late," Caroline said.
Venetia lay in bed with a blue silk eider-down drawn up to her chin. She flung an immature and lovely arm over her eyes for an instant, then uncovered them and raising herself in bed, looked with a bright expectant face at Caroline. Her dark hair was in soft disorder and her cheeks were flushed.
"Caroline, what fun! You hardly ever come in and talk any more. I'm not a bit sleepy. Come and sit on the foot of the bed."
"I'll sit here, thanks," said Caroline, taking a small armchair near the fireplace.
"Well, light the gas then, and shut the window. It's icy, except under the bed-clothes."
​Caroline did as she was told and resumed her seat. She hardly knew what to say, or where to begin; her talk with her father had shaken and moved her, and now that she was there in Venetia's room, the scene of many confidences of an intimate nature, and many youthful speculations, her news seemed astonishing and improbable even to herself. Seeing that she was in some difficulty, Venetia came to her assistance.
"I thought the dinner party went off wonderfully well. Marie really is a marvel. Caroline, don't you think Mrs. Chalmers is terribly attractive? I do."
"She seems very nice," said the more temperate Caroline, "and she's certainly good to look at. But I don't find these very mondaine women as attractive as you do."
"I don't think she's that at all," Venetia objected. "On the contrary, I thought she was very simple. She seemed to me to be trying to get her bearings all the time, as though she were wondering about us all a lot. I liked that. And I love her accent. I think she's a darling."
As Caroline had no desire to pursue that subject further, and seemed unprepared to introduce another, there was a short silence. Venetia broke it by saying:
"I hope Mr. Robinson enjoyed himself. Do you think he did?"
​Caroline said she thought he had. Then she seized her opportunity.
"But of course it was very trying for him, coming here for the first time like that. I hope you liked him. Did you?"
"Why trying? Everybody has to go somewhere for the first time. You might as well say it was trying for us, having him here for the first time."
"I mean, he probably felt he was being inspected. Especially as he knows he's the first man I've ever asked here to dine."
Venetia flashed a penetrating look at her. The vague suspicion that had been flitting through her mind took root and became a conviction.
"Caroline, I do believe you're really interested for once."
Caroline turned her head away and looked into the fire. Her heart was beating violently, and she controlled her voice with care.
"Well, never mind that for a moment. Answer my question first. Did you like him or not?"
Without looking at Venetia's face she could feel the restraint and reserve with which she answered. They were in her voice. It was exactly what she had expected—what she was arming herself against.
"I wish you wouldn't make such a point of my ​liking or not liking him. I don't know him. At the moment I can only say that he seemed very nice, but that he isn't . . . well, isn't exactly my sort. That's nothing against him. As I say, I don't know him."
"If he had been your sort," Caroline said evenly and coldly, "he wouldn't have liked me, nor I him. It's no good pretending we like the same sort of men. We don't. You like Clive. He's a type. He's everything that's well-bred, and correct, and conventional. Well, you like that type. I don't." She added: "Mind you, I don't dislike Clive at all. It's the type that I dislike."
Venetia said very tensely and quietly: "And I don't dislike Mr. Robinson, in exactly the same way."
She couldn't discuss Clive. He was not food for discussion, but only for the most secret and exquisite thoughts. She knew what she was sure no one else in the world knew of him. Her sensitive and perceptive mind had seen and was delighting in his valiant and inquiring spirit; in his tenderness, and in his quick and passionate response to the least sign of tenderness in her; in his willingness to give his body to his country provided he could keep his ideas to himself. There was a young ardour in him, both mental and physical, which she understood and adored. ​She had never discussed Clive with anyone. She never could nor would. Since that last evening they had spent together at the Berkeley, when they had talked frankly and endlessly, she had no longer any thought of resistance or of coquetry. Her one desire now was to show herself to him as she was. When she was with him she felt that her whole personality was deepened and strengthened; without him she was an animated shell, the mere outward appearance of herself. And there was no one on earth to whom she could confide these things, or to whom she wished to confide them.
But Caroline reacted differently to love. Now that Phil had been seen by and was established in the minds of her father and sister, she longed to talk about him. She proceeded to tell Venetia about his gifts, about his popularity and influence, and about his parents. Venetia passed, as she talked, from utter amazement to acceptance and final understanding of what was now, obviously, a fact to be considered and reckoned with. Caroline was not only interested in this man, she meant to marry him. That was perfectly clear, astounding though it was. She presently said as much, looking at Venetia with that same hard and defiant frankness that had so nonplussed Charles.
"And we're going to marry as soon as I'm twenty-one. In a registry office, of course. I ​told father to-night. I had just been telling him before I came in to tell you."
Venetia fought down her own feelings, feelings that were too chaotic and too painful to be allowed examination at the moment, much less utterance. She responded valiantly. It was her nature to respond, and here was a situation demanding much from her in the way of sisterly feeling. She saw that Caroline meant all and more than she had said; that she was at a crisis in her life; that she was exalted and happy as she had never been before. She knew that Caroline had been secretly wounded a hundred times by her own greater popularity and charm. She deplored it and understood it and regretted it, and she knew that this hardness and defiance she now showed were partly caused by it. She felt that she could now make up to Caroline for a superiority she had never sought, for a success that had perhaps given her sister bitter hours, and yet was no fault of hers.
"Oh, Caroline . . . it's so queer and new." Tears came into her eyes. "I'll try to know him and like him, I promise you. I'll do anything I can if you're really certain in your own mind about him. Reach me that handkerchief on my dressing-table, will you? Thanks . . ." She wiped her eyes. "What did father say? Tell me exactly. Was he terribly upset?"
​Caroline dealt with the interview fairly and justly.
"I meant to console him," she said, "by pointing out how lucky he was to have twins. He won't miss me so much, as he has you. And I know you won't dream of marrying for years yet. You'll go on making men fall in love with you till you're thirty or more, I expect. I'm not blaming you. If I enjoyed it as much as you do, I'd do the same, I suppose, but I don't."
"I don't enjoy it as much as you think," said Venetia in a low voice. "And I don't make them."
"Oh, Venetia, if you didn't . . . why, just this last year there's been Edwin Harpenden, and Cyril Stedman-Reid, and Frank Stoddard, and Clive Cary . . . and next year there'll be twice as many more, because you'll be still more attractive. I suppose it's a fortunate thing you're like that, because I can't imagine father living alone."
Venetia said, with a rigid face and body:
"I can't imagine him living alone either."
"But if you ever do eventually marry," Caroline observed, "he'll simply have to face it. I don't believe in children sacrificing themselves for their parents."
"Father's different," Venetia said. "He'd never ask it or expect it. He'd just suffer, by ​himself. It isn't as though he liked people. He only likes us."
"He ought to marry again," said Caroline.
Venetia turned her head and looked at her.
"Caroline, you're getting terribly hard."
"Hard?"
"Yes, hard. I don't know what's making you."
"Is it hard to say that father ought to marry again?"
"Yes, it is, when you know he'd hate it, and you only want him to for your own sake."
"It makes no difference whatever to me," Caroline protested. "I shan't be here. I was thinking of his good, and yours."
Venetia looked straight before her. Her arms lay inertly on either side of her narrow body.
"Never mind about me. I'll always be here to look after him. That's my job. I'll never marry. Never."
Caroline glanced quickly at her.
"Are you angry with me for wanting to marry Phil, and go away? Did you think I'd be the one to stay? I suppose you did."
"Angry? No, why should I be? It's the sort of thing you just leave to the future to take care of."
"I'm glad you feel like that," said Caroline.
"And I hope you'll be happy and that everything will be all right. Only you can't expect me ​to rejoice and be delighted. It's too sudden, and I don't know him . . . that's all."
"I know him," said Caroline, "through and through. And there isn't one thing in him I'd change. No, not one little thing."
Venetia caught her breath and her eyes closed suddenly.
"Let's talk about it to-morrow," she said in a low voice.
"Perhaps we'd better stop now," agreed Caro line. "It's long after one, and I've got to be at the office by nine. Shall I put out the fire?"
"Please."
She turned out the gas, re-opened the window, and went to the door. Venetia lay with her eyes closed.
"Good-night, Venetia."
"Good-night, Caroline, dear."
Caroline paused, wondering if Venetia ex pected her to kiss her. She was very undemon strative herself, and such exhibitions of feeling always made her uncomfortable. She turned off the light without saying anything more, and softly closed the door. She went into her own room, which was like a room in a nursing home, and quickly undressed. When she was ready for bed she took Phil Robinson's photograph—taken by a Hampstead photographer—out of her writing-​table and looked long at that intense, earnest, fanatical face. Then she slipped it under her pillow and got into bed.
That night she was the only happy one in the house.