CAROLINE pulled up her white kid gloves and settled her cloak more firmly on her shoulders, and stepped through the door into her box. Outwardly, her face was perfectly serene. Inwardly, she was shivering with nerves. Her horror of the literary world was as nothing to her horror of this new world into which John had plunged. Never had she thought of meeting actors and actresses. One knew the great names, of course, and perhaps might have run into some of them at receptions. But this sudden intimacy which meant that they came to her house, made her feel desperately inadequate. The whole of her upbringing, tastes, and the trend of her mind were unsuited to the demands made on her. She was incompetent to discuss amusingly this and that play and this and that performance. She felt that, to the actors and actresses who came to them for supper on Sundays, she was John’s dull wife. Sometimes John had said: “Weren’t you interested when Miss So-and-So was telling you about that tour? I thought she was tremendously amusing.” And Caroline, who had sat through a description of theatrical lodgings and trying journeys and stage arguments, had replied that she had been interested. But really she had listened in disgust. She thought the world of the theatre sordid, and wished to keep herself and her family out of it. From the first moment that John had attended a rehearsal, he had been like somebody drunk. She had done her best to be interested in this inflexion, and that inflexion, but she could see she was putting up a poor effect. To her mind John wrote words, and actors and actresses said them. Where they had to stand while they said them seemed to her about the only thing there was to discuss, once they had committed the words to memory. She could not see why John had to be in the theatre every day. She saw the whole theatrical world as something that was trying to break up her home. John had made a tentative suggestion that she should come to a rehearsal, but the thought of herself as ‘Author’s wife,’ being talked to by everybody, filled her with such dismay that John had laughed and said, “All right, we’ll leave it till the first night. But you’re so good at colours and things, I thought you might have some helpful suggestions to make.” And here was the first night. No good trying to remain in the background any more. She was John’s wife, sitting in a box for everybody to see, and painfully conscious of the glint of lorgnettes and operaglasses.
These weeks had been hateful; she was glad really that the first night was here at last. Perhaps it would mean that John would work in his study again. That the garden gate would be shut and they all one family under one roof. She knew that John felt that she had shown lack of interest in his play, and there was some truth in his statement. But if it came to that, had not he shown lack of interest in the Manor, which mattered far more? It seemed to her incredible that he could think that it would not fill her mind. All those weary journeys on that slow train up and down. Bates was doing what he could with the garden, but already it looked ill-kept. What could one gardener do with a place that size? There were dead leaves blowing up the terrace. She had been so ashamed that twice she had taken a brush and swept them away herself. If it looked bad now, what would it look like in a few months’ time? John was so queer about Ellison. The obvious thing for her to do was to go over to Paris and see him and reason with him. It was possible that his friend was right that a country life did not suit him. Perhaps he ought to have a little pied-à-terre in London. Perhaps he would do better to take up some profession. But John said, “You can’t go over there”; and suggested nothing else. Oh, it was a very good thing the play was produced at last, so John could settle down and be normal again.
The lights were beginning to dim. The orchestra was fading out, when the door opened and John slid in quietly and sat on Caroline’s left, hidden from the audience by the hangings. Caroline smiled at him. He took her hand.
“Don’t you look lovely. Every inch a queen.”
She looked at his forehead and saw beads of perspiration.
“Are you ill? Have you got a temperature?” He squeezed her hand.
“I should think you are about the best antidote to nerves a man could have.”
“Are you nervous?” Caroline looked surprised. “But you haven’t got any words to remember.”
He grinned.
“Other people can forget mine. Ssh! the curtain’s going up.”
Caroline had only a very bare idea of the plot of Candytuft . John had read her bits, but she found a play muddling when read. He had also told her the story, but unfortunately something he had said had made her think of Laurence and she had wondered if he was happy, and what he was doing, and suddenly realised she was not taking in a word. She had not hurt his feelings by asking him to repeat his story, but had said with fervour when he finished, “That ought to make an interesting play.”
“And amusing?” John asked. “Don’t you think it’s an amusing plot?”
“Oh, very,” Caroline agreed. So it was with very little idea of what she was going to see that she saw the curtain rise. Dimly she had supposed that a play called Candytuft would be about gardens, and it was with surprise that she saw some chambers in the Temple. It was difficult for her to concentrate on the action, owing to John’s mutters. “They missed that.”
“They took that one.”
“Fancy that getting across the footlights.”
“Beautiful.”
“Oh, the fool, he made a mess of that line, and it is so important.” Caroline tried to react with wifely sympathy and yet take a wifely interest in the play. She was sorry for the nice-looking boy. He was so like John in many ways. He was in love with a girl of a different class. He had got on in the world and it was only when you saw his really dreadful old father that you realised where he had come from. She was very sorry for him in the scene with the girl’s parents. Horrible, to be so unkind. She did not know how John could write about such nasty people. By the end of the act she had forgotten John and his mutterings. Just before the curtain came down, the boy said: “Doesn’t love matter at all?” Did it matter at all? As the curtain fell her eyes were swimming with tears. Of course it mattered. It mattered terribly. She turned to say to John, “Oh, I do hope it all turns out right,” and found he had gone.
There seemed to be one advantage in having a husband that wrote a play, it pleased your relations. Louisa and Elizabeth, who had so often promised to stay and never turned up, suddenly became quite effusive. They both wrote and said they would come with their husbands for the first night. Caroline was enchanted.
“Oh, John, Louisa and Elizabeth are coming to see your play. Isn’t it nice of them?”
John was not at all impressed.
“You write and tell them they can buy their own tickets then. You’ve done nothing but ask those sisters to stay since they were married. I don’t see why we need bother with them now.”
“But John, it isn’t a bother. It will be a tremendous treat to see them again. They can sit in the box with me. There’s always a lot of room in a box.”
“They will do nothing of the sort,” John retorted. “Do you think I’m going to be driven mad by your chattering, whispering sisters? If it will please you to entertain them, I’ll get them seats.”
Caroline would have liked to have asked them all to stay, but John refused pointblank.
“I don’t know them and I’m not in the mood to force myself to be polite. Ask them any other time you like, but not now.”
In the end Caroline wrote a tactful letter and invited them all to dine before going to the theatre. “I’m sorry I can’t ask you to sit in the box, but I shall see you in the intervals.”
In the second interval Elizabeth had found some friends and only Louisa came up to the box. The play was going magnificently and for a moment or two they talked about it, then Louisa suddenly pulled her chair forward.
“Oh, Caroline, I knew I had a bit of news for you. You know that Eric is on the Committee of the hospital now? His father thinks he should be if he’s going to stand for Parliament, and I had to go on the Ladies’ Linen Committee. Very tiresome, but one must do these things. The other day the matron asked me to go round the wards, and in a bed I saw a funny, shrivelled-up old thing, and I thought, ‘I know that face,’ and who do you think it was? That old frump we had as governess. Do you remember her? Longy.”
“Longy! She must be quite old now. What’s the matter with her?”
Louisa smoothed out her skirts.
“It’s rather dreadful. The matron said starvation. It seemed she had been existing on bread and water for days when they found her. She had kept herself, sewing or something. She got rheumatism in her hands. Poor old dear. It was most upsetting.”
“What did you do?”
“Do! Nothing. I spoke to her of course. She was very feeble. I don’t think she knew who I was, though I thought her face changed when I mentioned you. She said ‘Caroline’ and nodded. Rather like a child she was really. I meant to go round with flowers, but one thing and another kept me. When I did go, she was dead.”
“Dead!”
“Why Caroline,” Louisa patted her knee. “Don’t look so upset. I wish I hadn’t told you. Of course, it’s very sad to think she was as poor as that. But we couldn’t know, could we? I expect she muddled her life. She was always a silly old thing.”
Louisa tried to change the subject, but Caroline, obviously upset, only answered her in monosyllables.
When the theatre lights went down and the curtain was rising on the last act, John came to his seat. He found Caroline’s hand.
“Isn’t it wonderful, darling? I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels. Everybody says it’s good. And you know, I do think actors know when audiences like a play.”
“John,” Caroline clung to his hand as if it was a spar and she drowning. “Old Longy is dead. She died of starvation.”
John gave her a look of comical despair.
“You’ve brought talking of extraneous matters at what are, to me, important moments, to a fine art.”
Caroline took in scarcely a word of the last act. She could only think of Longy as she had seen her last. She had looked like a frightened hen at Victoria Station, alternatively ejaculating, “Oh, I do hope you’ll be happy, dear,” with “This is very wrong of me.” She had absolutely no excuse for herself. When she had come back from her honeymoon she had meant to have traced her. But they were poor. There had been a good deal for her to do about the house. She had asked Aunt Rose if she knew what had happened to her, but she had not. Uncle Peter had said something about finding out where she was at the registry office, but either he never had, or he had not let her know. Her own life was so full, Longy slipped into the background. She had often worried that her children, growing up in London houses, had no opportunity to learn a sense of responsibility to their dependants. She had said to herself that if you learnt that sort of thing as a child, it stayed with you all your life. Yet look at her! She clasped her hands together and forced back the tears. She could remember those drives with her mother delivering food and clothes. How often she had seen her mother come down to the hall, looking white and tired, and heard her father say: “Do you feel up to driving to-day, dearest?” and heard her mother retort that Lizzie was expecting her, or that old George did so look forward to his soup, or that little Annie Briggs had a new baby. Her father, too, had always seen there was enough to live on when one of his people got too old for their work. He had never considered the matter from the point of right or wrong; merely to him it was one of the things you did if people worked for you and that was the end of that. Old Longy had done much more than work for her, she had lost her own work for her. It was dreadful the way she had been neglected.
After John had made his speech, Caroline slipped out of the theatre and went home. John had said there would be a party, but of course, he would quite understand that, after what she had just heard, she would want to go home. She drove home gulping back her tears. Naturally, one could not cry in a carriage, but she wished the horse would go quicker and she alone in her bedroom. But when she reached Swan, Elizabeth’s tousled head came round her bedroom door.
“Mummy, was the play a success?”
Caroline pulled herself together and managed to smile. “A tremendous success, darling. Daddy made a beautiful speech. What are you doing awake at this hour, you bad girl?”
“My goodness,” Elizabeth skipped back into bed, “you wouldn’t expect me to go to sleep? All the evening I’ve been wondering and wondering if it was all right.”
“It’s more than all right. Daddy will tell you about it in the morning.”
Caroline stooped and kissed the top of Elizabeth’s head.
“Good night, my pet. Go to sleep. God bless you.”
It was the early morning when John came in. It had been a night of complete triumph. He could not help being pleased at the flattery of the great. He tried to accept it all as a matter of course, but he had been desperately gratified. It was hard to bear that there should be a fly in his ointment. Yet a fly there was. He missed Caroline. Driving home in the early morning he tried to reason with himself why Caroline’s absence should have taken the glow off his evening, why she had never been out of his thoughts. There had been plenty of people to take her place. Women who discussed his play with real intelligence. Caroline would never have done that. Lilias to show how slavishly she was his. Other women, who would like to entertain for him, inviting him to this and that. He was furiously angry with Caroline.
He had no idea why she had gone home. He supposed she had not liked the play. The last act had been a little outspoken, but he had told her the plot, she must have known how it would turn out. Narrow-minded fool. He would tell her when he got home.
Caroline was still awake when he got in. Her face was smeared and swollen with crying. John turned on the light. He sat on the bed.
“My dear Caroline. What is the matter?” Caroline blew her nose and sat up.
“But I told you. Longy’s dead.”
John’s face puckered with amazement.
“Do you mean to tell me you left me on my first night, and missed the party, because of an old governess that you haven’t seen for nearly seventeen years?”
Caroline’s voice shook.
“She died of starvation, John. How could I have let her? I ought to have done something. I ought not to have let her die like that.”
“Of course you ought not. But surely, all this remorse is a bit misplaced to-night? I have made a tremendous success, you know. You ruined my evening. I thought you went home because you didn’t like the last act.”
Caroline gave him an ashamed look.
“It was in the interval I heard about Longy. I never listened to the last act.” John leant back at the end of the bed and roared with laughter. Caroline stopped him. “Do be careful. You’ll wake the children.”
John got up and moved closer to her. He took her in his arms.
“My poor Caroline. You look like one of the children’s frocks that Nanny has put to soak before she washes it. Your face is all pleated you’ve cried so much. I tell you what I sh all do. I shall get a bottle of champagne. We’ll have a party, all by ourselves.”
“But it’s early morning,” Caroline objected. “Besides, there’s nothing to laugh about. It really is dreadful.”
“Of course it’s dreadful, but your crying won’t help things now. I shan’t be a moment.”
The champagne did Caroline good. While they drank John told her a few of the nice things people had said. Then he put down his glass.
“Lately, Caroline, I’ve thought about us. You know, darling, one of us has got to give in, or we are going to drift apart. What you want of life and what I want are two quite different things. You married me for better or worse; and I don’t think you’re accepting the ‘for better.’ I’m not a very good husband. I’ve horrible failings. But I can’t see it’s helping either of us if you’re not a good wife.”
“John!” Caroline was so surprised that her voice came in a gasp. “I never think of anything but you and the children.”
He shook his head.
“I grant, according to your lights, you’re a good mother. But what about the Manor? All these weeks, when my play has been so important to me, you’ve been engrossed in nothing but your brother’s business. Now it’s your old governess. To-morrow it may be a great-uncle. At supper to-night a whole lot of people asked me if I would come to dinners and receptions. I am a successful man. That means that my wife has got to entertain and perhaps put other things aside and think of me first.”
Caroline spoke with the courage of champagne.
“Do you put me first?” Then she shook her head. “I didn’t mean to ask that.”
“But you have asked it.” He stroked the back of her hand where it lay on the eiderdown. “Sometimes I wish you did not come so far first with me. Whatever happens, Caroline, never get into your head that anything else, or any other person, has that bit of me that belongs to you. I’m weak and a fool but you are my harbour. With poetic licence, accepting me as a ship, if you follow.”
“Am I?” Caroline looked puzzled. If that were true, how could Lilias be true? Everything in Caroline, even after a glass of champagne, shrank from a direct question. Was it possible that the love John had for her could be apart from that side of being husband and wife? From that side in which John had for so long lost interest?
“I’ve no right to ask favours of you, Caroline. Whatever I may say, you are a far better wife than I am a husband. But I want you to help me. Our children have nurses, governesses and schools. They don’t need you as I do. I want us to build my reputation. I want you to entertain for me, and to be entertained with me. We are on the crest of a wave. I have had this tremendous reception to-night, except from you. I can write more plays. If you would try, we could become figures in London. I know to you this seems very unimportant, but to me, who started life in a national school, it’s everything. Can you understand? I want to be a ‘person.’ You know writers can be quite important, almost as important as a Torrys.” She said nothing. In the pause he ran his first finger up and down the bone-lines on the back of her hand. “As for to-night, you can’t help Longy, but you could, if you like, help some others. I will set aside some of my royalties, and you can start a little fund, for old governesses.”
“Oh, John!” Caroline’s eyes shone. “That’s a lovely idea.”
He made a face at her.
“But remember, old governesses, the children, or the Manor, or whatever else it is, come second. Mr. John England is to come first.”