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@@ -0,0 +1,12492 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ann Veronica, by H. G. Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Ann Veronica + +Author: H. G. Wells + +Release Date: March 18, 2006 [EBook #524] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANN VERONICA *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger + + + + + +ANN VERONICA + +A MODERN LOVE STORY + +By H. G. Wells + + + + + + CONTENTSCHAP. + I. ANN VERONICA TALKS TO HER FATHER + II. ANN VERONICA GATHERS POINTS OF VIEW + III. THE MORNING OF THE CRISIS + IV. THE CRISIS + V. THE FLIGHT TO LONDON + VI. EXPOSTULATIONS + VII. IDEALS AND A REALITY + VIII. BIOLOGY + IX. DISCORDS + X. THE SUFFRAGETTES + XI. THOUGHTS IN PRISON + XII. ANN VERONICA PUTS THINGS IN ORDER + XIII. THE SAPPHIRE RING + XIV. THE COLLAPSE OF THE PENITENT + XV. THE LAST DAYS AT HOME + XVI. IN THE MOUNTAINS + XVII. IN PERSPECTIVE + + + + "The art of ignoring is one of the accomplishments of every + well-bred girl, so carefully instilled that at last she can even + ignore her own thoughts and her own knowledge." + + + + +ANN VERONICA + + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +ANN VERONICA TALKS TO HER FATHER + + +Part 1 + + +One Wednesday afternoon in late September, Ann Veronica Stanley came +down from London in a state of solemn excitement and quite resolved to +have things out with her father that very evening. She had trembled on +the verge of such a resolution before, but this time quite definitely +she made it. A crisis had been reached, and she was almost glad it had +been reached. She made up her mind in the train home that it should be +a decisive crisis. It is for that reason that this novel begins with +her there, and neither earlier nor later, for it is the history of this +crisis and its consequences that this novel has to tell. + +She had a compartment to herself in the train from London to Morningside +Park, and she sat with both her feet on the seat in an attitude that +would certainly have distressed her mother to see, and horrified her +grandmother beyond measure; she sat with her knees up to her chin and +her hands clasped before them, and she was so lost in thought that +she discovered with a start, from a lettered lamp, that she was at +Morningside Park, and thought she was moving out of the station, whereas +she was only moving in. "Lord!" she said. She jumped up at once, +caught up a leather clutch containing notebooks, a fat text-book, and +a chocolate-and-yellow-covered pamphlet, and leaped neatly from the +carriage, only to discover that the train was slowing down and that she +had to traverse the full length of the platform past it again as the +result of her precipitation. "Sold again," she remarked. "Idiot!" She +raged inwardly while she walked along with that air of self-contained +serenity that is proper to a young lady of nearly two-and-twenty under +the eye of the world. + +She walked down the station approach, past the neat, obtrusive offices +of the coal merchant and the house agent, and so to the wicket-gate by +the butcher's shop that led to the field path to her home. Outside the +post-office stood a no-hatted, blond young man in gray flannels, who was +elaborately affixing a stamp to a letter. At the sight of her he became +rigid and a singularly bright shade of pink. She made herself serenely +unaware of his existence, though it may be it was his presence that sent +her by the field detour instead of by the direct path up the Avenue. + +"Umph!" he said, and regarded his letter doubtfully before consigning it +to the pillar-box. "Here goes," he said. Then he hovered undecidedly for +some seconds with his hands in his pockets and his mouth puckered to a +whistle before he turned to go home by the Avenue. + +Ann Veronica forgot him as soon as she was through the gate, and her +face resumed its expression of stern preoccupation. "It's either now or +never," she said to herself.... + +Morningside Park was a suburb that had not altogether, as people say, +come off. It consisted, like pre-Roman Gaul, of three parts. There was +first the Avenue, which ran in a consciously elegant curve from the +railway station into an undeveloped wilderness of agriculture, with big, +yellow brick villas on either side, and then there was the pavement, the +little clump of shops about the post-office, and under the railway arch +was a congestion of workmen's dwellings. The road from Surbiton and +Epsom ran under the arch, and, like a bright fungoid growth in the +ditch, there was now appearing a sort of fourth estate of little +red-and-white rough-cast villas, with meretricious gables and very +brassy window-blinds. Behind the Avenue was a little hill, and an +iron-fenced path went over the crest of this to a stile under an +elm-tree, and forked there, with one branch going back into the Avenue +again. + +"It's either now or never," said Ann Veronica, again ascending this +stile. "Much as I hate rows, I've either got to make a stand or give in +altogether." + +She seated herself in a loose and easy attitude and surveyed the +backs of the Avenue houses; then her eyes wandered to where the new +red-and-white villas peeped among the trees. She seemed to be making +some sort of inventory. "Ye Gods!" she said at last. "WHAT a place! + +"Stuffy isn't the word for it. + +"I wonder what he takes me for?" + +When presently she got down from the stile a certain note of internal +conflict, a touch of doubt, had gone from her warm-tinted face. She had +now the clear and tranquil expression of one whose mind is made up. Her +back had stiffened, and her hazel eyes looked steadfastly ahead. + +As she approached the corner of the Avenue the blond, no-hatted man in +gray flannels appeared. There was a certain air of forced fortuity in +his manner. He saluted awkwardly. "Hello, Vee!" he said. + +"Hello, Teddy!" she answered. + +He hung vaguely for a moment as she passed. + +But it was clear she was in no mood for Teddys. He realized that he was +committed to the path across the fields, an uninteresting walk at the +best of times. + +"Oh, dammit!" he remarked, "dammit!" with great bitterness as he faced +it. + + + +Part 2 + + +Ann Veronica Stanley was twenty-one and a half years old. She had black +hair, fine eyebrows, and a clear complexion; and the forces that had +modelled her features had loved and lingered at their work and made them +subtle and fine. She was slender, and sometimes she seemed tall, and +walked and carried herself lightly and joyfully as one who commonly +and habitually feels well, and sometimes she stooped a little and +was preoccupied. Her lips came together with an expression between +contentment and the faintest shadow of a smile, her manner was one of +quiet reserve, and behind this mask she was wildly discontented and +eager for freedom and life. + +She wanted to live. She was vehemently impatient--she did not clearly +know for what--to do, to be, to experience. And experience was slow in +coming. All the world about her seemed to be--how can one put it?--in +wrappers, like a house when people leave it in the summer. The blinds +were all drawn, the sunlight kept out, one could not tell what +colors these gray swathings hid. She wanted to know. And there was no +intimation whatever that the blinds would ever go up or the windows or +doors be opened, or the chandeliers, that seemed to promise such a blaze +of fire, unveiled and furnished and lit. Dim souls flitted about her, +not only speaking but it would seem even thinking in undertones.... + +During her school days, especially her earlier school days, the world +had been very explicit with her, telling her what to do, what not to do, +giving her lessons to learn and games to play and interests of the most +suitable and various kinds. Presently she woke up to the fact that there +was a considerable group of interests called being in love and getting +married, with certain attractive and amusing subsidiary developments, +such as flirtation and "being interested" in people of the opposite sex. +She approached this field with her usual liveliness of apprehension. But +here she met with a check. These interests her world promptly, through +the agency of schoolmistresses, older school-mates, her aunt, and a +number of other responsible and authoritative people, assured her she +must on no account think about. Miss Moffatt, the history and moral +instruction mistress, was particularly explicit upon this score, and +they all agreed in indicating contempt and pity for girls whose minds +ran on such matters, and who betrayed it in their conversation or dress +or bearing. It was, in fact, a group of interests quite unlike any +other group, peculiar and special, and one to be thoroughly ashamed of. +Nevertheless, Ann Veronica found it a difficult matter not to think of +these things. However having a considerable amount of pride, she decided +she would disavow these undesirable topics and keep her mind away from +them just as far as she could, but it left her at the end of her school +days with that wrapped feeling I have described, and rather at loose +ends. + +The world, she discovered, with these matters barred had no particular +place for her at all, nothing for her to do, except a functionless +existence varied by calls, tennis, selected novels, walks, and dusting +in her father's house. She thought study would be better. She was a +clever girl, the best of her year in the High School, and she made +a valiant fight for Somerville or Newnham but her father had met and +argued with a Somerville girl at a friend's dinner-table and he thought +that sort of thing unsexed a woman. He said simply that he wanted her to +live at home. There was a certain amount of disputation, and meanwhile +she went on at school. They compromised at length on the science course +at the Tredgold Women's College--she had already matriculated into +London University from school--she came of age, and she bickered with +her aunt for latch-key privileges on the strength of that and her season +ticket. Shamefaced curiosities began to come back into her mind, thinly +disguised as literature and art. She read voraciously, and presently, +because of her aunt's censorship, she took to smuggling any books she +thought might be prohibited instead of bringing them home openly, and +she went to the theatre whenever she could produce an acceptable friend +to accompany her. She passed her general science examination with double +honors and specialized in science. She happened to have an acute sense +of form and unusual mental lucidity, and she found in biology, and +particularly in comparative anatomy, a very considerable interest, +albeit the illumination it cast upon her personal life was not +altogether direct. She dissected well, and in a year she found herself +chafing at the limitations of the lady B. Sc. who retailed a store of +faded learning in the Tredgold laboratory. She had already realized that +this instructress was hopelessly wrong and foggy--it is the test of the +good comparative anatomist--upon the skull. She discovered a desire to +enter as a student in the Imperial College at Westminster, where Russell +taught, and go on with her work at the fountain-head. + +She had asked about that already, and her father had replied, evasively: +"We'll have to see about that, little Vee; we'll have to see about +that." In that posture of being seen about the matter hung until she +seemed committed to another session at the Tredgold College, and in the +mean time a small conflict arose and brought the latch-key question, and +in fact the question of Ann Veronica's position generally, to an acute +issue. + +In addition to the various business men, solicitors, civil servants, +and widow ladies who lived in the Morningside Park Avenue, there was a +certain family of alien sympathies and artistic quality, the Widgetts, +with which Ann Veronica had become very friendly. Mr. Widgett was a +journalist and art critic, addicted to a greenish-gray tweed suit +and "art" brown ties; he smoked corncob pipes in the Avenue on Sunday +morning, travelled third class to London by unusual trains, and openly +despised golf. He occupied one of the smaller houses near the station. +He had one son, who had been co-educated, and three daughters with +peculiarly jolly red hair that Ann Veronica found adorable. Two of these +had been her particular intimates at the High School, and had done much +to send her mind exploring beyond the limits of the available literature +at home. It was a cheerful, irresponsible, shamelessly hard-up family in +the key of faded green and flattened purple, and the girls went on from +the High School to the Fadden Art School and a bright, eventful life of +art student dances, Socialist meetings, theatre galleries, talking about +work, and even, at intervals, work; and ever and again they drew Ann +Veronica from her sound persistent industry into the circle of these +experiences. They had asked her to come to the first of the two great +annual Fadden Dances, the October one, and Ann Veronica had accepted +with enthusiasm. And now her father said she must not go. + +He had "put his foot down," and said she must not go. + +Going involved two things that all Ann Veronica's tact had been +ineffectual to conceal from her aunt and father. Her usual dignified +reserve had availed her nothing. One point was that she was to wear +fancy dress in the likeness of a Corsair's bride, and the other was that +she was to spend whatever vestiges of the night remained after the dance +was over in London with the Widgett girls and a select party in "quite a +decent little hotel" near Fitzroy Square. + +"But, my dear!" said Ann Veronica's aunt. + +"You see," said Ann Veronica, with the air of one who shares a +difficulty, "I've promised to go. I didn't realize--I don't see how I +can get out of it now." + +Then it was her father issued his ultimatum. He had conveyed it to her, +not verbally, but by means of a letter, which seemed to her a singularly +ignoble method of prohibition. "He couldn't look me in the face and say +it," said Ann Veronica. + +"But of course it's aunt's doing really." + +And thus it was that as Ann Veronica neared the gates of home, she said +to herself: "I'll have it out with him somehow. I'll have it out with +him. And if he won't--" + +But she did not give even unspoken words to the alternative at that +time. + + + +Part 3 + + +Ann Veronica's father was a solicitor with a good deal of company +business: a lean, trustworthy, worried-looking, neuralgic, clean-shaven +man of fifty-three, with a hard mouth, a sharp nose, iron-gray hair, +gray eyes, gold-framed glasses, and a small, circular baldness at the +crown of his head. His name was Peter. He had had five children at +irregular intervals, of whom Ann Veronica was the youngest, so that as +a parent he came to her perhaps a little practised and jaded and +inattentive; and he called her his "little Vee," and patted her +unexpectedly and disconcertingly, and treated her promiscuously as of +any age between eleven and eight-and-twenty. The City worried him a good +deal, and what energy he had left over he spent partly in golf, a game +he treated very seriously, and partly in the practices of microscopic +petrography. + +He "went in" for microscopy in the unphilosophical Victorian manner as +his "hobby." A birthday present of a microscope had turned his mind to +technical microscopy when he was eighteen, and a chance friendship with +a Holborn microscope dealer had confirmed that bent. He had remarkably +skilful fingers and a love of detailed processes, and he had become one +of the most dexterous amateur makers of rock sections in the world. +He spent a good deal more money and time than he could afford upon the +little room at the top of the house, in producing new lapidary apparatus +and new microscopic accessories and in rubbing down slices of rock to +a transparent thinness and mounting them in a beautiful and dignified +manner. He did it, he said, "to distract his mind." His chief successes +he exhibited to the Lowndean Microscopical Society, where their high +technical merit never failed to excite admiration. Their scientific +value was less considerable, since he chose rocks entirely with a +view to their difficulty of handling or their attractiveness at +conversaziones when done. He had a great contempt for the sections the +"theorizers" produced. They proved all sorts of things perhaps, but they +were thick, unequal, pitiful pieces of work. Yet an indiscriminating, +wrong-headed world gave such fellows all sorts of distinctions.... + +He read but little, and that chiefly healthy light fiction with +chromatic titles, The Red Sword, The Black Helmet, The Purple Robe, also +in order "to distract his mind." He read it in winter in the evening +after dinner, and Ann Veronica associated it with a tendency to +monopolize the lamp, and to spread a very worn pair of dappled fawn-skin +slippers across the fender. She wondered occasionally why his mind +needed so much distraction. His favorite newspaper was the Times, which +he began at breakfast in the morning often with manifest irritation, and +carried off to finish in the train, leaving no other paper at home. + +It occurred to Ann Veronica once that she had known him when he was +younger, but day had followed day, and each had largely obliterated the +impression of its predecessor. But she certainly remembered that when +she was a little girl he sometimes wore tennis flannels, and also rode a +bicycle very dexterously in through the gates to the front door. And +in those days, too, he used to help her mother with her gardening, and +hover about her while she stood on the ladder and hammered creepers to +the scullery wall. + +It had been Ann Veronica's lot as the youngest child to live in a home +that became less animated and various as she grew up. Her mother had +died when she was thirteen, her two much older sisters had married +off--one submissively, one insubordinately; her two brothers had gone +out into the world well ahead of her, and so she had made what she could +of her father. But he was not a father one could make much of. + +His ideas about girls and women were of a sentimental and modest +quality; they were creatures, he thought, either too bad for a modern +vocabulary, and then frequently most undesirably desirable, or too pure +and good for life. He made this simple classification of a large and +various sex to the exclusion of all intermediate kinds; he held that +the two classes had to be kept apart even in thought and remote from one +another. Women are made like the potter's vessels--either for worship +or contumely, and are withal fragile vessels. He had never wanted +daughters. Each time a daughter had been born to him he had concealed +his chagrin with great tenderness and effusion from his wife, and had +sworn unwontedly and with passionate sincerity in the bathroom. He was +a manly man, free from any strong maternal strain, and he had loved his +dark-eyed, dainty bright-colored, and active little wife with a real +vein of passion in his sentiment. But he had always felt (he had never +allowed himself to think of it) that the promptitude of their family +was a little indelicate of her, and in a sense an intrusion. He had, +however, planned brilliant careers for his two sons, and, with a certain +human amount of warping and delay, they were pursuing these. One was +in the Indian Civil Service and one in the rapidly developing motor +business. The daughters, he had hoped, would be their mother's care. + +He had no ideas about daughters. They happen to a man. + +Of course a little daughter is a delightful thing enough. It runs about +gayly, it romps, it is bright and pretty, it has enormous quantities of +soft hair and more power of expressing affection than its brothers. It +is a lovely little appendage to the mother who smiles over it, and it +does things quaintly like her, gestures with her very gestures. It makes +wonderful sentences that you can repeat in the City and are good +enough for Punch. You call it a lot of nicknames--"Babs" and "Bibs" and +"Viddles" and "Vee"; you whack at it playfully, and it whacks you back. +It loves to sit on your knee. All that is jolly and as it should be. + +But a little daughter is one thing and a daughter quite another. There +one comes to a relationship that Mr. Stanley had never thought out. +When he found himself thinking about it, it upset him so that he at once +resorted to distraction. The chromatic fiction with which he relieved +his mind glanced but slightly at this aspect of life, and never with any +quality of guidance. Its heroes never had daughters, they borrowed other +people's. The one fault, indeed, of this school of fiction for him was +that it had rather a light way with parental rights. His instinct was in +the direction of considering his daughters his absolute property, bound +to obey him, his to give away or his to keep to be a comfort in his +declining years just as he thought fit. About this conception of +ownership he perceived and desired a certain sentimental glamour, he +liked everything properly dressed, but it remained ownership. Ownership +seemed only a reasonable return for the cares and expenses of a +daughter's upbringing. Daughters were not like sons. He perceived, +however, that both the novels he read and the world he lived in +discountenanced these assumptions. Nothing else was put in their place, +and they remained sotto voce, as it were, in his mind. The new and +the old cancelled out; his daughters became quasi-independent +dependents--which is absurd. One married as he wished and one against +his wishes, and now here was Ann Veronica, his little Vee, discontented +with her beautiful, safe, and sheltering home, going about with hatless +friends to Socialist meetings and art-class dances, and displaying a +disposition to carry her scientific ambitions to unwomanly lengths. She +seemed to think he was merely the paymaster, handing over the means +of her freedom. And now she insisted that she MUST leave the chastened +security of the Tredgold Women's College for Russell's unbridled +classes, and wanted to go to fancy dress dances in pirate costume and +spend the residue of the night with Widgett's ramshackle girls in some +indescribable hotel in Soho! + +He had done his best not to think about her at all, but the situation +and his sister had become altogether too urgent. He had finally put +aside The Lilac Sunbonnet, gone into his study, lit the gas fire, and +written the letter that had brought these unsatisfactory relations to a +head. + + +Part 4 + +MY DEAR VEE, he wrote. + +These daughters! He gnawed his pen and reflected, tore the sheet up, and +began again. + +"MY DEAR VERONICA,--Your aunt tells me you have involved yourself in +some arrangement with the Widgett girls about a Fancy Dress Ball in +London. I gather you wish to go up in some fantastic get-up, wrapped +about in your opera cloak, and that after the festivities you propose to +stay with these friends of yours, and without any older people in your +party, at an hotel. Now I am sorry to cross you in anything you have set +your heart upon, but I regret to say--" + +"H'm," he reflected, and crossed out the last four words. + +"--but this cannot be." + +"No," he said, and tried again: "but I must tell you quite definitely +that I feel it to be my duty to forbid any such exploit." + +"Damn!" he remarked at the defaced letter; and, taking a fresh sheet, he +recopied what he had written. A certain irritation crept into his manner +as he did so. + +"I regret that you should ever have proposed it," he went on. + +He meditated, and began a new paragraph. + +"The fact of it is, and this absurd project of yours only brings it to +a head, you have begun to get hold of some very queer ideas about what a +young lady in your position may or may not venture to do. I do not think +you quite understand my ideals or what is becoming as between father and +daughter. Your attitude to me--" + +He fell into a brown study. It was so difficult to put precisely. + +"--and your aunt--" + +For a time he searched for the mot juste. Then he went on: + +"--and, indeed, to most of the established things in life is, frankly, +unsatisfactory. You are restless, aggressive, critical with all +the crude unthinking criticism of youth. You have no grasp upon the +essential facts of life (I pray God you never may), and in your rash +ignorance you are prepared to dash into positions that may end in +lifelong regret. The life of a young girl is set about with prowling +pitfalls." + +He was arrested for a moment by an indistinct picture of Veronica +reading this last sentence. But he was now too deeply moved to trace +a certain unsatisfactoriness to its source in a mixture of metaphors. +"Well," he said, argumentatively, "it IS. That's all about it. It's time +she knew." + +"The life of a young girl is set about with prowling pitfalls, from +which she must be shielded at all costs." + +His lips tightened, and he frowned with solemn resolution. + +"So long as I am your father, so long as your life is entrusted to my +care, I feel bound by every obligation to use my authority to check this +odd disposition of yours toward extravagant enterprises. A day will come +when you will thank me. It is not, my dear Veronica, that I think there +is any harm in you; there is not. But a girl is soiled not only by evil +but by the proximity of evil, and a reputation for rashness may do +her as serious an injury as really reprehensible conduct. So do please +believe that in this matter I am acting for the best." + +He signed his name and reflected. Then he opened the study door and +called "Mollie!" and returned to assume an attitude of authority on the +hearthrug, before the blue flames and orange glow of the gas fire. + +His sister appeared. + +She was dressed in one of those complicated dresses that are all lace +and work and confused patternings of black and purple and cream about +the body, and she was in many ways a younger feminine version of the +same theme as himself. She had the same sharp nose--which, indeed, only +Ann Veronica, of all the family, had escaped. She carried herself well, +whereas her brother slouched, and there was a certain aristocratic +dignity about her that she had acquired through her long engagement to +a curate of family, a scion of the Wiltshire Edmondshaws. He had died +before they married, and when her brother became a widower she had +come to his assistance and taken over much of the care of his youngest +daughter. But from the first her rather old-fashioned conception of life +had jarred with the suburban atmosphere, the High School spirit and the +memories of the light and little Mrs. Stanley, whose family had been by +any reckoning inconsiderable--to use the kindliest term. Miss Stanley +had determined from the outset to have the warmest affection for her +youngest niece and to be a second mother in her life--a second and a +better one; but she had found much to battle with, and there was much in +herself that Ann Veronica failed to understand. She came in now with an +air of reserved solicitude. + +Mr. Stanley pointed to the letter with a pipe he had drawn from his +jacket pocket. "What do you think of that?" he asked. + +She took it up in her many-ringed hands and read it judicially. He +filled his pipe slowly. + +"Yes," she said at last, "it is firm and affectionate." + +"I could have said more." + +"You seem to have said just what had to be said. It seems to me exactly +what is wanted. She really must not go to that affair." + +She paused, and he waited for her to speak. + +"I don't think she quite sees the harm of those people or the sort of +life to which they would draw her," she said. "They would spoil every +chance." + +"She has chances?" he said, helping her out. + +"She is an extremely attractive girl," she said; and added, "to some +people. Of course, one doesn't like to talk about things until there are +things to talk about." + +"All the more reason why she shouldn't get herself talked about." + +"That is exactly what I feel." + +Mr. Stanley took the letter and stood with it in his hand thoughtfully +for a time. "I'd give anything," he remarked, "to see our little Vee +happily and comfortably married." + +He gave the note to the parlormaid the next morning in an inadvertent, +casual manner just as he was leaving the house to catch his London +train. When Ann Veronica got it she had at first a wild, fantastic idea +that it contained a tip. + + +Part 5 + + +Ann Veronica's resolve to have things out with her father was not +accomplished without difficulty. + +He was not due from the City until about six, and so she went and played +Badminton with the Widgett girls until dinner-time. The atmosphere at +dinner was not propitious. Her aunt was blandly amiable above a certain +tremulous undertow, and talked as if to a caller about the alarming +spread of marigolds that summer at the end of the garden, a sort of +Yellow Peril to all the smaller hardy annuals, while her father brought +some papers to table and presented himself as preoccupied with them. "It +really seems as if we shall have to put down marigolds altogether next +year," Aunt Molly repeated three times, "and do away with marguerites. +They seed beyond all reason." Elizabeth, the parlormaid, kept coming in +to hand vegetables whenever there seemed a chance of Ann Veronica asking +for an interview. Directly dinner was over Mr. Stanley, having pretended +to linger to smoke, fled suddenly up-stairs to petrography, and when +Veronica tapped he answered through the locked door, "Go away, Vee! I'm +busy," and made a lapidary's wheel buzz loudly. + +Breakfast, too, was an impossible occasion. He read the Times with an +unusually passionate intentness, and then declared suddenly for the +earlier of the two trains he used. + +"I'll come to the station," said Ann Veronica. "I may as well come up by +this train." + +"I may have to run," said her father, with an appeal to his watch. + +"I'll run, too," she volunteered. + +Instead of which they walked sharply.... + +"I say, daddy," she began, and was suddenly short of breath. + +"If it's about that dance project," he said, "it's no good, Veronica. +I've made up my mind." + +"You'll make me look a fool before all my friends." + +"You shouldn't have made an engagement until you'd consulted your aunt." + +"I thought I was old enough," she gasped, between laughter and crying. + +Her father's step quickened to a trot. "I won't have you quarrelling and +crying in the Avenue," he said. "Stop it!... If you've got anything +to say, you must say it to your aunt--" + +"But look here, daddy!" + +He flapped the Times at her with an imperious gesture. + +"It's settled. You're not to go. You're NOT to go." + +"But it's about other things." + +"I don't care. This isn't the place." + +"Then may I come to the study to-night--after dinner?" + +"I'm--BUSY!" + +"It's important. If I can't talk anywhere else--I DO want an +understanding." + +Ahead of them walked a gentleman whom it was evident they must at their +present pace very speedily overtake. It was Ramage, the occupant of the +big house at the end of the Avenue. He had recently made Mr. Stanley's +acquaintance in the train and shown him one or two trifling civilities. +He was an outside broker and the proprietor of a financial newspaper; he +had come up very rapidly in the last few years, and Mr. Stanley admired +and detested him in almost equal measure. It was intolerable to think +that he might overhear words and phrases. Mr. Stanley's pace slackened. + +"You've no right to badger me like this, Veronica," he said. "I can't +see what possible benefit can come of discussing things that are +settled. If you want advice, your aunt is the person. However, if you +must air your opinions--" + +"To-night, then, daddy!" + +He made an angry but conceivably an assenting noise, and then Ramage +glanced back and stopped, saluted elaborately, and waited for them to +come up. He was a square-faced man of nearly fifty, with iron-gray hair +a mobile, clean-shaven mouth and rather protuberant black eyes that now +scrutinized Ann Veronica. He dressed rather after the fashion of the +West End than the City, and affected a cultured urbanity that somehow +disconcerted and always annoyed Ann Veronica's father extremely. He +did not play golf, but took his exercise on horseback, which was also +unsympathetic. + +"Stuffy these trees make the Avenue," said Mr. Stanley as they drew +alongside, to account for his own ruffled and heated expression. "They +ought to have been lopped in the spring." + +"There's plenty of time," said Ramage. "Is Miss Stanley coming up with +us?" + +"I go second," she said, "and change at Wimbledon." + +"We'll all go second," said Ramage, "if we may?" + +Mr. Stanley wanted to object strongly, but as he could not immediately +think how to put it, he contented himself with a grunt, and the motion +was carried. "How's Mrs. Ramage?" he asked. + +"Very much as usual," said Ramage. "She finds lying up so much very +irksome. But, you see, she HAS to lie up." + +The topic of his invalid wife bored him, and he turned at once to Ann +Veronica. "And where are YOU going?" he said. "Are you going on again +this winter with that scientific work of yours? It's an instance of +heredity, I suppose." For a moment Mr. Stanley almost liked Ramage. +"You're a biologist, aren't you?" + +He began to talk of his own impressions of biology as a commonplace +magazine reader who had to get what he could from the monthly reviews, +and was glad to meet with any information from nearer the fountainhead. +In a little while he and she were talking quite easily and agreeably. +They went on talking in the train--it seemed to her father a slight want +of deference to him--and he listened and pretended to read the Times. He +was struck disagreeably by Ramage's air of gallant consideration and Ann +Veronica's self-possessed answers. These things did not harmonize with +his conception of the forthcoming (if unavoidable) interview. After +all, it came to him suddenly as a harsh discovery that she might be in +a sense regarded as grownup. He was a man who in all things classified +without nuance, and for him there were in the matter of age just two +feminine classes and no more--girls and women. The distinction lay +chiefly in the right to pat their heads. But here was a girl--she must +be a girl, since she was his daughter and pat-able--imitating the +woman quite remarkably and cleverly. He resumed his listening. She was +discussing one of those modern advanced plays with a remarkable, with an +extraordinary, confidence. + +"His love-making," she remarked, "struck me as unconvincing. He seemed +too noisy." + +The full significance of her words did not instantly appear to him. Then +it dawned. Good heavens! She was discussing love-making. For a time he +heard no more, and stared with stony eyes at a Book-War proclamation in +leaded type that filled half a column of the Times that day. Could she +understand what she was talking about? Luckily it was a second-class +carriage and the ordinary fellow-travellers were not there. Everybody, +he felt, must be listening behind their papers. + +Of course, girls repeat phrases and opinions of which they cannot +possibly understand the meaning. But a middle-aged man like Ramage ought +to know better than to draw out a girl, the daughter of a friend and +neighbor.... + +Well, after all, he seemed to be turning the subject. "Broddick is a +heavy man," he was saying, "and the main interest of the play was the +embezzlement." Thank Heaven! Mr. Stanley allowed his paper to drop +a little, and scrutinized the hats and brows of their three +fellow-travellers. + +They reached Wimbledon, and Ramage whipped out to hand Miss Stanley +to the platform as though she had been a duchess, and she descended as +though such attentions from middle-aged, but still gallant, merchants +were a matter of course. Then, as Ramage readjusted himself in a corner, +he remarked: "These young people shoot up, Stanley. It seems only +yesterday that she was running down the Avenue, all hair and legs." + +Mr. Stanley regarded him through his glasses with something approaching +animosity. + +"Now she's all hat and ideas," he said, with an air of humor. + +"She seems an unusually clever girl," said Ramage. + +Mr. Stanley regarded his neighbor's clean-shaven face almost warily. +"I'm not sure whether we don't rather overdo all this higher education," +he said, with an effect of conveying profound meanings. + + +Part 6 + + +He became quite sure, by a sort of accumulation of reflection, as the +day wore on. He found his youngest daughter intrusive in his thoughts +all through the morning, and still more so in the afternoon. He saw her +young and graceful back as she descended from the carriage, severely +ignoring him, and recalled a glimpse he had of her face, bright and +serene, as his train ran out of Wimbledon. He recalled with exasperating +perplexity her clear, matter-of-fact tone as she talked about +love-making being unconvincing. He was really very proud of her, and +extraordinarily angry and resentful at the innocent and audacious +self-reliance that seemed to intimate her sense of absolute independence +of him, her absolute security without him. After all, she only LOOKED a +woman. She was rash and ignorant, absolutely inexperienced. Absolutely. +He began to think of speeches, very firm, explicit speeches, he would +make. + +He lunched in the Legal Club in Chancery Lane, and met Ogilvy. Daughters +were in the air that day. Ogilvy was full of a client's trouble in +that matter, a grave and even tragic trouble. He told some of the +particulars. + +"Curious case," said Ogilvy, buttering his bread and cutting it up in a +way he had. "Curious case--and sets one thinking." + +He resumed, after a mouthful: "Here is a girl of sixteen or seventeen, +seventeen and a half to be exact, running about, as one might say, in +London. Schoolgirl. Her family are solid West End people, Kensington +people. Father--dead. She goes out and comes home. Afterward goes on to +Oxford. Twenty-one, twenty-two. Why doesn't she marry? Plenty of money +under her father's will. Charming girl." + +He consumed Irish stew for some moments. + +"Married already," he said, with his mouth full. "Shopman." + +"Good God!" said Mr. Stanley. + +"Good-looking rascal she met at Worthing. Very romantic and all that. He +fixed it." + +"But--" + +"He left her alone. Pure romantic nonsense on her part. Sheer +calculation on his. Went up to Somerset House to examine the will before +he did it. Yes. Nice position." + +"She doesn't care for him now?" + +"Not a bit. What a girl of sixteen cares for is hair and a high color +and moonlight and a tenor voice. I suppose most of our daughters would +marry organ-grinders if they had a chance--at that age. My son wanted +to marry a woman of thirty in a tobacconist's shop. Only a son's another +story. We fixed that. Well, that's the situation. My people don't know +what to do. Can't face a scandal. Can't ask the gent to go abroad and +condone a bigamy. He misstated her age and address; but you can't get +home on him for a thing like that.... There you are! Girl spoilt for +life. Makes one want to go back to the Oriental system!" + +Mr. Stanley poured wine. "Damned Rascal!" he said. "Isn't there a +brother to kick him?" + +"Mere satisfaction," reflected Ogilvy. "Mere sensuality. I rather think +they have kicked him, from the tone of some of the letters. Nice, of +course. But it doesn't alter the situation." + +"It's these Rascals," said Mr. Stanley, and paused. + +"Always has been," said Ogilvy. "Our interest lies in heading them off." + +"There was a time when girls didn't get these extravagant ideas." + +"Lydia Languish, for example. Anyhow, they didn't run about so much." + +"Yes. That's about the beginning. It's these damned novels. All this +torrent of misleading, spurious stuff that pours from the press. These +sham ideals and advanced notions. Women who Dids, and all that kind of +thing...." + +Ogilvy reflected. "This girl--she's really a very charming, frank +person--had had her imagination fired, so she told me, by a school +performance of Romeo and Juliet." + +Mr. Stanley decided to treat that as irrelevant. "There ought to be a +Censorship of Books. We want it badly at the present time. Even WITH +the Censorship of Plays there's hardly a decent thing to which a man can +take his wife and daughters, a creeping taint of suggestion everywhere. +What would it be without that safeguard?" + +Ogilvy pursued his own topic. "I'm inclined to think, Stanley, myself +that as a matter of fact it was the expurgated Romeo and Juliet did the +mischief. If our young person hadn't had the nurse part cut out, eh? She +might have known more and done less. I was curious about that. All they +left it was the moon and stars. And the balcony and 'My Romeo!'" + +"Shakespeare is altogether different from the modern stuff. Altogether +different. I'm not discussing Shakespeare. I don't want to Bowdlerize +Shakespeare. I'm not that sort I quite agree. But this modern miasma--" + +Mr. Stanley took mustard savagely. + +"Well, we won't go into Shakespeare," said Ogilvy "What interests me +is that our young women nowadays are running about as free as air +practically, with registry offices and all sorts of accommodation round +the corner. Nothing to check their proceedings but a declining habit of +telling the truth and the limitations of their imaginations. And in that +respect they stir up one another. Not my affair, of course, but I think +we ought to teach them more or restrain them more. One or the other. +They're too free for their innocence or too innocent for their freedom. +That's my point. Are you going to have any apple-tart, Stanley? The +apple-tart's been very good lately--very good!" + + + +Part 7 + + +At the end of dinner that evening Ann Veronica began: "Father!" + +Her father looked at her over his glasses and spoke with grave +deliberation; "If there is anything you want to say to me," he said, +"you must say it in the study. I am going to smoke a little here, and +then I shall go to the study. I don't see what you can have to say. I +should have thought my note cleared up everything. There are some papers +I have to look through to-night--important papers." + +"I won't keep you very long, daddy," said Ann Veronica. + +"I don't see, Mollie," he remarked, taking a cigar from the box on +the table as his sister and daughter rose, "why you and Vee shouldn't +discuss this little affair--whatever it is--without bothering me." + +It was the first time this controversy had become triangular, for all +three of them were shy by habit. + +He stopped in mid-sentence, and Ann Veronica opened the door for her +aunt. The air was thick with feelings. Her aunt went out of the room +with dignity and a rustle, and up-stairs to the fastness of her own +room. She agreed entirely with her brother. It distressed and confused +her that the girl should not come to her. + +It seemed to show a want of affection, to be a deliberate and unmerited +disregard, to justify the reprisal of being hurt. + +When Ann Veronica came into the study she found every evidence of a +carefully foreseen grouping about the gas fire. Both arm-chairs had been +moved a little so as to face each other on either side of the +fender, and in the circular glow of the green-shaded lamp there lay, +conspicuously waiting, a thick bundle of blue and white papers tied +with pink tape. Her father held some printed document in his hand, +and appeared not to observe her entry. "Sit down," he said, and +perused--"perused" is the word for it--for some moments. Then he put +the paper by. "And what is it all about, Veronica?" he asked, with a +deliberate note of irony, looking at her a little quizzically over his +glasses. + +Ann Veronica looked bright and a little elated, and she disregarded +her father's invitation to be seated. She stood on the mat instead, and +looked down on him. "Look here, daddy," she said, in a tone of great +reasonableness, "I MUST go to that dance, you know." + +Her father's irony deepened. "Why?" he asked, suavely. + +Her answer was not quite ready. "Well, because I don't see any reason +why I shouldn't." + +"You see I do." + +"Why shouldn't I go?" + +"It isn't a suitable place; it isn't a suitable gathering." + +"But, daddy, what do you know of the place and the gathering?" + +"And it's entirely out of order; it isn't right, it isn't correct; +it's impossible for you to stay in an hotel in London--the idea is +preposterous. I can't imagine what possessed you, Veronica." + +He put his head on one side, pulled down the corners of his mouth, and +looked at her over his glasses. + +"But why is it preposterous?" asked Ann Veronica, and fiddled with a +pipe on the mantel. + +"Surely!" he remarked, with an expression of worried appeal. + +"You see, daddy, I don't think it IS preposterous. That's really what +I want to discuss. It comes to this--am I to be trusted to take care of +myself, or am I not?" + +"To judge from this proposal of yours, I should say not." + +"I think I am." + +"As long as you remain under my roof--" he began, and paused. + +"You are going to treat me as though I wasn't. Well, I don't think +that's fair." + +"Your ideas of fairness--" he remarked, and discontinued that sentence. +"My dear girl," he said, in a tone of patient reasonableness, "you are a +mere child. You know nothing of life, nothing of its dangers, nothing of +its possibilities. You think everything is harmless and simple, and so +forth. It isn't. It isn't. That's where you go wrong. In some things, +in many things, you must trust to your elders, to those who know more of +life than you do. Your aunt and I have discussed all this matter. There +it is. You can't go." + +The conversation hung for a moment. Ann Veronica tried to keep hold of +a complicated situation and not lose her head. She had turned round +sideways, so as to look down into the fire. + +"You see, father," she said, "it isn't only this affair of the dance. +I want to go to that because it's a new experience, because I think +it will be interesting and give me a view of things. You say I know +nothing. That's probably true. But how am I to know of things?" + +"Some things I hope you may never know," he said. + +"I'm not so sure. I want to know--just as much as I can." + +"Tut!" he said, fuming, and put out his hand to the papers in the pink +tape. + +"Well, I do. It's just that I want to say. I want to be a human being; +I want to learn about things and know about things, and not to be +protected as something too precious for life, cooped up in one narrow +little corner." + +"Cooped up!" he cried. "Did I stand in the way of your going to college? +Have I ever prevented you going about at any reasonable hour? You've got +a bicycle!" + +"H'm!" said Ann Veronica, and then went on "I want to be taken +seriously. A girl--at my age--is grown-up. I want to go on with +my University work under proper conditions, now that I've done the +Intermediate. It isn't as though I haven't done well. I've never muffed +an exam yet. Roddy muffed two...." + +Her father interrupted. "Now look here, Veronica, let us be plain with +each other. You are not going to that infidel Russell's classes. You are +not going anywhere but to the Tredgold College. I've thought that out, +and you must make up your mind to it. All sorts of considerations come +in. While you live in my house you must follow my ideas. You are wrong +even about that man's scientific position and his standard of work. +There are men in the Lowndean who laugh at him--simply laugh at him. +And I have seen work by his pupils myself that struck me as being--well, +next door to shameful. There's stories, too, about his demonstrator, +Capes Something or other. The kind of man who isn't content with his +science, and writes articles in the monthly reviews. Anyhow, there it +is: YOU ARE NOT GOING THERE." + +The girl received this intimation in silence, but the face that looked +down upon the gas fire took an expression of obstinacy that brought out +a hitherto latent resemblance between parent and child. When she spoke, +her lips twitched. + +"Then I suppose when I have graduated I am to come home?" + +"It seems the natural course--" + +"And do nothing?" + +"There are plenty of things a girl can find to do at home." + +"Until some one takes pity on me and marries me?" + +He raised his eyebrows in mild appeal. His foot tapped impatiently, and +he took up the papers. + +"Look here, father," she said, with a change in her voice, "suppose I +won't stand it?" + +He regarded her as though this was a new idea. + +"Suppose, for example, I go to this dance?" + +"You won't." + +"Well"--her breath failed her for a moment. "How would you prevent it?" +she asked. + +"But I have forbidden it!" he said, raising his voice. + +"Yes, I know. But suppose I go?" + +"Now, Veronica! No, no. This won't do. Understand me! I forbid it. I +do not want to hear from you even the threat of disobedience." He spoke +loudly. "The thing is forbidden!" + +"I am ready to give up anything that you show to be wrong." + +"You will give up anything I wish you to give up." + +They stared at each other through a pause, and both faces were flushed +and obstinate. + +She was trying by some wonderful, secret, and motionless gymnastics to +restrain her tears. But when she spoke her lips quivered, and they +came. "I mean to go to that dance!" she blubbered. "I mean to go to +that dance! I meant to reason with you, but you won't reason. You're +dogmatic." + +At the sight of her tears his expression changed to a mingling of +triumph and concern. He stood up, apparently intending to put an +arm about her, but she stepped back from him quickly. She produced a +handkerchief, and with one sweep of this and a simultaneous gulp had +abolished her fit of weeping. His voice now had lost its ironies. + +"Now, Veronica," he pleaded, "Veronica, this is most unreasonable. All +we do is for your good. Neither your aunt nor I have any other thought +but what is best for you." + +"Only you won't let me live. Only you won't let me exist!" + +Mr. Stanley lost patience. He bullied frankly. + +"What nonsense is this? What raving! My dear child, you DO live, you +DO exist! You have this home. You have friends, acquaintances, social +standing, brothers and sisters, every advantage! Instead of which, you +want to go to some mixed classes or other and cut up rabbits and dance +about at nights in wild costumes with casual art student friends and God +knows who. That--that isn't living! You are beside yourself. You don't +know what you ask nor what you say. You have neither reason nor logic. +I am sorry to seem to hurt you, but all I say is for your good. You +MUST not, you SHALL not go. On this I am resolved. I put my foot down +like--like adamant. And a time will come, Veronica, mark my words, a +time will come when you will bless me for my firmness to-night. It goes +to my heart to disappoint you, but this thing must not be." + +He sidled toward her, but she recoiled from him, leaving him in +possession of the hearth-rug. + +"Well," she said, "good-night, father." + +"What!" he asked; "not a kiss?" + +She affected not to hear. + +The door closed softly upon her. For a long time he remained standing +before the fire, staring at the situation. Then he sat down and filled +his pipe slowly and thoughtfully.... + +"I don't see what else I could have said," he remarked. + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +ANN VERONICA GATHERS POINTS OF VIEW + +Part 1 + + +"Are you coming to the Fadden Dance, Ann Veronica?" asked Constance +Widgett. + +Ann Veronica considered her answer. "I mean to," she replied. + +"You are making your dress?" + +"Such as it is." + +They were in the elder Widgett girl's bedroom; Hetty was laid up, she +said, with a sprained ankle, and a miscellaneous party was gossiping +away her tedium. It was a large, littered, self-forgetful apartment, +decorated with unframed charcoal sketches by various incipient masters; +and an open bookcase, surmounted by plaster casts and the half of a +human skull, displayed an odd miscellany of books--Shaw and Swinburne, +Tom Jones, Fabian Essays, Pope and Dumas, cheek by jowl. Constance +Widgett's abundant copper-red hair was bent down over some dimly +remunerative work--stencilling in colors upon rough, white material--at +a kitchen table she had dragged up-stairs for the purpose, while on her +bed there was seated a slender lady of thirty or so in a dingy green +dress, whom Constance had introduced with a wave of her hand as Miss +Miniver. Miss Miniver looked out on the world through large emotional +blue eyes that were further magnified by the glasses she wore, and her +nose was pinched and pink, and her mouth was whimsically petulant. Her +glasses moved quickly as her glance travelled from face to face. +She seemed bursting with the desire to talk, and watching for her +opportunity. On her lapel was an ivory button, bearing the words "Votes +for Women." Ann Veronica sat at the foot of the sufferer's bed, while +Teddy Widgett, being something of an athlete, occupied the only +bed-room chair--a decadent piece, essentially a tripod and largely a +formality--and smoked cigarettes, and tried to conceal the fact that +he was looking all the time at Ann Veronica's eyebrows. Teddy was the +hatless young man who had turned Ann Veronica aside from the Avenue two +days before. He was the junior of both his sisters, co-educated and +much broken in to feminine society. A bowl of roses, just brought by +Ann Veronica, adorned the communal dressing-table, and Ann Veronica was +particularly trim in preparation for a call she was to make with her +aunt later in the afternoon. + +Ann Veronica decided to be more explicit. "I've been," she said, +"forbidden to come." + +"Hul-LO!" said Hetty, turning her head on the pillow; and Teddy remarked +with profound emotion, "My God!" + +"Yes," said Ann Veronica, "and that complicates the situation." + +"Auntie?" asked Constance, who was conversant with Ann Veronica's +affairs. + +"No! My father. It's--it's a serious prohibition." + +"Why?" asked Hetty. + +"That's the point. I asked him why, and he hadn't a reason." + +"YOU ASKED YOUR FATHER FOR A REASON!" said Miss Miniver, with great +intensity. + +"Yes. I tried to have it out with him, but he wouldn't have it out." Ann +Veronica reflected for an instant "That's why I think I ought to come." + +"You asked your father for a reason!" Miss Miniver repeated. + +"We always have things out with OUR father, poor dear!" said Hetty. +"He's got almost to like it." + +"Men," said Miss Miniver, "NEVER have a reason. Never! And they don't +know it! They have no idea of it. It's one of their worst traits, one of +their very worst." + +"But I say, Vee," said Constance, "if you come and you are forbidden to +come there'll be the deuce of a row." + +Ann Veronica was deciding for further confidences. Her situation +was perplexing her very much, and the Widgett atmosphere was lax and +sympathetic, and provocative of discussion. "It isn't only the dance," +she said. + +"There's the classes," said Constance, the well-informed. + +"There's the whole situation. Apparently I'm not to exist yet. I'm not +to study, I'm not to grow. I've got to stay at home and remain in a +state of suspended animation." + +"DUSTING!" said Miss Miniver, in a sepulchral voice. + +"Until you marry, Vee," said Hetty. + +"Well, I don't feel like standing it." + +"Thousands of women have married merely for freedom," said Miss Miniver. +"Thousands! Ugh! And found it a worse slavery." + +"I suppose," said Constance, stencilling away at bright pink petals, +"it's our lot. But it's very beastly." + +"What's our lot?" asked her sister. + +"Slavery! Downtroddenness! When I think of it I feel all over boot +marks--men's boots. We hide it bravely, but so it is. Damn! I've +splashed." + +Miss Miniver's manner became impressive. She addressed Ann Veronica +with an air of conveying great open secrets to her. "As things are at +present," she said, "it is true. We live under man-made institutions, +and that is what they amount to. Every girl in the world practically, +except a few of us who teach or type-write, and then we're underpaid and +sweated--it's dreadful to think how we are sweated!" She had lost her +generalization, whatever it was. She hung for a moment, and then went +on, conclusively, "Until we have the vote that is how things WILL be." + +"I'm all for the vote," said Teddy. + +"I suppose a girl MUST be underpaid and sweated," said Ann Veronica. "I +suppose there's no way of getting a decent income--independently." + +"Women have practically NO economic freedom," said Miss Miniver, +"because they have no political freedom. Men have seen to that. The one +profession, the one decent profession, I mean, for a woman--except the +stage--is teaching, and there we trample on one another. Everywhere +else--the law, medicine, the Stock Exchange--prejudice bars us." + +"There's art," said Ann Veronica, "and writing." + +"Every one hasn't the Gift. Even there a woman never gets a fair chance. +Men are against her. Whatever she does is minimized. All the best +novels have been written by women, and yet see how men sneer at the lady +novelist still! There's only one way to get on for a woman, and that is +to please men. That is what they think we are for!" + +"We're beasts," said Teddy. "Beasts!" + +But Miss Miniver took no notice of his admission. + +"Of course," said Miss Miniver--she went on in a regularly undulating +voice--"we DO please men. We have that gift. We can see round them and +behind them and through them, and most of us use that knowledge, in the +silent way we have, for our great ends. Not all of us, but some of us. +Too many. I wonder what men would say if we threw the mask aside--if +we really told them what WE thought of them, really showed them what WE +were." A flush of excitement crept into her cheeks. + +"Maternity," she said, "has been our undoing." + +From that she opened out into a long, confused emphatic discourse on the +position of women, full of wonderful statements, while Constance worked +at her stencilling and Ann Veronica and Hetty listened, and Teddy +contributed sympathetic noises and consumed cheap cigarettes. As she +talked she made weak little gestures with her hands, and she thrust her +face forward from her bent shoulders; and she peered sometimes at Ann +Veronica and sometimes at a photograph of the Axenstrasse, near +Fluelen, that hung upon the wall. Ann Veronica watched her face, vaguely +sympathizing with her, vaguely disliking her physical insufficiency and +her convulsive movements, and the fine eyebrows were knit with a faint +perplexity. Essentially the talk was a mixture of fragments of sentences +heard, of passages read, or arguments indicated rather than stated, and +all of it was served in a sauce of strange enthusiasm, thin yet +intense. Ann Veronica had had some training at the Tredgold College in +disentangling threads from confused statements, and she had a curious +persuasion that in all this fluent muddle there was something--something +real, something that signified. But it was very hard to follow. She did +not understand the note of hostility to men that ran through it all, the +bitter vindictiveness that lit Miss Miniver's cheeks and eyes, the +sense of some at last insupportable wrong slowly accumulated. She had no +inkling of that insupportable wrong. + +"We are the species," said Miss Miniver, "men are only incidents. +They give themselves airs, but so it is. In all the species of animals +the females are more important than the males; the males have to please +them. Look at the cock's feathers, look at the competition there is +everywhere, except among humans. The stags and oxen and things all +have to fight for us, everywhere. Only in man is the male made the +most important. And that happens through our maternity; it's our very +importance that degrades us. + +"While we were minding the children they stole our rights and liberties. +The children made us slaves, and the men took advantage of it. +It's--Mrs. Shalford says--the accidental conquering the essential. +Originally in the first animals there were no males, none at all. It +has been proved. Then they appear among the lower things"--she made +meticulous gestures to figure the scale of life; she seemed to be +holding up specimens, and peering through her glasses at them--"among +crustaceans and things, just as little creatures, ever so inferior to +the females. Mere hangers on. Things you would laugh at. And among human +beings, too, women to begin with were the rulers and leaders; they owned +all the property, they invented all the arts. + +"The primitive government was the Matriarchate. The Matriarchate! The +Lords of Creation just ran about and did what they were told." + +"But is that really so?" said Ann Veronica. + +"It has been proved," said Miss Miniver, and added, "by American +professors." + +"But how did they prove it?" + +"By science," said Miss Miniver, and hurried on, putting out a +rhetorical hand that showed a slash of finger through its glove. "And +now, look at us! See what we have become. Toys! Delicate trifles! A sex +of invalids. It is we who have become the parasites and toys." + +It was, Ann Veronica felt, at once absurd and extraordinarily right. +Hetty, who had periods of lucid expression, put the thing for her +from her pillow. She charged boldly into the space of Miss Miniver's +rhetorical pause. + +"It isn't quite that we're toys. Nobody toys with me. Nobody regards +Constance or Vee as a delicate trifle." + +Teddy made some confused noise, a thoracic street row; some remark was +assassinated by a rival in his throat and buried hastily under a cough. + +"They'd better not," said Hetty. "The point is we're not toys, toys +isn't the word; we're litter. We're handfuls. We're regarded as +inflammable litter that mustn't be left about. We are the species, and +maternity is our game; that's all right, but nobody wants that admitted +for fear we should all catch fire, and set about fulfilling the purpose +of our beings without waiting for further explanations. As if we didn't +know! The practical trouble is our ages. They used to marry us off at +seventeen, rush us into things before we had time to protest. They don't +now. Heaven knows why! They don't marry most of us off now until high up +in the twenties. And the age gets higher. We have to hang about in the +interval. There's a great gulf opened, and nobody's got any plans what +to do with us. So the world is choked with waste and waiting daughters. +Hanging about! And they start thinking and asking questions, and begin +to be neither one thing nor the other. We're partly human beings and +partly females in suspense." + +Miss Miniver followed with an expression of perplexity, her mouth shaped +to futile expositions. The Widgett method of thought puzzled her weakly +rhetorical mind. "There is no remedy, girls," she began, breathlessly, +"except the Vote. Give us that--" + +Ann Veronica came in with a certain disregard of Miss Miniver. "That's +it," she said. "They have no plans for us. They have no ideas what to do +with us." + +"Except," said Constance, surveying her work with her head on one side, +"to keep the matches from the litter." + +"And they won't let us make plans for ourselves." + +"We will," said Miss Miniver, refusing to be suppressed, "if some of us +have to be killed to get it." And she pressed her lips together in white +resolution and nodded, and she was manifestly full of that same passion +for conflict and self-sacrifice that has given the world martyrs since +the beginning of things. "I wish I could make every woman, every girl, +see this as clearly as I see it--just what the Vote means to us. Just +what it means...." + + + +Part 2 + + +As Ann Veronica went back along the Avenue to her aunt she became aware +of a light-footed pursuer running. Teddy overtook her, a little out of +breath, his innocent face flushed, his straw-colored hair disordered. He +was out of breath, and spoke in broken sentences. + +"I say, Vee. Half a minute, Vee. It's like this: You want freedom. Look +here. You know--if you want freedom. Just an idea of mine. You know +how those Russian students do? In Russia. Just a formal marriage. Mere +formality. Liberates the girl from parental control. See? You marry me. +Simply. No further responsibility whatever. Without hindrance--present +occupation. Why not? Quite willing. Get a license--just an idea of mine. +Doesn't matter a bit to me. Do anything to please you, Vee. Anything. +Not fit to be dust on your boots. Still--there you are!" + +He paused. + +Ann Veronica's desire to laugh unrestrainedly was checked by the +tremendous earnestness of his expression. "Awfully good of you, Teddy." +she said. + +He nodded silently, too full for words. + +"But I don't see," said Ann Veronica, "just how it fits the present +situation." + +"No! Well, I just suggested it. Threw it out. Of course, if at any +time--see reason--alter your opinion. Always at your service. No +offence, I hope. All right! I'm off. Due to play hockey. Jackson's. +Horrid snorters! So long, Vee! Just suggested it. See? Nothing really. +Passing thought." + +"Teddy," said Ann Veronica, "you're a dear!" + +"Oh, quite!" said Teddy, convulsively, and lifted an imaginary hat and +left her. + + + +Part 3 + + +The call Ann Veronica paid with her aunt that afternoon had at first +much the same relation to the Widgett conversation that a plaster statue +of Mr. Gladstone would have to a carelessly displayed interior on a +dissecting-room table. The Widgetts talked with a remarkable absence of +external coverings; the Palsworthys found all the meanings of life on +its surfaces. They seemed the most wrapped things in all Ann Veronica's +wrappered world. The Widgett mental furniture was perhaps worn and +shabby, but there it was before you, undisguised, fading visibly in an +almost pitiless sunlight. Lady Palsworthy was the widow of a knight +who had won his spurs in the wholesale coal trade, she was of good +seventeenth-century attorney blood, a county family, and distantly +related to Aunt Mollie's deceased curate. She was the social leader of +Morningside Park, and in her superficial and euphuistic way an extremely +kind and pleasant woman. With her lived a Mrs. Pramlay, a sister of +the Morningside Park doctor, and a very active and useful member of the +Committee of the Impoverished Gentlewomen's Aid Society. Both ladies +were on easy and friendly terms with all that was best in Morningside +Park society; they had an afternoon once a month that was quite well +attended, they sometimes gave musical evenings, they dined out and gave +a finish to people's dinners, they had a full-sized croquet lawn and +tennis beyond, and understood the art of bringing people together. +And they never talked of anything at all, never discussed, never even +encouraged gossip. They were just nice. + +Ann Veronica found herself walking back down the Avenue that had just +been the scene of her first proposal beside her aunt, and speculating +for the first time in her life about that lady's mental attitudes. Her +prevailing effect was one of quiet and complete assurance, as though she +knew all about everything, and was only restrained by her instinctive +delicacy from telling what she knew. But the restraint exercised by her +instinctive delicacy was very great; over and above coarse or sexual +matters it covered religion and politics and any mention of money +matters or crime, and Ann Veronica found herself wondering whether these +exclusions represented, after all, anything more than suppressions. Was +there anything at all in those locked rooms of her aunt's mind? Were +they fully furnished and only a little dusty and cobwebby and in need of +an airing, or were they stark vacancy except, perhaps, for a cockroach +or so or the gnawing of a rat? What was the mental equivalent of a rat's +gnawing? The image was going astray. But what would her aunt think of +Teddy's recent off-hand suggestion of marriage? What would she think of +the Widgett conversation? Suppose she was to tell her aunt quietly +but firmly about the parasitic males of degraded crustacea. The girl +suppressed a chuckle that would have been inexplicable. + +There came a wild rush of anthropological lore into her brain, a flare +of indecorous humor. It was one of the secret troubles of her mind, this +grotesque twist her ideas would sometimes take, as though they rebelled +and rioted. After all, she found herself reflecting, behind her aunt's +complacent visage there was a past as lurid as any one's--not, of +course, her aunt's own personal past, which was apparently just that +curate and almost incredibly jejune, but an ancestral past with all +sorts of scandalous things in it: fire and slaughterings, exogamy, +marriage by capture, corroborees, cannibalism! Ancestresses with perhaps +dim anticipatory likenesses to her aunt, their hair less neatly done, +no doubt, their manners and gestures as yet undisciplined, but still +ancestresses in the direct line, must have danced through a brief and +stirring life in the woady buff. Was there no echo anywhere in Miss +Stanley's pacified brain? Those empty rooms, if they were empty, were +the equivalents of astoundingly decorated predecessors. Perhaps it was +just as well there was no inherited memory. + +Ann Veronica was by this time quite shocked at her own thoughts, and yet +they would go on with their freaks. Great vistas of history opened, and +she and her aunt were near reverting to the primitive and passionate and +entirely indecorous arboreal--were swinging from branches by the +arms, and really going on quite dreadfully--when their arrival at +the Palsworthys' happily checked this play of fancy, and brought Ann +Veronica back to the exigencies of the wrappered life again. + +Lady Palsworthy liked Ann Veronica because she was never awkward, +had steady eyes, and an almost invariable neatness and dignity in her +clothes. She seemed just as stiff and shy as a girl ought to be, Lady +Palsworthy thought, neither garrulous nor unready, and free from nearly +all the heavy aggressiveness, the overgrown, overblown quality, the +egotism and want of consideration of the typical modern girl. But then +Lady Palsworthy had never seen Ann Veronica running like the wind +at hockey. She had never seen her sitting on tables nor heard her +discussing theology, and had failed to observe that the graceful figure +was a natural one and not due to ably chosen stays. She took it for +granted Ann Veronica wore stays--mild stays, perhaps, but stays, and +thought no more of the matter. She had seen her really only at teas, +with the Stanley strain in her uppermost. There are so many girls +nowadays who are quite unpresentable at tea, with their untrimmed +laughs, their awful dispositions of their legs when they sit down, their +slangy disrespect; they no longer smoke, it is true, like the girls of +the eighties and nineties, nevertheless to a fine intelligence they have +the flavor of tobacco. They have no amenities, they scratch the +mellow surface of things almost as if they did it on purpose; and +Lady Palsworthy and Mrs. Pramlay lived for amenities and the mellowed +surfaces of things. Ann Veronica was one of the few young people--and +one must have young people just as one must have flowers--one could ask +to a little gathering without the risk of a painful discord. Then the +distant relationship to Miss Stanley gave them a slight but pleasant +sense of proprietorship in the girl. They had their little dreams about +her. + +Mrs. Pramlay received them in the pretty chintz drawing-room, which +opened by French windows on the trim garden, with its croquet lawn, its +tennis-net in the middle distance, and its remote rose alley lined +with smart dahlias and flaming sunflowers. Her eye met Miss Stanley's +understandingly, and she was if anything a trifle more affectionate in +her greeting to Ann Veronica. Then Ann Veronica passed on toward the +tea in the garden, which was dotted with the elite of Morningside Park +society, and there she was pounced upon by Lady Palsworthy and given tea +and led about. Across the lawn and hovering indecisively, Ann Veronica +saw and immediately affected not to see Mr. Manning, Lady Palsworthy's +nephew, a tall young man of seven-and-thirty with a handsome, +thoughtful, impassive face, a full black mustache, and a certain heavy +luxuriousness of gesture. The party resolved itself for Ann Veronica +into a game in which she manoeuvred unostentatiously and finally +unsuccessfully to avoid talking alone with this gentleman. + +Mr. Manning had shown on previous occasions that he found Ann Veronica +interesting and that he wished to interest her. He was a civil servant +of some standing, and after a previous conversation upon aesthetics of +a sententious, nebulous, and sympathetic character, he had sent her a +small volume, which he described as the fruits of his leisure and which +was as a matter of fact rather carefully finished verse. It dealt with +fine aspects of Mr. Manning's feelings, and as Ann Veronica's mind +was still largely engaged with fundamentals and found no pleasure in +metrical forms, she had not as yet cut its pages. So that as she saw him +she remarked to herself very faintly but definitely, "Oh, golly!" and +set up a campaign of avoidance that Mr. Manning at last broke down by +coming directly at her as she talked with the vicar's aunt about some of +the details of the alleged smell of the new church lamps. He did not so +much cut into this conversation as loom over it, for he was a tall, if +rather studiously stooping, man. + +The face that looked down upon Ann Veronica was full of amiable +intention. "Splendid you are looking to-day, Miss Stanley," he said. +"How well and jolly you must be feeling." + +He beamed over the effect of this and shook hands with effusion, and +Lady Palsworthy suddenly appeared as his confederate and disentangled +the vicar's aunt. + +"I love this warm end of summer more than words can tell," he said. +"I've tried to make words tell it. It's no good. Mild, you know, and +boon. You want music." + +Ann Veronica agreed, and tried to make the manner of her assent cover a +possible knowledge of a probable poem. + +"Splendid it must be to be a composer. Glorious! The Pastoral. +Beethoven; he's the best of them. Don't you think? Tum, tay, tum, tay." + +Ann Veronica did. + +"What have you been doing since our last talk? Still cutting up +rabbits and probing into things? I've often thought of that talk of +ours--often." + +He did not appear to require any answer to his question. + +"Often," he repeated, a little heavily. + +"Beautiful these autumn flowers are," said Ann Veronica, in a wide, +uncomfortable pause. + +"Do come and see the Michaelmas daisies at the end of the garden," said +Mr. Manning, "they're a dream." And Ann Veronica found herself being +carried off to an isolation even remoter and more conspicuous than the +corner of the lawn, with the whole of the party aiding and abetting and +glancing at them. "Damn!" said Ann Veronica to herself, rousing herself +for a conflict. + +Mr. Manning told her he loved beauty, and extorted a similar admission +from her; he then expatiated upon his own love of beauty. He said that +for him beauty justified life, that he could not imagine a good action +that was not a beautiful one nor any beautiful thing that could be +altogether bad. Ann Veronica hazarded an opinion that as a matter of +history some very beautiful people had, to a quite considerable extent, +been bad, but Mr. Manning questioned whether when they were bad they +were really beautiful or when they were beautiful bad. Ann Veronica +found her attention wandering a little as he told her that he was not +ashamed to feel almost slavish in the presence of really beautiful +people, and then they came to the Michaelmas daisies. They were really +very fine and abundant, with a blaze of perennial sunflowers behind +them. + +"They make me want to shout," said Mr. Manning, with a sweep of the arm. + +"They're very good this year," said Ann Veronica, avoiding controversial +matter. + +"Either I want to shout," said Mr. Manning, "when I see beautiful +things, or else I want to weep." He paused and looked at her, and said, +with a sudden drop into a confidential undertone, "Or else I want to +pray." + +"When is Michaelmas Day?" said Ann Veronica, a little abruptly. + +"Heaven knows!" said Mr. Manning; and added, "the twenty-ninth." + +"I thought it was earlier," said Ann Veronica. "Wasn't Parliament to +reassemble?" + +He put out his hand and leaned against a tree and crossed his legs. +"You're not interested in politics?" he asked, almost with a note of +protest. + +"Well, rather," said Ann Veronica. "It seems--It's interesting." + +"Do you think so? I find my interest in that sort of thing decline and +decline." + +"I'm curious. Perhaps because I don't know. I suppose an intelligent +person OUGHT to be interested in political affairs. They concern us +all." + +"I wonder," said Mr. Manning, with a baffling smile. + +"I think they do. After all, they're history in the making." + +"A sort of history," said Mr. Manning; and repeated, "a sort of history. +But look at these glorious daisies!" + +"But don't you think political questions ARE important?" + +"I don't think they are this afternoon, and I don't think they are to +you." + +Ann Veronica turned her back on the Michaelmas daisies, and faced toward +the house with an air of a duty completed. + +"Just come to that seat now you are here, Miss Stanley, and look down +the other path; there's a vista of just the common sort. Better even +than these." + +Ann Veronica walked as he indicated. + +"You know I'm old-fashioned, Miss Stanley. I don't think women need to +trouble about political questions." + +"I want a vote," said Ann Veronica. + +"Really!" said Mr. Manning, in an earnest voice, and waved his hand to +the alley of mauve and purple. "I wish you didn't." + +"Why not?" She turned on him. + +"It jars. It jars with all my ideas. Women to me are something so +serene, so fine, so feminine, and politics are so dusty, so sordid, +so wearisome and quarrelsome. It seems to me a woman's duty to be +beautiful, to BE beautiful and to behave beautifully, and politics +are by their very nature ugly. You see, I--I am a woman worshipper. +I worshipped women long before I found any woman I might ever hope +to worship. Long ago. And--the idea of committees, of hustings, of +agenda-papers!" + +"I don't see why the responsibility of beauty should all be shifted on +to the women," said Ann Veronica, suddenly remembering a part of Miss +Miniver's discourse. + +"It rests with them by the nature of things. Why should you who are +queens come down from your thrones? If you can afford it, WE can't. We +can't afford to turn our women, our Madonnas, our Saint Catherines, our +Mona Lisas, our goddesses and angels and fairy princesses, into a sort +of man. Womanhood is sacred to me. My politics in that matter wouldn't +be to give women votes. I'm a Socialist, Miss Stanley." + +"WHAT?" said Ann Veronica, startled. + +"A Socialist of the order of John Ruskin. Indeed I am! I would make this +country a collective monarchy, and all the girls and women in it should +be the Queen. They should never come into contact with politics or +economics--or any of those things. And we men would work for them and +serve them in loyal fealty." + +"That's rather the theory now," said Ann Veronica. "Only so many men +neglect their duties." + +"Yes," said Mr. Manning, with an air of emerging from an elaborate +demonstration, "and so each of us must, under existing conditions, being +chivalrous indeed to all women, choose for himself his own particular +and worshipful queen." + +"So far as one can judge from the system in practice," said Ann +Veronica, speaking in a loud, common-sense, detached tone, and beginning +to walk slowly but resolutely toward the lawn, "it doesn't work." + +"Every one must be experimental," said Mr. Manning, and glanced round +hastily for further horticultural points of interest in secluded +corners. None presented themselves to save him from that return. + +"That's all very well when one isn't the material experimented upon," +Ann Veronica had remarked. + +"Women would--they DO have far more power than they think, as +influences, as inspirations." + +Ann Veronica said nothing in answer to that. + +"You say you want a vote," said Mr. Manning, abruptly. + +"I think I ought to have one." + +"Well, I have two," said Mr. Manning--"one in Oxford University and one +in Kensington." He caught up and went on with a sort of clumsiness: "Let +me present you with them and be your voter." + +There followed an instant's pause, and then Ann Veronica had decided to +misunderstand. + +"I want a vote for myself," she said. "I don't see why I should take it +second-hand. Though it's very kind of you. And rather unscrupulous. Have +you ever voted, Mr. Manning? I suppose there's a sort of place like a +ticket-office. And a ballot-box--" Her face assumed an expression of +intellectual conflict. "What is a ballot-box like, exactly?" she asked, +as though it was very important to her. + +Mr. Manning regarded her thoughtfully for a moment and stroked his +mustache. "A ballot-box, you know," he said, "is very largely just a +box." He made quite a long pause, and went on, with a sigh: "You have a +voting paper given you--" + +They emerged into the publicity of the lawn. + +"Yes," said Ann Veronica, "yes," to his explanation, and saw across +the lawn Lady Palsworthy talking to her aunt, and both of them staring +frankly across at her and Mr. Manning as they talked. + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +THE MORNING OF THE CRISIS + +Part 1 + +Two days after came the day of the Crisis, the day of the Fadden Dance. +It would have been a crisis anyhow, but it was complicated in Ann +Veronica's mind by the fact that a letter lay on the breakfast-table +from Mr. Manning, and that her aunt focussed a brightly tactful +disregard upon this throughout the meal. Ann Veronica had come down +thinking of nothing in the world but her inflexible resolution to go to +the dance in the teeth of all opposition. She did not know Mr. Manning's +handwriting, and opened his letter and read some lines before its import +appeared. Then for a time she forgot the Fadden affair altogether. +With a well-simulated unconcern and a heightened color she finished her +breakfast. + +She was not obliged to go to the Tredgold College, because as yet the +College had not settled down for the session. She was supposed to be +reading at home, and after breakfast she strolled into the vegetable +garden, and having taken up a position upon the staging of a disused +greenhouse that had the double advantage of being hidden from the +windows of the house and secure from the sudden appearance of any one, +she resumed the reading of Mr. Manning's letter. + +Mr. Manning's handwriting had an air of being clear without being easily +legible; it was large and rather roundish, with a lack of definition +about the letters and a disposition to treat the large ones as +liberal-minded people nowadays treat opinions, as all amounting to the +same thing really--a years-smoothed boyish rather than an adult hand. +And it filled seven sheets of notepaper, each written only on one side. + + +"MY DEAR MISS STANLEY," it began,--"I hope you will forgive my +bothering you with a letter, but I have been thinking very much over our +conversation at Lady Palsworthy's, and I feel there are things I want +to say to you so much that I cannot wait until we meet again. It is the +worst of talk under such social circumstances that it is always getting +cut off so soon as it is beginning; and I went home that afternoon +feeling I had said nothing--literally nothing--of the things I had meant +to say to you and that were coursing through my head. They were things I +had meant very much to talk to you about, so that I went home vexed and +disappointed, and only relieved myself a little by writing a few verses. +I wonder if you will mind very much when I tell you they were suggested +by you. You must forgive the poet's license I take. Here is one verse. +The metrical irregularity is intentional, because I want, as it were, to +put you apart: to change the lilt and the mood altogether when I speak +of you. + + "'A SONG OF LADIES AND MY LADY + + "'Saintly white and a lily is Mary, + Margaret's violets, sweet and shy; + Green and dewy is Nellie-bud fairy, + Forget-me-nots live in Gwendolen's eye. + Annabel shines like a star in the darkness, + Rosamund queens it a rose, deep rose; + But the lady I love is like sunshine in April weather, + She gleams and gladdens, she warms--and goes.' + +"Crude, I admit. But let that verse tell my secret. All bad +verse--originally the epigram was Lang's, I believe--is written in a +state of emotion. + +"My dear Miss Stanley, when I talked to you the other afternoon of work +and politics and such-like things, my mind was all the time resenting it +beyond measure. There we were discussing whether you should have a vote, +and I remembered the last occasion we met it was about your prospects of +success in the medical profession or as a Government official such as a +number of women now are, and all the time my heart was crying out within +me, 'Here is the Queen of your career.' I wanted, as I have never wanted +before, to take you up, to make you mine, to carry you off and set you +apart from all the strain and turmoil of life. For nothing will ever +convince me that it is not the man's share in life to shield, to +protect, to lead and toil and watch and battle with the world at large. +I want to be your knight, your servant, your protector, your--I dare +scarcely write the word--your husband. So I come suppliant. I am +five-and-thirty, and I have knocked about in the world and tasted the +quality of life. I had a hard fight to begin with to win my way into the +Upper Division--I was third on a list of forty-seven--and since then I +have found myself promoted almost yearly in a widening sphere of social +service. Before I met you I never met any one whom I felt I could +love, but you have discovered depths in my own nature I had scarcely +suspected. Except for a few early ebullitions of passion, natural to +a warm and romantic disposition, and leaving no harmful +after-effects--ebullitions that by the standards of the higher truth I +feel no one can justly cast a stone at, and of which I for one am by no +means ashamed--I come to you a pure and unencumbered man. I love you. +In addition to my public salary I have a certain private property and +further expectations through my aunt, so that I can offer you a life +of wide and generous refinement, travel, books, discussion, and easy +relations with a circle of clever and brilliant and thoughtful people +with whom my literary work has brought me into contact, and of which, +seeing me only as you have done alone in Morningside Park, you can have +no idea. I have a certain standing not only as a singer but as a critic, +and I belong to one of the most brilliant causerie dinner clubs of +the day, in which successful Bohemianism, politicians, men of affairs, +artists, sculptors, and cultivated noblemen generally, mingle together +in the easiest and most delightful intercourse. That is my real milieu, +and one that I am convinced you would not only adorn but delight in. + +"I find it very hard to write this letter. There are so many things +I want to tell you, and they stand on such different levels, that +the effect is necessarily confusing and discordant, and I find myself +doubting if I am really giving you the thread of emotion that should run +through all this letter. For although I must confess it reads very much +like an application or a testimonial or some such thing as that, I can +assure you I am writing this in fear and trembling with a sinking heart. +My mind is full of ideas and images that I have been cherishing and +accumulating--dreams of travelling side by side, of lunching quietly +together in some jolly restaurant, of moonlight and music and all that +side of life, of seeing you dressed like a queen and shining in some +brilliant throng--mine; of your looking at flowers in some old-world +garden, our garden--there are splendid places to be got down in Surrey, +and a little runabout motor is quite within my means. You know they say, +as, indeed, I have just quoted already, that all bad poetry is written +in a state of emotion, but I have no doubt that this is true of bad +offers of marriage. I have often felt before that it is only when one +has nothing to say that one can write easy poetry. Witness Browning. And +how can I get into one brief letter the complex accumulated desires of +what is now, I find on reference to my diary, nearly sixteen months of +letting my mind run on you--ever since that jolly party at Surbiton, +where we raced and beat the other boat. You steered and I rowed stroke. +My very sentences stumble and give way. But I do not even care if I am +absurd. I am a resolute man, and hitherto when I have wanted a thing I +have got it; but I have never yet wanted anything in my life as I have +wanted you. It isn't the same thing. I am afraid because I love you, so +that the mere thought of failure hurts. If I did not love you so much I +believe I could win you by sheer force of character, for people tell me +I am naturally of the dominating type. Most of my successes in life have +been made with a sort of reckless vigor. + +"Well, I have said what I had to say, stumblingly and badly, and baldly. +But I am sick of tearing up letters and hopeless of getting what I have +to say better said. It would be easy enough for me to write an eloquent +letter about something else. Only I do not care to write about anything +else. Let me put the main question to you now that I could not put the +other afternoon. Will you marry me, Ann Veronica? + +"Very sincerely yours, + +"HUBERT MANNING." + + +Ann Veronica read this letter through with grave, attentive eyes. + +Her interest grew as she read, a certain distaste disappeared. Twice she +smiled, but not unkindly. Then she went back and mixed up the sheets in +a search for particular passages. Finally she fell into reflection. + +"Odd!" she said. "I suppose I shall have to write an answer. It's so +different from what one has been led to expect." + +She became aware of her aunt, through the panes of the greenhouse, +advancing with an air of serene unconsciousness from among the raspberry +canes. + +"No you don't!" said Ann Veronica, and walked out at a brisk and +business-like pace toward the house. + +"I'm going for a long tramp, auntie," she said. + +"Alone, dear?" + +"Yes, aunt. I've got a lot of things to think about." + +Miss Stanley reflected as Ann Veronica went toward the house. She +thought her niece very hard and very self-possessed and self-confident. +She ought to be softened and tender and confidential at this phase of +her life. She seemed to have no idea whatever of the emotional states +that were becoming to her age and position. Miss Stanley walked round +the garden thinking, and presently house and garden reverberated to Ann +Veronica's slamming of the front door. + +"I wonder!" said Miss Stanley. + +For a long time she surveyed a row of towering holly-hocks, as though +they offered an explanation. Then she went in and up-stairs, hesitated +on the landing, and finally, a little breathless and with an air of +great dignity, opened the door and walked into Ann Veronica's room. It +was a neat, efficient-looking room, with a writing-table placed with a +business-like regard to the window, and a bookcase surmounted by a +pig's skull, a dissected frog in a sealed bottle, and a pile of +shiny, black-covered note-books. In the corner of the room were two +hockey-sticks and a tennis-racket, and upon the walls Ann Veronica, +by means of autotypes, had indicated her proclivities in art. But Miss +Stanley took no notice of these things. She walked straight across to +the wardrobe and opened it. There, hanging among Ann Veronica's more +normal clothing, was a skimpy dress of red canvas, trimmed with cheap +and tawdry braid, and short--it could hardly reach below the knee. On +the same peg and evidently belonging to it was a black velvet Zouave +jacket. And then! a garment that was conceivably a secondary skirt. + +Miss Stanley hesitated, and took first one and then another of the +constituents of this costume off its peg and surveyed it. + +The third item she took with a trembling hand by its waistbelt. As she +raised it, its lower portion fell apart into two baggy crimson masses. + +"TROUSERS!" she whispered. + +Her eyes travelled about the room as if in appeal to the very chairs. + +Tucked under the writing-table a pair of yellow and gold Turkish +slippers of a highly meretricious quality caught her eye. She walked +over to them still carrying the trousers in her hands, and stooped to +examine them. They were ingenious disguises of gilt paper destructively +gummed, it would seem, to Ann Veronicas' best dancing-slippers. + +Then she reverted to the trousers. + +"How CAN I tell him?" whispered Miss Stanley. + + +Part 2 + + +Ann Veronica carried a light but business-like walking-stick. She walked +with an easy quickness down the Avenue and through the proletarian +portion of Morningside Park, and crossing these fields came into a +pretty overhung lane that led toward Caddington and the Downs. And +then her pace slackened. She tucked her stick under her arm and re-read +Manning's letter. + +"Let me think," said Ann Veronica. "I wish this hadn't turned up to-day +of all days." + +She found it difficult to begin thinking, and indeed she was anything +but clear what it was she had to think about. Practically it was most +of the chief interests in life that she proposed to settle in this +pedestrian meditation. Primarily it was her own problem, and in +particular the answer she had to give to Mr. Manning's letter, but in +order to get data for that she found that she, having a logical and +ordered mind, had to decide upon the general relations of men to women, +the objects and conditions of marriage and its bearing upon the +welfare of the race, the purpose of the race, the purpose, if any, of +everything.... + +"Frightful lot of things aren't settled," said Ann Veronica. In +addition, the Fadden Dance business, all out of proportion, occupied +the whole foreground of her thoughts and threw a color of rebellion +over everything. She kept thinking she was thinking about Mr. Manning's +proposal of marriage and finding she was thinking of the dance. + +For a time her efforts to achieve a comprehensive concentration were +dispersed by the passage of the village street of Caddington, the +passing of a goggled car-load of motorists, and the struggles of a +stable lad mounted on one recalcitrant horse and leading another. When +she got back to her questions again in the monotonous high-road that led +up the hill, she found the image of Mr. Manning central in her mind. +He stood there, large and dark, enunciating, in his clear voice from +beneath his large mustache, clear flat sentences, deliberately kindly. +He proposed, he wanted to possess her! He loved her. + +Ann Veronica felt no repulsion at the prospect. That Mr. Manning loved +her presented itself to her bloodlessly, stilled from any imaginative +quiver or thrill of passion or disgust. The relationship seemed to have +almost as much to do with blood and body as a mortgage. It was something +that would create a mutual claim, a relationship. It was in another +world from that in which men will die for a kiss, and touching hands +lights fires that burn up lives--the world of romance, the world of +passionately beautiful things. + +But that other world, in spite of her resolute exclusion of it, was +always looking round corners and peeping through chinks and crannies, +and rustling and raiding into the order in which she chose to live, +shining out of pictures at her, echoing in lyrics and music; it invaded +her dreams, it wrote up broken and enigmatical sentences upon the +passage walls of her mind. She was aware of it now as if it were a +voice shouting outside a house, shouting passionate verities in a hot +sunlight, a voice that cries while people talk insincerely in a darkened +room and pretend not to hear. Its shouting now did in some occult manner +convey a protest that Mr. Manning would on no account do, though he +was tall and dark and handsome and kind, and thirty-five and adequately +prosperous, and all that a husband should be. But there was, it +insisted, no mobility in his face, no movement, nothing about him that +warmed. If Ann Veronica could have put words to that song they +would have been, "Hot-blooded marriage or none!" but she was far too +indistinct in this matter to frame any words at all. + +"I don't love him," said Ann Veronica, getting a gleam. "I don't see +that his being a good sort matters. That really settles about that.... +But it means no end of a row." + +For a time she sat on a rail before leaving the road for the downland +turf. "But I wish," she said, "I had some idea what I was really up to." + +Her thoughts went into solution for a time, while she listened to a lark +singing. + +"Marriage and mothering," said Ann Veronica, with her mind crystallizing +out again as the lark dropped to the nest in the turf. "And all the rest +of it perhaps is a song." + + + +Part 3 + + +Her mind got back to the Fadden Ball. + +She meant to go, she meant to go, she meant to go. Nothing would stop +her, and she was prepared to face the consequences. Suppose her father +turned her out of doors! She did not care, she meant to go. She would +just walk out of the house and go.... + +She thought of her costume in some detail and with considerable +satisfaction, and particularly of a very jolly property dagger with +large glass jewels in the handle, that reposed in a drawer in her room. +She was to be a Corsair's Bride. "Fancy stabbing a man for jealousy!" +she thought. "You'd have to think how to get in between his bones." + +She thought of her father, and with an effort dismissed him from her +mind. + +She tried to imagine the collective effect of the Fadden Ball; she had +never seen a fancy-dress gathering in her life. Mr. Manning came into +her thoughts again, an unexpected, tall, dark, self-contained presence +at the Fadden. One might suppose him turning up; he knew a lot of clever +people, and some of them might belong to the class. What would he come +as? + +Presently she roused herself with a guilty start from the task of +dressing and re-dressing Mr. Manning in fancy costume, as though he +was a doll. She had tried him as a Crusader, in which guise he seemed +plausible but heavy--"There IS something heavy about him; I wonder if +it's his mustache?"--and as a Hussar, which made him preposterous, and +as a Black Brunswicker, which was better, and as an Arab sheik. Also +she had tried him as a dragoman and as a gendarme, which seemed the most +suitable of all to his severely handsome, immobile profile. She felt +he would tell people the way, control traffic, and refuse admission +to public buildings with invincible correctness and the very finest +explicit feelings possible. For each costume she had devised a suitable +form of matrimonial refusal. "Oh, Lord!" she said, discovering what she +was up to, and dropped lightly from the fence upon the turf and went on +her way toward the crest. + +"I shall never marry," said Ann Veronica, resolutely; "I'm not the sort. +That's why it's so important I should take my own line now." + + +Part 4 + + +Ann Veronica's ideas of marriage were limited and unsystematic. Her +teachers and mistresses had done their best to stamp her mind with an +ineradicable persuasion that it was tremendously important, and on no +account to be thought about. Her first intimations of marriage as a fact +of extreme significance in a woman's life had come with the marriage of +Alice and the elopement of her second sister, Gwen. + +These convulsions occurred when Ann Veronica was about twelve. There +was a gulf of eight years between her and the youngest of her brace of +sisters--an impassable gulf inhabited chaotically by two noisy brothers. +These sisters moved in a grown-up world inaccessible to Ann Veronica's +sympathies, and to a large extent remote from her curiosity. She got +into rows through meddling with their shoes and tennis-rackets, and had +moments of carefully concealed admiration when she was privileged to see +them just before her bedtime, rather radiantly dressed in white or pink +or amber and prepared to go out with her mother. She thought Alice a bit +of a sneak, an opinion her brothers shared, and Gwen rather a snatch +at meals. She saw nothing of their love-making, and came home from her +boarding-school in a state of decently suppressed curiosity for Alice's +wedding. + +Her impressions of this cardinal ceremony were rich and confused, +complicated by a quite transitory passion that awakened no reciprocal +fire for a fat curly headed cousin in black velveteen and a lace +collar, who assisted as a page. She followed him about persistently, and +succeeded, after a brisk, unchivalrous struggle (in which he pinched and +asked her to "cheese it"), in kissing him among the raspberries behind +the greenhouse. Afterward her brother Roddy, also strange in velveteen, +feeling rather than knowing of this relationship, punched this Adonis's +head. + +A marriage in the house proved to be exciting but extremely +disorganizing. Everything seemed designed to unhinge the mind and +make the cat wretched. All the furniture was moved, all the meals were +disarranged, and everybody, Ann Veronica included, appeared in new, +bright costumes. She had to wear cream and a brown sash and a short +frock and her hair down, and Gwen cream and a brown sash and a long +skirt and her hair up. And her mother, looking unusually alert and +hectic, wore cream and brown also, made up in a more complicated manner. + +Ann Veronica was much impressed by a mighty trying on and altering and +fussing about Alice's "things"--Alice was being re-costumed from garret +to cellar, with a walking-dress and walking-boots to measure, and a +bride's costume of the most ravishing description, and stockings and +such like beyond the dreams of avarice--and a constant and increasing +dripping into the house of irrelevant remarkable objects, such as-- + +Real lace bedspread; + +Gilt travelling clock; + +Ornamental pewter plaque; + +Salad bowl (silver mounted) and servers; + +Madgett's "English Poets" (twelve volumes), bound purple morocco; + +Etc., etc. + +Through all this flutter of novelty there came and went a solicitous, +preoccupied, almost depressed figure. It was Doctor Ralph, formerly +the partner of Doctor Stickell in the Avenue, and now with a thriving +practice of his own in Wamblesmith. He had shaved his side-whiskers and +come over in flannels, but he was still indisputably the same person +who had attended Ann Veronica for the measles and when she swallowed +the fish-bone. But his role was altered, and he was now playing the +bridegroom in this remarkable drama. Alice was going to be Mrs. Ralph. +He came in apologetically; all the old "Well, and how ARE we?" note +gone; and once he asked Ann Veronica, almost furtively, + +"How's Alice getting on, Vee?" Finally, on the Day, he appeared like +his old professional self transfigured, in the most beautiful light gray +trousers Ann Veronica had ever seen and a new shiny silk hat with a most +becoming roll.... + +It was not simply that all the rooms were rearranged and everybody +dressed in unusual fashions, and all the routines of life abolished and +put away: people's tempers and emotions also seemed strangely disturbed +and shifted about. Her father was distinctly irascible, and disposed +more than ever to hide away among the petrological things--the study was +turned out. At table he carved in a gloomy but resolute manner. On the +Day he had trumpet-like outbreaks of cordiality, varied by a watchful +preoccupation. Gwen and Alice were fantastically friendly, which seemed +to annoy him, and Mrs. Stanley was throughout enigmatical, with an +anxious eye on her husband and Alice. + +There was a confused impression of livery carriages and whips with white +favors, people fussily wanting other people to get in before them, +and then the church. People sat in unusual pews, and a wide margin of +hassocky emptiness intervened between the ceremony and the walls. + +Ann Veronica had a number of fragmentary impressions of Alice strangely +transfigured in bridal raiment. It seemed to make her sister downcast +beyond any precedent. The bridesmaids and pages got rather jumbled +in the aisle, and she had an effect of Alice's white back and +sloping shoulders and veiled head receding toward the altar. In some +incomprehensible way that back view made her feel sorry for Alice. Also +she remembered very vividly the smell of orange blossom, and Alice, +drooping and spiritless, mumbling responses, facing Doctor Ralph, while +the Rev. Edward Bribble stood between them with an open book. Doctor +Ralph looked kind and large, and listened to Alice's responses as though +he was listening to symptoms and thought that on the whole she was +progressing favorably. + +And afterward her mother and Alice kissed long and clung to each other. +And Doctor Ralph stood by looking considerate. He and her father shook +hands manfully. + +Ann Veronica had got quite interested in Mr. Bribble's rendering of the +service--he had the sort of voice that brings out things--and was still +teeming with ideas about it when finally a wild outburst from the organ +made it clear that, whatever snivelling there might be down in the +chancel, that excellent wind instrument was, in its Mendelssohnian +way, as glad as ever it could be. "Pump, pump, per-um-pump, Pum, Pump, +Per-um...." + +The wedding-breakfast was for Ann Veronica a spectacle of the unreal +consuming the real; she liked that part very well, until she was +carelessly served against her expressed wishes with mayonnaise. She +was caught by an uncle, whose opinion she valued, making faces at Roddy +because he had exulted at this. + +Of the vast mass of these impressions Ann Veronica could make nothing +at the time; there they were--Fact! She stored them away in a mind +naturally retentive, as a squirrel stores away nuts, for further +digestion. Only one thing emerged with any reasonable clarity in her +mind at once, and that was that unless she was saved from drowning by +an unmarried man, in which case the ceremony is unavoidable, or totally +destitute of under-clothing, and so driven to get a trousseau, in which +hardship a trousseau would certainly be "ripping," marriage was an +experience to be strenuously evaded. + +When they were going home she asked her mother why she and Gwen and +Alice had cried. + +"Ssh!" said her mother, and then added, "A little natural feeling, +dear." + +"But didn't Alice want to marry Doctor Ralph?" + +"Oh, ssh, Vee!" said her mother, with an evasion as patent as an +advertisement board. "I am sure she will be very happy indeed with +Doctor Ralph." + +But Ann Veronica was by no means sure of that until she went over +to Wamblesmith and saw her sister, very remote and domestic and +authoritative, in a becoming tea-gown, in command of Doctor Ralph's +home. Doctor Ralph came in to tea and put his arm round Alice and kissed +her, and Alice called him "Squiggles," and stood in the shelter of his +arms for a moment with an expression of satisfied proprietorship. She +HAD cried, Ann Veronica knew. There had been fusses and scenes dimly +apprehended through half-open doors. She had heard Alice talking and +crying at the same time, a painful noise. Perhaps marriage hurt. But now +it was all over, and Alice was getting on well. It reminded Ann Veronica +of having a tooth stopped. + +And after that Alice became remoter than ever, and, after a time, ill. +Then she had a baby and became as old as any really grown-up person, or +older, and very dull. Then she and her husband went off to a Yorkshire +practice, and had four more babies, none of whom photographed well, and +so she passed beyond the sphere of Ann Veronica's sympathies altogether. + + + +Part 5 + + +The Gwen affair happened when she was away at school at +Marticombe-on-Sea, a term before she went to the High School, and was +never very clear to her. + +Her mother missed writing for a week, and then she wrote in an unusual +key. "My dear," the letter ran, "I have to tell you that your sister +Gwen has offended your father very much. I hope you will always love +her, but I want you to remember she has offended your father and married +without his consent. Your father is very angry, and will not have her +name mentioned in his hearing. She has married some one he could not +approve of, and gone right away...." + +When the next holidays came Ann Veronica's mother was ill, and Gwen was +in the sick-room when Ann Veronica returned home. She was in one of her +old walking-dresses, her hair was done in an unfamiliar manner, she wore +a wedding-ring, and she looked as if she had been crying. + +"Hello, Gwen!" said Ann Veronica, trying to put every one at their ease. +"Been and married?... What's the name of the happy man?" + +Gwen owned to "Fortescue." + +"Got a photograph of him or anything?" said Ann Veronica, after kissing +her mother. + +Gwen made an inquiry, and, directed by Mrs. Stanley, produced a portrait +from its hiding-place in the jewel-drawer under the mirror. It presented +a clean-shaven face with a large Corinthian nose, hair tremendously +waving off the forehead and more chin and neck than is good for a man. + +"LOOKS all right," said Ann Veronica, regarding him with her head first +on one side and then on the other, and trying to be agreeable. "What's +the objection?" + +"I suppose she ought to know?" said Gwen to her mother, trying to alter +the key of the conversation. + +"You see, Vee," said Mrs. Stanley, "Mr. Fortescue is an actor, and your +father does not approve of the profession." + +"Oh!" said Ann Veronica. "I thought they made knights of actors?" + +"They may of Hal some day," said Gwen. "But it's a long business." + +"I suppose this makes you an actress?" said Ann Veronica. + +"I don't know whether I shall go on," said Gwen, a novel note of +languorous professionalism creeping into her voice. "The other women +don't much like it if husband and wife work together, and I don't think +Hal would like me to act away from him." + +Ann Veronica regarded her sister with a new respect, but the traditions +of family life are strong. "I don't suppose you'll be able to do it +much," said Ann Veronica. + +Later Gwen's trouble weighed so heavily on Mrs. Stanley in her illness +that her husband consented to receive Mr. Fortescue in the drawing-room, +and actually shake hands with him in an entirely hopeless manner and +hope everything would turn out for the best. + +The forgiveness and reconciliation was a cold and formal affair, and +afterwards her father went off gloomily to his study, and Mr. Fortescue +rambled round the garden with soft, propitiatory steps, the Corinthian +nose upraised and his hands behind his back, pausing to look long and +hard at the fruit-trees against the wall. + +Ann Veronica watched him from the dining-room window, and after some +moments of maidenly hesitation rambled out into the garden in a reverse +direction to Mr. Fortescue's steps, and encountered him with an air of +artless surprise. + +"Hello!" said Ann Veronica, with arms akimbo and a careless, breathless +manner. "You Mr. Fortescue?" + +"At your service. You Ann Veronica?" + +"Rather! I say--did you marry Gwen?" + +"Yes." + +"Why?" + +Mr. Fortescue raised his eyebrows and assumed a light-comedy expression. +"I suppose I fell in love with her, Ann Veronica." + +"Rum," said Ann Veronica. "Have you got to keep her now?" + +"To the best of my ability," said Mr. Fortescue, with a bow. + +"Have you much ability?" asked Ann Veronica. + +Mr. Fortescue tried to act embarrassment in order to conceal its +reality, and Ann Veronica went on to ask a string of questions about +acting, and whether her sister would act, and was she beautiful enough +for it, and who would make her dresses, and so on. + +As a matter of fact Mr. Fortescue had not much ability to keep her +sister, and a little while after her mother's death Ann Veronica +met Gwen suddenly on the staircase coming from her father's study, +shockingly dingy in dusty mourning and tearful and resentful, and after +that Gwen receded from the Morningside Park world, and not even the +begging letters and distressful communications that her father and aunt +received, but only a vague intimation of dreadfulness, a leakage of +incidental comment, flashes of paternal anger at "that blackguard," came +to Ann Veronica's ears. + + + +Part 6 + + +These were Ann Veronica's leading cases in the question of marriage. +They were the only real marriages she had seen clearly. For the rest, +she derived her ideas of the married state from the observed behavior of +married women, which impressed her in Morningside Park as being tied and +dull and inelastic in comparison with the life of the young, and from a +remarkably various reading among books. As a net result she had come to +think of all married people much as one thinks of insects that have +lost their wings, and of her sisters as new hatched creatures who had +scarcely for a moment had wings. She evolved a dim image of herself +cooped up in a house under the benevolent shadow of Mr. Manning. +Who knows?--on the analogy of "Squiggles" she might come to call him +"Mangles!" + +"I don't think I can ever marry any one," she said, and fell suddenly +into another set of considerations that perplexed her for a time. Had +romance to be banished from life?... + +It was hard to part with romance, but she had never thirsted so keenly +to go on with her University work in her life as she did that day. She +had never felt so acutely the desire for free initiative, for a life +unhampered by others. At any cost! Her brothers had it practically--at +least they had it far more than it seemed likely she would unless she +exerted herself with quite exceptional vigor. Between her and the fair, +far prospect of freedom and self-development manoeuvred Mr. Manning, her +aunt and father, neighbors, customs, traditions, forces. They seemed to +her that morning to be all armed with nets and prepared to throw them +over her directly her movements became in any manner truly free. + +She had a feeling as though something had dropped from her eyes, as +though she had just discovered herself for the first time--discovered +herself as a sleep-walker might do, abruptly among dangers, hindrances, +and perplexities, on the verge of a cardinal crisis. + +The life of a girl presented itself to her as something happy and +heedless and unthinking, yet really guided and controlled by others, and +going on amidst unsuspected screens and concealments. + +And in its way it was very well. Then suddenly with a rush came reality, +came "growing up"; a hasty imperative appeal for seriousness, for +supreme seriousness. The Ralphs and Mannings and Fortescues came down +upon the raw inexperience, upon the blinking ignorance of the newcomer; +and before her eyes were fairly open, before she knew what had +happened, a new set of guides and controls, a new set of obligations and +responsibilities and limitations, had replaced the old. "I want to be +a Person," said Ann Veronica to the downs and the open sky; "I will not +have this happen to me, whatever else may happen in its place." + +Ann Veronica had three things very definitely settled by the time when, +a little after mid-day, she found herself perched up on a gate between a +bridle-path and a field that commanded the whole wide stretch of country +between Chalking and Waldersham. Firstly, she did not intend to marry at +all, and particularly she did not mean to marry Mr. Manning; secondly, +by some measure or other, she meant to go on with her studies, not at +the Tredgold Schools but at the Imperial College; and, thirdly, she was, +as an immediate and decisive act, a symbol of just exactly where she +stood, a declaration of free and adult initiative, going that night to +the Fadden Ball. + +But the possible attitude of her father she had still to face. So far +she had the utmost difficulty in getting on to that vitally important +matter. The whole of that relationship persisted in remaining obscure. +What would happen when next morning she returned to Morningside Park? + +He couldn't turn her out of doors. But what he could do or might do she +could not imagine. She was not afraid of violence, but she was afraid of +something mean, some secondary kind of force. Suppose he stopped all her +allowance, made it imperative that she should either stay ineffectually +resentful at home or earn a living for herself at once.... It +appeared highly probable to her that he would stop her allowance. + +What can a girl do? + +Somewhere at this point Ann Veronica's speculations were interrupted +and turned aside by the approach of a horse and rider. Mr. Ramage, that +iron-gray man of the world, appeared dressed in a bowler hat and a suit +of hard gray, astride of a black horse. He pulled rein at the sight of +her, saluted, and regarded her with his rather too protuberant eyes. The +girl's gaze met his in interested inquiry. + +"You've got my view," he said, after a pensive second. "I always get off +here and lean over that rail for a bit. May I do so to-day?" + +"It's your gate," she said, amiably; "you got it first. It's for you to +say if I may sit on it." + +He slipped off the horse. "Let me introduce you to Caesar," he said; +and she patted Caesar's neck, and remarked how soft his nose was, and +secretly deplored the ugliness of equine teeth. Ramage tethered the +horse to the farther gate-post, and Caesar blew heavily and began to +investigate the hedge. + +Ramage leaned over the gate at Ann Veronica's side, and for a moment +there was silence. + +He made some obvious comments on the wide view warming toward its +autumnal blaze that spread itself in hill and valley, wood and village, +below. + +"It's as broad as life," said Mr. Ramage, regarding it and putting a +well-booted foot up on the bottom rail. + + + +Part 7 + + +"And what are you doing here, young lady," he said, looking up at her +face, "wandering alone so far from home?" + +"I like long walks," said Ann Veronica, looking down on him. + +"Solitary walks?" + +"That's the point of them. I think over all sorts of things." + +"Problems?" + +"Sometimes quite difficult problems." + +"You're lucky to live in an age when you can do so. Your mother, +for instance, couldn't. She had to do her thinking at home--under +inspection." + +She looked down on him thoughtfully, and he let his admiration of her +free young poise show in his face. + +"I suppose things have changed?" she said. + +"Never was such an age of transition." + +She wondered what to. Mr. Ramage did not know. "Sufficient unto me is +the change thereof," he said, with all the effect of an epigram. + +"I must confess," he said, "the New Woman and the New Girl intrigue me +profoundly. I am one of those people who are interested in women, more +interested than I am in anything else. I don't conceal it. And the +change, the change of attitude! The way all the old clingingness +has been thrown aside is amazing. And all the old--the old trick of +shrinking up like a snail at a touch. If you had lived twenty years ago +you would have been called a Young Person, and it would have been your +chief duty in life not to know, never to have heard of, and never to +understand." + +"There's quite enough still," said Ann Veronica, smiling, "that one +doesn't understand." + +"Quite. But your role would have been to go about saying, 'I beg your +pardon' in a reproving tone to things you understood quite well in your +heart and saw no harm in. That terrible Young Person! she's vanished. +Lost, stolen, or strayed, the Young Person!... I hope we may never +find her again." + +He rejoiced over this emancipation. "While that lamb was about every man +of any spirit was regarded as a dangerous wolf. We wore invisible chains +and invisible blinkers. Now, you and I can gossip at a gate, and Honi +soit qui mal y pense. The change has given man one good thing he never +had before," he said. "Girl friends. And I am coming to believe the best +as well as the most beautiful friends a man can have are girl friends." + +He paused, and went on, after a keen look at her: + +"I had rather gossip to a really intelligent girl than to any man +alive." + +"I suppose we ARE more free than we were?" said Ann Veronica, keeping +the question general. + +"Oh, there's no doubt of it! Since the girls of the eighties broke +bounds and sailed away on bicycles--my young days go back to the very +beginnings of that--it's been one triumphant relaxation." + +"Relaxation, perhaps. But are we any more free?" + +"Well?" + +"I mean we've long strings to tether us, but we are bound all the same. +A woman isn't much freer--in reality." + +Mr. Ramage demurred. + +"One runs about," said Ann Veronica. + +"Yes." + +"But it's on condition one doesn't do anything." + +"Do what?" + +"Oh!--anything." + +He looked interrogation with a faint smile. + +"It seems to me it comes to earning one's living in the long run," said +Ann Veronica, coloring faintly. "Until a girl can go away as a son does +and earn her independent income, she's still on a string. It may be a +long string, long enough if you like to tangle up all sorts of people; +but there it is! If the paymaster pulls, home she must go. That's what I +mean." + +Mr. Ramage admitted the force of that. He was a little impressed by +Ann Veronica's metaphor of the string, which, indeed, she owed to Hetty +Widgett. "YOU wouldn't like to be independent?" he asked, abruptly. "I +mean REALLY independent. On your own. It isn't such fun as it seems." + +"Every one wants to be independent," said Ann Veronica. "Every one. Man +or woman." + +"And you?" + +"Rather!" + +"I wonder why?" + +"There's no why. It's just to feel--one owns one's self." + +"Nobody does that," said Ramage, and kept silence for a moment. + +"But a boy--a boy goes out into the world and presently stands on his +own feet. He buys his own clothes, chooses his own company, makes his +own way of living." + +"You'd like to do that?" + +"Exactly." + +"Would you like to be a boy?" + +"I wonder! It's out of the question, any way." + +Ramage reflected. "Why don't you?" + +"Well, it might mean rather a row." + +"I know--" said Ramage, with sympathy. + +"And besides," said Ann Veronica, sweeping that aspect aside, "what +could I do? A boy sails out into a trade or profession. But--it's one +of the things I've just been thinking over. Suppose--suppose a girl +did want to start in life, start in life for herself--" She looked him +frankly in the eyes. "What ought she to do?" + +"Suppose you--" + +"Yes, suppose I--" + +He felt that his advice was being asked. He became a little more +personal and intimate. "I wonder what you could do?" he said. "I should +think YOU could do all sorts of things.... + +"What ought you to do?" He began to produce his knowledge of the world +for her benefit, jerkily and allusively, and with a strong, rank flavor +of "savoir faire." He took an optimist view of her chances. Ann Veronica +listened thoughtfully, with her eyes on the turf, and now and then she +asked a question or looked up to discuss a point. In the meanwhile, +as he talked, he scrutinized her face, ran his eyes over her careless, +gracious poise, wondered hard about her. He described her privately to +himself as a splendid girl. It was clear she wanted to get away from +home, that she was impatient to get away from home. Why? While the front +of his mind was busy warning her not to fall into the hopeless miseries +of underpaid teaching, and explaining his idea that for women of +initiative, quite as much as for men, the world of business had by far +the best chances, the back chambers of his brain were busy with the +problem of that "Why?" + +His first idea as a man of the world was to explain her unrest by a +lover, some secret or forbidden or impossible lover. But he dismissed +that because then she would ask her lover and not him all these things. +Restlessness, then, was the trouble, simple restlessness: home bored +her. He could quite understand the daughter of Mr. Stanley being bored +and feeling limited. But was that enough? Dim, formless suspicions +of something more vital wandered about his mind. Was the young lady +impatient for experience? Was she adventurous? As a man of the world he +did not think it becoming to accept maidenly calm as anything more than +a mask. Warm life was behind that always, even if it slept. If it +was not an actual personal lover, it still might be the lover not yet +incarnate, not yet perhaps suspected.... + +He had diverged only a little from the truth when he said that his +chief interest in life was women. It wasn't so much women as Woman that +engaged his mind. His was the Latin turn of thinking; he had fallen +in love at thirteen, and he was still capable--he prided himself--of +falling in love. His invalid wife and her money had been only the thin +thread that held his life together; beaded on that permanent relation +had been an inter-weaving series of other feminine experiences, +disturbing, absorbing, interesting, memorable affairs. Each one had +been different from the others, each had had a quality all its own, a +distinctive freshness, a distinctive beauty. He could not understand how +men could live ignoring this one predominant interest, this wonderful +research into personality and the possibilities of pleasing, these +complex, fascinating expeditions that began in interest and mounted to +the supremest, most passionate intimacy. All the rest of his existence +was subordinate to this pursuit; he lived for it, worked for it, kept +himself in training for it. + +So while he talked to this girl of work and freedom, his slightly +protuberant eyes were noting the gracious balance of her limbs and body +across the gate, the fine lines of her chin and neck. Her grave fine +face, her warm clear complexion, had already aroused his curiosity as he +had gone to and fro in Morningside Park, and here suddenly he was +near to her and talking freely and intimately. He had found her in +a communicative mood, and he used the accumulated skill of years in +turning that to account. + +She was pleased and a little flattered by his interest and sympathy. She +became eager to explain herself, to show herself in the right light. He +was manifestly exerting his mind for her, and she found herself fully +disposed to justify his interest. + +She, perhaps, displayed herself rather consciously as a fine +person unduly limited. She even touched lightly on her father's +unreasonableness. + +"I wonder," said Ramage, "that more girls don't think as you do and want +to strike out in the world." + +And then he speculated. "I wonder if you will?" + +"Let me say one thing," he said. "If ever you do and I can help you +in any way, by advice or inquiry or recommendation--You see, I'm no +believer in feminine incapacity, but I do perceive there is such a thing +as feminine inexperience. As a sex you're a little under-trained--in +affairs. I'd take it--forgive me if I seem a little urgent--as a sort of +proof of friendliness. I can imagine nothing more pleasant in life than +to help you, because I know it would pay to help you. There's something +about you, a little flavor of Will, I suppose, that makes one feel--good +luck about you and success...." + +And while he talked and watched her as he talked, she answered, and +behind her listening watched and thought about him. She liked the +animated eagerness of his manner. + +His mind seemed to be a remarkably full one; his knowledge of detailed +reality came in just where her own mind was most weakly equipped. +Through all he said ran one quality that pleased her--the quality of a +man who feels that things can be done, that one need not wait for the +world to push one before one moved. Compared with her father and Mr. +Manning and the men in "fixed" positions generally that she knew, +Ramage, presented by himself, had a fine suggestion of freedom, of +power, of deliberate and sustained adventure.... + +She was particularly charmed by his theory of friendship. It was really +very jolly to talk to a man in this way--who saw the woman in her and +did not treat her as a child. She was inclined to think that perhaps +for a girl the converse of his method was the case; an older man, a +man beyond the range of anything "nonsensical," was, perhaps, the most +interesting sort of friend one could meet. But in that reservation it +may be she went a little beyond the converse of his view.... + +They got on wonderfully well together. They talked for the better part +of an hour, and at last walked together to the junction of highroad +and the bridle-path. There, after protestations of friendliness and +helpfulness that were almost ardent, he mounted a little clumsily and +rode off at an amiable pace, looking his best, making a leg with +his riding gaiters, smiling and saluting, while Ann Veronica turned +northward and so came to Micklechesil. There, in a little tea and +sweet-stuff shop, she bought and consumed slowly and absent-mindedly the +insufficient nourishment that is natural to her sex on such occasions. + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH + +THE CRISIS + + +Part 1 + + +We left Miss Stanley with Ann Veronica's fancy dress in her hands and +her eyes directed to Ann Veronica's pseudo-Turkish slippers. + +When Mr. Stanley came home at a quarter to six--an earlier train by +fifteen minutes than he affected--his sister met him in the hall with +a hushed expression. "I'm so glad you're here, Peter," she said. "She +means to go." + +"Go!" he said. "Where?" + +"To that ball." + +"What ball?" The question was rhetorical. He knew. + +"I believe she's dressing up-stairs--now." + +"Then tell her to undress, confound her!" The City had been thoroughly +annoying that day, and he was angry from the outset. + +Miss Stanley reflected on this proposal for a moment. + +"I don't think she will," she said. + +"She must," said Mr. Stanley, and went into his study. His sister +followed. "She can't go now. She'll have to wait for dinner," he said, +uncomfortably. + +"She's going to have some sort of meal with the Widgetts down the +Avenue, and go up with them. + +"She told you that?" + +"Yes." + +"When?" + +"At tea." + +"But why didn't you prohibit once for all the whole thing? How dared she +tell you that?" + +"Out of defiance. She just sat and told me that was her arrangement. +I've never seen her quite so sure of herself." + +"What did you say?" + +"I said, 'My dear Veronica! how can you think of such things?'" + +"And then?" + +"She had two more cups of tea and some cake, and told me of her walk." + +"She'll meet somebody one of these days--walking about like that." + +"She didn't say she'd met any one." + +"But didn't you say some more about that ball?" + +"I said everything I could say as soon as I realized she was trying to +avoid the topic. I said, 'It is no use your telling me about this walk +and pretend I've been told about the ball, because you haven't. Your +father has forbidden you to go!'" + +"Well?" + +"She said, 'I hate being horrid to you and father, but I feel it my duty +to go to that ball!'" + +"Felt it her duty!" + +"'Very well,' I said, 'then I wash my hands of the whole business. Your +disobedience be upon your own head.'" + +"But that is flat rebellion!" said Mr. Stanley, standing on the +hearthrug with his back to the unlit gas-fire. "You ought at once--you +ought at once to have told her that. What duty does a girl owe to any +one before her father? Obedience to him, that is surely the first law. +What CAN she put before that?" His voice began to rise. "One would think +I had said nothing about the matter. One would think I had agreed to +her going. I suppose this is what she learns in her infernal London +colleges. I suppose this is the sort of damned rubbish--" + +"Oh! Ssh, Peter!" cried Miss Stanley. + +He stopped abruptly. In the pause a door could be heard opening and +closing on the landing up-stairs. Then light footsteps became audible, +descending the staircase with a certain deliberation and a faint rustle +of skirts. + +"Tell her," said Mr. Stanley, with an imperious gesture, "to come in +here." + + + +Part 2 + + +Miss Stanley emerged from the study and stood watching Ann Veronica +descend. + +The girl was flushed with excitement, bright-eyed, and braced for a +struggle; her aunt had never seen her looking so fine or so pretty. +Her fancy dress, save for the green-gray stockings, the pseudo-Turkish +slippers, and baggy silk trousered ends natural to a Corsair's bride, +was hidden in a large black-silk-hooded opera-cloak. Beneath the hood +it was evident that her rebellious hair was bound up with red silk, and +fastened by some device in her ears (unless she had them pierced, which +was too dreadful a thing to suppose!) were long brass filigree earrings. + +"I'm just off, aunt," said Ann Veronica. + +"Your father is in the study and wishes to speak to you." + +Ann Veronica hesitated, and then stood in the open doorway and regarded +her father's stern presence. She spoke with an entirely false note of +cheerful off-handedness. "I'm just in time to say good-bye before I go, +father. I'm going up to London with the Widgetts to that ball." + +"Now look here, Ann Veronica," said Mr. Stanley, "just a moment. You are +NOT going to that ball!" + +Ann Veronica tried a less genial, more dignified note. + +"I thought we had discussed that, father." + +"You are not going to that ball! You are not going out of this house in +that get-up!" + +Ann Veronica tried yet more earnestly to treat him, as she would treat +any man, with an insistence upon her due of masculine respect. "You +see," she said, very gently, "I AM going. I am sorry to seem to disobey +you, but I am. I wish"--she found she had embarked on a bad sentence--"I +wish we needn't have quarrelled." + +She stopped abruptly, and turned about toward the front door. In a +moment he was beside her. "I don't think you can have heard me, Vee," +he said, with intensely controlled fury. "I said you were"--he +shouted--"NOT TO GO!" + +She made, and overdid, an immense effort to be a princess. She tossed +her head, and, having no further words, moved toward the door. Her +father intercepted her, and for a moment she and he struggled with their +hands upon the latch. A common rage flushed their faces. "Let go!" she +gasped at him, a blaze of anger. + +"Veronica!" cried Miss Stanley, warningly, and, "Peter!" + +For a moment they seemed on the verge of an altogether desperate +scuffle. Never for a moment had violence come between these two since +long ago he had, in spite of her mother's protest in the background, +carried her kicking and squalling to the nursery for some forgotten +crime. With something near to horror they found themselves thus +confronted. + +The door was fastened by a catch and a latch with an inside key, to +which at night a chain and two bolts were added. Carefully abstaining +from thrusting against each other, Ann Veronica and her father began an +absurdly desperate struggle, the one to open the door, the other to keep +it fastened. She seized the key, and he grasped her hand and squeezed +it roughly and painfully between the handle and the ward as she tried to +turn it. His grip twisted her wrist. She cried out with the pain of it. + +A wild passion of shame and self-disgust swept over her. Her spirit +awoke in dismay to an affection in ruins, to the immense undignified +disaster that had come to them. + +Abruptly she desisted, recoiled, and turned and fled up-stairs. + +She made noises between weeping and laughter as she went. She gained her +room, and slammed her door and locked it as though she feared violence +and pursuit. + +"Oh God!" she cried, "Oh God!" and flung aside her opera-cloak, and for +a time walked about the room--a Corsair's bride at a crisis of emotion. +"Why can't he reason with me," she said, again and again, "instead of +doing this?" + + + +Part 3 + + +There presently came a phase in which she said: "I WON'T stand it even +now. I will go to-night." + +She went as far as her door, then turned to the window. She opened +this and scrambled out--a thing she had not done for five long years of +adolescence--upon the leaded space above the built-out bath-room on the +first floor. Once upon a time she and Roddy had descended thence by the +drain-pipe. + +But things that a girl of sixteen may do in short skirts are not +things to be done by a young lady of twenty-one in fancy dress and +an opera-cloak, and just as she was coming unaided to an adequate +realization of this, she discovered Mr. Pragmar, the wholesale druggist, +who lived three gardens away, and who had been mowing his lawn to get +an appetite for dinner, standing in a fascinated attitude beside the +forgotten lawn-mower and watching her intently. + +She found it extremely difficult to infuse an air of quiet correctitude +into her return through the window, and when she was safely inside she +waved clinched fists and executed a noiseless dance of rage. + +When she reflected that Mr. Pragmar probably knew Mr. Ramage, and might +describe the affair to him, she cried "Oh!" with renewed vexation, and +repeated some steps of her dance in a new and more ecstatic measure. + + + +Part 4 + + +At eight that evening Miss Stanley tapped at Ann Veronica's bedroom +door. + +"I've brought you up some dinner, Vee," she said. + +Ann Veronica was lying on her bed in a darkling room staring at the +ceiling. She reflected before answering. She was frightfully hungry. +She had eaten little or no tea, and her mid-day meal had been worse than +nothing. + +She got up and unlocked the door. + +Her aunt did not object to capital punishment or war, or the industrial +system or casual wards, or flogging of criminals or the Congo Free +State, because none of these things really got hold of her imagination; +but she did object, she did not like, she could not bear to think of +people not having and enjoying their meals. It was her distinctive test +of an emotional state, its interference with a kindly normal digestion. +Any one very badly moved choked down a few mouthfuls; the symptom of +supreme distress was not to be able to touch a bit. So that the thought +of Ann Veronica up-stairs had been extremely painful for her through all +the silent dinner-time that night. As soon as dinner was over she went +into the kitchen and devoted herself to compiling a tray--not a tray +merely of half-cooled dinner things, but a specially prepared "nice" +tray, suitable for tempting any one. With this she now entered. + +Ann Veronica found herself in the presence of the most disconcerting +fact in human experience, the kindliness of people you believe to be +thoroughly wrong. She took the tray with both hands, gulped, and gave +way to tears. + +Her aunt leaped unhappily to the thought of penitence. + +"My dear," she began, with an affectionate hand on Ann Veronica's +shoulder, "I do SO wish you would realize how it grieves your father." + +Ann Veronica flung away from her hand, and the pepper-pot on the tray +upset, sending a puff of pepper into the air and instantly filling them +both with an intense desire to sneeze. + +"I don't think you see," she replied, with tears on her cheeks, and her +brows knitting, "how it shames and, ah!--disgraces me--AH TISHU!" + +She put down the tray with a concussion on her toilet-table. + +"But, dear, think! He is your father. SHOOH!" + +"That's no reason," said Ann Veronica, speaking through her handkerchief +and stopping abruptly. + +Niece and aunt regarded each other for a moment over their +pocket-handkerchiefs with watery but antagonistic eyes, each far too +profoundly moved to see the absurdity of the position. + +"I hope," said Miss Stanley, with dignity, and turned doorward with +features in civil warfare. "Better state of mind," she gasped.... + +Ann Veronica stood in the twilight room staring at the door that had +slammed upon her aunt, her pocket-handkerchief rolled tightly in her +hand. Her soul was full of the sense of disaster. She had made her first +fight for dignity and freedom as a grown-up and independent Person, and +this was how the universe had treated her. It had neither succumbed +to her nor wrathfully overwhelmed her. It had thrust her back with an +undignified scuffle, with vulgar comedy, with an unendurable, scornful +grin. + +"By God!" said Ann Veronica for the first time in her life. "But I will! +I will!" + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTH + +THE FLIGHT TO LONDON + + +Part 1 + + +Ann Veronica had an impression that she did not sleep at all that night, +and at any rate she got through an immense amount of feverish feeling +and thinking. + +What was she going to do? + +One main idea possessed her: she must get away from home, she must +assert herself at once or perish. "Very well," she would say, "then I +must go." To remain, she felt, was to concede everything. And she would +have to go to-morrow. It was clear it must be to-morrow. If she delayed +a day she would delay two days, if she delayed two days she would delay +a week, and after a week things would be adjusted to submission forever. +"I'll go," she vowed to the night, "or I'll die!" She made plans and +estimated means and resources. These and her general preparations had +perhaps a certain disproportion. She had a gold watch, a very good gold +watch that had been her mother's, a pearl necklace that was also pretty +good, some unpretending rings, some silver bangles and a few other such +inferior trinkets, three pounds thirteen shillings unspent of her +dress and book allowance and a few good salable books. So equipped, she +proposed to set up a separate establishment in the world. + +And then she would find work. + +For most of a long and fluctuating night she was fairly confident that +she would find work; she knew herself to be strong, intelligent, and +capable by the standards of most of the girls she knew. She was not +quite clear how she should find it, but she felt she would. Then +she would write and tell her father what she had done, and put their +relationship on a new footing. + +That was how she projected it, and in general terms it seemed plausible +and possible. But in between these wider phases of comparative +confidence were gaps of disconcerting doubt, when the universe was +presented as making sinister and threatening faces at her, defying her +to defy, preparing a humiliating and shameful overthrow. "I don't care," +said Ann Veronica to the darkness; "I'll fight it." + +She tried to plan her proceedings in detail. The only difficulties that +presented themselves clearly to her were the difficulties of getting +away from Morningside Park, and not the difficulties at the other end +of the journey. These were so outside her experience that she found it +possible to thrust them almost out of sight by saying they would be "all +right" in confident tones to herself. But still she knew they were not +right, and at times they became a horrible obsession as of something +waiting for her round the corner. She tried to imagine herself "getting +something," to project herself as sitting down at a desk and writing, +or as returning after her work to some pleasantly equipped and free and +independent flat. For a time she furnished the flat. But even with +that furniture it remained extremely vague, the possible good and the +possible evil as well! + +The possible evil! "I'll go," said Ann Veronica for the hundredth time. +"I'll go. I don't care WHAT happens." + +She awoke out of a doze, as though she had never been sleeping. It was +time to get up. + +She sat on the edge of her bed and looked about her, at her room, at the +row of black-covered books and the pig's skull. "I must take them," +she said, to help herself over her own incredulity. "How shall I get my +luggage out of the house?..." + +The figure of her aunt, a little distant, a little propitiatory, behind +the coffee things, filled her with a sense of almost catastrophic +adventure. Perhaps she might never come back to that breakfast-room +again. Never! Perhaps some day, quite soon, she might regret that +breakfast-room. She helped herself to the remainder of the slightly +congealed bacon, and reverted to the problem of getting her luggage +out of the house. She decided to call in the help of Teddy Widgett, or, +failing him, of one of his sisters. + + + +Part 2 + + +She found the younger generation of the Widgetts engaged in languid +reminiscences, and all, as they expressed it, a "bit decayed." Every +one became tremendously animated when they heard that Ann Veronica had +failed them because she had been, as she expressed it, "locked in." + +"My God!" said Teddy, more impressively than ever. + +"But what are you going to do?" asked Hetty. + +"What can one do?" asked Ann Veronica. "Would you stand it? I'm going to +clear out." + +"Clear out?" cried Hetty. + +"Go to London," said Ann Veronica. + +She had expected sympathetic admiration, but instead the whole Widgett +family, except Teddy, expressed a common dismay. "But how can you?" +asked Constance. "Who will you stop with?" + +"I shall go on my own. Take a room!" + +"I say!" said Constance. "But who's going to pay for the room?" + +"I've got money," said Ann Veronica. "Anything is better than this--this +stifled life down here." And seeing that Hetty and Constance were +obviously developing objections, she plunged at once into a demand for +help. "I've got nothing in the world to pack with except a toy size +portmanteau. Can you lend me some stuff?" + +"You ARE a chap!" said Constance, and warmed only slowly from the idea +of dissuasion to the idea of help. But they did what they could for her. +They agreed to lend her their hold-all and a large, formless bag which +they called the communal trunk. And Teddy declared himself ready to go +to the ends of the earth for her, and carry her luggage all the way. + +Hetty, looking out of the window--she always smoked her after-breakfast +cigarette at the window for the benefit of the less advanced section of +Morningside Park society--and trying not to raise objections, saw Miss +Stanley going down toward the shops. + +"If you must go on with it," said Hetty, "now's your time." And Ann +Veronica at once went back with the hold-all, trying not to hurry +indecently but to keep up her dignified air of being a wronged person +doing the right thing at a smart trot, to pack. Teddy went round by the +garden backs and dropped the bag over the fence. All this was exciting +and entertaining. Her aunt returned before the packing was done, and +Ann Veronica lunched with an uneasy sense of bag and hold-all packed +up-stairs and inadequately hidden from chance intruders by the valance +of the bed. She went down, flushed and light-hearted, to the Widgetts' +after lunch to make some final arrangements and then, as soon as her +aunt had retired to lie down for her usual digestive hour, took the +risk of the servants having the enterprise to report her proceedings +and carried her bag and hold-all to the garden gate, whence Teddy, in +a state of ecstatic service, bore them to the railway station. Then she +went up-stairs again, dressed herself carefully for town, put on her +most businesslike-looking hat, and with a wave of emotion she found it +hard to control, walked down to catch the 3.17 up-train. + +Teddy handed her into the second-class compartment her season-ticket +warranted, and declared she was "simply splendid." "If you want +anything," he said, "or get into any trouble, wire me. I'd come back +from the ends of the earth. I'd do anything, Vee. It's horrible to think +of you!" + +"You're an awful brick, Teddy!" she said. + +"Who wouldn't be for you?" + +The train began to move. "You're splendid!" said Teddy, with his hair +wild in the wind. "Good luck! Good luck!" + +She waved from the window until the bend hid him. + +She found herself alone in the train asking herself what she must do +next, and trying not to think of herself as cut off from home or any +refuge whatever from the world she had resolved to face. She felt +smaller and more adventurous even than she had expected to feel. "Let +me see," she said to herself, trying to control a slight sinking of the +heart, "I am going to take a room in a lodging-house because that is +cheaper.... But perhaps I had better get a room in an hotel to-night +and look round.... + +"It's bound to be all right," she said. + +But her heart kept on sinking. What hotel should she go to? If she told +a cabman to drive to an hotel, any hotel, what would he do--or say? He +might drive to something dreadfully expensive, and not at all the quiet +sort of thing she required. Finally she decided that even for an hotel +she must look round, and that meanwhile she would "book" her luggage at +Waterloo. She told the porter to take it to the booking-office, and it +was only after a disconcerting moment or so that she found she ought to +have directed him to go to the cloak-room. But that was soon put right, +and she walked out into London with a peculiar exaltation of mind, an +exaltation that partook of panic and defiance, but was chiefly a sense +of vast unexampled release. + +She inhaled a deep breath of air--London air. + + + +Part 3 + + +She dismissed the first hotels she passed, she scarcely knew why, mainly +perhaps from the mere dread of entering them, and crossed Waterloo +Bridge at a leisurely pace. It was high afternoon, there was no great +throng of foot-passengers, and many an eye from omnibus and pavement +rested gratefully on her fresh, trim presence as she passed young +and erect, with the light of determination shining through the quiet +self-possession of her face. She was dressed as English girls do dress +for town, without either coquetry or harshness: her collarless blouse +confessed a pretty neck, her eyes were bright and steady, and her dark +hair waved loosely and graciously over her ears.... + +It seemed at first the most beautiful afternoon of all time to her, +and perhaps the thrill of her excitement did add a distinctive and +culminating keenness to the day. The river, the big buildings on the +north bank, Westminster, and St. Paul's, were rich and wonderful with +the soft sunshine of London, the softest, the finest grained, the most +penetrating and least emphatic sunshine in the world. The very carts +and vans and cabs that Wellington Street poured out incessantly upon +the bridge seemed ripe and good in her eyes. A traffic of copious barges +slumbered over the face of the river-barges either altogether stagnant +or dreaming along in the wake of fussy tugs; and above circled, urbanely +voracious, the London seagulls. She had never been there before at that +hour, in that light, and it seemed to her as if she came to it all for +the first time. And this great mellow place, this London, now was hers, +to struggle with, to go where she pleased in, to overcome and live in. +"I am glad," she told herself, "I came." + +She marked an hotel that seemed neither opulent nor odd in a little side +street opening on the Embankment, made up her mind with an effort, and, +returning by Hungerford Bridge to Waterloo, took a cab to this chosen +refuge with her two pieces of luggage. There was just a minute's +hesitation before they gave her a room. + +The young lady in the bureau said she would inquire, and Ann Veronica, +while she affected to read the appeal on a hospital collecting-box upon +the bureau counter, had a disagreeable sense of being surveyed from +behind by a small, whiskered gentleman in a frock-coat, who came out of +the inner office and into the hall among a number of equally observant +green porters to look at her and her bags. But the survey was +satisfactory, and she found herself presently in Room No. 47, +straightening her hat and waiting for her luggage to appear. + +"All right so far," she said to herself.... + + + +Part 4 + + +But presently, as she sat on the one antimacassared red silk chair +and surveyed her hold-all and bag in that tidy, rather vacant, and +dehumanized apartment, with its empty wardrobe and desert toilet-table +and pictureless walls and stereotyped furnishings, a sudden blankness +came upon her as though she didn't matter, and had been thrust away into +this impersonal corner, she and her gear.... + +She decided to go out into the London afternoon again and get something +to eat in an Aerated Bread shop or some such place, and perhaps find a +cheap room for herself. Of course that was what she had to do; she had +to find a cheap room for herself and work! + +This Room No. 47 was no more than a sort of railway compartment on the +way to that. + +How does one get work? + +She walked along the Strand and across Trafalgar Square, and by the +Haymarket to Piccadilly, and so through dignified squares and palatial +alleys to Oxford Street; and her mind was divided between a speculative +treatment of employment on the one hand, and breezes--zephyr breezes--of +the keenest appreciation for London, on the other. The jolly part of it +was that for the first time in her life so far as London was concerned, +she was not going anywhere in particular; for the first time in her life +it seemed to her she was taking London in. + +She tried to think how people get work. Ought she to walk into some +of these places and tell them what she could do? She hesitated at the +window of a shipping-office in Cockspur Street and at the Army and +Navy Stores, but decided that perhaps there would be some special and +customary hour, and that it would be better for her to find this out +before she made her attempt. And, besides, she didn't just immediately +want to make her attempt. + +She fell into a pleasant dream of positions and work. Behind every one +of these myriad fronts she passed there must be a career or careers. Her +ideas of women's employment and a modern woman's pose in life were based +largely on the figure of Vivie Warren in Mrs. Warren's Profession. She +had seen Mrs. Warren's Profession furtively with Hetty Widgett from the +gallery of a Stage Society performance one Monday afternoon. Most of +it had been incomprehensible to her, or comprehensible in a way that +checked further curiosity, but the figure of Vivien, hard, capable, +successful, and bullying, and ordering about a veritable Teddy in the +person of Frank Gardner, appealed to her. She saw herself in very much +Vivie's position--managing something. + +Her thoughts were deflected from Vivie Warren by the peculiar behavior +of a middle-aged gentleman in Piccadilly. He appeared suddenly from +the infinite in the neighborhood of the Burlington Arcade, crossing +the pavement toward her and with his eyes upon her. He seemed to her +indistinguishably about her father's age. He wore a silk hat a little +tilted, and a morning coat buttoned round a tight, contained figure; +and a white slip gave a finish to his costume and endorsed the quiet +distinction of his tie. His face was a little flushed perhaps, and his +small, brown eyes were bright. He stopped on the curb-stone, not facing +her but as if he was on his way to cross the road, and spoke to her +suddenly over his shoulder. + +"Whither away?" he said, very distinctly in a curiously wheedling voice. +Ann Veronica stared at his foolish, propitiatory smile, his hungry gaze, +through one moment of amazement, then stepped aside and went on her way +with a quickened step. But her mind was ruffled, and its mirror-like +surface of satisfaction was not easily restored. + +Queer old gentleman! + +The art of ignoring is one of the accomplishments of every well-bred +girl, so carefully instilled that at last she can even ignore her own +thoughts and her own knowledge. Ann Veronica could at the same time ask +herself what this queer old gentleman could have meant by speaking to +her, and know--know in general terms, at least--what that accosting +signified. About her, as she had gone day by day to and from the +Tredgold College, she had seen and not seen many an incidental aspect +of those sides of life about which girls are expected to know nothing, +aspects that were extraordinarily relevant to her own position and +outlook on the world, and yet by convention ineffably remote. For all +that she was of exceptional intellectual enterprise, she had never +yet considered these things with unaverted eyes. She had viewed them +askance, and without exchanging ideas with any one else in the world +about them. + +She went on her way now no longer dreaming and appreciative, but +disturbed and unwillingly observant behind her mask of serene +contentment. + +That delightful sense of free, unembarrassed movement was gone. + +As she neared the bottom of the dip in Piccadilly she saw a woman +approaching her from the opposite direction--a tall woman who at the +first glance seemed altogether beautiful and fine. She came along with +the fluttering assurance of some tall ship. Then as she drew nearer +paint showed upon her face, and a harsh purpose behind the quiet +expression of her open countenance, and a sort of unreality in her +splendor betrayed itself for which Ann Veronica could not recall the +right word--a word, half understood, that lurked and hid in her mind, +the word "meretricious." Behind this woman and a little to the side +of her, walked a man smartly dressed, with desire and appraisal in his +eyes. Something insisted that those two were mysteriously linked--that +the woman knew the man was there. + +It was a second reminder that against her claim to go free and +untrammelled there was a case to be made, that after all it was true +that a girl does not go alone in the world unchallenged, nor ever has +gone freely alone in the world, that evil walks abroad and dangers, and +petty insults more irritating than dangers, lurk. + +It was in the quiet streets and squares toward Oxford Street that +it first came into her head disagreeably that she herself was being +followed. She observed a man walking on the opposite side of the way and +looking toward her. + +"Bother it all!" she swore. "Bother!" and decided that this was not so, +and would not look to right or left again. + +Beyond the Circus Ann Veronica went into a British Tea-Table Company +shop to get some tea. And as she was yet waiting for her tea to come she +saw this man again. Either it was an unfortunate recovery of a trail, or +he had followed her from Mayfair. There was no mistaking his intentions +this time. He came down the shop looking for her quite obviously, and +took up a position on the other side against a mirror in which he was +able to regard her steadfastly. + +Beneath the serene unconcern of Ann Veronica's face was a boiling +tumult. She was furiously angry. She gazed with a quiet detachment +toward the window and the Oxford Street traffic, and in her heart she +was busy kicking this man to death. He HAD followed her! What had he +followed her for? He must have followed her all the way from beyond +Grosvenor Square. + +He was a tall man and fair, with bluish eyes that were rather +protuberant, and long white hands of which he made a display. He had +removed his silk hat, and now sat looking at Ann Veronica over an +untouched cup of tea; he sat gloating upon her, trying to catch her eye. +Once, when he thought he had done so, he smiled an ingratiating smile. +He moved, after quiet intervals, with a quick little movement, and ever +and again stroked his small mustache and coughed a self-conscious cough. + +"That he should be in the same world with me!" said Ann Veronica, +reduced to reading the list of good things the British Tea-Table Company +had priced for its patrons. + +Heaven knows what dim and tawdry conceptions of passion and desire were +in that blond cranium, what romance-begotten dreams of intrigue and +adventure! but they sufficed, when presently Ann Veronica went out +into the darkling street again, to inspire a flitting, dogged pursuit, +idiotic, exasperating, indecent. + +She had no idea what she should do. If she spoke to a policeman she did +not know what would ensue. Perhaps she would have to charge this man and +appear in a police-court next day. + +She became angry with herself. She would not be driven in by this +persistent, sneaking aggression. She would ignore him. Surely she could +ignore him. She stopped abruptly, and looked in a flower-shop window. He +passed, and came loitering back and stood beside her, silently looking +into her face. + +The afternoon had passed now into twilight. The shops were lighting +up into gigantic lanterns of color, the street lamps were glowing +into existence, and she had lost her way. She had lost her sense of +direction, and was among unfamiliar streets. She went on from street to +street, and all the glory of London had departed. Against the sinister, +the threatening, monstrous inhumanity of the limitless city, there was +nothing now but this supreme, ugly fact of a pursuit--the pursuit of the +undesired, persistent male. + +For a second time Ann Veronica wanted to swear at the universe. + +There were moments when she thought of turning upon this man and +talking to him. But there was something in his face at once stupid and +invincible that told her he would go on forcing himself upon her, that +he would esteem speech with her a great point gained. In the twilight +he had ceased to be a person one could tackle and shame; he had become +something more general, a something that crawled and sneaked toward her +and would not let her alone.... + +Then, when the tension was getting unendurable, and she was on the verge +of speaking to some casual passer-by and demanding help, her follower +vanished. For a time she could scarcely believe he was gone. He had. The +night had swallowed him up, but his work on her was done. She had lost +her nerve, and there was no more freedom in London for her that night. +She was glad to join in the stream of hurrying homeward workers that was +now welling out of a thousand places of employment, and to imitate their +driven, preoccupied haste. She had followed a bobbing white hat and gray +jacket until she reached the Euston Road corner of Tottenham Court Road, +and there, by the name on a bus and the cries of a conductor, she made +a guess of her way. And she did not merely affect to be driven--she felt +driven. She was afraid people would follow her, she was afraid of the +dark, open doorways she passed, and afraid of the blazes of light; she +was afraid to be alone, and she knew not what it was she feared. + +It was past seven when she got back to her hotel. She thought then that +she had shaken off the man of the bulging blue eyes forever, but that +night she found he followed her into her dreams. He stalked her, he +stared at her, he craved her, he sidled slinking and propitiatory +and yet relentlessly toward her, until at last she awoke from the +suffocating nightmare nearness of his approach, and lay awake in fear +and horror listening to the unaccustomed sounds of the hotel. + +She came very near that night to resolving that she would return to +her home next morning. But the morning brought courage again, and those +first intimations of horror vanished completely from her mind. + + + +Part 5 + + +She had sent her father a telegram from the East Strand post-office +worded thus: + + | All | is | well | with | me | + |---------|-----------|----------|----------|---------| + | and | quite | safe | Veronica | | + ----------------------------------------------------- + +and afterward she had dined a la carte upon a cutlet, and had then set +herself to write an answer to Mr. Manning's proposal of marriage. But +she had found it very difficult. + + +"DEAR MR. MANNING," she had begun. So far it had been plain sailing, +and it had seemed fairly evident to go on: "I find it very difficult to +answer your letter." + +But after that neither ideas nor phrases had come and she had fallen +thinking of the events of the day. She had decided that she would spend +the next morning answering advertisements in the papers that abounded in +the writing-room; and so, after half an hour's perusal of back numbers +of the Sketch in the drawing-room, she had gone to bed. + +She found next morning, when she came to this advertisement answering, +that it was more difficult than she had supposed. In the first place +there were not so many suitable advertisements as she had expected. +She sat down by the paper-rack with a general feeling of resemblance +to Vivie Warren, and looked through the Morning Post and Standard and +Telegraph, and afterward the half-penny sheets. The Morning Post was +hungry for governesses and nursery governesses, but held out no other +hopes; the Daily Telegraph that morning seemed eager only for skirt +hands. She went to a writing-desk and made some memoranda on a sheet of +note-paper, and then remembered that she had no address as yet to which +letters could be sent. + +She decided to leave this matter until the morrow and devote the morning +to settling up with Mr. Manning. At the cost of quite a number of torn +drafts she succeeded in evolving this: + +"DEAR MR. MANNING,--I find it very difficult to answer your letter. +I hope you won't mind if I say first that I think it does me an +extraordinary honor that you should think of any one like myself +so highly and seriously, and, secondly, that I wish it had not been +written." + +She surveyed this sentence for some time before going on. "I wonder," +she said, "why one writes him sentences like that? It'll have to go," +she decided, "I've written too many already." She went on, with a +desperate attempt to be easy and colloquial: + +"You see, we were rather good friends, I thought, and now perhaps it +will be difficult for us to get back to the old friendly footing. But if +that can possibly be done I want it to be done. You see, the plain fact +of the case is that I think I am too young and ignorant for marriage. +I have been thinking these things over lately, and it seems to me that +marriage for a girl is just the supremest thing in life. It isn't just +one among a number of important things; for her it is the important +thing, and until she knows far more than I know of the facts of life, +how is she to undertake it? So please; if you will, forget that you +wrote that letter, and forgive this answer. I want you to think of me +just as if I was a man, and quite outside marriage altogether. + +"I do hope you will be able to do this, because I value men friends. +I shall be very sorry if I cannot have you for a friend. I think that +there is no better friend for a girl than a man rather older than +herself. + +"Perhaps by this time you will have heard of the step I have taken in +leaving my home. Very likely you will disapprove highly of what I have +done--I wonder? You may, perhaps, think I have done it just in a fit of +childish petulance because my father locked me in when I wanted to go +to a ball of which he did not approve. But really it is much more +than that. At Morningside Park I feel as though all my growing up was +presently to stop, as though I was being shut in from the light of life, +and, as they say in botany, etiolated. I was just like a sort of dummy +that does things as it is told--that is to say, as the strings are +pulled. I want to be a person by myself, and to pull my own strings. I +had rather have trouble and hardship like that than be taken care of by +others. I want to be myself. I wonder if a man can quite understand that +passionate feeling? It is quite a passionate feeling. So I am already +no longer the girl you knew at Morningside Park. I am a young person +seeking employment and freedom and self-development, just as in quite +our first talk of all I said I wanted to be. + +"I do hope you will see how things are, and not be offended with me or +frightfully shocked and distressed by what I have done. + +"Very sincerely yours, + +"ANN VERONICA STANLEY." + + + +Part 6 + + +In the afternoon she resumed her search for apartments. The intoxicating +sense of novelty had given place to a more business-like mood. She +drifted northward from the Strand, and came on some queer and dingy +quarters. + +She had never imagined life was half so sinister as it looked to her in +the beginning of these investigations. She found herself again in the +presence of some element in life about which she had been trained not +to think, about which she was perhaps instinctively indisposed to think; +something which jarred, in spite of all her mental resistance, with +all her preconceptions of a clean and courageous girl walking out from +Morningside Park as one walks out of a cell into a free and spacious +world. One or two landladies refused her with an air of conscious virtue +that she found hard to explain. "We don't let to ladies," they said. + +She drifted, via Theobald's Road, obliquely toward the region about +Titchfield Street. Such apartments as she saw were either scandalously +dirty or unaccountably dear, or both. And some were adorned with +engravings that struck her as being more vulgar and undesirable than +anything she had ever seen in her life. Ann Veronica loved beautiful +things, and the beauty of undraped loveliness not least among them; but +these were pictures that did but insist coarsely upon the roundness of +women's bodies. The windows of these rooms were obscured with draperies, +their floors a carpet patchwork; the china ornaments on their mantels +were of a class apart. After the first onset several of the women who +had apartments to let said she would not do for them, and in effect +dismissed her. This also struck her as odd. + +About many of these houses hung a mysterious taint as of something +weakly and commonly and dustily evil; the women who negotiated the rooms +looked out through a friendly manner as though it was a mask, with hard, +defiant eyes. Then one old crone, short-sighted and shaky-handed, called +Ann Veronica "dearie," and made some remark, obscure and slangy, of +which the spirit rather than the words penetrated to her understanding. + +For a time she looked at no more apartments, and walked through +gaunt and ill-cleaned streets, through the sordid under side of life, +perplexed and troubled, ashamed of her previous obtuseness. + +She had something of the feeling a Hindoo must experience who has been +into surroundings or touched something that offends his caste. She +passed people in the streets and regarded them with a quickening +apprehension, once or twice came girls dressed in slatternly finery, +going toward Regent Street from out these places. It did not occur to +her that they at least had found a way of earning a living, and had that +much economic superiority to herself. It did not occur to her that save +for some accidents of education and character they had souls like her +own. + +For a time Ann Veronica went on her way gauging the quality of sordid +streets. At last, a little way to the northward of Euston Road, the +moral cloud seemed to lift, the moral atmosphere to change; clean blinds +appeared in the windows, clean doorsteps before the doors, a different +appeal in the neatly placed cards bearing the word + + -------------------------- + | APARTMENTS | + -------------------------- + +in the clear bright windows. At last in a street near the Hampstead Road +she hit upon a room that had an exceptional quality of space and order, +and a tall woman with a kindly face to show it. "You're a student, +perhaps?" said the tall woman. "At the Tredgold Women's College," said +Ann Veronica. She felt it would save explanations if she did not state +she had left her home and was looking for employment. The room was +papered with green, large-patterned paper that was at worst a trifle +dingy, and the arm-chair and the seats of the other chairs were covered +with the unusual brightness of a large-patterned chintz, which also +supplied the window-curtain. There was a round table covered, not with +the usual "tapestry" cover, but with a plain green cloth that went +passably with the wall-paper. In the recess beside the fireplace +were some open bookshelves. The carpet was a quiet drugget and not +excessively worn, and the bed in the corner was covered by a white +quilt. There were neither texts nor rubbish on the walls, but only a +stirring version of Belshazzar's feast, a steel engraving in the early +Victorian manner that had some satisfactory blacks. And the woman who +showed this room was tall, with an understanding eye and the quiet +manner of the well-trained servant. + +Ann Veronica brought her luggage in a cab from the hotel; she tipped the +hotel porter sixpence and overpaid the cabman eighteenpence, unpacked +some of her books and possessions, and so made the room a little +homelike, and then sat down in a by no means uncomfortable arm-chair +before the fire. She had arranged for a supper of tea, a boiled egg, and +some tinned peaches. She had discussed the general question of supplies +with the helpful landlady. "And now," said Ann Veronica surveying her +apartment with an unprecedented sense of proprietorship, "what is the +next step?" + +She spent the evening in writing--it was a little difficult--to her +father and--which was easier--to the Widgetts. She was greatly heartened +by doing this. The necessity of defending herself and assuming a +confident and secure tone did much to dispell the sense of being +exposed and indefensible in a huge dingy world that abounded in sinister +possibilities. She addressed her letters, meditated on them for a time, +and then took them out and posted them. Afterward she wanted to get her +letter to her father back in order to read it over again, and, if it +tallied with her general impression of it, re-write it. + +He would know her address to-morrow. She reflected upon that with a +thrill of terror that was also, somehow, in some faint remote way, +gleeful. + +"Dear old Daddy," she said, "he'll make a fearful fuss. Well, it had to +happen somewhen.... Somehow. I wonder what he'll say?" + + + +CHAPTER THE SIXTH + +EXPOSTULATIONS + + +Part 1 + + +The next morning opened calmly, and Ann Veronica sat in her own room, +her very own room, and consumed an egg and marmalade, and read the +advertisements in the Daily Telegraph. Then began expostulations, +preluded by a telegram and headed by her aunt. The telegram reminded +Ann Veronica that she had no place for interviews except her +bed-sitting-room, and she sought her landlady and negotiated hastily for +the use of the ground floor parlor, which very fortunately was vacant. +She explained she was expecting an important interview, and asked that +her visitor should be duly shown in. Her aunt arrived about half-past +ten, in black and with an unusually thick spotted veil. She raised this +with the air of a conspirator unmasking, and displayed a tear-flushed +face. For a moment she remained silent. + +"My dear," she said, when she could get her breath, "you must come home +at once." + +Ann Veronica closed the door quite softly and stood still. + +"This has almost killed your father.... After Gwen!" + +"I sent a telegram." + +"He cares so much for you. He did so care for you." + +"I sent a telegram to say I was all right." + +"All right! And I never dreamed anything of the sort was going on. I +had no idea!" She sat down abruptly and threw her wrists limply upon the +table. "Oh, Veronica!" she said, "to leave your home!" + +She had been weeping. She was weeping now. Ann Veronica was overcome by +this amount of emotion. + +"Why did you do it?" her aunt urged. "Why could you not confide in us?" + +"Do what?" said Ann Veronica. + +"What you have done." + +"But what have I done?" + +"Elope! Go off in this way. We had no idea. We had such a pride in +you, such hope in you. I had no idea you were not the happiest girl. +Everything I could do! Your father sat up all night. Until at last I +persuaded him to go to bed. He wanted to put on his overcoat and come +after you and look for you--in London. We made sure it was just like +Gwen. Only Gwen left a letter on the pincushion. You didn't even do that +Vee; not even that." + +"I sent a telegram, aunt," said Ann Veronica. + +"Like a stab. You didn't even put the twelve words." + +"I said I was all right." + +"Gwen said she was happy. Before that came your father didn't even +know you were gone. He was just getting cross about your being late for +dinner--you know his way--when it came. He opened it--just off-hand, and +then when he saw what it was he hit at the table and sent his soup spoon +flying and splashing on to the tablecloth. 'My God!' he said, 'I'll go +after them and kill him. I'll go after them and kill him.' For the +moment I thought it was a telegram from Gwen." + +"But what did father imagine?" + +"Of course he imagined! Any one would! 'What has happened, Peter?' I +asked. He was standing up with the telegram crumpled in his hand. He +used a most awful word! Then he said, 'It's Ann Veronica gone to join +her sister!' 'Gone!' I said. 'Gone!' he said. 'Read that,' and threw the +telegram at me, so that it went into the tureen. He swore when I tried +to get it out with the ladle, and told me what it said. Then he sat +down again in a chair and said that people who wrote novels ought to be +strung up. It was as much as I could do to prevent him flying out of the +house there and then and coming after you. Never since I was a girl have +I seen your father so moved. 'Oh! little Vee!' he cried, 'little Vee!' +and put his face between his hands and sat still for a long time before +he broke out again." + +Ann Veronica had remained standing while her aunt spoke. + +"Do you mean, aunt," she asked, "that my father thought I had gone +off--with some man?" + +"What else COULD he think? Would any one DREAM you would be so mad as to +go off alone?" + +"After--after what had happened the night before?" + +"Oh, why raise up old scores? If you could see him this morning, his +poor face as white as a sheet and all cut about with shaving! He was +for coming up by the very first train and looking for you, but I said to +him, 'Wait for the letters,' and there, sure enough, was yours. He could +hardly open the envelope, he trembled so. Then he threw the letter at +me. 'Go and fetch her home,' he said; 'it isn't what we thought! It's +just a practical joke of hers.' And with that he went off to the City, +stern and silent, leaving his bacon on his plate--a great slice of bacon +hardly touched. No breakfast, he's had no dinner, hardly a mouthful of +soup--since yesterday at tea." + +She stopped. Aunt and niece regarded each other silently. + +"You must come home to him at once," said Miss Stanley. + +Ann Veronica looked down at her fingers on the claret-colored +table-cloth. Her aunt had summoned up an altogether too vivid picture +of her father as the masterful man, overbearing, emphatic, sentimental, +noisy, aimless. Why on earth couldn't he leave her to grow in her own +way? Her pride rose at the bare thought of return. + +"I don't think I CAN do that," she said. She looked up and said, a +little breathlessly, "I'm sorry, aunt, but I don't think I can." + + +Part 2 + + +Then it was the expostulations really began. + +From first to last, on this occasion, her aunt expostulated for about +two hours. "But, my dear," she began, "it is Impossible! It is quite out +of the Question. You simply can't." And to that, through vast rhetorical +meanderings, she clung. It reached her only slowly that Ann Veronica was +standing to her resolution. "How will you live?" she appealed. "Think +of what people will say!" That became a refrain. "Think of what Lady +Palsworthy will say! Think of what"--So-and-so--"will say! What are we +to tell people? + +"Besides, what am I to tell your father?" + +At first it had not been at all clear to Ann Veronica that she would +refuse to return home; she had had some dream of a capitulation that +should leave her an enlarged and defined freedom, but as her aunt put +this aspect and that of her flight to her, as she wandered illogically +and inconsistently from one urgent consideration to another, as she +mingled assurances and aspects and emotions, it became clearer and +clearer to the girl that there could be little or no change in the +position of things if she returned. "And what will Mr. Manning think?" +said her aunt. + +"I don't care what any one thinks," said Ann Veronica. + +"I can't imagine what has come over you," said her aunt. "I can't +conceive what you want. You foolish girl!" + +Ann Veronica took that in silence. At the back of her mind, dim and yet +disconcerting, was the perception that she herself did not know what she +wanted. And yet she knew it was not fair to call her a foolish girl. + +"Don't you care for Mr. Manning?" said her aunt. + +"I don't see what he has to do with my coming to London?" + +"He--he worships the ground you tread on. You don't deserve it, but he +does. Or at least he did the day before yesterday. And here you are!" + +Her aunt opened all the fingers of her gloved hand in a rhetorical +gesture. "It seems to me all madness--madness! Just because your +father--wouldn't let you disobey him!" + + + +Part 3 + + +In the afternoon the task of expostulation was taken up by Mr. Stanley +in person. Her father's ideas of expostulation were a little harsh and +forcible, and over the claret-colored table-cloth and under the gas +chandelier, with his hat and umbrella between them like the mace in +Parliament, he and his daughter contrived to have a violent quarrel. She +had intended to be quietly dignified, but he was in a smouldering rage +from the beginning, and began by assuming, which alone was more than +flesh and blood could stand, that the insurrection was over and that she +was coming home submissively. In his desire to be emphatic and to avenge +himself for his over-night distresses, he speedily became brutal, more +brutal than she had ever known him before. + +"A nice time of anxiety you've given me, young lady," he said, as he +entered the room. "I hope you're satisfied." + +She was frightened--his anger always did frighten her--and in her +resolve to conceal her fright she carried a queen-like dignity to what +she felt even at the time was a preposterous pitch. She said she hoped +she had not distressed him by the course she had felt obliged to take, +and he told her not to be a fool. She tried to keep her side up by +declaring that he had put her into an impossible position, and he +replied by shouting, "Nonsense! Nonsense! Any father in my place would +have done what I did." + +Then he went on to say: "Well, you've had your little adventure, and I +hope now you've had enough of it. So go up-stairs and get your things +together while I look out for a hansom." + +To which the only possible reply seemed to be, "I'm not coming home." + +"Not coming home!" + +"No!" And, in spite of her resolve to be a Person, Ann Veronica began +to weep with terror at herself. Apparently she was always doomed to weep +when she talked to her father. But he was always forcing her to say and +do such unexpectedly conclusive things. She feared he might take her +tears as a sign of weakness. So she said: "I won't come home. I'd rather +starve!" + +For a moment the conversation hung upon that declaration. Then Mr. +Stanley, putting his hands on the table in the manner rather of a +barrister than a solicitor, and regarding her balefully through his +glasses with quite undisguised animosity, asked, "And may I presume to +inquire, then, what you mean to do?--how do you propose to live?" + +"I shall live," sobbed Ann Veronica. "You needn't be anxious about that! +I shall contrive to live." + +"But I AM anxious," said Mr. Stanley, "I am anxious. Do you think it's +nothing to me to have my daughter running about London looking for odd +jobs and disgracing herself?" + +"Sha'n't get odd jobs," said Ann Veronica, wiping her eyes. + +And from that point they went on to a thoroughly embittering wrangle. +Mr. Stanley used his authority, and commanded Ann Veronica to come home, +to which, of course, she said she wouldn't; and then he warned her not +to defy him, warned her very solemnly, and then commanded her again. +He then said that if she would not obey him in this course she should +"never darken his doors again," and was, indeed, frightfully abusive. +This threat terrified Ann Veronica so much that she declared with sobs +and vehemence that she would never come home again, and for a time both +talked at once and very wildly. He asked her whether she understood what +she was saying, and went on to say still more precisely that she should +never touch a penny of his money until she came home again--not one +penny. Ann Veronica said she didn't care. + +Then abruptly Mr. Stanley changed his key. "You poor child!" he said; +"don't you see the infinite folly of these proceedings? Think! Think of +the love and affection you abandon! Think of your aunt, a second mother +to you. Think if your own mother was alive!" + +He paused, deeply moved. + +"If my own mother was alive," sobbed Ann Veronica, "she would +understand." + +The talk became more and more inconclusive and exhausting. Ann Veronica +found herself incompetent, undignified, and detestable, holding on +desperately to a hardening antagonism to her father, quarrelling with +him, wrangling with him, thinking of repartees--almost as if he was a +brother. It was horrible, but what could she do? She meant to live +her own life, and he meant, with contempt and insults, to prevent her. +Anything else that was said she now regarded only as an aspect of or +diversion from that. + +In the retrospect she was amazed to think how things had gone to pieces, +for at the outset she had been quite prepared to go home again upon +terms. While waiting for his coming she had stated her present +and future relations with him with what had seemed to her the most +satisfactory lucidity and completeness. She had looked forward to an +explanation. Instead had come this storm, this shouting, this weeping, +this confusion of threats and irrelevant appeals. It was not only that +her father had said all sorts of inconsistent and unreasonable things, +but that by some incomprehensible infection she herself had replied in +the same vein. He had assumed that her leaving home was the point at +issue, that everything turned on that, and that the sole alternative was +obedience, and she had fallen in with that assumption until rebellion +seemed a sacred principle. Moreover, atrociously and inexorably, he +allowed it to appear ever and again in horrible gleams that he suspected +there was some man in the case.... Some man! + +And to conclude it all was the figure of her father in the doorway, +giving her a last chance, his hat in one hand, his umbrella in the +other, shaken at her to emphasize his point. + +"You understand, then," he was saying, "you understand?" + +"I understand," said Ann Veronica, tear-wet and flushed with a +reciprocal passion, but standing up to him with an equality that amazed +even herself, "I understand." She controlled a sob. "Not a penny--not +one penny--and never darken your doors again!" + + + +Part 4 + + +The next day her aunt came again and expostulated, and was just saying +it was "an unheard-of thing" for a girl to leave her home as Ann +Veronica had done, when her father arrived, and was shown in by the +pleasant-faced landlady. + +Her father had determined on a new line. He put down his hat and +umbrella, rested his hands on his hips, and regarded Ann Veronica +firmly. + +"Now," he said, quietly, "it's time we stopped this nonsense." + +Ann Veronica was about to reply, when he went on, with a still more +deadly quiet: "I am not here to bandy words with you. Let us have no +more of this humbug. You are to come home." + +"I thought I explained--" + +"I don't think you can have heard me," said her father; "I have told you +to come home." + +"I thought I explained--" + +"Come home!" + +Ann Veronica shrugged her shoulders. + +"Very well," said her father. + +"I think this ends the business," he said, turning to his sister. + +"It's not for us to supplicate any more. She must learn wisdom--as God +pleases." + +"But, my dear Peter!" said Miss Stanley. + +"No," said her brother, conclusively, "it's not for a parent to go on +persuading a child." + +Miss Stanley rose and regarded Ann Veronica fixedly. The girl stood with +her hands behind her back, sulky, resolute, and intelligent, a strand +of her black hair over one eye and looking more than usually +delicate-featured, and more than ever like an obdurate child. + +"She doesn't know." + +"She does." + +"I can't imagine what makes you fly out against everything like this," +said Miss Stanley to her niece. + +"What is the good of talking?" said her brother. "She must go her own +way. A man's children nowadays are not his own. That's the fact of the +matter. Their minds are turned against him.... Rubbishy novels and +pernicious rascals. We can't even protect them from themselves." + +An immense gulf seemed to open between father and daughter as he said +these words. + +"I don't see," gasped Ann Veronica, "why parents and children... +shouldn't be friends." + +"Friends!" said her father. "When we see you going through disobedience +to the devil! Come, Molly, she must go her own way. I've tried to use my +authority. And she defies me. What more is there to be said? She defies +me!" + +It was extraordinary. Ann Veronica felt suddenly an effect of tremendous +pathos; she would have given anything to have been able to frame and +make some appeal, some utterance that should bridge this bottomless +chasm that had opened between her and her father, and she could find +nothing whatever to say that was in the least sincere and appealing. + +"Father," she cried, "I have to live!" + +He misunderstood her. "That," he said, grimly, with his hand on the +door-handle, "must be your own affair, unless you choose to live at +Morningside Park." + +Miss Stanley turned to her. "Vee," she said, "come home. Before it is +too late." + +"Come, Molly," said Mr. Stanley, at the door. + +"Vee!" said Miss Stanley, "you hear what your father says!" + +Miss Stanley struggled with emotion. She made a curious movement toward +her niece, then suddenly, convulsively, she dabbed down something lumpy +on the table and turned to follow her brother. Ann Veronica stared for a +moment in amazement at this dark-green object that clashed as it was +put down. It was a purse. She made a step forward. "Aunt!" she said, "I +can't--" + +Then she caught a wild appeal in her aunt's blue eye, halted, and the +door clicked upon them. + +There was a pause, and then the front door slammed.... + +Ann Veronica realized that she was alone with the world. And this time +the departure had a tremendous effect of finality. She had to resist an +impulse of sheer terror, to run out after them and give in. + +"Gods," she said, at last, "I've done it this time!" + +"Well!" She took up the neat morocco purse, opened it, and examined the +contents. + +It contained three sovereigns, six and fourpence, two postage stamps, a +small key, and her aunt's return half ticket to Morningside Park. + + + +Part 5 + + +After the interview Ann Veronica considered herself formally cut off +from home. If nothing else had clinched that, the purse had. + +Nevertheless there came a residuum of expostulations. Her brother Roddy, +who was in the motor line, came to expostulate; her sister Alice wrote. +And Mr. Manning called. + +Her sister Alice seemed to have developed a religious sense away there +in Yorkshire, and made appeals that had no meaning for Ann Veronica's +mind. She exhorted Ann Veronica not to become one of "those unsexed +intellectuals, neither man nor woman." + +Ann Veronica meditated over that phrase. "That's HIM," said Ann +Veronica, in sound, idiomatic English. "Poor old Alice!" + +Her brother Roddy came to her and demanded tea, and asked her to state +a case. "Bit thick on the old man, isn't it?" said Roddy, who had +developed a bluff, straightforward style in the motor shop. + +"Mind my smoking?" said Roddy. "I don't see quite what your game is, +Vee, but I suppose you've got a game on somewhere. + +"Rummy lot we are!" said Roddy. "Alice--Alice gone dotty, and all over +kids. Gwen--I saw Gwen the other day, and the paint's thicker than ever. +Jim is up to the neck in Mahatmas and Theosophy and Higher Thought and +rot--writes letters worse than Alice. And now YOU'RE on the war-path. I +believe I'm the only sane member of the family left. The G.V.'s as mad +as any of you, in spite of all his respectability; not a bit of him +straight anywhere, not one bit." + +"Straight?" + +"Not a bit of it! He's been out after eight per cent. since the +beginning. Eight per cent.! He'll come a cropper one of these days, +if you ask me. He's been near it once or twice already. That's got his +nerves to rags. I suppose we're all human beings really, but what price +the sacred Institution of the Family! Us as a bundle! Eh?... I don't +half disagree with you, Vee, really; only thing is, I don't see +how you're going to pull it off. A home MAY be a sort of cage, but +still--it's a home. Gives you a right to hang on to the old man until he +busts--practically. Jolly hard life for a girl, getting a living. Not MY +affair." + +He asked questions and listened to her views for a time. + +"I'd chuck this lark right off if I were you, Vee," he said. "I'm five +years older than you, and no end wiser, being a man. What you're after +is too risky. It's a damned hard thing to do. It's all very handsome +starting out on your own, but it's too damned hard. That's my opinion, +if you ask me. There's nothing a girl can do that isn't sweated to the +bone. You square the G.V., and go home before you have to. That's my +advice. If you don't eat humble-pie now you may live to fare worse +later. _I_ can't help you a cent. Life's hard enough nowadays for an +unprotected male. Let alone a girl. You got to take the world as it is, +and the only possible trade for a girl that isn't sweated is to get hold +of a man and make him do it for her. It's no good flying out at that, +Vee; _I_ didn't arrange it. It's Providence. That's how things are; +that's the order of the world. Like appendicitis. It isn't pretty, but +we're made so. Rot, no doubt; but we can't alter it. You go home and +live on the G.V., and get some other man to live on as soon as possible. +It isn't sentiment but it's horse sense. All this Woman-who-Diddery--no +damn good. After all, old P.--Providence, I mean--HAS arranged it so +that men will keep you, more or less. He made the universe on those +lines. You've got to take what you can get." + +That was the quintessence of her brother Roddy. + +He played variations on this theme for the better part of an hour. + +"You go home," he said, at parting; "you go home. It's all very fine and +all that, Vee, this freedom, but it isn't going to work. The world isn't +ready for girls to start out on their own yet; that's the plain fact of +the case. Babies and females have got to keep hold of somebody or go +under--anyhow, for the next few generations. You go home and wait a +century, Vee, and then try again. Then you may have a bit of a chance. +Now you haven't the ghost of one--not if you play the game fair." + + + +Part 6 + + +It was remarkable to Ann Veronica how completely Mr. Manning, in his +entirely different dialect, indorsed her brother Roddy's view of things. +He came along, he said, just to call, with large, loud apologies, +radiantly kind and good. Miss Stanley, it was manifest, had given him +Ann Veronica's address. The kindly faced landlady had failed to catch +his name, and said he was a tall, handsome gentleman with a great black +mustache. Ann Veronica, with a sigh at the cost of hospitality, made a +hasty negotiation for an extra tea and for a fire in the ground-floor +apartment, and preened herself carefully for the interview. In the +little apartment, under the gas chandelier, his inches and his stoop +were certainly very effective. In the bad light he looked at once +military and sentimental and studious, like one of Ouida's guardsmen +revised by Mr. Haldane and the London School of Economics and finished +in the Keltic school. + +"It's unforgivable of me to call, Miss Stanley," he said, shaking hands +in a peculiar, high, fashionable manner; "but you know you said we might +be friends." + +"It's dreadful for you to be here," he said, indicating the yellow +presence of the first fog of the year without, "but your aunt told me +something of what had happened. It's just like your Splendid Pride to do +it. Quite!" + +He sat in the arm-chair and took tea, and consumed several of the +extra cakes which she had sent out for and talked to her and expressed +himself, looking very earnestly at her with his deep-set eyes, and +carefully avoiding any crumbs on his mustache the while. Ann Veronica +sat firelit by her tea-tray with, quite unconsciously, the air of an +expert hostess. + +"But how is it all going to end?" said Mr. Manning. + +"Your father, of course," he said, "must come to realize just how +Splendid you are! He doesn't understand. I've seen him, and he doesn't +a bit understand. _I_ didn't understand before that letter. It makes me +want to be just everything I CAN be to you. You're like some splendid +Princess in Exile in these Dreadful Dingy apartments!" + +"I'm afraid I'm anything but a Princess when it comes to earning a +salary," said Ann Veronica. "But frankly, I mean to fight this through +if I possibly can." + +"My God!" said Manning, in a stage-aside. "Earning a salary!" + +"You're like a Princess in Exile!" he repeated, overruling her. "You +come into these sordid surroundings--you mustn't mind my calling them +sordid--and it makes them seem as though they didn't matter.... I +don't think they do matter. I don't think any surroundings could throw a +shadow on you." + +Ann Veronica felt a slight embarrassment. "Won't you have some more tea, +Mr. Manning?" she asked. + +"You know--," said Mr. Manning, relinquishing his cup without answering +her question, "when I hear you talk of earning a living, it's as if I +heard of an archangel going on the Stock Exchange--or Christ selling +doves.... Forgive my daring. I couldn't help the thought." + +"It's a very good image," said Ann Veronica. + +"I knew you wouldn't mind." + +"But does it correspond with the facts of the case? You know, Mr. +Manning, all this sort of thing is very well as sentiment, but does it +correspond with the realities? Are women truly such angelic things and +men so chivalrous? You men have, I know, meant to make us Queens and +Goddesses, but in practice--well, look, for example, at the stream of +girls one meets going to work of a morning, round-shouldered, cheap, and +underfed! They aren't queens, and no one is treating them as queens. +And look, again, at the women one finds letting lodgings.... I was +looking for rooms last week. It got on my nerves--the women I saw. Worse +than any man. Everywhere I went and rapped at a door I found behind it +another dreadful dingy woman--another fallen queen, I suppose--dingier +than the last, dirty, you know, in grain. Their poor hands!" + +"I know," said Mr. Manning, with entirely suitable emotion. + +"And think of the ordinary wives and mothers, with their anxiety, their +limitations, their swarms of children!" + +Mr. Manning displayed distress. He fended these things off from him with +the rump of his fourth piece of cake. "I know that our social order is +dreadful enough," he said, "and sacrifices all that is best and most +beautiful in life. I don't defend it." + +"And besides, when it comes to the idea of queens," Ann Veronica went +on, "there's twenty-one and a half million women to twenty million men. +Suppose our proper place is a shrine. Still, that leaves over a million +shrines short, not reckoning widows who re-marry. And more boys die than +girls, so that the real disproportion among adults is even greater." + +"I know," said Mr Manning, "I know these Dreadful Statistics. I know +there's a sort of right in your impatience at the slowness of Progress. +But tell me one thing I don't understand--tell me one thing: How can you +help it by coming down into the battle and the mire? That's the thing +that concerns me." + +"Oh, I'm not trying to help it," said Ann Veronica. "I'm only arguing +against your position of what a woman should be, and trying to get +it clear in my own mind. I'm in this apartment and looking for work +because--Well, what else can I do, when my father practically locks me +up?" + +"I know," said Mr. Manning, "I know. Don't think I can't sympathize and +understand. Still, here we are in this dingy, foggy city. Ye gods! what +a wilderness it is! Every one trying to get the better of every one, +every one regardless of every one--it's one of those days when every one +bumps against you--every one pouring coal smoke into the air and making +confusion worse confounded, motor omnibuses clattering and smelling, +a horse down in the Tottenham Court Road, an old woman at the corner +coughing dreadfully--all the painful sights of a great city, and here +you come into it to take your chances. It's too valiant, Miss Stanley, +too valiant altogether!" + +Ann Veronica meditated. She had had two days of employment-seeking now. +"I wonder if it is." + +"It isn't," said Mr. Manning, "that I mind Courage in a Woman--I love +and admire Courage. What could be more splendid than a beautiful girl +facing a great, glorious tiger? Una and the Lion again, and all that! +But this isn't that sort of thing; this is just a great, ugly, endless +wilderness of selfish, sweating, vulgar competition!" + +"That you want to keep me out of?" + +"Exactly!" said Mr. Manning. + +"In a sort of beautiful garden-close--wearing lovely dresses and picking +beautiful flowers?" + +"Ah! If one could!" + +"While those other girls trudge to business and those other women let +lodgings. And in reality even that magic garden-close resolves itself +into a villa at Morningside Park and my father being more and more +cross and overbearing at meals--and a general feeling of insecurity and +futility." + +Mr. Manning relinquished his cup, and looked meaningly at Ann Veronica. +"There," he said, "you don't treat me fairly, Miss Stanley. My +garden-close would be a better thing than that." + + + +CHAPTER THE SEVENTH + +IDEALS AND A REALITY + + +Part 1 + + +And now for some weeks Ann Veronica was to test her market value in the +world. She went about in a negligent November London that had become +very dark and foggy and greasy and forbidding indeed, and tried to find +that modest but independent employment she had so rashly assumed. She +went about, intent-looking and self-possessed, trim and fine, concealing +her emotions whatever they were, as the realities of her position opened +out before her. Her little bed-sitting-room was like a lair, and she +went out from it into this vast, dun world, with its smoke-gray houses, +its glaring streets of shops, its dark streets of homes, its orange-lit +windows, under skies of dull copper or muddy gray or black, much as an +animal goes out to seek food. She would come back and write letters, +carefully planned and written letters, or read some book she had fetched +from Mudie's--she had invested a half-guinea with Mudie's--or sit over +her fire and think. + +Slowly and reluctantly she came to realize that Vivie Warren was what +is called an "ideal." There were no such girls and no such positions. No +work that offered was at all of the quality she had vaguely postulated +for herself. With such qualifications as she possessed, two chief +channels of employment lay open, and neither attracted her, neither +seemed really to offer a conclusive escape from that subjection to +mankind against which, in the person of her father, she was rebelling. +One main avenue was for her to become a sort of salaried accessory wife +or mother, to be a governess or an assistant schoolmistress, or a very +high type of governess-nurse. The other was to go into business--into a +photographer's reception-room, for example, or a costumer's or hat-shop. +The first set of occupations seemed to her to be altogether too domestic +and restricted; for the latter she was dreadfully handicapped by her +want of experience. And also she didn't like them. She didn't like the +shops, she didn't like the other women's faces; she thought the +smirking men in frock-coats who dominated these establishments the +most intolerable persons she had ever had to face. One called her very +distinctly "My dear!" + +Two secretarial posts did indeed seem to offer themselves in which, at +least, there was no specific exclusion of womanhood; one was under +a Radical Member of Parliament, and the other under a Harley Street +doctor, and both men declined her proffered services with the utmost +civility and admiration and terror. There was also a curious interview +at a big hotel with a middle-aged, white-powdered woman, all covered +with jewels and reeking of scent, who wanted a Companion. She did not +think Ann Veronica would do as her companion. + +And nearly all these things were fearfully ill-paid. They carried no +more than bare subsistence wages; and they demanded all her time and +energy. She had heard of women journalists, women writers, and so +forth; but she was not even admitted to the presence of the editors she +demanded to see, and by no means sure that if she had been she could +have done any work they might have given her. One day she desisted from +her search and went unexpectedly to the Tredgold College. Her place +was not filled; she had been simply noted as absent, and she did a +comforting day of admirable dissection upon the tortoise. She was so +interested, and this was such a relief from the trudging anxiety of her +search for work, that she went on for a whole week as if she was still +living at home. Then a third secretarial opening occurred and renewed +her hopes again: a position as amanuensis--with which some of the +lighter duties of a nurse were combined--to an infirm gentleman of means +living at Twickenham, and engaged upon a great literary research to +prove that the "Faery Queen" was really a treatise upon molecular +chemistry written in a peculiar and picturesquely handled cipher. + + + +Part 2 + + +Now, while Ann Veronica was taking these soundings in the industrial +sea, and measuring herself against the world as it is, she was also +making extensive explorations among the ideas and attitudes of a number +of human beings who seemed to be largely concerned with the world as it +ought to be. She was drawn first by Miss Miniver, and then by her own +natural interest, into a curious stratum of people who are busied with +dreams of world progress, of great and fundamental changes, of a New Age +that is to replace all the stresses and disorders of contemporary life. + +Miss Miniver learned of her flight and got her address from the +Widgetts. She arrived about nine o'clock the next evening in a state of +tremulous enthusiasm. She followed the landlady half way up-stairs, and +called up to Ann Veronica, "May I come up? It's me! You know--Nettie +Miniver!" She appeared before Ann Veronica could clearly recall who +Nettie Miniver might be. + +There was a wild light in her eye, and her straight hair was out +demonstrating and suffragetting upon some independent notions of its +own. Her fingers were bursting through her gloves, as if to get at once +into touch with Ann Veronica. "You're Glorious!" said Miss Miniver in +tones of rapture, holding a hand in each of hers and peering up into Ann +Veronica's face. "Glorious! You're so calm, dear, and so resolute, so +serene! + +"It's girls like you who will show them what We are," said Miss Miniver; +"girls whose spirits have not been broken!" + +Ann Veronica sunned herself a little in this warmth. + +"I was watching you at Morningside Park, dear," said Miss Miniver. "I am +getting to watch all women. I thought then perhaps you didn't care, that +you were like so many of them. NOW it's just as though you had grown up +suddenly." + +She stopped, and then suggested: "I wonder--I should love--if it was +anything _I_ said." + +She did not wait for Ann Veronica's reply. She seemed to assume that it +must certainly be something she had said. "They all catch on," she said. +"It spreads like wildfire. This is such a grand time! Such a glorious +time! There never was such a time as this! Everything seems so close to +fruition, so coming on and leading on! The Insurrection of Women! They +spring up everywhere. Tell me all that happened, one sister-woman to +another." + +She chilled Ann Veronica a little by that last phrase, and yet the +magnetism of her fellowship and enthusiasm was very strong; and it was +pleasant to be made out a heroine after so much expostulation and so +many secret doubts. + +But she did not listen long; she wanted to talk. She sat, crouched +together, by the corner of the hearthrug under the bookcase that +supported the pig's skull, and looked into the fire and up at Ann +Veronica's face, and let herself go. "Let us put the lamp out," she +said; "the flames are ever so much better for talking," and Ann Veronica +agreed. "You are coming right out into life--facing it all." + +Ann Veronica sat with her chin on her hand, red-lit and saying little, +and Miss Miniver discoursed. As she talked, the drift and significance +of what she was saying shaped itself slowly to Ann Veronica's +apprehension. It presented itself in the likeness of a great, gray, dull +world--a brutal, superstitious, confused, and wrong-headed world, +that hurt people and limited people unaccountably. In remote times and +countries its evil tendencies had expressed themselves in the form of +tyrannies, massacres, wars, and what not; but just at present in England +they shaped as commercialism and competition, silk hats, suburban +morals, the sweating system, and the subjection of women. So far the +thing was acceptable enough. But over against the world Miss Miniver +assembled a small but energetic minority, the Children of Light--people +she described as "being in the van," or "altogether in the van," about +whom Ann Veronica's mind was disposed to be more sceptical. + +Everything, Miss Miniver said, was "working up," everything was "coming +on"--the Higher Thought, the Simple Life, Socialism, Humanitarianism, it +was all the same really. She loved to be there, taking part in it all, +breathing it, being it. Hitherto in the world's history there had been +precursors of this Progress at great intervals, voices that had spoken +and ceased, but now it was all coming on together in a rush. She +mentioned, with familiar respect, Christ and Buddha and Shelley and +Nietzsche and Plato. Pioneers all of them. Such names shone brightly in +the darkness, with black spaces of unilluminated emptiness about them, +as stars shine in the night; but now--now it was different; now it was +dawn--the real dawn. + +"The women are taking it up," said Miss Miniver; "the women and the +common people, all pressing forward, all roused." + +Ann Veronica listened with her eyes on the fire. + +"Everybody is taking it up," said Miss Miniver. "YOU had to come in. You +couldn't help it. Something drew you. Something draws everybody. From +suburbs, from country towns--everywhere. I see all the Movements. As +far as I can, I belong to them all. I keep my finger on the pulse of +things." + +Ann Veronica said nothing. + +"The dawn!" said Miss Miniver, with her glasses reflecting the fire like +pools of blood-red flame. + +"I came to London," said Ann Veronica, "rather because of my own +difficulty. I don't know that I understand altogether." + +"Of course you don't," said Miss Miniver, gesticulating triumphantly +with her thin hand and thinner wrist, and patting Ann Veronica's knee. +"Of course you don't. That's the wonder of it. But you will, you +will. You must let me take you to things--to meetings and things, to +conferences and talks. Then you will begin to see. You will begin to see +it all opening out. I am up to the ears in it all--every moment I can +spare. I throw up work--everything! I just teach in one school, one good +school, three days a week. All the rest--Movements! I can live now on +fourpence a day. Think how free that leaves me to follow things up! I +must take you everywhere. I must take you to the Suffrage people, and +the Tolstoyans, and the Fabians." + +"I have heard of the Fabians," said Ann Veronica. + +"It's THE Society!" said Miss Miniver. "It's the centre of the +intellectuals. Some of the meetings are wonderful! Such earnest, +beautiful women! Such deep-browed men!... And to think that there +they are making history! There they are putting together the plans of a +new world. Almost light-heartedly. There is Shaw, and Webb, and Wilkins +the author, and Toomer, and Doctor Tumpany--the most wonderful people! +There you see them discussing, deciding, planning! Just think--THEY ARE +MAKING A NEW WORLD!" + +"But ARE these people going to alter everything?" said Ann Veronica. + +"What else can happen?" asked Miss Miniver, with a little weak gesture +at the glow. "What else can possibly happen--as things are going now?" + + + +Part 3 + + +Miss Miniver let Ann Veronica into her peculiar levels of the world +with so enthusiastic a generosity that it seemed ingratitude to remain +critical. Indeed, almost insensibly Ann Veronica became habituated to +the peculiar appearance and the peculiar manners of the people "in the +van." The shock of their intellectual attitude was over, usage robbed +it of the first quaint effect of deliberate unreason. They were in many +respects so right; she clung to that, and shirked more and more the +paradoxical conviction that they were also somehow, and even in direct +relation to that rightness, absurd. + +Very central in Miss Miniver's universe were the Goopes. The Goopes were +the oddest little couple conceivable, following a fruitarian career upon +an upper floor in Theobald's Road. They were childless and servantless, +and they had reduced simple living to the finest of fine arts. Mr. +Goopes, Ann Veronica gathered, was a mathematical tutor and visited +schools, and his wife wrote a weekly column in New Ideas upon vegetarian +cookery, vivisection, degeneration, the lacteal secretion, appendicitis, +and the Higher Thought generally, and assisted in the management of +a fruit shop in the Tottenham Court Road. Their very furniture had +mysteriously a high-browed quality, and Mr. Goopes when at home dressed +simply in a pajama-shaped suit of canvas sacking tied with brown +ribbons, while his wife wore a purple djibbah with a richly +embroidered yoke. He was a small, dark, reserved man, with a large +inflexible-looking convex forehead, and his wife was very pink and +high-spirited, with one of those chins that pass insensibly into a full, +strong neck. Once a week, every Saturday, they had a little gathering +from nine till the small hours, just talk and perhaps reading aloud and +fruitarian refreshments--chestnut sandwiches buttered with nut tose, +and so forth--and lemonade and unfermented wine; and to one of these +symposia Miss Miniver after a good deal of preliminary solicitude, +conducted Ann Veronica. + +She was introduced, perhaps a little too obviously for her taste, as +a girl who was standing out against her people, to a gathering that +consisted of a very old lady with an extremely wrinkled skin and a deep +voice who was wearing what appeared to Ann Veronica's inexperienced +eye to be an antimacassar upon her head, a shy, blond young man with a +narrow forehead and glasses, two undistinguished women in plain skirts +and blouses, and a middle-aged couple, very fat and alike in black, Mr. +and Mrs. Alderman Dunstable, of the Borough Council of Marylebone. +These were seated in an imperfect semicircle about a very copper-adorned +fireplace, surmounted by a carved wood inscription: + +"DO IT NOW." + +And to them were presently added a roguish-looking young man, with +reddish hair, an orange tie, and a fluffy tweed suit, and others who, +in Ann Veronica's memory, in spite of her efforts to recall details, +remained obstinately just "others." + +The talk was animated, and remained always brilliant in form even when +it ceased to be brilliant in substance. There were moments when Ann +Veronica rather more than suspected the chief speakers to be, as +school-boys say, showing off at her. + +They talked of a new substitute for dripping in vegetarian cookery that +Mrs. Goopes was convinced exercised an exceptionally purifying influence +on the mind. And then they talked of Anarchism and Socialism, and +whether the former was the exact opposite of the latter or only a higher +form. The reddish-haired young man contributed allusions to the Hegelian +philosophy that momentarily confused the discussion. Then Alderman +Dunstable, who had hitherto been silent, broke out into speech and went +off at a tangent, and gave his personal impressions of quite a number +of his fellow-councillors. He continued to do this for the rest of the +evening intermittently, in and out, among other topics. He addressed +himself chiefly to Goopes, and spoke as if in reply to long-sustained +inquiries on the part of Goopes into the personnel of the Marylebone +Borough Council. "If you were to ask me," he would say, "I should say +Blinders is straight. An ordinary type, of course--" + +Mrs. Dunstable's contributions to the conversation were entirely in the +form of nods; whenever Alderman Dunstable praised or blamed she nodded +twice or thrice, according to the requirements of his emphasis. And +she seemed always to keep one eye on Ann Veronica's dress. Mrs. +Goopes disconcerted the Alderman a little by abruptly challenging the +roguish-looking young man in the orange tie (who, it seemed, was the +assistant editor of New Ideas) upon a critique of Nietzsche and Tolstoy +that had appeared in his paper, in which doubts had been cast upon the +perfect sincerity of the latter. Everybody seemed greatly concerned +about the sincerity of Tolstoy. + +Miss Miniver said that if once she lost her faith in Tolstoy's +sincerity, nothing she felt would really matter much any more, and she +appealed to Ann Veronica whether she did not feel the same; and Mr. +Goopes said that we must distinguish between sincerity and irony, which +was often indeed no more than sincerity at the sublimated level. + +Alderman Dunstable said that sincerity was often a matter of +opportunity, and illustrated the point to the fair young man with an +anecdote about Blinders on the Dust Destructor Committee, during which +the young man in the orange tie succeeded in giving the whole discussion +a daring and erotic flavor by questioning whether any one could be +perfectly sincere in love. + +Miss Miniver thought that there was no true sincerity except in love, +and appealed to Ann Veronica, but the young man in the orange tie went +on to declare that it was quite possible to be sincerely in love with +two people at the same time, although perhaps on different planes with +each individual, and deceiving them both. But that brought Mrs. Goopes +down on him with the lesson Titian teaches so beautifully in his "Sacred +and Profane Love," and became quite eloquent upon the impossibility of +any deception in the former. + +Then they discoursed on love for a time, and Alderman Dunstable, turning +back to the shy, blond young man and speaking in undertones of the +utmost clearness, gave a brief and confidential account of an unfounded +rumor of the bifurcation of the affections of Blinders that had led to a +situation of some unpleasantness upon the Borough Council. + +The very old lady in the antimacassar touched Ann Veronica's arm +suddenly, and said, in a deep, arch voice: + +"Talking of love again; spring again, love again. Oh! you young people!" + +The young man with the orange tie, in spite of Sisyphus-like efforts +on the part of Goopes to get the topic on to a higher plane, displayed +great persistence in speculating upon the possible distribution of the +affections of highly developed modern types. + +The old lady in the antimacassar said, abruptly, "Ah! you young people, +you young people, if you only knew!" and then laughed and then mused in +a marked manner; and the young man with the narrow forehead and glasses +cleared his throat and asked the young man in the orange tie whether he +believed that Platonic love was possible. Mrs. Goopes said she believed +in nothing else, and with that she glanced at Ann Veronica, rose a +little abruptly, and directed Goopes and the shy young man in the +handing of refreshments. + +But the young man with the orange tie remained in his place, disputing +whether the body had not something or other which he called its +legitimate claims. And from that they came back by way of the Kreutzer +Sonata and Resurrection to Tolstoy again. + +So the talk went on. Goopes, who had at first been a little reserved, +resorted presently to the Socratic method to restrain the young man with +the orange tie, and bent his forehead over him, and brought out at last +very clearly from him that the body was only illusion and everything +nothing but just spirit and molecules of thought. It became a sort of +duel at last between them, and all the others sat and listened--every +one, that is, except the Alderman, who had got the blond young man into +a corner by the green-stained dresser with the aluminum things, and was +sitting with his back to every one else, holding one hand over his mouth +for greater privacy, and telling him, with an accent of confidential +admission, in whispers of the chronic struggle between the natural +modesty and general inoffensiveness of the Borough Council and the +social evil in Marylebone. + +So the talk went on, and presently they were criticising novelists, and +certain daring essays of Wilkins got their due share of attention, +and then they were discussing the future of the theatre. Ann Veronica +intervened a little in the novelist discussion with a defence of Esmond +and a denial that the Egoist was obscure, and when she spoke every one +else stopped talking and listened. Then they deliberated whether Bernard +Shaw ought to go into Parliament. And that brought them to vegetarianism +and teetotalism, and the young man in the orange tie and Mrs. Goopes +had a great set-to about the sincerity of Chesterton and Belloc that was +ended by Goopes showing signs of resuming the Socratic method. + +And at last Ann Veronica and Miss Miniver came down the dark staircase +and out into the foggy spaces of the London squares, and crossed Russell +Square, Woburn Square, Gordon Square, making an oblique route to Ann +Veronica's lodging. They trudged along a little hungry, because of the +fruitarian refreshments, and mentally very active. And Miss Miniver fell +discussing whether Goopes or Bernard Shaw or Tolstoy or Doctor Tumpany +or Wilkins the author had the more powerful and perfect mind in +existence at the present time. She was clear there were no other minds +like them in all the world. + + + +Part 4 + + +Then one evening Ann Veronica went with Miss Miniver into the back seats +of the gallery at Essex Hall, and heard and saw the giant leaders of the +Fabian Society who are re-making the world: Bernard Shaw and Toomer and +Doctor Tumpany and Wilkins the author, all displayed upon a platform. +The place was crowded, and the people about her were almost equally +made up of very good-looking and enthusiastic young people and a great +variety of Goopes-like types. In the discussion there was the oddest +mixture of things that were personal and petty with an idealist devotion +that was fine beyond dispute. In nearly every speech she heard was the +same implication of great and necessary changes in the world--changes +to be won by effort and sacrifice indeed, but surely to be won. And +afterward she saw a very much larger and more enthusiastic gathering, +a meeting of the advanced section of the woman movement in Caxton Hall, +where the same note of vast changes in progress sounded; and she went +to a soiree of the Dress Reform Association and visited a Food Reform +Exhibition, where imminent change was made even alarmingly visible. +The women's meeting was much more charged with emotional force than the +Socialists'. Ann Veronica was carried off her intellectual and critical +feet by it altogether, and applauded and uttered cries that subsequent +reflection failed to endorse. "I knew you would feel it," said Miss +Miniver, as they came away flushed and heated. "I knew you would begin +to see how it all falls into place together." + +It did begin to fall into place together. She became more and more +alive, not so much to a system of ideas as to a big diffused +impulse toward change, to a great discontent with and criticism of +life as it is lived, to a clamorous confusion of ideas for +reconstruction--reconstruction of the methods of business, of economic +development, of the rules of property, of the status of children, of the +clothing and feeding and teaching of every one; she developed a quite +exaggerated consciousness of a multitude of people going about the +swarming spaces of London with their minds full, their talk and gestures +full, their very clothing charged with the suggestion of the urgency of +this pervasive project of alteration. Some indeed carried themselves, +dressed themselves even, rather as foreign visitors from the land +of "Looking Backward" and "News from Nowhere" than as the indigenous +Londoners they were. For the most part these were detached people: men +practising the plastic arts, young writers, young men in employment, a +very large proportion of girls and women--self-supporting women or girls +of the student class. They made a stratum into which Ann Veronica was +now plunged up to her neck; it had become her stratum. + +None of the things they said and did were altogether new to Ann +Veronica, but now she got them massed and alive, instead of by glimpses +or in books--alive and articulate and insistent. The London backgrounds, +in Bloomsbury and Marylebone, against which these people went to +and fro, took on, by reason of their gray facades, their implacably +respectable windows and window-blinds, their reiterated unmeaning iron +railings, a stronger and stronger suggestion of the flavor of her father +at his most obdurate phase, and of all that she felt herself fighting +against. + +She was already a little prepared by her discursive reading and +discussion under the Widgett influence for ideas and "movements," though +temperamentally perhaps she was rather disposed to resist and criticise +than embrace them. But the people among whom she was now thrown through +the social exertions of Miss Miniver and the Widgetts--for Teddy and +Hetty came up from Morningside Park and took her to an eighteen-penny +dinner in Soho and introduced her to some art students, who were also +Socialists, and so opened the way to an evening of meandering talk in a +studio--carried with them like an atmosphere this implication, not only +that the world was in some stupid and even obvious way WRONG, with which +indeed she was quite prepared to agree, but that it needed only a +few pioneers to behave as such and be thoroughly and indiscriminately +"advanced," for the new order to achieve itself. + +When ninety per cent. out of the ten or twelve people one meets in a +month not only say but feel and assume a thing, it is very hard not +to fall into the belief that the thing is so. Imperceptibly almost Ann +Veronica began to acquire the new attitude, even while her mind still +resisted the felted ideas that went with it. And Miss Miniver began to +sway her. + +The very facts that Miss Miniver never stated an argument clearly, that +she was never embarrassed by a sense of self-contradiction, and had +little more respect for consistency of statement than a washerwoman +has for wisps of vapor, which made Ann Veronica critical and hostile at +their first encounter in Morningside Park, became at last with constant +association the secret of Miss Miniver's growing influence. The brain +tires of resistance, and when it meets again and again, incoherently +active, the same phrases, the same ideas that it has already slain, +exposed and dissected and buried, it becomes less and less energetic to +repeat the operation. There must be something, one feels, in ideas that +achieve persistently a successful resurrection. What Miss Miniver would +have called the Higher Truth supervenes. + +Yet through these talks, these meetings and conferences, these movements +and efforts, Ann Veronica, for all that she went with her friend, and +at times applauded with her enthusiastically, yet went nevertheless with +eyes that grew more and more puzzled, and fine eyebrows more and more +disposed to knit. She was with these movements--akin to them, she felt +it at times intensely--and yet something eluded her. Morningside Park +had been passive and defective; all this rushed about and was active, +but it was still defective. It still failed in something. It did seem +germane to the matter that so many of the people "in the van" were plain +people, or faded people, or tired-looking people. It did affect the +business that they all argued badly and were egotistical in their +manners and inconsistent in their phrases. There were moments when she +doubted whether the whole mass of movements and societies and gatherings +and talks was not simply one coherent spectacle of failure protecting +itself from abjection by the glamour of its own assertions. It happened +that at the extremest point of Ann Veronica's social circle from the +Widgetts was the family of the Morningside Park horse-dealer, a company +of extremely dressy and hilarious young women, with one equestrian +brother addicted to fancy waistcoats, cigars, and facial spots. These +girls wore hats at remarkable angles and bows to startle and kill; they +liked to be right on the spot every time and up to everything that +was it from the very beginning and they rendered their conception of +Socialists and all reformers by the words "positively frightening" +and "weird." Well, it was beyond dispute that these words did convey +a certain quality of the Movements in general amid which Miss Miniver +disported herself. They WERE weird. And yet for all that-- + +It got into Ann Veronica's nights at last and kept her awake, the +perplexing contrast between the advanced thought and the advanced +thinker. The general propositions of Socialism, for example, struck her +as admirable, but she certainly did not extend her admiration to any +of its exponents. She was still more stirred by the idea of the equal +citizenship of men and women, by the realization that a big and growing +organization of women were giving form and a generalized expression +to just that personal pride, that aspiration for personal freedom and +respect which had brought her to London; but when she heard Miss Miniver +discoursing on the next step in the suffrage campaign, or read of women +badgering Cabinet Ministers, padlocked to railings, or getting up in a +public meeting to pipe out a demand for votes and be carried out kicking +and screaming, her soul revolted. She could not part with dignity. +Something as yet unformulated within her kept her estranged from all +these practical aspects of her beliefs. + +"Not for these things, O Ann Veronica, have you revolted," it said; "and +this is not your appropriate purpose." + +It was as if she faced a darkness in which was something very beautiful +and wonderful as yet unimagined. The little pucker in her brows became +more perceptible. + + + +Part 5 + + +In the beginning of December Ann Veronica began to speculate privately +upon the procedure of pawning. She had decided that she would begin +with her pearl necklace. She spent a very disagreeable afternoon and +evening--it was raining fast outside, and she had very unwisely left +her soundest pair of boots in the boothole of her father's house in +Morningside Park--thinking over the economic situation and planning a +course of action. Her aunt had secretly sent on to Ann Veronica some new +warm underclothing, a dozen pairs of stockings, and her last winter's +jacket, but the dear lady had overlooked those boots. + +These things illuminated her situation extremely. Finally she decided +upon a step that had always seemed reasonable to her, but that hitherto +she had, from motives too faint for her to formulate, refrained from +taking. She resolved to go into the City to Ramage and ask for his +advice. And next morning she attired herself with especial care and +neatness, found his address in the Directory at a post-office, and went +to him. + +She had to wait some minutes in an outer office, wherein three young +men of spirited costume and appearance regarded her with ill-concealed +curiosity and admiration. Then Ramage appeared with effusion, and +ushered her into his inner apartment. The three young men exchanged +expressive glances. + +The inner apartment was rather gracefully furnished with a thick, fine +Turkish carpet, a good brass fender, a fine old bureau, and on the walls +were engravings of two young girls' heads by Greuze, and of some modern +picture of boys bathing in a sunlit pool. + +"But this is a surprise!" said Ramage. "This is wonderful! I've been +feeling that you had vanished from my world. Have you been away from +Morningside Park?" + +"I'm not interrupting you?" + +"You are. Splendidly. Business exists for such interruptions. There you +are, the best client's chair." + +Ann Veronica sat down, and Ramage's eager eyes feasted on her. + +"I've been looking out for you," he said. "I confess it." + +She had not, she reflected, remembered how prominent his eyes were. + +"I want some advice," said Ann Veronica. + +"Yes?" + +"You remember once, how we talked--at a gate on the Downs? We talked +about how a girl might get an independent living." + +"Yes, yes." + +"Well, you see, something has happened at home." + +She paused. + +"Nothing has happened to Mr. Stanley?" + +"I've fallen out with my father. It was about--a question of what I +might do or might not do. He--In fact, he--he locked me in my room. +Practically." + +Her breath left her for a moment. + +"I SAY!" said Mr. Ramage. + +"I wanted to go to an art-student ball of which he disapproved." + +"And why shouldn't you?" + +"I felt that sort of thing couldn't go on. So I packed up and came to +London next day." + +"To a friend?" + +"To lodgings--alone." + +"I say, you know, you have some pluck. You did it on your own?" + +Ann Veronica smiled. "Quite on my own," she said. + +"It's magnificent!" He leaned back and regarded her with his head a +little on one side. "By Jove!" he said, "there is something direct about +you. I wonder if I should have locked you up if I'd been your father. +Luckily I'm not. And you started out forthwith to fight the world and be +a citizen on your own basis?" He came forward again and folded his hands +under him on his desk. + +"How has the world taken it?" he asked. "If I was the world I think I +should have put down a crimson carpet, and asked you to say what you +wanted, and generally walk over me. But the world didn't do that." + +"Not exactly." + +"It presented a large impenetrable back, and went on thinking about +something else." + +"It offered from fifteen to two-and-twenty shillings a week--for +drudgery." + +"The world has no sense of what is due to youth and courage. It never +has had." + +"Yes," said Ann Veronica. "But the thing is, I want a job." + +"Exactly! And so you came along to me. And you see, I don't turn my +back, and I am looking at you and thinking about you from top to toe." + +"And what do you think I ought to do?" + +"Exactly!" He lifted a paper-weight and dabbed it gently down again. +"What ought you to do?" + +"I've hunted up all sorts of things." + +"The point to note is that fundamentally you don't want particularly to +do it." + +"I don't understand." + +"You want to be free and so forth, yes. But you don't particularly +want to do the job that sets you free--for its own sake. I mean that it +doesn't interest you in itself." + +"I suppose not." + +"That's one of our differences. We men are like children. We can get +absorbed in play, in games, in the business we do. That's really why +we do them sometimes rather well and get on. But women--women as a rule +don't throw themselves into things like that. As a matter of fact it +isn't their affair. And as a natural consequence, they don't do so well, +and they don't get on--and so the world doesn't pay them. They don't +catch on to discursive interests, you see, because they are more +serious, they are concentrated on the central reality of life, and a +little impatient of its--its outer aspects. At least that, I think, is +what makes a clever woman's independent career so much more difficult +than a clever man's." + +"She doesn't develop a specialty." Ann Veronica was doing her best to +follow him. + +"She has one, that's why. Her specialty is the central thing in life, it +is life itself, the warmth of life, sex--and love." + +He pronounced this with an air of profound conviction and with his +eyes on Ann Veronica's face. He had an air of having told her a deep, +personal secret. She winced as he thrust the fact at her, was about to +answer, and checked herself. She colored faintly. + +"That doesn't touch the question I asked you," she said. "It may be +true, but it isn't quite what I have in mind." + +"Of course not," said Ramage, as one who rouses himself from deep +preoccupations And he began to question her in a business-like way upon +the steps she had taken and the inquiries she had made. He displayed +none of the airy optimism of their previous talk over the downland gate. +He was helpful, but gravely dubious. "You see," he said, "from my point +of view you're grown up--you're as old as all the goddesses and the +contemporary of any man alive. But from the--the economic point of view +you're a very young and altogether inexperienced person." + +He returned to and developed that idea. "You're still," he said, "in the +educational years. From the point of view of most things in the world +of employment which a woman can do reasonably well and earn a living +by, you're unripe and half-educated. If you had taken your degree, for +example." + +He spoke of secretarial work, but even there she would need to be able +to do typing and shorthand. He made it more and more evident to her that +her proper course was not to earn a salary but to accumulate equipment. +"You see," he said, "you are like an inaccessible gold-mine in all this +sort of matter. You're splendid stuff, you know, but you've got nothing +ready to sell. That's the flat business situation." + +He thought. Then he slapped his hand on his desk and looked up with +the air of a man struck by a brilliant idea. "Look here," he said, +protruding his eyes; "why get anything to do at all just yet? Why, if +you must be free, why not do the sensible thing? Make yourself worth +a decent freedom. Go on with your studies at the Imperial College, +for example, get a degree, and make yourself good value. Or become a +thorough-going typist and stenographer and secretarial expert." + +"But I can't do that." + +"Why not?" + +"You see, if I do go home my father objects to the College, and as for +typing--" + +"Don't go home." + +"Yes, but you forget; how am I to live?" + +"Easily. Easily.... Borrow.... From me." + +"I couldn't do that," said Ann Veronica, sharply. + +"I see no reason why you shouldn't." + +"It's impossible." + +"As one friend to another. Men are always doing it, and if you set up to +be a man--" + +"No, it's absolutely out of the question, Mr. Ramage." And Ann +Veronica's face was hot. + +Ramage pursed his rather loose lips and shrugged his shoulders, with +his eyes fixed steadily upon her. "Well anyhow--I don't see the force of +your objection, you know. That's my advice to you. Here I am. Consider +you've got resources deposited with me. Perhaps at the first blush--it +strikes you as odd. People are brought up to be so shy about money. As +though it was indelicate--it's just a sort of shyness. But here I am to +draw upon. Here I am as an alternative either to nasty work--or going +home." + +"It's very kind of you--" began Ann Veronica. + +"Not a bit. Just a friendly polite suggestion. I don't suggest any +philanthropy. I shall charge you five per cent., you know, fair and +square." + +Ann Veronica opened her lips quickly and did not speak. But the five per +cent. certainly did seem to improve the aspect of Ramage's suggestion. + +"Well, anyhow, consider it open." He dabbed with his paper-weight again, +and spoke in an entirely indifferent tone. "And now tell me, please, how +you eloped from Morningside Park. How did you get your luggage out of +the house? Wasn't it--wasn't it rather in some respects--rather a lark? +It's one of my regrets for my lost youth. I never ran away from anywhere +with anybody anywhen. And now--I suppose I should be considered too +old. I don't feel it.... Didn't you feel rather EVENTFUL--in the +train--coming up to Waterloo?" + + + +Part 6 + + +Before Christmas Ann Veronica had gone to Ramage again and accepted this +offer she had at first declined. + +Many little things had contributed to that decision. The chief influence +was her awakening sense of the need of money. She had been forced to buy +herself that pair of boots and a walking-skirt, and the pearl necklace +at the pawnbrokers' had yielded very disappointingly. And, also, she +wanted to borrow that money. It did seem in so many ways exactly what +Ramage said it was--the sensible thing to do. There it was--to be +borrowed. It would put the whole adventure on a broader and better +footing; it seemed, indeed, almost the only possible way in which she +might emerge from her rebellion with anything like success. If only for +the sake of her argument with her home, she wanted success. And why, +after all, should she not borrow money from Ramage? + +It was so true what he said; middle-class people WERE ridiculously +squeamish about money. Why should they be? + +She and Ramage were friends, very good friends. If she was in a position +to help him she would help him; only it happened to be the other way +round. He was in a position to help her. What was the objection? + +She found it impossible to look her own diffidence in the face. So she +went to Ramage and came to the point almost at once. + +"Can you spare me forty pounds?" she said. + +Mr. Ramage controlled his expression and thought very quickly. + +"Agreed," he said, "certainly," and drew a checkbook toward him. + +"It's best," he said, "to make it a good round sum. + +"I won't give you a check though--Yes, I will. I'll give you an +uncrossed check, and then you can get it at the bank here, quite close +by.... You'd better not have all the money on you; you had better +open a small account in the post-office and draw it out a fiver at a +time. That won't involve references, as a bank account would--and all +that sort of thing. The money will last longer, and--it won't bother +you." + +He stood up rather close to her and looked into her eyes. He seemed to +be trying to understand something very perplexing and elusive. "It's +jolly," he said, "to feel you have come to me. It's a sort of guarantee +of confidence. Last time--you made me feel snubbed." + +He hesitated, and went off at a tangent. "There's no end of things I'd +like to talk over with you. It's just upon my lunch-time. Come and have +lunch with me." + +Ann Veronica fenced for a moment. "I don't want to take up your time." + +"We won't go to any of these City places. They're just all men, and no +one is safe from scandal. But I know a little place where we'll get a +little quiet talk." + +Ann Veronica for some indefinable reason did not want to lunch with him, +a reason indeed so indefinable that she dismissed it, and Ramage went +through the outer office with her, alert and attentive, to the vivid +interest of the three clerks. The three clerks fought for the only +window, and saw her whisked into a hansom. Their subsequent conversation +is outside the scope of our story. + +"Ritter's!" said Ramage to the driver, "Dean Street." + +It was rare that Ann Veronica used hansoms, and to be in one was itself +eventful and exhilarating. She liked the high, easy swing of the thing +over its big wheels, the quick clatter-patter of the horse, the passage +of the teeming streets. She admitted her pleasure to Ramage. + +And Ritter's, too, was very amusing and foreign and discreet; a little +rambling room with a number of small tables, with red electric light +shades and flowers. It was an overcast day, albeit not foggy, and +the electric light shades glowed warmly, and an Italian waiter with +insufficient English took Ramage's orders, and waited with an appearance +of affection. Ann Veronica thought the whole affair rather jolly. Ritter +sold better food than most of his compatriots, and cooked it better, and +Ramage, with a fine perception of a feminine palate, ordered Vero Capri. +It was, Ann Veronica felt, as a sip or so of that remarkable blend +warmed her blood, just the sort of thing that her aunt would not +approve, to be lunching thus, tete-a-tete with a man; and yet at the +same time it was a perfectly innocent as well as agreeable proceeding. + +They talked across their meal in an easy and friendly manner about Ann +Veronica's affairs. He was really very bright and clever, with a sort of +conversational boldness that was just within the limits of permissible +daring. She described the Goopes and the Fabians to him, and gave him +a sketch of her landlady; and he talked in the most liberal and +entertaining way of a modern young woman's outlook. He seemed to know +a great deal about life. He gave glimpses of possibilities. He roused +curiosities. He contrasted wonderfully with the empty showing-off of +Teddy. His friendship seemed a thing worth having.... + +But when she was thinking it over in her room that evening vague and +baffling doubts came drifting across this conviction. She doubted how +she stood toward him and what the restrained gleam of his face might +signify. She felt that perhaps, in her desire to play an adequate part +in the conversation, she had talked rather more freely than she ought to +have done, and given him a wrong impression of herself. + + + +Part 7 + + +That was two days before Christmas Eve. The next morning came a compact +letter from her father. + + +"MY DEAR DAUGHTER," it ran,--"Here, on the verge of the season +of forgiveness I hold out a last hand to you in the hope of a +reconciliation. I ask you, although it is not my place to ask you, to +return home. This roof is still open to you. You will not be taunted +if you return and everything that can be done will be done to make you +happy. + +"Indeed, I must implore you to return. This adventure of yours has gone +on altogether too long; it has become a serious distress to both your +aunt and myself. We fail altogether to understand your motives in doing +what you are doing, or, indeed, how you are managing to do it, or what +you are managing on. If you will think only of one trifling aspect--the +inconvenience it must be to us to explain your absence--I think you may +begin to realize what it all means for us. I need hardly say that your +aunt joins with me very heartily in this request. + +"Please come home. You will not find me unreasonable with you. + +"Your affectionate + +"FATHER." + + +Ann Veronica sat over her fire with her father's note in her hand. +"Queer letters he writes," she said. "I suppose most people's letters +are queer. Roof open--like a Noah's Ark. I wonder if he really wants me +to go home. It's odd how little I know of him, and of how he feels and +what he feels." + +"I wonder how he treated Gwen." + +Her mind drifted into a speculation about her sister. "I ought to look +up Gwen," she said. "I wonder what happened." + +Then she fell to thinking about her aunt. "I would like to go home," she +cried, "to please her. She has been a dear. Considering how little he +lets her have." + +The truth prevailed. "The unaccountable thing is that I wouldn't go home +to please her. She is, in her way, a dear. One OUGHT to want to please +her. And I don't. I don't care. I can't even make myself care." + +Presently, as if for comparison with her father's letter, she got out +Ramage's check from the box that contained her papers. For so far she +had kept it uncashed. She had not even endorsed it. + +"Suppose I chuck it," she remarked, standing with the mauve slip in her +hand--"suppose I chuck it, and surrender and go home! Perhaps, after +all, Roddy was right! + +"Father keeps opening the door and shutting it, but a time will come-- + +"I could still go home!" + +She held Ramage's check as if to tear it across. "No," she said at last; +"I'm a human being--not a timid female. What could I do at home? The +other's a crumple-up--just surrender. Funk! I'll see it out." + + + +CHAPTER THE EIGHTH + +BIOLOGY + + +Part 1 + + +January found Ann Veronica a student in the biological laboratory of the +Central Imperial College that towers up from among the back streets in +the angle between Euston Road and Great Portland Street. She was working +very steadily at the Advanced Course in Comparative Anatomy, wonderfully +relieved to have her mind engaged upon one methodically developing theme +in the place of the discursive uncertainties of the previous two months, +and doing her utmost to keep right in the back of her mind and out +of sight the facts, firstly, that she had achieved this haven of +satisfactory activity by incurring a debt to Ramage of forty pounds, +and, secondly, that her present position was necessarily temporary and +her outlook quite uncertain. + +The biological laboratory had an atmosphere that was all its own. + +It was at the top of the building, and looked clear over a clustering +mass of inferior buildings toward Regent's Park. It was long and narrow, +a well-lit, well-ventilated, quiet gallery of small tables and sinks, +pervaded by a thin smell of methylated spirit and of a mitigated +and sterilized organic decay. Along the inner side was a wonderfully +arranged series of displayed specimens that Russell himself had +prepared. The supreme effect for Ann Veronica was its surpassing +relevance; it made every other atmosphere she knew seem discursive and +confused. The whole place and everything in it aimed at one thing--to +illustrate, to elaborate, to criticise and illuminate, and make ever +plainer and plainer the significance of animal and vegetable structure. +It dealt from floor to ceiling and end to end with the Theory of the +Forms of Life; the very duster by the blackboard was there to do its +share in that work, the very washers in the taps; the room was more +simply concentrated in aim even than a church. To that, perhaps, a +large part of its satisfyingness was due. Contrasted with the confused +movement and presences of a Fabian meeting, or the inexplicable +enthusiasm behind the suffrage demand, with the speeches that were +partly egotistical displays, partly artful manoeuvres, and partly +incoherent cries for unsoundly formulated ends, compared with the +comings and goings of audiences and supporters that were like the +eddy-driven drift of paper in the street, this long, quiet, methodical +chamber shone like a star seen through clouds. + +Day after day for a measured hour in the lecture-theatre, with elaborate +power and patience, Russell pieced together difficulty and suggestion, +instance and counter-instance, in the elaborate construction of the +family tree of life. And then the students went into the long laboratory +and followed out these facts in almost living tissue with microscope and +scalpel, probe and microtome, and the utmost of their skill and care, +making now and then a raid into the compact museum of illustration next +door, in which specimens and models and directions stood in disciplined +ranks, under the direction of the demonstrator Capes. There was a couple +of blackboards at each end of the aisle of tables, and at these Capes, +with quick and nervous speech that contrasted vividly with Russell's +slow, definitive articulation, directed the dissection and made +illuminating comments on the structures under examination. Then he +would come along the laboratory, sitting down by each student in +turn, checking the work and discussing its difficulties, and answering +questions arising out of Russell's lecture. + +Ann Veronica had come to the Imperial College obsessed by the +great figure of Russell, by the part he had played in the Darwinian +controversies, and by the resolute effect of the grim-lipped, yellow, +leonine face beneath the mane of silvery hair. Capes was rather a +discovery. Capes was something superadded. Russell burned like a beacon, +but Capes illuminated by darting flashes and threw light, even if it +was but momentary light, into a hundred corners that Russell left +steadfastly in the shade. + +Capes was an exceptionally fair man of two or three-and-thirty, so +ruddily blond that it was a mercy he had escaped light eyelashes, and +with a minor but by no means contemptible reputation of his own. He +talked at the blackboard in a pleasant, very slightly lisping voice with +a curious spontaneity, and was sometimes very clumsy in his exposition, +and sometimes very vivid. He dissected rather awkwardly and hurriedly, +but, on the whole, effectively, and drew with an impatient directness +that made up in significance what it lacked in precision. Across the +blackboard the colored chalks flew like flights of variously tinted +rockets as diagram after diagram flickered into being. + +There happened that year to be an unusual proportion of girls and women +in the advanced laboratory, perhaps because the class as a whole was an +exceptionally small one. It numbered nine, and four of these were women +students. As a consequence of its small size, it was possible to get +along with the work on a much easier and more colloquial footing than +a larger class would have permitted. And a custom had grown up of a +general tea at four o'clock, under the auspices of a Miss Garvice, a +tall and graceful girl of distinguished intellectual incompetence, in +whom the hostess instinct seemed to be abnormally developed. + +Capes would come to these teas; he evidently liked to come, and he +would appear in the doorway of the preparation-room, a pleasing note of +shyness in his manner, hovering for an invitation. + +From the first, Ann Veronica found him an exceptionally interesting man. +To begin with, he struck her as being the most variable person she had +ever encountered. At times he was brilliant and masterful, talked round +and over every one, and would have been domineering if he had not +been extraordinarily kindly; at times he was almost monosyllabic, and +defeated Miss Garvice's most skilful attempts to draw him out. Sometimes +he was obviously irritable and uncomfortable and unfortunate in his +efforts to seem at ease. And sometimes he overflowed with a peculiarly +malignant wit that played, with devastating effect, upon any topics that +had the courage to face it. Ann Veronica's experiences of men had been +among more stable types--Teddy, who was always absurd; her father, +who was always authoritative and sentimental; Manning, who was always +Manning. And most of the others she had met had, she felt, the same +steadfastness. Goopes, she was sure was always high-browed and slow and +Socratic. And Ramage too--about Ramage there would always be that air of +avidity, that air of knowledge and inquiry, the mixture of things in his +talk that were rather good with things that were rather poor. But one +could not count with any confidence upon Capes. + +The five men students were a mixed company. There was a very white-faced +youngster of eighteen who brushed back his hair exactly in Russell's +manner, and was disposed to be uncomfortably silent when he was +near her, and to whom she felt it was only Christian kindness to be +consistently pleasant; and a lax young man of five-and-twenty in navy +blue, who mingled Marx and Bebel with the more orthodox gods of the +biological pantheon. There was a short, red-faced, resolute youth who +inherited an authoritative attitude upon bacteriology from his father; +a Japanese student of unassuming manners who drew beautifully and had +an imperfect knowledge of English; and a dark, unwashed Scotchman +with complicated spectacles, who would come every morning as a sort of +volunteer supplementary demonstrator, look very closely at her work +and her, tell her that her dissections were "fairish," or "very fairish +indeed," or "high above the normal female standard," hover as if for +some outbreak of passionate gratitude and with admiring retrospects +that made the facetted spectacles gleam like diamonds, return to his own +place. + +The women, Ann Veronica thought, were not quite so interesting as the +men. There were two school-mistresses, one of whom--Miss Klegg--might +have been a first cousin to Miss Miniver, she had so many Miniver +traits; there was a preoccupied girl whose name Ann Veronica never +learned, but who worked remarkably well; and Miss Garvice, who began +by attracting her very greatly--she moved so beautifully--and ended by +giving her the impression that moving beautifully was the beginning and +end of her being. + + + +Part 2 + + +The next few weeks were a time of the very liveliest thought and growth +for Ann Veronica. The crowding impressions of the previous weeks seemed +to run together directly her mind left the chaotic search for employment +and came into touch again with a coherent and systematic development +of ideas. The advanced work at the Central Imperial College was in the +closest touch with living interests and current controversies; it drew +its illustrations and material from Russell's two great researches--upon +the relation of the brachiopods to the echinodermata, and upon the +secondary and tertiary mammalian and pseudo-mammalian factors in the +free larval forms of various marine organisms. Moreover, a vigorous fire +of mutual criticism was going on now between the Imperial College and +the Cambridge Mendelians and echoed in the lectures. From beginning to +end it was first-hand stuff. + +But the influence of the science radiated far beyond its own special +field--beyond those beautiful but highly technical problems with which +we do not propose for a moment to trouble the naturally terrified +reader. Biology is an extraordinarily digestive science. It throws out a +number of broad experimental generalizations, and then sets out to +bring into harmony or relation with these an infinitely multifarious +collection of phenomena. The little streaks upon the germinating area +of an egg, the nervous movements of an impatient horse, the trick of +a calculating boy, the senses of a fish, the fungus at the root of a +garden flower, and the slime upon a sea-wet rock--ten thousand such +things bear their witness and are illuminated. And not only did these +tentacular generalizations gather all the facts of natural history and +comparative anatomy together, but they seemed always stretching out +further and further into a world of interests that lay altogether +outside their legitimate bounds. + +It came to Ann Veronica one night after a long talk with Miss Miniver, +as a sudden remarkable thing, as a grotesque, novel aspect, that this +slowly elaborating biological scheme had something more than an academic +interest for herself. And not only so, but that it was after all, a more +systematic and particular method of examining just the same questions +that underlay the discussions of the Fabian Society, the talk of the +West Central Arts Club, the chatter of the studios and the deep, the +bottomless discussions of the simple-life homes. It was the same Bios +whose nature and drift and ways and methods and aspects engaged +them all. And she, she in her own person too, was this eternal Bios, +beginning again its recurrent journey to selection and multiplication +and failure or survival. + +But this was but a momentary gleam of personal application, and at this +time she followed it up no further. + +And now Ann Veronica's evenings were also becoming very busy. She +pursued her interest in the Socialist movement and in the Suffragist +agitation in the company of Miss Miniver. They went to various central +and local Fabian gatherings, and to a number of suffrage meetings. Teddy +Widgett hovered on the fringe of all these gatherings, blinking at Ann +Veronica and occasionally making a wildly friendly dash at her, and +carrying her and Miss Miniver off to drink cocoa with a choice diversity +of other youthful and congenial Fabians after the meetings. Then Mr. +Manning loomed up ever and again into her world, full of a futile +solicitude, and almost always declaring she was splendid, splendid, and +wishing he could talk things out with her. Teas he contributed to the +commissariat of Ann Veronica's campaign--quite a number of teas. He +would get her to come to tea with him, usually in a pleasant tea-room +over a fruit-shop in Tottenham Court Road, and he would discuss his own +point of view and hint at a thousand devotions were she but to command +him. And he would express various artistic sensibilities and aesthetic +appreciations in carefully punctuated sentences and a large, clear +voice. At Christmas he gave her a set of a small edition of Meredith's +novels, very prettily bound in flexible leather, being guided in the +choice of an author, as he intimated, rather by her preferences than his +own. + +There was something markedly and deliberately liberal-minded in his +manner in all their encounters. He conveyed not only his sense of the +extreme want of correctitude in their unsanctioned meetings, but also +that, so far as he was concerned, this irregularity mattered not at +all, that he had flung--and kept on flinging--such considerations to the +wind. + +And, in addition, she was now seeing and talking to Ramage almost +weekly, on a theory which she took very gravely, that they were +exceptionally friends. He would ask her to come to dinner with him in +some little Italian or semi-Bohemian restaurant in the district toward +Soho, or in one of the more stylish and magnificent establishments about +Piccadilly Circus, and for the most part she did not care to refuse. +Nor, indeed, did she want to refuse. These dinners, from their lavish +display of ambiguous hors d'oeuvre to their skimpy ices in dishes of +frilled paper, with their Chianti flasks and Parmesan dishes and their +polyglot waiters and polyglot clientele, were very funny and bright; +and she really liked Ramage, and valued his help and advice. It was +interesting to see how different and characteristic his mode of approach +was to all sorts of questions that interested her, and it was amusing to +discover this other side to the life of a Morningside Park inhabitant. +She had thought that all Morningside Park householders came home before +seven at the latest, as her father usually did. Ramage talked always +about women or some woman's concern, and very much about Ann Veronica's +own outlook upon life. He was always drawing contrasts between a woman's +lot and a man's, and treating her as a wonderful new departure in this +comparison. Ann Veronica liked their relationship all the more because +it was an unusual one. + +After these dinners they would have a walk, usually to the Thames +Embankment to see the two sweeps of river on either side of Waterloo +Bridge; and then they would part at Westminster Bridge, perhaps, and +he would go on to Waterloo. Once he suggested they should go to a +music-hall and see a wonderful new dancer, but Ann Veronica did not feel +she cared to see a new dancer. So, instead, they talked of dancing +and what it might mean in a human life. Ann Veronica thought it was +a spontaneous release of energy expressive of well-being, but Ramage +thought that by dancing, men, and such birds and animals as dance, come +to feel and think of their bodies. + +This intercourse, which had been planned to warm Ann Veronica to a +familiar affection with Ramage, was certainly warming Ramage to a +constantly deepening interest in Ann Veronica. He felt that he was +getting on with her very slowly indeed, but he did not see how he could +get on faster. He had, he felt, to create certain ideas and vivify +certain curiosities and feelings in her. Until that was done a certain +experience of life assured him that a girl is a locked coldness against +a man's approach. She had all the fascination of being absolutely +perplexing in this respect. On the one hand, she seemed to think plainly +and simply, and would talk serenely and freely about topics that most +women have been trained either to avoid or conceal; and on the other she +was unconscious, or else she had an air of being unconscious--that was +the riddle--to all sorts of personal applications that almost any girl +or woman, one might have thought, would have made. He was always doing +his best to call her attention to the fact that he was a man of spirit +and quality and experience, and she a young and beautiful woman, and +that all sorts of constructions upon their relationship were possible, +trusting her to go on from that to the idea that all sorts of +relationships were possible. She responded with an unfaltering +appearance of insensibility, and never as a young and beautiful woman +conscious of sex; always in the character of an intelligent girl +student. + +His perception of her personal beauty deepened and quickened with each +encounter. Every now and then her general presence became radiantly +dazzling in his eyes; she would appear in the street coming toward him, +a surprise, so fine and smiling and welcoming was she, so expanded and +illuminated and living, in contrast with his mere expectation. Or he +would find something--a wave in her hair, a little line in the contour +of her brow or neck, that made an exquisite discovery. + +He was beginning to think about her inordinately. He would sit in +his inner office and compose conversations with her, penetrating, +illuminating, and nearly conclusive--conversations that never proved to +be of the slightest use at all with her when he met her face to face. +And he began also at times to wake at night and think about her. + +He thought of her and himself, and no longer in that vein of incidental +adventure in which he had begun. He thought, too, of the fretful invalid +who lay in the next room to his, whose money had created his business +and made his position in the world. + +"I've had most of the things I wanted," said Ramage, in the stillness of +the night. + + + +Part 3 + + +For a time Ann Veronica's family had desisted from direct offers of a +free pardon; they were evidently waiting for her resources to come to +an end. Neither father, aunt, nor brothers made a sign, and then +one afternoon in early February her aunt came up in a state between +expostulation and dignified resentment, but obviously very anxious for +Ann Veronica's welfare. "I had a dream in the night," she said. "I saw +you in a sort of sloping, slippery place, holding on by your hands and +slipping. You seemed to me to be slipping and slipping, and your face +was white. It was really most vivid, most vivid! You seemed to be +slipping and just going to tumble and holding on. It made me wake up, +and there I lay thinking of you, spending your nights up here all alone, +and no one to look after you. I wondered what you could be doing and +what might be happening to you. I said to myself at once, 'Either this +is a coincidence or the caper sauce.' But I made sure it was you. I felt +I MUST do something anyhow, and up I came just as soon as I could to see +you." + +She had spoken rather rapidly. "I can't help saying it," she said, with +the quality of her voice altering, "but I do NOT think it is right for +an unprotected girl to be in London alone as you are." + +"But I'm quite equal to taking care of myself, aunt." + +"It must be most uncomfortable here. It is most uncomfortable for every +one concerned." + +She spoke with a certain asperity. She felt that Ann Veronica had duped +her in that dream, and now that she had come up to London she might as +well speak her mind. + +"No Christmas dinner," she said, "or anything nice! One doesn't even +know what you are doing." + +"I'm going on working for my degree." + +"Why couldn't you do that at home?" + +"I'm working at the Imperial College. You see, aunt, it's the only +possible way for me to get a good degree in my subjects, and father +won't hear of it. There'd only be endless rows if I was at home. And how +could I come home--when he locks me in rooms and all that?" + +"I do wish this wasn't going on," said Miss Stanley, after a pause. "I +do wish you and your father could come to some agreement." + +Ann Veronica responded with conviction: "I wish so, too." + +"Can't we arrange something? Can't we make a sort of treaty?" + +"He wouldn't keep it. He would get very cross one evening and no one +would dare to remind him of it." + +"How can you say such things?" + +"But he would!" + +"Still, it isn't your place to say so." + +"It prevents a treaty." + +"Couldn't _I_ make a treaty?" + +Ann Veronica thought, and could not see any possible treaty that would +leave it open for her to have quasi-surreptitious dinners with Ramage +or go on walking round the London squares discussing Socialism with Miss +Miniver toward the small hours. She had tasted freedom now, and so far +she had not felt the need of protection. Still, there certainly was +something in the idea of a treaty. + +"I don't see at all how you can be managing," said Miss Stanley, and Ann +Veronica hastened to reply, "I do on very little." Her mind went back to +that treaty. + +"And aren't there fees to pay at the Imperial College?" her aunt was +saying--a disagreeable question. + +"There are a few fees." + +"Then how have you managed?" + +"Bother!" said Ann Veronica to herself, and tried not to look guilty. "I +was able to borrow the money." + +"Borrow the money! But who lent you the money?" + +"A friend," said Ann Veronica. + +She felt herself getting into a corner. She sought hastily in her mind +for a plausible answer to an obvious question that didn't come. Her aunt +went off at a tangent. "But my dear Ann Veronica, you will be getting +into debt!" + +Ann Veronica at once, and with a feeling of immense relief, took refuge +in her dignity. "I think, aunt," she said, "you might trust to my +self-respect to keep me out of that." + +For the moment her aunt could not think of any reply to this +counterstroke, and Ann Veronica followed up her advantage by a sudden +inquiry about her abandoned boots. + +But in the train going home her aunt reasoned it out. + +"If she is borrowing money," said Miss Stanley, "she MUST be getting +into debt. It's all nonsense...." + + + +Part 4 + + +It was by imperceptible degrees that Capes became important in Ann +Veronica's thoughts. But then he began to take steps, and, at last, +strides to something more and more like predominance. She began by being +interested in his demonstrations and his biological theory, then she was +attracted by his character, and then, in a manner, she fell in love with +his mind. + +One day they were at tea in the laboratory and a discussion sprang up +about the question of women's suffrage. The movement was then in its +earlier militant phases, and one of the women only, Miss Garvice, +opposed it, though Ann Veronica was disposed to be lukewarm. But a man's +opposition always inclined her to the suffrage side; she had a curious +feeling of loyalty in seeing the more aggressive women through. Capes +was irritatingly judicial in the matter, neither absurdly against, in +which case one might have smashed him, or hopelessly undecided, but +tepidly sceptical. Miss Klegg and the youngest girl made a vigorous +attack on Miss Garvice, who had said she thought women lost something +infinitely precious by mingling in the conflicts of life. The discussion +wandered, and was punctuated with bread and butter. Capes was inclined +to support Miss Klegg until Miss Garvice cornered him by quoting him +against himself, and citing a recent paper in the Nineteenth Century, in +which, following Atkinson, he had made a vigorous and damaging attack +on Lester Ward's case for the primitive matriarchate and the predominant +importance of the female throughout the animal kingdom. + +Ann Veronica was not aware of this literary side of her teacher; she had +a little tinge of annoyance at Miss Garvice's advantage. Afterwards +she hunted up the article in question, and it seemed to her quite +delightfully written and argued. Capes had the gift of easy, unaffected +writing, coupled with very clear and logical thinking, and to follow +his written thought gave her the sensation of cutting things with a +perfectly new, perfectly sharp knife. She found herself anxious to read +more of him, and the next Wednesday she went to the British Museum and +hunted first among the half-crown magazines for his essays and then +through various scientific quarterlies for his research papers. The +ordinary research paper, when it is not extravagant theorizing, is apt +to be rather sawdusty in texture, and Ann Veronica was delighted to find +the same easy and confident luminosity that distinguished his work for +the general reader. She returned to these latter, and at the back of +her mind, as she looked them over again, was a very distinct resolve +to quote them after the manner of Miss Garvice at the very first +opportunity. + +When she got home to her lodgings that evening she reflected with +something like surprise upon her half-day's employment, and decided +that it showed nothing more nor less than that Capes was a really very +interesting person indeed. + +And then she fell into a musing about Capes. She wondered why he was so +distinctive, so unlike other men, and it never occurred to her for some +time that this might be because she was falling in love with him. + + + +Part 5 + + +Yet Ann Veronica was thinking a very great deal about love. A dozen +shynesses and intellectual barriers were being outflanked or broken +down in her mind. All the influences about her worked with her own +predisposition and against all the traditions of her home and upbringing +to deal with the facts of life in an unabashed manner. Ramage, by a +hundred skilful hints had led her to realize that the problem of her own +life was inseparably associated with, and indeed only one special case +of, the problems of any woman's life, and that the problem of a woman's +life is love. + +"A young man comes into life asking how best he may place himself," +Ramage had said; "a woman comes into life thinking instinctively how +best she may give herself." + +She noted that as a good saying, and it germinated and spread tentacles +of explanation through her brain. The biological laboratory, perpetually +viewing life as pairing and breeding and selection, and again pairing +and breeding, seemed only a translated generalization of that assertion. +And all the talk of the Miniver people and the Widgett people seemed +always to be like a ship in adverse weather on the lee shore of love. +"For seven years," said Ann Veronica, "I have been trying to keep myself +from thinking about love.... + +"I have been training myself to look askance at beautiful things." + +She gave herself permission now to look at this squarely. She made +herself a private declaration of liberty. "This is mere nonsense, mere +tongue-tied fear!" she said. "This is the slavery of the veiled life. +I might as well be at Morningside Park. This business of love is the +supreme affair in life, it is the woman's one event and crisis that +makes up for all her other restrictions, and I cower--as we all +cower--with a blushing and paralyzed mind until it overtakes me!... + +"I'll be hanged if I do." + +But she could not talk freely about love, she found, for all that +manumission. + +Ramage seemed always fencing about the forbidden topic, probing for +openings, and she wondered why she did not give him them. But something +instinctive prevented that, and with the finest resolve not to be +"silly" and prudish she found that whenever he became at all bold +in this matter she became severely scientific and impersonal, almost +entomological indeed, in her method; she killed every remark as he made +it and pinned it out for examination. In the biological laboratory that +was their invincible tone. But she disapproved more and more of her own +mental austerity. Here was an experienced man of the world, her friend, +who evidently took a great interest in this supreme topic and was +willing to give her the benefit of his experiences! Why should not she +be at her ease with him? Why should not she know things? It is hard +enough anyhow for a human being to learn, she decided, but it is a dozen +times more difficult than it need be because of all this locking of the +lips and thoughts. + +She contrived to break down the barriers of shyness at last in one +direction, and talked one night of love and the facts of love with Miss +Miniver. + +But Miss Miniver was highly unsatisfactory. She repeated phrases of Mrs. +Goopes's: "Advanced people," she said, with an air of great elucidation, +"tend to GENERALIZE love. 'He prayeth best who loveth best--all things +both great and small.' For my own part I go about loving." + +"Yes, but men;" said Ann Veronica, plunging; "don't you want the love of +men?" + +For some seconds they remained silent, both shocked by this question. + +Miss Miniver looked over her glasses at her friend almost balefully. +"NO!" she said, at last, with something in her voice that reminded Ann +Veronica of a sprung tennis-racket. + +"I've been through all that," she went on, after a pause. + +She spoke slowly. "I have never yet met a man whose intellect I could +respect." + +Ann Veronica looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, and decided to +persist on principle. + +"But if you had?" she said. + +"I can't imagine it," said Miss Miniver. "And think, think"--her voice +sank--"of the horrible coarseness!" + +"What coarseness?" said Ann Veronica. + +"My dear Vee!" Her voice became very low. "Don't you know?" + +"Oh! I know--" + +"Well--" Her face was an unaccustomed pink. + +Ann Veronica ignored her friend's confusion. + +"Don't we all rather humbug about the coarseness? All we women, I mean," +said she. She decided to go on, after a momentary halt. "We pretend +bodies are ugly. Really they are the most beautiful things in the world. +We pretend we never think of everything that makes us what we are." + +"No," cried Miss Miniver, almost vehemently. "You are wrong! I did not +think you thought such things. Bodies! Bodies! Horrible things! We are +souls. Love lives on a higher plane. We are not animals. If ever I +did meet a man I could love, I should love him"--her voice dropped +again--"platonically." + +She made her glasses glint. "Absolutely platonically," she said. + +"Soul to soul." + +She turned her face to the fire, gripped her hands upon her elbows, and +drew her thin shoulders together in a shrug. "Ugh!" she said. + +Ann Veronica watched her and wondered about her. + +"We do not want the men," said Miss Miniver; "we do not want them, with +their sneers and loud laughter. Empty, silly, coarse brutes. Brutes! +They are the brute still with us! Science some day may teach us a way +to do without them. It is only the women matter. It is not every sort of +creature needs--these males. Some have no males." + +"There's green-fly," admitted Ann Veronica. "And even then--" + +The conversation hung for a thoughtful moment. + +Ann Veronica readjusted her chin on her hand. "I wonder which of us is +right," she said. "I haven't a scrap--of this sort of aversion." + +"Tolstoy is so good about this," said Miss Miniver, regardless of her +friend's attitude. "He sees through it all. The Higher Life and the +Lower. He sees men all defiled by coarse thoughts, coarse ways of living +cruelties. Simply because they are hardened by--by bestiality, +and poisoned by the juices of meat slain in anger and fermented +drinks--fancy! drinks that have been swarmed in by thousands and +thousands of horrible little bacteria!" + +"It's yeast," said Ann Veronica--"a vegetable." + +"It's all the same," said Miss Miniver. "And then they are swollen up +and inflamed and drunken with matter. They are blinded to all fine +and subtle things--they look at life with bloodshot eyes and dilated +nostrils. They are arbitrary and unjust and dogmatic and brutish and +lustful." + +"But do you really think men's minds are altered by the food they eat?" + +"I know it," said Miss Miniver. "Experte credo. When I am leading a true +life, a pure and simple life free of all stimulants and excitements, I +think--I think--oh! with pellucid clearness; but if I so much as take a +mouthful of meat--or anything--the mirror is all blurred." + + + +Part 6 + + +Then, arising she knew not how, like a new-born appetite, came a craving +in Ann Veronica for the sight and sound of beauty. + +It was as if her aesthetic sense had become inflamed. Her mind turned +and accused itself of having been cold and hard. She began to look for +beauty and discover it in unexpected aspects and places. Hitherto she +had seen it chiefly in pictures and other works of art, incidentally, +and as a thing taken out of life. Now the sense of beauty was spreading +to a multitude of hitherto unsuspected aspects of the world about her. + +The thought of beauty became an obsession. It interwove with her +biological work. She found herself asking more and more curiously, "Why, +on the principle of the survival of the fittest, have I any sense of +beauty at all?" That enabled her to go on thinking about beauty when it +seemed to her right that she should be thinking about biology. + +She was very greatly exercised by the two systems of values--the two +series of explanations that her comparative anatomy on the one hand and +her sense of beauty on the other, set going in her thoughts. She could +not make up her mind which was the finer, more elemental thing, which +gave its values to the other. Was it that the struggle of things +to survive produced as a sort of necessary by-product these intense +preferences and appreciations, or was it that some mystical outer thing, +some great force, drove life beautyward, even in spite of expediency, +regardless of survival value and all the manifest discretions of life? +She went to Capes with that riddle and put it to him very carefully and +clearly, and he talked well--he always talked at some length when she +took a difficulty to him--and sent her to a various literature upon the +markings of butterflies, the incomprehensible elaboration and splendor +of birds of Paradise and humming-birds' plumes, the patterning of +tigers, and a leopard's spots. He was interesting and inconclusive, and +the original papers to which he referred her discursive were at best +only suggestive. Afterward, one afternoon, he hovered about her, and +came and sat beside her and talked of beauty and the riddle of beauty +for some time. He displayed a quite unprofessional vein of mysticism in +the matter. He contrasted with Russell, whose intellectual methods were, +so to speak, sceptically dogmatic. Their talk drifted to the beauty of +music, and they took that up again at tea-time. + +But as the students sat about Miss Garvice's tea-pot and drank tea or +smoked cigarettes, the talk got away from Capes. The Scotchman informed +Ann Veronica that your view of beauty necessarily depended on your +metaphysical premises, and the young man with the Russell-like hair +became anxious to distinguish himself by telling the Japanese student +that Western art was symmetrical and Eastern art asymmetrical, and that +among the higher organisms the tendency was toward an external symmetry +veiling an internal want of balance. Ann Veronica decided she would have +to go on with Capes another day, and, looking up, discovered him sitting +on a stool with his hands in his pockets and his head a little on one +side, regarding her with a thoughtful expression. She met his eye for a +moment in curious surprise. + +He turned his eyes and stared at Miss Garvice like one who wakes from +a reverie, and then got up and strolled down the laboratory toward his +refuge, the preparation-room. + + + +Part 7 + + +Then one day a little thing happened that clothed itself in +significance. + +She had been working upon a ribbon of microtome sections of the +developing salamander, and he came to see what she had made of them. She +stood up and he sat down at the microscope, and for a time he was busy +scrutinizing one section after another. She looked down at him and saw +that the sunlight was gleaming from his cheeks, and that all over +his cheeks was a fine golden down of delicate hairs. And at the sight +something leaped within her. + +Something changed for her. + +She became aware of his presence as she had never been aware of any +human being in her life before. She became aware of the modelling of his +ear, of the muscles of his neck and the textures of the hair that came +off his brow, the soft minute curve of eyelid that she could just see +beyond his brow; she perceived all these familiar objects as though +they were acutely beautiful things. They WERE, she realized, acutely +beautiful things. Her sense followed the shoulders under his coat, down +to where his flexible, sensitive-looking hand rested lightly upon the +table. She felt him as something solid and strong and trustworthy beyond +measure. The perception of him flooded her being. + +He got up. "Here's something rather good," he said, and with a start and +an effort she took his place at the microscope, while he stood beside +her and almost leaning over her. + +She found she was trembling at his nearness and full of a thrilling +dread that he might touch her. She pulled herself together and put her +eye to the eye-piece. + +"You see the pointer?" he asked. + +"I see the pointer," she said. + +"It's like this," he said, and dragged a stool beside her and sat down +with his elbow four inches from hers and made a sketch. Then he got up +and left her. + +She had a feeling at his departure as of an immense cavity, of something +enormously gone; she could not tell whether it was infinite regret or +infinite relief.... + +But now Ann Veronica knew what was the matter with her. + + + +Part 8 + + +And as she sat on her bed that night, musing and half-undressed, she +began to run one hand down her arm and scrutinize the soft flow of +muscle under her skin. She thought of the marvellous beauty of skin, +and all the delightfulness of living texture. Oh the back of her arm she +found the faintest down of hair in the world. "Etherialized monkey," she +said. She held out her arm straight before her, and turned her hand this +way and that. + +"Why should one pretend?" she whispered. "Why should one pretend? + +"Think of all the beauty in the world that is covered up and overlaid." + +She glanced shyly at the mirror above her dressing-table, and then about +her at the furniture, as though it might penetrate to the thoughts that +peeped in her mind. + +"I wonder," said Ann Veronica at last, "if I am beautiful? I wonder if I +shall ever shine like a light, like a translucent goddess?-- + +"I wonder-- + +"I suppose girls and women have prayed for this, have come to this--In +Babylon, in Nineveh. + +"Why shouldn't one face the facts of one's self?" + +She stood up. She posed herself before her mirror and surveyed herself +with gravely thoughtful, gravely critical, and yet admiring eyes. "And, +after all, I am just one common person!" + +She watched the throb of the arteries in the stem of her neck, and +put her hand at last gently and almost timidly to where her heart beat +beneath her breast. + + + +Part 9 + + +The realization that she was in love flooded Ann Veronica's mind, and +altered the quality of all its topics. + +She began to think persistently of Capes, and it seemed to her now that +for some weeks at least she must have been thinking persistently of +him unawares. She was surprised to find how stored her mind was with +impressions and memories of him, how vividly she remembered his gestures +and little things that he had said. It occurred to her that it was +absurd and wrong to be so continuously thinking of one engrossing topic, +and she made a strenuous effort to force her mind to other questions. + +But it was extraordinary what seemingly irrelevant things could restore +her to the thought of Capes again. And when she went to sleep, then +always Capes became the novel and wonderful guest of her dreams. + +For a time it really seemed all-sufficient to her that she should love. +That Capes should love her seemed beyond the compass of her imagination. +Indeed, she did not want to think of him as loving her. She wanted to +think of him as her beloved person, to be near him and watch him, +to have him going about, doing this and that, saying this and that, +unconscious of her, while she too remained unconscious of herself. To +think of him as loving her would make all that different. Then he would +turn his face to her, and she would have to think of herself in his +eyes. She would become defensive--what she did would be the thing that +mattered. He would require things of her, and she would be passionately +concerned to meet his requirements. Loving was better than that. Loving +was self-forgetfulness, pure delighting in another human being. She felt +that with Capes near to her she would be content always to go on loving. + +She went next day to the schools, and her world seemed all made of +happiness just worked up roughly into shapes and occasions and duties. +She found she could do her microscope work all the better for being in +love. She winced when first she heard the preparation-room door open and +Capes came down the laboratory; but when at last he reached her she was +self-possessed. She put a stool for him at a little distance from her +own, and after he had seen the day's work he hesitated, and then plunged +into a resumption of their discussion about beauty. + +"I think," he said, "I was a little too mystical about beauty the other +day." + +"I like the mystical way," she said. + +"Our business here is the right way. I've been thinking, you know--I'm +not sure that primarily the perception of beauty isn't just intensity +of feeling free from pain; intensity of perception without any tissue +destruction." + +"I like the mystical way better," said Ann Veronica, and thought. + +"A number of beautiful things are not intense." + +"But delicacy, for example, may be intensely perceived." + +"But why is one face beautiful and another not?" objected Ann Veronica; +"on your theory any two faces side by side in the sunlight ought to be +equally beautiful. One must get them with exactly the same intensity." + +He did not agree with that. "I don't mean simply intensity of sensation. +I said intensity of perception. You may perceive harmony, proportion, +rhythm, intensely. They are things faint and slight in themselves, as +physical facts, but they are like the detonator of a bomb: they +let loose the explosive. There's the internal factor as well as the +external.... I don't know if I express myself clearly. I mean that +the point is that vividness of perception is the essential factor of +beauty; but, of course, vividness may be created by a whisper." + +"That brings us back," said Ann Veronica, "to the mystery. Why should +some things and not others open the deeps?" + +"Well, that might, after all, be an outcome of selection--like the +preference for blue flowers, which are not nearly so bright as yellow, +of some insects." + +"That doesn't explain sunsets." + +"Not quite so easily as it explains an insect alighting on colored +paper. But perhaps if people didn't like clear, bright, healthy +eyes--which is biologically understandable--they couldn't like precious +stones. One thing may be a necessary collateral of the others. And, +after all, a fine clear sky of bright colors is the signal to come out +of hiding and rejoice and go on with life." + +"H'm!" said Ann Veronica, and shook her head. + +Capes smiled cheerfully with his eyes meeting hers. "I throw it out +in passing," he said. "What I am after is that beauty isn't a special +inserted sort of thing; that's my idea. It's just life, pure life, life +nascent, running clear and strong." + +He stood up to go on to the next student. + +"There's morbid beauty," said Ann Veronica. + +"I wonder if there is!" said Capes, and paused, and then bent down over +the boy who wore his hair like Russell. + +Ann Veronica surveyed his sloping back for a moment, and then drew her +microscope toward her. Then for a time she sat very still. She felt that +she had passed a difficult corner, and that now she could go on talking +with him again, just as she had been used to do before she understood +what was the matter with her.... + +She had one idea, she found, very clear in her mind--that she would get +a Research Scholarship, and so contrive another year in the laboratory. + +"Now I see what everything means," said Ann Veronica to herself; and it +really felt for some days as though the secret of the universe, that had +been wrapped and hidden from her so obstinately, was at last altogether +displayed. + + + +CHAPTER THE NINTH + +DISCORDS + +Part 1 + +One afternoon, soon after Ann Veronica's great discovery, a telegram +came into the laboratory for her. It ran: + + --------------------------------------------------- + | Bored | and | nothing | to | do | + |----------|-----------|----------|--------|--------| + | will | you | dine | with | me | + |----------|-----------|----------|--------|--------| + | to-night | somewhere | and | talk | I | + |----------|-----------|----------|--------|--------| + | shall | be | grateful | Ramage | | + --------------------------------------------------- + +Ann Veronica was rather pleased by this. She had not seen Ramage for ten +or eleven days, and she was quite ready for a gossip with him. And now +her mind was so full of the thought that she was in love--in love!--that +marvellous state! that I really believe she had some dim idea of talking +to him about it. At any rate, it would be good to hear him saying the +sort of things he did--perhaps now she would grasp them better--with +this world-shaking secret brandishing itself about inside her head +within a yard of him. + +She was sorry to find Ramage a little disposed to be melancholy. + +"I have made over seven hundred pounds in the last week," he said. + +"That's exhilarating," said Ann Veronica. + +"Not a bit of it," he said; "it's only a score in a game." + +"It's a score you can buy all sorts of things with." + +"Nothing that one wants." + +He turned to the waiter, who held a wine-card. "Nothing can cheer me," +he said, "except champagne." He meditated. "This," he said, and then: +"No! Is this sweeter? Very well." + +"Everything goes well with me," he said, folding his arms under him and +regarding Ann Veronica with the slightly projecting eyes wide open. "And +I'm not happy. I believe I'm in love." + +He leaned back for his soup. + +Presently he resumed: "I believe I must be in love." + +"You can't be that," said Ann Veronica, wisely. + +"How do you know?" + +"Well, it isn't exactly a depressing state, is it?" + +"YOU don't know." + +"One has theories," said Ann Veronica, radiantly. + +"Oh, theories! Being in love is a fact." + +"It ought to make one happy." + +"It's an unrest--a longing--What's that?" The waiter had intervened. +"Parmesan--take it away!" + +He glanced at Ann Veronica's face, and it seemed to him that she really +was exceptionally radiant. He wondered why she thought love made people +happy, and began to talk of the smilax and pinks that adorned the table. +He filled her glass with champagne. "You MUST," he said, "because of my +depression." + +They were eating quails when they returned to the topic of love. "What +made you think" he said, abruptly, with the gleam of avidity in his +face, "that love makes people happy?" + +"I know it must." + +"But how?" + +He was, she thought, a little too insistent. "Women know these things by +instinct," she answered. + +"I wonder," he said, "if women do know things by instinct? I have +my doubts about feminine instinct. It's one of our conventional +superstitions. A woman is supposed to know when a man is in love with +her. Do you think she does?" + +Ann Veronica picked among her salad with a judicial expression of face. +"I think she would," she decided. + +"Ah!" said Ramage, impressively. + +Ann Veronica looked up at him and found him regarding her with eyes that +were almost woebegone, and into which, indeed, he was trying to throw +much more expression than they could carry. There was a little pause +between them, full for Ann Veronica of rapid elusive suspicions and +intimations. + +"Perhaps one talks nonsense about a woman's instinct," she said. "It's +a way of avoiding explanations. And girls and women, perhaps, are +different. I don't know. I don't suppose a girl can tell if a man is in +love with her or not in love with her." Her mind went off to Capes. Her +thoughts took words for themselves. "She can't. I suppose it depends on +her own state of mind. If one wants a thing very much, perhaps one is +inclined to think one can't have it. I suppose if one were to love some +one, one would feel doubtful. And if one were to love some one very +much, it's just so that one would be blindest, just when one wanted most +to see." + +She stopped abruptly, afraid that Ramage might be able to infer Capes +from the things she had said, and indeed his face was very eager. + +"Yes?" he said. + +Ann Veronica blushed. "That's all," she said "I'm afraid I'm a little +confused about these things." + +Ramage looked at her, and then fell into deep reflection as the waiter +came to paragraph their talk again. + +"Have you ever been to the opera, Ann Veronica?" said Ramage. + +"Once or twice." + +"Shall we go now?" + +"I think I would like to listen to music. What is there?" + +"Tristan." + +"I've never heard Tristan and Isolde." + +"That settles it. We'll go. There's sure to be a place somewhere." + +"It's rather jolly of you," said Ann Veronica. + +"It's jolly of you to come," said Ramage. + +So presently they got into a hansom together, and Ann Veronica sat back +feeling very luxurious and pleasant, and looked at the light and stir +and misty glitter of the street traffic from under slightly drooping +eyelids, while Ramage sat closer to her than he need have done, and +glanced ever and again at her face, and made to speak and said nothing. +And when they got to Covent Garden Ramage secured one of the little +upper boxes, and they came into it as the overture began. + +Ann Veronica took off her jacket and sat down in the corner chair, and +leaned forward to look into the great hazy warm brown cavity of the +house, and Ramage placed his chair to sit beside her and near her, +facing the stage. The music took hold of her slowly as her eyes wandered +from the indistinct still ranks of the audience to the little busy +orchestra with its quivering violins, its methodical movements of brown +and silver instruments, its brightly lit scores and shaded lights. She +had never been to the opera before except as one of a congested mass of +people in the cheaper seats, and with backs and heads and women's hats +for the frame of the spectacle; there was by contrast a fine large sense +of space and ease in her present position. The curtain rose out of the +concluding bars of the overture and revealed Isolde on the prow of the +barbaric ship. The voice of the young seaman came floating down from the +masthead, and the story of the immortal lovers had begun. She knew +the story only imperfectly, and followed it now with a passionate and +deepening interest. The splendid voices sang on from phase to phase of +love's unfolding, the ship drove across the sea to the beating rhythm of +the rowers. The lovers broke into passionate knowledge of themselves and +each other, and then, a jarring intervention, came King Mark amidst the +shouts of the sailormen, and stood beside them. + +The curtain came festooning slowly down, the music ceased, the lights +in the auditorium glowed out, and Ann Veronica woke out of her confused +dream of involuntary and commanding love in a glory of sound and colors +to discover that Ramage was sitting close beside her with one hand +resting lightly on her waist. She made a quick movement, and the hand +fell away. + +"By God! Ann Veronica," he said, sighing deeply. "This stirs one." + +She sat quite still looking at him. + +"I wish you and I had drunk that love potion," he said. + +She found no ready reply to that, and he went on: "This music is the +food of love. It makes me desire life beyond measure. Life! Life and +love! It makes me want to be always young, always strong, always +devoting my life--and dying splendidly." + +"It is very beautiful," said Ann Veronica in a low tone. + +They said no more for a moment, and each was now acutely aware of the +other. Ann Veronica was excited and puzzled, with a sense of a strange +and disconcerting new light breaking over her relations with Ramage. +She had never thought of him at all in that way before. It did not shock +her; it amazed her, interested her beyond measure. But also this must +not go on. She felt he was going to say something more--something +still more personal and intimate. She was curious, and at the same time +clearly resolved she must not hear it. She felt she must get him talking +upon some impersonal theme at any cost. She snatched about in her mind. +"What is the exact force of a motif?" she asked at random. "Before I +heard much Wagnerian music I heard enthusiastic descriptions of it from +a mistress I didn't like at school. She gave me an impression of a sort +of patched quilt; little bits of patterned stuff coming up again and +again." + +She stopped with an air of interrogation. + +Ramage looked at her for a long and discriminating interval without +speaking. He seemed to be hesitating between two courses of action. "I +don't know much about the technique of music," he said at last, with his +eyes upon her. "It's a matter of feeling with me." + +He contradicted himself by plunging into an exposition of motifs. + +By a tacit agreement they ignored the significant thing between them, +ignored the slipping away of the ground on which they had stood together +hitherto.... + +All through the love music of the second act, until the hunting horns of +Mark break in upon the dream, Ann Veronica's consciousness was flooded +with the perception of a man close beside her, preparing some new thing +to say to her, preparing, perhaps, to touch her, stretching hungry +invisible tentacles about her. She tried to think what she should do in +this eventuality or that. Her mind had been and was full of the thought +of Capes, a huge generalized Capes-lover. And in some incomprehensible +way, Ramage was confused with Capes; she had a grotesque disposition to +persuade herself that this was really Capes who surrounded her, as it +were, with wings of desire. The fact that it was her trusted friend +making illicit love to her remained, in spite of all her effort, an +insignificant thing in her mind. The music confused and distracted her, +and made her struggle against a feeling of intoxication. Her head swam. +That was the inconvenience of it; her head was swimming. The music +throbbed into the warnings that preceded the king's irruption. + +Abruptly he gripped her wrist. "I love you, Ann Veronica. I love +you--with all my heart and soul." + +She put her face closer to his. She felt the warm nearness of his. +"DON'T!" she said, and wrenched her wrist from his retaining hand. + +"My God! Ann Veronica," he said, struggling to keep his hold upon her; +"my God! Tell me--tell me now--tell me you love me!" + +His expression was as it were rapaciously furtive. She answered in +whispers, for there was the white arm of a woman in the next box peeping +beyond the partition within a yard of him. + +"My hand! This isn't the place." + +He released her hand and talked in eager undertones against an auditory +background of urgency and distress. + +"Ann Veronica," he said, "I tell you this is love. I love the soles of +your feet. I love your very breath. I have tried not to tell you--tried +to be simply your friend. It is no good. I want you. I worship you. I +would do anything--I would give anything to make you mine.... Do you +hear me? Do you hear what I am saying?... Love!" + +He held her arm and abandoned it again at her quick defensive movement. +For a long time neither spoke again. + +She sat drawn together in her chair in the corner of the box, at a loss +what to say or do--afraid, curious, perplexed. It seemed to her that +it was her duty to get up and clamor to go home to her room, to protest +against his advances as an insult. But she did not in the least want +to do that. These sweeping dignities were not within the compass of her +will; she remembered she liked Ramage, and owed things to him, and she +was interested--she was profoundly interested. He was in love with +her! She tried to grasp all the welter of values in the situation +simultaneously, and draw some conclusion from their disorder. + +He began to talk again in quick undertones that she could not clearly +hear. + +"I have loved you," he was saying, "ever since you sat on that gate and +talked. I have always loved you. I don't care what divides us. I don't +care what else there is in the world. I want you beyond measure or +reckoning...." + +His voice rose and fell amidst the music and the singing of Tristan and +King Mark, like a voice heard in a badly connected telephone. She stared +at his pleading face. + +She turned to the stage, and Tristan was wounded in Kurvenal's arms, +with Isolde at his feet, and King Mark, the incarnation of masculine +force and obligation, the masculine creditor of love and beauty, stood +over him, and the second climax was ending in wreaths and reek of +melodies; and then the curtain was coming down in a series of short +rushes, the music had ended, and the people were stirring and breaking +out into applause, and the lights of the auditorium were resuming. The +lighting-up pierced the obscurity of the box, and Ramage stopped his +urgent flow of words abruptly and sat back. This helped to restore Ann +Veronica's self-command. + +She turned her eyes to him again, and saw her late friend and pleasant +and trusted companion, who had seen fit suddenly to change into a lover, +babbling interesting inacceptable things. He looked eager and flushed +and troubled. His eyes caught at hers with passionate inquiries. "Tell +me," he said; "speak to me." She realized it was possible to be sorry +for him--acutely sorry for the situation. Of course this thing was +absolutely impossible. But she was disturbed, mysteriously disturbed. +She remembered abruptly that she was really living upon his money. She +leaned forward and addressed him. + +"Mr. Ramage," she said, "please don't talk like this." + +He made to speak and did not. + +"I don't want you to do it, to go on talking to me. I don't want to hear +you. If I had known that you had meant to talk like this I wouldn't have +come here." + +"But how can I help it? How can I keep silence?" + +"Please!" she insisted. "Please not now." + +"I MUST talk with you. I must say what I have to say!" + +"But not now--not here." + +"It came," he said. "I never planned it--And now I have begun--" + +She felt acutely that he was entitled to explanations, and as acutely +that explanations were impossible that night. She wanted to think. + +"Mr. Ramage," she said, "I can't--Not now. Will you please--Not now, or +I must go." + +He stared at her, trying to guess at the mystery of her thoughts. + +"You don't want to go?" + +"No. But I must--I ought--" + +"I MUST talk about this. Indeed I must." + +"Not now." + +"But I love you. I love you--unendurably." + +"Then don't talk to me now. I don't want you to talk to me now. There is +a place--This isn't the place. You have misunderstood. I can't explain--" + +They regarded one another, each blinded to the other. "Forgive me," he +decided to say at last, and his voice had a little quiver of emotion, +and he laid his hand on hers upon her knee. "I am the most foolish of +men. I was stupid--stupid and impulsive beyond measure to burst upon +you in this way. I--I am a love-sick idiot, and not accountable for my +actions. Will you forgive me--if I say no more?" + +She looked at him with perplexed, earnest eyes. + +"Pretend," he said, "that all I have said hasn't been said. And let us +go on with our evening. Why not? Imagine I've had a fit of hysteria--and +that I've come round." + +"Yes," she said, and abruptly she liked him enormously. She felt this +was the sensible way out of this oddly sinister situation. + +He still watched her and questioned her. + +"And let us have a talk about this--some other time. Somewhere, where we +can talk without interruption. Will you?" + +She thought, and it seemed to him she had never looked so +self-disciplined and deliberate and beautiful. "Yes," she said, "that +is what we ought to do." But now she doubted again of the quality of the +armistice they had just made. + +He had a wild impulse to shout. "Agreed," he said with queer exaltation, +and his grip tightened on her hand. "And to-night we are friends?" + +"We are friends," said Ann Veronica, and drew her hand quickly away from +him. + +"To-night we are as we have always been. Except that this music we have +been swimming in is divine. While I have been pestering you, have you +heard it? At least, you heard the first act. And all the third act is +love-sick music. Tristan dying and Isolde coming to crown his death. +Wagner had just been in love when he wrote it all. It begins with that +queer piccolo solo. Now I shall never hear it but what this evening will +come pouring back over me." + +The lights sank, the prelude to the third act was beginning, the +music rose and fell in crowded intimations of lovers separated--lovers +separated with scars and memories between them, and the curtain went +reefing up to display Tristan lying wounded on his couch and the +shepherd crouching with his pipe. + + + +Part 2 + + +They had their explanations the next evening, but they were explanations +in quite other terms than Ann Veronica had anticipated, quite other and +much more startling and illuminating terms. Ramage came for her at her +lodgings, and she met him graciously and kindly as a queen who knows she +must needs give sorrow to a faithful liege. She was unusually soft +and gentle in her manner to him. He was wearing a new silk hat, with a +slightly more generous brim than its predecessor, and it suited his type +of face, robbed his dark eyes a little of their aggressiveness and gave +him a solid and dignified and benevolent air. A faint anticipation of +triumph showed in his manner and a subdued excitement. + +"We'll go to a place where we can have a private room," he said. +"Then--then we can talk things out." + +So they went this time to the Rococo, in Germain Street, and up-stairs +to a landing upon which stood a bald-headed waiter with whiskers like a +French admiral and discretion beyond all limits in his manner. He seemed +to have expected them. He ushered them with an amiable flat hand into a +minute apartment with a little gas-stove, a silk crimson-covered sofa, +and a bright little table, gay with napery and hot-house flowers. + +"Odd little room," said Ann Veronica, dimly apprehending that obtrusive +sofa. + +"One can talk without undertones, so to speak," said Ramage. +"It's--private." He stood looking at the preparations before them with +an unusual preoccupation of manner, then roused himself to take her +jacket, a little awkwardly, and hand it to the waiter who hung it in the +corner of the room. It appeared he had already ordered dinner and +wine, and the whiskered waiter waved in his subordinate with the soup +forthwith. + +"I'm going to talk of indifferent themes," said Ramage, a little +fussily, "until these interruptions of the service are over. Then--then +we shall be together.... How did you like Tristan?" + +Ann Veronica paused the fraction of a second before her reply came. + +"I thought much of it amazingly beautiful." + +"Isn't it. And to think that man got it all out of the poorest little +love-story for a respectable titled lady! Have you read of it?" + +"Never." + +"It gives in a nutshell the miracle of art and the imagination. You get +this queer irascible musician quite impossibly and unfortunately in +love with a wealthy patroness, and then out of his brain comes THIS, a +tapestry of glorious music, setting out love to lovers, lovers who love +in spite of all that is wise and respectable and right." + +Ann Veronica thought. She did not want to seem to shrink from +conversation, but all sorts of odd questions were running through her +mind. "I wonder why people in love are so defiant, so careless of other +considerations?" + +"The very hares grow brave. I suppose because it IS the chief thing in +life." He stopped and said earnestly: "It is the chief thing in +life, and everything else goes down before it. Everything, my dear, +everything!... But we have got to talk upon indifferent themes until +we have done with this blond young gentleman from Bavaria...." + +The dinner came to an end at last, and the whiskered waiter presented +his bill and evacuated the apartment and closed the door behind him with +an almost ostentatious discretion. Ramage stood up, and suddenly turned +the key in the door in an off-hand manner. "Now," he said, "no one can +blunder in upon us. We are alone and we can say and do what we please. +We two." He stood still, looking at her. + +Ann Veronica tried to seem absolutely unconcerned. The turning of the +key startled her, but she did not see how she could make an objection. +She felt she had stepped into a world of unknown usages. + +"I have waited for this," he said, and stood quite still, looking at her +until the silence became oppressive. + +"Won't you sit down," she said, "and tell me what you want to say?" Her +voice was flat and faint. Suddenly she had become afraid. She struggled +not to be afraid. After all, what could happen? + +He was looking at her very hard and earnestly. "Ann Veronica," he said. + +Then before she could say a word to arrest him he was at her side. +"Don't!" she said, weakly, as he had bent down and put one arm about her +and seized her hands with his disengaged hand and kissed her--kissed her +almost upon her lips. He seemed to do ten things before she could think +to do one, to leap upon her and take possession. + +Ann Veronica's universe, which had never been altogether so respectful +to her as she could have wished, gave a shout and whirled head over +heels. Everything in the world had changed for her. If hate could kill, +Ramage would have been killed by a flash of hate. "Mr. Ramage!" she +cried, and struggled to her feet. + +"My darling!" he said, clasping her resolutely in his arms, "my +dearest!" + +"Mr. Ramage!" she began, and his mouth sealed hers and his breath was +mixed with her breath. Her eye met his four inches away, and his was +glaring, immense, and full of resolution, a stupendous monster of an +eye. + +She shut her lips hard, her jaw hardened, and she set herself to +struggle with him. She wrenched her head away from his grip and got her +arm between his chest and hers. They began to wrestle fiercely. Each +became frightfully aware of the other as a plastic energetic body, +of the strong muscles of neck against cheek, of hands gripping +shoulder-blade and waist. "How dare you!" she panted, with her world +screaming and grimacing insult at her. "How dare you!" + +They were both astonished at the other's strength. Perhaps Ramage was +the more astonished. Ann Veronica had been an ardent hockey player and +had had a course of jiu-jitsu in the High School. Her defence ceased +rapidly to be in any sense ladylike, and became vigorous and effective; +a strand of black hair that had escaped its hairpins came athwart +Ramage's eyes, and then the knuckles of a small but very hardly clinched +fist had thrust itself with extreme effectiveness and painfulness under +his jawbone and ear. + +"Let go!" said Ann Veronica, through her teeth, strenuously inflicting +agony, and he cried out sharply and let go and receded a pace. + +"NOW!" said Ann Veronica. "Why did you dare to do that?" + + + +Part 3 + + +Each of them stared at the other, set in a universe that had changed its +system of values with kaleidoscopic completeness. She was flushed, and +her eyes were bright and angry; her breath came sobbing, and her hair +was all abroad in wandering strands of black. He too was flushed and +ruffled; one side of his collar had slipped from its stud and he held a +hand to the corner of his jaw. + +"You vixen!" said Mr. Ramage, speaking the simplest first thought of his +heart. + +"You had no right--" panted Ann Veronica. + +"Why on earth," he asked, "did you hurt me like that?" + +Ann Veronica did her best to think she had not deliberately attempted to +cause him pain. She ignored his question. + +"I never dreamt!" she said. + +"What on earth did you expect me to do, then?" he asked. + + + +Part 4 + + +Interpretation came pouring down upon her almost blindingly; she +understood now the room, the waiter, the whole situation. She +understood. She leaped to a world of shabby knowledge, of furtive base +realizations. She wanted to cry out upon herself for the uttermost fool +in existence. + +"I thought you wanted to have a talk to me," she said. + +"I wanted to make love to you. + +"You knew it," he added, in her momentary silence. + +"You said you were in love with me," said Ann Veronica; "I wanted to +explain--" + +"I said I loved and wanted you." The brutality of his first astonishment +was evaporating. "I am in love with you. You know I am in love with you. +And then you go--and half throttle me.... I believe you've crushed a +gland or something. It feels like it." + +"I am sorry," said Ann Veronica. "What else was I to do?" + +For some seconds she stood watching him and both were thinking very +quickly. Her state of mind would have seemed altogether discreditable to +her grandmother. She ought to have been disposed to faint and scream at +all these happenings; she ought to have maintained a front of outraged +dignity to veil the sinking of her heart. I would like to have to tell +it so. But indeed that is not at all a good description of her attitude. +She was an indignant queen, no doubt she was alarmed and disgusted +within limits; but she was highly excited, and there was something, some +low adventurous strain in her being, some element, subtle at least if +base, going about the rioting ways and crowded insurgent meeting-places +of her mind declaring that the whole affair was after all--they are the +only words that express it--a very great lark indeed. At the bottom +of her heart she was not a bit afraid of Ramage. She had unaccountable +gleams of sympathy with and liking for him. And the grotesquest fact +was that she did not so much loathe, as experience with a quite critical +condemnation this strange sensation of being kissed. Never before had +any human being kissed her lips.... + +It was only some hours after that these ambiguous elements evaporated +and vanished and loathing came, and she really began to be thoroughly +sick and ashamed of the whole disgraceful quarrel and scuffle. + +He, for his part, was trying to grasp the series of unexpected reactions +that had so wrecked their tete-a-tete. He had meant to be master of his +fate that evening and it had escaped him altogether. It had, as it were, +blown up at the concussion of his first step. It dawned upon him that he +had been abominably used by Ann Veronica. + +"Look here," he said, "I brought you here to make love to you." + +"I didn't understand--your idea of making love. You had better let me go +again." + +"Not yet," he said. "I do love you. I love you all the more for the +streak of sheer devil in you.... You are the most beautiful, the most +desirable thing I have ever met in this world. It was good to kiss you, +even at the price. But, by Jove! you are fierce! You are like those +Roman women who carry stilettos in their hair." + +"I came here to talk reasonably, Mr. Ramage. It is abominable--" + +"What is the use of keeping up this note of indignation, Ann Veronica? +Here I am! I am your lover, burning for you. I mean to have you! Don't +frown me off now. Don't go back into Victorian respectability and +pretend you don't know and you can't think and all the rest of it. One +comes at last to the step from dreams to reality. This is your moment. +No one will ever love you as I love you now. I have been dreaming of +your body and you night after night. I have been imaging--" + +"Mr. Ramage, I came here--I didn't suppose for one moment you would +dare--" + +"Nonsense! That is your mistake! You are too intellectual. You want to +do everything with your mind. You are afraid of kisses. You are afraid +of the warmth in your blood. It's just because all that side of your +life hasn't fairly begun." + +He made a step toward her. + +"Mr. Ramage," she said, sharply, "I have to make it plain to you. I +don't think you understand. I don't love you. I don't. I can't love you. +I love some one else. It is repulsive. It disgusts me that you should +touch me." + +He stared in amazement at this new aspect of the situation. "You love +some one else?" he repeated. + +"I love some one else. I could not dream of loving you." + +And then he flashed his whole conception of the relations of men and +women upon her in one astonishing question. His hand went with an almost +instinctive inquiry to his jawbone again. "Then why the devil," he +demanded, "do you let me stand you dinners and the opera--and why do you +come to a cabinet particuliar with me?" + +He became radiant with anger. "You mean to tell me" he said, "that you +have a lover? While I have been keeping you! Yes--keeping you!" + +This view of life he hurled at her as if it were an offensive missile. +It stunned her. She felt she must fly before it and could no longer do +so. She did not think for one moment what interpretation he might put +upon the word "lover." + +"Mr. Ramage," she said, clinging to her one point, "I want to get out of +this horrible little room. It has all been a mistake. I have been stupid +and foolish. Will you unlock that door?" + +"Never!" he said. "Confound your lover! Look here! Do you really think +I am going to run you while he makes love to you? No fear! I never heard +of anything so cool. If he wants you, let him get you. You're mine. I've +paid for you and helped you, and I'm going to conquer you somehow--if +I have to break you to do it. Hitherto you've seen only my easy, kindly +side. But now confound it! how can you prevent it? I will kiss you." + +"You won't!" said Ann Veronica; with the clearest note of determination. + +He seemed to be about to move toward her. She stepped back quickly, and +her hand knocked a wine-glass from the table to smash noisily on the +floor. She caught at the idea. "If you come a step nearer to me," she +said, "I will smash every glass on this table." + +"Then, by God!" he said, "you'll be locked up!" + +Ann Veronica was disconcerted for a moment. She had a vision of +policemen, reproving magistrates, a crowded court, public disgrace. She +saw her aunt in tears, her father white-faced and hard hit. "Don't come +nearer!" she said. + +There was a discreet knocking at the door, and Ramage's face changed. + +"No," she said, under her breath, "you can't face it." And she knew that +she was safe. + +He went to the door. "It's all right," he said, reassuringly to the +inquirer without. + +Ann Veronica glanced at the mirror to discover a flushed and dishevelled +disorder. She began at once a hasty readjustment of her hair, while +Ramage parleyed with inaudible interrogations. "A glass slipped from the +table," he explained.... "Non. Fas du tout. Non.... Niente.... Bitte!... +Oui, dans la note.... Presently. Presently." That conversation ended and +he turned to her again. + +"I am going," she said grimly, with three hairpins in her mouth. + +She took her hat from the peg in the corner and began to put it on. He +regarded that perennial miracle of pinning with wrathful eyes. + +"Look here, Ann Veronica," he began. "I want a plain word with you about +all this. Do you mean to tell me you didn't understand why I wanted you +to come here?" + +"Not a bit of it," said Ann Veronica stoutly. + +"You didn't expect that I should kiss you?" + +"How was I to know that a man would--would think it was possible--when +there was nothing--no love?" + +"How did I know there wasn't love?" + +That silenced her for a moment. "And what on earth," he said, "do you +think the world is made of? Why do you think I have been doing things +for you? The abstract pleasure of goodness? Are you one of the members +of that great white sisterhood that takes and does not give? The good +accepting woman! Do you really suppose a girl is entitled to live at +free quarters on any man she meets without giving any return?" + +"I thought," said Ann Veronica, "you were my friend." + +"Friend! What have a man and a girl in common to make them friends? Ask +that lover of yours! And even with friends, would you have it all Give +on one side and all Take on the other?... Does HE know I keep you?... +You won't have a man's lips near you, but you'll eat out of his hand +fast enough." + +Ann Veronica was stung to helpless anger. + +"Mr. Ramage," she cried, "you are outrageous! You understand nothing. +You are--horrible. Will you let me go out of this room?" + +"No," cried Ramage; "hear me out! I'll have that satisfaction, anyhow. +You women, with your tricks of evasion, you're a sex of swindlers. +You have all the instinctive dexterity of parasites. You make yourself +charming for help. You climb by disappointing men. This lover of +yours--" + +"He doesn't know!" cried Ann Veronica. + +"Well, you know." + +Ann Veronica could have wept with vexation. Indeed, a note of weeping +broke her voice for a moment as she burst out, "You know as well as I do +that money was a loan!" + +"Loan!" + +"You yourself called it a loan!" + +"Euphuism. We both understood that." + +"You shall have every penny of it back." + +"I'll frame it--when I get it." + +"I'll pay you if I have to work at shirt-making at threepence an hour." + +"You'll never pay me. You think you will. It's your way of glossing over +the ethical position. It's the sort of way a woman always does gloss +over her ethical positions. You're all dependents--all of you. By +instinct. Only you good ones--shirk. You shirk a straightforward and +decent return for what you get from us--taking refuge in purity and +delicacy and such-like when it comes to payment." + +"Mr. Ramage," said Ann Veronica, "I want to go--NOW!" + + + +Part 5 + + +But she did not get away just then. + +Ramage's bitterness passed as abruptly as his aggression. "Oh, +Ann Veronica!" he cried, "I cannot let you go like this! You don't +understand. You can't possibly understand!" + +He began a confused explanation, a perplexing contradictory apology for +his urgency and wrath. He loved Ann Veronica, he said; he was so mad +to have her that he defeated himself, and did crude and alarming and +senseless things. His vicious abusiveness vanished. He suddenly became +eloquent and plausible. He did make her perceive something of the acute, +tormenting desire for her that had arisen in him and possessed him. +She stood, as it were, directed doorward, with her eyes watching every +movement, listening to him, repelled by him and yet dimly understanding. + +At any rate he made it very clear that night that there was an +ineradicable discord in life, a jarring something that must shatter all +her dreams of a way of living for women that would enable them to be +free and spacious and friendly with men, and that was the passionate +predisposition of men to believe that the love of women can be earned +and won and controlled and compelled. + +He flung aside all his talk of help and disinterested friendship as +though it had never been even a disguise between them, as though +from the first it was no more than a fancy dress they had put quite +understandingly upon their relationship. He had set out to win her, and +she had let him start. And at the thought of that other lover--he was +convinced that that beloved person was a lover, and she found herself +unable to say a word to explain to him that this other person, the +person she loved, did not even know of her love--Ramage grew angry +and savage once more, and returned suddenly to gibe and insult. Men do +services for the love of women, and the woman who takes must pay. Such +was the simple code that displayed itself in all his thoughts. He left +that arid rule clear of the least mist of refinement or delicacy. + +That he should pay forty pounds to help this girl who preferred another +man was no less in his eyes than a fraud and mockery that made her +denial a maddening and outrageous disgrace to him. And this though he +was evidently passionately in love with her. + +For a while he threatened her. "You have put all your life in my hands," +he declared. "Think of that check you endorsed. There it is--against +you. I defy you to explain it away. What do you think people will make +of that? What will this lover of yours make of that?" + +At intervals Ann Veronica demanded to go, declaring her undying resolve +to repay him at any cost, and made short movements doorward. + +But at last this ordeal was over, and Ramage opened the door. She +emerged with a white face and wide-open eyes upon a little, red-lit +landing. She went past three keenly observant and ostentatiously +preoccupied waiters down the thick-carpeted staircase and out of the +Hotel Rococo, that remarkable laboratory of relationships, past a tall +porter in blue and crimson, into a cool, clear night. + + + +Part 6 + + +When Ann Veronica reached her little bed-sitting-room again, every nerve +in her body was quivering with shame and self-disgust. + +She threw hat and coat on the bed and sat down before the fire. + +"And now," she said, splintering the surviving piece of coal into +indignant flame-spurting fragments with one dexterous blow, "what am I +to do? + +"I'm in a hole!--mess is a better word, expresses it better. I'm in a +mess--a nasty mess! a filthy mess! Oh, no end of a mess! + +"Do you hear, Ann Veronica?--you're in a nasty, filthy, unforgivable +mess! + +"Haven't I just made a silly mess of things? + +"Forty pounds! I haven't got twenty!" + +She got up, stamped with her foot, and then, suddenly remembering the +lodger below, sat down and wrenched off her boots. + +"This is what comes of being a young woman up to date. By Jove! I'm +beginning to have my doubts about freedom! + +"You silly young woman, Ann Veronica! You silly young woman! The +smeariness of the thing! + +"The smeariness of this sort of thing!... Mauled about!" + +She fell to rubbing her insulted lips savagely with the back of her +hand. "Ugh!" she said. + +"The young women of Jane Austen's time didn't get into this sort of +scrape! At least--one thinks so.... I wonder if some of them did--and +it didn't get reported. Aunt Jane had her quiet moments. Most of +them didn't, anyhow. They were properly brought up, and sat still and +straight, and took the luck fate brought them as gentlewomen should. +And they had an idea of what men were like behind all their nicety. They +knew they were all Bogey in disguise. I didn't! I didn't! After all--" + +For a time her mind ran on daintiness and its defensive restraints +as though it was the one desirable thing. That world of fine printed +cambrics and escorted maidens, of delicate secondary meanings and +refined allusiveness, presented itself to her imagination with the +brightness of a lost paradise, as indeed for many women it is a lost +paradise. + +"I wonder if there is anything wrong with my manners," she said. "I +wonder if I've been properly brought up. If I had been quite quiet and +white and dignified, wouldn't it have been different? Would he have +dared?..." + +For some creditable moments in her life Ann Veronica was utterly +disgusted with herself; she was wrung with a passionate and belated +desire to move gently, to speak softly and ambiguously--to be, in +effect, prim. + +Horrible details recurred to her. + +"Why, among other things, did I put my knuckles in his +neck--deliberately to hurt him?" + +She tried to sound the humorous note. + +"Are you aware, Ann Veronica, you nearly throttled that gentleman?" + +Then she reviled her own foolish way of putting it. + +"You ass and imbecile, Ann Veronica! You female cad! Cad! Cad!... Why +aren't you folded up clean in lavender--as every young woman ought to +be? What have you been doing with yourself?..." + +She raked into the fire with the poker. + +"All of which doesn't help me in the slightest degree to pay back that +money." + +That night was the most intolerable one that Ann Veronica had ever +spent. She washed her face with unwonted elaboration before she went +to bed. This time, there was no doubt, she did not sleep. The more +she disentangled the lines of her situation the deeper grew her +self-disgust. Occasionally the mere fact of lying in bed became +unendurable, and she rolled out and marched about her room and whispered +abuse of herself--usually until she hit against some article of +furniture. + +Then she would have quiet times, in which she would say to herself, "Now +look here! Let me think it all out!" + +For the first time, it seemed to her, she faced the facts of a woman's +position in the world--the meagre realities of such freedom as it +permitted her, the almost unavoidable obligation to some individual man +under which she must labor for even a foothold in the world. She had +flung away from her father's support with the finest assumption of +personal independence. And here she was--in a mess because it had +been impossible for her to avoid leaning upon another man. She had +thought--What had she thought? That this dependence of women was but +an illusion which needed only to be denied to vanish. She had denied it +with vigor, and here she was! + +She did not so much exhaust this general question as pass from it to her +insoluble individual problem again: "What am I to do?" + +She wanted first of all to fling the forty pounds back into Ramage's +face. But she had spent nearly half of it, and had no conception of how +such a sum could be made good again. She thought of all sorts of odd and +desperate expedients, and with passionate petulance rejected them all. + +She took refuge in beating her pillow and inventing insulting epithets +for herself. She got up, drew up her blind, and stared out of window at +a dawn-cold vision of chimneys for a time, and then went and sat on the +edge of her bed. What was the alternative to going home? No alternative +appeared in that darkness. + +It seemed intolerable that she should go home and admit herself beaten. +She did most urgently desire to save her face in Morningside Park, and +for long hours she could think of no way of putting it that would not be +in the nature of unconditional admission of defeat. + +"I'd rather go as a chorus-girl," she said. + +She was not very clear about the position and duties of a chorus-girl, +but it certainly had the air of being a last desperate resort. +There sprang from that a vague hope that perhaps she might extort a +capitulation from her father by a threat to seek that position, and then +with overwhelming clearness it came to her that whatever happened she +would never be able to tell her father about her debt. The completest +capitulation would not wipe out that trouble. And she felt that if she +went home it was imperative to pay. She would always be going to and fro +up the Avenue, getting glimpses of Ramage, seeing him in trains.... + +For a time she promenaded the room. + +"Why did I ever take that loan? An idiot girl in an asylum would have +known better than that! + +"Vulgarity of soul and innocence of mind--the worst of all conceivable +combinations. I wish some one would kill Ramage by accident!... + +"But then they would find that check endorsed in his bureau.... + +"I wonder what he will do?" She tried to imagine situations that might +arise out of Ramage's antagonism, for he had been so bitter and savage +that she could not believe that he would leave things as they were. + +The next morning she went out with her post-office savings bank-book, +and telegraphed for a warrant to draw out all the money she had in the +world. It amounted to two-and-twenty pounds. She addressed an envelope +to Ramage, and scrawled on a half-sheet of paper, "The rest shall +follow." The money would be available in the afternoon, and she would +send him four five-pound notes. The rest she meant to keep for +her immediate necessities. A little relieved by this step toward +reinstatement, she went on to the Imperial College to forget her muddle +of problems for a time, if she could, in the presence of Capes. + + + +Part 7 + + +For a time the biological laboratory was full of healing virtue. Her +sleepless night had left her languid but not stupefied, and for an hour +or so the work distracted her altogether from her troubles. + +Then, after Capes had been through her work and had gone on, it came to +her that the fabric of this life of hers was doomed to almost immediate +collapse; that in a little while these studies would cease, and perhaps +she would never set eyes on him again. After that consolations fled. + +The overnight nervous strain began to tell; she became inattentive +to the work before her, and it did not get on. She felt sleepy and +unusually irritable. She lunched at a creamery in Great Portland Street, +and as the day was full of wintry sunshine, spent the rest of the +lunch-hour in a drowsy gloom, which she imagined to be thought upon the +problems of her position, on a seat in Regent's Park. A girl of fifteen +or sixteen gave her a handbill that she regarded as a tract until she +saw "Votes for Women" at the top. That turned her mind to the more +generalized aspects of her perplexities again. She had never been so +disposed to agree that the position of women in the modern world is +intolerable. + +Capes joined the students at tea, and displayed himself in an impish +mood that sometimes possessed him. He did not notice that Ann Veronica +was preoccupied and heavy-eyed. Miss Klegg raised the question of +women's suffrage, and he set himself to provoke a duel between her and +Miss Garvice. The youth with the hair brushed back and the spectacled +Scotchman joined in the fray for and against the women's vote. + +Ever and again Capes appealed to Ann Veronica. He liked to draw her in, +and she did her best to talk. But she did not talk readily, and in +order to say something she plunged a little, and felt she plunged. +Capes scored back with an uncompromising vigor that was his way of +complimenting her intelligence. But this afternoon it discovered an +unusual vein of irritability in her. He had been reading Belfort Bax, +and declared himself a convert. He contrasted the lot of women in +general with the lot of men, presented men as patient, self-immolating +martyrs, and women as the pampered favorites of Nature. A vein of +conviction mingled with his burlesque. + +For a time he and Miss Klegg contradicted one another. + +The question ceased to be a tea-table talk, and became suddenly +tragically real for Ann Veronica. There he sat, cheerfully friendly +in his sex's freedom--the man she loved, the one man she cared +should unlock the way to the wide world for her imprisoned feminine +possibilities, and he seemed regardless that she stifled under his eyes; +he made a jest of all this passionate insurgence of the souls of women +against the fate of their conditions. + +Miss Garvice repeated again, and almost in the same words she used at +every discussion, her contribution to the great question. + +She thought that women were not made for the struggle and turmoil of +life--their place was the little world, the home; that their power lay +not in votes but in influence over men and in making the minds of their +children fine and splendid. + +"Women should understand men's affairs, perhaps," said Miss Garvice, +"but to mingle in them is just to sacrifice that power of influencing +they can exercise now." + +"There IS something sound in that position," said Capes, intervening as +if to defend Miss Garvice against a possible attack from Ann Veronica. +"It may not be just and so forth, but, after all, it is how things are. +Women are not in the world in the same sense that men are--fighting +individuals in a scramble. I don't see how they can be. Every home is a +little recess, a niche, out of the world of business and competition, in +which women and the future shelter." + +"A little pit!" said Ann Veronica; "a little prison!" + +"It's just as often a little refuge. Anyhow, that is how things are." + +"And the man stands as the master at the mouth of the den." + +"As sentinel. You forget all the mass of training and tradition and +instinct that go to make him a tolerable master. Nature is a mother; her +sympathies have always been feminist, and she has tempered the man to +the shorn woman." + +"I wish," said Ann Veronica, with sudden anger, "that you could know +what it is to live in a pit!" + +She stood up as she spoke, and put down her cup beside Miss Garvice's. +She addressed Capes as though she spoke to him alone. + +"I can't endure it," she said. + +Every one turned to her in astonishment. + +She felt she had to go on. "No man can realize," she said, "what that +pit can be. The way--the way we are led on! We are taught to believe we +are free in the world, to think we are queens.... Then we find out. +We find out no man will treat a woman fairly as man to man--no man. He +wants you--or he doesn't; and then he helps some other woman against +you.... What you say is probably all true and necessary.... But +think of the disillusionment! Except for our sex we have minds like men, +desires like men. We come out into the world, some of us--" + +She paused. Her words, as she said them, seemed to her to mean nothing, +and there was so much that struggled for expression. "Women are mocked," +she said. "Whenever they try to take hold of life a man intervenes." + +She felt, with a sudden horror, that she might weep. She wished she had +not stood up. She wondered wildly why she had stood up. No one spoke, +and she was impelled to flounder on. "Think of the mockery!" she said. +"Think how dumb we find ourselves and stifled! I know we seem to have +a sort of freedom.... Have you ever tried to run and jump in +petticoats, Mr. Capes? Well, think what it must be to live in them--soul +and mind and body! It's fun for a man to jest at our position." + +"I wasn't jesting," said Capes, abruptly. + +She stood face to face with him, and his voice cut across her speech +and made her stop abruptly. She was sore and overstrung, and it was +intolerable to her that he should stand within three yards of her +unsuspectingly, with an incalculably vast power over her happiness. She +was sore with the perplexities of her preposterous position. She was +sick of herself, of her life, of everything but him; and for him all her +masked and hidden being was crying out. + +She stopped abruptly at the sound of his voice, and lost the thread +of what she was saying. In the pause she realized the attention of the +others converged upon her, and that the tears were brimming over her +eyes. She felt a storm of emotion surging up within her. She became +aware of the Scotch student regarding her with stupendous amazement, +a tea-cup poised in one hairy hand and his faceted glasses showing a +various enlargement of segments of his eye. + +The door into the passage offered itself with an irresistible +invitation--the one alternative to a public, inexplicable passion of +weeping. + +Capes flashed to an understanding of her intention, sprang to his feet, +and opened the door for her retreat. + + + +Part 8 + + +"Why should I ever come back?" she said to herself, as she went down the +staircase. + +She went to the post-office and drew out and sent off her money +to Ramage. And then she came out into the street, sure only of one +thing--that she could not return directly to her lodgings. She wanted +air--and the distraction of having moving and changing things about her. +The evenings were beginning to draw out, and it would not be dark for +an hour. She resolved to walk across the Park to the Zoological gardens, +and so on by way of Primrose Hill to Hampstead Heath. There she would +wander about in the kindly darkness. And think things out.... + +Presently she became aware of footsteps hurrying after her, and glanced +back to find Miss Klegg, a little out of breath, in pursuit. + +Ann Veronica halted a pace, and Miss Klegg came alongside. + +"Do YOU go across the Park?" + +"Not usually. But I'm going to-day. I want a walk." + +"I'm not surprised at it. I thought Mr. Capes most trying." + +"Oh, it wasn't that. I've had a headache all day." + +"I thought Mr. Capes most unfair," Miss Klegg went on in a small, even +voice; "MOST unfair! I'm glad you spoke out as you did." + +"I didn't mind that little argument." + +"You gave it him well. What you said wanted saying. After you went he +got up and took refuge in the preparation-room. Or else _I_ would have +finished him." + +Ann Veronica said nothing, and Miss Klegg went on: "He very often +IS--most unfair. He has a way of sitting on people. He wouldn't like it +if people did it to him. He jumps the words out of your mouth; he takes +hold of what you have to say before you have had time to express it +properly." + +Pause. + +"I suppose he's frightfully clever," said Miss Klegg. + +"He's a Fellow of the Royal Society, and he can't be much over thirty," +said Miss Klegg. + +"He writes very well," said Ann Veronica. + +"He can't be more than thirty. He must have married when he was quite a +young man." + +"Married?" said Ann Veronica. + +"Didn't you know he was married?" asked Miss Klegg, and was struck by a +thought that made her glance quickly at her companion. + +Ann Veronica had no answer for a moment. She turned her head away +sharply. Some automaton within her produced in a quite unfamiliar voice +the remark, "They're playing football." + +"It's too far for the ball to reach us," said Miss Klegg. + +"I didn't know Mr. Capes was married," said Ann Veronica, resuming the +conversation with an entire disappearance of her former lassitude. + +"Oh yes," said Miss Klegg; "I thought every one knew." + +"No," said Ann Veronica, offhandedly. "Never heard anything of it." + +"I thought every one knew. I thought every one had heard about it." + +"But why?" + +"He's married--and, I believe, living separated from his wife. There was +a case, or something, some years ago." + +"What case?" + +"A divorce--or something--I don't know. But I have heard that he almost +had to leave the schools. If it hadn't been for Professor Russell +standing up for him, they say he would have had to leave." + +"Was he divorced, do you mean?" + +"No, but he got himself mixed up in a divorce case. I forget the +particulars, but I know it was something very disagreeable. It was among +artistic people." + +Ann Veronica was silent for a while. + +"I thought every one had heard," said Miss Klegg. "Or I wouldn't have +said anything about it." + +"I suppose all men," said Ann Veronica, in a tone of detached criticism, +"get some such entanglement. And, anyhow, it doesn't matter to us." She +turned abruptly at right angles to the path they followed. "This is my +way back to my side of the Park," she said. + +"I thought you were coming right across the Park." + +"Oh no," said Ann Veronica; "I have some work to do. I just wanted a +breath of air. And they'll shut the gates presently. It's not far from +twilight." + + + + +Part 9 + + +She was sitting brooding over her fire about ten o'clock that night when +a sealed and registered envelope was brought up to her. + +She opened it and drew out a letter, and folded within it were the notes +she had sent off to Ramage that day. The letter began: + + +"MY DEAREST GIRL,--I cannot let you do this foolish thing--" + + +She crumpled notes and letter together in her hand, and then with a +passionate gesture flung them into the fire. Instantly she seized the +poker and made a desperate effort to get them out again. But she was +only able to save a corner of the letter. The twenty pounds burned with +avidity. + +She remained for some seconds crouching at the fender, poker in hand. + +"By Jove!" she said, standing up at last, "that about finishes it, Ann +Veronica!" + + + +CHAPTER THE TENTH + +THE SUFFRAGETTES + + +Part 1 + + +"There is only one way out of all this," said Ann Veronica, sitting up +in her little bed in the darkness and biting at her nails. + +"I thought I was just up against Morningside Park and father, but it's +the whole order of things--the whole blessed order of things...." + +She shivered. She frowned and gripped her hands about her knees very +tightly. Her mind developed into savage wrath at the present conditions +of a woman's life. + +"I suppose all life is an affair of chances. But a woman's life is all +chance. It's artificially chance. Find your man, that's the rule. All +the rest is humbug and delicacy. He's the handle of life for you. He +will let you live if it pleases him.... + +"Can't it be altered? + +"I suppose an actress is free?..." + +She tried to think of some altered state of affairs in which these +monstrous limitations would be alleviated, in which women would stand on +their own feet in equal citizenship with men. For a time she brooded on +the ideals and suggestions of the Socialists, on the vague intimations +of an Endowment of Motherhood, of a complete relaxation of that intense +individual dependence for women which is woven into the existing social +order. At the back of her mind there seemed always one irrelevant +qualifying spectator whose presence she sought to disregard. She would +not look at him, would not think of him; when her mind wavered, then +she muttered to herself in the darkness so as to keep hold of her +generalizations. + +"It is true. It is no good waiving the thing; it is true. Unless women +are never to be free, never to be even respected, there must be a +generation of martyrs.... Why shouldn't we be martyrs? There's +nothing else for most of us, anyhow. It's a sort of blacklegging to want +to have a life of one's own...." + +She repeated, as if she answered an objector: "A sort of blacklegging. + +"A sex of blacklegging clients." + +Her mind diverged to other aspects, and another type of womanhood. + +"Poor little Miniver! What can she be but what she is?... Because +she states her case in a tangle, drags it through swamps of nonsense, it +doesn't alter the fact that she is right." + +That phrase about dragging the truth through swamps of nonsense she +remembered from Capes. At the recollection that it was his, she seemed +to fall through a thin surface, as one might fall through the crust of +a lava into glowing depths. She wallowed for a time in the thought of +Capes, unable to escape from his image and the idea of his presence in +her life. + +She let her mind run into dreams of that cloud paradise of an altered +world in which the Goopes and Minivers, the Fabians and reforming people +believed. Across that world was written in letters of light, "Endowment +of Motherhood." Suppose in some complex yet conceivable way women were +endowed, were no longer economically and socially dependent on men. "If +one was free," she said, "one could go to him.... This vile hovering +to catch a man's eye!... One could go to him and tell him one loved +him. I want to love him. A little love from him would be enough. It +would hurt no one. It would not burden him with any obligation." + +She groaned aloud and bowed her forehead to her knees. She floundered +deep. She wanted to kiss his feet. His feet would have the firm texture +of his hands. + +Then suddenly her spirit rose in revolt. "I will not have this slavery," +she said. "I will not have this slavery." + +She shook her fist ceilingward. "Do you hear!" she said "whatever you +are, wherever you are! I will not be slave to the thought of any man, +slave to the customs of any time. Confound this slavery of sex! I am a +man! I will get this under if I am killed in doing it!" + +She scowled into the cold blacknesses about her. + +"Manning," she said, and contemplated a figure of inaggressive +persistence. "No!" Her thoughts had turned in a new direction. + +"It doesn't matter," she said, after a long interval, "if they are +absurd. They mean something. They mean everything that women can +mean--except submission. The vote is only the beginning, the necessary +beginning. If we do not begin--" + +She had come to a resolution. Abruptly she got out of bed, smoothed +her sheet and straightened her pillow and lay down, and fell almost +instantly asleep. + + + +Part 2 + + +The next morning was as dark and foggy as if it was mid-November instead +of early March. Ann Veronica woke rather later than usual, and lay awake +for some minutes before she remembered a certain resolution she +had taken in the small hours. Then instantly she got out of bed and +proceeded to dress. + +She did not start for the Imperial College. She spent the morning up +to ten in writing a series of unsuccessful letters to Ramage, which she +tore up unfinished; and finally she desisted and put on her jacket and +went out into the lamp-lit obscurity and slimy streets. She turned a +resolute face southward. + +She followed Oxford Street into Holborn, and then she inquired for +Chancery Lane. There she sought and at last found 107A, one of those +heterogeneous piles of offices which occupy the eastern side of the +lane. She studied the painted names of firms and persons and enterprises +on the wall, and discovered that the Women's Bond of Freedom occupied +several contiguous suites on the first floor. She went up-stairs and +hesitated between four doors with ground-glass panes, each of which +professed "The Women's Bond of Freedom" in neat black letters. She +opened one and found herself in a large untidy room set with chairs that +were a little disarranged as if by an overnight meeting. On the walls +were notice-boards bearing clusters of newspaper slips, three or four +big posters of monster meetings, one of which Ann Veronica had attended +with Miss Miniver, and a series of announcements in purple copying-ink, +and in one corner was a pile of banners. There was no one at all in this +room, but through the half-open door of one of the small apartments +that gave upon it she had a glimpse of two very young girls sitting at a +littered table and writing briskly. + +She walked across to this apartment and, opening the door a little +wider, discovered a press section of the movement at work. + +"I want to inquire," said Ann Veronica. + +"Next door," said a spectacled young person of seventeen or eighteen, +with an impatient indication of the direction. + +In the adjacent apartment Ann Veronica found a middle-aged woman with +a tired face under the tired hat she wore, sitting at a desk opening +letters while a dusky, untidy girl of eight-or nine-and-twenty hammered +industriously at a typewriter. The tired woman looked up in inquiring +silence at Ann Veronica's diffident entry. + +"I want to know more about this movement," said Ann Veronica. + +"Are you with us?" said the tired woman. + +"I don't know," said Ann Veronica; "I think I am. I want very much to do +something for women. But I want to know what you are doing." + +The tired woman sat still for a moment. "You haven't come here to make a +lot of difficulties?" she asked. + +"No," said Ann Veronica, "but I want to know." + +The tired woman shut her eyes tightly for a moment, and then looked with +them at Ann Veronica. "What can you do?" she asked. + +"Do?" + +"Are you prepared to do things for us? Distribute bills? Write letters? +Interrupt meetings? Canvass at elections? Face dangers?" + +"If I am satisfied--" + +"If we satisfy you?" + +"Then, if possible, I would like to go to prison." + +"It isn't nice going to prison." + +"It would suit me." + +"It isn't nice getting there." + +"That's a question of detail," said Ann Veronica. + +The tired woman looked quietly at her. "What are your objections?" she +said. + +"It isn't objections exactly. I want to know what you are doing; how you +think this work of yours really does serve women." + +"We are working for the equal citizenship of men and women," said the +tired woman. "Women have been and are treated as the inferiors of men, +we want to make them their equals." + +"Yes," said Ann Veronica, "I agree to that. But--" + +The tired woman raised her eyebrows in mild protest. + +"Isn't the question more complicated than that?" said Ann Veronica. + +"You could have a talk to Miss Kitty Brett this afternoon, if you liked. +Shall I make an appointment for you?" + +Miss Kitty Brett was one of the most conspicuous leaders of the +movement. Ann Veronica snatched at the opportunity, and spent most +of the intervening time in the Assyrian Court of the British Museum, +reading and thinking over a little book upon the feminist movement the +tired woman had made her buy. She got a bun and some cocoa in the little +refreshment-room, and then wandered through the galleries up-stairs, +crowded with Polynesian idols and Polynesian dancing-garments, and all +the simple immodest accessories to life in Polynesia, to a seat among +the mummies. She was trying to bring her problems to a head, and her +mind insisted upon being even more discursive and atmospheric than +usual. It generalized everything she put to it. + +"Why should women be dependent on men?" she asked; and the question was +at once converted into a system of variations upon the theme of "Why +are things as they are?"--"Why are human beings viviparous?"--"Why are +people hungry thrice a day?"--"Why does one faint at danger?" + +She stood for a time looking at the dry limbs and still human face of +that desiccated unwrapped mummy from the very beginnings of social life. +It looked very patient, she thought, and a little self-satisfied. It +looked as if it had taken its world for granted and prospered on that +assumption--a world in which children were trained to obey their +elders and the wills of women over-ruled as a matter of course. It was +wonderful to think this thing had lived, had felt and suffered. Perhaps +once it had desired some other human being intolerably. Perhaps some one +had kissed the brow that was now so cadaverous, rubbed that sunken cheek +with loving fingers, held that stringy neck with passionately living +hands. But all of that was forgotten. "In the end," it seemed to be +thinking, "they embalmed me with the utmost respect--sound spices chosen +to endure--the best! I took my world as I found it. THINGS ARE SO!" + + + +Part 3 + + +Ann Veronica's first impression of Kitty Brett was that she was +aggressive and disagreeable; her next that she was a person of amazing +persuasive power. She was perhaps three-and-twenty, and very pink and +healthy-looking, showing a great deal of white and rounded neck above +her business-like but altogether feminine blouse, and a good deal of +plump, gesticulating forearm out of her short sleeve. She had animated +dark blue-gray eyes under her fine eyebrows, and dark brown hair that +rolled back simply and effectively from her broad low forehead. And she +was about as capable of intelligent argument as a runaway steam-roller. +She was a trained being--trained by an implacable mother to one end. + +She spoke with fluent enthusiasm. She did not so much deal with Ann +Veronica's interpolations as dispose of them with quick and use-hardened +repartee, and then she went on with a fine directness to sketch the case +for her agitation, for that remarkable rebellion of the women that was +then agitating the whole world of politics and discussion. She assumed +with a kind of mesmeric force all the propositions that Ann Veronica +wanted her to define. + +"What do we want? What is the goal?" asked Ann Veronica. + +"Freedom! Citizenship! And the way to that--the way to everything--is +the Vote." + +Ann Veronica said something about a general change of ideas. + +"How can you change people's ideas if you have no power?" said Kitty +Brett. + +Ann Veronica was not ready enough to deal with that counter-stroke. + +"One doesn't want to turn the whole thing into a mere sex antagonism." + +"When women get justice," said Kitty Brett, "there will be no sex +antagonism. None at all. Until then we mean to keep on hammering away." + +"It seems to me that much of a woman's difficulties are economic." + +"That will follow," said Kitty Brett--"that will follow." + +She interrupted as Ann Veronica was about to speak again, with a bright +contagious hopefulness. "Everything will follow," she said. + +"Yes," said Ann Veronica, trying to think where they were, trying to +get things plain again that had seemed plain enough in the quiet of the +night. + +"Nothing was ever done," Miss Brett asserted, "without a certain element +of Faith. After we have got the Vote and are recognized as citizens, +then we can come to all these other things." + +Even in the glamour of Miss Brett's assurance it seemed to Ann Veronica +that this was, after all, no more than the gospel of Miss Miniver with +a new set of resonances. And like that gospel it meant something, +something different from its phrases, something elusive, and yet +something that in spite of the superficial incoherence of its phrasing, +was largely essentially true. There was something holding women down, +holding women back, and if it wasn't exactly man-made law, man-made +law was an aspect of it. There was something indeed holding the whole +species back from the imaginable largeness of life.... + +"The Vote is the symbol of everything," said Miss Brett. + +She made an abrupt personal appeal. + +"Oh! please don't lose yourself in a wilderness of secondary +considerations," she said. "Don't ask me to tell you all that women can +do, all that women can be. There is a new life, different from the old +life of dependence, possible. If only we are not divided. If only we +work together. This is the one movement that brings women of different +classes together for a common purpose. If you could see how it gives +them souls, women who have taken things for granted, who have given +themselves up altogether to pettiness and vanity...." + +"Give me something to do," said Ann Veronica, interrupting her +persuasions at last. "It has been very kind of you to see me, but I +don't want to sit and talk and use your time any longer. I want to do +something. I want to hammer myself against all this that pens women in. +I feel that I shall stifle unless I can do something--and do something +soon." + + + +Part 4 + + +It was not Ann Veronica's fault that the night's work should have taken +upon itself the forms of wild burlesque. She was in deadly earnest in +everything she did. It seemed to her the last desperate attack upon the +universe that would not let her live as she desired to live, that penned +her in and controlled her and directed her and disapproved of her, the +same invincible wrappering, the same leaden tyranny of a universe that +she had vowed to overcome after that memorable conflict with her father +at Morningside Park. + +She was listed for the raid--she was informed it was to be a raid upon +the House of Commons, though no particulars were given her--and told to +go alone to 14, Dexter Street, Westminster, and not to ask any policeman +to direct her. 14, Dexter Street, Westminster, she found was not a house +but a yard in an obscure street, with big gates and the name of Podgers +& Carlo, Carriers and Furniture Removers, thereon. She was perplexed by +this, and stood for some seconds in the empty street hesitating, until +the appearance of another circumspect woman under the street lamp at the +corner reassured her. In one of the big gates was a little door, and she +rapped at this. It was immediately opened by a man with light eyelashes +and a manner suggestive of restrained passion. "Come right in," he +hissed under his breath, with the true conspirator's note, closed the +door very softly and pointed, "Through there!" + +By the meagre light of a gas lamp she perceived a cobbled yard with four +large furniture vans standing with horses and lamps alight. A slender +young man, wearing glasses, appeared from the shadow of the nearest van. +"Are you A, B, C, or D?" he asked. + +"They told me D," said Ann Veronica. + +"Through there," he said, and pointed with the pamphlet he was carrying. + +Ann Veronica found herself in a little stirring crowd of excited women, +whispering and tittering and speaking in undertones. + +The light was poor, so that she saw their gleaming faces dimly and +indistinctly. No one spoke to her. She stood among them, watching +them and feeling curiously alien to them. The oblique ruddy lighting +distorted them oddly, made queer bars and patches of shadow upon their +clothes. "It's Kitty's idea," said one, "we are to go in the vans." + +"Kitty is wonderful," said another. + +"Wonderful!" + +"I have always longed for prison service," said a voice, "always. +From the beginning. But it's only now I'm able to do it." + +A little blond creature close at hand suddenly gave way to a fit of +hysterical laughter, and caught up the end of it with a sob. + +"Before I took up the Suffrage," a firm, flat voice remarked, "I could +scarcely walk up-stairs without palpitations." + +Some one hidden from Ann Veronica appeared to be marshalling the +assembly. "We have to get in, I think," said a nice little old lady in +a bonnet to Ann Veronica, speaking with a voice that quavered a little. +"My dear, can you see in this light? I think I would like to get in. +Which is C?" + +Ann Veronica, with a curious sinking of the heart, regarded the black +cavities of the vans. Their doors stood open, and placards with big +letters indicated the section assigned to each. She directed the little +old woman and then made her way to van D. A young woman with a white +badge on her arm stood and counted the sections as they entered their +vans. + +"When they tap the roof," she said, in a voice of authority, "you are to +come out. You will be opposite the big entrance in Old Palace Yard. It's +the public entrance. You are to make for that and get into the lobby if +you can, and so try and reach the floor of the House, crying 'Votes for +Women!' as you go." + +She spoke like a mistress addressing school-children. + +"Don't bunch too much as you come out," she added. + +"All right?" asked the man with the light eyelashes, suddenly appearing +in the doorway. He waited for an instant, wasting an encouraging smile +in the imperfect light, and then shut the doors of the van, leaving the +women in darkness.... + +The van started with a jerk and rumbled on its way. + +"It's like Troy!" said a voice of rapture. "It's exactly like Troy!" + + + +Part 5 + + +So Ann Veronica, enterprising and a little dubious as ever, mingled with +the stream of history and wrote her Christian name upon the police-court +records of the land. + +But out of a belated regard for her father she wrote the surname of some +one else. + +Some day, when the rewards of literature permit the arduous research +required, the Campaign of the Women will find its Carlyle, and the +particulars of that marvellous series of exploits by which Miss Brett +and her colleagues nagged the whole Western world into the discussion of +women's position become the material for the most delightful and amazing +descriptions. At present the world waits for that writer, and the +confused record of the newspapers remains the only resource of the +curious. When he comes he will do that raid of the pantechnicons the +justice it deserves; he will picture the orderly evening scene about the +Imperial Legislature in convincing detail, the coming and going of cabs +and motor-cabs and broughams through the chill, damp evening into New +Palace Yard, the reinforced but untroubled and unsuspecting police about +the entries of those great buildings whose square and panelled Victorian +Gothic streams up from the glare of the lamps into the murkiness of +the night; Big Ben shining overhead, an unassailable beacon, and the +incidental traffic of Westminster, cabs, carts, and glowing omnibuses +going to and from the bridge. About the Abbey and Abingdon Street stood +the outer pickets and detachments of the police, their attention all +directed westward to where the women in Caxton Hall, Westminster, hummed +like an angry hive. Squads reached to the very portal of that centre of +disturbance. And through all these defences and into Old Palace +Yard, into the very vitals of the defenders' position, lumbered the +unsuspected vans. + +They travelled past the few idle sightseers who had braved the +uninviting evening to see what the Suffragettes might be doing; they +pulled up unchallenged within thirty yards of those coveted portals. + +And then they disgorged. + +Were I a painter of subject pictures, I would exhaust all my skill +in proportion and perspective and atmosphere upon the august seat +of empire, I would present it gray and dignified and immense and +respectable beyond any mere verbal description, and then, in vivid +black and very small, I would put in those valiantly impertinent +vans, squatting at the base of its altitudes and pouring out a swift, +straggling rush of ominous little black objects, minute figures of +determined women at war with the universe. + +Ann Veronica was in their very forefront. + +In an instant the expectant calm of Westminster was ended, and the very +Speaker in the chair blenched at the sound of the policemen's whistles. +The bolder members in the House left their places to go lobbyward, +grinning. Others pulled hats over their noses, cowered in their seats, +and feigned that all was right with the world. In Old Palace Yard +everybody ran. They either ran to see or ran for shelter. Even two +Cabinet Ministers took to their heels, grinning insincerely. At the +opening of the van doors and the emergence into the fresh air Ann +Veronica's doubt and depression gave place to the wildest exhilaration. +That same adventurousness that had already buoyed her through crises +that would have overwhelmed any normally feminine girl with shame and +horror now became uppermost again. Before her was a great Gothic portal. +Through that she had to go. + +Past her shot the little old lady in the bonnet, running incredibly +fast, but otherwise still alertly respectable, and she was making a +strange threatening sound as she ran, such as one would use in driving +ducks out of a garden--"B-r-r-r-r-r--!" and pawing with black-gloved +hands. The policemen were closing in from the sides to intervene. The +little old lady struck like a projectile upon the resounding chest +of the foremost of these, and then Ann Veronica had got past and was +ascending the steps. + +Then most horribly she was clasped about the waist from behind and +lifted from the ground. + +At that a new element poured into her excitement, an element of wild +disgust and terror. She had never experienced anything so disagreeable +in her life as the sense of being held helplessly off her feet. She +screamed involuntarily--she had never in her life screamed before--and +then she began to wriggle and fight like a frightened animal against the +men who were holding her. + +The affair passed at one leap from a spree to a nightmare of violence +and disgust. Her hair got loose, her hat came over one eye, and she had +no arm free to replace it. She felt she must suffocate if these men did +not put her down, and for a time they would not put her down. Then with +an indescribable relief her feet were on the pavement, and she was +being urged along by two policemen, who were gripping her wrists in an +irresistible expert manner. She was writhing to get her hands loose +and found herself gasping with passionate violence, "It's +damnable!--damnable!" to the manifest disgust of the fatherly policeman +on her right. + +Then they had released her arms and were trying to push her away. + +"You be off, missie," said the fatherly policeman. "This ain't no place +for you." + +He pushed her a dozen yards along the greasy pavement with flat, +well-trained hands that there seemed to be no opposing. Before her +stretched blank spaces, dotted with running people coming toward her, +and below them railings and a statue. She almost submitted to this +ending of her adventure. But at the word "home" she turned again. + +"I won't go home," she said; "I won't!" and she evaded the clutch of the +fatherly policeman and tried to thrust herself past him in the direction +of that big portal. "Steady on!" he cried. + +A diversion was created by the violent struggles of the little old +lady. She seemed to be endowed with superhuman strength. A knot of +three policemen in conflict with her staggered toward Ann Veronica's +attendants and distracted their attention. "I WILL be arrested! I WON'T +go home!" the little old lady was screaming over and over again. They +put her down, and she leaped at them; she smote a helmet to the ground. + +"You'll have to take her!" shouted an inspector on horseback, and she +echoed his cry: "You'll have to take me!" They seized upon her and +lifted her, and she screamed. Ann Veronica became violently excited at +the sight. "You cowards!" said Ann Veronica, "put her down!" and tore +herself from a detaining hand and battered with her fists upon the big +red ear and blue shoulder of the policeman who held the little old lady. + +So Ann Veronica also was arrested. + +And then came the vile experience of being forced and borne along the +street to the police-station. Whatever anticipation Ann Veronica had +formed of this vanished in the reality. Presently she was going through +a swaying, noisy crowd, whose faces grinned and stared pitilessly in the +light of the electric standards. "Go it, miss!" cried one. "Kick aht at +'em!" though, indeed, she went now with Christian meekness, resenting +only the thrusting policemen's hands. Several people in the crowd seemed +to be fighting. Insulting cries became frequent and various, but for the +most part she could not understand what was said. "Who'll mind the baby +nar?" was one of the night's inspirations, and very frequent. A lean +young man in spectacles pursued her for some time, crying "Courage! +Courage!" Somebody threw a dab of mud at her, and some of it got down +her neck. Immeasurable disgust possessed her. She felt draggled and +insulted beyond redemption. + +She could not hide her face. She attempted by a sheer act of will to +end the scene, to will herself out of it anywhere. She had a horrible +glimpse of the once nice little old lady being also borne stationward, +still faintly battling and very muddy--one lock of grayish hair +straggling over her neck, her face scared, white, but triumphant. Her +bonnet dropped off and was trampled into the gutter. A little Cockney +recovered it, and made ridiculous attempts to get to her and replace it. + +"You must arrest me!" she gasped, breathlessly, insisting insanely on a +point already carried; "you shall!" + +The police-station at the end seemed to Ann Veronica like a refuge from +unnamable disgraces. She hesitated about her name, and, being prompted, +gave it at last as Ann Veronica Smith, 107A, Chancery Lane.... + +Indignation carried her through that night, that men and the world +could so entreat her. The arrested women were herded in a passage of +the Panton Street Police-station that opened upon a cell too unclean for +occupation, and most of them spent the night standing. Hot coffee +and cakes were sent in to them in the morning by some intelligent +sympathizer, or she would have starved all day. Submission to the +inevitable carried her through the circumstances of her appearance +before the magistrate. + +He was no doubt doing his best to express the attitude of society toward +these wearily heroic defendants, but he seemed to be merely rude and +unfair to Ann Veronica. He was not, it seemed, the proper stipendiary at +all, and there had been some demur to his jurisdiction that had ruffled +him. He resented being regarded as irregular. He felt he was human +wisdom prudentially interpolated.... "You silly wimmin," he said over +and over again throughout the hearing, plucking at his blotting-pad +with busy hands. "You silly creatures! Ugh! Fie upon you!" The court was +crowded with people, for the most part supporters and admirers of the +defendants, and the man with the light eyelashes was conspicuously +active and omnipresent. + +Ann Veronica's appearance was brief and undistinguished. She had nothing +to say for herself. She was guided into the dock and prompted by a +helpful police inspector. She was aware of the body of the court, +of clerks seated at a black table littered with papers, of policemen +standing about stiffly with expressions of conscious integrity, and +a murmuring background of the heads and shoulders of spectators close +behind her. On a high chair behind a raised counter the stipendiary's +substitute regarded her malevolently over his glasses. A disagreeable +young man, with red hair and a loose mouth, seated at the reporter's +table, was only too manifestly sketching her. + +She was interested by the swearing of the witnesses. The kissing of the +book struck her as particularly odd, and then the policemen gave their +evidence in staccato jerks and stereotyped phrases. + +"Have you anything to ask the witness?" asked the helpful inspector. + +The ribald demons that infested the back of Ann Veronica's mind urged +various facetious interrogations upon her, as, for example, where +the witness had acquired his prose style. She controlled herself, and +answered meekly, "No." + +"Well, Ann Veronica Smith," the magistrate remarked when the case was +all before him, "you're a good-looking, strong, respectable gell, and +it's a pity you silly young wimmin can't find something better to do +with your exuberance. Two-and-twenty! I can't imagine what your parents +can be thinking about to let you get into these scrapes." + +Ann Veronica's mind was filled with confused unutterable replies. + +"You are persuaded to come and take part in these outrageous +proceedings--many of you, I am convinced, have no idea whatever of +their nature. I don't suppose you could tell me even the derivation of +suffrage if I asked you. No! not even the derivation! But the fashion's +been set and in it you must be." + +The men at the reporter's table lifted their eyebrows, smiled faintly, +and leaned back to watch how she took her scolding. One with the +appearance of a bald little gnome yawned agonizingly. They had got all +this down already--they heard the substance of it now for the fourteenth +time. The stipendiary would have done it all very differently. + +She found presently she was out of the dock and confronted with the +alternative of being bound over in one surety for the sum of forty +pounds--whatever that might mean or a month's imprisonment. + +"Second class," said some one, but first and second were all alike to +her. She elected to go to prison. + +At last, after a long rumbling journey in a stuffy windowless van, she +reached Canongate Prison--for Holloway had its quota already. It was bad +luck to go to Canongate. + +Prison was beastly. Prison was bleak without spaciousness, and pervaded +by a faint, oppressive smell; and she had to wait two hours in the +sullenly defiant company of two unclean women thieves before a cell +could be assigned to her. Its dreariness, like the filthiness of the +police cell, was a discovery for her. She had imagined that prisons +were white-tiled places, reeking of lime-wash and immaculately +sanitary. Instead, they appeared to be at the hygienic level of tramps' +lodging-houses. She was bathed in turbid water that had already been +used. She was not allowed to bathe herself: another prisoner, with a +privileged manner, washed her. Conscientious objectors to that process +are not permitted, she found, in Canongate. Her hair was washed for her +also. Then they dressed her in a dirty dress of coarse serge and a cap, +and took away her own clothes. The dress came to her only too manifestly +unwashed from its former wearer; even the under-linen they gave her +seemed unclean. Horrible memories of things seen beneath the microscope +of the baser forms of life crawled across her mind and set her +shuddering with imagined irritations. She sat on the edge of the +bed--the wardress was too busy with the flood of arrivals that day +to discover that she had it down--and her skin was shivering from the +contact of these garments. She surveyed accommodation that seemed at +first merely austere, and became more and more manifestly inadequate as +the moments fled by. She meditated profoundly through several enormous +cold hours on all that had happened and all that she had done since the +swirl of the suffrage movement had submerged her personal affairs.... + +Very slowly emerging out of a phase of stupefaction, these personal +affairs and her personal problem resumed possession of her mind. She had +imagined she had drowned them altogether. + + + +CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH + +THOUGHTS IN PRISON + + +Part 1 + + +The first night in prison she found it impossible to sleep. The bed +was hard beyond any experience of hers, the bed-clothes coarse and +insufficient, the cell at once cold and stuffy. The little grating +in the door, the sense of constant inspection, worried her. She kept +opening her eyes and looking at it. She was fatigued physically and +mentally, and neither mind nor body could rest. She became aware that +at regular intervals a light flashed upon her face and a bodiless eye +regarded her, and this, as the night wore on, became a torment.... + +Capes came back into her mind. He haunted a state between hectic +dreaming and mild delirium, and she found herself talking aloud to +him. All through the night an entirely impossible and monumental +Capes confronted her, and she argued with him about men and women. She +visualized him as in a policeman's uniform and quite impassive. On some +insane score she fancied she had to state her case in verse. "We are the +music and you are the instrument," she said; "we are verse and you are +prose. + + "For men have reason, women rhyme + A man scores always, all the time." + +This couplet sprang into her mind from nowhere, and immediately begot an +endless series of similar couplets that she began to compose and address +to Capes. They came teeming distressfully through her aching brain: + + "A man can kick, his skirts don't tear; + A man scores always, everywhere. + + "His dress for no man lays a snare; + A man scores always, everywhere. + For hats that fail and hats that flare; + Toppers their universal wear; + A man scores always, everywhere. + + "Men's waists are neither here nor there; + A man scores always, everywhere. + + "A man can manage without hair; + A man scores always, everywhere. + + "There are no males at men to stare; + A man scores always, everywhere. + + "And children must we women bear-- + +"Oh, damn!" she cried, as the hundred-and-first couplet or so presented +itself in her unwilling brain. + +For a time she worried about that compulsory bath and cutaneous +diseases. + +Then she fell into a fever of remorse for the habit of bad language she +had acquired. + + "A man can smoke, a man can swear; + A man scores always, everywhere." + +She rolled over on her face, and stuffed her fingers in her ears to shut +out the rhythm from her mind. She lay still for a long time, and her +mind resumed at a more tolerable pace. She found herself talking to +Capes in an undertone of rational admission. + +"There is something to be said for the lady-like theory after all," she +admitted. "Women ought to be gentle and submissive persons, strong only +in virtue and in resistance to evil compulsion. My dear--I can call you +that here, anyhow--I know that. The Victorians over-did it a little, I +admit. Their idea of maidenly innocence was just a blank white--the sort +of flat white that doesn't shine. But that doesn't alter the fact +that there IS innocence. And I've read, and thought, and guessed, and +looked--until MY innocence--it's smirched. + +"Smirched!... + +"You see, dear, one IS passionately anxious for something--what is it? +One wants to be CLEAN. You want me to be clean. You would want me to be +clean, if you gave me a thought, that is.... + +"I wonder if you give me a thought.... + +"I'm not a good woman. I don't mean I'm not a good woman--I mean that +I'm not a GOOD woman. My poor brain is so mixed, dear, I hardly know +what I am saying. I mean I'm not a good specimen of a woman. I've got a +streak of male. Things happen to women--proper women--and all they have +to do is to take them well. They've just got to keep white. But I'm +always trying to make things happen. And I get myself dirty... + +"It's all dirt that washes off, dear, but it's dirt. + +"The white unaggressive woman who corrects and nurses and serves, and is +worshipped and betrayed--the martyr-queen of men, the white mother.... +You can't do that sort of thing unless you do it over religion, and +there's no religion in me--of that sort--worth a rap. + +"I'm not gentle. Certainly not a gentlewoman. + +"I'm not coarse--no! But I've got no purity of mind--no real purity of +mind. A good woman's mind has angels with flaming swords at the portals +to keep out fallen thoughts.... + +"I wonder if there are any good women really. + +"I wish I didn't swear. I do swear. It began as a joke.... It +developed into a sort of secret and private bad manners. It's got to be +at last like tobacco-ash over all my sayings and doings.... + +"'Go it, missie,' they said; "kick aht!' + +"I swore at that policeman--and disgusted him. Disgusted him! + + "For men policemen never blush; + A man in all things scores so much... + +"Damn! Things are getting plainer. It must be the dawn creeping in. + + "Now here hath been dawning another blue day; + I'm just a poor woman, please take it away. + +"Oh, sleep! Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!" + + + +Part 2 + + +"Now," said Ann Veronica, after the half-hour of exercise, and sitting +on the uncomfortable wooden seat without a back that was her perch by +day, "it's no good staying here in a sort of maze. I've got nothing to +do for a month but think. I may as well think. I ought to be able to +think things out. + +"How shall I put the question? What am I? What have I got to do with +myself?... + +"I wonder if many people HAVE thought things out? + +"Are we all just seizing hold of phrases and obeying moods? + +"It wasn't so with old-fashioned people, they knew right from wrong; +they had a clear-cut, religious faith that seemed to explain everything +and give a rule for everything. We haven't. I haven't, anyhow. And it's +no good pretending there is one when there isn't.... I suppose I +believe in God.... Never really thought about Him--people don't.. +.. I suppose my creed is, 'I believe rather indistinctly in God the +Father Almighty, substratum of the evolutionary process, and, in a vein +of vague sentimentality that doesn't give a datum for anything at all, +in Jesus Christ, His Son.'... + +"It's no sort of good, Ann Veronica, pretending one does believe when +one doesn't.... + +"And as for praying for faith--this sort of monologue is about as near +as any one of my sort ever gets to prayer. Aren't I asking--asking +plainly now?... + +"We've all been mixing our ideas, and we've got intellectual hot +coppers--every blessed one of us.... + +"A confusion of motives--that's what I am!... + +"There is this absurd craving for Mr. Capes--the 'Capes crave,' they +would call it in America. Why do I want him so badly? Why do I want him, +and think about him, and fail to get away from him? + +"It isn't all of me. + +"The first person you love, Ann Veronica, is yourself--get hold of that! +The soul you have to save is Ann Veronica's soul...." + +She knelt upon the floor of her cell and clasped her hands, and remained +for a long time in silence. + +"Oh, God!" she said at last, "how I wish I had been taught to pray!" + + + +Part 3 + + +She had some idea of putting these subtle and difficult issues to the +chaplain when she was warned of his advent. But she had not reckoned +with the etiquette of Canongate. She got up, as she had been told to +do, at his appearance, and he amazed her by sitting down, according to +custom, on her stool. He still wore his hat, to show that the days +of miracles and Christ being civil to sinners are over forever. She +perceived that his countenance was only composed by a great effort, his +features severely compressed. He was ruffled, and his ears were red, +no doubt from some adjacent controversy. He classified her as he seated +himself. + +"Another young woman, I suppose," he said, "who knows better than her +Maker about her place in the world. Have you anything to ask me?" + +Ann Veronica readjusted her mind hastily. Her back stiffened. She +produced from the depths of her pride the ugly investigatory note of +the modern district visitor. "Are you a special sort of clergyman," she +said, after a pause, and looking down her nose at him, "or do you go to +the Universities?" + +"Oh!" he said, profoundly. + +He panted for a moment with unuttered replies, and then, with a scornful +gesture, got up and left the cell. + +So that Ann Veronica was not able to get the expert advice she certainly +needed upon her spiritual state. + + + +Part 4 + + +After a day or so she thought more steadily. She found herself in a +phase of violent reaction against the suffrage movement, a phase +greatly promoted by one of those unreasonable objections people of Ann +Veronica's temperament take at times--to the girl in the next cell to +her own. She was a large, resilient girl, with a foolish smile, a still +more foolish expression of earnestness, and a throaty contralto voice. +She was noisy and hilarious and enthusiastic, and her hair was always +abominably done. In the chapel she sang with an open-lunged gusto that +silenced Ann Veronica altogether, and in the exercising-yard slouched +round with carelessly dispersed feet. Ann Veronica decided that +"hoydenish ragger" was the only phrase to express her. She was always +breaking rules, whispering asides, intimating signals. She became at +times an embodiment for Ann Veronica of all that made the suffrage +movement defective and unsatisfying. + +She was always initiating petty breaches of discipline. Her greatest +exploit was the howling before the mid-day meal. This was an imitation +of the noises made by the carnivora at the Zoological Gardens at +feeding-time; the idea was taken up by prisoner after prisoner until +the whole place was alive with barkings, yappings, roarings, pelican +chatterings, and feline yowlings, interspersed with shrieks of +hysterical laughter. To many in that crowded solitude it came as an +extraordinary relief. It was better even than the hymn-singing. But it +annoyed Ann Veronica. + +"Idiots!" she said, when she heard this pandemonium, and with particular +reference to this young lady with the throaty contralto next door. +"Intolerable idiots!..." + +It took some days for this phase to pass, and it left some scars and +something like a decision. "Violence won't do it," said Ann Veronica. +"Begin violence, and the woman goes under.... + +"But all the rest of our case is right.... Yes." + +As the long, solitary days wore on, Ann Veronica found a number of +definite attitudes and conclusions in her mind. + +One of these was a classification of women into women who are and women +who are not hostile to men. "The real reason why I am out of place +here," she said, "is because I like men. I can talk with them. I've +never found them hostile. I've got no feminine class feeling. I don't +want any laws or freedoms to protect me from a man like Mr. Capes. I +know that in my heart I would take whatever he gave.... + +"A woman wants a proper alliance with a man, a man who is better stuff +than herself. She wants that and needs it more than anything else in +the world. It may not be just, it may not be fair, but things are so. It +isn't law, nor custom, nor masculine violence settled that. It is just +how things happen to be. She wants to be free--she wants to be legally +and economically free, so as not to be subject to the wrong man; but +only God, who made the world, can alter things to prevent her being +slave to the right one. + +"And if she can't have the right one? + +"We've developed such a quality of preference!" + +She rubbed her knuckles into her forehead. "Oh, but life is difficult!" +she groaned. "When you loosen the tangle in one place you tie a knot in +another.... Before there is any change, any real change, I shall be +dead--dead--dead and finished--two hundred years!..." + + + +Part 5 + + +One afternoon, while everything was still, the wardress heard her cry +out suddenly and alarmingly, and with great and unmistakable passion, +"Why in the name of goodness did I burn that twenty pounds?" + + + +Part 6 + + +She sat regarding her dinner. The meat was coarse and disagreeably +served. + +"I suppose some one makes a bit on the food," she said.... + +"One has such ridiculous ideas of the wicked common people and the +beautiful machinery of order that ropes them in. And here are these +places, full of contagion! + +"Of course, this is the real texture of life, this is what we refined +secure people forget. We think the whole thing is straight and noble at +bottom, and it isn't. We think if we just defy the friends we have and +go out into the world everything will become easy and splendid. +One doesn't realize that even the sort of civilization one has at +Morningside Park is held together with difficulty. By policemen one +mustn't shock. + +"This isn't a world for an innocent girl to walk about in. It's a world +of dirt and skin diseases and parasites. It's a world in which the +law can be a stupid pig and the police-stations dirty dens. One wants +helpers and protectors--and clean water. + +"Am I becoming reasonable or am I being tamed? + +"I'm simply discovering that life is many-sided and complex and +puzzling. I thought one had only to take it by the throat. + +"It hasn't GOT a throat!" + + + +Part 7 + + +One day the idea of self-sacrifice came into her head, and she made, she +thought, some important moral discoveries. + +It came with an extreme effect of re-discovery, a remarkable novelty. +"What have I been all this time?" she asked herself, and answered, "Just +stark egotism, crude assertion of Ann Veronica, without a modest rag of +religion or discipline or respect for authority to cover me!" + +It seemed to her as though she had at last found the touchstone of +conduct. She perceived she had never really thought of any one but +herself in all her acts and plans. Even Capes had been for her merely an +excitant to passionate love--a mere idol at whose feet one could enjoy +imaginative wallowings. She had set out to get a beautiful life, a free, +untrammelled life, self-development, without counting the cost either +for herself or others. + +"I have hurt my father," she said; "I have hurt my aunt. I have hurt and +snubbed poor Teddy. I've made no one happy. I deserve pretty much what +I've got.... + +"If only because of the way one hurts others if one kicks loose and +free, one has to submit.... + +"Broken-in people! I suppose the world is just all egotistical children +and broken-in people. + +"Your little flag of pride must flutter down with the rest of them, Ann +Veronica.... + +"Compromise--and kindness. + +"Compromise and kindness. + +"Who are YOU that the world should lie down at your feet? + +"You've got to be a decent citizen, Ann Veronica. Take your half loaf +with the others. You mustn't go clawing after a man that doesn't belong +to you--that isn't even interested in you. That's one thing clear. + +"You've got to take the decent reasonable way. You've got to adjust +yourself to the people God has set about you. Every one else does." + +She thought more and more along that line. There was no reason why +she shouldn't be Capes' friend. He did like her, anyhow; he was always +pleased to be with her. There was no reason why she shouldn't be his +restrained and dignified friend. After all, that was life. Nothing was +given away, and no one came so rich to the stall as to command all that +it had to offer. Every one has to make a deal with the world. + +It would be very good to be Capes' friend. + +She might be able to go on with biology, possibly even work upon the +same questions that he dealt with.... + +Perhaps her granddaughter might marry his grandson.... + +It grew clear to her that throughout all her wild raid for independence +she had done nothing for anybody, and many people had done things for +her. She thought of her aunt and that purse that was dropped on the +table, and of many troublesome and ill-requited kindnesses; she thought +of the help of the Widgetts, of Teddy's admiration; she thought, with +a new-born charity, of her father, of Manning's conscientious +unselfishness, of Miss Miniver's devotion. + +"And for me it has been Pride and Pride and Pride! + +"I am the prodigal daughter. I will arise and go to my father, and will +say unto him-- + +"I suppose pride and self-assertion are sin? Sinned against heaven--Yes, +I have sinned against heaven and before thee.... + +"Poor old daddy! I wonder if he'll spend much on the fatted calf?... + +"The wrappered life-discipline! One comes to that at last. I begin to +understand Jane Austen and chintz covers and decency and refinement and +all the rest of it. One puts gloves on one's greedy fingers. One learns +to sit up... + +"And somehow or other," she added, after a long interval, "I must pay +Mr. Ramage back his forty pounds." + + + +CHAPTER THE TWELFTH + +ANN VERONICA PUTS THINGS IN ORDER + + +Part 1 + + +Ann Veronica made a strenuous attempt to carry out her good resolutions. +She meditated long and carefully upon her letter to her father before +she wrote it, and gravely and deliberately again before she despatched +it. + + +"MY DEAR FATHER," she wrote,--"I have been thinking hard about +everything since I was sent to this prison. All these experiences have +taught me a great deal about life and realities. I see that compromise +is more necessary to life than I ignorantly supposed it to be, and I +have been trying to get Lord Morley's book on that subject, but it does +not appear to be available in the prison library, and the chaplain seems +to regard him as an undesirable writer." + +At this point she had perceived that she was drifting from her subject. + +"I must read him when I come out. But I see very clearly that as things +are a daughter is necessarily dependent on her father and bound while +she is in that position to live harmoniously with his ideals." + +"Bit starchy," said Ann Veronica, and altered the key abruptly. Her +concluding paragraph was, on the whole, perhaps, hardly starchy enough. + +"Really, daddy, I am sorry for all I have done to put you out. May I +come home and try to be a better daughter to you? + +"ANN VERONICA." + + + +Part 2 + + +Her aunt came to meet her outside Canongate, and, being a little +confused between what was official and what was merely a rebellious +slight upon our national justice, found herself involved in a triumphal +procession to the Vindicator Vegetarian Restaurant, and was specifically +and personally cheered by a small, shabby crowd outside that rendezvous. +They decided quite audibly, "She's an Old Dear, anyhow. Voting wouldn't +do no 'arm to 'er." She was on the very verge of a vegetarian meal +before she recovered her head again. Obeying some fine instinct, she had +come to the prison in a dark veil, but she had pushed this up to kiss +Ann Veronica and never drawn it down again. Eggs were procured for her, +and she sat out the subsequent emotions and eloquence with the dignity +becoming an injured lady of good family. The quiet encounter and +home-coming Ann Veronica and she had contemplated was entirely +disorganized by this misadventure; there were no adequate explanations, +and after they had settled things at Ann Veronica's lodgings, they +reached home in the early afternoon estranged and depressed, with +headaches and the trumpet voice of the indomitable Kitty Brett still +ringing in their ears. + +"Dreadful women, my dear!" said Miss Stanley. "And some of them quite +pretty and well dressed. No need to do such things. We must never +let your father know we went. Why ever did you let me get into that +wagonette?" + +"I thought we had to," said Ann Veronica, who had also been a little +under the compulsion of the marshals of the occasion. "It was very +tiring." + +"We will have some tea in the drawing-room as soon as ever we can--and I +will take my things off. I don't think I shall ever care for this bonnet +again. We'll have some buttered toast. Your poor cheeks are quite sunken +and hollow...." + + + +Part 3 + + +When Ann Veronica found herself in her father's study that evening it +seemed to her for a moment as though all the events of the past six +months had been a dream. The big gray spaces of London, the shop-lit, +greasy, shining streets, had become very remote; the biological +laboratory with its work and emotions, the meetings and discussions, +the rides in hansoms with Ramage, were like things in a book read and +closed. The study seemed absolutely unaltered, there was still the same +lamp with a little chip out of the shade, still the same gas fire, still +the same bundle of blue and white papers, it seemed, with the same pink +tape about them, at the elbow of the arm-chair, still the same father. +He sat in much the same attitude, and she stood just as she had stood +when he told her she could not go to the Fadden Dance. Both had dropped +the rather elaborate politeness of the dining-room, and in their faces +an impartial observer would have discovered little lines of obstinate +wilfulness in common; a certain hardness--sharp, indeed, in the father +and softly rounded in the daughter--but hardness nevertheless, that made +every compromise a bargain and every charity a discount. + +"And so you have been thinking?" her father began, quoting her letter +and looking over his slanting glasses at her. "Well, my girl, I wish you +had thought about all these things before these bothers began." + +Ann Veronica perceived that she must not forget to remain eminently +reasonable. + +"One has to live and learn," she remarked, with a passable imitation of +her father's manner. + +"So long as you learn," said Mr. Stanley. + +Their conversation hung. + +"I suppose, daddy, you've no objection to my going on with my work at +the Imperial College?" she asked. + +"If it will keep you busy," he said, with a faintly ironical smile. + +"The fees are paid to the end of the session." + +He nodded twice, with his eyes on the fire, as though that was a formal +statement. + +"You may go on with that work," he said, "so long as you keep in harmony +with things at home. I'm convinced that much of Russell's investigations +are on wrong lines, unsound lines. Still--you must learn for yourself. +You're of age--you're of age." + +"The work's almost essential for the B.Sc. exam." + +"It's scandalous, but I suppose it is." + +Their agreement so far seemed remarkable, and yet as a home-coming the +thing was a little lacking in warmth. But Ann Veronica had still to get +to her chief topic. They were silent for a time. "It's a period of crude +views and crude work," said Mr. Stanley. "Still, these Mendelian fellows +seem likely to give Mr. Russell trouble, a good lot of trouble. Some of +their specimens--wonderfully selected, wonderfully got up." + +"Daddy," said Ann Veronica, "these affairs--being away from home +has--cost money." + +"I thought you would find that out." + +"As a matter of fact, I happen to have got a little into debt." + +"NEVER!" + +Her heart sank at the change in his expression. + +"Well, lodgings and things! And I paid my fees at the College." + +"Yes. But how could you get--Who gave you credit? + +"You see," said Ann Veronica, "my landlady kept on my room while I +was in Holloway, and the fees for the College mounted up pretty +considerably." She spoke rather quickly, because she found her father's +question the most awkward she had ever had to answer in her life. + +"Molly and you settled about the rooms. She said you HAD some money." + +"I borrowed it," said Ann Veronica in a casual tone, with white despair +in her heart. + +"But who could have lent you money?" + +"I pawned my pearl necklace. I got three pounds, and there's three on my +watch." + +"Six pounds. H'm. Got the tickets? Yes, but then--you said you +borrowed?" + +"I did, too," said Ann Veronica. + +"Who from?" + +She met his eye for a second and her heart failed her. The truth +was impossible, indecent. If she mentioned Ramage he might have a +fit--anything might happen. She lied. "The Widgetts," she said. + +"Tut, tut!" he said. "Really, Vee, you seem to have advertised our +relations pretty generally!" + +"They--they knew, of course. Because of the Dance." + +"How much do you owe them?" + +She knew forty pounds was a quite impossible sum for their neighbors. +She knew, too, she must not hesitate. "Eight pounds," she plunged, and +added foolishly, "fifteen pounds will see me clear of everything." She +muttered some unlady-like comment upon herself under her breath and +engaged in secret additions. + +Mr. Stanley determined to improve the occasion. He seemed to deliberate. +"Well," he said at last slowly, "I'll pay it. I'll pay it. But I do +hope, Vee, I do hope--this is the end of these adventures. I hope you +have learned your lesson now and come to see--come to realize--how +things are. People, nobody, can do as they like in this world. +Everywhere there are limitations." + +"I know," said Ann Veronica (fifteen pounds!). "I have learned that. I +mean--I mean to do what I can." (Fifteen pounds. Fifteen from forty is +twenty-five.) + +He hesitated. She could think of nothing more to say. + +"Well," she achieved at last. "Here goes for the new life!" + +"Here goes for the new life," he echoed and stood up. Father and +daughter regarded each other warily, each more than a little insecure +with the other. He made a movement toward her, and then recalled the +circumstances of their last conversation in that study. She saw his +purpose and his doubt hesitated also, and then went to him, took his +coat lapels, and kissed him on the cheek. + +"Ah, Vee," he said, "that's better! and kissed her back rather clumsily. + +"We're going to be sensible." + +She disengaged herself from him and went out of the room with a grave, +preoccupied expression. (Fifteen pounds! And she wanted forty!) + + + +Part 4 + + +It was, perhaps, the natural consequence of a long and tiring and +exciting day that Ann Veronica should pass a broken and distressful +night, a night in which the noble and self-subduing resolutions of +Canongate displayed themselves for the first time in an atmosphere of +almost lurid dismay. Her father's peculiar stiffness of soul presented +itself now as something altogether left out of the calculations upon +which her plans were based, and, in particular, she had not anticipated +the difficulty she would find in borrowing the forty pounds she needed +for Ramage. That had taken her by surprise, and her tired wits had +failed her. She was to have fifteen pounds, and no more. She knew that +to expect more now was like anticipating a gold-mine in the garden. The +chance had gone. It became suddenly glaringly apparent to her that it +was impossible to return fifteen pounds or any sum less than twenty +pounds to Ramage--absolutely impossible. She realized that with a pang +of disgust and horror. + +Already she had sent him twenty pounds, and never written to explain to +him why it was she had not sent it back sharply directly he returned +it. She ought to have written at once and told him exactly what had +happened. Now if she sent fifteen pounds the suggestion that she had +spent a five-pound note in the meanwhile would be irresistible. No! That +was impossible. She would have just to keep the fifteen pounds until she +could make it twenty. That might happen on her birthday--in August. + +She turned about, and was persecuted by visions, half memories, +half dreams, of Ramage. He became ugly and monstrous, dunning her, +threatening her, assailing her. + +"Confound sex from first to last!" said Ann Veronica. "Why can't we +propagate by sexless spores, as the ferns do? We restrict each other, we +badger each other, friendship is poisoned and buried under it!... I +MUST pay off that forty pounds. I MUST." + +For a time there seemed no comfort for her even in Capes. She was to see +Capes to-morrow, but now, in this state of misery she had achieved, she +felt assured he would turn his back upon her, take no notice of her at +all. And if he didn't, what was the good of seeing him? + +"I wish he was a woman," she said, "then I could make him my friend. I +want him as my friend. I want to talk to him and go about with him. Just +go about with him." + +She was silent for a time, with her nose on the pillow, and that brought +her to: "What's the good of pretending? + +"I love him," she said aloud to the dim forms of her room, and repeated +it, and went on to imagine herself doing acts of tragically dog-like +devotion to the biologist, who, for the purposes of the drama, remained +entirely unconscious of and indifferent to her proceedings. + +At last some anodyne formed itself from these exercises, +and, with eyelashes wet with such feeble tears as only +three-o'clock-in-the-morning pathos can distil, she fell asleep. + + + +Part 5 + + +Pursuant to some altogether private calculations she did not go up to +the Imperial College until after mid-day, and she found the laboratory +deserted, even as she desired. She went to the table under the end +window at which she had been accustomed to work, and found it swept and +garnished with full bottles of re-agents. Everything was very neat; it +had evidently been straightened up and kept for her. She put down the +sketch-books and apparatus she had brought with her, pulled out her +stool, and sat down. As she did so the preparation-room door opened +behind her. She heard it open, but as she felt unable to look round in +a careless manner she pretended not to hear it. Then Capes' footsteps +approached. She turned with an effort. + +"I expected you this morning," he said. "I saw--they knocked off your +fetters yesterday." + +"I think it is very good of me to come this afternoon." + +"I began to be afraid you might not come at all." + +"Afraid!" + +"Yes. I'm glad you're back for all sorts of reasons." He spoke a little +nervously. "Among other things, you know, I didn't understand quite--I +didn't understand that you were so keenly interested in this suffrage +question. I have it on my conscience that I offended you--" + +"Offended me when?" + +"I've been haunted by the memory of you. I was rude and stupid. We were +talking about the suffrage--and I rather scoffed." + +"You weren't rude," she said. + +"I didn't know you were so keen on this suffrage business." + +"Nor I. You haven't had it on your mind all this time?" + +"I have rather. I felt somehow I'd hurt you." + +"You didn't. I--I hurt myself." + +"I mean--" + +"I behaved like an idiot, that's all. My nerves were in rags. I was +worried. We're the hysterical animal, Mr. Capes. I got myself locked up +to cool off. By a sort of instinct. As a dog eats grass. I'm right again +now." + +"Because your nerves were exposed, that was no excuse for my touching +them. I ought to have seen--" + +"It doesn't matter a rap--if you're not disposed to resent the--the way +I behaved." + +"_I_ resent!" + +"I was only sorry I'd been so stupid." + +"Well, I take it we're straight again," said Capes with a note of +relief, and assumed an easier position on the edge of her table. "But +if you weren't keen on the suffrage business, why on earth did you go to +prison?" + +Ann Veronica reflected. "It was a phase," she said. + +He smiled. "It's a new phase in the life history," he remarked. +"Everybody seems to have it now. Everybody who's going to develop into a +woman." + +"There's Miss Garvice." + +"She's coming on," said Capes. "And, you know, you're altering us all. +I'M shaken. The campaign's a success." He met her questioning eye, and +repeated, "Oh! it IS a success. A man is so apt to--to take women a +little too lightly. Unless they remind him now and then not to.... +YOU did." + +"Then I didn't waste my time in prison altogether?" + +"It wasn't the prison impressed me. But I liked the things you said +here. I felt suddenly I understood you--as an intelligent person. If +you'll forgive my saying that, and implying what goes with it. There's +something--puppyish in a man's usual attitude to women. That is what +I've had on my conscience.... I don't think we're altogether to blame +if we don't take some of your lot seriously. Some of your sex, I mean. +But we smirk a little, I'm afraid, habitually when we talk to you. We +smirk, and we're a bit--furtive." + +He paused, with his eyes studying her gravely. "You, anyhow, don't +deserve it," he said. + +Their colloquy was ended abruptly by the apparition of Miss Klegg at +the further door. When she saw Ann Veronica she stood for a moment as if +entranced, and then advanced with outstretched hands. "Veronique!" she +cried with a rising intonation, though never before had she called Ann +Veronica anything but Miss Stanley, and seized her and squeezed her and +kissed her with profound emotion. "To think that you were going to do +it--and never said a word! You are a little thin, but except for that +you look--you look better than ever. Was it VERY horrible? I tried to +get into the police-court, but the crowd was ever so much too big, push +as I would.... + +"I mean to go to prison directly the session is over," said Miss Klegg. +"Wild horses--not if they have all the mounted police in London--shan't +keep me out." + + + +Part 6 + + +Capes lit things wonderfully for Ann Veronica all that afternoon, he was +so friendly, so palpably interested in her, and glad to have her back +with him. Tea in the laboratory was a sort of suffragette reception. +Miss Garvice assumed a quality of neutrality, professed herself almost +won over by Ann Veronica's example, and the Scotchman decided that if +women had a distinctive sphere it was, at any rate, an enlarging sphere, +and no one who believed in the doctrine of evolution could logically +deny the vote to women "ultimately," however much they might be disposed +to doubt the advisability of its immediate concession. It was a refusal +of expediency, he said, and not an absolute refusal. The youth with his +hair like Russell cleared his throat and said rather irrelevantly that +he knew a man who knew Thomas Bayard Simmons, who had rioted in the +Strangers' Gallery, and then Capes, finding them all distinctly pro-Ann +Veronica, if not pro-feminist, ventured to be perverse, and started a +vein of speculation upon the Scotchman's idea--that there were still +hopes of women evolving into something higher. + +He was unusually absurd and ready, and all the time it seemed to Ann +Veronica as a delightful possibility, as a thing not indeed to be +entertained seriously, but to be half furtively felt, that he was being +so agreeable because she had come back again. She returned home through +a world that was as roseate as it had been gray overnight. + +But as she got out of the train at Morningside Park Station she had a +shock. She saw, twenty yards down the platform, the shiny hat and broad +back and inimitable swagger of Ramage. She dived at once behind the +cover of the lamp-room and affected serious trouble with her shoe-lace +until he was out of the station, and then she followed slowly and with +extreme discretion until the bifurcation of the Avenue from the field +way insured her escape. Ramage went up the Avenue, and she hurried +along the path with a beating heart and a disagreeable sense of unsolved +problems in her mind. + +"That thing's going on," she told herself. "Everything goes on, confound +it! One doesn't change anything one has set going by making good +resolutions." + +And then ahead of her she saw the radiant and welcoming figure of +Manning. He came as an agreeable diversion from an insoluble perplexity. +She smiled at the sight of him, and thereat his radiation increased. + +"I missed the hour of your release," he said, "but I was at the +Vindicator Restaurant. You did not see me, I know. I was among the +common herd in the place below, but I took good care to see you." + +"Of course you're converted?" she said. + +"To the view that all those Splendid Women in the movement ought to have +votes. Rather! Who could help it?" + +He towered up over her and smiled down at her in his fatherly way. + +"To the view that all women ought to have votes whether they like it or +not." + +He shook his head, and his eyes and the mouth under the black mustache +wrinkled with his smile. And as he walked by her side they began a +wrangle that was none the less pleasant to Ann Veronica because it +served to banish a disagreeable preoccupation. It seemed to her in her +restored geniality that she liked Manning extremely. The brightness +Capes had diffused over the world glorified even his rival. + + + +Part 7 + + +The steps by which Ann Veronica determined to engage herself to marry +Manning were never very clear to her. A medley of motives warred in her, +and it was certainly not one of the least of these that she knew herself +to be passionately in love with Capes; at moments she had a giddy +intimation that he was beginning to feel keenly interested in her. +She realized more and more the quality of the brink upon which she +stood--the dreadful readiness with which in certain moods she +might plunge, the unmitigated wrongness and recklessness of such a +self-abandonment. "He must never know," she would whisper to herself, +"he must never know. Or else--Else it will be impossible that I can be +his friend." + +That simple statement of the case was by no means all that went on in +Ann Veronica's mind. But it was the form of her ruling determination; it +was the only form that she ever allowed to see daylight. What else was +there lurked in shadows and deep places; if in some mood of reverie it +came out into the light, it was presently overwhelmed and hustled back +again into hiding. She would never look squarely at these dream forms +that mocked the social order in which she lived, never admit she +listened to the soft whisperings in her ear. But Manning seemed more and +more clearly indicated as a refuge, as security. Certain simple purposes +emerged from the disingenuous muddle of her feelings and desires. Seeing +Capes from day to day made a bright eventfulness that hampered her in +the course she had resolved to follow. She vanished from the laboratory +for a week, a week of oddly interesting days.... + +When she renewed her attendance at the Imperial College the third finger +of her left hand was adorned with a very fine old ring with dark blue +sapphires that had once belonged to a great-aunt of Manning's. + +That ring manifestly occupied her thoughts a great deal. She kept +pausing in her work and regarding it, and when Capes came round to her, +she first put her hand in her lap and then rather awkwardly in front of +him. But men are often blind to rings. He seemed to be. + +In the afternoon she had considered certain doubts very carefully, +and decided on a more emphatic course of action. "Are these ordinary +sapphires?" she said. He bent to her hand, and she slipped off the ring +and gave it to him to examine. + +"Very good," he said. "Rather darker than most of them. But I'm +generously ignorant of gems. Is it an old ring?" he asked, returning it. + +"I believe it is. It's an engagement ring...." She slipped it on her +finger, and added, in a voice she tried to make matter-of-fact: "It was +given to me last week." + +"Oh!" he said, in a colorless tone, and with his eyes on her face. + +"Yes. Last week." + +She glanced at him, and it was suddenly apparent for one instant of +illumination that this ring upon her finger was the crowning blunder +of her life. It was apparent, and then it faded into the quality of an +inevitable necessity. + +"Odd!" he remarked, rather surprisingly, after a little interval. + +There was a brief pause, a crowded pause, between them. + +She sat very still, and his eyes rested on that ornament for a moment, +and then travelled slowly to her wrist and the soft lines of her +forearm. + +"I suppose I ought to congratulate you," he said. Their eyes met, and +his expressed perplexity and curiosity. "The fact is--I don't know +why--this takes me by surprise. Somehow I haven't connected the idea +with you. You seemed complete--without that." + +"Did I?" she said. + +"I don't know why. But this is like--like walking round a house that +looks square and complete and finding an unexpected long wing running +out behind." + +She looked up at him, and found he was watching her closely. For some +seconds of voluminous thinking they looked at the ring between them, +and neither spoke. Then Capes shifted his eyes to her microscope and +the little trays of unmounted sections beside it. "How is that carmine +working?" he asked, with a forced interest. + +"Better," said Ann Veronica, with an unreal alacrity. "But it still +misses the nucleolus." + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH + +THE SAPPHIRE RING + + +Part 1 + + +For a time that ring set with sapphires seemed to be, after all, the +satisfactory solution of Ann Veronica's difficulties. It was like +pouring a strong acid over dulled metal. A tarnish of constraint that +had recently spread over her intercourse with Capes vanished again. They +embarked upon an open and declared friendship. They even talked about +friendship. They went to the Zoological Gardens together one Saturday to +see for themselves a point of morphological interest about the toucan's +bill--that friendly and entertaining bird--and they spent the rest of +the afternoon walking about and elaborating in general terms this theme +and the superiority of intellectual fellowship to all merely passionate +relationships. Upon this topic Capes was heavy and conscientious, but +that seemed to her to be just exactly what he ought to be. He was also, +had she known it, more than a little insincere. "We are only in the dawn +of the Age of Friendship," he said, "when interest, I suppose, will +take the place of passions. Either you have had to love people or hate +them--which is a sort of love, too, in its way--to get anything out of +them. Now, more and more, we're going to be interested in them, to be +curious about them and--quite mildly-experimental with them." He seemed +to be elaborating ideas as he talked. They watched the chimpanzees in +the new apes' house, and admired the gentle humanity of their eyes--"so +much more human than human beings"--and they watched the Agile Gibbon in +the next apartment doing wonderful leaps and aerial somersaults. + +"I wonder which of us enjoys that most," said Capes--"does he, or do +we?" + +"He seems to get a zest--" + +"He does it and forgets it. We remember it. These joyful bounds just +lace into the stuff of my memories and stay there forever. Living's just +material." + +"It's very good to be alive." + +"It's better to know life than be life." + +"One may do both," said Ann Veronica. + +She was in a very uncritical state that afternoon. When he said, "Let's +go and see the wart-hog," she thought no one ever had had so quick a +flow of good ideas as he; and when he explained that sugar and not buns +was the talisman of popularity among the animals, she marvelled at his +practical omniscience. + +Finally, at the exit into Regent's Park, they ran against Miss Klegg. +It was the expression of Miss Klegg's face that put the idea into Ann +Veronica's head of showing Manning at the College one day, an idea which +she didn't for some reason or other carry out for a fortnight. + + + +Part 2 + + +When at last she did so, the sapphire ring took on a new quality in the +imagination of Capes. It ceased to be the symbol of liberty and a remote +and quite abstracted person, and became suddenly and very disagreeably +the token of a large and portentous body visible and tangible. + +Manning appeared just at the end of the afternoon's work, and the +biologist was going through some perplexities the Scotchman had created +by a metaphysical treatment of the skulls of Hyrax and a young African +elephant. He was clearing up these difficulties by tracing a partially +obliterated suture the Scotchman had overlooked when the door from the +passage opened, and Manning came into his universe. + +Seen down the length of the laboratory, Manning looked a very handsome +and shapely gentleman indeed, and, at the sight of his eager advance to +his fiancee, Miss Klegg replaced one long-cherished romance about Ann +Veronica by one more normal and simple. He carried a cane and a silk +hat with a mourning-band in one gray-gloved hand; his frock-coat and +trousers were admirable; his handsome face, his black mustache, his +prominent brow conveyed an eager solicitude. + +"I want," he said, with a white hand outstretched, "to take you out to +tea." + +"I've been clearing up," said Ann Veronica, brightly. + +"All your dreadful scientific things?" he said, with a smile that Miss +Klegg thought extraordinarily kindly. + +"All my dreadful scientific things," said Ann Veronica. + +He stood back, smiling with an air of proprietorship, and looking about +him at the business-like equipment of the room. The low ceiling made him +seem abnormally tall. Ann Veronica wiped a scalpel, put a card over a +watch-glass containing thin shreds of embryonic guinea-pig swimming in +mauve stain, and dismantled her microscope. + +"I wish I understood more of biology," said Manning. + +"I'm ready," said Ann Veronica, closing her microscope-box with a click, +and looking for one brief instant up the laboratory. "We have no airs +and graces here, and my hat hangs from a peg in the passage." + +She led the way to the door, and Manning passed behind her and round her +and opened the door for her. When Capes glanced up at them for a moment, +Manning seemed to be holding his arms all about her, and there was +nothing but quiet acquiescence in her bearing. + +After Capes had finished the Scotchman's troubles he went back into the +preparation-room. He sat down on the sill of the open window, folded his +arms, and stared straight before him for a long time over the wilderness +of tiles and chimney-pots into a sky that was blue and empty. He was not +addicted to monologue, and the only audible comment he permitted himself +at first upon a universe that was evidently anything but satisfactory to +him that afternoon, was one compact and entirely unassigned "Damn!" + +The word must have had some gratifying quality, because he repeated +it. Then he stood up and repeated it again. "The fool I have been!" he +cried; and now speech was coming to him. He tried this sentence with +expletives. "Ass!" he went on, still warming. "Muck-headed moral ass! I +ought to have done anything. + +"I ought to have done anything! + +"What's a man for? + +"Friendship!" + +He doubled up his fist, and seemed to contemplate thrusting it through +the window. He turned his back on that temptation. Then suddenly he +seized a new preparation bottle that stood upon his table and contained +the better part of a week's work--a displayed dissection of a snail, +beautifully done--and hurled it across the room, to smash resoundingly +upon the cemented floor under the bookcase; then, without either haste +or pause, he swept his arm along a shelf of re-agents and sent them to +mingle with the debris on the floor. They fell in a diapason of smashes. +"H'm!" he said, regarding the wreckage with a calmer visage. "Silly!" he +remarked after a pause. "One hardly knows--all the time." + +He put his hands in his pockets, his mouth puckered to a whistle, and he +went to the door of the outer preparation-room and stood there, looking, +save for the faintest intensification of his natural ruddiness, the +embodiment of blond serenity. + +"Gellett," he called, "just come and clear up a mess, will you? I've +smashed some things." + + + +Part 3 + + +There was one serious flaw in Ann Veronica's arrangements for +self-rehabilitation, and that was Ramage. He hung over her--he and his +loan to her and his connection with her and that terrible evening--a +vague, disconcerting possibility of annoyance and exposure. She could +not see any relief from this anxiety except repayment, and repayment +seemed impossible. The raising of twenty-five pounds was a task +altogether beyond her powers. Her birthday was four months away, and +that, at its extremist point, might give her another five pounds. + +The thing rankled in her mind night and day. She would wake in the night +to repeat her bitter cry: "Oh, why did I burn those notes?" + +It added greatly to the annoyance of the situation that she had twice +seen Ramage in the Avenue since her return to the shelter of her +father's roof. He had saluted her with elaborate civility, his eyes +distended with indecipherable meanings. + +She felt she was bound in honor to tell the whole affair to Manning +sooner or later. Indeed, it seemed inevitable that she must clear it up +with his assistance, or not at all. And when Manning was not about +the thing seemed simple enough. She would compose extremely lucid and +honorable explanations. But when it came to broaching them, it proved to +be much more difficult than she had supposed. + +They went down the great staircase of the building, and, while she +sought in her mind for a beginning, he broke into appreciation of her +simple dress and self-congratulations upon their engagement. + +"It makes me feel," he said, "that nothing is impossible--to have you +here beside me. I said, that day at Surbiton, 'There's many good things +in life, but there's only one best, and that's the wild-haired girl +who's pulling away at that oar. I will make her my Grail, and some day, +perhaps, if God wills, she shall become my wife!'" + +He looked very hard before him as he said this, and his voice was full +of deep feeling. + +"Grail!" said Ann Veronica, and then: "Oh, yes--of course! Anything but +a holy one, I'm afraid." + +"Altogether holy, Ann Veronica. Ah! but you can't imagine what you are +to me and what you mean to me! I suppose there is something mystical and +wonderful about all women." + +"There is something mystical and wonderful about all human beings. I +don't see that men need bank it with the women." + +"A man does," said Manning--"a true man, anyhow. And for me there is +only one treasure-house. By Jove! When I think of it I want to leap and +shout!" + +"It would astonish that man with the barrow." + +"It astonishes me that I don't," said Manning, in a tone of intense +self-enjoyment. + +"I think," began Ann Veronica, "that you don't realize--" + +He disregarded her entirely. He waved an arm and spoke with a peculiar +resonance. "I feel like a giant! I believe now I shall do great things. +Gods! what it must be to pour out strong, splendid verse--mighty +lines! mighty lines! If I do, Ann Veronica, it will be you. It will be +altogether you. I will dedicate my books to you. I will lay them all at +your feet." + +He beamed upon her. + +"I don't think you realize," Ann Veronica began again, "that I am rather +a defective human being." + +"I don't want to," said Manning. "They say there are spots on the sun. +Not for me. It warms me, and lights me, and fills my world with flowers. +Why should I peep at it through smoked glass to see things that don't +affect me?" He smiled his delight at his companion. + +"I've got bad faults." + +He shook his head slowly, smiling mysteriously. + +"But perhaps I want to confess them." + +"I grant you absolution." + +"I don't want absolution. I want to make myself visible to you." + +"I wish I could make you visible to yourself. I don't believe in the +faults. They're just a joyous softening of the outline--more beautiful +than perfection. Like the flaws of an old marble. If you talk of your +faults, I shall talk of your splendors." + +"I do want to tell you things, nevertheless." + +"We'll have, thank God! ten myriad days to tell each other things. When +I think of it--" + +"But these are things I want to tell you now!" + +"I made a little song of it. Let me say it to you. I've no name for it +yet. Epithalamy might do. + + "Like him who stood on Darien + I view uncharted sea + Ten thousand days, ten thousand nights + Before my Queen and me. + +"And that only brings me up to about sixty-five! + + "A glittering wilderness of time + That to the sunset reaches + No keel as yet its waves has ploughed + Or gritted on its beaches. + + "And we will sail that splendor wide, + From day to day together, + From isle to isle of happiness + Through year's of God's own weather." + +"Yes," said his prospective fellow-sailor, "that's very pretty." She +stopped short, full of things un-said. Pretty! Ten thousand days, ten +thousand nights! + +"You shall tell me your faults," said Manning. "If they matter to you, +they matter." + +"It isn't precisely faults," said Ann Veronica. "It's something that +bothers me." Ten thousand! Put that way it seemed so different. + +"Then assuredly!" said Manning. + +She found a little difficulty in beginning. She was glad when he went +on: "I want to be your city of refuge from every sort of bother. I want +to stand between you and all the force and vileness of the world. I want +to make you feel that here is a place where the crowd does not clamor +nor ill-winds blow." + +"That is all very well," said Ann Veronica, unheeded. + +"That is my dream of you," said Manning, warming. "I want my life to be +beaten gold just in order to make it a fitting setting for yours. There +you will be, in an inner temple. I want to enrich it with hangings and +gladden it with verses. I want to fill it with fine and precious things. +And by degrees, perhaps, that maiden distrust of yours that makes you +shrink from my kisses, will vanish.... Forgive me if a certain +warmth creeps into my words! The Park is green and gray to-day, but I am +glowing pink and gold.... It is difficult to express these things." + + + +Part 4 + + +They sat with tea and strawberries and cream before them at a little +table in front of the pavilion in Regent's Park. Her confession was +still unmade. Manning leaned forward on the table, talking discursively +on the probable brilliance of their married life. Ann Veronica sat back +in an attitude of inattention, her eyes on a distant game of cricket, +her mind perplexed and busy. She was recalling the circumstances under +which she had engaged herself to Manning, and trying to understand a +curious development of the quality of this relationship. + +The particulars of her engagement were very clear in her memory. She had +taken care he should have this momentous talk with her on a garden-seat +commanded by the windows of the house. They had been playing tennis, +with his manifest intention looming over her. + +"Let us sit down for a moment," he had said. He made his speech a little +elaborately. She plucked at the knots of her racket and heard him to the +end, then spoke in a restrained undertone. + +"You ask me to be engaged to you, Mr. Manning," she began. + +"I want to lay all my life at your feet." + +"Mr. Manning, I do not think I love you.... I want to be very plain +with you. I have nothing, nothing that can possibly be passion for you. +I am sure. Nothing at all." + +He was silent for some moments. + +"Perhaps that is only sleeping," he said. "How can you know?" + +"I think--perhaps I am rather a cold-blooded person." + +She stopped. He remained listening attentively. + +"You have been very kind to me," she said. + +"I would give my life for you." + +Her heart had warmed toward him. It had seemed to her that life might +be very good indeed with his kindliness and sacrifice about her. She +thought of him as always courteous and helpful, as realizing, indeed, +his ideal of protection and service, as chivalrously leaving her free to +live her own life, rejoicing with an infinite generosity in every detail +of her irresponsive being. She twanged the catgut under her fingers. + +"It seems so unfair," she said, "to take all you offer me and give so +little in return." + +"It is all the world to me. And we are not traders looking at +equivalents." + +"You know, Mr. Manning, I do not really want to marry." + +"No." + +"It seems so--so unworthy"--she picked among her phrases "of the noble +love you give--" + +She stopped, through the difficulty she found in expressing herself. + +"But I am judge of that," said Manning. + +"Would you wait for me?" + +Manning was silent for a space. "As my lady wills." + +"Would you let me go on studying for a time?" + +"If you order patience." + +"I think, Mr. Manning... I do not know. It is so difficult. When I +think of the love you give me--One ought to give you back love." + +"You like me?" + +"Yes. And I am grateful to you...." + +Manning tapped with his racket on the turf through some moments of +silence. "You are the most perfect, the most glorious of created +things--tender, frank intellectual, brave, beautiful. I am your +servitor. I am ready to wait for you, to wait your pleasure, to give all +my life to winning it. Let me only wear your livery. Give me but leave +to try. You want to think for a time, to be free for a time. That is so +like you, Diana--Pallas Athene! (Pallas Athene is better.) You are all +the slender goddesses. I understand. Let me engage myself. That is all I +ask." + +She looked at him; his face, downcast and in profile, was handsome and +strong. Her gratitude swelled within her. + +"You are too good for me," she said in a low voice. + +"Then you--you will?" + +A long pause. + +"It isn't fair...." + +"But will you?" + +"YES." + +For some seconds he had remained quite still. + +"If I sit here," he said, standing up before her abruptly, "I shall +have to shout. Let us walk about. Tum, tum, tirray, tum, tum, tum, +te-tum--that thing of Mendelssohn's! If making one human being +absolutely happy is any satisfaction to you--" + +He held out his hands, and she also stood up. + +He drew her close up to him with a strong, steady pull. Then suddenly, +in front of all those windows, he folded her in his arms and pressed her +to him, and kissed her unresisting face. + +"Don't!" cried Ann Veronica, struggling faintly, and he released her. + +"Forgive me," he said. "But I am at singing-pitch." + +She had a moment of sheer panic at the thing she had done. "Mr. +Manning," she said, "for a time--Will you tell no one? Will you keep +this--our secret? I'm doubtful--Will you please not even tell my aunt?" + +"As you will," he said. "But if my manner tells! I cannot help it if +that shows. You only mean a secret for a little time?" + +"Just for a little time," she said; "yes...." + +But the ring, and her aunt's triumphant eye, and a note of approval in +her father's manner, and a novel disposition in him to praise Manning +in a just, impartial voice had soon placed very definite qualifications +upon that covenanted secrecy. + + + +Part 5 + + +At first the quality of her relationship to Manning seemed moving and +beautiful to Ann Veronica. She admired and rather pitied him, and she +was unfeignedly grateful to him. She even thought that perhaps she might +come to love him, in spite of that faint indefinable flavor of absurdity +that pervaded his courtly bearing. She would never love him as she +loved Capes, of course, but there are grades and qualities of love. +For Manning it would be a more temperate love altogether. Much more +temperate; the discreet and joyless love of a virtuous, reluctant, +condescending wife. She had been quite convinced that an engagement with +him and at last a marriage had exactly that quality of compromise which +distinguishes the ways of the wise. It would be the wrappered world +almost at its best. She saw herself building up a life upon that--a +life restrained, kindly, beautiful, a little pathetic and altogether +dignified; a life of great disciplines and suppressions and extensive +reserves... + +But the Ramage affair needed clearing up, of course; it was a flaw upon +that project. She had to explain about and pay off that forty pounds.... + +Then, quite insensibly, her queenliness had declined. She was never able +to trace the changes her attitude had undergone, from the time when she +believed herself to be the pampered Queen of Fortune, the crown of a +good man's love (and secretly, but nobly, worshipping some one else), +to the time when she realized she was in fact just a mannequin for her +lover's imagination, and that he cared no more for the realities of her +being, for the things she felt and desired, for the passions and dreams +that might move her, than a child cares for the sawdust in its doll. She +was the actress his whim had chosen to play a passive part.... + +It was one of the most educational disillusionments in Ann Veronica's +career. + +But did many women get anything better? + +This afternoon, when she was urgent to explain her hampering and +tainting complication with Ramage, the realization of this alien quality +in her relationship with Manning became acute. Hitherto it had been +qualified by her conception of all life as a compromise, by her new +effort to be unexacting of life. But she perceived that to tell Manning +of her Ramage adventures as they had happened would be like tarring +figures upon a water-color. They were in different key, they had a +different timbre. How could she tell him what indeed already began to +puzzle herself, why she had borrowed that money at all? The plain fact +was that she had grabbed a bait. She had grabbed! She became less and +less attentive to his meditative, self-complacent fragments of talk as +she told herself this. Her secret thoughts made some hasty, half-hearted +excursions into the possibility of telling the thing in romantic +tones--Ramage was as a black villain, she as a white, fantastically +white, maiden.... She doubted if Manning would even listen to that. +He would refuse to listen and absolve her unshriven. + +Then it came to her with a shock, as an extraordinary oversight, that +she could never tell Manning about Ramage--never. + +She dismissed the idea of doing so. But that still left the forty +pounds!... + +Her mind went on generalizing. So it would always be between herself and +Manning. She saw her life before her robbed of all generous illusions, +the wrappered life unwrappered forever, vistas of dull responses, crises +of make-believe, years of exacting mutual disregard in a misty garden of +fine sentiments. + +But did any woman get anything better from a man? Perhaps every woman +conceals herself from a man perforce!... + +She thought of Capes. She could not help thinking of Capes. Surely +Capes was different. Capes looked at one and not over one, spoke to one, +treated one as a visible concrete fact. Capes saw her, felt for her, +cared for her greatly, even if he did not love her. Anyhow, he did not +sentimentalize her. And she had been doubting since that walk in the +Zoological Gardens whether, indeed, he did simply care for her. Little +things, almost impalpable, had happened to justify that doubt; something +in his manner had belied his words. Did he not look for her in the +morning when she entered--come very quickly to her? She thought of him +as she had last seen him looking down the length of the laboratory to +see her go. Why had he glanced up--quite in that way?... + +The thought of Capes flooded her being like long-veiled sunlight +breaking again through clouds. It came to her like a dear thing +rediscovered, that she loved Capes. It came to her that to marry any +one but Capes was impossible. If she could not marry him, she would not +marry any one. She would end this sham with Manning. It ought never +to have begun. It was cheating, pitiful cheating. And then if some day +Capes wanted her--saw fit to alter his views upon friendship.... + +Dim possibilities that she would not seem to look at even to herself +gesticulated in the twilight background of her mind. + +She leaped suddenly at a desperate resolution, and in one moment had +made it into a new self. She flung aside every plan she had in life, +every discretion. Of course, why not? She would be honest, anyhow! + +She turned her eyes to Manning. + +He was sitting back from the table now, with one arm over the back +of his green chair and the other resting on the little table. He was +smiling under his heavy mustache, and his head was a little on one side +as he looked at her. + +"And what was that dreadful confession you had to make?" he was saying. +His quiet, kindly smile implied his serene disbelief in any confessible +thing. Ann Veronica pushed aside a tea-cup and the vestiges of her +strawberries and cream, and put her elbows before her on the table. "Mr. +Manning," she said, "I HAVE a confession to make." + +"I wish you would use my Christian name," he said. + +She attended to that, and then dismissed it as unimportant. + +Something in her voice and manner conveyed an effect of unwonted gravity +to him. For the first time he seemed to wonder what it might be that she +had to confess. His smile faded. + +"I don't think our engagement can go on," she plunged, and felt exactly +that loss of breath that comes with a dive into icy water. + +"But, how," he said, sitting up astonished beyond measure, "not go on?" + +"I have been thinking while you have been talking. You see--I didn't +understand." + +She stared hard at her finger-nails. "It is hard to express one's self, +but I do want to be honest with you. When I promised to marry you I +thought I could; I thought it was a possible arrangement. I did think it +could be done. I admired your chivalry. I was grateful." + +She paused. + +"Go on," he said. + +She moved her elbow nearer to him and spoke in a still lower tone. "I +told you I did not love you." + +"I know," said Manning, nodding gravely. "It was fine and brave of you." + +"But there is something more." + +She paused again. + +"I--I am sorry--I didn't explain. These things are difficult. It wasn't +clear to me that I had to explain.... I love some one else." + +They remained looking at each other for three or four seconds. Then +Manning flopped back in his chair and dropped his chin like a man shot. +There was a long silence between them. + +"My God!" he said at last, with tremendous feeling, and then again, "My +God!" + +Now that this thing was said her mind was clear and calm. She heard this +standard expression of a strong soul wrung with a critical coldness that +astonished herself. She realized dimly that there was no personal thing +behind his cry, that countless myriads of Mannings had "My God!"-ed with +an equal gusto at situations as flatly apprehended. This mitigated +her remorse enormously. He rested his brow on his hand and conveyed +magnificent tragedy by his pose. + +"But why," he said in the gasping voice of one subduing an agony, and +looked at her from under a pain-wrinkled brow, "why did you not tell me +this before?" + +"I didn't know--I thought I might be able to control myself." + +"And you can't?" + +"I don't think I ought to control myself." + +"And I have been dreaming and thinking--" + +"I am frightfully sorry...." + +"But--This bolt from the blue! My God! Ann Veronica, you don't +understand. This--this shatters a world!" + +She tried to feel sorry, but her sense of his immense egotism was strong +and clear. + +He went on with intense urgency. + +"Why did you ever let me love you? Why did you ever let me peep through +the gates of Paradise? Oh! my God! I don't begin to feel and realize +this yet. It seems to me just talk; it seems to me like the fancy of a +dream. Tell me I haven't heard. This is a joke of yours." He made his +voice very low and full, and looked closely into her face. + +She twisted her fingers tightly. "It isn't a joke," she said. "I feel +shabby and disgraced.... I ought never to have thought of it. Of you, +I mean...." + +He fell back in his chair with an expression of tremendous desolation. +"My God!" he said again.... + +They became aware of the waitress standing over them with book and +pencil ready for their bill. "Never mind the bill," said Manning +tragically, standing up and thrusting a four-shilling piece into her +hand, and turning a broad back on her astonishment. "Let us walk across +the Park at least," he said to Ann Veronica. "Just at present my mind +simply won't take hold of this at all.... I tell you--never mind the +bill. Keep it! Keep it!" + + + +Part 6 + + +They walked a long way that afternoon. They crossed the Park to the +westward, and then turned back and walked round the circle about the +Royal Botanical Gardens and then southwardly toward Waterloo. They +trudged and talked, and Manning struggled, as he said, to "get the hang +of it all." + +It was a long, meandering talk, stupid, shameful, and unavoidable. Ann +Veronica was apologetic to the bottom of her soul. At the same time she +was wildly exultant at the resolution she had taken, the end she had +made to her blunder. She had only to get through this, to solace Manning +as much as she could, to put such clumsy plasterings on his wounds as +were possible, and then, anyhow, she would be free--free to put her fate +to the test. She made a few protests, a few excuses for her action in +accepting him, a few lame explanations, but he did not heed them or care +for them. Then she realized that it was her business to let Manning talk +and impose his own interpretations upon the situation so far as he was +concerned. She did her best to do this. But about his unknown rival he +was acutely curious. + +He made her tell him the core of the difficulty. + +"I cannot say who he is," said Ann Veronica, "but he is a married +man.... No! I do not even know that he cares for me. It is no good going +into that. Only I just want him. I just want him, and no one else will +do. It is no good arguing about a thing like that." + +"But you thought you could forget him." + +"I suppose I must have thought so. I didn't understand. Now I do." + +"By God!" said Manning, making the most of the word, "I suppose it's +fate. Fate! You are so frank so splendid! + +"I'm taking this calmly now," he said, almost as if he apologized, +"because I'm a little stunned." + +Then he asked, "Tell me! has this man, has he DARED to make love to +you?" + +Ann Veronica had a vicious moment. "I wish he had," she said. + +"But--" + +The long inconsecutive conversation by that time was getting on her +nerves. "When one wants a thing more than anything else in the world," +she said with outrageous frankness, "one naturally wishes one had it." + +She shocked him by that. She shattered the edifice he was building up +of himself as a devoted lover, waiting only his chance to win her from a +hopeless and consuming passion. + +"Mr. Manning," she said, "I warned you not to idealize me. Men ought not +to idealize any woman. We aren't worth it. We've done nothing to deserve +it. And it hampers us. You don't know the thoughts we have; the things +we can do and say. You are a sisterless man; you have never heard the +ordinary talk that goes on at a girls' boarding-school." + +"Oh! but you ARE splendid and open and fearless! As if I couldn't allow! +What are all these little things? Nothing! Nothing! You can't sully +yourself. You can't! I tell you frankly you may break off your +engagement to me--I shall hold myself still engaged to you, yours just +the same. As for this infatuation--it's like some obsession, some +magic thing laid upon you. It's not you--not a bit. It's a thing that's +happened to you. It is like some accident. I don't care. In a sense I +don't care. It makes no difference.... All the same, I wish I had +that fellow by the throat! Just the virile, unregenerate man in me +wishes that.... + +"I suppose I should let go if I had. + +"You know," he went on, "this doesn't seem to me to end anything. + +"I'm rather a persistent person. I'm the sort of dog, if you turn it out +of the room it lies down on the mat at the door. I'm not a lovesick +boy. I'm a man, and I know what I mean. It's a tremendous blow, of +course--but it doesn't kill me. And the situation it makes!--the +situation!" + +Thus Manning, egotistical, inconsecutive, unreal. And Ann Veronica +walked beside him, trying in vain to soften her heart to him by the +thought of how she had ill-used him, and all the time, as her feet and +mind grew weary together, rejoicing more and more that at the cost +of this one interminable walk she escaped the prospect of--what was +it?--"Ten thousand days, ten thousand nights" in his company. Whatever +happened she need never return to that possibility. + +"For me," Manning went on, "this isn't final. In a sense it alters +nothing. I shall still wear your favor--even if it is a stolen and +forbidden favor--in my casque.... I shall still believe in you. Trust +you." + +He repeated several times that he would trust her, though it remained +obscure just exactly where the trust came in. + +"Look here," he cried out of a silence, with a sudden flash of +understanding, "did you mean to throw me over when you came out with me +this afternoon?" + +Ann Veronica hesitated, and with a startled mind realized the truth. +"No," she answered, reluctantly. + +"Very well," said Manning. "Then I don't take this as final. That's all. +I've bored you or something.... You think you love this other man! No +doubt you do love him. Before you have lived--" + +He became darkly prophetic. He thrust out a rhetorical hand. + +"I will MAKE you love me! Until he has faded--faded into a memory..." + +He saw her into the train at Waterloo, and stood, a tall, grave figure, +with hat upraised, as the carriage moved forward slowly and hid him. +Ann Veronica sat back with a sigh of relief. Manning might go on now +idealizing her as much as he liked. She was no longer a confederate in +that. He might go on as the devoted lover until he tired. She had done +forever with the Age of Chivalry, and her own base adaptations of its +traditions to the compromising life. She was honest again. + +But when she turned her thoughts to Morningside Park she perceived the +tangled skein of life was now to be further complicated by his romantic +importunity. + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH + +THE COLLAPSE OF THE PENITENT + + +Part 1 + + +Spring had held back that year until the dawn of May, and then spring +and summer came with a rush together. Two days after this conversation +between Manning and Ann Veronica, Capes came into the laboratory at +lunch-time and found her alone there standing by the open window, and +not even pretending to be doing anything. + +He came in with his hands in his trousers pockets and a general air +of depression in his bearing. He was engaged in detesting Manning and +himself in almost equal measure. His face brightened at the sight of +her, and he came toward her. + +"What are you doing?" he asked. + +"Nothing," said Ann Veronica, and stared over her shoulder out of the +window. + +"So am I.... Lassitude?" + +"I suppose so." + +"_I_ can't work." + +"Nor I," said Ann Veronica. + +Pause. + +"It's the spring," he said. "It's the warming up of the year, the coming +of the light mornings, the way in which everything begins to run about +and begin new things. Work becomes distasteful; one thinks of holidays. +This year--I've got it badly. I want to get away. I've never wanted to +get away so much." + +"Where do you go?" + +"Oh!--Alps." + +"Climbing?" + +"Yes." + +"That's rather a fine sort of holiday!" + +He made no answer for three or four seconds. + +"Yes," he said, "I want to get away. I feel at moments as though I could +bolt for it.... Silly, isn't it? Undisciplined." + +He went to the window and fidgeted with the blind, looking out to where +the tree-tops of Regent's Park showed distantly over the houses. He +turned round toward her and found her looking at him and standing very +still. + +"It's the stir of spring," he said. + +"I believe it is." + +She glanced out of the window, and the distant trees were a froth of +hard spring green and almond blossom. She formed a wild resolution, +and, lest she should waver from it, she set about at once to realize it. +"I've broken off my engagement," she said, in a matter-of-fact tone, and +found her heart thumping in her neck. He moved slightly, and she +went on, with a slight catching of her breath: "It's a bother and +disturbance, but you see--" She had to go through with it now, because +she could think of nothing but her preconceived words. Her voice was +weak and flat. + +"I've fallen in love." + +He never helped her by a sound. + +"I--I didn't love the man I was engaged to," she said. She met his eyes +for a moment, and could not interpret their expression. They struck her +as cold and indifferent. + +Her heart failed her and her resolution became water. She remained +standing stiffly, unable even to move. She could not look at him through +an interval that seemed to her a vast gulf of time. But she felt his lax +figure become rigid. + +At last his voice came to release her tension. + +"I thought you weren't keeping up to the mark. You--It's jolly of you to +confide in me. Still--" Then, with incredible and obviously deliberate +stupidity, and a voice as flat as her own, he asked, "Who is the man?" + +Her spirit raged within her at the dumbness, the paralysis that had +fallen upon her. Grace, confidence, the power of movement even, seemed +gone from her. A fever of shame ran through her being. Horrible doubts +assailed her. She sat down awkwardly and helplessly on one of the little +stools by her table and covered her face with her hands. + +"Can't you SEE how things are?" she said. + + + +Part 2 + + +Before Capes could answer her in any way the door at the end of the +laboratory opened noisily and Miss Klegg appeared. She went to her own +table and sat down. At the sound of the door Ann Veronica uncovered +a tearless face, and with one swift movement assumed a conversational +attitude. Things hung for a moment in an awkward silence. + +"You see," said Ann Veronica, staring before her at the window-sash, +"that's the form my question takes at the present time." + +Capes had not quite the same power of recovery. He stood with his +hands in his pockets looking at Miss Klegg's back. His face was white. +"It's--it's a difficult question." He appeared to be paralyzed by +abstruse acoustic calculations. Then, very awkwardly, he took a stool +and placed it at the end of Ann Veronica's table, and sat down. He +glanced at Miss Klegg again, and spoke quickly and furtively, with eager +eyes on Ann Veronica's face. + +"I had a faint idea once that things were as you say they are, but the +affair of the ring--of the unexpected ring--puzzled me. Wish SHE"--he +indicated Miss Klegg's back with a nod--"was at the bottom of the +sea.... I would like to talk to you about this--soon. If you don't think +it would be a social outrage, perhaps I might walk with you to your +railway station." + +"I will wait," said Ann Veronica, still not looking at him, "and we will +go into Regent's Park. No--you shall come with me to Waterloo." + +"Right!" he said, and hesitated, and then got up and went into the +preparation-room. + + + +Part 3 + + +For a time they walked in silence through the back streets that lead +southward from the College. Capes bore a face of infinite perplexity. + +"The thing I feel most disposed to say, Miss Stanley," he began at last, +"is that this is very sudden." + +"It's been coming on since first I came into the laboratory." + +"What do you want?" he asked, bluntly. + +"You!" said Ann Veronica. + +The sense of publicity, of people coming and going about them, kept +them both unemotional. And neither had any of that theatricality which +demands gestures and facial expression. + +"I suppose you know I like you tremendously?" he pursued. + +"You told me that in the Zoological Gardens." + +She found her muscles a-tremble. But there was nothing in her bearing +that a passer-by would have noted, to tell of the excitement that +possessed her. + +"I"--he seemed to have a difficulty with the word--"I love you. I've +told you that practically already. But I can give it its name now. You +needn't be in any doubt about it. I tell you that because it puts us on +a footing...." + +They went on for a time without another word. + +"But don't you know about me?" he said at last. + +"Something. Not much." + +"I'm a married man. And my wife won't live with me for reasons that I +think most women would consider sound.... Or I should have made love +to you long ago." + +There came a silence again. + +"I don't care," said Ann Veronica. + +"But if you knew anything of that--" + +"I did. It doesn't matter." + +"Why did you tell me? I thought--I thought we were going to be friends." + +He was suddenly resentful. He seemed to charge her with the ruin of +their situation. "Why on earth did you TELL me?" he cried. + +"I couldn't help it. It was an impulse. I HAD to." + +"But it changes things. I thought you understood." + +"I had to," she repeated. "I was sick of the make-believe. I don't care! +I'm glad I did. I'm glad I did." + +"Look here!" said Capes, "what on earth do you want? What do you think +we can do? Don't you know what men are, and what life is?--to come to me +and talk to me like this!" + +"I know--something, anyhow. But I don't care; I haven't a spark of +shame. I don't see any good in life if it hasn't got you in it. I wanted +you to know. And now you know. And the fences are down for good. You +can't look me in the eyes and say you don't care for me." + +"I've told you," he said. + +"Very well," said Ann Veronica, with an air of concluding the +discussion. + +They walked side by side for a time. + +"In that laboratory one gets to disregard these passions," began Capes. +"Men are curious animals, with a trick of falling in love readily +with girls about your age. One has to train one's self not to. I've +accustomed myself to think of you--as if you were like every other +girl who works at the schools--as something quite outside these +possibilities. If only out of loyalty to co-education one has to do +that. Apart from everything else, this meeting of ours is a breach of a +good rule." + +"Rules are for every day," said Ann Veronica. "This is not every day. +This is something above all rules." + +"For you." + +"Not for you?" + +"No. No; I'm going to stick to the rules.... It's odd, but nothing +but cliche seems to meet this case. You've placed me in a very +exceptional position, Miss Stanley." The note of his own voice +exasperated him. "Oh, damn!" he said. + +She made no answer, and for a time he debated some problems with +himself. + +"No!" he said aloud at last. + +"The plain common-sense of the case," he said, "is that we can't +possibly be lovers in the ordinary sense. That, I think, is manifest. +You know, I've done no work at all this afternoon. I've been smoking +cigarettes in the preparation-room and thinking this out. We can't be +lovers in the ordinary sense, but we can be great and intimate friends." + +"We are," said Ann Veronica. + +"You've interested me enormously...." + +He paused with a sense of ineptitude. "I want to be your friend," he +said. "I said that at the Zoo, and I mean it. Let us be friends--as near +and close as friends can be." + +Ann Veronica gave him a pallid profile. + +"What is the good of pretending?" she said. + +"We don't pretend." + +"We do. Love is one thing and friendship quite another. Because I'm +younger than you.... I've got imagination.... I know what I am +talking about. Mr. Capes, do you think... do you think I don't know +the meaning of love?" + + + +Part 4 + + +Capes made no answer for a time. + +"My mind is full of confused stuff," he said at length. "I've been +thinking--all the afternoon. Oh, and weeks and months of thought and +feeling there are bottled up too.... I feel a mixture of beast and +uncle. I feel like a fraudulent trustee. Every rule is against me--Why +did I let you begin this? I might have told--" + +"I don't see that you could help--" + +"I might have helped--" + +"You couldn't." + +"I ought to have--all the same. + +"I wonder," he said, and went off at a tangent. "You know about my +scandalous past?" + +"Very little. It doesn't seem to matter. Does it?" + +"I think it does. Profoundly." + +"How?" + +"It prevents our marrying. It forbids--all sorts of things." + +"It can't prevent our loving." + +"I'm afraid it can't. But, by Jove! it's going to make our loving a +fiercely abstract thing." + +"You are separated from your wife?" + +"Yes, but do you know how?" + +"Not exactly." + +"Why on earth--? A man ought to be labelled. You see, I'm separated from +my wife. But she doesn't and won't divorce me. You don't understand +the fix I am in. And you don't know what led to our separation. And, in +fact, all round the problem you don't know and I don't see how I could +possibly have told you before. I wanted to, that day in the Zoo. But I +trusted to that ring of yours." + +"Poor old ring!" said Ann Veronica. + +"I ought never have gone to the Zoo, I suppose. I asked you to go. But +a man is a mixed creature.... I wanted the time with you. I wanted it +badly." + +"Tell me about yourself," said Ann Veronica. + +"To begin with, I was--I was in the divorce court. I was--I was a +co-respondent. You understand that term?" + +Ann Veronica smiled faintly. "A modern girl does understand these terms. +She reads novels--and history--and all sorts of things. Did you really +doubt if I knew?" + +"No. But I don't suppose you can understand." + +"I don't see why I shouldn't." + +"To know things by name is one thing; to know them by seeing them and +feeling them and being them quite another. That is where life takes +advantage of youth. You don't understand." + +"Perhaps I don't." + +"You don't. That's the difficulty. If I told you the facts, I expect, +since you are in love with me, you'd explain the whole business as being +very fine and honorable for me--the Higher Morality, or something of +that sort.... It wasn't." + +"I don't deal very much," said Ann Veronica, "in the Higher Morality, or +the Higher Truth, or any of those things." + +"Perhaps you don't. But a human being who is young and clean, as you +are, is apt to ennoble--or explain away." + +"I've had a biological training. I'm a hard young woman." + +"Nice clean hardness, anyhow. I think you are hard. There's +something--something ADULT about you. I'm talking to you now as though +you had all the wisdom and charity in the world. I'm going to tell you +things plainly. Plainly. It's best. And then you can go home and think +things over before we talk again. I want you to be clear what you're +really and truly up to, anyhow." + +"I don't mind knowing," said Ann Veronica. + +"It's precious unromantic." + +"Well, tell me." + +"I married pretty young," said Capes. "I've got--I have to tell you this +to make myself clear--a streak of ardent animal in my composition. I +married--I married a woman whom I still think one of the most beautiful +persons in the world. She is a year or so older than I am, and she is, +well, of a very serene and proud and dignified temperament. If you met +her you would, I am certain, think her as fine as I do. She has never +done a really ignoble thing that I know of--never. I met her when we +were both very young, as young as you are. I loved her and made love to +her, and I don't think she quite loved me back in the same way." + +He paused for a time. Ann Veronica said nothing. + +"These are the sort of things that aren't supposed to happen. They leave +them out of novels--these incompatibilities. Young people ignore them +until they find themselves up against them. My wife doesn't understand, +doesn't understand now. She despises me, I suppose.... We married, +and for a time we were happy. She was fine and tender. I worshipped her +and subdued myself." + +He left off abruptly. "Do you understand what I am talking about? It's +no good if you don't." + +"I think so," said Ann Veronica, and colored. "In fact, yes, I do." + +"Do you think of these things--these matters--as belonging to our Higher +Nature or our Lower?" + +"I don't deal in Higher Things, I tell you," said Ann Veronica, "or +Lower, for the matter of that. I don't classify." She hesitated. "Flesh +and flowers are all alike to me." + +"That's the comfort of you. Well, after a time there came a fever in +my blood. Don't think it was anything better than fever--or a bit +beautiful. It wasn't. Quite soon, after we were married--it was just +within a year--I formed a friendship with the wife of a friend, a woman +eight years older than myself.... It wasn't anything splendid, you +know. It was just a shabby, stupid, furtive business that began between +us. Like stealing. We dressed it in a little music.... I want you to +understand clearly that I was indebted to the man in many small ways. I +was mean to him.... It was the gratification of an immense necessity. +We were two people with a craving. We felt like thieves. We WERE +thieves.... We LIKED each other well enough. Well, my friend found +us out, and would give no quarter. He divorced her. How do you like the +story?" + +"Go on," said Ann Veronica, a little hoarsely, "tell me all of it." + +"My wife was astounded--wounded beyond measure. She thought me--filthy. +All her pride raged at me. One particularly humiliating thing came +out--humiliating for me. There was a second co-respondent. I hadn't +heard of him before the trial. I don't know why that should be so +acutely humiliating. There's no logic in these things. It was." + +"Poor you!" said Ann Veronica. + +"My wife refused absolutely to have anything more to do with me. She +could hardly speak to me; she insisted relentlessly upon a separation. +She had money of her own--much more than I have--and there was no need +to squabble about that. She has given herself up to social work." + +"Well--" + +"That's all. Practically all. And yet--Wait a little, you'd better have +every bit of it. One doesn't go about with these passions allayed simply +because they have made wreckage and a scandal. There one is! The same +stuff still! One has a craving in one's blood, a craving roused, cut off +from its redeeming and guiding emotional side. A man has more freedom to +do evil than a woman. Irregularly, in a quite inglorious and unromantic +way, you know, I am a vicious man. That's--that's my private life. Until +the last few months. It isn't what I have been but what I am. I haven't +taken much account of it until now. My honor has been in my scientific +work and public discussion and the things I write. Lots of us are like +that. But, you see, I'm smirched. For the sort of love-making you think +about. I've muddled all this business. I've had my time and lost my +chances. I'm damaged goods. And you're as clean as fire. You come with +those clear eyes of yours, as valiant as an angel...." + +He stopped abruptly. + +"Well?" she said. + +"That's all." + +"It's so strange to think of you--troubled by such things. I didn't +think--I don't know what I thought. Suddenly all this makes you human. +Makes you real." + +"But don't you see how I must stand to you? Don't you see how it bars us +from being lovers--You can't--at first. You must think it over. It's all +outside the world of your experience." + +"I don't think it makes a rap of difference, except for one thing. I +love you more. I've wanted you--always. I didn't dream, not even in my +wildest dreaming, that--you might have any need of me." + +He made a little noise in his throat as if something had cried out +within him, and for a time they were both too full for speech. + +They were going up the slope into Waterloo Station. + +"You go home and think of all this," he said, "and talk about it +to-morrow. Don't, don't say anything now, not anything. As for loving +you, I do. I do--with all my heart. It's no good hiding it any more. +I could never have talked to you like this, forgetting everything that +parts us, forgetting even your age, if I did not love you utterly. If +I were a clean, free man--We'll have to talk of all these things. Thank +goodness there's plenty of opportunity! And we two can talk. Anyhow, now +you've begun it, there's nothing to keep us in all this from being the +best friends in the world. And talking of every conceivable thing. Is +there?" + +"Nothing," said Ann Veronica, with a radiant face. + +"Before this there was a sort of restraint--a make-believe. It's gone." + +"It's gone." + +"Friendship and love being separate things. And that confounded +engagement!" + +"Gone!" + +They came upon a platform, and stood before her compartment. + +He took her hand and looked into her eyes and spoke, divided against +himself, in a voice that was forced and insincere. + +"I shall be very glad to have you for a friend," he said, "loving +friend. I had never dreamed of such a friend as you." + +She smiled, sure of herself beyond any pretending, into his troubled +eyes. Hadn't they settled that already? + +"I want you as a friend," he persisted, almost as if he disputed +something. + + + +Part 5 + + +The next morning she waited in the laboratory at the lunch-hour in the +reasonable certainty that he would come to her. + +"Well, you have thought it over?" he said, sitting down beside her. + +"I've been thinking of you all night," she answered. + +"Well?" + +"I don't care a rap for all these things." + +He said nothing for a space. + +"I don't see there's any getting away from the fact that you and I love +each other," he said, slowly. "So far you've got me and I you.... +You've got me. I'm like a creature just wakened up. My eyes are open to +you. I keep on thinking of you. I keep on thinking of little details and +aspects of your voice, your eyes, the way you walk, the way your hair +goes back from the side of your forehead. I believe I have always been +in love with you. Always. Before ever I knew you." + +She sat motionless, with her hand tightening over the edge of the table, +and he, too, said no more. She began to tremble violently. + +He stood up abruptly and went to the window. + +"We have," he said, "to be the utmost friends." + +She stood up and held her arms toward him. "I want you to kiss me," she +said. + +He gripped the window-sill behind him. + +"If I do," he said.... "No! I want to do without that. I want to +do without that for a time. I want to give you time to think. I am a +man--of a sort of experience. You are a girl with very little. Just sit +down on that stool again and let's talk of this in cold blood. People of +your sort--I don't want the instincts to--to rush our situation. Are you +sure what it is you want of me?" + +"I want you. I want you to be my lover. I want to give myself to you. +I want to be whatever I can to you." She paused for a moment. "Is that +plain?" she asked. + +"If I didn't love you better than myself," said Capes, "I wouldn't fence +like this with you. + +"I am convinced you haven't thought this out," he went on. "You do not +know what such a relation means. We are in love. Our heads swim with +the thought of being together. But what can we do? Here am I, fixed to +respectability and this laboratory; you're living at home. It means... +just furtive meetings." + +"I don't care how we meet," she said. + +"It will spoil your life." + +"It will make it. I want you. I am clear I want you. You are different +from all the world for me. You can think all round me. You are the one +person I can understand and feel--feel right with. I don't idealize you. +Don't imagine that. It isn't because you're good, but because I may be +rotten bad; and there's something--something living and understanding +in you. Something that is born anew each time we meet, and pines when +we are separated. You see, I'm selfish. I'm rather scornful. I think +too much about myself. You're the only person I've really given good, +straight, unselfish thought to. I'm making a mess of my life--unless +you come in and take it. I am. In you--if you can love me--there +is salvation. Salvation. I know what I am doing better than you do. +Think--think of that engagement!" + +Their talk had come to eloquent silences that contradicted all he had to +say. + +She stood up before him, smiling faintly. + +"I think we've exhausted this discussion," she said. + +"I think we have," he answered, gravely, and took her in his arms, and +smoothed her hair from her forehead, and very tenderly kissed her lips. + + + +Part 6 + + +They spent the next Sunday in Richmond Park, and mingled the happy +sensation of being together uninterruptedly through the long sunshine +of a summer's day with the ample discussion of their position. "This has +all the clean freshness of spring and youth," said Capes; "it is love +with the down on; it is like the glitter of dew in the sunlight to be +lovers such as we are, with no more than one warm kiss between us. I +love everything to-day, and all of you, but I love this, this--this +innocence upon us most of all. + +"You can't imagine," he said, "what a beastly thing a furtive love +affair can be. + +"This isn't furtive," said Ann Veronica. + +"Not a bit of it. And we won't make it so.... We mustn't make it so." + +They loitered under trees, they sat on mossy banks they gossiped on +friendly benches, they came back to lunch at the "Star and Garter," +and talked their afternoon away in the garden that looks out upon the +crescent of the river. They had a universe to talk about--two universes. + +"What are we going to do?" said Capes, with his eyes on the broad +distances beyond the ribbon of the river. + +"I will do whatever you want," said Ann Veronica. + +"My first love was all blundering," said Capes. + +He thought for a moment, and went on: "Love is something that has to be +taken care of. One has to be so careful.... It's a beautiful plant, +but a tender one.... I didn't know. I've a dread of love dropping its +petals, becoming mean and ugly. How can I tell you all I feel? I love +you beyond measure. And I'm afraid.... I'm anxious, joyfully anxious, +like a man when he has found a treasure." + +"YOU know," said Ann Veronica. "I just came to you and put myself in +your hands." + +"That's why, in a way, I'm prudish. I've--dreads. I don't want to tear +at you with hot, rough hands." + +"As you will, dear lover. But for me it doesn't matter. Nothing is wrong +that you do. Nothing. I am quite clear about this. I know exactly what I +am doing. I give myself to you." + +"God send you may never repent it!" cried Capes. + +She put her hand in his to be squeezed. + +"You see," he said, "it is doubtful if we can ever marry. Very doubtful. +I have been thinking--I will go to my wife again. I will do my utmost. +But for a long time, anyhow, we lovers have to be as if we were no more +than friends." + +He paused. She answered slowly. "That is as you will," she said. + +"Why should it matter?" he said. + +And then, as she answered nothing, "Seeing that we are lovers." + + + +Part 7 + + +It was rather less than a week after that walk that Capes came and sat +down beside Ann Veronica for their customary talk in the lunch hour. He +took a handful of almonds and raisins that she held out to him--for +both these young people had given up the practice of going out for +luncheon--and kept her hand for a moment to kiss her finger-tips. He did +not speak for a moment. + +"Well?" she said. + +"I say!" he said, without any movement. "Let's go." + +"Go!" She did not understand him at first, and then her heart began to +beat very rapidly. + +"Stop this--this humbugging," he explained. "It's like the Picture and +the Bust. I can't stand it. Let's go. Go off and live together--until we +can marry. Dare you?" + +"Do you mean NOW?" + +"At the end of the session. It's the only clean way for us. Are you +prepared to do it?" + +Her hands clenched. "Yes," she said, very faintly. And then: "Of course! +Always. It is what I have wanted, what I have meant all along." + +She stared before her, trying to keep back a rush of tears. + +Capes kept obstinately stiff, and spoke between his teeth. + +"There's endless reasons, no doubt, why we shouldn't," he said. +"Endless. It's wrong in the eyes of most people. For many of them it +will smirch us forever.... You DO understand?" + +"Who cares for most people?" she said, not looking at him. + +"I do. It means social isolation--struggle." + +"If you dare--I dare," said Ann Veronica. "I was never so clear in all +my life as I have been in this business." She lifted steadfast eyes to +him. "Dare!" she said. The tears were welling over now, but her voice +was steady. "You're not a man for me--not one of a sex, I mean. You're +just a particular being with nothing else in the world to class with +you. You are just necessary to life for me. I've never met any one +like you. To have you is all important. Nothing else weighs against it. +Morals only begin when that is settled. I sha'n't care a rap if we can +never marry. I'm not a bit afraid of anything--scandal, difficulty, +struggle.... I rather want them. I do want them." + +"You'll get them," he said. "This means a plunge." + +"Are you afraid?" + +"Only for you! Most of my income will vanish. Even unbelieving +biological demonstrators must respect decorum; and besides, you see--you +were a student. We shall have--hardly any money." + +"I don't care." + +"Hardship and danger." + +"With you!" + +"And as for your people?" + +"They don't count. That is the dreadful truth. This--all this swamps +them. They don't count, and I don't care." + +Capes suddenly abandoned his attitude of meditative restraint. "By +Jove!" he broke out, "one tries to take a serious, sober view. I don't +quite know why. But this is a great lark, Ann Veronica! This turns life +into a glorious adventure!" + +"Ah!" she cried in triumph. + +"I shall have to give up biology, anyhow. I've always had a sneaking +desire for the writing-trade. That is what I must do. I can." + +"Of course you can." + +"And biology was beginning to bore me a bit. One research is very like +another.... Latterly I've been doing things.... Creative work +appeals to me wonderfully. Things seem to come rather easily.... But +that, and that sort of thing, is just a day-dream. For a time I must do +journalism and work hard.... What isn't a day-dream is this: that you +and I are going to put an end to flummery--and go!" + +"Go!" said Ann Veronica, clenching her hands. + +"For better or worse." + +"For richer or poorer." + +She could not go on, for she was laughing and crying at the same time. +"We were bound to do this when you kissed me," she sobbed through +her tears. "We have been all this time--Only your queer code of +honor--Honor! Once you begin with love you have to see it through." + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH + +THE LAST DAYS AT HOME + + +Part 1 + + +They decided to go to Switzerland at the session's end. "We'll clean up +everything tidy," said Capes.... + +For her pride's sake, and to save herself from long day-dreams and an +unappeasable longing for her lover, Ann Veronica worked hard at her +biology during those closing weeks. She was, as Capes had said, a +hard young woman. She was keenly resolved to do well in the school +examination, and not to be drowned in the seas of emotion that +threatened to submerge her intellectual being. + +Nevertheless, she could not prevent a rising excitement as the dawn of +the new life drew near to her--a thrilling of the nerves, a secret +and delicious exaltation above the common circumstances of +existence. Sometimes her straying mind would become astonishingly +active--embroidering bright and decorative things that she could say to +Capes; sometimes it passed into a state of passive acquiescence, into +a radiant, formless, golden joy. She was aware of people--her aunt, +her father, her fellow-students, friends, and neighbors--moving about +outside this glowing secret, very much as an actor is aware of the dim +audience beyond the barrier of the footlights. They might applaud, or +object, or interfere, but the drama was her very own. She was going +through with that, anyhow. + +The feeling of last days grew stronger with her as their number +diminished. She went about the familiar home with a clearer and clearer +sense of inevitable conclusions. She became exceptionally considerate +and affectionate with her father and aunt, and more and more concerned +about the coming catastrophe that she was about to precipitate upon +them. Her aunt had a once exasperating habit of interrupting her work +with demands for small household services, but now Ann Veronica rendered +them with a queer readiness of anticipatory propitiation. She was +greatly exercised by the problem of confiding in the Widgetts; they were +dears, and she talked away two evenings with Constance without broaching +the topic; she made some vague intimations in letters to Miss Miniver +that Miss Miniver failed to mark. But she did not bother her head very +much about her relations with these sympathizers. + +And at length her penultimate day in Morningside Park dawned for her. +She got up early, and walked about the garden in the dewy June sunshine +and revived her childhood. She was saying good-bye to childhood and +home, and her making; she was going out into the great, multitudinous +world; this time there would be no returning. She was at the end of +girlhood and on the eve of a woman's crowning experience. She visited +the corner that had been her own little garden--her forget-me-nots and +candytuft had long since been elbowed into insignificance by weeds; she +visited the raspberry-canes that had sheltered that first love affair +with the little boy in velvet, and the greenhouse where she had been +wont to read her secret letters. Here was the place behind the shed +where she had used to hide from Roddy's persecutions, and here the +border of herbaceous perennials under whose stems was fairyland. The +back of the house had been the Alps for climbing, and the shrubs +in front of it a Terai. The knots and broken pale that made the +garden-fence scalable, and gave access to the fields behind, were still +to be traced. And here against a wall were the plum-trees. In spite of +God and wasps and her father, she had stolen plums; and once because of +discovered misdeeds, and once because she had realized that her mother +was dead, she had lain on her face in the unmown grass, beneath the +elm-trees that came beyond the vegetables, and poured out her soul in +weeping. + +Remote little Ann Veronica! She would never know the heart of that child +again! That child had loved fairy princes with velvet suits and golden +locks, and she was in love with a real man named Capes, with little +gleams of gold on his cheek and a pleasant voice and firm and shapely +hands. She was going to him soon and certainly, going to his strong, +embracing arms. She was going through a new world with him side by side. +She had been so busy with life that, for a vast gulf of time, as it +seemed, she had given no thought to those ancient, imagined things of +her childhood. Now, abruptly, they were real again, though very distant, +and she had come to say farewell to them across one sundering year. + +She was unusually helpful at breakfast, and unselfish about the eggs: +and then she went off to catch the train before her father's. She did +this to please him. He hated travelling second-class with her--indeed, +he never did--but he also disliked travelling in the same train when his +daughter was in an inferior class, because of the look of the thing. +So he liked to go by a different train. And in the Avenue she had an +encounter with Ramage. + +It was an odd little encounter, that left vague and dubitable +impressions in her mind. She was aware of him--a silk-hatted, +shiny-black figure on the opposite side of the Avenue; and then, +abruptly and startlingly, he crossed the road and saluted and spoke to +her. + +"I MUST speak to you," he said. "I can't keep away from you." + +She made some inane response. She was struck by a change in his +appearance. His eyes looked a little bloodshot to her; his face had lost +something of its ruddy freshness. + +He began a jerky, broken conversation that lasted until they reached the +station, and left her puzzled at its drift and meaning. She quickened +her pace, and so did he, talking at her slightly averted ear. She made +lumpish and inadequate interruptions rather than replies. At times he +seemed to be claiming pity from her; at times he was threatening her +with her check and exposure; at times he was boasting of his inflexible +will, and how, in the end, he always got what he wanted. He said that +his life was boring and stupid without her. Something or other--she +did not catch what--he was damned if he could stand. He was evidently +nervous, and very anxious to be impressive; his projecting eyes sought +to dominate. The crowning aspect of the incident, for her mind, was the +discovery that he and her indiscretion with him no longer mattered very +much. Its importance had vanished with her abandonment of compromise. +Even her debt to him was a triviality now. + +And of course! She had a brilliant idea. It surprised her she hadn't +thought of it before! She tried to explain that she was going to pay +him forty pounds without fail next week. She said as much to him. She +repeated this breathlessly. + +"I was glad you did not send it back again," he said. + +He touched a long-standing sore, and Ann Veronica found herself vainly +trying to explain--the inexplicable. "It's because I mean to send it +back altogether," she said. + +He ignored her protests in order to pursue some impressive line of his +own. + +"Here we are, living in the same suburb," he began. "We have to +be--modern." + +Her heart leaped within her as she caught that phrase. That knot also +would be cut. Modern, indeed! She was going to be as primordial as +chipped flint. + + + +Part 2 + + +In the late afternoon, as Ann Veronica was gathering flowers for the +dinner-table, her father came strolling across the lawn toward her with +an affectation of great deliberation. + +"I want to speak to you about a little thing, Vee," said Mr. Stanley. + +Ann Veronica's tense nerves started, and she stood still with her eyes +upon him, wondering what it might be that impended. + +"You were talking to that fellow Ramage to-day--in the Avenue. Walking +to the station with him." + +So that was it! + +"He came and talked to me." + +"Ye--e--es." Mr. Stanley considered. "Well, I don't want you to talk to +him," he said, very firmly. + +Ann Veronica paused before she answered. "Don't you think I ought to?" +she asked, very submissively. + +"No." Mr. Stanley coughed and faced toward the house. "He is not--I +don't like him. I think it inadvisable--I don't want an intimacy to +spring up between you and a man of that type." + +Ann Veronica reflected. "I HAVE--had one or two talks with him, daddy." + +"Don't let there be any more. I--In fact, I dislike him extremely." + +"Suppose he comes and talks to me?" + +"A girl can always keep a man at a distance if she cares to do it. +She--She can snub him." + +Ann Veronica picked a cornflower. + +"I wouldn't make this objection," Mr. Stanley went on, "but there are +things--there are stories about Ramage. He's--He lives in a world of +possibilities outside your imagination. His treatment of his wife +is most unsatisfactory. Most unsatisfactory. A bad man, in fact. A +dissipated, loose-living man." + +"I'll try not to see him again," said Ann Veronica. "I didn't know you +objected to him, daddy." + +"Strongly," said Mr. Stanley, "very strongly." + +The conversation hung. Ann Veronica wondered what her father would do if +she were to tell him the full story of her relations with Ramage. + +"A man like that taints a girl by looking at her, by his mere +conversation." He adjusted his glasses on his nose. There was another +little thing he had to say. "One has to be so careful of one's friends +and acquaintances," he remarked, by way of transition. "They mould one +insensibly." His voice assumed an easy detached tone. "I suppose, Vee, +you don't see much of those Widgetts now?" + +"I go in and talk to Constance sometimes." + +"Do you?" + +"We were great friends at school." + +"No doubt.... Still--I don't know whether I quite like--Something +ramshackle about those people, Vee. While I am talking about your +friends, I feel--I think you ought to know how I look at it." His voice +conveyed studied moderation. "I don't mind, of course, your seeing +her sometimes, still there are differences--differences in social +atmospheres. One gets drawn into things. Before you know where you +are you find yourself in a complication. I don't want to influence you +unduly--But--They're artistic people, Vee. That's the fact about them. +We're different." + +"I suppose we are," said Vee, rearranging the flowers in her hand. + +"Friendships that are all very well between school-girls don't always go +on into later life. It's--it's a social difference." + +"I like Constance very much." + +"No doubt. Still, one has to be reasonable. As you admitted to me--one +has to square one's self with the world. You don't know. With people +of that sort all sorts of things may happen. We don't want things to +happen." + +Ann Veronica made no answer. + +A vague desire to justify himself ruffled her father. "I may seem +unduly--anxious. I can't forget about your sister. It's that has always +made me--SHE, you know, was drawn into a set--didn't discriminate +Private theatricals." + +Ann Veronica remained anxious to hear more of her sister's story from +her father's point of view, but he did not go on. Even so much allusion +as this to that family shadow, she felt, was an immense recognition of +her ripening years. She glanced at him. He stood a little anxious and +fussy, bothered by the responsibility of her, entirely careless of what +her life was or was likely to be, ignoring her thoughts and feelings, +ignorant of every fact of importance in her life, explaining everything +he could not understand in her as nonsense and perversity, concerned +only with a terror of bothers and undesirable situations. "We don't want +things to happen!" Never had he shown his daughter so clearly that the +womenkind he was persuaded he had to protect and control could please +him in one way, and in one way only, and that was by doing nothing +except the punctual domestic duties and being nothing except restful +appearances. He had quite enough to see to and worry about in the City +without their doing things. He had no use for Ann Veronica; he had +never had a use for her since she had been too old to sit upon his knee. +Nothing but the constraint of social usage now linked him to her. And +the less "anything" happened the better. The less she lived, in fact, +the better. These realizations rushed into Ann Veronica's mind and +hardened her heart against him. She spoke slowly. "I may not see the +Widgetts for some little time, father," she said. "I don't think I +shall." + +"Some little tiff?" + +"No; but I don't think I shall see them." + +Suppose she were to add, "I am going away!" + +"I'm glad to hear you say it," said Mr. Stanley, and was so evidently +pleased that Ann Veronica's heart smote her. + +"I am very glad to hear you say it," he repeated, and refrained from +further inquiry. "I think we are growing sensible," he said. "I think +you are getting to understand me better." + +He hesitated, and walked away from her toward the house. Her eyes +followed him. The curve of his shoulders, the very angle of his feet, +expressed relief at her apparent obedience. "Thank goodness!" said +that retreating aspect, "that's said and over. Vee's all right. There's +nothing happened at all!" She didn't mean, he concluded, to give him any +more trouble ever, and he was free to begin a fresh chromatic novel--he +had just finished the Blue Lagoon, which he thought very beautiful and +tender and absolutely irrelevant to Morningside Park--or work in peace +at his microtome without bothering about her in the least. + +The immense disillusionment that awaited him! The devastating +disillusionment! She had a vague desire to run after him, to state her +case to him, to wring some understanding from him of what life was to +her. She felt a cheat and a sneak to his unsuspecting retreating back. + +"But what can one do?" asked Ann Veronica. + + + +Part 3 + + +She dressed carefully for dinner in a black dress that her father +liked, and that made her look serious and responsible. Dinner was quite +uneventful. Her father read a draft prospectus warily, and her aunt +dropped fragments of her projects for managing while the cook had a +holiday. After dinner Ann Veronica went into the drawing-room with Miss +Stanley, and her father went up to his den for his pipe and pensive +petrography. Later in the evening she heard him whistling, poor man! + +She felt very restless and excited. She refused coffee, though she knew +that anyhow she was doomed to a sleepless night. She took up one of her +father's novels and put it down again, fretted up to her own room for +some work, sat on her bed and meditated upon the room that she was now +really abandoning forever, and returned at length with a stocking to +darn. Her aunt was making herself cuffs out of little slips of insertion +under the newly lit lamp. + +Ann Veronica sat down in the other arm-chair and darned badly for a +minute or so. Then she looked at her aunt, and traced with a curious eye +the careful arrangement of her hair, her sharp nose, the little drooping +lines of mouth and chin and cheek. + +Her thought spoke aloud. "Were you ever in love, aunt?" she asked. + +Her aunt glanced up startled, and then sat very still, with hands that +had ceased to work. "What makes you ask such a question, Vee?" she said. + +"I wondered." + +Her aunt answered in a low voice: "I was engaged to him, dear, for seven +years, and then he died." + +Ann Veronica made a sympathetic little murmur. + +"He was in holy orders, and we were to have been married when he got a +living. He was a Wiltshire Edmondshaw, a very old family." + +She sat very still. + +Ann Veronica hesitated with a question that had leaped up in her mind, +and that she felt was cruel. "Are you sorry you waited, aunt?" she said. + +Her aunt was a long time before she answered. "His stipend forbade it," +she said, and seemed to fall into a train of thought. "It would have +been rash and unwise," she said at the end of a meditation. "What he had +was altogether insufficient." + +Ann Veronica looked at the mildly pensive gray eyes and the comfortable, +rather refined face with a penetrating curiosity. Presently her aunt +sighed deeply and looked at the clock. "Time for my Patience," she said. +She got up, put the neat cuffs she had made into her work-basket, +and went to the bureau for the little cards in the morocco case. Ann +Veronica jumped up to get her the card-table. "I haven't seen the new +Patience, dear," she said. "May I sit beside you?" + +"It's a very difficult one," said her aunt. "Perhaps you will help me +shuffle?" + +Ann Veronica did, and also assisted nimbly with the arrangements of the +rows of eight with which the struggle began. Then she sat watching the +play, sometimes offering a helpful suggestion, sometimes letting her +attention wander to the smoothly shining arms she had folded across her +knees just below the edge of the table. She was feeling extraordinarily +well that night, so that the sense of her body was a deep delight, a +realization of a gentle warmth and strength and elastic firmness. Then +she glanced at the cards again, over which her aunt's many-ringed hand +played, and then at the rather weak, rather plump face that surveyed its +operations. + +It came to Ann Veronica that life was wonderful beyond measure. It +seemed incredible that she and her aunt were, indeed, creatures of the +same blood, only by a birth or so different beings, and part of that +same broad interlacing stream of human life that has invented the fauns +and nymphs, Astarte, Aphrodite, Freya, and all the twining beauty of +the gods. The love-songs of all the ages were singing in her blood, the +scent of night stock from the garden filled the air, and the moths that +beat upon the closed frames of the window next the lamp set her mind +dreaming of kisses in the dusk. Yet her aunt, with a ringed hand +flitting to her lips and a puzzled, worried look in her eyes, deaf +to all this riot of warmth and flitting desire, was playing +Patience--playing Patience, as if Dionysius and her curate had died +together. A faint buzz above the ceiling witnessed that petrography, +too, was active. Gray and tranquil world! Amazing, passionless world! A +world in which days without meaning, days in which "we don't want things +to happen" followed days without meaning--until the last thing happened, +the ultimate, unavoidable, coarse, "disagreeable." It was her last +evening in that wrappered life against which she had rebelled. Warm +reality was now so near her she could hear it beating in her ears. Away +in London even now Capes was packing and preparing; Capes, the magic man +whose touch turned one to trembling fire. What was he doing? What was he +thinking? It was less than a day now, less than twenty hours. Seventeen +hours, sixteen hours. She glanced at the soft-ticking clock with the +exposed brass pendulum upon the white marble mantel, and made a rapid +calculation. To be exact, it was just sixteen hours and twenty minutes. +The slow stars circled on to the moment of their meeting. The softly +glittering summer stars! She saw them shining over mountains of snow, +over valleys of haze and warm darkness.... There would be no moon. + +"I believe after all it's coming out!" said Miss Stanley. "The aces made +it easy." + +Ann Veronica started from her reverie, sat up in her chair, became +attentive. "Look, dear," she said presently, "you can put the ten on the +Jack." + + + +CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH + +IN THE MOUNTAINS + + +Part 1 + + +Next day Ann Veronica and Capes felt like newborn things. It seemed +to them they could never have been really alive before, but only +dimly anticipating existence. They sat face to face beneath an +experienced-looking rucksack and a brand new portmanteau and a leather +handbag, in the afternoon-boat train that goes from Charing Cross to +Folkestone for Boulogne. They tried to read illustrated papers in an +unconcerned manner and with forced attention, lest they should catch +the leaping exultation in each other's eyes. And they admired Kent +sedulously from the windows. + +They crossed the Channel in sunshine and a breeze that just ruffled the +sea to glittering scales of silver. Some of the people who watched them +standing side by side thought they must be newly wedded because of their +happy faces, and others that they were an old-established couple because +of their easy confidence in each other. + +At Boulogne they took train to Basle; next morning they breakfasted +together in the buffet of that station, and thence they caught the +Interlaken express, and so went by way of Spies to Frutigen. There was +no railway beyond Frutigen in those days; they sent their baggage by +post to Kandersteg, and walked along the mule path to the left of the +stream to that queer hollow among the precipices, Blau See, where the +petrifying branches of trees lie in the blue deeps of an icy lake, and +pine-trees clamber among gigantic boulders. A little inn flying a +Swiss flag nestles under a great rock, and there they put aside their +knapsacks and lunched and rested in the mid-day shadow of the gorge +and the scent of resin. And later they paddled in a boat above the +mysterious deeps of the See, and peered down into the green-blues and +the blue-greens together. By that time it seemed to them they had lived +together twenty years. + +Except for one memorable school excursion to Paris, Ann Veronica had +never yet been outside England. So that it seemed to her the whole world +had changed--the very light of it had changed. Instead of English villas +and cottages there were chalets and Italian-built houses shining white; +there were lakes of emerald and sapphire and clustering castles, and +such sweeps of hill and mountain, such shining uplands of snow, as she +had never seen before. Everything was fresh and bright, from the kindly +manners of the Frutigen cobbler, who hammered mountain nails into her +boots, to the unfamiliar wild flowers that spangled the wayside. And +Capes had changed into the easiest and jolliest companion in the world. +The mere fact that he was there in the train alongside her, helping her, +sitting opposite to her in the dining-car, presently sleeping on a seat +within a yard of her, made her heart sing until she was afraid their +fellow passengers would hear it. It was too good to be true. She would +not sleep for fear of losing a moment of that sense of his proximity. To +walk beside him, dressed akin to him, rucksacked and companionable, was +bliss in itself; each step she took was like stepping once more across +the threshold of heaven. + +One trouble, however, shot its slanting bolts athwart the shining warmth +of that opening day and marred its perfection, and that was the thought +of her father. + +She had treated him badly; she had hurt him and her aunt; she had done +wrong by their standards, and she would never persuade them that she +had done right. She thought of her father in the garden, and of her aunt +with her Patience, as she had seen them--how many ages was it ago? Just +one day intervened. She felt as if she had struck them unawares. The +thought of them distressed her without subtracting at all from the +oceans of happiness in which she swam. But she wished she could put the +thing she had done in some way to them so that it would not hurt them +so much as the truth would certainly do. The thought of their faces, +and particularly of her aunt's, as it would meet the fact--disconcerted, +unfriendly, condemning, pained--occurred to her again and again. + +"Oh! I wish," she said, "that people thought alike about these things." + +Capes watched the limpid water dripping from his oar. "I wish they did," +he said, "but they don't." + +"I feel--All this is the rightest of all conceivable things. I want to +tell every one. I want to boast myself." + +"I know." + +"I told them a lie. I told them lies. I wrote three letters yesterday +and tore them up. It was so hopeless to put it to them. At last--I told +a story." + +"You didn't tell them our position?" + +"I implied we had married." + +"They'll find out. They'll know." + +"Not yet." + +"Sooner or later." + +"Possibly--bit by bit.... But it was hopelessly hard to put. I said +I knew he disliked and distrusted you and your work--that you shared +all Russell's opinions: he hates Russell beyond measure--and that we +couldn't possibly face a conventional marriage. What else could one say? +I left him to suppose--a registry perhaps...." + +Capes let his oar smack on the water. + +"Do you mind very much?" + +He shook his head. + +"But it makes me feel inhuman," he added. + +"And me...." + +"It's the perpetual trouble," he said, "of parent and child. They +can't help seeing things in the way they do. Nor can we. WE don't +think they're right, but they don't think we are. A deadlock. In a very +definite sense we are in the wrong--hopelessly in the wrong. But--It's +just this: who was to be hurt?" + +"I wish no one had to be hurt," said Ann Veronica. "When one is happy--I +don't like to think of them. Last time I left home I felt as hard as +nails. But this is all different. It is different." + +"There's a sort of instinct of rebellion," said Capes. "It isn't +anything to do with our times particularly. People think it is, but they +are wrong. It's to do with adolescence. Long before religion and Society +heard of Doubt, girls were all for midnight coaches and Gretna Green. +It's a sort of home-leaving instinct." + +He followed up a line of thought. + +"There's another instinct, too," he went on, "in a state of suppression, +unless I'm very much mistaken; a child-expelling instinct.... I +wonder.... There's no family uniting instinct, anyhow; it's habit +and sentiment and material convenience hold families together after +adolescence. There's always friction, conflict, unwilling concessions. +Always! I don't believe there is any strong natural affection at all +between parents and growing-up children. There wasn't, I know, between +myself and my father. I didn't allow myself to see things as they were +in those days; now I do. I bored him. I hated him. I suppose that +shocks one's ideas.... It's true.... There are sentimental and +traditional deferences and reverences, I know, between father and +son; but that's just exactly what prevents the development of an easy +friendship. Father-worshipping sons are abnormal--and they're no good. +No good at all. One's got to be a better man than one's father, or what +is the good of successive generations? Life is rebellion, or nothing." + +He rowed a stroke and watched the swirl of water from his oar broaden +and die away. At last he took up his thoughts again: "I wonder if, some +day, one won't need to rebel against customs and laws? If this discord +will have gone? Some day, perhaps--who knows?--the old won't coddle and +hamper the young, and the young won't need to fly in the faces of the +old. They'll face facts as facts, and understand. Oh, to face facts! +Gods! what a world it might be if people faced facts! Understanding! +Understanding! There is no other salvation. Some day older people, +perhaps, will trouble to understand younger people, and there won't +be these fierce disruptions; there won't be barriers one must defy or +perish.... That's really our choice now, defy--or futility.... The +world, perhaps, will be educated out of its idea of fixed standards.... +I wonder, Ann Veronica, if, when our time comes, we shall be any +wiser?" + +Ann Veronica watched a water-beetle fussing across the green depths. +"One can't tell. I'm a female thing at bottom. I like high tone for a +flourish and stars and ideas; but I want my things." + + + +Part 2 + + +Capes thought. + +"It's odd--I have no doubt in my mind that what we are doing is wrong," +he said. "And yet I do it without compunction." + +"I never felt so absolutely right," said Ann Veronica. + +"You ARE a female thing at bottom," he admitted. "I'm not nearly so sure +as you. As for me, I look twice at it.... Life is two things, +that's how I see it; two things mixed and muddled up together. Life is +morality--life is adventure. Squire and master. Adventure rules, and +morality--looks up the trains in the Bradshaw. Morality tells you what +is right, and adventure moves you. If morality means anything it means +keeping bounds, respecting implications, respecting implicit bounds. If +individuality means anything it means breaking bounds--adventure. + +"Will you be moral and your species, or immoral and yourself? We've +decided to be immoral. We needn't try and give ourselves airs. We've +deserted the posts in which we found ourselves, cut our duties, exposed +ourselves to risks that may destroy any sort of social usefulness in +us.... I don't know. One keeps rules in order to be one's self. One +studies Nature in order not to be blindly ruled by her. There's no sense +in morality, I suppose, unless you are fundamentally immoral." + +She watched his face as he traced his way through these speculative +thickets. + +"Look at our affair," he went on, looking up at her. "No power on earth +will persuade me we're not two rather disreputable persons. You desert +your home; I throw up useful teaching, risk every hope in your career. +Here we are absconding, pretending to be what we are not; shady, to say +the least of it. It's not a bit of good pretending there's any Higher +Truth or wonderful principle in this business. There isn't. We never +started out in any high-browed manner to scandalize and Shelleyfy. +When first you left your home you had no idea that _I_ was the hidden +impulse. I wasn't. You came out like an ant for your nuptial flight. It +was just a chance that we in particular hit against each other--nothing +predestined about it. We just hit against each other, and here we are +flying off at a tangent, a little surprised at what we are doing, all +our principles abandoned, and tremendously and quite unreasonably proud +of ourselves. Out of all this we have struck a sort of harmony.... +And it's gorgeous!" + +"Glorious!" said Ann Veronica. + +"Would YOU like us--if some one told you the bare outline of our +story?--and what we are doing?" + +"I shouldn't mind," said Ann Veronica. + +"But if some one else asked your advice? If some one else said, 'Here is +my teacher, a jaded married man on the verge of middle age, and he and I +have a violent passion for one another. We propose to disregard all our +ties, all our obligations, all the established prohibitions of society, +and begin life together afresh.' What would you tell her?" + +"If she asked advice, I should say she wasn't fit to do anything of the +sort. I should say that having a doubt was enough to condemn it." + +"But waive that point." + +"It would be different all the same. It wouldn't be you." + +"It wouldn't be you either. I suppose that's the gist of the whole +thing." He stared at a little eddy. "The rule's all right, so long as +there isn't a case. Rules are for established things, like the pieces +and positions of a game. Men and women are not established things; +they're experiments, all of them. Every human being is a new thing, +exists to do new things. Find the thing you want to do most intensely, +make sure that's it, and do it with all your might. If you live, well +and good; if you die, well and good. Your purpose is done.... Well, +this is OUR thing." + +He woke the glassy water to swirling activity again, and made the +deep-blue shapes below writhe and shiver. + +"This is MY thing," said Ann Veronica, softly, with thoughtful eyes upon +him. + +Then she looked up the sweep of pine-trees to the towering sunlit cliffs +and the high heaven above and then back to his face. She drew in a deep +breath of the sweet mountain air. Her eyes were soft and grave, and +there was the faintest of smiles upon her resolute lips. + + + +Part 3 + + +Later they loitered along a winding path above the inn, and made love +to one another. Their journey had made them indolent, the afternoon was +warm, and it seemed impossible to breathe a sweeter air. The flowers and +turf, a wild strawberry, a rare butterfly, and suchlike little intimate +things had become more interesting than mountains. Their flitting hands +were always touching. Deep silences came between them.... + +"I had thought to go on to Kandersteg," said Capes, "but this is a +pleasant place. There is not a soul in the inn but ourselves. Let +us stay the night here. Then we can loiter and gossip to our heart's +content." + +"Agreed," said Ann Veronica. + +"After all, it's our honeymoon." + +"All we shall get," said Ann Veronica. + +"This place is very beautiful." + +"Any place would be beautiful," said Ann Veronica, in a low voice. + +For a time they walked in silence. + +"I wonder," she began, presently, "why I love you--and love you so +much?... I know now what it is to be an abandoned female. I AM an +abandoned female. I'm not ashamed--of the things I'm doing. I want to +put myself into your hands. You know--I wish I could roll my little body +up small and squeeze it into your hand and grip your fingers upon it. +Tight. I want you to hold me and have me SO.... Everything. Everything. +It's a pure joy of giving--giving to YOU. I have never spoken of these +things to any human being. Just dreamed--and ran away even from my +dreams. It is as if my lips had been sealed about them. And now I break +the seals--for you. Only I wish--I wish to-day I was a thousand times, +ten thousand times more beautiful." + +Capes lifted her hand and kissed it. + +"You are a thousand times more beautiful," he said, "than anything else +could be.... You are you. You are all the beauty in the world. Beauty +doesn't mean, never has meant, anything--anything at all but you. It +heralded you, promised you...." + + + +Part 4 + + +They lay side by side in a shallow nest of turf and mosses among +bowlders and stunted bushes on a high rock, and watched the day sky +deepen to evening between the vast precipices overhead and looked over +the tree-tops down the widening gorge. A distant suggestion of chalets +and a glimpse of the road set them talking for a time of the world they +had left behind. + +Capes spoke casually of their plans for work. "It's a flabby, +loose-willed world we have to face. It won't even know whether to be +scandalized at us or forgiving. It will hold aloof, a little undecided +whether to pelt or not--" + +"That depends whether we carry ourselves as though we expected pelting," +said Ann Veronica. + +"We won't." + +"No fear!" + +"Then, as we succeed, it will begin to sidle back to us. It will do its +best to overlook things--" + +"If we let it, poor dear." + +"That's if we succeed. If we fail," said Capes, "then--" + +"We aren't going to fail," said Ann Veronica. + +Life seemed a very brave and glorious enterprise to Ann Veronica that +day. She was quivering with the sense of Capes at her side and glowing +with heroic love; it seemed to her that if they put their hands jointly +against the Alps and pushed they would be able to push them aside. She +lay and nibbled at a sprig of dwarf rhododendron. + +"FAIL!" she said. + + + +Part 5 + + +Presently it occurred to Ann Veronica to ask about the journey he had +planned. He had his sections of the Siegfried map folded in his pocket, +and he squatted up with his legs crossed like an Indian idol while +she lay prone beside him and followed every movement of his indicatory +finger. + +"Here," he said, "is this Blau See, and here we rest until to-morrow. I +think we rest here until to-morrow?" + +There was a brief silence. + +"It is a very pleasant place," said Ann Veronica, biting a rhododendron +stalk through, and with that faint shadow of a smile returning to her +lips.... + +"And then?" said Ann Veronica. + +"Then we go on to this place, the Oeschinensee. It's a lake among +precipices, and there is a little inn where we can stay, and sit and eat +our dinner at a pleasant table that looks upon the lake. For some days +we shall be very idle there among the trees and rocks. There are boats +on the lake and shady depths and wildernesses of pine-wood. After a day +or so, perhaps, we will go on one or two little excursions and see how +good your head is--a mild scramble or so; and then up to a hut on a pass +just here, and out upon the Blumlis-alp glacier that spreads out so and +so." + +She roused herself from some dream at the word. "Glaciers?" she said. + +"Under the Wilde Frau--which was named after you." + +He bent and kissed her hair and paused, and then forced his attention +back to the map. "One day," he resumed, "we will start off early and +come down into Kandersteg and up these zigzags and here and here, and so +past this Daubensee to a tiny inn--it won't be busy yet, though; we +may get it all to ourselves--on the brim of the steepest zigzag you can +imagine, thousands of feet of zigzag; and you will sit and eat lunch +with me and look out across the Rhone Valley and over blue distances +beyond blue distances to the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa and a long +regiment of sunny, snowy mountains. And when we see them we shall at +once want to go to them--that's the way with beautiful things--and +down we shall go, like flies down a wall, to Leukerbad, and so to Leuk +Station, here, and then by train up the Rhone Valley and this little +side valley to Stalden; and there, in the cool of the afternoon, we +shall start off up a gorge, torrents and cliffs below us and above us, +to sleep in a half-way inn, and go on next day to Saas Fee, Saas of +the Magic, Saas of the Pagan People. And there, about Saas, are ice +and snows again, and sometimes we will loiter among the rocks and trees +about Saas or peep into Samuel Butler's chapels, and sometimes we will +climb up out of the way of the other people on to the glaciers and snow. +And, for one expedition at least, we will go up this desolate valley +here to Mattmark, and so on to Monte Moro. There indeed you see Monte +Rosa. Almost the best of all." + +"Is it very beautiful?" + +"When I saw it there it was very beautiful. It was wonderful. It was the +crowned queen of mountains in her robes of shining white. It towered up +high above the level of the pass, thousands of feet, still, shining, and +white, and below, thousands of feet below, was a floor of little woolly +clouds. And then presently these clouds began to wear thin and expose +steep, deep slopes, going down and down, with grass and pine-trees, down +and down, and at last, through a great rent in the clouds, bare roofs, +shining like very minute pin-heads, and a road like a fibre of white +silk-Macugnana, in Italy. That will be a fine day--it will have to be, +when first you set eyes on Italy.... That's as far as we go." + +"Can't we go down into Italy?" + +"No," he said; "it won't run to that now. We must wave our hands at the +blue hills far away there and go back to London and work." + +"But Italy--" + +"Italy's for a good girl," he said, and laid his hand for a moment on +her shoulder. "She must look forward to Italy." + +"I say," she reflected, "you ARE rather the master, you know." + +The idea struck him as novel. "Of course I'm manager for this +expedition," he said, after an interval of self-examination. + +She slid her cheek down the tweed sleeve of his coat. "Nice sleeve," she +said, and came to his hand and kissed it. + +"I say!" he cried. "Look here! Aren't you going a little too far? +This--this is degradation--making a fuss with sleeves. You mustn't do +things like that." + +"Why not?" + +"Free woman--and equal." + +"I do it--of my own free will," said Ann Veronica, kissing his hand +again. "It's nothing to what I WILL do." + +"Oh, well!" he said, a little doubtfully, "it's just a phase," and bent +down and rested his hand on her shoulder for a moment, with his heart +beating and his nerves a-quiver. Then as she lay very still, with her +hands clinched and her black hair tumbled about her face, he came still +closer and softly kissed the nape of her neck.... + + + +Part 6 + + +Most of the things that he had planned they did. But they climbed more +than he had intended because Ann Veronica proved rather a good climber, +steady-headed and plucky, rather daring, but quite willing to be +cautious at his command. + +One of the things that most surprised him in her was her capacity for +blind obedience. She loved to be told to do things. + +He knew the circle of mountains about Saas Fee fairly well: he had been +there twice before, and it was fine to get away from the straggling +pedestrians into the high, lonely places, and sit and munch sandwiches +and talk together and do things together that were just a little +difficult and dangerous. And they could talk, they found; and never +once, it seemed, did their meaning and intention hitch. They were +enormously pleased with one another; they found each other beyond +measure better than they had expected, if only because of the want of +substance in mere expectation. Their conversation degenerated again +and again into a strain of self-congratulation that would have irked an +eavesdropper. + +"You're--I don't know," said Ann Veronica. "You're splendid." + +"It isn't that you're splendid or I," said Capes. "But we satisfy one +another. Heaven alone knows why. So completely! The oddest fitness! +What is it made of? Texture of skin and texture of mind? Complexion and +voice. I don't think I've got illusions, nor you.... If I had never +met anything of you at all but a scrap of your skin binding a book, Ann +Veronica, I know I would have kept that somewhere near to me.... All +your faults are just jolly modelling to make you real and solid." + +"The faults are the best part of it," said Ann Veronica; "why, even our +little vicious strains run the same way. Even our coarseness." + +"Coarse?" said Capes, "We're not coarse." + +"But if we were?" said Ann Veronica. + +"I can talk to you and you to me without a scrap of effort," said +Capes; "that's the essence of it. It's made up of things as small as the +diameter of hairs and big as life and death.... One always dreamed +of this and never believed it. It's the rarest luck, the wildest, most +impossible accident. Most people, every one I know else, seem to have +mated with foreigners and to talk uneasily in unfamiliar tongues, to be +afraid of the knowledge the other one has, of the other one's perpetual +misjudgment and misunderstandings. + +"Why don't they wait?" he added. + +Ann Veronica had one of her flashes of insight. + +"One doesn't wait," said Ann Veronica. + +She expanded that. "_I_ shouldn't have waited," she said. "I might have +muddled for a time. But it's as you say. I've had the rarest luck and +fallen on my feet." + +"We've both fallen on our feet! We're the rarest of mortals! The real +thing! There's not a compromise nor a sham nor a concession between +us. We aren't afraid; we don't bother. We don't consider each other; +we needn't. That wrappered life, as you call it--we've burned the +confounded rags! Danced out of it! We're stark!" + +"Stark!" echoed Ann Veronica. + + + +Part 7 + + +As they came back from that day's climb--it was up the Mittaghorn--they +had to cross a shining space of wet, steep rocks between two grass +slopes that needed a little care. There were a few loose, broken +fragments of rock to reckon with upon the ledges, and one place where +hands did as much work as toes. They used the rope--not that a rope was +at all necessary, but because Ann Veronica's exalted state of mind made +the fact of the rope agreeably symbolical; and, anyhow, it did insure a +joint death in the event of some remotely possibly mischance. Capes went +first, finding footholds and, where the drops in the strata-edges came +like long, awkward steps, placing Ann Veronica's feet. About half-way +across this interval, when everything seemed going well, Capes had a +shock. + +"Heavens!" exclaimed Ann Veronica, with extraordinary passion. "My God!" +and ceased to move. + +Capes became rigid and adhesive. Nothing ensued. "All right?" he asked. + +"I'll have to pay it." + +"Eh?" + +"I've forgotten something. Oh, cuss it!" + +"Eh?" + +"He said I would." + +"What?" + +"That's the devil of it!" + +"Devil of what?... You DO use vile language!" + +"Forget about it like this." + +"Forget WHAT?" + +"And I said I wouldn't. I said I'd do anything. I said I'd make shirts." + +"Shirts?" + +"Shirts at one--and--something a dozen. Oh, goodness! Bilking! Ann +Veronica, you're a bilker!" + +Pause. + +"Will you tell me what all this is about?" said Capes. + +"It's about forty pounds." + +Capes waited patiently. + +"G. I'm sorry.... But you've got to lend me forty pounds." + +"It's some sort of delirium," said Capes. "The rarefied air? I thought +you had a better head." + +"No! I'll explain lower. It's all right. Let's go on climbing now. It's +a thing I've unaccountably overlooked. All right really. It can wait +a bit longer. I borrowed forty pounds from Mr. Ramage. Thank goodness +you'll understand. That's why I chucked Manning.... All right, I'm +coming. But all this business has driven it clean out of my head.... +That's why he was so annoyed, you know." + +"Who was annoyed?" + +"Mr. Ramage--about the forty pounds." She took a step. "My dear," she +added, by way of afterthought, "you DO obliterate things!" + + + +Part 8 + + +They found themselves next day talking love to one another high up on +some rocks above a steep bank of snow that overhung a precipice on the +eastern side of the Fee glacier. By this time Capes' hair had bleached +nearly white, and his skin had become a skin of red copper shot with +gold. They were now both in a state of unprecedented physical fitness. +And such skirts as Ann Veronica had had when she entered the valley of +Saas were safely packed away in the hotel, and she wore a leather belt +and loose knickerbockers and puttees--a costume that suited the fine, +long lines of her limbs far better than any feminine walking-dress could +do. Her complexion had resisted the snow-glare wonderfully; her skin had +only deepened its natural warmth a little under the Alpine sun. She had +pushed aside her azure veil, taken off her snow-glasses, and sat smiling +under her hand at the shining glories--the lit cornices, the blue +shadows, the softly rounded, enormous snow masses, the deep places +full of quivering luminosity--of the Taschhorn and Dom. The sky was +cloudless, effulgent blue. + +Capes sat watching and admiring her, and then he fell praising the day +and fortune and their love for each other. + +"Here we are," he said, "shining through each other like light through a +stained-glass window. With this air in our blood, this sunlight soaking +us.... Life is so good. Can it ever be so good again?" + +Ann Veronica put out a firm hand and squeezed his arm. "It's very good," +she said. "It's glorious good!" + +"Suppose now--look at this long snow-slope and then that blue deep +beyond--do you see that round pool of color in the ice--a thousand feet +or more below? Yes? Well, think--we've got to go but ten steps and lie +down and put our arms about each other. See? Down we should rush in a +foam--in a cloud of snow--to flight and a dream. All the rest of +our lives would be together then, Ann Veronica. Every moment. And no +ill-chances." + +"If you tempt me too much," she said, after a silence, "I shall do +it. I need only just jump up and throw myself upon you. I'm a desperate +young woman. And then as we went down you'd try to explain. And that +would spoil it.... You know you don't mean it." + +"No, I don't. But I liked to say it." + +"Rather! But I wonder why you don't mean it?" + +"Because, I suppose, the other thing is better. What other reason could +there be? It's more complex, but it's better. THIS, this glissade, would +be damned scoundrelism. You know that, and I know that, though we might +be put to it to find a reason why. It would be swindling. Drawing the +pay of life and then not living. And besides--We're going to live, Ann +Veronica! Oh, the things we'll do, the life we'll lead! There'll be +trouble in it at times--you and I aren't going to run without friction. +But we've got the brains to get over that, and tongues in our heads to +talk to each other. We sha'n't hang up on any misunderstanding. Not us. +And we're going to fight that old world down there. That old world that +had shoved up that silly old hotel, and all the rest of it.... If we +don't live it will think we are afraid of it.... Die, indeed! We're +going to do work; we're going to unfold about each other; we're going to +have children." + +"Girls!" cried Ann Veronica. + +"Boys!" said Capes. + +"Both!" said Ann Veronica. "Lots of 'em!" + +Capes chuckled. "You delicate female!" + +"Who cares," said Ann Veronica, "seeing it's you? Warm, soft little +wonders! Of course I want them." + + + +Part 9 + + +"All sorts of things we're going to do," said Capes; "all sorts of times +we're going to have. Sooner or later we'll certainly do something to +clean those prisons you told me about--limewash the underside of life. +You and I. We can love on a snow cornice, we can love over a pail of +whitewash. Love anywhere. Anywhere! Moonlight and music--pleasing, you +know, but quite unnecessary. We met dissecting dogfish.... Do you +remember your first day with me?... Do you indeed remember? The smell +of decay and cheap methylated spirit!... My dear! we've had so many +moments! I used to go over the times we'd had together, the things we'd +said--like a rosary of beads. But now it's beads by the cask--like the +hold of a West African trader. It feels like too much gold-dust clutched +in one's hand. One doesn't want to lose a grain. And one must--some of +it must slip through one's fingers." + +"I don't care if it does," said Ann Veronica. "I don't care a rap for +remembering. I care for you. This moment couldn't be better until the +next moment comes. That's how it takes me. Why should WE hoard? We +aren't going out presently, like Japanese lanterns in a gale. It's the +poor dears who do, who know they will, know they can't keep it up, who +need to clutch at way-side flowers. And put 'em in little books for +remembrance. Flattened flowers aren't for the likes of us. Moments, +indeed! We like each other fresh and fresh. It isn't illusions--for us. +We two just love each other--the real, identical other--all the time." + +"The real, identical other," said Capes, and took and bit the tip of her +little finger. + +"There's no delusions, so far as I know," said Ann Veronica. + +"I don't believe there is one. If there is, it's a mere +wrapping--there's better underneath. It's only as if I'd begun to know +you the day before yesterday or there-abouts. You keep on coming truer, +after you have seemed to come altogether true. You... brick!" + + + +Part 10 + + +"To think," he cried, "you are ten years younger than I!... There are +times when you make me feel a little thing at your feet--a young, silly, +protected thing. Do you know, Ann Veronica, it is all a lie about your +birth certificate; a forgery--and fooling at that. You are one of the +Immortals. Immortal! You were in the beginning, and all the men in the +world who have known what love is have worshipped at your feet. You have +converted me to--Lester Ward! You are my dear friend, you are a slip of +a girl, but there are moments when my head has been on your breast, when +your heart has been beating close to my ears, when I have known you for +the goddess, when I have wished myself your slave, when I have wished +that you could kill me for the joy of being killed by you. You are the +High Priestess of Life...." + +"Your priestess," whispered Ann Veronica, softly. "A silly little +priestess who knew nothing of life at all until she came to you." + + + +Part 11 + + +They sat for a time without speaking a word, in an enormous shining +globe of mutual satisfaction. + +"Well," said Capes, at length, "we've to go down, Ann Veronica. Life +waits for us." + +He stood up and waited for her to move. + +"Gods!" cried Ann Veronica, and kept him standing. "And to think that +it's not a full year ago since I was a black-hearted rebel school-girl, +distressed, puzzled, perplexed, not understanding that this great +force of love was bursting its way through me! All those nameless +discontents--they were no more than love's birth-pangs. I felt--I +felt living in a masked world. I felt as though I had bandaged eyes. I +felt--wrapped in thick cobwebs. They blinded me. They got in my mouth. +And now--Dear! Dear! The dayspring from on high hath visited me. I love. +I am loved. I want to shout! I want to sing! I am glad! I am glad to be +alive because you are alive! I am glad to be a woman because you are a +man! I am glad! I am glad! I am glad! I thank God for life and you. I +thank God for His sunlight on your face. I thank God for the beauty +you love and the faults you love. I thank God for the very skin that is +peeling from your nose, for all things great and small that make us what +we are. This is grace I am saying! Oh! my dear! all the joy and weeping +of life are mixed in me now and all the gratitude. Never a new-born +dragon-fly that spread its wings in the morning has felt as glad as I!" + + + +CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH + +IN PERSPECTIVE + + +Part 1 + + +About four years and a quarter later--to be exact, it was four years and +four months--Mr. and Mrs. Capes stood side by side upon an old Persian +carpet that did duty as a hearthrug in the dining-room of their flat +and surveyed a shining dinner-table set for four people, lit by +skilfully-shaded electric lights, brightened by frequent gleams of +silver, and carefully and simply adorned with sweet-pea blossom. Capes +had altered scarcely at all during the interval, except for a new +quality of smartness in the cut of his clothes, but Ann Veronica was +nearly half an inch taller; her face was at once stronger and softer, +her neck firmer and rounder, and her carriage definitely more womanly +than it had been in the days of her rebellion. She was a woman now to +the tips of her fingers; she had said good-bye to her girlhood in the +old garden four years and a quarter ago. She was dressed in a simple +evening gown of soft creamy silk, with a yoke of dark old embroidery +that enhanced the gentle gravity of her style, and her black hair flowed +off her open forehead to pass under the control of a simple ribbon of +silver. A silver necklace enhanced the dusky beauty of her neck. Both +husband and wife affected an unnatural ease of manner for the benefit of +the efficient parlor-maid, who was putting the finishing touches to the +sideboard arrangements. + +"It looks all right," said Capes. + +"I think everything's right," said Ann Veronica, with the roaming eye of +a capable but not devoted house-mistress. + +"I wonder if they will seem altered," she remarked for the third time. + +"There I can't help," said Capes. + +He walked through a wide open archway, curtained with deep-blue +curtains, into the apartment that served as a reception-room. Ann +Veronica, after a last survey of the dinner appointments, followed him, +rustling, came to his side by the high brass fender, and touched two or +three ornaments on the mantel above the cheerful fireplace. + +"It's still a marvel to me that we are to be forgiven," she said, +turning. + +"My charm of manner, I suppose. But, indeed, he's very human." + +"Did you tell him of the registry office?" + +"No--o--certainly not so emphatically as I did about the play." + +"It was an inspiration--your speaking to him?" + +"I felt impudent. I believe I am getting impudent. I had not been near +the Royal Society since--since you disgraced me. What's that?" + +They both stood listening. It was not the arrival of the guests, but +merely the maid moving about in the hall. + +"Wonderful man!" said Ann Veronica, reassured, and stroking his cheek +with her finger. + +Capes made a quick movement as if to bite that aggressive digit, but it +withdrew to Ann Veronica's side. + +"I was really interested in his stuff. I WAS talking to him before I saw +his name on the card beside the row of microscopes. Then, naturally, I +went on talking. He--he has rather a poor opinion of his contemporaries. +Of course, he had no idea who I was." + +"But how did you tell him? You've never told me. Wasn't it--a little bit +of a scene?" + +"Oh! let me see. I said I hadn't been at the Royal Society soiree for +four years, and got him to tell me about some of the fresh Mendelian +work. He loves the Mendelians because he hates all the big names of +the eighties and nineties. Then I think I remarked that science was +disgracefully under-endowed, and confessed I'd had to take to +more profitable courses. 'The fact of it is,' I said, 'I'm the new +playwright, Thomas More. Perhaps you've heard--?' Well, you know, he +had." + +"Fame!" + +"Isn't it? 'I've not seen your play, Mr. More,' he said, 'but I'm told +it's the most amusing thing in London at the present time. A friend +of mine, Ogilvy'--I suppose that's Ogilvy & Ogilvy, who do so many +divorces, Vee?--'was speaking very highly of it--very highly!'" He +smiled into her eyes. + +"You are developing far too retentive a memory for praises," said Ann +Veronica. + +"I'm still new to them. But after that it was easy. I told him instantly +and shamelessly that the play was going to be worth ten thousand pounds. +He agreed it was disgraceful. Then I assumed a rather portentous manner +to prepare him." + +"How? Show me." + +"I can't be portentous, dear, when you're about. It's my other side of +the moon. But I was portentous, I can assure you. 'My name's NOT More, +Mr. Stanley,' I said. 'That's my pet name.'" + +"Yes?" + +"I think--yes, I went on in a pleasing blend of the casual and sotto +voce, 'The fact of it is, sir, I happen to be your son-in-law, Capes. I +do wish you could come and dine with us some evening. It would make my +wife very happy.'" + +"What did he say?" + +"What does any one say to an invitation to dinner point-blank? One tries +to collect one's wits. 'She is constantly thinking of you,' I said." + +"And he accepted meekly?" + +"Practically. What else could he do? You can't kick up a scene on the +spur of the moment in the face of such conflicting values as he +had before him. With me behaving as if everything was infinitely +matter-of-fact, what could he do? And just then Heaven sent old +Manningtree--I didn't tell you before of the fortunate intervention of +Manningtree, did I? He was looking quite infernally distinguished, with +a wide crimson ribbon across him--what IS a wide crimson ribbon? Some +sort of knight, I suppose. He is a knight. 'Well, young man,' he said, +'we haven't seen you lately,' and something about 'Bateson & Co.'--he's +frightfully anti-Mendelian--having it all their own way. So I introduced +him to my father-in-law like a shot. I think that WAS decision. Yes, it +was Manningtree really secured your father. He--" + +"Here they are!" said Ann Veronica as the bell sounded. + + + +Part 2 + + +They received the guests in their pretty little hall with genuine +effusion. Miss Stanley threw aside a black cloak to reveal a discreet +and dignified arrangement of brown silk, and then embraced Ann Veronica +with warmth. "So very clear and cold," she said. "I feared we might +have a fog." The housemaid's presence acted as a useful restraint. Ann +Veronica passed from her aunt to her father, and put her arms about him +and kissed his cheek. "Dear old daddy!" she said, and was amazed to +find herself shedding tears. She veiled her emotion by taking off his +overcoat. "And this is Mr. Capes?" she heard her aunt saying. + +All four people moved a little nervously into the drawing-room, +maintaining a sort of fluttered amiability of sound and movement. + +Mr. Stanley professed a great solicitude to warm his hands. "Quite +unusually cold for the time of year," he said. "Everything very nice, +I am sure," Miss Stanley murmured to Capes as he steered her to a place +upon the little sofa before the fire. Also she made little pussy-like +sounds of a reassuring nature. + +"And let's have a look at you, Vee!" said Mr. Stanley, standing up with +a sudden geniality and rubbing his hands together. + +Ann Veronica, who knew her dress became her, dropped a curtsy to her +father's regard. + +Happily they had no one else to wait for, and it heartened her mightily +to think that she had ordered the promptest possible service of the +dinner. Capes stood beside Miss Stanley, who was beaming unnaturally, +and Mr. Stanley, in his effort to seem at ease, took entire possession +of the hearthrug. + +"You found the flat easily?" said Capes in the pause. "The numbers are a +little difficult to see in the archway. They ought to put a lamp." + +Her father declared there had been no difficulty. + +"Dinner is served, m'm," said the efficient parlor-maid in the archway, +and the worst was over. + +"Come, daddy," said Ann Veronica, following her husband and Miss +Stanley; and in the fulness of her heart she gave a friendly squeeze to +the parental arm. + +"Excellent fellow!" he answered a little irrelevantly. "I didn't +understand, Vee." + +"Quite charming apartments," Miss Stanley admired; "charming! Everything +is so pretty and convenient." + +The dinner was admirable as a dinner; nothing went wrong, from the +golden and excellent clear soup to the delightful iced marrons +and cream; and Miss Stanley's praises died away to an appreciative +acquiescence. A brisk talk sprang up between Capes and Mr. Stanley, to +which the two ladies subordinated themselves intelligently. The +burning topic of the Mendelian controversy was approached on one or two +occasions, but avoided dexterously; and they talked chiefly of letters +and art and the censorship of the English stage. Mr. Stanley was +inclined to think the censorship should be extended to the supply of +what he styled latter-day fiction; good wholesome stories were being +ousted, he said, by "vicious, corrupting stuff" that "left a bad taste +in the mouth." He declared that no book could be satisfactory that left +a bad taste in the mouth, however much it seized and interested the +reader at the time. He did not like it, he said, with a significant +look, to be reminded of either his books or his dinners after he had +done with them. Capes agreed with the utmost cordiality. + +"Life is upsetting enough, without the novels taking a share," said Mr. +Stanley. + +For a time Ann Veronica's attention was diverted by her aunt's interest +in the salted almonds. + +"Quite particularly nice," said her aunt. "Exceptionally so." + +When Ann Veronica could attend again she found the men were discussing +the ethics of the depreciation of house property through the increasing +tumult of traffic in the West End, and agreeing with each other to a +devastating extent. It came into her head with real emotional force that +this must be some particularly fantastic sort of dream. It seemed to her +that her father was in some inexplicable way meaner-looking than she +had supposed, and yet also, as unaccountably, appealing. His tie had +demanded a struggle; he ought to have taken a clean one after his +first failure. Why was she noting things like this? Capes seemed +self-possessed and elaborately genial and commonplace, but she knew him +to be nervous by a little occasional clumsiness, by the faintest shadow +of vulgarity in the urgency of his hospitality. She wished he could +smoke and dull his nerves a little. A gust of irrational impatience blew +through her being. Well, they'd got to the pheasants, and in a little +while he would smoke. What was it she had expected? Surely her moods +were getting a little out of hand. + +She wished her father and aunt would not enjoy their dinner with such +quiet determination. Her father and her husband, who had both been a +little pale at their first encounter, were growing now just faintly +flushed. It was a pity people had to eat food. + +"I suppose," said her father, "I have read at least half the novels that +have been at all successful during the last twenty years. Three a week +is my allowance, and, if I get short ones, four. I change them in the +morning at Cannon Street, and take my book as I come down." + +It occurred to her that she had never seen her father dining out +before, never watched him critically as an equal. To Capes he was almost +deferential, and she had never seen him deferential in the old time, +never. The dinner was stranger than she had ever anticipated. It was +as if she had grown right past her father into something older and +of infinitely wider outlook, as if he had always been unsuspectedly a +flattened figure, and now she had discovered him from the other side. + +It was a great relief to arrive at last at that pause when she could say +to her aunt, "Now, dear?" and rise and hold back the curtain through the +archway. Capes and her father stood up, and her father made a belated +movement toward the curtain. She realized that he was the sort of man +one does not think much about at dinners. And Capes was thinking that +his wife was a supremely beautiful woman. He reached a silver cigar and +cigarette box from the sideboard and put it before his father-in-law, +and for a time the preliminaries of smoking occupied them both. Then +Capes flittered to the hearthrug and poked the fire, stood up, and +turned about. "Ann Veronica is looking very well, don't you think?" he +said, a little awkwardly. + +"Very," said Mr. Stanley. "Very," and cracked a walnut appreciatively. + +"Life--things--I don't think her prospects now--Hopeful outlook." + +"You were in a difficult position," Mr. Stanley pronounced, and seemed +to hesitate whether he had not gone too far. He looked at his port wine +as though that tawny ruby contained the solution of the matter. "All's +well that ends well," he said; "and the less one says about things the +better." + +"Of course," said Capes, and threw a newly lit cigar into the fire +through sheer nervousness. "Have some more port wine, sir?" + +"It's a very sound wine," said Mr. Stanley, consenting with dignity. + +"Ann Veronica has never looked quite so well, I think," said Capes, +clinging, because of a preconceived plan, to the suppressed topic. + + + +Part 3 + + +At last the evening was over, and Capes and his wife had gone down to +see Mr. Stanley and his sister into a taxicab, and had waved an amiable +farewell from the pavement steps. + +"Great dears!" said Capes, as the vehicle passed out of sight. + +"Yes, aren't they?" said Ann Veronica, after a thoughtful pause. And +then, "They seem changed." + +"Come in out of the cold," said Capes, and took her arm. + +"They seem smaller, you know, even physically smaller," she said. + +"You've grown out of them.... Your aunt liked the pheasant." + +"She liked everything. Did you hear us through the archway, talking +cookery?" + +They went up by the lift in silence. + +"It's odd," said Ann Veronica, re-entering the flat. + +"What's odd?" + +"Oh, everything!" + +She shivered, and went to the fire and poked it. Capes sat down in the +arm-chair beside her. + +"Life's so queer," she said, kneeling and looking into the flames. "I +wonder--I wonder if we shall ever get like that." + +She turned a firelit face to her husband. "Did you tell him?" + +Capes smiled faintly. "Yes." + +"How?" + +"Well--a little clumsily." + +"But how?" + +"I poured him out some port wine, and I said--let me see--oh, 'You are +going to be a grandfather!'" + +"Yes. Was he pleased?" + +"Calmly! He said--you won't mind my telling you?" + +"Not a bit." + +"He said, 'Poor Alice has got no end!'" + +"Alice's are different," said Ann Veronica, after an interval. "Quite +different. She didn't choose her man.... Well, I told aunt.... +Husband of mine, I think we have rather overrated the emotional capacity +of those--those dears." + +"What did your aunt say?" + +"She didn't even kiss me. She said"--Ann Veronica shivered again--"'I +hope it won't make you uncomfortable, my dear'--like that--'and +whatever you do, do be careful of your hair!' I think--I judge from +her manner--that she thought it was just a little indelicate of +us--considering everything; but she tried to be practical and +sympathetic and live down to our standards." + +Capes looked at his wife's unsmiling face. + +"Your father," he said, "remarked that all's well that ends well, and +that he was disposed to let bygones be bygones. He then spoke with a +certain fatherly kindliness of the past...." + +"And my heart has ached for him!" + +"Oh, no doubt it cut him at the time. It must have cut him." + +"We might even have--given it up for them!" + +"I wonder if we could." + +"I suppose all IS well that ends well. Somehow to-night--I don't know." + +"I suppose so. I'm glad the old sore is assuaged. Very glad. But if we +had gone under--!" + +They regarded one another silently, and Ann Veronica had one of her +penetrating flashes. + +"We are not the sort that goes under," said Ann Veronica, holding her +hands so that the red reflections vanished from her eyes. "We settled +long ago--we're hard stuff. We're hard stuff!" + +Then she went on: "To think that is my father! Oh, my dear! He stood +over me like a cliff; the thought of him nearly turned me aside from +everything we have done. He was the social order; he was law and wisdom. +And they come here, and they look at our furniture to see if it is good; +and they are not glad, it does not stir them, that at last, at last we +can dare to have children." + +She dropped back into a crouching attitude and began to weep. "Oh, +my dear!" she cried, and suddenly flung herself, kneeling, into her +husband's arms. + +"Do you remember the mountains? Do you remember how we loved one +another? How intensely we loved one another! Do you remember the light +on things and the glory of things? I'm greedy, I'm greedy! I want +children like the mountains and life like the sky. Oh! and love--love! +We've had so splendid a time, and fought our fight and won. And it's +like the petals falling from a flower. Oh, I've loved love, dear! I've +loved love and you, and the glory of you; and the great time is over, +and I have to go carefully and bear children, and--take care of my +hair--and when I am done with that I shall be an old woman. The petals +have fallen--the red petals we loved so. We're hedged about with +discretions--and all this furniture--and successes! We are successful +at last! Successful! But the mountains, dear! We won't forget the +mountains, dear, ever. That shining slope of snow, and how we talked of +death! We might have died! Even when we are old, when we are rich as we +may be, we won't forget the tune when we cared nothing for anything but +the joy of one another, when we risked everything for one another, when +all the wrappings and coverings seemed to have fallen from life and left +it light and fire. Stark and stark! Do you remember it all?... Say +you will never forget! That these common things and secondary things +sha'n't overwhelm us. These petals! I've been wanting to cry all the +evening, cry here on your shoulder for my petals. Petals!... Silly +woman!... I've never had these crying fits before...." + +"Blood of my heart!" whispered Capes, holding her close to him. "I know. +I understand." + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ann Veronica, by H. G. 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