Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story Read online

  Part 2

  Now, while Ann Veronica was taking these soundings in the industrialsea, and measuring herself against the world as it is, she was alsomaking extensive explorations among the ideas and attitudes of a numberof human beings who seemed to be largely concerned with the world as itought to be. She was drawn first by Miss Miniver, and then by her ownnatural interest, into a curious stratum of people who are busied withdreams of world progress, of great and fundamental changes, of a New Agethat is to replace all the stresses and disorders of contemporary life.

  Miss Miniver learned of her flight and got her address from theWidgetts. She arrived about nine o'clock the next evening in a state oftremulous enthusiasm. She followed the landlady half way up-stairs, andcalled up to Ann Veronica, "May I come up? It's me! You know--NettieMiniver!" She appeared before Ann Veronica could clearly recall whoNettie Miniver might be.

  There was a wild light in her eye, and her straight hair was outdemonstrating and suffragetting upon some independent notions of itsown. Her fingers were bursting through her gloves, as if to get at onceinto touch with Ann Veronica. "You're Glorious!" said Miss Miniver intones of rapture, holding a hand in each of hers and peering up into AnnVeronica's face. "Glorious! You're so calm, dear, and so resolute, soserene!

  "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 amgetting to watch all women. I thought then perhaps you didn't care, thatyou were like so many of them. NOW it's just as though you had grown upsuddenly."

  She stopped, and then suggested: "I wonder--I should love--if it wasanything _I_ said."

  She did not wait for Ann Veronica's reply. She seemed to assume that itmust certainly be something she had said. "They all catch on," she said."It spreads like wildfire. This is such a grand time! Such a glorioustime! There never was such a time as this! Everything seems so close tofruition, so coming on and leading on! The Insurrection of Women! Theyspring up everywhere. Tell me all that happened, one sister-woman toanother."

  She chilled Ann Veronica a little by that last phrase, and yet themagnetism of her fellowship and enthusiasm was very strong; and it waspleasant to be made out a heroine after so much expostulation and somany secret doubts.

  But she did not listen long; she wanted to talk. She sat, crouchedtogether, by the corner of the hearthrug under the bookcase thatsupported the pig's skull, and looked into the fire and up at AnnVeronica's face, and let herself go. "Let us put the lamp out," shesaid; "the flames are ever so much better for talking," and Ann Veronicaagreed. "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 significanceof what she was saying shaped itself slowly to Ann Veronica'sapprehension. It presented itself in the likeness of a great, gray, dullworld--a brutal, superstitious, confused, and wrong-headed world,that hurt people and limited people unaccountably. In remote times andcountries its evil tendencies had expressed themselves in the form oftyrannies, massacres, wars, and what not; but just at present in Englandthey shaped as commercialism and competition, silk hats, suburbanmorals, the sweating system, and the subjection of women. So far thething was acceptable enough. But over against the world Miss Miniverassembled a small but energetic minority, the Children of Light--peopleshe described as "being in the van," or "altogether in the van," aboutwhom Ann Veronica's mind was disposed to be more sceptical.

  Everything, Miss Miniver said, was "working up," everything was "comingon"--the Higher Thought, the Simple Life, Socialism, Humanitarianism, itwas 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 beenprecursors of this Progress at great intervals, voices that had spokenand ceased, but now it was all coming on together in a rush. Shementioned, with familiar respect, Christ and Buddha and Shelley andNietzsche and Plato. Pioneers all of them. Such names shone brightly inthe darkness, with black spaces of unilluminated emptiness about them,as stars shine in the night; but now--now it was different; now it wasdawn--the real dawn.

  "The women are taking it up," said Miss Miniver; "the women and thecommon 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. Youcouldn't help it. Something drew you. Something draws everybody. Fromsuburbs, from country towns--everywhere. I see all the Movements. Asfar as I can, I belong to them all. I keep my finger on the pulse ofthings."

  Ann Veronica said nothing.

  "The dawn!" said Miss Miniver, with her glasses reflecting the fire likepools of blood-red flame.

  "I came to London," said Ann Veronica, "rather because of my owndifficulty. I don't know that I understand altogether."

  "Of course you don't," said Miss Miniver, gesticulating triumphantlywith 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, youwill. You must let me take you to things--to meetings and things, toconferences and talks. Then you will begin to see. You will begin to seeit all opening out. I am up to the ears in it all--every moment I canspare. I throw up work--everything! I just teach in one school, one goodschool, three days a week. All the rest--Movements! I can live now onfourpence a day. Think how free that leaves me to follow things up! Imust take you everywhere. I must take you to the Suffrage people, andthe 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 theintellectuals. Some of the meetings are wonderful! Such earnest,beautiful women! Such deep-browed men!... And to think that therethey are making history! There they are putting together the plans of anew world. Almost light-heartedly. There is Shaw, and Webb, and Wilkinsthe author, and Toomer, and Doctor Tumpany--the most wonderful people!There you see them discussing, deciding, planning! Just think--THEY AREMAKING 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 gestureat 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 worldwith so enthusiastic a generosity that it seemed ingratitude to remaincritical. Indeed, almost insensibly Ann Veronica became habituated tothe peculiar appearance and the peculiar manners of the people "in thevan." The shock of their intellectual attitude was over, usage robbedit of the first quaint effect of deliberate unreason. They were in manyrespects so right; she clung to that, and shirked more and more theparadoxical conviction that they were also somehow, and even in directrelation to that rightness, absurd.

  Very central in Miss Miniver's universe were the Goopes. The Goopes werethe oddest little couple conceivable, following a fruitarian career uponan 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 visitedschools, and his wife wrote a weekly column in New Ideas upon vegetariancookery, vivisection, degeneration, the lacteal secretion, appendicitis,and the Higher Thought generally, and assisted in the management ofa fruit shop in the Tottenham Court Road. Their very furniture hadmysteriously a high-browed quality, and Mr. Goopes when at home dressedsimply in a pajama-shaped suit of canvas sacking tied with brownribbons, while his wife wore a purple djibbah with a richlyembroidered yoke. He was a small, dark, reserved man, with a largeinflexible-looking convex forehead, and his wife was very pink andhigh-spirited, with one of those chins that pass insensibly into a full,strong neck. Once a week, every Saturday, they had a little gatheringfrom nine till the small hours, just talk and perhaps reading aloud a
ndfruitarian refreshments--chestnut sandwiches buttered with nut tose,and so forth--and lemonade and unfermented wine; and to one of thesesymposia Miss Miniver after a good deal of preliminary solicitude,conducted Ann Veronica.

  She was introduced, perhaps a little too obviously for her taste, asa girl who was standing out against her people, to a gathering thatconsisted of a very old lady with an extremely wrinkled skin and a deepvoice who was wearing what appeared to Ann Veronica's inexperiencedeye to be an antimacassar upon her head, a shy, blond young man with anarrow forehead and glasses, two undistinguished women in plain skirtsand 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-adornedfireplace, surmounted by a carved wood inscription:

  "DO IT NOW."

  And to them were presently added a roguish-looking young man, withreddish 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 whenit ceased to be brilliant in substance. There were moments when AnnVeronica rather more than suspected the chief speakers to be, asschool-boys say, showing off at her.

  They talked of a new substitute for dripping in vegetarian cookery thatMrs. Goopes was convinced exercised an exceptionally purifying influenceon the mind. And then they talked of Anarchism and Socialism, andwhether the former was the exact opposite of the latter or only a higherform. The reddish-haired young man contributed allusions to the Hegelianphilosophy that momentarily confused the discussion. Then AldermanDunstable, who had hitherto been silent, broke out into speech and wentoff at a tangent, and gave his personal impressions of quite a numberof his fellow-councillors. He continued to do this for the rest of theevening intermittently, in and out, among other topics. He addressedhimself chiefly to Goopes, and spoke as if in reply to long-sustainedinquiries on the part of Goopes into the personnel of the MaryleboneBorough Council. "If you were to ask me," he would say, "I should sayBlinders is straight. An ordinary type, of course--"

  Mrs. Dunstable's contributions to the conversation were entirely in theform of nods; whenever Alderman Dunstable praised or blamed she noddedtwice or thrice, according to the requirements of his emphasis. Andshe seemed always to keep one eye on Ann Veronica's dress. Mrs.Goopes disconcerted the Alderman a little by abruptly challenging theroguish-looking young man in the orange tie (who, it seemed, was theassistant editor of New Ideas) upon a critique of Nietzsche and Tolstoythat had appeared in his paper, in which doubts had been cast upon theperfect sincerity of the latter. Everybody seemed greatly concernedabout the sincerity of Tolstoy.

  Miss Miniver said that if once she lost her faith in Tolstoy'ssincerity, nothing she felt would really matter much any more, and sheappealed to Ann Veronica whether she did not feel the same; and Mr.Goopes said that we must distinguish between sincerity and irony, whichwas often indeed no more than sincerity at the sublimated level.

  Alderman Dunstable said that sincerity was often a matter ofopportunity, and illustrated the point to the fair young man with ananecdote about Blinders on the Dust Destructor Committee, during whichthe young man in the orange tie succeeded in giving the whole discussiona daring and erotic flavor by questioning whether any one could beperfectly 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 wenton to declare that it was quite possible to be sincerely in love withtwo people at the same time, although perhaps on different planes witheach individual, and deceiving them both. But that brought Mrs. Goopesdown on him with the lesson Titian teaches so beautifully in his "Sacredand Profane Love," and became quite eloquent upon the impossibility ofany deception in the former.

  Then they discoursed on love for a time, and Alderman Dunstable, turningback to the shy, blond young man and speaking in undertones of theutmost clearness, gave a brief and confidential account of an unfoundedrumor of the bifurcation of the affections of Blinders that had led to asituation of some unpleasantness upon the Borough Council.

  The very old lady in the antimacassar touched Ann Veronica's armsuddenly, 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 effortson the part of Goopes to get the topic on to a higher plane, displayedgreat persistence in speculating upon the possible distribution of theaffections 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 ina marked manner; and the young man with the narrow forehead and glassescleared his throat and asked the young man in the orange tie whether hebelieved that Platonic love was possible. Mrs. Goopes said she believedin nothing else, and with that she glanced at Ann Veronica, rose alittle abruptly, and directed Goopes and the shy young man in thehanding of refreshments.

  But the young man with the orange tie remained in his place, disputingwhether the body had not something or other which he called itslegitimate claims. And from that they came back by way of the KreutzerSonata 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 withthe orange tie, and bent his forehead over him, and brought out at lastvery clearly from him that the body was only illusion and everythingnothing but just spirit and molecules of thought. It became a sort ofduel at last between them, and all the others sat and listened--everyone, that is, except the Alderman, who had got the blond young man intoa corner by the green-stained dresser with the aluminum things, and wassitting with his back to every one else, holding one hand over his mouthfor greater privacy, and telling him, with an accent of confidentialadmission, in whispers of the chronic struggle between the naturalmodesty and general inoffensiveness of the Borough Council and thesocial evil in Marylebone.

  So the talk went on, and presently they were criticising novelists, andcertain daring essays of Wilkins got their due share of attention,and then they were discussing the future of the theatre. Ann Veronicaintervened a little in the novelist discussion with a defence of Esmondand a denial that the Egoist was obscure, and when she spoke every oneelse stopped talking and listened. Then they deliberated whether BernardShaw ought to go into Parliament. And that brought them to vegetarianismand teetotalism, and the young man in the orange tie and Mrs. Goopeshad a great set-to about the sincerity of Chesterton and Belloc that wasended by Goopes showing signs of resuming the Socratic method.

  And at last Ann Veronica and Miss Miniver came down the dark staircaseand out into the foggy spaces of the London squares, and crossed RussellSquare, Woburn Square, Gordon Square, making an oblique route to AnnVeronica's lodging. They trudged along a little hungry, because of thefruitarian refreshments, and mentally very active. And Miss Miniver felldiscussing whether Goopes or Bernard Shaw or Tolstoy or Doctor Tumpanyor Wilkins the author had the more powerful and perfect mind inexistence at the present time. She was clear there were no other mindslike them in all the world.

  Part 4

  Then one evening Ann Veronica went with Miss Miniver into the back seatsof the gallery at Essex Hall, and heard and saw the giant leaders of theFabian Society who are re-making the world: Bernard Shaw and Toomer andDoctor Tumpany and Wilkins the author, all displayed upon a platform.The place was crowded, and the people about her were almost equallymade up of very good-looking and enthusiastic young people and a greatvariety of Goopes-like types. In the discussion there was the oddestmixture of things that were personal and petty with an idealist devotionthat was fine beyond dispute. In nearly every speech she heard was thesame implication of great and necessary changes in the world--changesto be won by effort and sacrifice in
deed, but surely to be won. Andafterward 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 wentto a soiree of the Dress Reform Association and visited a Food ReformExhibition, where imminent change was made even alarmingly visible.The women's meeting was much more charged with emotional force than theSocialists'. Ann Veronica was carried off her intellectual and criticalfeet by it altogether, and applauded and uttered cries that subsequentreflection failed to endorse. "I knew you would feel it," said MissMiniver, as they came away flushed and heated. "I knew you would beginto see how it all falls into place together."

  It did begin to fall into place together. She became more and morealive, not so much to a system of ideas as to a big diffusedimpulse toward change, to a great discontent with and criticism oflife as it is lived, to a clamorous confusion of ideas forreconstruction--reconstruction of the methods of business, of economicdevelopment, of the rules of property, of the status of children, of theclothing and feeding and teaching of every one; she developed a quiteexaggerated consciousness of a multitude of people going about theswarming spaces of London with their minds full, their talk and gesturesfull, their very clothing charged with the suggestion of the urgency ofthis pervasive project of alteration. Some indeed carried themselves,dressed themselves even, rather as foreign visitors from the landof "Looking Backward" and "News from Nowhere" than as the indigenousLondoners they were. For the most part these were detached people: menpractising the plastic arts, young writers, young men in employment, avery large proportion of girls and women--self-supporting women or girlsof the student class. They made a stratum into which Ann Veronica wasnow plunged up to her neck; it had become her stratum.