Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story Read online

  "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 afiercely 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 frommy wife. But she doesn't and won't divorce me. You don't understandthe fix I am in. And you don't know what led to our separation. And, infact, all round the problem you don't know and I don't see how I couldpossibly have told you before. I wanted to, that day in the Zoo. But Itrusted 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. Buta man is a mixed creature.... I wanted the time with you. I wanted itbadly."

  "Tell me about yourself," said Ann Veronica.

  "To begin with, I was--I was in the divorce court. I was--I was aco-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 reallydoubt 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 andfeeling them and being them quite another. That is where life takesadvantage 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 beingvery fine and honorable for me--the Higher Morality, or something ofthat sort.... It wasn't."

  "I don't deal very much," said Ann Veronica, "in the Higher Morality, orthe Higher Truth, or any of those things."

  "Perhaps you don't. But a human being who is young and clean, as youare, 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'ssomething--something ADULT about you. I'm talking to you now as thoughyou had all the wisdom and charity in the world. I'm going to tell youthings plainly. Plainly. It's best. And then you can go home and thinkthings over before we talk again. I want you to be clear what you'rereally 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 thisto make myself clear--a streak of ardent animal in my composition. Imarried--I married a woman whom I still think one of the most beautifulpersons 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 mether you would, I am certain, think her as fine as I do. She has neverdone a really ignoble thing that I know of--never. I met her when wewere both very young, as young as you are. I loved her and made love toher, 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 leavethem out of novels--these incompatibilities. Young people ignore themuntil 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 herand subdued myself."

  He left off abruptly. "Do you understand what I am talking about? It'sno 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 HigherNature or our Lower?"

  "I don't deal in Higher Things, I tell you," said Ann Veronica, "orLower, for the matter of that. I don't classify." She hesitated. "Fleshand flowers are all alike to me."

  "That's the comfort of you. Well, after a time there came a fever inmy blood. Don't think it was anything better than fever--or a bitbeautiful. It wasn't. Quite soon, after we were married--it was justwithin a year--I formed a friendship with the wife of a friend, a womaneight years older than myself.... It wasn't anything splendid, youknow. It was just a shabby, stupid, furtive business that began betweenus. Like stealing. We dressed it in a little music.... I want you tounderstand clearly that I was indebted to the man in many small ways. Iwas mean to him.... It was the gratification of an immense necessity.We were two people with a craving. We felt like thieves. We WEREthieves.... We LIKED each other well enough. Well, my friend foundus out, and would give no quarter. He divorced her. How do you like thestory?"

  "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 cameout--humiliating for me. There was a second co-respondent. I hadn'theard of him before the trial. I don't know why that should be soacutely 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. Shecould 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 needto 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 haveevery bit of it. One doesn't go about with these passions allayed simplybecause they have made wreckage and a scandal. There one is! The samestuff still! One has a craving in one's blood, a craving roused, cut offfrom its redeeming and guiding emotional side. A man has more freedom todo evil than a woman. Irregularly, in a quite inglorious and unromanticway, you know, I am a vicious man. That's--that's my private life. Untilthe last few months. It isn't what I have been but what I am. I haven'ttaken much account of it until now. My honor has been in my scientificwork and public discussion and the things I write. Lots of us are likethat. But, you see, I'm smirched. For the sort of love-making you thinkabout. I've muddled all this business. I've had my time and lost mychances. I'm damaged goods. And you're as clean as fire. You come withthose 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'tthink--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 usfrom being lovers--You can't--at first. You must think it over. It's alloutside the world of your experience."

  "I don't think it makes a rap of difference, except for one thing. Ilove you more. I've wanted you--always. I didn't dream, not even in mywildest dreaming, that--you might have any need of me."

  He made a little noise in his throat as if something had cried outwithin 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 itto-morrow. Don't, don't say anything now, not anything. As for lovingyou, 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 thatparts us, forgetting even your age, if I did not love you utterly. IfI were a clean, free man--We'll have to talk of all these things. Thankgoodness there's plenty of opportunity! And we two can talk. Anyhow, nowyou've begun it, there's nothing to keep us in all this from being thebest friends in the world. And talking of every conceivable thing. Isthere?"

  "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 confoundedengagement!"

  "Gone!"

  They came upon a platform, and stood before her compartment.

  He took her hand and looked into her eyes and spoke, divided againsthimself, in a voice that was forced and insincere.

  "I shall be very glad to have you for a friend," he said, "lovingfriend. I had never dreamed of such a friend as you."

  She smiled, sure of herself beyond any pretending, into his troubledeyes. Hadn't they settled that already?

  "I want you as a friend," he persisted, almost as if he disputedsomething.

  Part 5

  The next morning she waited in the laboratory at the lunch-hour in thereasonable 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 loveeach 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 toyou. I keep on thinking of you. I keep on thinking of little details andaspects of your voice, your eyes, the way you walk, the way your hairgoes back from the side of your forehead. I believe I have always beenin 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," shesaid.

  He gripped the window-sill behind him.

  "If I do," he said.... "No! I want to do without that. I want todo without that for a time. I want to give you time to think. I am aman--of a sort of experience. You are a girl with very little. Just sitdown on that stool again and let's talk of this in cold blood. People ofyour sort--I don't want the instincts to--to rush our situation. Are yousure 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 thatplain?" she asked.

  "If I didn't love you better than myself," said Capes, "I wouldn't fencelike this with you.

  "I am convinced you haven't thought this out," he went on. "You do notknow what such a relation means. We are in love. Our heads swim withthe thought of being together. But what can we do? Here am I, fixed torespectability 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 differentfrom all the world for me. You can think all round me. You are the oneperson 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 berotten bad; and there's something--something living and understandingin you. Something that is born anew each time we meet, and pines whenwe are separated. You see, I'm selfish. I'm rather scornful. I thinktoo 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--unlessyou come in and take it. I am. In you--if you can love me--thereis 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 tosay.

  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, andsmoothed her hair from her forehead, and very tenderly kissed her lips.

  Part 6

  They spent the next Sunday in Richmond Park, and mingled the happysensation of being together uninterruptedly through the long sunshineof a summer's day with the ample discussion of their position. "This hasall the clean freshness of spring and youth," said Capes; "it is lovewith the down on it is like the glitter of dew in the sunlight to belovers such as we are, with no more than one warm kiss between us. Ilove everything to-day, and all of you, but I love this, this--thisinnocence upon us most of all.

  "You can't imagine," he said, "what a beastly thing a furtive loveaffair 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 onfriendly benches, they came back to lunch at the "Star and Garter,"and talked their afternoon away in the garden that looks out upon thecrescent 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 broaddistances 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 betaken 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 itspetals, becoming mean and ugly. How can I tell you all I feel? I loveyou 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 inyour hands."

  "That's why, in a way, I'm prudish. I've--dreads. I don't want to tearat you with hot, rough hands."

  "As you will, dear lover. But for me it doesn't matter. Nothing is wrongthat you do. Nothing. I am quite clear about this. I know exactly what Iam 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 morethan 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 satdown beside Ann Veronica for their customary talk in the lunch hour. Hetook a handful of almonds and raisins that she held out to him--forboth these young people had given up the practice of going out forluncheon--and kept her hand for a moment to kiss her finger-tips. He didnot 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 tobeat very rapidly.

  "Stop this--this humbugging," he explained. "It's like the Picture andthe Bust. I can't stand it. Let's go. Go off and live together--until wecan marry. Dare you?"

  "Do you mean NOW?"

  "At the end of the session. It's the only clean way for us. Are youprepared 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 itwill 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 allmy life as I have been in this business." She lifted steadfast eyes tohim. "Dare!" she said. The tears were welling over now, but her voicewas steady. "You're not a man for me--not one of a sex, I mean
. You'rejust a particular being with nothing else in the world to class withyou. You are just necessary to life for me. I've never met any onelike 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 cannever 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 unbelievingbiological demonstrators must respect decorum; and besides, you see--youwere 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 swampsthem. They don't count, and I don't care."

  Capes suddenly abandoned his attitude of meditative restraint. "ByJove!" he broke out, "one tries to take a serious, sober view. I don'tquite know why. But this is a great lark, Ann Veronica! This turns lifeinto a glorious adventure!"

  "Ah!" she cried in triumph.

  "I shall have to give up biology, anyhow. I've always had a sneakingdesire 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 likeanother.... Latterly I've been doing things.... Creative workappeals to me wonderfully. Things seem to come rather easily.... Butthat, and that sort of thing, is just a day-dream. For a time I must dojournalism and work hard.... What isn't a day-dream is this: that youand I are going to put an end to flummery--and go!"