Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story Read online

  "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 throughher tears. "We have been all this time--Only your queer code ofhonor--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 upeverything tidy," said Capes....

  For her pride's sake, and to save herself from long day-dreams and anunappeasable longing for her lover, Ann Veronica worked hard at herbiology during those closing weeks. She was, as Capes had said, ahard young woman. She was keenly resolved to do well in the schoolexamination, and not to be drowned in the seas of emotion thatthreatened to submerge her intellectual being.

  Nevertheless, she could not prevent a rising excitement as the dawn ofthe new life drew near to her--a thrilling of the nerves, a secretand delicious exaltation above the common circumstances ofexistence. Sometimes her straying mind would become astonishinglyactive--embroidering bright and decorative things that she could say toCapes; sometimes it passed into a state of passive acquiescence, intoa radiant, formless, golden joy. She was aware of people--her aunt,her father, her fellow-students, friends, and neighbors--moving aboutoutside this glowing secret, very much as an actor is aware of the dimaudience beyond the barrier of the footlights. They might applaud, orobject, or interfere, but the drama was her very own. She was goingthrough with that, anyhow.

  The feeling of last days grew stronger with her as their numberdiminished. She went about the familiar home with a clearer and clearersense of inevitable conclusions. She became exceptionally considerateand affectionate with her father and aunt, and more and more concernedabout the coming catastrophe that she was about to precipitate uponthem. Her aunt had a once exasperating habit of interrupting her workwith demands for small household services, but now Ann Veronica renderedthem with a queer readiness of anticipatory propitiation. She wasgreatly exercised by the problem of confiding in the Widgetts; they weredears, and she talked away two evenings with Constance without broachingthe topic; she made some vague intimations in letters to Miss Miniverthat Miss Miniver failed to mark. But she did not bother her head verymuch 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 sunshineand revived her childhood. She was saying good-bye to childhood andhome, and her making; she was going out into the great, multitudinousworld; this time there would be no returning. She was at the end ofgirlhood and on the eve of a woman's crowning experience. She visitedthe corner that had been her own little garden--her forget-me-nots andcandytuft had long since been elbowed into insignificance by weeds; shevisited the raspberry-canes that had sheltered that first love affairwith the little boy in velvet, and the greenhouse where she had beenwont to read her secret letters. Here was the place behind the shedwhere she had used to hide from Roddy's persecutions, and here theborder of herbaceous perennials under whose stems was fairyland. Theback of the house had been the Alps for climbing, and the shrubsin front of it a Terai. The knots and broken pale that made thegarden-fence scalable, and gave access to the fields behind, were stillto be traced. And here against a wall were the plum-trees. In spite ofGod and wasps and her father, she had stolen plums; and once because ofdiscovered misdeeds, and once because she had realized that her motherwas dead, she had lain on her face in the unmown grass, beneath theelm-trees that came beyond the vegetables, and poured out her soul inweeping.

  Remote little Ann Veronica! She would never know the heart of that childagain! That child had loved fairy princes with velvet suits and goldenlocks, and she was in love with a real man named Capes, with littlegleams of gold on his cheek and a pleasant voice and firm and shapelyhands. 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 itseemed, she had given no thought to those ancient, imagined things ofher 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 didthis to please him. He hated travelling second-class with her--indeed,he never did--but he also disliked travelling in the same train when hisdaughter 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 anencounter with Ramage.

  It was an odd little encounter, that left vague and dubitableimpressions 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 toher.

  "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 hisappearance. His eyes looked a little bloodshot to her; his face had lostsomething of its ruddy freshness.

  He began a jerky, broken conversation that lasted until they reached thestation, and left her puzzled at its drift and meaning. She quickenedher pace, and so did he, talking at her slightly averted ear. She madelumpish and inadequate interruptions rather than replies. At times heseemed to be claiming pity from her; at times he was threatening herwith her check and exposure; at times he was boasting of his inflexiblewill, and how, in the end, he always got what he wanted. He said thathis life was boring and stupid without her. Something or other--shedid not catch what--he was damned if he could stand. He was evidentlynervous, and very anxious to be impressive; his projecting eyes soughtto dominate. The crowning aspect of the incident, for her mind, was thediscovery that he and her indiscretion with him no longer mattered verymuch. 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'tthought of it before! She tried to explain that she was going to payhim forty pounds without fail next week. She said as much to him. Sherepeated 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 vainlytrying to explain--the inexplicable. "It's because I mean to send itback altogether," she said.

  He ignored her protests in order to pursue some impressive line of hisown.

  "Here we are, living in the same suburb," he began. "We have tobe--modern."

  Her heart leaped within her as she caught that phrase. That knot alsowould be cut. Modern, indeed! She was going to be as primordial aschipped flint.

  Part 2

  In the late afternoon, as Ann Veronica was gathering flowers for thedinner-table, her father came strolling across the lawn toward her withan 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 eyesupon him, wondering what it might be that impended.

  "You were talking to that fellow Ramage to-day--in the Avenue. Walkingto 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 tohim," 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--Idon't like him. I think it inadvisable--I don't want an intimacy tospring 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 fa
ct, 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 arethings--there are stories about Ramage. He's--He lives in a world ofpossibilities outside your imagination. His treatment of his wifeis most unsatisfactory. Most unsatisfactory. A bad man, in fact. Adissipated, loose-living man."

  "I'll try not to see him again," said Ann Veronica. "I didn't know youobjected to him, daddy."

  "Strongly," said Mr. Stanley, "very strongly."

  The conversation hung. Ann Veronica wondered what her father would do ifshe 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 mereconversation." He adjusted his glasses on his nose. There was anotherlittle thing he had to say. "One has to be so careful of one's friendsand acquaintances," he remarked, by way of transition. "They mould oneinsensibly." 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--Somethingramshackle about those people, Vee. While I am talking about yourfriends, I feel--I think you ought to know how I look at it." His voiceconveyed studied moderation. "I don't mind, of course, your seeingher sometimes, still there are differences--differences in socialatmospheres. One gets drawn into things. Before you know where youare you find yourself in a complication. I don't want to influence youunduly--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 goon 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--onehas to square one's self with the world. You don't know. With peopleof that sort all sorts of things may happen. We don't want things tohappen."

  Ann Veronica made no answer.

  A vague desire to justify himself ruffled her father. "I may seemunduly--anxious. I can't forget about your sister. It's that has alwaysmade me--SHE, you know, was drawn into a set--didn't discriminatePrivate theatricals."

  Ann Veronica remained anxious to hear more of her sister's story fromher father's point of view, but he did not go on. Even so much allusionas this to that family shadow, she felt, was an immense recognition ofher ripening years. She glanced at him. He stood a little anxious andfussy, bothered by the responsibility of her, entirely careless of whather life was or was likely to be, ignoring her thoughts and feelings,ignorant of every fact of importance in her life, explaining everythinghe could not understand in her as nonsense and perversity, concernedonly with a terror of bothers and undesirable situations. "We don't wantthings to happen!" Never had he shown his daughter so clearly that thewomenkind he was persuaded he had to protect and control could pleasehim in one way, and in one way only, and that was by doing nothingexcept the punctual domestic duties and being nothing except restfulappearances. He had quite enough to see to and worry about in the Citywithout their doing things. He had no use for Ann Veronica; he hadnever 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. Andthe less "anything" happened the better. The less she lived, in fact,the better. These realizations rushed into Ann Veronica's mind andhardened her heart against him. She spoke slowly. "I may not see theWidgetts for some little time, father," she said. "I don't think Ishall."

  "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 evidentlypleased that Ann Veronica's heart smote her.

  "I am very glad to hear you say it," he repeated, and refrained fromfurther inquiry. "I think we are growing sensible," he said. "I thinkyou are getting to understand me better."

  He hesitated, and walked away from her toward the house. Her eyesfollowed him. The curve of his shoulders, the very angle of his feet,expressed relief at her apparent obedience. "Thank goodness!" saidthat retreating aspect, "that's said and over. Vee's all right. There'snothing happened at all!" She didn't mean, he concluded, to give him anymore trouble ever, and he was free to begin a fresh chromatic novel--hehad just finished the Blue Lagoon, which he thought very beautiful andtender and absolutely irrelevant to Morningside Park--or work in peaceat his microtome without bothering about her in the least.

  The immense disillusionment that awaited him! The devastatingdisillusionment! She had a vague desire to run after him, to state hercase to him, to wring some understanding from him of what life was toher. 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 fatherliked, and that made her look serious and responsible. Dinner was quiteuneventful. Her father read a draft prospectus warily, and her auntdropped fragments of her projects for managing while the cook had aholiday. After dinner Ann Veronica went into the drawing-room with MissStanley, and her father went up to his den for his pipe and pensivepetrography. Later in the evening she heard him whistling, poor man!

  She felt very restless and excited. She refused coffee, though she knewthat anyhow she was doomed to a sleepless night. She took up one of herfather's novels and put it down again, fretted up to her own room forsome work, sat on her bed and meditated upon the room that she was nowreally abandoning forever, and returned at length with a stocking todarn. Her aunt was making herself cuffs out of little slips of insertionunder the newly lit lamp.

  Ann Veronica sat down in the other arm-chair and darned badly for aminute or so. Then she looked at her aunt, and traced with a curious eyethe careful arrangement of her hair, her sharp nose, the little droopinglines 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 thathad 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 sevenyears, 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 aliving. 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 havebeen rash and unwise," she said at the end of a meditation. "What he hadwas altogether insufficient."

  Ann Veronica looked at the mildly pensive gray eyes and the comfortable,rather refined face with a penetrating curiosity. Presently her auntsighed 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. AnnVeronica jumped up to get her the card-table. "I haven't seen the newPatience, dear," she said. "May I sit beside you?"

  "It's a very difficult one," said her aunt. "Perhaps you will help meshuffle?"

  Ann Veronica did, and also assisted nimbly with the arrangements of therows of eight with which the struggle began. Then she sat watching theplay, sometimes offering a helpful suggestion, sometimes letting herattention wander to the smoothly shining arms she had folded across herknees just b
elow the edge of the table. She was feeling extraordinarilywell that night, so that the sense of her body was a deep delight, arealization of a gentle warmth and strength and elastic firmness. Thenshe glanced at the cards again, over which her aunt's many-ringed handplayed, and then at the rather weak, rather plump face that surveyed itsoperations.

  It came to Ann Veronica that life was wonderful beyond measure. Itseemed incredible that she and her aunt were, indeed, creatures of thesame blood, only by a birth or so different beings, and part of thatsame broad interlacing stream of human life that has invented the faunsand nymphs, Astarte, Aphrodite, Freya, and all the twining beauty ofthe gods. The love-songs of all the ages were singing in her blood, thescent of night stock from the garden filled the air, and the moths thatbeat upon the closed frames of the window next the lamp set her minddreaming of kisses in the dusk. Yet her aunt, with a ringed handflitting to her lips and a puzzled, worried look in her eyes, deafto all this riot of warmth and flitting desire, was playingPatience--playing Patience, as if Dionysius and her curate had diedtogether. A faint buzz above the ceiling witnessed that petrography,too, was active. Gray and tranquil world! Amazing, passionless world! Aworld in which days without meaning, days in which "we don't want thingsto happen" followed days without meaning--until the last thing happened,the ultimate, unavoidable, coarse, "disagreeable." It was her lastevening in that wrappered life against which she had rebelled. Warmreality was now so near her she could hear it beating in her ears. Awayin London even now Capes was packing and preparing; Capes, the magic manwhose touch turned one to trembling fire. What was he doing? What was hethinking? It was less than a day now, less than twenty hours. Seventeenhours, sixteen hours. She glanced at the soft-ticking clock with theexposed brass pendulum upon the white marble mantel, and made a rapidcalculation. To be exact, it was just sixteen hours and twenty minutes.The slow stars circled on to the moment of their meeting. The softlyglittering summer stars! She saw them shining over mountains of snow,over valleys of haze and warm darkness.... There would be no moon.