Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story Read online

  "I believe after all it's coming out!" said Miss Stanley. "The aces madeit easy."

  Ann Veronica started from her reverie, sat up in her chair, becameattentive. "Look, dear," she said presently, "you can put the ten on theJack."

  CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH

  IN THE MOUNTAINS

  Part 1

  Next day Ann Veronica and Capes felt like newborn things. It seemedto them they could never have been really alive before, but onlydimly anticipating existence. They sat face to face beneath anexperienced-looking rucksack and a brand new portmanteau and a leatherhandbag, in the afternoon-boat train that goes from Charing Cross toFolkestone for Boulogne. They tried to read illustrated papers in anunconcerned manner and with forced attention, lest they should catchthe leaping exultation in each other's eyes. And they admired Kentsedulously from the windows.

  They crossed the Channel in sunshine and a breeze that just ruffled thesea to glittering scales of silver. Some of the people who watched themstanding side by side thought they must be newly wedded because of theirhappy faces, and others that they were an old-established couple becauseof their easy confidence in each other.

  At Boulogne they took train to Basle; next morning they breakfastedtogether in the buffet of that station, and thence they caught theInterlaken express, and so went by way of Spies to Frutigen. There wasno railway beyond Frutigen in those days; they sent their baggage bypost to Kandersteg, and walked along the mule path to the left of thestream to that queer hollow among the precipices, Blau See, where thepetrifying branches of trees lie in the blue deeps of an icy lake, andpine-trees clamber among gigantic boulders. A little inn flying aSwiss flag nestles under a great rock, and there they put aside theirknapsacks and lunched and rested in the mid-day shadow of the gorgeand the scent of resin. And later they paddled in a boat above themysterious deeps of the See, and peered down into the green-blues andthe blue-greens together. By that time it seemed to them they had livedtogether twenty years.

  Except for one memorable school excursion to Paris, Ann Veronica hadnever yet been outside England. So that it seemed to her the whole worldhad changed--the very light of it had changed. Instead of English villasand cottages there were chalets and Italian-built houses shining white;there were lakes of emerald and sapphire and clustering castles, andsuch sweeps of hill and mountain, such shining uplands of snow, as shehad never seen before. Everything was fresh and bright, from the kindlymanners of the Frutigen cobbler, who hammered mountain nails into herboots, to the unfamiliar wild flowers that spangled the wayside. AndCapes 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 seatwithin a yard of her, made her heart sing until she was afraid theirfellow passengers would hear it. It was too good to be true. She wouldnot sleep for fear of losing a moment of that sense of his proximity. Towalk beside him, dressed akin to him, rucksacked and companionable, wasbliss in itself; each step she took was like stepping once more acrossthe threshold of heaven.

  One trouble, however, shot its slanting bolts athwart the shining warmthof that opening day and marred its perfection, and that was the thoughtof her father.

  She had treated him badly; she had hurt him and her aunt; she had donewrong by their standards, and she would never persuade them that shehad done right. She thought of her father in the garden, and of her auntwith her Patience, as she had seen them--how many ages was it ago? Justone day intervened. She felt as if she had struck them unawares. Thethought of them distressed her without subtracting at all from theoceans of happiness in which she swam. But she wished she could put thething she had done in some way to them so that it would not hurt themso 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 totell every one. I want to boast myself."

  "I know."

  "I told them a lie. I told them lies. I wrote three letters yesterdayand tore them up. It was so hopeless to put it to them. At last--I tolda 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 saidI knew he disliked and distrusted you and your work--that you sharedall Russell's opinions: he hates Russell beyond measure--and that wecouldn'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. Theycan't help seeing things in the way they do. Nor can we. WE don'tthink they're right, but they don't think we are. A deadlock. In a verydefinite sense we are in the wrong--hopelessly in the wrong. But--It'sjust this: who was to be hurt?"

  "I wish no one had to be hurt," said Ann Veronica. "When one is happy--Idon't like to think of them. Last time I left home I felt as hard asnails. But this is all different. It is different."

  "There's a sort of instinct of rebellion," said Capes. "It isn'tanything to do with our times particularly. People think it is, but theyare wrong. It's to do with adolescence. Long before religion and Societyheard 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.... Iwonder.... There's no family uniting instinct, anyhow; it's habitand sentiment and material convenience hold families together afteradolescence. There's always friction, conflict, unwilling concessions.Always! I don't believe there is any strong natural affection at allbetween parents and growing-up children. There wasn't, I know, betweenmyself and my father. I didn't allow myself to see things as they werein those days; now I do. I bored him. I hated him. I suppose thatshocks one's ideas.... It's true.... There are sentimental andtraditional deferences and reverences, I know, between father andson but that's just exactly what prevents the development of an easyfriendship. 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 whatis the good of successive generations? Life is rebellion, or nothing."

  He rowed a stroke and watched the swirl of water from his oar broadenand die away. At last he took up his thoughts again: "I wonder if, someday, one won't need to rebel against customs and laws? If this discordwill have gone? Some day, perhaps--who knows?--the old won't coddle andhamper the young, and the young won't need to fly in the faces of theold. 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'tbe these fierce disruptions; there won't be barriers one must defy orperish.... That's really our choice now, defy--or futility.... Theworld, perhaps, will be educated out of its idea of fixed standards....I wonder, Ann Veronica, if, when our time comes, we shall be anywiser?"

  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 aflourish 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 sureas 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 ismorality--life is adventure. Squire and master. Adventure rules, andmorality--looks up the trains in the Bradshaw. Morality tells you whatis right, and adventure moves you. If morality means anything it meanskeeping bounds, respecting implications, respecting implicit bounds. Ifindividuality means anything it means breaking bounds--adventure.

  "Will you be moral and your species, or immoral and yourself? We'vedecided to be immoral. We needn't try and give ourselves airs. We'vedeserted the posts in which we found ourselves, cut our duties, exposedourselves to risks that may destroy any sort of social usefulness inus.... I don't know. One keeps rules in order to be one's self. Onestudies Nature in order not to be blindly ruled by her. There's no sensein morality, I suppose, unless you are fundamentally immoral."

  She watched his face as he traced his way through these speculativethickets.

  "Look at our affair," he went on, looking up at her. "No power on earthwill persuade me we're not two rather disreputable persons. You desertyour 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 saythe least of it. It's not a bit of good pretending there's any HigherTruth or wonderful principle in this business. There isn't. We neverstarted out in any high-browed manner to scandalize and Shelleyfy.When first you left your home you had no idea that _I_ was the hiddenimpulse. I wasn't. You came out like an ant for your nuptial flight. Itwas just a chance that we in particular hit against each other--nothingpredestined about it. We just hit against each other, and here we areflying off at a tangent, a little surprised at what we are doing, allour principles abandoned, and tremendously and quite unreasonably proudof 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 ourstory?--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 ismy teacher, a jaded married man on the verge of middle age, and he and Ihave a violent passion for one another. We propose to disregard all ourties, 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 thesort. 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 wholething." He stared at a little eddy. "The rule's all right, so long asthere isn't a case. Rules are for established things, like the piecesand 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, welland 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 thedeep-blue shapes below writhe and shiver.

  "This is MY thing," said Ann Veronica, softly, with thoughtful eyes uponhim.

  Then she looked up the sweep of pine-trees to the towering sunlit cliffsand the high heaven above and then back to his face. She drew in a deepbreath of the sweet mountain air. Her eyes were soft and grave, andthere was the faintest of smiles upon her resolute lips.

  Part 3

  Later they loitered along a winding path above the inn, and made loveto one another. Their journey had made them indolent, the afternoon waswarm, and it seemed impossible to breathe a sweeter air. The flowers andturf, a wild strawberry, a rare butterfly, and suchlike little intimatethings had become more interesting than mountains. Their flitting handswere always touching. Deep silences came between them....

  "I had thought to go on to Kandersteg," said Capes, "but this is apleasant place. There is not a soul in the inn but ourselves. Letus stay the night here. Then we can loiter and gossip to our heart'scontent."

  "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 somuch?... I know now what it is to be an abandoned female. I AM anabandoned female. I'm not ashamed--of the things I'm doing. I want toput myself into your hands. You know--I wish I could roll my little bodyup 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 thesethings to any human being. Just dreamed--and ran away even from mydreams. It is as if my lips had been sealed about them. And now I breakthe 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 elsecould be.... You are you. You are all the beauty in the world. Beautydoesn't mean, never has meant, anything--anything at all but you. Itheralded you, promised you...."

  Part 4

  They lay side by side in a shallow nest of turf and mosses amongbowlders and stunted bushes on a high rock, and watched the day skydeepen to evening between the vast precipices overhead and looked overthe tree-tops down the widening gorge. A distant suggestion of chaletsand a glimpse of the road set them talking for a time of the world theyhad 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 bescandalized at us or forgiving. It will hold aloof, a little undecidedwhether 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 itsbest 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 thatday. She was quivering with the sense of Capes at her side and glowingwith heroic love; it seemed to her that if they put their hands jointlyagainst the Alps and pushed they would be able to push them aside. Shelay 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 hadplanned. He had his sections of the Siegfried map folded in his pocket,and he squatted up with his legs crossed like an Indian idol whileshe lay prone beside him and followed every movement of his indicatoryfinger.

  "Here," he said, "is this Blau See, and here we rest until to-morrow. Ithink we rest here until to-morrow?"

  There was a brief silence.

  "It is a very pleasant place," said Ann Veronica, biting a rhododendronstalk through, and with that faint shadow of a smile returning to herlips....

  "And then?" said Ann Veronica.

  "Then we go on to this place, the Oeschinensee. It's a lake amongprecipices, and there is a little inn where we can stay, and sit and eatour dinner at a pleasant table that looks upon the lake. For some dayswe shall be very idle there among the trees and rocks. There are boatson the lake and shady depths and wildernesses of pine-wood. After a dayor so, perhaps, we will go on one or two little excursions and see howgood your head
is--a mild scramble or so; and then up to a hut on a passjust here, and out upon the Blumlis-alp glacier that spreads out so andso."

  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 attentionback to the map. "One day," he resumed, "we will start off early andcome down into Kandersteg and up these zigzags and here and here, and sopast this Daubensee to a tiny inn--it won't be busy yet, though; wemay get it all to ourselves--on the brim of the steepest zigzag you canimagine, thousands of feet of zigzag; and you will sit and eat lunchwith me and look out across the Rhone Valley and over blue distancesbeyond blue distances to the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa and a longregiment of sunny, snowy mountains. And when we see them we shall atonce want to go to them--that's the way with beautiful things--anddown we shall go, like flies down a wall, to Leukerbad, and so to LeukStation, here, and then by train up the Rhone Valley and this littleside valley to Stalden; and there, in the cool of the afternoon, weshall 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 ofthe Magic, Saas of the Pagan People. And there, about Saas, are iceand snows again, and sometimes we will loiter among the rocks and treesabout Saas or peep into Samuel Butler's chapels, and sometimes we willclimb 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 valleyhere to Mattmark, and so on to Monte Moro. There indeed you see MonteRosa. Almost the best of all."