Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story Read online

  They both stood listening. It was not the arrival of the guests, butmerely the maid moving about in the hall.

  "Wonderful man!" said Ann Veronica, reassured, and stroking his cheekwith her finger.

  Capes made a quick movement as if to bite that aggressive digit, but itwithdrew to Ann Veronica's side.

  "I was really interested in his stuff. I WAS talking to him before I sawhis name on the card beside the row of microscopes. Then, naturally, Iwent 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 bitof a scene?"

  "Oh! let me see. I said I hadn't been at the Royal Society soiree forfour years, and got him to tell me about some of the fresh Mendelianwork. He loves the Mendelians because he hates all the big names ofthe eighties and nineties. Then I think I remarked that science wasdisgracefully under-endowed, and confessed I'd had to take tomore profitable courses. 'The fact of it is,' I said, 'I'm the newplaywright, Thomas More. Perhaps you've heard--?' Well, you know, hehad."

  "Fame!"

  "Isn't it? 'I've not seen your play, Mr. More,' he said, 'but I'm toldit's the most amusing thing in London at the present time. A friendof mine, Ogilvy'--I suppose that's Ogilvy & Ogilvy, who do so manydivorces, Vee?--'was speaking very highly of it--very highly!'" Hesmiled into her eyes.

  "You are developing far too retentive a memory for praises," said AnnVeronica.

  "I'm still new to them. But after that it was easy. I told him instantlyand shamelessly that the play was going to be worth ten thousand pounds.He agreed it was disgraceful. Then I assumed a rather portentous mannerto prepare him."

  "How? Show me."

  "I can't be portentous, dear, when you're about. It's my other side ofthe 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 sottovoce, 'The fact of it is, sir, I happen to be your son-in-law, Capes. Ido wish you could come and dine with us some evening. It would make mywife very happy.'"

  "What did he say?"

  "What does any one say to an invitation to dinner point-blank? One triesto 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 thespur of the moment in the face of such conflicting values as hehad before him. With me behaving as if everything was infinitelymatter-of-fact, what could he do? And just then Heaven sent oldManningtree--I didn't tell you before of the fortunate intervention ofManningtree, did I? He was looking quite infernally distinguished, witha wide crimson ribbon across him--what IS a wide crimson ribbon? Somesort 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'sfrightfully anti-Mendelian--having it all their own way. So I introducedhim to my father-in-law like a shot. I think that WAS decision. Yes, itwas 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 genuineeffusion. Miss Stanley threw aside a black cloak to reveal a discreetand dignified arrangement of brown silk, and then embraced Ann Veronicawith warmth. "So very clear and cold," she said. "I feared we mighthave a fog." The housemaid's presence acted as a useful restraint. AnnVeronica passed from her aunt to her father, and put her arms about himand kissed his cheek. "Dear old daddy!" she said, and was amazed tofind herself shedding tears. She veiled her emotion by taking off hisovercoat. "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. "Quiteunusually 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 placeupon the little sofa before the fire. Also she made little pussy-likesounds of a reassuring nature.

  "And let's have a look at you, Vee!" said Mr. Stanley, standing up witha sudden geniality and rubbing his hands together.

  Ann Veronica, who knew her dress became her, dropped a curtsy to herfather's regard.

  Happily they had no one else to wait for, and it heartened her mightilyto think that she had ordered the promptest possible service of thedinner. Capes stood beside Miss Stanley, who was beaming unnaturally,and Mr. Stanley, in his effort to seem at ease, took entire possessionof the hearthrug.

  "You found the flat easily?" said Capes in the pause. "The numbers are alittle 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 MissStanley; and in the fulness of her heart she gave a friendly squeeze tothe parental arm.

  "Excellent fellow!" he answered a little irrelevantly. "I didn'tunderstand, Vee."

  "Quite charming apartments," Miss Stanley admired; "charming! Everythingis so pretty and convenient."

  The dinner was admirable as a dinner; nothing went wrong, from thegolden and excellent clear soup to the delightful iced marronsand cream; and Miss Stanley's praises died away to an appreciativeacquiescence. A brisk talk sprang up between Capes and Mr. Stanley, towhich the two ladies subordinated themselves intelligently. Theburning topic of the Mendelian controversy was approached on one or twooccasions, but avoided dexterously; and they talked chiefly of lettersand art and the censorship of the English stage. Mr. Stanley wasinclined to think the censorship should be extended to the supply ofwhat he styled latter-day fiction good wholesome stories were beingousted, he said, by "vicious, corrupting stuff" that "left a bad tastein the mouth." He declared that no book could be satisfactory that lefta bad taste in the mouth, however much it seized and interested thereader at the time. He did not like it, he said, with a significantlook, to be reminded of either his books or his dinners after he haddone 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 interestin the salted almonds.

  "Quite particularly nice," said her aunt. "Exceptionally so."

  When Ann Veronica could attend again she found the men were discussingthe ethics of the depreciation of house property through the increasingtumult of traffic in the West End, and agreeing with each other to adevastating extent. It came into her head with real emotional force thatthis must be some particularly fantastic sort of dream. It seemed to herthat her father was in some inexplicable way meaner-looking than shehad supposed, and yet also, as unaccountably, appealing. His tie haddemanded a struggle; he ought to have taken a clean one after hisfirst failure. Why was she noting things like this? Capes seemedself-possessed and elaborately genial and commonplace, but she knew himto be nervous by a little occasional clumsiness, by the faintest shadowof vulgarity in the urgency of his hospitality. She wished he couldsmoke and dull his nerves a little. A gust of irrational impatience blewthrough her being. Well, they'd got to the pheasants, and in a littlewhile he would smoke. What was it she had expected? Surely her moodswere getting a little out of hand.

  She wished her father and aunt would not enjoy their dinner with suchquiet determination. Her father and her husband, who had both been alittle pale at their first encounter, were growing now just faintlyflushed. It was a pity people had to eat food.

  "I suppose," said her father, "I have read at least half the novels thathave been at all successful during the last twenty years. Three a weekis my allowance, and, if I get short ones, four. I change them in themorning at Cannon Street, and take my book as
I come down."

  It occurred to her that she had never seen her father dining outbefore, never watched him critically as an equal. To Capes he was almostdeferential, and she had never seen him deferential in the old time,never. The dinner was stranger than she had ever anticipated. It wasas if she had grown right past her father into something older andof infinitely wider outlook, as if he had always been unsuspectedly aflattened 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 sayto her aunt, "Now, dear?" and rise and hold back the curtain through thearchway. Capes and her father stood up, and her father made a belatedmovement toward the curtain. She realized that he was the sort of manone does not think much about at dinners. And Capes was thinking thathis wife was a supremely beautiful woman. He reached a silver cigar andcigarette box from the sideboard and put it before his father-in-law,and for a time the preliminaries of smoking occupied them both. ThenCapes flittered to the hearthrug and poked the fire, stood up, andturned about. "Ann Veronica is looking very well, don't you think?" hesaid, 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 seemedto hesitate whether he had not gone too far. He looked at his port wineas though that tawny ruby contained the solution of the matter. "All'swell that ends well," he said; "and the less one says about things thebetter."

  "Of course," said Capes, and threw a newly lit cigar into the firethrough 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 tosee Mr. Stanley and his sister into a taxicab, and had waved an amiablefarewell 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. Andthen, "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, talkingcookery?"

  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 thearm-chair beside her.

  "Life's so queer," she said, kneeling and looking into the flames. "Iwonder--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 aregoing 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. "Quitedifferent. She didn't choose her man.... Well, I told aunt....Husband of mine, I think we have rather overrated the emotional capacityof those--those dears."

  "What did your aunt say?"

  "She didn't even kiss me. She said"--Ann Veronica shivered again--"'Ihope it won't make you uncomfortable, my dear'--like that--'andwhatever you do, do be careful of your hair!' I think--I judge fromher manner--that she thought it was just a little indelicate ofus--considering everything; but she tried to be practical andsympathetic 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, andthat he was disposed to let bygones be bygones. He then spoke with acertain 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 wehad gone under--!"

  They regarded one another silently, and Ann Veronica had one of herpenetrating flashes.

  "We are not the sort that goes under," said Ann Veronica, holding herhands so that the red reflections vanished from her eyes. "We settledlong ago--we're hard stuff. We're hard stuff!"

  Then she went on: "To think that is my father! Oh, my dear! He stoodover me like a cliff; the thought of him nearly turned me aside fromeverything 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 wecan 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 herhusband's arms.

  "Do you remember the mountains? Do you remember how we loved oneanother? How intensely we loved one another! Do you remember the lighton things and the glory of things? I'm greedy, I'm greedy! I wantchildren 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'slike the petals falling from a flower. Oh, I've loved love, dear! I'veloved 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 myhair--and when I am done with that I shall be an old woman. The petalshave fallen--the red petals we loved so. We're hedged about withdiscretions--and all this furniture--and successes! We are successfulat last! Successful! But the mountains, dear! We won't forget themountains, dear, ever. That shining slope of snow, and how we talked ofdeath! We might have died! Even when we are old, when we are rich as wemay be, we won't forget the tune when we cared nothing for anything butthe joy of one another, when we risked everything for one another, whenall the wrappings and coverings seemed to have fallen from life and leftit light and fire. Stark and stark! Do you remember it all?... Sayyou will never forget! That these common things and secondary thingssha'n't overwhelm us. These petals! I've been wanting to cry all theevening, cry here on your shoulder for my petals. Petals!... Sillywoman!... I've never had these crying fits before...."

  "Blood of my heart!" whispered Capes, holding her close to him. "I know.I understand."