Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story Read online

  "They make me want to shout," said Mr. Manning, with a sweep of the arm.

  "They're very good this year," said Ann Veronica, avoiding controversialmatter.

  "Either I want to shout," said Mr. Manning, "when I see beautifulthings, or else I want to weep." He paused and looked at her, and said,with a sudden drop into a confidential undertone, "Or else I want topray."

  "When is Michaelmas Day?" said Ann Veronica, a little abruptly.

  "Heaven knows!" said Mr. Manning; and added, "the twenty-ninth."

  "I thought it was earlier," said Ann Veronica. "Wasn't Parliament toreassemble?"

  He put out his hand and leaned against a tree and crossed his legs."You're not interested in politics?" he asked, almost with a note ofprotest.

  "Well, rather," said Ann Veronica. "It seems--It's interesting."

  "Do you think so? I find my interest in that sort of thing decline anddecline."

  "I'm curious. Perhaps because I don't know. I suppose an intelligentperson OUGHT to be interested in political affairs. They concern usall."

  "I wonder," said Mr. Manning, with a baffling smile.

  "I think they do. After all, they're history in the making."

  "A sort of history," said Mr. Manning; and repeated, "a sort of history.But look at these glorious daisies!"

  "But don't you think political questions ARE important?"

  "I don't think they are this afternoon, and I don't think they are toyou."

  Ann Veronica turned her back on the Michaelmas daisies, and faced towardthe house with an air of a duty completed.

  "Just come to that seat now you are here, Miss Stanley, and look downthe other path; there's a vista of just the common sort. Better eventhan these."

  Ann Veronica walked as he indicated.

  "You know I'm old-fashioned, Miss Stanley. I don't think women need totrouble about political questions."

  "I want a vote," said Ann Veronica.

  "Really!" said Mr. Manning, in an earnest voice, and waved his hand tothe alley of mauve and purple. "I wish you didn't."

  "Why not?" She turned on him.

  "It jars. It jars with all my ideas. Women to me are something soserene, so fine, so feminine, and politics are so dusty, so sordid,so wearisome and quarrelsome. It seems to me a woman's duty to bebeautiful, to BE beautiful and to behave beautifully, and politicsare by their very nature ugly. You see, I--I am a woman worshipper.I worshipped women long before I found any woman I might ever hopeto worship. Long ago. And--the idea of committees, of hustings, ofagenda-papers!"

  "I don't see why the responsibility of beauty should all be shifted onto the women," said Ann Veronica, suddenly remembering a part of MissMiniver's discourse.

  "It rests with them by the nature of things. Why should you who arequeens come down from your thrones? If you can afford it, WE can't. Wecan't afford to turn our women, our Madonnas, our Saint Catherines, ourMona Lisas, our goddesses and angels and fairy princesses, into a sortof man. Womanhood is sacred to me. My politics in that matter wouldn'tbe to give women votes. I'm a Socialist, Miss Stanley."

  "WHAT?" said Ann Veronica, startled.

  "A Socialist of the order of John Ruskin. Indeed I am! I would make thiscountry a collective monarchy, and all the girls and women in it shouldbe the Queen. They should never come into contact with politics oreconomics--or any of those things. And we men would work for them andserve them in loyal fealty."

  "That's rather the theory now," said Ann Veronica. "Only so many menneglect their duties."

  "Yes," said Mr. Manning, with an air of emerging from an elaboratedemonstration, "and so each of us must, under existing conditions, beingchivalrous indeed to all women, choose for himself his own particularand worshipful queen."

  "So far as one can judge from the system in practice," said AnnVeronica, speaking in a loud, common-sense, detached tone, and beginningto walk slowly but resolutely toward the lawn, "it doesn't work."

  "Every one must be experimental," said Mr. Manning, and glanced roundhastily for further horticultural points of interest in secludedcorners. None presented themselves to save him from that return.

  "That's all very well when one isn't the material experimented upon,"Ann Veronica had remarked.

  "Women would--they DO have far more power than they think, asinfluences, as inspirations."

  Ann Veronica said nothing in answer to that.

  "You say you want a vote," said Mr. Manning, abruptly.

  "I think I ought to have one."

  "Well, I have two," said Mr. Manning--"one in Oxford University and onein Kensington." He caught up and went on with a sort of clumsiness: "Letme present you with them and be your voter."

  There followed an instant's pause, and then Ann Veronica had decided tomisunderstand.

  "I want a vote for myself," she said. "I don't see why I should take itsecond-hand. Though it's very kind of you. And rather unscrupulous. Haveyou ever voted, Mr. Manning? I suppose there's a sort of place like aticket-office. And a ballot-box--" Her face assumed an expression ofintellectual conflict. "What is a ballot-box like, exactly?" she asked,as though it was very important to her.

  Mr. Manning regarded her thoughtfully for a moment and stroked hismustache. "A ballot-box, you know," he said, "is very largely just abox." He made quite a long pause, and went on, with a sigh: "You have avoting paper given you--"

  They emerged into the publicity of the lawn.

  "Yes," said Ann Veronica, "yes," to his explanation, and saw acrossthe lawn Lady Palsworthy talking to her aunt, and both of them staringfrankly across at her and Mr. Manning as they talked.

  CHAPTER THE THIRD

  THE MORNING OF THE CRISIS

  Part 1

  Two days after came the day of the Crisis, the day of the Fadden Dance.It would have been a crisis anyhow, but it was complicated in AnnVeronica's mind by the fact that a letter lay on the breakfast-tablefrom Mr. Manning, and that her aunt focussed a brightly tactfuldisregard upon this throughout the meal. Ann Veronica had come downthinking of nothing in the world but her inflexible resolution to go tothe dance in the teeth of all opposition. She did not know Mr. Manning'shandwriting, and opened his letter and read some lines before its importappeared. Then for a time she forgot the Fadden affair altogether.With a well-simulated unconcern and a heightened color she finished herbreakfast.

  She was not obliged to go to the Tredgold College, because as yet theCollege had not settled down for the session. She was supposed to bereading at home, and after breakfast she strolled into the vegetablegarden, and having taken up a position upon the staging of a disusedgreenhouse that had the double advantage of being hidden from thewindows of the house and secure from the sudden appearance of any one,she resumed the reading of Mr. Manning's letter.

  Mr. Manning's handwriting had an air of being clear without being easilylegible; it was large and rather roundish, with a lack of definitionabout the letters and a disposition to treat the large ones asliberal-minded people nowadays treat opinions, as all amounting to thesame thing really--a years-smoothed boyish rather than an adult hand.And it filled seven sheets of notepaper, each written only on one side.

  "MY DEAR MISS STANLEY," it began,--"I hope you will forgive mybothering you with a letter, but I have been thinking very much over ourconversation at Lady Palsworthy's, and I feel there are things I wantto say to you so much that I cannot wait until we meet again. It is theworst of talk under such social circumstances that it is always gettingcut off so soon as it is beginning; and I went home that afternoonfeeling I had said nothing--literally nothing--of the things I had meantto say to you and that were coursing through my head. They were things Ihad meant very much to talk to you about, so that I went home vexed anddisappointed, and only relieved myself a little by writing a few verses.I wonder if you will mind very much when I tell you they were suggestedby you. You must forgive the poet's license I take. Here is one verse.The metrical irregularity is intentional, because I want, as it were, toput you apart: to change the
lilt and the mood altogether when I speakof you.

  "'A SONG OF LADIES AND MY LADY

  "'Saintly white and a lily is Mary, Margaret's violets, sweet and shy; Green and dewy is Nellie-bud fairy, Forget-me-nots live in Gwendolen's eye. Annabel shines like a star in the darkness, Rosamund queens it a rose, deep rose; But the lady I love is like sunshine in April weather, She gleams and gladdens, she warms--and goes.'

  "Crude, I admit. But let that verse tell my secret. All badverse--originally the epigram was Lang's, I believe--is written in astate of emotion.

  "My dear Miss Stanley, when I talked to you the other afternoon of workand politics and such-like things, my mind was all the time resenting itbeyond measure. There we were discussing whether you should have a vote,and I remembered the last occasion we met it was about your prospects ofsuccess in the medical profession or as a Government official such as anumber of women now are, and all the time my heart was crying out withinme, 'Here is the Queen of your career.' I wanted, as I have never wantedbefore, to take you up, to make you mine, to carry you off and set youapart from all the strain and turmoil of life. For nothing will everconvince me that it is not the man's share in life to shield, toprotect, to lead and toil and watch and battle with the world at large.I want to be your knight, your servant, your protector, your--I darescarcely write the word--your husband. So I come suppliant. I amfive-and-thirty, and I have knocked about in the world and tasted thequality of life. I had a hard fight to begin with to win my way into theUpper Division--I was third on a list of forty-seven--and since then Ihave found myself promoted almost yearly in a widening sphere of socialservice. Before I met you I never met any one whom I felt I couldlove, but you have discovered depths in my own nature I had scarcelysuspected. Except for a few early ebullitions of passion, natural toa warm and romantic disposition, and leaving no harmfulafter-effects--ebullitions that by the standards of the higher truth Ifeel no one can justly cast a stone at, and of which I for one am by nomeans ashamed--I come to you a pure and unencumbered man. I love you.In addition to my public salary I have a certain private property andfurther expectations through my aunt, so that I can offer you a lifeof wide and generous refinement, travel, books, discussion, and easyrelations with a circle of clever and brilliant and thoughtful peoplewith whom my literary work has brought me into contact, and of which,seeing me only as you have done alone in Morningside Park, you can haveno idea. I have a certain standing not only as a singer but as a critic,and I belong to one of the most brilliant causerie dinner clubs ofthe day, in which successful Bohemianism, politicians, men of affairs,artists, sculptors, and cultivated noblemen generally, mingle togetherin the easiest and most delightful intercourse. That is my real milieu,and one that I am convinced you would not only adorn but delight in.

  "I find it very hard to write this letter. There are so many thingsI want to tell you, and they stand on such different levels, thatthe effect is necessarily confusing and discordant, and I find myselfdoubting if I am really giving you the thread of emotion that should runthrough all this letter. For although I must confess it reads very muchlike an application or a testimonial or some such thing as that, I canassure you I am writing this in fear and trembling with a sinking heart.My mind is full of ideas and images that I have been cherishing andaccumulating--dreams of travelling side by side, of lunching quietlytogether in some jolly restaurant, of moonlight and music and all thatside of life, of seeing you dressed like a queen and shining in somebrilliant throng--mine; of your looking at flowers in some old-worldgarden, our garden--there are splendid places to be got down in Surrey,and a little runabout motor is quite within my means. You know they say,as, indeed, I have just quoted already, that all bad poetry is writtenin a state of emotion, but I have no doubt that this is true of badoffers of marriage. I have often felt before that it is only when onehas nothing to say that one can write easy poetry. Witness Browning. Andhow can I get into one brief letter the complex accumulated desires ofwhat is now, I find on reference to my diary, nearly sixteen months ofletting my mind run on you--ever since that jolly party at Surbiton,where we raced and beat the other boat. You steered and I rowed stroke.My very sentences stumble and give way. But I do not even care if I amabsurd. I am a resolute man, and hitherto when I have wanted a thing Ihave got it; but I have never yet wanted anything in my life as I havewanted you. It isn't the same thing. I am afraid because I love you, sothat the mere thought of failure hurts. If I did not love you so much Ibelieve I could win you by sheer force of character, for people tell meI am naturally of the dominating type. Most of my successes in life havebeen made with a sort of reckless vigor.

  "Well, I have said what I had to say, stumblingly and badly, and baldly.But I am sick of tearing up letters and hopeless of getting what I haveto say better said. It would be easy enough for me to write an eloquentletter about something else. Only I do not care to write about anythingelse. Let me put the main question to you now that I could not put theother afternoon. Will you marry me, Ann Veronica?

  "Very sincerely yours,

  "HUBERT MANNING."

  Ann Veronica read this letter through with grave, attentive eyes.

  Her interest grew as she read, a certain distaste disappeared. Twice shesmiled, but not unkindly. Then she went back and mixed up the sheets ina search for particular passages. Finally she fell into reflection.

  "Odd!" she said. "I suppose I shall have to write an answer. It's sodifferent from what one has been led to expect."

  She became aware of her aunt, through the panes of the greenhouse,advancing with an air of serene unconsciousness from among the raspberrycanes.

  "No you don't!" said Ann Veronica, and walked out at a brisk andbusiness-like pace toward the house.

  "I'm going for a long tramp, auntie," she said.

  "Alone, dear?"

  "Yes, aunt. I've got a lot of things to think about."

  Miss Stanley reflected as Ann Veronica went toward the house. Shethought her niece very hard and very self-possessed and self-confident.She ought to be softened and tender and confidential at this phase ofher life. She seemed to have no idea whatever of the emotional statesthat were becoming to her age and position. Miss Stanley walked roundthe garden thinking, and presently house and garden reverberated to AnnVeronica's slamming of the front door.

  "I wonder!" said Miss Stanley.

  For a long time she surveyed a row of towering holly-hocks, as thoughthey offered an explanation. Then she went in and up-stairs, hesitatedon the landing, and finally, a little breathless and with an air ofgreat dignity, opened the door and walked into Ann Veronica's room. Itwas a neat, efficient-looking room, with a writing-table placed with abusiness-like regard to the window, and a bookcase surmounted by apig's skull, a dissected frog in a sealed bottle, and a pile ofshiny, black-covered note-books. In the corner of the room were twohockey-sticks and a tennis-racket, and upon the walls Ann Veronica,by means of autotypes, had indicated her proclivities in art. But MissStanley took no notice of these things. She walked straight across tothe wardrobe and opened it. There, hanging among Ann Veronica's morenormal clothing, was a skimpy dress of red canvas, trimmed with cheapand tawdry braid, and short--it could hardly reach below the knee. Onthe same peg and evidently belonging to it was a black velvet Zouavejacket. And then! a garment that was conceivably a secondary skirt.

  Miss Stanley hesitated, and took first one and then another of theconstituents of this costume off its peg and surveyed it.

  The third item she took with a trembling hand by its waistbelt. As sheraised it, its lower portion fell apart into two baggy crimson masses.

  "TROUSERS!" she whispered.

  Her eyes travelled about the room as if in appeal to the very chairs.

  Tucked under the writing-table a pair of yellow and gold Turkishslippers of a highly meretricious quality caught her eye. She walkedover to them still carrying the trousers in her hands, and stooped toexamine them. They were ingenious disguises of gilt paper d
estructivelygummed, it would seem, to Ann Veronicas' best dancing-slippers.

  Then she reverted to the trousers.

  "How CAN I tell him?" whispered Miss Stanley.

  Part 2

  Ann Veronica carried a light but business-like walking-stick. She walkedwith an easy quickness down the Avenue and through the proletarianportion of Morningside Park, and crossing these fields came into apretty overhung lane that led toward Caddington and the Downs. Andthen her pace slackened. She tucked her stick under her arm and re-readManning's letter.

  "Let me think," said Ann Veronica. "I wish this hadn't turned up to-dayof all days."

  She found it difficult to begin thinking, and indeed she was anythingbut clear what it was she had to think about. Practically it was mostof the chief interests in life that she proposed to settle in thispedestrian meditation. Primarily it was her own problem, and inparticular the answer she had to give to Mr. Manning's letter, but inorder to get data for that she found that she, having a logical andordered mind, had to decide upon the general relations of men to women,the objects and conditions of marriage and its bearing upon thewelfare of the race, the purpose of the race, the purpose, if any, ofeverything....