Ann Veronica Read online

  He contradicted himself by plunging into an exposition of motifs.

  By a tacit agreement they ignored the significant thing between them, ignored the slipping away of the ground on which they had stood together hitherto....

  All through the love music of the second act, until the hunting horns of Mark break in upon the dream, Ann Veronica's consciousness was flooded with the perception of a man close beside her, preparing some new thing to say to her, preparing, perhaps, to touch her, stretching hungry invisible tentacles about her. She tried to think what she should do in this eventuality or that. Her mind had been and was full of the thought of Capes, a huge generalized Capes-lover. And in some incomprehensible way, Ramage was confused with Capes; she had a grotesque disposition to persuade herself that this was really Capes who surrounded her, as it were, with wings of desire. The fact that it was her trusted friend making illicit love to her remained, in spite of all her effort, an insignificant thing in her mind. The music confused and distracted her, and made her struggle against a feeling of intoxication. Her head swam. That was the inconvenience of it; her head was swimming. The music throbbed into the warnings that preceded the king's irruption.

  Abruptly he gripped her wrist. "I love you, Ann Veronica. I love you—with all my heart and soul."

  She put her face closer to his. She felt the warm nearness of his. "DON'T!" she said, and wrenched her wrist from his retaining hand.

  "My God! Ann Veronica," he said, struggling to keep his hold upon her; "my God! Tell me—tell me now—tell me you love me!"

  His expression was as it were rapaciously furtive. She answered in whispers, for there was the white arm of a woman in the next box peeping beyond the partition within a yard of him.

  "My hand! This isn't the place."

  He released her hand and talked in eager undertones against an auditory background of urgency and distress.

  "Ann Veronica," he said, "I tell you this is love. I love the soles of your feet. I love your very breath. I have tried not to tell you—tried to be simply your friend. It is no good. I want you. I worship you. I would do anything—I would give anything to make you mine.... Do you hear me? Do you hear what I am saying?... Love!"

  He held her arm and abandoned it again at her quick defensive movement. For a long time neither spoke again.

  She sat drawn together in her chair in the corner of the box, at a loss what to say or do—afraid, curious, perplexed. It seemed to her that it was her duty to get up and clamor to go home to her room, to protest against his advances as an insult. But she did not in the least want to do that. These sweeping dignities were not within the compass of her will; she remembered she liked Ramage, and owed things to him, and she was interested—she was profoundly interested. He was in love with her! She tried to grasp all the welter of values in the situation simultaneously, and draw some conclusion from their disorder.

  He began to talk again in quick undertones that she could not clearly hear.

  "I have loved you," he was saying, "ever since you sat on that gate and talked. I have always loved you. I don't care what divides us. I don't care what else there is in the world. I want you beyond measure or reckoning...."

  His voice rose and fell amidst the music and the singing of Tristan and King Mark, like a voice heard in a badly connected telephone. She stared at his pleading face.

  She turned to the stage, and Tristan was wounded in Kurvenal's arms, with Isolde at his feet, and King Mark, the incarnation of masculine force and obligation, the masculine creditor of love and beauty, stood over him, and the second climax was ending in wreaths and reek of melodies; and then the curtain was coming down in a series of short rushes, the music had ended, and the people were stirring and breaking out into applause, and the lights of the auditorium were resuming. The lighting-up pierced the obscurity of the box, and Ramage stopped his urgent flow of words abruptly and sat back. This helped to restore Ann Veronica's self-command.

  She turned her eyes to him again, and saw her late friend and pleasant and trusted companion, who had seen fit suddenly to change into a lover, babbling interesting inacceptable things. He looked eager and flushed and troubled. His eyes caught at hers with passionate inquiries. "Tell me," he said; "speak to me." She realized it was possible to be sorry for him—acutely sorry for the situation. Of course this thing was absolutely impossible. But she was disturbed, mysteriously disturbed. She remembered abruptly that she was really living upon his money. She leaned forward and addressed him.

  "Mr. Ramage," she said, "please don't talk like this."

  He made to speak and did not.

  "I don't want you to do it, to go on talking to me. I don't want to hear you. If I had known that you had meant to talk like this I wouldn't have come here."

  "But how can I help it? How can I keep silence?"

  "Please!" she insisted. "Please not now."

  "I MUST talk with you. I must say what I have to say!"

  "But not now—not here."

  "It came," he said. "I never planned it—And now I have begun—"

  She felt acutely that he was entitled to explanations, and as acutely that explanations were impossible that night. She wanted to think.

  "Mr. Ramage," she said, "I can't—Not now. Will you please—Not now, or I must go."

  He stared at her, trying to guess at the mystery of her thoughts.

  "You don't want to go?"

  "No. But I must—I ought—"

  "I MUST talk about this. Indeed I must."

  "Not now."

  "But I love you. I love you—unendurably."

  "Then don't talk to me now. I don't want you to talk to me now. There is a place—This isn't the place. You have misunderstood. I can't explain—"

  They regarded one another, each blinded to the other. "Forgive me," he decided to say at last, and his voice had a little quiver of emotion, and he laid his hand on hers upon her knee. "I am the most foolish of men. I was stupid—stupid and impulsive beyond measure to burst upon you in this way. I—I am a love-sick idiot, and not accountable for my actions. Will you forgive me—if I say no more?"

  She looked at him with perplexed, earnest eyes.

  "Pretend," he said, "that all I have said hasn't been said. And let us go on with our evening. Why not? Imagine I've had a fit of hysteria—and that I've come round."

  "Yes," she said, and abruptly she liked him enormously. She felt this was the sensible way out of this oddly sinister situation.

  He still watched her and questioned her.

  "And let us have a talk about this—some other time. Somewhere, where we can talk without interruption. Will you?"

  She thought, and it seemed to him she had never looked so self-disciplined and deliberate and beautiful. "Yes," she said, "that is what we ought to do." But now she doubted again of the quality of the armistice they had just made.

  He had a wild impulse to shout. "Agreed," he said with queer exaltation, and his grip tightened on her hand. "And to-night we are friends?"

  "We are friends," said Ann Veronica, and drew her hand quickly away from him.

  "To-night we are as we have always been. Except that this music we have been swimming in is divine. While I have been pestering you, have you heard it? At least, you heard the first act. And all the third act is love-sick music. Tristan dying and Isolde coming to crown his death. Wagner had just been in love when he wrote it all. It begins with that queer piccolo solo. Now I shall never hear it but what this evening will come pouring back over me."

  The lights sank, the prelude to the third act was beginning, the music rose and fell in crowded intimations of lovers separated—lovers separated with scars and memories between them, and the curtain went reefing up to display Tristan lying wounded on his couch and the shepherd crouching with his pipe.

  Part 2

  They had their explanations the next evening, but they were explanations in quite other terms than Ann Veronica had anticipated, quite other and much more startling and illuminating
terms. Ramage came for her at her lodgings, and she met him graciously and kindly as a queen who knows she must needs give sorrow to a faithful liege. She was unusually soft and gentle in her manner to him. He was wearing a new silk hat, with a slightly more generous brim than its predecessor, and it suited his type of face, robbed his dark eyes a little of their aggressiveness and gave him a solid and dignified and benevolent air. A faint anticipation of triumph showed in his manner and a subdued excitement.

  "We'll go to a place where we can have a private room," he said. "Then—then we can talk things out."

  So they went this time to the Rococo, in Germain Street, and up-stairs to a landing upon which stood a bald-headed waiter with whiskers like a French admiral and discretion beyond all limits in his manner. He seemed to have expected them. He ushered them with an amiable flat hand into a minute apartment with a little gas-stove, a silk crimson-covered sofa, and a bright little table, gay with napery and hot-house flowers.

  "Odd little room," said Ann Veronica, dimly apprehending that obtrusive sofa.

  "One can talk without undertones, so to speak," said Ramage. "It's—private." He stood looking at the preparations before them with an unusual preoccupation of manner, then roused himself to take her jacket, a little awkwardly, and hand it to the waiter who hung it in the corner of the room. It appeared he had already ordered dinner and wine, and the whiskered waiter waved in his subordinate with the soup forthwith.

  "I'm going to talk of indifferent themes," said Ramage, a little fussily, "until these interruptions of the service are over. Then—then we shall be together.... How did you like Tristan?"

  Ann Veronica paused the fraction of a second before her reply came.

  "I thought much of it amazingly beautiful."

  "Isn't it. And to think that man got it all out of the poorest little love-story for a respectable titled lady! Have you read of it?"

  "Never."

  "It gives in a nutshell the miracle of art and the imagination. You get this queer irascible musician quite impossibly and unfortunately in love with a wealthy patroness, and then out of his brain comes THIS, a tapestry of glorious music, setting out love to lovers, lovers who love in spite of all that is wise and respectable and right."

  Ann Veronica thought. She did not want to seem to shrink from conversation, but all sorts of odd questions were running through her mind. "I wonder why people in love are so defiant, so careless of other considerations?"

  "The very hares grow brave. I suppose because it IS the chief thing in life." He stopped and said earnestly: "It is the chief thing in life, and everything else goes down before it. Everything, my dear, everything!... But we have got to talk upon indifferent themes until we have done with this blond young gentleman from Bavaria...."

  The dinner came to an end at last, and the whiskered waiter presented his bill and evacuated the apartment and closed the door behind him with an almost ostentatious discretion. Ramage stood up, and suddenly turned the key in the door in an off-hand manner. "Now," he said, "no one can blunder in upon us. We are alone and we can say and do what we please. We two." He stood still, looking at her.

  Ann Veronica tried to seem absolutely unconcerned. The turning of the key startled her, but she did not see how she could make an objection. She felt she had stepped into a world of unknown usages.

  "I have waited for this," he said, and stood quite still, looking at her until the silence became oppressive.

  "Won't you sit down," she said, "and tell me what you want to say?" Her voice was flat and faint. Suddenly she had become afraid. She struggled not to be afraid. After all, what could happen?

  He was looking at her very hard and earnestly. "Ann Veronica," he said.

  Then before she could say a word to arrest him he was at her side. "Don't!" she said, weakly, as he had bent down and put one arm about her and seized her hands with his disengaged hand and kissed her—kissed her almost upon her lips. He seemed to do ten things before she could think to do one, to leap upon her and take possession.

  Ann Veronica's universe, which had never been altogether so respectful to her as she could have wished, gave a shout and whirled head over heels. Everything in the world had changed for her. If hate could kill, Ramage would have been killed by a flash of hate. "Mr. Ramage!" she cried, and struggled to her feet.

  "My darling!" he said, clasping her resolutely in his arms, "my dearest!"

  "Mr. Ramage!" she began, and his mouth sealed hers and his breath was mixed with her breath. Her eye met his four inches away, and his was glaring, immense, and full of resolution, a stupendous monster of an eye.

  She shut her lips hard, her jaw hardened, and she set herself to struggle with him. She wrenched her head away from his grip and got her arm between his chest and hers. They began to wrestle fiercely. Each became frightfully aware of the other as a plastic energetic body, of the strong muscles of neck against cheek, of hands gripping shoulder-blade and waist. "How dare you!" she panted, with her world screaming and grimacing insult at her. "How dare you!"

  They were both astonished at the other's strength. Perhaps Ramage was the more astonished. Ann Veronica had been an ardent hockey player and had had a course of jiu-jitsu in the High School. Her defence ceased rapidly to be in any sense ladylike, and became vigorous and effective; a strand of black hair that had escaped its hairpins came athwart Ramage's eyes, and then the knuckles of a small but very hardly clinched fist had thrust itself with extreme effectiveness and painfulness under his jawbone and ear.

  "Let go!" said Ann Veronica, through her teeth, strenuously inflicting agony, and he cried out sharply and let go and receded a pace.

  "NOW!" said Ann Veronica. "Why did you dare to do that?"

  Part 3

  Each of them stared at the other, set in a universe that had changed its system of values with kaleidoscopic completeness. She was flushed, and her eyes were bright and angry; her breath came sobbing, and her hair was all abroad in wandering strands of black. He too was flushed and ruffled; one side of his collar had slipped from its stud and he held a hand to the corner of his jaw.

  "You vixen!" said Mr. Ramage, speaking the simplest first thought of his heart.

  "You had no right—" panted Ann Veronica.

  "Why on earth," he asked, "did you hurt me like that?"

  Ann Veronica did her best to think she had not deliberately attempted to cause him pain. She ignored his question.

  "I never dreamt!" she said.

  "What on earth did you expect me to do, then?" he asked.

  Part 4

  Interpretation came pouring down upon her almost blindingly; she understood now the room, the waiter, the whole situation. She understood. She leaped to a world of shabby knowledge, of furtive base realizations. She wanted to cry out upon herself for the uttermost fool in existence.

  "I thought you wanted to have a talk to me," she said.

  "I wanted to make love to you.

  "You knew it," he added, in her momentary silence.

  "You said you were in love with me," said Ann Veronica; "I wanted to explain—"

  "I said I loved and wanted you." The brutality of his first astonishment was evaporating. "I am in love with you. You know I am in love with you. And then you go—and half throttle me.... I believe you've crushed a gland or something. It feels like it."

  "I am sorry," said Ann Veronica. "What else was I to do?"

  For some seconds she stood watching him and both were thinking very quickly. Her state of mind would have seemed altogether discreditable to her grandmother. She ought to have been disposed to faint and scream at all these happenings; she ought to have maintained a front of outraged dignity to veil the sinking of her heart. I would like to have to tell it so. But indeed that is not at all a good description of her attitude. She was an indignant queen, no doubt she was alarmed and disgusted within limits; but she was highly excited, and there was something, some low adventurous strain in her being, some element, subtle at least if base, going about
the rioting ways and crowded insurgent meeting-places of her mind declaring that the whole affair was after all—they are the only words that express it—a very great lark indeed. At the bottom of her heart she was not a bit afraid of Ramage. She had unaccountable gleams of sympathy with and liking for him. And the grotesquest fact was that she did not so much loathe, as experience with a quite critical condemnation this strange sensation of being kissed. Never before had any human being kissed her lips....

  It was only some hours after that these ambiguous elements evaporated and vanished and loathing came, and she really began to be thoroughly sick and ashamed of the whole disgraceful quarrel and scuffle.

  He, for his part, was trying to grasp the series of unexpected reactions that had so wrecked their tete-a-tete. He had meant to be master of his fate that evening and it had escaped him altogether. It had, as it were, blown up at the concussion of his first step. It dawned upon him that he had been abominably used by Ann Veronica.

  "Look here," he said, "I brought you here to make love to you."

  "I didn't understand—your idea of making love. You had better let me go again."

  "Not yet," he said. "I do love you. I love you all the more for the streak of sheer devil in you.... You are the most beautiful, the most desirable thing I have ever met in this world. It was good to kiss you, even at the price. But, by Jove! you are fierce! You are like those Roman women who carry stilettos in their hair."

  "I came here to talk reasonably, Mr. Ramage. It is abominable—"

  "What is the use of keeping up this note of indignation, Ann Veronica? Here I am! I am your lover, burning for you. I mean to have you! Don't frown me off now. Don't go back into Victorian respectability and pretend you don't know and you can't think and all the rest of it. One comes at last to the step from dreams to reality. This is your moment. No one will ever love you as I love you now. I have been dreaming of your body and you night after night. I have been imaging—"