Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story Read online

  "I said everything I could say as soon as I realized she was trying toavoid the topic. I said, 'It is no use your telling me about this walkand pretend I've been told about the ball, because you haven't. Yourfather has forbidden you to go!'"

  "Well?"

  "She said, 'I hate being horrid to you and father, but I feel it my dutyto go to that ball!'"

  "Felt it her duty!"

  "'Very well,' I said, 'then I wash my hands of the whole business. Yourdisobedience be upon your own head.'"

  "But that is flat rebellion!" said Mr. Stanley, standing on thehearthrug with his back to the unlit gas-fire. "You ought at once--youought at once to have told her that. What duty does a girl owe to anyone before her father? Obedience to him, that is surely the first law.What CAN she put before that?" His voice began to rise. "One would thinkI had said nothing about the matter. One would think I had agreed toher going. I suppose this is what she learns in her infernal Londoncolleges. I suppose this is the sort of damned rubbish--"

  "Oh! Ssh, Peter!" cried Miss Stanley.

  He stopped abruptly. In the pause a door could be heard opening andclosing on the landing up-stairs. Then light footsteps became audible,descending the staircase with a certain deliberation and a faint rustleof skirts.

  "Tell her," said Mr. Stanley, with an imperious gesture, "to come inhere."

  Part 2

  Miss Stanley emerged from the study and stood watching Ann Veronicadescend.

  The girl was flushed with excitement, bright-eyed, and braced for astruggle; her aunt had never seen her looking so fine or so pretty.Her fancy dress, save for the green-gray stockings, the pseudo-Turkishslippers, and baggy silk trousered ends natural to a Corsair's bride,was hidden in a large black-silk-hooded opera-cloak. Beneath the hoodit was evident that her rebellious hair was bound up with red silk, andfastened by some device in her ears (unless she had them pierced, whichwas too dreadful a thing to suppose!) were long brass filigree earrings.

  "I'm just off, aunt," said Ann Veronica.

  "Your father is in the study and wishes to speak to you."

  Ann Veronica hesitated, and then stood in the open doorway and regardedher father's stern presence. She spoke with an entirely false note ofcheerful off-handedness. "I'm just in time to say good-bye before I go,father. I'm going up to London with the Widgetts to that ball."

  "Now look here, Ann Veronica," said Mr. Stanley, "just a moment. You areNOT going to that ball!"

  Ann Veronica tried a less genial, more dignified note.

  "I thought we had discussed that, father."

  "You are not going to that ball! You are not going out of this house inthat get-up!"

  Ann Veronica tried yet more earnestly to treat him, as she would treatany man, with an insistence upon her due of masculine respect. "Yousee," she said, very gently, "I AM going. I am sorry to seem to disobeyyou, but I am. I wish"--she found she had embarked on a bad sentence--"Iwish we needn't have quarrelled."

  She stopped abruptly, and turned about toward the front door. In amoment he was beside her. "I don't think you can have heard me, Vee,"he said, with intensely controlled fury. "I said you were"--heshouted--"NOT TO GO!"

  She made, and overdid, an immense effort to be a princess. She tossedher head, and, having no further words, moved toward the door. Herfather intercepted her, and for a moment she and he struggled with theirhands upon the latch. A common rage flushed their faces. "Let go!" shegasped at him, a blaze of anger.

  "Veronica!" cried Miss Stanley, warningly, and, "Peter!"

  For a moment they seemed on the verge of an altogether desperatescuffle. Never for a moment had violence come between these two sincelong ago he had, in spite of her mother's protest in the background,carried her kicking and squalling to the nursery for some forgottencrime. With something near to horror they found themselves thusconfronted.

  The door was fastened by a catch and a latch with an inside key, towhich at night a chain and two bolts were added. Carefully abstainingfrom thrusting against each other, Ann Veronica and her father began anabsurdly desperate struggle, the one to open the door, the other to keepit fastened. She seized the key, and he grasped her hand and squeezedit roughly and painfully between the handle and the ward as she tried toturn it. His grip twisted her wrist. She cried out with the pain of it.

  A wild passion of shame and self-disgust swept over her. Her spiritawoke in dismay to an affection in ruins, to the immense undignifieddisaster that had come to them.

  Abruptly she desisted, recoiled, and turned and fled up-stairs.

  She made noises between weeping and laughter as she went. She gained herroom, and slammed her door and locked it as though she feared violenceand pursuit.

  "Oh God!" she cried, "Oh God!" and flung aside her opera-cloak, and fora time walked about the room--a Corsair's bride at a crisis of emotion."Why can't he reason with me," she said, again and again, "instead ofdoing this?"

  Part 3

  There presently came a phase in which she said: "I WON'T stand it evennow. I will go to-night."

  She went as far as her door, then turned to the window. She openedthis and scrambled out--a thing she had not done for five long years ofadolescence--upon the leaded space above the built-out bath-room on thefirst floor. Once upon a time she and Roddy had descended thence by thedrain-pipe.

  But things that a girl of sixteen may do in short skirts are notthings to be done by a young lady of twenty-one in fancy dress andan opera-cloak, and just as she was coming unaided to an adequaterealization of this, she discovered Mr. Pragmar, the wholesale druggist,who lived three gardens away, and who had been mowing his lawn to getan appetite for dinner, standing in a fascinated attitude beside theforgotten lawn-mower and watching her intently.

  She found it extremely difficult to infuse an air of quiet correctitudeinto her return through the window, and when she was safely inside shewaved clinched fists and executed a noiseless dance of rage.

  When she reflected that Mr. Pragmar probably knew Mr. Ramage, and mightdescribe the affair to him, she cried "Oh!" with renewed vexation, andrepeated some steps of her dance in a new and more ecstatic measure.

  Part 4

  At eight that evening Miss Stanley tapped at Ann Veronica's bedroomdoor.

  "I've brought you up some dinner, Vee," she said.

  Ann Veronica was lying on her bed in a darkling room staring at theceiling. She reflected before answering. She was frightfully hungry.She had eaten little or no tea, and her mid-day meal had been worse thannothing.

  She got up and unlocked the door.

  Her aunt did not object to capital punishment or war, or the industrialsystem or casual wards, or flogging of criminals or the Congo FreeState, because none of these things really got hold of her imaginationbut she did object, she did not like, she could not bear to think ofpeople not having and enjoying their meals. It was her distinctive testof an emotional state, its interference with a kindly normal digestion.Any one very badly moved choked down a few mouthfuls; the symptom ofsupreme distress was not to be able to touch a bit. So that the thoughtof Ann Veronica up-stairs had been extremely painful for her through allthe silent dinner-time that night. As soon as dinner was over she wentinto the kitchen and devoted herself to compiling a tray--not a traymerely of half-cooled dinner things, but a specially prepared "nice"tray, suitable for tempting any one. With this she now entered.

  Ann Veronica found herself in the presence of the most disconcertingfact in human experience, the kindliness of people you believe to bethoroughly wrong. She took the tray with both hands, gulped, and gaveway to tears.

  Her aunt leaped unhappily to the thought of penitence.

  "My dear," she began, with an affectionate hand on Ann Veronica'sshoulder, "I do SO wish you would realize how it grieves your father."

  Ann Veronica flung away from her hand, and the pepper-pot on the trayupset, sending a puff of pepper into the air and instantly filling themboth with an intense desire to sneeze.

  "I don't think you
see," she replied, with tears on her cheeks, and herbrows knitting, "how it shames and, ah!--disgraces me--AH TISHU!"

  She put down the tray with a concussion on her toilet-table.

  "But, dear, think! He is your father. SHOOH!"

  "That's no reason," said Ann Veronica, speaking through her handkerchiefand stopping abruptly.

  Niece and aunt regarded each other for a moment over theirpocket-handkerchiefs with watery but antagonistic eyes, each far tooprofoundly moved to see the absurdity of the position.

  "I hope," said Miss Stanley, with dignity, and turned doorward withfeatures in civil warfare. "Better state of mind," she gasped....

  Ann Veronica stood in the twilight room staring at the door that hadslammed upon her aunt, her pocket-handkerchief rolled tightly in herhand. Her soul was full of the sense of disaster. She had made her firstfight for dignity and freedom as a grown-up and independent Person, andthis was how the universe had treated her. It had neither succumbedto her nor wrathfully overwhelmed her. It had thrust her back with anundignified scuffle, with vulgar comedy, with an unendurable, scornfulgrin.

  "By God!" said Ann Veronica for the first time in her life. "But I will!I will!"

  CHAPTER THE FIFTH

  THE FLIGHT TO LONDON

  Part 1

  Ann Veronica had an impression that she did not sleep at all that night,and at any rate she got through an immense amount of feverish feelingand thinking.

  What was she going to do?

  One main idea possessed her: she must get away from home, she mustassert herself at once or perish. "Very well," she would say, "then Imust go." To remain, she felt, was to concede everything. And she wouldhave to go to-morrow. It was clear it must be to-morrow. If she delayeda day she would delay two days, if she delayed two days she would delaya week, and after a week things would be adjusted to submission forever."I'll go," she vowed to the night, "or I'll die!" She made plans andestimated means and resources. These and her general preparations hadperhaps a certain disproportion. She had a gold watch, a very good goldwatch that had been her mother's, a pearl necklace that was also prettygood, some unpretending rings, some silver bangles and a few other suchinferior trinkets, three pounds thirteen shillings unspent of herdress and book allowance and a few good salable books. So equipped, sheproposed to set up a separate establishment in the world.

  And then she would find work.

  For most of a long and fluctuating night she was fairly confident thatshe would find work; she knew herself to be strong, intelligent, andcapable by the standards of most of the girls she knew. She was notquite clear how she should find it, but she felt she would. Thenshe would write and tell her father what she had done, and put theirrelationship on a new footing.

  That was how she projected it, and in general terms it seemed plausibleand possible. But in between these wider phases of comparativeconfidence were gaps of disconcerting doubt, when the universe waspresented as making sinister and threatening faces at her, defying herto defy, preparing a humiliating and shameful overthrow. "I don't care,"said Ann Veronica to the darkness; "I'll fight it."

  She tried to plan her proceedings in detail. The only difficulties thatpresented themselves clearly to her were the difficulties of gettingaway from Morningside Park, and not the difficulties at the other endof the journey. These were so outside her experience that she found itpossible to thrust them almost out of sight by saying they would be "allright" in confident tones to herself. But still she knew they were notright, and at times they became a horrible obsession as of somethingwaiting for her round the corner. She tried to imagine herself "gettingsomething," to project herself as sitting down at a desk and writing,or as returning after her work to some pleasantly equipped and free andindependent flat. For a time she furnished the flat. But even withthat furniture it remained extremely vague, the possible good and thepossible evil as well!

  The possible evil! "I'll go," said Ann Veronica for the hundredth time."I'll go. I don't care WHAT happens."

  She awoke out of a doze, as though she had never been sleeping. It wastime to get up.

  She sat on the edge of her bed and looked about her, at her room, at therow of black-covered books and the pig's skull. "I must take them,"she said, to help herself over her own incredulity. "How shall I get myluggage out of the house?..."

  The figure of her aunt, a little distant, a little propitiatory, behindthe coffee things, filled her with a sense of almost catastrophicadventure. Perhaps she might never come back to that breakfast-roomagain. Never! Perhaps some day, quite soon, she might regret thatbreakfast-room. She helped herself to the remainder of the slightlycongealed bacon, and reverted to the problem of getting her luggageout of the house. She decided to call in the help of Teddy Widgett, or,failing him, of one of his sisters.

  Part 2

  She found the younger generation of the Widgetts engaged in languidreminiscences, and all, as they expressed it, a "bit decayed." Everyone became tremendously animated when they heard that Ann Veronica hadfailed them because she had been, as she expressed it, "locked in."

  "My God!" said Teddy, more impressively than ever.

  "But what are you going to do?" asked Hetty.

  "What can one do?" asked Ann Veronica. "Would you stand it? I'm going toclear out."

  "Clear out?" cried Hetty.

  "Go to London," said Ann Veronica.

  She had expected sympathetic admiration, but instead the whole Widgettfamily, except Teddy, expressed a common dismay. "But how can you?"asked Constance. "Who will you stop with?"

  "I shall go on my own. Take a room!"

  "I say!" said Constance. "But who's going to pay for the room?"

  "I've got money," said Ann Veronica. "Anything is better than this--thisstifled life down here." And seeing that Hetty and Constance wereobviously developing objections, she plunged at once into a demand forhelp. "I've got nothing in the world to pack with except a toy sizeportmanteau. Can you lend me some stuff?"

  "You ARE a chap!" said Constance, and warmed only slowly from the ideaof dissuasion to the idea of help. But they did what they could for her.They agreed to lend her their hold-all and a large, formless bag whichthey called the communal trunk. And Teddy declared himself ready to goto the ends of the earth for her, and carry her luggage all the way.

  Hetty, looking out of the window--she always smoked her after-breakfastcigarette at the window for the benefit of the less advanced section ofMorningside Park society--and trying not to raise objections, saw MissStanley going down toward the shops.

  "If you must go on with it," said Hetty, "now's your time." And AnnVeronica at once went back with the hold-all, trying not to hurryindecently but to keep up her dignified air of being a wronged persondoing the right thing at a smart trot, to pack. Teddy went round by thegarden backs and dropped the bag over the fence. All this was excitingand entertaining. Her aunt returned before the packing was done, andAnn Veronica lunched with an uneasy sense of bag and hold-all packedup-stairs and inadequately hidden from chance intruders by the valanceof the bed. She went down, flushed and light-hearted, to the Widgetts'after lunch to make some final arrangements and then, as soon as heraunt had retired to lie down for her usual digestive hour, took therisk of the servants having the enterprise to report her proceedingsand carried her bag and hold-all to the garden gate, whence Teddy, ina state of ecstatic service, bore them to the railway station. Then shewent up-stairs again, dressed herself carefully for town, put on hermost businesslike-looking hat, and with a wave of emotion she found ithard to control, walked down to catch the 3.17 up-train.

  Teddy handed her into the second-class compartment her season-ticketwarranted, and declared she was "simply splendid." "If you wantanything," he said, "or get into any trouble, wire me. I'd come backfrom the ends of the earth. I'd do anything, Vee. It's horrible to thinkof you!"

  "You're an awful brick, Teddy!" she said.

  "Who wouldn't be for you?"

  The train began to move. "You're splendid!" sai
d Teddy, with his hairwild in the wind. "Good luck! Good luck!"

  She waved from the window until the bend hid him.

  She found herself alone in the train asking herself what she must donext, and trying not to think of herself as cut off from home or anyrefuge whatever from the world she had resolved to face. She feltsmaller and more adventurous even than she had expected to feel. "Letme see," she said to herself, trying to control a slight sinking of theheart, "I am going to take a room in a lodging-house because that ischeaper.... But perhaps I had better get a room in an hotel to-nightand look round....

  "It's bound to be all right," she said.

  But her heart kept on sinking. What hotel should she go to? If she tolda cabman to drive to an hotel, any hotel, what would he do--or say? Hemight drive to something dreadfully expensive, and not at all the quietsort of thing she required. Finally she decided that even for an hotelshe must look round, and that meanwhile she would "book" her luggage atWaterloo. She told the porter to take it to the booking-office, and itwas only after a disconcerting moment or so that she found she ought tohave directed him to go to the cloak-room. But that was soon put right,and she walked out into London with a peculiar exaltation of mind, anexaltation that partook of panic and defiance, but was chiefly a senseof vast unexampled release.

  She inhaled a deep breath of air--London air.

  Part 3

  She dismissed the first hotels she passed, she scarcely knew why, mainlyperhaps from the mere dread of entering them, and crossed WaterlooBridge at a leisurely pace. It was high afternoon, there was no greatthrong of foot-passengers, and many an eye from omnibus and pavementrested gratefully on her fresh, trim presence as she passed youngand erect, with the light of determination shining through the quietself-possession of her face. She was dressed as English girls do dressfor town, without either coquetry or harshness: her collarless blouseconfessed a pretty neck, her eyes were bright and steady, and her darkhair waved loosely and graciously over her ears....