Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story
an impartial observer would have discovered little lines of obstinate
wilfulness in common; a certain hardness--sharp, indeed, in the father
and softly rounded in the daughter--but hardness nevertheless, that made
every compromise a bargain and every charity a discount.
“And so you have been thinking?” her father began, quoting her letter
and looking over his slanting glasses at her. “Well, my girl, I wish you
had thought about all these things before these bothers began.”
Ann Veronica perceived that she must not forget to remain eminently
reasonable.
“One has to live and learn,” she remarked, with a passable imitation of
her father’s manner.
“So long as you learn,” said Mr. Stanley.
Their conversation hung.
“I suppose, daddy, you’ve no objection to my going on with my work at
the Imperial College?” she asked.
“If it will keep you busy,” he said, with a faintly ironical smile.
“The fees are paid to the end of the session.”
He nodded twice, with his eyes on the fire, as though that was a formal
statement.
“You may go on with that work,” he said, “so long as you keep in harmony
with things at home. I’m convinced that much of Russell’s investigations
are on wrong lines, unsound lines. Still--you must learn for yourself.
You’re of age--you’re of age.”
“The work’s almost essential for the B.Sc. exam.”
“It’s scandalous, but I suppose it is.”
Their agreement so far seemed remarkable, and yet as a home-coming the
thing was a little lacking in warmth. But Ann Veronica had still to get
to her chief topic. They were silent for a time. “It’s a period of crude
views and crude work,” said Mr. Stanley. “Still, these Mendelian fellows
seem likely to give Mr. Russell trouble, a good lot of trouble. Some of
their specimens--wonderfully selected, wonderfully got up.”
“Daddy,” said Ann Veronica, “these affairs--being away from home
has--cost money.”
“I thought you would find that out.”
“As a matter of fact, I happen to have got a little into debt.”
“NEVER!”
Her heart sank at the change in his expression.
“Well, lodgings and things! And I paid my fees at the College.”
“Yes. But how could you get--Who gave you credit?
“You see,” said Ann Veronica, “my landlady kept on my room while I
was in Holloway, and the fees for the College mounted up pretty
considerably.” She spoke rather quickly, because she found her father’s
question the most awkward she had ever had to answer in her life.
“Molly and you settled about the rooms. She said you HAD some money.”
“I borrowed it,” said Ann Veronica in a casual tone, with white despair
in her heart.
“But who could have lent you money?”
“I pawned my pearl necklace. I got three pounds, and there’s three on my
watch.”
“Six pounds. H’m. Got the tickets? Yes, but then--you said you
borrowed?”
“I did, too,” said Ann Veronica.
“Who from?”
She met his eye for a second and her heart failed her. The truth
was impossible, indecent. If she mentioned Ramage he might have a
fit--anything might happen. She lied. “The Widgetts,” she said.
“Tut, tut!” he said. “Really, Vee, you seem to have advertised our
relations pretty generally!”
“They--they knew, of course. Because of the Dance.”
“How much do you owe them?”
She knew forty pounds was a quite impossible sum for their neighbors.
She knew, too, she must not hesitate. “Eight pounds,” she plunged, and
added foolishly, “fifteen pounds will see me clear of everything.” She
muttered some unlady-like comment upon herself under her breath and
engaged in secret additions.
Mr. Stanley determined to improve the occasion. He seemed to deliberate.
“Well,” he said at last slowly, “I’ll pay it. I’ll pay it. But I do
hope, Vee, I do hope--this is the end of these adventures. I hope you
have learned your lesson now and come to see--come to realize--how
things are. People, nobody, can do as they like in this world.
Everywhere there are limitations.”
“I know,” said Ann Veronica (fifteen pounds!). “I have learned that. I
mean--I mean to do what I can.” (Fifteen pounds. Fifteen from forty is
twenty-five.)
He hesitated. She could think of nothing more to say.
“Well,” she achieved at last. “Here goes for the new life!”
“Here goes for the new life,” he echoed and stood up. Father and
daughter regarded each other warily, each more than a little insecure
with the other. He made a movement toward her, and then recalled the
circumstances of their last conversation in that study. She saw his
purpose and his doubt hesitated also, and then went to him, took his
coat lapels, and kissed him on the cheek.
“Ah, Vee,” he said, “that’s better! and kissed her back rather clumsily.
“We’re going to be sensible.”
She disengaged herself from him and went out of the room with a grave,
preoccupied expression. (Fifteen pounds! And she wanted forty!)
Part 4
It was, perhaps, the natural consequence of a long and tiring and
exciting day that Ann Veronica should pass a broken and distressful
night, a night in which the noble and self-subduing resolutions of
Canongate displayed themselves for the first time in an atmosphere of
almost lurid dismay. Her father’s peculiar stiffness of soul presented
itself now as something altogether left out of the calculations upon
which her plans were based, and, in particular, she had not anticipated
the difficulty she would find in borrowing the forty pounds she needed
for Ramage. That had taken her by surprise, and her tired wits had
failed her. She was to have fifteen pounds, and no more. She knew that
to expect more now was like anticipating a gold-mine in the garden. The
chance had gone. It became suddenly glaringly apparent to her that it
was impossible to return fifteen pounds or any sum less than twenty
pounds to Ramage--absolutely impossible. She realized that with a pang
of disgust and horror.
Already she had sent him twenty pounds, and never written to explain to
him why it was she had not sent it back sharply directly he returned
it. She ought to have written at once and told him exactly what had
happened. Now if she sent fifteen pounds the suggestion that she had
spent a five-pound note in the meanwhile would be irresistible. No! That
was impossible. She would have just to keep the fifteen pounds until she
could make it twenty. That might happen on her birthday--in August.
She turned about, and was persecuted by visions, half memories,
half dreams, of Ramage. He became ugly and monstrous, dunning her,
threatening her, assailing her.
“Confound sex from first to last!” said Ann Veronica. “Why can’t we
propagate by sexless spores, as the ferns do? We restrict each other, we
badger each other, friendship is poisoned and buried under it!... I
MUST pay off that forty pounds. I MUST.”
For a time there seemed no comfort for her even in Capes. She was to see
Capes to-morrow, but now, in this state of misery she had achieved, she
felt assured he would turn his back upon her, take no notice of her at
all. And if he didn’t, what was the good of seeing him?
“I wish he was a woman,” she said, “then I could make him my friend. I
want him as my friend. I want to talk to him and go about with him. Just
go about with him.”
She was silent for a time, with her nose on the pillow, and that brought
her to: “What’s the good of pretending?
“I love him,” she said aloud to the dim forms of her room, and repeated
it, and went on to imagine herself doing acts of tragically dog-like
devotion to the biologist, who, for the purposes of the drama, remained
entirely unconscious of and indifferent to her proceedings.
At last some anodyne formed itself from these exercises,
and, with eyelashes wet with such feeble tears as only
three-o’clock-in-the-morning pathos can distil, she fell asleep.
Part 5
Pursuant to some altogether private calculations she did not go up to
the Imperial College until after mid-day, and she found the laboratory
deserted, even as she desired. She went to the table under the end
window at which she had been accustomed to work, and found it swept and
garnished with full bottles of re-agents. Everything was very neat; it
had evidently been straightened up and kept for her. She put down the
sketch-books and apparatus she had brought with her, pulled out her
stool, and sat down. As she did so the preparation-room door opened
behind her. She heard it open, but as she felt unable to look round in
a careless manner she pretended not to hear it. Then Capes’ footsteps
approached. She turned with an effort.
“I expected you this morning,” he said. “I saw--they knocked off your
fetters yesterday.”
“I think it is very good of me to come this afternoon.”
“I began to be afraid you might not come at all.”
“Afraid!”
“Yes. I’m glad you’re back for all sorts of reasons.” He spoke a little
nervously. “Among other things, you know, I didn’t understand quite--I
didn’t understand that you were so keenly interested in this suffrage
question. I have it on my conscience that I offended you--”
“Offended me when?”
“I’ve been haunted by the memory of you. I was rude and stupid. We were
talking about the suffrage--and I rather scoffed.”
“You weren’t rude,” she said.
“I didn’t know you were so keen on this suffrage business.”
“Nor I. You haven’t had it on your mind all this time?”
“I have rather. I felt somehow I’d hurt you.”
“You didn’t. I--I hurt myself.”
“I mean--”
“I behaved like an idiot, that’s all. My nerves were in rags. I was
worried. We’re the hysterical animal, Mr. Capes. I got myself locked up
to cool off. By a sort of instinct. As a dog eats grass. I’m right again
now.”
“Because your nerves were exposed, that was no excuse for my touching
them. I ought to have seen--”
“It doesn’t matter a rap--if you’re not disposed to resent the--the way
I behaved.”
“_I_ resent!”
“I was only sorry I’d been so stupid.”
“Well, I take it we’re straight again,” said Capes with a note of
relief, and assumed an easier position on the edge of her table. “But
if you weren’t keen on the suffrage business, why on earth did you go to
prison?”
Ann Veronica reflected. “It was a phase,” she said.
He smiled. “It’s a new phase in the life history,” he remarked.
“Everybody seems to have it now. Everybody who’s going to develop into a
woman.”
“There’s Miss Garvice.”
“She’s coming on,” said Capes. “And, you know, you’re altering us all.
I’M shaken. The campaign’s a success.” He met her questioning eye, and
repeated, “Oh! it IS a success. A man is so apt to--to take women a
little too lightly. Unless they remind him now and then not to....
YOU did.”
“Then I didn’t waste my time in prison altogether?”
“It wasn’t the prison impressed me. But I liked the things you said
here. I felt suddenly I understood you--as an intelligent person. If
you’ll forgive my saying that, and implying what goes with it. There’s
something--puppyish in a man’s usual attitude to women. That is what
I’ve had on my conscience.... I don’t think we’re altogether to blame
if we don’t take some of your lot seriously. Some of your sex, I mean.
But we smirk a little, I’m afraid, habitually when we talk to you. We
smirk, and we’re a bit--furtive.”
He paused, with his eyes studying her gravely. “You, anyhow, don’t
deserve it,” he said.
Their colloquy was ended abruptly by the apparition of Miss Klegg at
the further door. When she saw Ann Veronica she stood for a moment as if
entranced, and then advanced with outstretched hands. “Veronique!” she
cried with a rising intonation, though never before had she called Ann
Veronica anything but Miss Stanley, and seized her and squeezed her and
kissed her with profound emotion. “To think that you were going to do
it--and never said a word! You are a little thin, but except for that