Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story
He took her hand and looked into her eyes and spoke, divided against
himself, in a voice that was forced and insincere.
“I shall be very glad to have you for a friend,” he said, “loving
friend. I had never dreamed of such a friend as you.”
She smiled, sure of herself beyond any pretending, into his troubled
eyes. Hadn’t they settled that already?
“I want you as a friend,” he persisted, almost as if he disputed
something.
Part 5
The next morning she waited in the laboratory at the lunch-hour in the
reasonable certainty that he would come to her.
“Well, you have thought it over?” he said, sitting down beside her.
“I’ve been thinking of you all night,” she answered.
“Well?”
“I don’t care a rap for all these things.”
He said nothing for a space.
“I don’t see there’s any getting away from the fact that you and I love
each other,” he said, slowly. “So far you’ve got me and I you....
You’ve got me. I’m like a creature just wakened up. My eyes are open to
you. I keep on thinking of you. I keep on thinking of little details and
aspects of your voice, your eyes, the way you walk, the way your hair
goes back from the side of your forehead. I believe I have always been
in love with you. Always. Before ever I knew you.”
She sat motionless, with her hand tightening over the edge of the table,
and he, too, said no more. She began to tremble violently.
He stood up abruptly and went to the window.
“We have,” he said, “to be the utmost friends.”
She stood up and held her arms toward him. “I want you to kiss me,” she
said.
He gripped the window-sill behind him.
“If I do,” he said.... “No! I want to do without that. I want to
do without that for a time. I want to give you time to think. I am a
man--of a sort of experience. You are a girl with very little. Just sit
down on that stool again and let’s talk of this in cold blood. People of
your sort--I don’t want the instincts to--to rush our situation. Are you
sure what it is you want of me?”
“I want you. I want you to be my lover. I want to give myself to you.
I want to be whatever I can to you.” She paused for a moment. “Is that
plain?” she asked.
“If I didn’t love you better than myself,” said Capes, “I wouldn’t fence
like this with you.
“I am convinced you haven’t thought this out,” he went on. “You do not
know what such a relation means. We are in love. Our heads swim with
the thought of being together. But what can we do? Here am I, fixed to
respectability and this laboratory; you’re living at home. It means...
just furtive meetings.”
“I don’t care how we meet,” she said.
“It will spoil your life.”
“It will make it. I want you. I am clear I want you. You are different
from all the world for me. You can think all round me. You are the one
person I can understand and feel--feel right with. I don’t idealize you.
Don’t imagine that. It isn’t because you’re good, but because I may be
rotten bad; and there’s something--something living and understanding
in you. Something that is born anew each time we meet, and pines when
we are separated. You see, I’m selfish. I’m rather scornful. I think
too much about myself. You’re the only person I’ve really given good,
straight, unselfish thought to. I’m making a mess of my life--unless
you come in and take it. I am. In you--if you can love me--there
is salvation. Salvation. I know what I am doing better than you do.
Think--think of that engagement!”
Their talk had come to eloquent silences that contradicted all he had to
say.
She stood up before him, smiling faintly.
“I think we’ve exhausted this discussion,” she said.
“I think we have,” he answered, gravely, and took her in his arms, and
smoothed her hair from her forehead, and very tenderly kissed her lips.
Part 6
They spent the next Sunday in Richmond Park, and mingled the happy
sensation of being together uninterruptedly through the long sunshine
of a summer’s day with the ample discussion of their position. “This has
all the clean freshness of spring and youth,” said Capes; “it is love
with the down on; it is like the glitter of dew in the sunlight to be
lovers such as we are, with no more than one warm kiss between us. I
love everything to-day, and all of you, but I love this, this--this
innocence upon us most of all.
“You can’t imagine,” he said, “what a beastly thing a furtive love
affair can be.
“This isn’t furtive,” said Ann Veronica.
“Not a bit of it. And we won’t make it so.... We mustn’t make it so.”
They loitered under trees, they sat on mossy banks they gossiped on
friendly benches, they came back to lunch at the “Star and Garter,”
and talked their afternoon away in the garden that looks out upon the
crescent of the river. They had a universe to talk about--two universes.
“What are we going to do?” said Capes, with his eyes on the broad
distances beyond the ribbon of the river.
“I will do whatever you want,” said Ann Veronica.
“My first love was all blundering,” said Capes.
He thought for a moment, and went on: “Love is something that has to be
taken care of. One has to be so careful.... It’s a beautiful plant,
but a tender one.... I didn’t know. I’ve a dread of love dropping its
petals, becoming mean and ugly. How can I tell you all I feel? I love
you beyond measure. And I’m afraid.... I’m anxious, joyfully anxious,
like a man when he has found a treasure.”
“YOU know,” said Ann Veronica. “I just came to you and put myself in
your hands.”
“That’s why, in a way, I’m prudish. I’ve--dreads. I don’t want to tear
at you with hot, rough hands.”
“As you will, dear lover. But for me it doesn’t matter. Nothing is wrong
that you do. Nothing. I am quite clear about this. I know exactly what I
am doing. I give myself to you.”
“God send you may never repent it!” cried Capes.
She put her hand in his to be squeezed.
“You see,” he said, “it is doubtful if we can ever marry. Very doubtful.
I have been thinking--I will go to my wife again. I will do my utmost.
But for a long time, anyhow, we lovers have to be as if we were no more
than friends.”
He paused. She answered slowly. “That is as you will,” she said.
“Why should it matter?” he said.
And then, as she answered nothing, “Seeing that we are lovers.”
Part 7
It was rather less than a week after that walk that Capes came and sat
down beside Ann Veronica for their customary talk in the lunch hour. He
took a handful of almonds and raisins that she held out to him--for
both these young people had given up the practice of going out for
luncheon--and kept her hand for a moment to kiss her finger-tips. He did
not speak for a moment.
“Well?” she said.
“I say!” he said, without any movement. “Let’s go.”
“Go!” She did not understand him at first, and then her heart began to
beat very rapidly.
“Stop this--this humbugging,” he explained. “It’s like the Picture and
the Bust. I can’t stand it. Let’s go. Go off and live together--until we
can marry. Dare you?”
“Do you mean NOW?”
“At the end of the session. It’s the only clean way for us. Are you
prepared to do it?”
Her hands clenched. “Yes,” she said, very faintly. And then: “Of course!
Always. It is what I have wanted, what I have meant all along.”
She stared before her, trying to keep back a rush of tears.
Capes kept obstinately stiff, and spoke between his teeth.
“There’s endless reasons, no doubt, why we shouldn’t,” he said.
“Endless. It’s wrong in the eyes of most people. For many of them it
will smirch us forever.... You DO understand?”
“Who cares for most people?” she said, not looking at him.
“I do. It means social isolation--struggle.”
“If you dare--I dare,” said Ann Veronica. “I was never so clear in all
my life as I have been in this business.” She lifted steadfast eyes to
him. “Dare!” she said. The tears were welling over now, but her voice
was steady. “You’re not a man for me--not one of a sex, I mean. You’re
just a particular being with nothing else in the world to class with
you. You are just necessary to life for me. I’ve never met any one
like you. To have you is all important. Nothing else weighs against it.
Morals only begin when that is settled. I sha’n’t care a rap if we can
never marry. I’m not a bit afraid of anything--scandal, difficulty,
struggle.... I rather want them. I do want them.”
“You’ll get them,” he said. “This means a plunge.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Only for you! Most of my income will vanish. Even unbelieving
biological demonstrators must respect decorum; and besides, you see--you
were a student. We shall have--hardly any money.”
“I don’t care.”
“Hardship and danger.”
“With you!”
“And as for your people?”
“They don’t count. That is the dreadful truth. This--all this swamps
them. They don’t count, and I don’t care.”
Capes suddenly abandoned his attitude of meditative restraint. “By
Jove!” he broke out, “one tries to take a serious, sober view. I don’t
quite know why. But this is a great lark, Ann Veronica! This turns life
into a glorious adventure!”
“Ah!” she cried in triumph.
“I shall have to give up biology, anyhow. I’ve always had a sneaking
desire for the writing-trade. That is what I must do. I can.”
“Of course you can.”
“And biology was beginning to bore me a bit. One research is very like
another.... Latterly I’ve been doing things.... Creative work
appeals to me wonderfully. Things seem to come rather easily.... But
that, and that sort of thing, is just a day-dream. For a time I must do
journalism and work hard.... What isn’t a day-dream is this: that you
and I are going to put an end to flummery--and go!”
“Go!” said Ann Veronica, clenching her hands.
“For better or worse.”
“For richer or poorer.”
She could not go on, for she was laughing and crying at the same time.
“We were bound to do this when you kissed me,” she sobbed through
her tears. “We have been all this time--Only your queer code of
honor--Honor! Once you begin with love you have to see it through.”
CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH
THE LAST DAYS AT HOME
Part 1
They decided to go to Switzerland at the session’s end. “We’ll clean up
everything tidy,” said Capes....
For her pride’s sake, and to save herself from long day-dreams and an
unappeasable longing for her lover, Ann Veronica worked hard at her
biology during those closing weeks. She was, as Capes had said, a
hard young woman. She was keenly resolved to do well in the school
examination, and not to be drowned in the seas of emotion that
threatened to submerge her intellectual being.
Nevertheless, she could not prevent a rising excitement as the dawn of
the new life drew near to her--a thrilling of the nerves, a secret
and delicious exaltation above the common circumstances of
existence. Sometimes her straying mind would become astonishingly
active--embroidering bright and decorative things that she could say to
Capes; sometimes it passed into a state of passive acquiescence, into
a radiant, formless, golden joy. She was aware of people--her aunt,
her father, her fellow-students, friends, and neighbors--moving about
outside this glowing secret, very much as an actor is aware of the dim
audience beyond the barrier of the footlights. They might applaud, or
object, or interfere, but the drama was her very own. She was going
through with that, anyhow.
The feeling of last days grew stronger with her as their number
diminished. She went about the familiar home with a clearer and clearer
sense of inevitable conclusions. She became exceptionally considerate
and affectionate with her father and aunt, and more and more concerned
about the coming catastrophe that she was about to precipitate upon
them. Her aunt had a once exasperating habit of interrupting her work
with demands for small household services, but now Ann Veronica rendered