Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story

IGHT T

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p at all that night, and at any rate she got through

she goi

ed two days she would delay a 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 and estimated means and resources. These and her general preparations had perhaps a certain disproportion. She had a gold watch, a very good gold watch that ha

she would

ntelligent, and capable by the standards of most of the girls she knew. She was not quite clear how she should find it, but

ve confidence were gaps of disconcerting doubt, when the universe was presented as making sinister and threatening faces at her, def

e to thrust them almost out of sight by saying they would be "all right" in confident tones to herself. But still she knew they were not right, and at times they became a horrible obsession as of something waiting for her round the corner. She tried to imagine herself "getting something,"

nn Veronica for the hundredth time.

though she had never been sl

black-covered books and the pig's skull. "I must take them," she said, to help h

r come back to that breakfast-room again. Never! Perhaps some day, quite soon, she might regret that breakfast-room. She helped herself to the remainder of the slightly co

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as they expressed it, a "bit decayed." Every one became tremendously animated when they he

eddy, more impre

you going to d

Veronica. "Would you stand

ut?" cri

on," said A

le Widgett family, except Teddy, expressed a common dismay.

on my own. T

ce. "But who's going

g that Hetty and Constance were obviously developing objections, she plunged at once into a demand for hel

what they could for her. They agreed to lend her their hold-all and a large, formless bag which they called the commu

the window for the benefit of the less advanced section of Morningside Park societ

the packing was done, and Ann Veronica lunched with an uneasy sense of bag and hold-all packed up-stairs and inadequately hidden from chance intruders by the valance of the bed. She went down, flushed and light-hearted, to the Widgetts' after lunch to make some final arrangements and then, as soon as her aunt had retired to lie down for her usual digestive hour, took the risk of the serv

he was "simply splendid." "If you want anything," he said, "or get into any trouble, wire me.

ful brick, Te

ldn't be

ndid!" said Teddy, with his hair wild

he window until

d she had resolved to face. She felt smaller and more adventurous even than she had expected to feel. "Let me see," she said to herself, trying to control a slight sin

o be all righ

lly she decided that even for an hotel she must look round, and that meanwhile she would "book" her luggage at Waterloo. She told the porter to take it to the booking-office, and it was only after a disconcerting moment or so that she found she o

deep breath of

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passengers, and many an eye from omnibus and pavement rested gratefully on her fresh, trim presence as she passed young and erect, with the light of determination shining through the quiet self-possession of her face. She was

st penetrating and least emphatic sunshine in the world. The very carts and vans and cabs that Wellington Street poured out incessantly upon the bridge seemed ripe and good in her eyes. A traffic of copious barges slumbered over the face of the river-barges either altogether stagnant or dreaming along in the wake of fussy tugs; and above ci

made up her mind with an effort, and, returning by Hungerford Bridge to Waterloo, took a cab to this chos

le sense of being surveyed from behind by a small, whiskered gentleman in a frock-coat, who came out of the inner office and into the hall among a number of equally observant gree

far," she said

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and dehumanized apartment, with its empty wardrobe and desert toilet-table and pictureless walls and stereotyped furnishings, a su

Aerated Bread shop or some such place, and perhaps find a cheap room for herself. Of

e than a sort of railway co

s one g

divided between a speculative treatment of employment on the one hand, and breezes-zephyr breezes-of the keenest appreciation for London, on the other. The jolly part of it was th

f a shipping-office in Cockspur Street and at the Army and Navy Stores, but decided that perhaps there would be some special and customary hour, a

Warren in Mrs. Warren's Profession. She had seen Mrs. Warren's Profession furtively with Hetty Widgett from the gallery of a Stage Society performance one Monday afternoon. Most of it had been incomprehensible to her, or comprehensible in a way t

his eyes upon her. He seemed to her indistinguishably about her father's age. He wore a silk hat a little tilted, and a morning coat buttoned round a tight, contained figure; and a white slip gave a finish to his costume and endorsed the qu

opitiatory smile, his hungry gaze, through one moment of amazement, then stepped aside and went on her way with

old ge

general terms, at least-what that accosting signified. About her, as she had gone day by day to and from the Tredgold College, she had seen and not seen many an incidental aspect of those sides of life about which girls are expected to know nothing, aspects that were extraordinarily relevant to her o

appreciative, but disturbed and unwillingly o

of free, unembarrass

drew nearer paint showed upon her face, and a harsh purpose behind the quiet expression of her open countenance, and a sort of unreality in her splendor betrayed itself for which Ann Veronica could not recall the right word-a word, half understood, that lurked

at after all it was true that a girl does not go alone in the world unchallenged, nor ever has gone freely

came into her head disagreeably that she herself was being followed. She ob

and decided that this was not so, and

an again. Either it was an unfortunate recovery of a trail, or he had followed her from Mayfair. There was no mistaking his intentions this time. He cam

et detachment toward the window and the Oxford Street traffic, and in her heart she was busy kicking this man to death.

sat looking at Ann Veronica over an untouched cup of tea; he sat gloating upon her, trying to catch her eye. Once, when he thought he had done so, he smiled an i

Veronica, reduced to reading the list of good things t

ance-begotten dreams of intrigue and adventure! but they sufficed, when presently Ann Veronica went out

eman she did not know what would ensue. Perhaps she would h

She would ignore him. Surely she could ignore him. She stopped abruptly, and looked in a flower-s

ay. She had lost her sense of direction, and was among unfamiliar streets. She went on from street to street, and all the glory of London had departed. Against the sinister

Veronica wanted to s

t told her he would go on forcing himself upon her, that he would esteem speech with her a great point gained. In the twilight he had ceased to be a p

ondon for her that night. She was glad to join in the stream of hurrying homeward workers that was now welling out of a thousand places of employment, and to imitate their driven, preoccupied haste. She had followed a bobbing white hat and gray jacket until she reached the Euston Road corner of Tottenham Court Road, and there, by

he followed her into her dreams. He stalked her, he stared at her, he craved her, he sidled slinking and propitiatory and yet relentlessly toward her, until

her home next morning. But the morning brought courage again, and

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telegram from the East Str

| well |

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te | safe |

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had then set herself to write an answer to Mr. Manning's

plain sailing, and it had seemed fairly evident to g

ecided that she would spend the next morning answering advertisements in the papers that abounded in the writing-

ith a general feeling of resemblance to Vivie Warren, and looked through the Morning Post and Standard and Telegraph, and afterward the half-penny sheets. The Morning Post was hungry for governesses and nursery governesses, but held out no

the morning to settling up with Mr. Manning. At the cost of

I say first that I think it does me an extraordinary honor that you should think of any on

y one writes him sentences like that? It'll have to go," she decided, "I've written

ng and ignorant for marriage. I have been thinking these things over lately, and it seems to me that marriage for a girl is just the supremest thing in life. It isn't just one among a number of important things; for her it is the important thing, and unt

shall be very sorry if I cannot have you for a friend. I think that the

ningside Park I feel as though all my growing up was presently to stop, as though I was being shut in from the light of life, and, as they say in botany, etiolated. I was just like a sort of dummy that does things as it is told-that is to say, as the strings are pulled. I want to be a person by myself, and to pull my own strings. I had rather have trouble and har

d not be offended with me or frightfully s

incerel

RONICA

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sense of novelty had given place to a more business-like mood. She drif

to think, about which she was perhaps instinctively indisposed to think; something which jarred, in spite of all her mental resistance, with all her preconceptions of a clean and courageous girl walking out fro

han anything she had ever seen in her life. Ann Veronica loved beautiful things, and the beauty of undraped loveliness not least among them; but these were pictures that did but insist coarsely upon the roundness of women's bodies. The windows of these rooms were obscu

ooked out through a friendly manner as though it was a mask, with hard, defiant eyes. Then one old crone, short-sighted and shaky-handed, cal

gaunt and ill-cleaned streets, through the sordid under side of

th a quickening apprehension, once or twice came girls dressed in slatternly finery, going toward Regent Street from out these places. It did not occur to her that they at least had found

rthward of Euston Road, the moral cloud seemed to lift, the moral atmosphere to change; clean blinds appeared

----

ARTM

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ed with green, large-patterned paper that was at worst a trifle dingy, and the arm-chair and the seats of the other chairs were covered with the unusual brightness of a large-patterned chintz, which also supplied the window-curtain. There was a round table covered, not with the usual "tapestry" cover, but with a plain green cloth that went passably with the wall-paper. In the recess beside the fireplace were some open book

he room a little homelike, and then sat down in a by no means uncomfortable arm-chair before the fire. She had arranged for a supper of tea, a boiled egg, and some tinned peaches. She had dis

confident and secure tone did much to dispell the sense of being exposed and indefensible in a huge dingy world that abounded in sinister possibilities. She addressed her letters, meditated on them for

ted upon that with a thrill of terror that was

fearful fuss. Well, it had to happen somew