Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story

AND A

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self-possessed, trim and fine, concealing her emotions whatever they were, as the realities of her position opened out before her. Her little bed-sitting-room was like a lair, and she went out from it into this vast, dun world, with its smoke-gray houses, its glaring streets of shops, its dark streets of homes, i

bjection to mankind against which, in the person of her father, she was rebelling. One main avenue was for her to become a sort of salaried accessory wife or mother, to be a governess or an assistant schoolmistress, or a very high type of governess-nurse. The other was to go into business-into a photographer's reception-room, for example, or a costumer's or hat-shop. The first set of occupations seem

e other under a Harley Street doctor, and both men declined her proffered services with the utmost civility and admiration and terror. There was also a curious interview at a b

One day she desisted from her search and went unexpectedly to the Tredgold College. Her place was not filled; she had been simply noted as absent, and she did a comforting day of admirable dissection upon the tortoise. She was so interested, and this was such a relief from the trudging anxiety of her search for work, that she went on for a whole week as if she was still living at home.

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ttitudes of a number of human beings who seemed to be largely concerned with the world as it ought to be. She was drawn first by Miss Miniver, and then by her own natural interest, into a

in a state of tremulous enthusiasm. She followed the landlady half way up-stairs, and called up to Ann Veronica, "May I co

fingers were bursting through her gloves, as if to get at once into touch with Ann Veronica. "You're Glorious!" said Miss Miniver in tones of

m what We are," said Miss Miniver; "gi

ed herself a litt

ting to watch all women. I thought then perhaps you didn't care, that you we

ted: "I wonder-I should love

"It spreads like wildfire. This is such a grand time! Such a glorious time! There never was such a time as this! Everything seems so close to fru

m of her fellowship and enthusiasm was very strong; and it was pleasant to

supported the pig's skull, and looked into the fire and up at Ann Veronica's face, and let herself go. "Let us put the lamp out," sh

d wrong-headed world, that hurt people and limited people unaccountably. In remote times and countries its evil tendencies had expressed themselves in the form of tyrannies, massacres, wars, and what not; but just at present in England they shaped as commercialism and competition, silk hats, suburban morals, the sweati

itherto in the world's history there had been precursors of this Progress at great intervals, voices that had spoken and ceased, but now it was all coming on together in a rush. She mentioned, with familiar respect, Christ and Buddha and Sh

Miniver; "the women and the common peo

tened with her e

hing drew you. Something draws everybody. From suburbs, from country towns-everywhere. I see all

nica sai

ith her glasses reflecting the f

rather because of my own difficulty. I d

gs-to meetings and things, to conferences and talks. Then you will begin to see. You will begin to see it all opening out. I am up to the ears in it all-every moment I can spare. I throw up work-everything! I just teach in one school, one good

the Fabians," s

... And to think that there they are making history! There they are putting together the plans of a new world. Almost light-heartedly. There is Shaw, and Webb, and Wi

going to alter everyth

th a little weak gesture at the glow. "What el

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ituated to the peculiar appearance and the peculiar manners of the people "in the van." The shock of their intellectual attitude was over, usage robbed it of the first quaint effect of deliberate un

cteal secretion, appendicitis, and the Higher Thought generally, and assisted in the management of a fruit shop in the Tottenham Court Road. Their very furniture had mysteriously a high-browed quality, and Mr. Goopes when at home dressed simply in a pajama-shaped suit of canvas sacking tied with brown ribbons, while his wife wore a purple djibbah with a richly embroidered yoke. He was a small, dark, reserved man, with a large inflexible-looking convex forehead, an

ing what appeared to Ann Veronica's inexperienced eye to be an antimacassar upon her head, a shy, blond young man with a narrow forehead and glasses, two undistinguished women in plain skirts and blouses, and a middle-aged coup

IT N

an orange tie, and a fluffy tweed suit, and others who, in Ann Veronica's memor

to be brilliant in substance. There were moments when Ann Veronica rather more

tributed allusions to the Hegelian philosophy that momentarily confused the discussion. Then Alderman Dunstable, who had hitherto been silent, broke out into speech and went off at a tangent, and gave his personal impressions of quite a number of his fellow-councillors. He continued to do this for the rest of the evening

med always to keep one eye on Ann Veronica's dress. Mrs. Goopes disconcerted the Alderman a little by abruptly challenging the roguish-looking young man in the orange tie (who, it seemed, was the assistant editor of Ne

uch any more, and she appealed to Ann Veronica whether she did not feel the same; and Mr. Goopes said that we mu

with an anecdote about Blinders on the Dust Destructor Committee, during which the young man in the orange tie succeeded i

ssible to be sincerely in love with two people at the same time, although perhaps on different planes with each individual, and deceiving them both. But that brought Mrs. Goop

king in undertones of the utmost clearness, gave a brief and confidential account of an unfounded rumor of the bif

ar touched Ann Veronica's arm sudde

spring again, love again

oopes to get the topic on to a higher plane, displayed great persistence in speculati

ng man with the narrow forehead and glasses cleared his throat and asked the young man in the orange tie whether he believed that Platonic love was possible. Mrs. Goopes sa

body had not something or other which he called its legitimate claims. And from t

ng but just spirit and molecules of thought. It became a sort of duel at last between them, and all the others sat and listened-every one, that is, except the Alderman, who had got the blond young man into a corner by the green-stained dresser with the aluminum things, and was sitting wit

e novelist discussion with a defence of Esmond and a denial that the Egoist was obscure, and when she spoke every one else stopped talking and listened. Then they deliberated whether Bernard Shaw ought to go into Parliament. And that

que route to Ann Veronica's lodging. They trudged along a little hungry, because of the fruitarian refreshments, and mentally very active. And Miss Miniver fell discussing whether Goopes or Bernar

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hings that were personal and petty with an idealist devotion that was fine beyond dispute. In nearly every speech she heard was the same implication of great and necessary changes in the world-changes to be won by effort and sacrifice indeed, but surely to be won. And afterward she saw a very much larger and more enthusiastic gathering, a meeting of the advanced section of the woman movement in Caxton Hall, where the same note of vast changes in progress sounded; and she went to a soiree of the Dress Re

nd feeding and teaching of every one; she developed a quite exaggerated consciousness of a multitude of people going about the swarming spaces of London with their minds full, their talk and gestures full, their very clothing charged with the suggestion of the urgency of this pervasive project of alteration. Some indeed carried themselves, dressed themselves even, rather as foreign visitors from the land

London backgrounds, in Bloomsbury and Marylebone, against which these people went to and fro, took on, by reason of their gray facades, their implacably respectable windows and window-bl

tions of Miss Miniver and the Widgetts-for Teddy and Hetty came up from Morningside Park and took her to an eighteen-penny dinner in Soho and introduced her to some art students, who were also Socialists, and so opened the way to an evening of meandering talk in a studio-carried with them like a

is very hard not to fall into the belief that the thing is so. Imperceptibly almost Ann Veronica began to acquire the

stile at their first encounter in Morningside Park, became at last with constant association the secret of Miss Miniver's growing influence. The brain tires of resistance, and when it meets again and again, incoherently active, the same phrases, the same ideas that it ha

the people "in the van" were plain people, or faded people, or tired-looking people. It did affect the business that they all argued badly and were egotistical in their manners and inconsistent in their phrases. There were moments when she doubted whether the whole mass of movements and societies and gatherings and talks was not simply one coherent spectacle of failure protecting itself from abjection by the glamour of its own assertions. It happened that at the extremest point of Ann Veronica's social circle from the Widgetts was the family of the Morningside Park horse-dealer, a company of ex

ual citizenship of men and women, by the realization that a big and growing organization of women were giving form and a generalized expression to just that personal pride, that aspiration for personal freedom and respect which had brought her to London; but when she heard Miss Miniver discoursing on the next step in the suffrage campaig

, have you revolted," it said; "and t

ing very beautiful and wonderful as yet unimagined. T

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and evening-it was raining fast outside, and she had very unwisely left her soundest pair of boots in the boothole of her father's house in Morningside Park-thinking over the economic situation and plan

she had, from motives too faint for her to formulate, refrained from taking. She resolved to go into the City to Ramage and ask for his advi

appearance regarded her with ill-concealed curiosity and admiration. Then Ramage appeared with ef

, a good brass fender, a fine old bureau, and on the walls were engravings of two you

erful! I've been feeling that you had vanished from

interrupt

sts for such interruptions. There

n, and Ramage's eage

out for you," he sa

cted, remembered how p

advice," said

es

gate on the Downs? We talked about how

s,

something has ha

pa

happened to

question of what I might do or might not do. He-

left her fo

said Mr

art-student ball of

shouldn

uldn't go on. So I packed up

a fr

dgings

have some pluck. You

led. "Quite on m

g direct about you. I wonder if I should have locked you up if I'd been your father. Luckily I'm not. And you started out fort

I should have put down a crimson carpet, and asked you to say what y

exa

trable back, and went on thi

to two-and-twenty shill

what is due to youth and

onica. "But the thi

see, I don't turn my back, and I am looking a

you think I

eight and dabbed it gently dow

up all sort

fundamentally you don't w

t under

rticularly want to do the job that sets you free-for its

ppose

hings like that. As a matter of fact it isn't their affair. And as a natural consequence, they don't do so well, and they don't get on-and so the world doesn't pay them. They don't catch on to discursive interests, you see, because they a

ialty." Ann Veronica was do

s the central thing in life, it is life i

ca's face. He had an air of having told her a deep, personal secret. She winced as he

ed you," she said. "It may be true, bu

e had made. He displayed none of the airy optimism of their previous talk over the downland gate. He was helpful, but gravely dubious. "You see," he said, "from my point of view you'

the point of view of most things in the world of employment which a woman can do reasonably well

r that her proper course was not to earn a salary but to accumulate equipment. "You see," he said, "you are like an inaccessible gold-min

why get anything to do at all just yet? Why, if you must be free, why not do the sensible thing? Make yourself worth a decent freedom. Go on with your studie

can't d

y n

my father objects to the C

t go

forget; how

ly.... Borrow

hat," said Ann V

ason why you

imposs

Men are always doing it, an

he question, Mr. Ramage." And

That's my advice to you. Here I am. Consider you've got resources deposited with me. Perhaps at the first blush-it strikes you as odd. People are brought up to be so

d of you-" beg

I don't suggest any philanthropy. I shall charg

t speak. But the five per cent. certainly did s

Park. How did you get your luggage out of the house? Wasn't it-wasn't it rather in some respects-rather a lark? It's one of my regrets for my lost youth. I never ran away f

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one to Ramage again and accepted th

very disappointingly. And, also, she wanted to borrow that money. It did seem in so many ways exactly what Ramage said it was-the sensible thing to do. There it was-to be borrowed. It would put the whole adventure on a broader and better footing; it

class people WERE ridiculously squea

tion to help him she would help him; only it happened to be the othe

iffidence in the face. So she went to Ram

me forty poun

d his expression and

ertainly," and drew a

aid, "to make it

... You'd better not have all the money on you; you had better open a small account in the post-office and draw it out a fiver at a time.

erstand something very perplexing and elusive. "It's jolly," he said, "to feel you have

end of things I'd like to talk over with you. It's

a moment. "I don't wan

t all men, and no one is safe from scandal. But I kno

nd Ramage went through the outer office with her, alert and attentive, to the vivid interest of the three clerks. The three cler

Ramage to the dri

rating. She liked the high, easy swing of the thing over its big wheels, the quick clatter-

ficient English took Ramage's orders, and waited with an appearance of affection. Ann Veronica thought the whole affair rather jolly. Ritter sold better food than most of his compatriots, and cooked it better, and Ramage, with a fine perception of a feminine palate, ordered Vero

permissible daring. She described the Goopes and the Fabians to him, and gave him a sketch of her landlady; and he talked in the most liberal and entertaining way of a modern young woman's outlook. He se

how she stood toward him and what the restrained gleam of his face might signify. She felt that perhaps, in her desire to play an adequ

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mas Eve. The next morning came

hope of a reconciliation. I ask you, although it is not my place to ask you, to return home. This roof is still

nderstand your motives in doing what you are doing, or, indeed, how you are managing to do it, or what you are managing on. If you will think only of one trifling aspect-the inconven

ou will not find me

affect

THE

said. "I suppose most people's letters are queer. Roof open-like a Noah's Ark. I wonder if he real

how he tre

out her sister. "I ought to look up Gw

ike to go home," she cried, "to please her. She has

ome to please her. She is, in her way, a dear. One OUGHT to want to p

ot out Ramage's check from the box that contained her papers. F

mauve slip in her hand-"suppose I chuck it, and surr

he door and shutting it

still g

last; "I'm a human being-not a timid female. What could I do at hom