Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story

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d Course in Comparative Anatomy, wonderfully relieved to have her mind engaged upon one methodically developing theme in the place of the discursive uncertainties of the previous two months, and doing her utmost to keep right in the back of her

tory had an atmospher

re she knew seem discursive and confused. The whole place and everything in it aimed at one thing-to illustrate, to elaborate, to criticise and illuminate, and make ever plainer and plainer the significance of animal and vegetable structure. It dealt from floor to ceiling and end to end with the Theory of the Forms of Life; the very duster by the blackboard was there to do its share in that work, the very washers in the taps; the room was more simply concentrated in aim even than a church. To that, perhaps, a

, probe and microtome, and the utmost of their skill and care, making now and then a raid into the compact museum of illustration next door, in which specimens and models and directions stood in disciplined ranks, under the direction of the demonstrator Capes. There was a couple of blackboards at each end of the aisle of tables, and at these Capes, with quick and

ffect of the grim-lipped, yellow, leonine face beneath the mane of silvery hair. Capes was rather a discovery. Capes was something superadded. Russell burned like a b

rd in a pleasant, very slightly lisping voice with a curious spontaneity, and was sometimes very clumsy in his exposition, and sometimes very vivid. He dissected rather awkwardly and hurriedly, but, on the whole, effectively, a

re women students. As a consequence of its small size, it was possible to get along with the work on a much easier and more colloquial footing than a larger class would have permitted. And a custom had grown

he would appear in the doorway of the preparation-room, a plea

Sometimes he was obviously irritable and uncomfortable and unfortunate in his efforts to seem at ease. And sometimes he overflowed with a peculiarly malignant wit that played, with devastating effect, upon any topics that had the courage to face it. Ann Veronica's experiences of men had been among more stable types-Teddy, who was always absurd; her father, who was always authoritative and sentimental; Manning, w

ebel with the more orthodox gods of the biological pantheon. There was a short, red-faced, resolute youth who inherited an authoritative attitude upon bacteriology from his father; a Japanese student of unassuming manners who drew beautifully and had an imperfect knowledge of English; and a dark, unwashed Scotchman with complicated spectacles, who would come every morni

Miss Miniver, she had so many Miniver traits; there was a preoccupied girl whose name Ann Veronica never learned, but who worked remarkably well; and Miss Garvice, wh

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as. The advanced work at the Central Imperial College was in the closest touch with living interests and current controversies; it drew its illustrations and material from Russell's two great researches-upon the relation of the brachiopods to the echinodermata, and upon the secondary and ter

sets out to bring into harmony or relation with these an infinitely multifarious collection of phenomena. The little streaks upon the germinating area of an egg, the nervous movements of an impatient horse, the trick of a calculating boy, the senses of a fish, the fungus at the root of a garden flower, and the slime upon a sea-we

was after all, a more systematic and particular method of examining just the same questions that underlay the discussions of the Fabian Society, the talk of the West Central Arts Club, the chatter of the studios and the deep, the bottomless discussions of the sim

of personal application, and at thi

with a choice diversity of other youthful and congenial Fabians after the meetings. Then Mr. Manning loomed up ever and again into her world, full of a futile solicitude, and almost always declaring she was splendid, splendid, and wishing he could talk things out with her. Teas he contributed to the commissariat of Ann Veronica's campaign-quite a number of teas. He would get her to come to tea with him, usually in a pleasant tea-room over a fruit-shop in Tottenha

nly his sense of the extreme want of correctitude in their unsanctioned meetings, but also that, so far as he was con

lavish display of ambiguous hors d'oeuvre to their skimpy ices in dishes of frilled paper, with their Chianti flasks and Parmesan dishes and their polyglot waiters and polyglot clientele, were very funny and bright; and she really liked Ramage, and valued his help and advice. It was interesting to see how different and characteristic his mode of approach was to all sorts of questions that interested her, and it was amusing to discover this other side to the life of a Mo

n to Waterloo. Once he suggested they should go to a music-hall and see a wonderful new dancer, but Ann Veronica did not feel she cared to see a new dancer. So, instead, they talked of dancing and what it might mean i

man's approach. She had all the fascination of being absolutely perplexing in this respect. On the one hand, she seemed to think plainly and simply, and would talk serenely and freely about topics that most women have been trained either to avoid or conceal; and on the other she was unconscious, or else she had an air of being unconscious-that was the riddle-to all sorts of personal applications that almost any girl or woman, one might have thought, would have made. He was always

s; she would appear in the street coming toward him, a surprise, so fine and smiling and welcoming was she, so expanded and illuminated and living, in contras

h her, penetrating, illuminating, and nearly conclusive-conversations that never proved to be of the slightest u

n which he had begun. He thought, too, of the fretful invalid who lay in the next r

s I wanted," said Ramage, i

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nica's welfare. "I had a dream in the night," she said. "I saw you in a sort of sloping, slippery place, holding on by your hands and slipping. You seemed to me to be slipping and slipping, and your face was white. It was really most vivid, most vivid! You seemed to be slipping and just going to tumble and holding on. It made me wake up, and there I

, with the quality of her voice altering, "but I do NOT think it

ual to taking car

e here. It is most uncomforta

eronica had duped her in that dream, and now that she

, "or anything nice! One doesn'

n working fo

't you do t

o get a good degree in my subjects, and father won't hear of it. There'd only be endless

Stanley, after a pause. "I do wish you and

ded with conviction

mething? Can't we ma

t very cross one evening and no o

ou say suc

he wo

n't your plac

vents a

I make a

with Ramage or go on walking round the London squares discussing Socialism with Miss Miniver toward the small hours. She had tast

iss Stanley, and Ann Veronica hastened to reply, "I

the Imperial College?" her aunt w

are a f

have you

self, and tried not to look guilty

ey! But who len

" said Ann

a plausible answer to an obvious question that didn't come. Her aunt went o

, took refuge in her dignity. "I think, aunt," she said, "

this counterstroke, and Ann Veronica followed up her a

going home her au

Miss Stanley, "she MUST be getting

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and, at last, strides to something more and more like predominance. She began by being interested in his demonstrations a

sive women through. Capes was irritatingly judicial in the matter, neither absurdly against, in which case one might have smashed him, or hopelessly undecided, but tepidly sceptical. Miss Klegg and the youngest girl made a vigorous attack on Miss Garvice, who had said she thought women lost something infinitely precious by mingling in the conflicts of life. The discussion wandered, and was

r the sensation of cutting things with a perfectly new, perfectly sharp knife. She found herself anxious to read more of him, and the next Wednesday she went to the British Museum and hunted first among the half-crown magazines for his essays and then through various scientific quarterlies for his research papers. The ordinary research paper, when it is not extravagant the

ike surprise upon her half-day's employment, and decided that it showed nothi

so distinctive, so unlike other men, and it never occurred to her for

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ith her own predisposition and against all the traditions of her home and upbringing to deal with the facts of life in an unabashed manner. Ramage, by a hundred skilful hints had led her to r

ace himself," Ramage had said; "a woman comes into lif

eding and selection, and again pairing and breeding, seemed only a translated generalization of that assertion. And all the talk of the Miniver people and the Widgett people se

myself to look askance

he said. "This is the slavery of the veiled life. I might as well be at Morningside Park. This business of love is the supreme affair in life, it is the woman

hanged

ely about love, she found,

, almost entomological indeed, in her method; she killed every remark as he made it and pinned it out for examination. In the biological laboratory that was their invincible tone. But she disapproved more and more of her own mental austerity. Here was an experienced man of the world, her friend, who evidently took a great interest

ss at last in one direction, and talked one night

d people," she said, with an air of great elucidation, "tend to GENERALIZE love. 'He prayet

eronica, plunging; "don't

emained silent, both sh

balefully. "NO!" she said, at last, with something in her

all that," she went

never yet met a man whose

ughtfully for a moment, and de

ou had?"

niver. "And think, think"-her voic

ness?" said

voice became very l

I k

ce was an unac

gnored her fri

d to go on, after a momentary halt. "We pretend bodies are ugly. Really they are the most bea

gs. Bodies! Bodies! Horrible things! We are souls. Love lives on a higher plane. We are not animal

glint. "Absolutely pl

to s

hands upon her elbows, and drew her thin sh

ched her and won

silly, coarse brutes. Brutes! They are the brute still with us! Science some day may teach us a way to do wit

admitted Ann Veroni

n hung for a th

. "I wonder which of us is right," she said.

e sees men all defiled by coarse thoughts, coarse ways of living cruelties. Simply because they are hardened by-by bestiality, and poisoned by the

aid Ann Veronic

with matter. They are blinded to all fine and subtle things-they look at life with bloodshot

k men's minds are alter

simple life free of all stimulants and excitements, I think-I think-oh! with pellucid clea

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w-born appetite, came a craving in Ann Ve

beauty and discover it in unexpected aspects and places. Hitherto she had seen it chiefly in pictures and other works of art, incidentally, a

nd more curiously, "Why, on the principle of the survival of the fittest, have I any sense of beauty at all?" Tha

rove life beautyward, even in spite of expediency, regardless of survival value and all the manifest discretions of life? She went to Capes with that riddle and put it to him very carefully and clearly, and he talked well-he always talked at some length when she took a difficulty to him-and sent her to a various literature upon the markings of butterflies, the incomprehensible elaboration and splendor of birds of Paradise and humming-birds' plumes, the patterning of tigers, and a leopard's spots. He w

ike hair became anxious to distinguish himself by telling the Japanese student that Western art was symmetrical and Eastern art asymmetrical, and that among the higher organisms the tendency was toward an external symmetry veiling an internal want of balance. Ann Vero

ho wakes from a reverie, and then got up and strolled do

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ing happened that clothe

nd he sat down at the microscope, and for a time he was busy scrutinizing one section after another. She looked down at him and saw that the sunlig

g change

he soft minute curve of eyelid that she could just see beyond his brow; she perceived all these familiar objects as though they were acutely beautiful things. They WERE, she realized, acutely beautiful things. Her sense followe

th a start and an effort she took his place at the microsc

of a thrilling dread that he might touch her. She pul

he pointer

pointer,"

de her and sat down with his elbow four inches from

vity, of something enormously gone; she could not tell

ca knew what was t

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der her skin. She thought of the marvellous beauty of skin, and all the delightfulness of living texture. Oh the back of her arm she found the fa

nd?" she whispered. "

y in the world that is

le, and then about her at the furniture, as though it

am beautiful? I wonder if I shall ever shin

won

e prayed for this, have come t

ne face the fact

d herself with gravely thoughtful, gravely critical, and yet

her neck, and put her hand at last gently and almos

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flooded Ann Veronica's mind, and al

urprised to find how stored her mind was with impressions and memories of him, how vividly she remembered his gestures and little things that he had said. It occur

ore her to the thought of Capes again. And when she went to sleep, t

doing this and that, saying this and that, unconscious of her, while she too remained unconscious of herself. To think of him as loving her would make all that different. Then he would turn his face to her, and she would have to think of herself in his eyes. She would become defensive-what she did would b

ll the better for being in love. She winced when first she heard the preparation-room door open and Capes came down the laboratory; but when at last he reached her she was self-posse

s a little too mystical a

mystical way

sure that primarily the perception of beauty isn't just intensity of feeli

way better," said Ann

autiful things

example, may be i

"on your theory any two faces side by side in the sunlight ought to be

nt and slight in themselves, as physical facts, but they are like the detonator of a bomb: they let loose the explosive. There's the internal factor as well as the external.... I do

ica, "to the mystery. Why should some

ction-like the preference for blue flowers, which a

n't explai

thy eyes-which is biologically understandable-they couldn't like precious stones. One thing may be a necessary collateral of th

Veronica, and

he said. "What I am after is that beauty isn't a special inserted sort of thing;

o go on to th

d beauty," sai

nd paused, and then bent down over th

ime she sat very still. She felt that she had passed a difficult corner, and that now she could go on talk

mind-that she would get a Research Scholarship,

lly felt for some days as though the secret of the universe, that had been