Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story

by H. G. Wells

  None of the things they said and did were altogether new to AnnVeronica, but now she got them massed and alive, instead of by glimpsesor in books--alive and articulate and insistent. The London backgrounds,in Bloomsbury and Marylebone, against which these people went toand fro, took on, by reason of their gray facades, their implacablyrespectable windows and window-blinds, their reiterated unmeaning ironrailings, a stronger and stronger suggestion of the flavor of her fatherat his most obdurate phase, and of all that she felt herself fightingagainst.

  She was already a little prepared by her discursive reading anddiscussion under the Widgett influence for ideas and "movements," thoughtemperamentally perhaps she was rather disposed to resist and criticisethan embrace them. But the people among whom she was now thrown throughthe social exertions of Miss Miniver and the Widgetts--for Teddy andHetty came up from Morningside Park and took her to an eighteen-pennydinner in Soho and introduced her to some art students, who were alsoSocialists, and so opened the way to an evening of meandering talk in astudio--carried with them like an atmosphere this implication, not onlythat the world was in some stupid and even obvious way WRONG, with whichindeed she was quite prepared to agree, but that it needed only afew pioneers to behave as such and be thoroughly and indiscriminately"advanced," for the new order to achieve itself.

  When ninety per cent. out of the ten or twelve people one meets in amonth not only say but feel and assume a thing, it is very hard notto fall into the belief that the thing is so. Imperceptibly almost AnnVeronica began to acquire the new attitude, even while her mind stillresisted the felted ideas that went with it. And Miss Miniver began tosway her.

  The very facts that Miss Miniver never stated an argument clearly, thatshe was never embarrassed by a sense of self-contradiction, and hadlittle more respect for consistency of statement than a washerwomanhas for wisps of vapor, which made Ann Veronica critical and hostile attheir first encounter in Morningside Park, became at last with constantassociation the secret of Miss Miniver's growing influence. The braintires of resistance, and when it meets again and again, incoherentlyactive, the same phrases, the same ideas that it has already slain,exposed and dissected and buried, it becomes less and less energetic torepeat the operation. There must be something, one feels, in ideas thatachieve persistently a successful resurrection. What Miss Miniver wouldhave called the Higher Truth supervenes.

  Yet through these talks, these meetings and conferences, these movementsand efforts, Ann Veronica, for all that she went with her friend, andat times applauded with her enthusiastically, yet went nevertheless witheyes that grew more and more puzzled, and fine eyebrows more and moredisposed to knit. She was with these movements--akin to them, she feltit at times intensely--and yet something eluded her. Morningside Parkhad been passive and defective; all this rushed about and was active,but it was still defective. It still failed in something. It did seemgermane to the matter that so many of the people "in the van" were plainpeople, or faded people, or tired-looking people. It did affect thebusiness that they all argued badly and were egotistical in theirmanners and inconsistent in their phrases. There were moments when shedoubted whether the whole mass of movements and societies and gatheringsand talks was not simply one coherent spectacle of failure protectingitself from abjection by the glamour of its own assertions. It happenedthat at the extremest point of Ann Veronica's social circle from theWidgetts was the family of the Morningside Park horse-dealer, a companyof extremely dressy and hilarious young women, with one equestrianbrother addicted to fancy waistcoats, cigars, and facial spots. Thesegirls wore hats at remarkable angles and bows to startle and kill; theyliked to be right on the spot every time and up to everything thatwas it from the very beginning and they rendered their conception ofSocialists and all reformers by the words "positively frightening"and "weird." Well, it was beyond dispute that these words did conveya certain quality of the Movements in general amid which Miss Miniverdisported herself. They WERE weird. And yet for all that--

  It got into Ann Veronica's nights at last and kept her awake, theperplexing contrast between the advanced thought and the advancedthinker. The general propositions of Socialism, for example, struck heras admirable, but she certainly did not extend her admiration to anyof its exponents. She was still more stirred by the idea of the equalcitizenship of men and women, by the realization that a big and growingorganization of women were giving form and a generalized expressionto just that personal pride, that aspiration for personal freedom andrespect which had brought her to London but when she heard Miss Miniverdiscoursing on the next step in the suffrage campaign, or read of womenbadgering Cabinet Ministers, padlocked to railings, or getting up in apublic meeting to pipe out a demand for votes and be carried out kickingand screaming, her soul revolted. She could not part with dignity.Something as yet unformulated within her kept her estranged from allthese practical aspects of her beliefs.

  "Not for these things, O Ann Veronica, have you revolted," it said; "andthis is not your appropriate purpose."

  It was as if she faced a darkness in which was something very beautifuland wonderful as yet unimagined. The little pucker in her brows becamemore perceptible.

  Part 5

  In the beginning of December Ann Veronica began to speculate privatelyupon the procedure of pawning. She had decided that she would beginwith her pearl necklace. She spent a very disagreeable afternoon andevening--it was raining fast outside, and she had very unwisely lefther soundest pair of boots in the boothole of her father's house inMorningside Park--thinking over the economic situation and planning acourse of action. Her aunt had secretly sent on to Ann Veronica some newwarm underclothing, a dozen pairs of stockings, and her last winter'sjacket, but the dear lady had overlooked those boots.

  These things illuminated her situation extremely. Finally she decidedupon a step that had always seemed reasonable to her, but that hithertoshe had, from motives too faint for her to formulate, refrained fromtaking. She resolved to go into the City to Ramage and ask for hisadvice. And next morning she attired herself with especial care andneatness, found his address in the Directory at a post-office, and wentto him.

  She had to wait some minutes in an outer office, wherein three youngmen of spirited costume and appearance regarded her with ill-concealedcuriosity and admiration. Then Ramage appeared with effusion, andushered her into his inner apartment. The three young men exchangedexpressive glances.

  The inner apartment was rather gracefully furnished with a thick, fineTurkish carpet, a good brass fender, a fine old bureau, and on the wallswere engravings of two young girls' heads by Greuze, and of some modernpicture of boys bathing in a sunlit pool.

  "But this is a surprise!" said Ramage. "This is wonderful! I've beenfeeling that you had vanished from my world. Have you been away fromMorningside Park?"

  "I'm not interrupting you?"

  "You are. Splendidly. Business exists for such interruptions. There youare, the best client's chair."

  Ann Veronica sat down, and Ramage's eager eyes feasted on her.

  "I've been looking out for you," he said. "I confess it."

  She had not, she reflected, remembered how prominent his eyes were.

  "I want some advice," said Ann Veronica.

  "Yes?"

  "You remember once, how we talked--at a gate on the Downs? We talkedabout how a girl might get an independent living."

  "Yes, yes."

  "Well, you see, something has happened at home."

  She paused.

  "Nothing has happened to Mr. Stanley?"

  "I've fallen out with my father. It was about--a question of what Imight do or might not do. He--In fact, he--he locked me in my room.Practically."

  Her breath left her for a moment.

  "I SAY!" said Mr. Ramage.

  "I wanted to go to an art-student ball of which he disapproved."

  "And why shouldn't you?"

  "I felt that sort of thing couldn't go on. So I packed up and came toLondon next day."

  "To
a friend?"

  "To lodgings--alone."

  "I say, you know, you have some pluck. You did it on your own?"

  Ann Veronica smiled. "Quite on my own," she said.

  "It's magnificent!" He leaned back and regarded her with his head alittle on one side. "By Jove!" he said, "there is something direct aboutyou. I wonder if I should have locked you up if I'd been your father.Luckily I'm not. And you started out forthwith to fight the world and bea citizen on your own basis?" He came forward again and folded his handsunder him on his desk.

  "How has the world taken it?" he asked. "If I was the world I think Ishould have put down a crimson carpet, and asked you to say what youwanted, and generally walk over me. But the world didn't do that."

  "Not exactly."

  "It presented a large impenetrable back, and went on thinking aboutsomething else."

  "It offered from fifteen to two-and-twenty shillings a week--fordrudgery."

  "The world has no sense of what is due to youth and courage. It neverhas had."

  "Yes," said Ann Veronica. "But the thing is, I want a job."

  "Exactly! And so you came along to me. And you see, I don't turn myback, and I am looking at you and thinking about you from top to toe."

  "And what do you think I ought to do?"

  "Exactly!" He lifted a paper-weight and dabbed it gently down again."What ought you to do?"

  "I've hunted up all sorts of things."

  "The point to note is that fundamentally you don't want particularly todo it."

  "I don't understand."

  "You want to be free and so forth, yes. But you don't particularlywant to do the job that sets you free--for its own sake. I mean that itdoesn't interest you in itself."

  "I suppose not."

  "That's one of our differences. We men are like children. We can getabsorbed in play, in games, in the business we do. That's really whywe do them sometimes rather well and get on. But women--women as a ruledon't throw themselves into things like that. As a matter of fact itisn'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'tcatch on to discursive interests, you see, because they are moreserious, they are concentrated on the central reality of life, and alittle impatient of its--its outer aspects. At least that, I think, iswhat makes a clever woman's independent career so much more difficultthan a clever man's."

  "She doesn't develop a specialty." Ann Veronica was doing her best tofollow him.

  "She has one, that's why. Her specialty is the central thing in life, itis life itself, the warmth of life, sex--and love."

  He pronounced this with an air of profound conviction and with hiseyes on Ann Veronica's face. He had an air of having told her a deep,personal secret. She winced as he thrust the fact at her, was about toanswer, and checked herself. She colored faintly.

  "That doesn't touch the question I asked you," she said. "It may betrue, but it isn't quite what I have in mind."

  "Of course not," said Ramage, as one who rouses himself from deeppreoccupations And he began to question her in a business-like way uponthe steps she had taken and the inquiries she had made. He displayednone of the airy optimism of their previous talk over the downland gate.He was helpful, but gravely dubious. "You see," he said, "from my pointof view you're grown up--you're as old as all the goddesses and thecontemporary of any man alive. But from the--the economic point of viewyou're a very young and altogether inexperienced person."

  He returned to and developed that idea. "You're still," he said, "in theeducational years. From the point of view of most things in the worldof employment which a woman can do reasonably well and earn a livingby, you're unripe and half-educated. If you had taken your degree, forexample."

  He spoke of secretarial work, but even there she would need to be ableto do typing and shorthand. He made it more and more evident to her thather proper course was not to earn a salary but to accumulate equipment."You see," he said, "you are like an inaccessible gold-mine in all thissort of matter. You're splendid stuff, you know, but you've got nothingready to sell. That's the flat business situation."

  He thought. Then he slapped his hand on his desk and looked up withthe air of a man struck by a brilliant idea. "Look here," he said,protruding his eyes; "why get anything to do at all just yet? Why, ifyou must be free, why not do the sensible thing? Make yourself wortha decent freedom. Go on with your studies at the Imperial College,for example, get a degree, and make yourself good value. Or become athorough-going typist and stenographer and secretarial expert."

  "But I can't do that."

  "Why not?"

  "You see, if I do go home my father objects to the College, and as fortyping--"

  "Don't go home."

  "Yes, but you forget; how am I to live?"

  "Easily. Easily.... Borrow.... From me."

  "I couldn't do that," said Ann Veronica, sharply.

  "I see no reason why you shouldn't."

  "It's impossible."

  "As one friend to another. Men are always doing it, and if you set up tobe a man--"

  "No, it's absolutely out of the question, Mr. Ramage." And AnnVeronica's face was hot.

  Ramage pursed his rather loose lips and shrugged his shoulders, withhis eyes fixed steadily upon her. "Well anyhow--I don't see the force ofyour objection, you know. That's my advice to you. Here I am. Consideryou've got resources deposited with me. Perhaps at the first blush--itstrikes you as odd. People are brought up to be so shy about money. Asthough it was indelicate--it's just a sort of shyness. But here I am todraw upon. Here I am as an alternative either to nasty work--or goinghome."

  "It's very kind of you--" began Ann Veronica.

  "Not a bit. Just a friendly polite suggestion. I don't suggest anyphilanthropy. I shall charge you five per cent., you know, fair andsquare."

  Ann Veronica opened her lips quickly and did not speak. But the five percent. certainly did seem to improve the aspect of Ramage's suggestion.

  "Well, anyhow, consider it open." He dabbed with his paper-weight again,and spoke in an entirely indifferent tone. "And now tell me, please, howyou eloped from Morningside Park. How did you get your luggage out ofthe 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 from anywherewith anybody anywhen. And now--I suppose I should be considered tooold. I don't feel it.... Didn't you feel rather EVENTFUL--in thetrain--coming up to Waterloo?"

  Part 6

  Before Christmas Ann Veronica had gone to Ramage again and accepted thisoffer she had at first declined.

  Many little things had contributed to that decision. The chief influencewas her awakening sense of the need of money. She had been forced to buyherself that pair of boots and a walking-skirt, and the pearl necklaceat the pawnbrokers' had yielded very disappointingly. And, also, shewanted to borrow that money. It did seem in so many ways exactly whatRamage said it was--the sensible thing to do. There it was--to beborrowed. It would put the whole adventure on a broader and betterfooting; it seemed, indeed, almost the only possible way in which shemight emerge from her rebellion with anything like success. If only forthe sake of her argument with her home, she wanted success. And why,after all, should she not borrow money from Ramage?

  It was so true what he said; middle-class people WERE ridiculouslysqueamish about money. Why should they be?

  She and Ramage were friends, very good friends. If she was in a positionto help him she would help him; only it happened to be the other wayround. He was in a position to help her. What was the objection?

  She found it impossible to look her own diffidence in the face. So shewent to Ramage and came to the point almost at once.

  "Can you spare me forty pounds?" she said.

  Mr. Ramage controlled his expression and thought very quickly.

  "Agreed," he said, "certainly," and drew a checkbook toward him.

  "It's best," he said, "to make it a good round sum.

 
"I won't give you a check though--Yes, I will. I'll give you anuncrossed check, and then you can get it at the bank here, quite closeby.... You'd better not have all the money on you; you had betteropen a small account in the post-office and draw it out a fiver at atime. That won't involve references, as a bank account would--and allthat sort of thing. The money will last longer, and--it won't botheryou."

  He stood up rather close to her and looked into her eyes. He seemed tobe trying to understand something very perplexing and elusive. "It'sjolly," he said, "to feel you have come to me. It's a sort of guaranteeof confidence. Last time--you made me feel snubbed."

  He hesitated, and went off at a tangent. "There's no end of things I'dlike to talk over with you. It's just upon my lunch-time. Come and havelunch with me."

  Ann Veronica fenced for a moment. "I don't want to take up your time."

  "We won't go to any of these City places. They're just all men, and noone is safe from scandal. But I know a little place where we'll get alittle quiet talk."

  Ann Veronica for some indefinable reason did not want to lunch with him,a reason indeed so indefinable that she dismissed it, and Ramage wentthrough the outer office with her, alert and attentive, to the vividinterest of the three clerks. The three clerks fought for the onlywindow, and saw her whisked into a hansom. Their subsequent conversationis outside the scope of our story.