Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story

by H. G. Wells

  But as the students sat about Miss Garvice's tea-pot and drank tea orsmoked cigarettes, the talk got away from Capes. The Scotchman informedAnn Veronica that your view of beauty necessarily depended on yourmetaphysical premises, and the young man with the Russell-like hairbecame anxious to distinguish himself by telling the Japanese studentthat Western art was symmetrical and Eastern art asymmetrical, and thatamong the higher organisms the tendency was toward an external symmetryveiling an internal want of balance. Ann Veronica decided she would haveto go on with Capes another day, and, looking up, discovered him sittingon a stool with his hands in his pockets and his head a little on oneside, regarding her with a thoughtful expression. She met his eye for amoment in curious surprise.

  He turned his eyes and stared at Miss Garvice like one who wakes froma reverie, and then got up and strolled down the laboratory toward hisrefuge, the preparation-room.

  Part 7

  Then one day a little thing happened that clothed itself insignificance.

  She had been working upon a ribbon of microtome sections of thedeveloping salamander, and he came to see what she had made of them. Shestood up and he sat down at the microscope, and for a time he was busyscrutinizing one section after another. She looked down at him and sawthat the sunlight was gleaming from his cheeks, and that all overhis cheeks was a fine golden down of delicate hairs. And at the sightsomething leaped within her.

  Something changed for her.

  She became aware of his presence as she had never been aware of anyhuman being in her life before. She became aware of the modelling of hisear, of the muscles of his neck and the textures of the hair that cameoff his brow, the soft minute curve of eyelid that she could just seebeyond his brow; she perceived all these familiar objects as thoughthey were acutely beautiful things. They WERE, she realized, acutelybeautiful things. Her sense followed the shoulders under his coat, downto where his flexible, sensitive-looking hand rested lightly upon thetable. She felt him as something solid and strong and trustworthy beyondmeasure. The perception of him flooded her being.

  He got up. "Here's something rather good," he said, and with a start andan effort she took his place at the microscope, while he stood besideher and almost leaning over her.

  She found she was trembling at his nearness and full of a thrillingdread that he might touch her. She pulled herself together and put hereye to the eye-piece.

  "You see the pointer?" he asked.

  "I see the pointer," she said.

  "It's like this," he said, and dragged a stool beside her and sat downwith his elbow four inches from hers and made a sketch. Then he got upand left her.

  She had a feeling at his departure as of an immense cavity, of somethingenormously gone; she could not tell whether it was infinite regret orinfinite relief....

  But now Ann Veronica knew what was the matter with her.

  Part 8

  And as she sat on her bed that night, musing and half-undressed, shebegan to run one hand down her arm and scrutinize the soft flow ofmuscle under her skin. She thought of the marvellous beauty of skin,and all the delightfulness of living texture. Oh the back of her arm shefound the faintest down of hair in the world. "Etherialized monkey," shesaid. She held out her arm straight before her, and turned her hand thisway and that.

  "Why should one pretend?" she whispered. "Why should one pretend?

  "Think of all the beauty in the world that is covered up and overlaid."

  She glanced shyly at the mirror above her dressing-table, and then abouther at the furniture, as though it might penetrate to the thoughts thatpeeped in her mind.

  "I wonder," said Ann Veronica at last, "if I am beautiful? I wonder if Ishall ever shine like a light, like a translucent goddess?--

  "I wonder--

  "I suppose girls and women have prayed for this, have come to this--InBabylon, in Nineveh.

  "Why shouldn't one face the facts of one's self?"

  She stood up. She posed herself before her mirror and surveyed herselfwith gravely thoughtful, gravely critical, and yet admiring eyes. "And,after all, I am just one common person!"

  She watched the throb of the arteries in the stem of her neck, andput her hand at last gently and almost timidly to where her heart beatbeneath her breast.

  Part 9

  The realization that she was in love flooded Ann Veronica's mind, andaltered the quality of all its topics.

  She began to think persistently of Capes, and it seemed to her now thatfor some weeks at least she must have been thinking persistently ofhim unawares. She was surprised to find how stored her mind was withimpressions and memories of him, how vividly she remembered his gesturesand little things that he had said. It occurred to her that it wasabsurd and wrong to be so continuously thinking of one engrossing topic,and she made a strenuous effort to force her mind to other questions.

  But it was extraordinary what seemingly irrelevant things could restoreher to the thought of Capes again. And when she went to sleep, thenalways Capes became the novel and wonderful guest of her dreams.

  For a time it really seemed all-sufficient to her that she should love.That Capes should love her seemed beyond the compass of her imagination.Indeed, she did not want to think of him as loving her. She wanted tothink of him as her beloved person, to be near him and watch him,to have him going about, doing this and that, saying this and that,unconscious of her, while she too remained unconscious of herself. Tothink of him as loving her would make all that different. Then he wouldturn his face to her, and she would have to think of herself in hiseyes. She would become defensive--what she did would be the thing thatmattered. He would require things of her, and she would be passionatelyconcerned to meet his requirements. Loving was better than that. Lovingwas self-forgetfulness, pure delighting in another human being. She feltthat with Capes near to her she would be content always to go on loving.

  She went next day to the schools, and her world seemed all made ofhappiness just worked up roughly into shapes and occasions and duties.She found she could do her microscope work all the better for being inlove. She winced when first she heard the preparation-room door open andCapes came down the laboratory; but when at last he reached her she wasself-possessed. She put a stool for him at a little distance from herown, and after he had seen the day's work he hesitated, and then plungedinto a resumption of their discussion about beauty.

  "I think," he said, "I was a little too mystical about beauty the otherday."

  "I like the mystical way," she said.

  "Our business here is the right way. I've been thinking, you know--I'mnot sure that primarily the perception of beauty isn't just intensityof feeling free from pain; intensity of perception without any tissuedestruction."

  "I like the mystical way better," said Ann Veronica, and thought.

  "A number of beautiful things are not intense."

  "But delicacy, for example, may be intensely perceived."

  "But why is one face beautiful and another not?" objected Ann Veronica;"on your theory any two faces side by side in the sunlight ought to beequally beautiful. One must get them with exactly the same intensity."

  He did not agree with that. "I don't mean simply intensity of sensation.I said intensity of perception. You may perceive harmony, proportion,rhythm, intensely. They are things faint and slight in themselves, asphysical facts, but they are like the detonator of a bomb: theylet loose the explosive. There's the internal factor as well as theexternal.... I don't know if I express myself clearly. I mean thatthe point is that vividness of perception is the essential factor ofbeauty; but, of course, vividness may be created by a whisper."

  "That brings us back," said Ann Veronica, "to the mystery. Why shouldsome things and not others open the deeps?"

  "Well, that might, after all, be an outcome of selection--like thepreference for blue flowers, which are not nearly so bright as yellow,of some insects."

  "That doesn't explain sunsets."

  "Not quite so easily as it explains an insect alighting
on coloredpaper. But perhaps if people didn't like clear, bright, healthyeyes--which is biologically understandable--they couldn't like preciousstones. One thing may be a necessary collateral of the others. And,after all, a fine clear sky of bright colors is the signal to come outof hiding and rejoice and go on with life."

  "H'm!" said Ann Veronica, and shook her head.

  Capes smiled cheerfully with his eyes meeting hers. "I throw it outin passing," he said. "What I am after is that beauty isn't a specialinserted sort of thing; that's my idea. It's just life, pure life, lifenascent, running clear and strong."

  He stood up to go on to the next student.

  "There's morbid beauty," said Ann Veronica.

  "I wonder if there is!" said Capes, and paused, and then bent down overthe boy who wore his hair like Russell.

  Ann Veronica surveyed his sloping back for a moment, and then drew hermicroscope toward her. Then for a time she sat very still. She felt thatshe had passed a difficult corner, and that now she could go on talkingwith him again, just as she had been used to do before she understoodwhat was the matter with her....

  She had one idea, she found, very clear in her mind--that she would geta Research Scholarship, and so contrive another year in the laboratory.

  "Now I see what everything means," said Ann Veronica to herself; and itreally felt for some days as though the secret of the universe, that hadbeen wrapped and hidden from her so obstinately, was at last altogetherdisplayed.

  CHAPTER THE NINTH

  DISCORDS

  Part 1

  One afternoon, soon after Ann Veronica's great discovery, a telegramcame into the laboratory for her. It ran:

  --------------------------------------------------- | Bored | and | nothing | to | do | |----------|-----------|----------|--------|--------| | will | you | dine | with | me | |----------|-----------|----------|--------|--------| | to-night | somewhere | and | talk | I | |----------|-----------|----------|--------|--------| | shall | be | grateful | Ramage | | ---------------------------------------------------

  Ann Veronica was rather pleased by this. She had not seen Ramage for tenor eleven days, and she was quite ready for a gossip with him. And nowher mind was so full of the thought that she was in love--in love!--thatmarvellous state! that I really believe she had some dim idea of talkingto him about it. At any rate, it would be good to hear him saying thesort of things he did--perhaps now she would grasp them better--withthis world-shaking secret brandishing itself about inside her headwithin a yard of him.

  She was sorry to find Ramage a little disposed to be melancholy.

  "I have made over seven hundred pounds in the last week," he said.

  "That's exhilarating," said Ann Veronica.

  "Not a bit of it," he said; "it's only a score in a game."

  "It's a score you can buy all sorts of things with."

  "Nothing that one wants."

  He turned to the waiter, who held a wine-card. "Nothing can cheer me,"he said, "except champagne." He meditated. "This," he said, and then:"No! Is this sweeter? Very well."

  "Everything goes well with me," he said, folding his arms under him andregarding Ann Veronica with the slightly projecting eyes wide open. "AndI'm not happy. I believe I'm in love."

  He leaned back for his soup.

  Presently he resumed: "I believe I must be in love."

  "You can't be that," said Ann Veronica, wisely.

  "How do you know?"

  "Well, it isn't exactly a depressing state, is it?"

  "YOU don't know."

  "One has theories," said Ann Veronica, radiantly.

  "Oh, theories! Being in love is a fact."

  "It ought to make one happy."

  "It's an unrest--a longing--What's that?" The waiter had intervened."Parmesan--take it away!"

  He glanced at Ann Veronica's face, and it seemed to him that she reallywas exceptionally radiant. He wondered why she thought love made peoplehappy, and began to talk of the smilax and pinks that adorned the table.He filled her glass with champagne. "You MUST," he said, "because of mydepression."

  They were eating quails when they returned to the topic of love. "Whatmade you think" he said, abruptly, with the gleam of avidity in hisface, "that love makes people happy?"

  "I know it must."

  "But how?"

  He was, she thought, a little too insistent. "Women know these things byinstinct," she answered.

  "I wonder," he said, "if women do know things by instinct? I havemy doubts about feminine instinct. It's one of our conventionalsuperstitions. A woman is supposed to know when a man is in love withher. Do you think she does?"

  Ann Veronica picked among her salad with a judicial expression of face."I think she would," she decided.

  "Ah!" said Ramage, impressively.

  Ann Veronica looked up at him and found him regarding her with eyes thatwere almost woebegone, and into which, indeed, he was trying to throwmuch more expression than they could carry. There was a little pausebetween them, full for Ann Veronica of rapid elusive suspicions andintimations.

  "Perhaps one talks nonsense about a woman's instinct," she said. "It'sa way of avoiding explanations. And girls and women, perhaps, aredifferent. I don't know. I don't suppose a girl can tell if a man is inlove with her or not in love with her." Her mind went off to Capes. Herthoughts took words for themselves. "She can't. I suppose it depends onher own state of mind. If one wants a thing very much, perhaps one isinclined to think one can't have it. I suppose if one were to love someone, one would feel doubtful. And if one were to love some one verymuch, it's just so that one would be blindest, just when one wanted mostto see."

  She stopped abruptly, afraid that Ramage might be able to infer Capesfrom the things she had said, and indeed his face was very eager.

  "Yes?" he said.

  Ann Veronica blushed. "That's all," she said "I'm afraid I'm a littleconfused about these things."

  Ramage looked at her, and then fell into deep reflection as the waitercame to paragraph their talk again.

  "Have you ever been to the opera, Ann Veronica?" said Ramage.

  "Once or twice."

  "Shall we go now?"

  "I think I would like to listen to music. What is there?"

  "Tristan."

  "I've never heard Tristan and Isolde."

  "That settles it. We'll go. There's sure to be a place somewhere."

  "It's rather jolly of you," said Ann Veronica.

  "It's jolly of you to come," said Ramage.

  So presently they got into a hansom together, and Ann Veronica sat backfeeling very luxurious and pleasant, and looked at the light and stirand misty glitter of the street traffic from under slightly droopingeyelids, while Ramage sat closer to her than he need have done, andglanced ever and again at her face, and made to speak and said nothing.And when they got to Covent Garden Ramage secured one of the littleupper boxes, and they came into it as the overture began.

  Ann Veronica took off her jacket and sat down in the corner chair, andleaned forward to look into the great hazy warm brown cavity of thehouse, and Ramage placed his chair to sit beside her and near her,facing the stage. The music took hold of her slowly as her eyes wanderedfrom the indistinct still ranks of the audience to the little busyorchestra with its quivering violins, its methodical movements of brownand silver instruments, its brightly lit scores and shaded lights. Shehad never been to the opera before except as one of a congested mass ofpeople in the cheaper seats, and with backs and heads and women's hatsfor the frame of the spectacle; there was by contrast a fine large senseof space and ease in her present position. The curtain rose out of theconcluding bars of the overture and revealed Isolde on the prow of thebarbaric ship. The voice of the young seaman came floating down from themasthead, and the story of the immortal lovers had begun. She knewthe story only imperfectly, and followed it now with a passionate anddeepening interest. The sple
ndid voices sang on from phase to phase oflove's unfolding, the ship drove across the sea to the beating rhythm ofthe rowers. The lovers broke into passionate knowledge of themselves andeach other, and then, a jarring intervention, came King Mark amidst theshouts of the sailormen, and stood beside them.

  The curtain came festooning slowly down, the music ceased, the lightsin the auditorium glowed out, and Ann Veronica woke out of her confuseddream of involuntary and commanding love in a glory of sound and colorsto discover that Ramage was sitting close beside her with one handresting lightly on her waist. She made a quick movement, and the handfell away.