Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story

by H. G. Wells

  "Frightful lot of things aren't settled," said Ann Veronica. Inaddition, the Fadden Dance business, all out of proportion, occupiedthe whole foreground of her thoughts and threw a color of rebellionover everything. She kept thinking she was thinking about Mr. Manning'sproposal of marriage and finding she was thinking of the dance.

  For a time her efforts to achieve a comprehensive concentration weredispersed by the passage of the village street of Caddington, thepassing of a goggled car-load of motorists, and the struggles of astable lad mounted on one recalcitrant horse and leading another. Whenshe got back to her questions again in the monotonous high-road that ledup the hill, she found the image of Mr. Manning central in her mind.He stood there, large and dark, enunciating, in his clear voice frombeneath his large mustache, clear flat sentences, deliberately kindly.He proposed, he wanted to possess her! He loved her.

  Ann Veronica felt no repulsion at the prospect. That Mr. Manning lovedher presented itself to her bloodlessly, stilled from any imaginativequiver or thrill of passion or disgust. The relationship seemed to havealmost as much to do with blood and body as a mortgage. It was somethingthat would create a mutual claim, a relationship. It was in anotherworld from that in which men will die for a kiss, and touching handslights fires that burn up lives--the world of romance, the world ofpassionately beautiful things.

  But that other world, in spite of her resolute exclusion of it, wasalways looking round corners and peeping through chinks and crannies,and rustling and raiding into the order in which she chose to live,shining out of pictures at her, echoing in lyrics and music; it invadedher dreams, it wrote up broken and enigmatical sentences upon thepassage walls of her mind. She was aware of it now as if it were avoice shouting outside a house, shouting passionate verities in a hotsunlight, a voice that cries while people talk insincerely in a darkenedroom and pretend not to hear. Its shouting now did in some occult mannerconvey a protest that Mr. Manning would on no account do, though hewas tall and dark and handsome and kind, and thirty-five and adequatelyprosperous, and all that a husband should be. But there was, itinsisted, no mobility in his face, no movement, nothing about him thatwarmed. If Ann Veronica could have put words to that song theywould have been, "Hot-blooded marriage or none!" but she was far tooindistinct in this matter to frame any words at all.

  "I don't love him," said Ann Veronica, getting a gleam. "I don't seethat his being a good sort matters. That really settles about that....But it means no end of a row."

  For a time she sat on a rail before leaving the road for the downlandturf. "But I wish," she said, "I had some idea what I was really up to."

  Her thoughts went into solution for a time, while she listened to a larksinging.

  "Marriage and mothering," said Ann Veronica, with her mind crystallizingout again as the lark dropped to the nest in the turf. "And all the restof it perhaps is a song."

  Part 3

  Her mind got back to the Fadden Ball.

  She meant to go, she meant to go, she meant to go. Nothing would stopher, and she was prepared to face the consequences. Suppose her fatherturned her out of doors! She did not care, she meant to go. She wouldjust walk out of the house and go....

  She thought of her costume in some detail and with considerablesatisfaction, and particularly of a very jolly property dagger withlarge glass jewels in the handle, that reposed in a drawer in her room.She was to be a Corsair's Bride. "Fancy stabbing a man for jealousy!"she thought. "You'd have to think how to get in between his bones."

  She thought of her father, and with an effort dismissed him from hermind.

  She tried to imagine the collective effect of the Fadden Ball; she hadnever seen a fancy-dress gathering in her life. Mr. Manning came intoher thoughts again, an unexpected, tall, dark, self-contained presenceat the Fadden. One might suppose him turning up; he knew a lot of cleverpeople, and some of them might belong to the class. What would he comeas?

  Presently she roused herself with a guilty start from the task ofdressing and re-dressing Mr. Manning in fancy costume, as though hewas a doll. She had tried him as a Crusader, in which guise he seemedplausible but heavy--"There IS something heavy about him; I wonder ifit's his mustache?"--and as a Hussar, which made him preposterous, andas a Black Brunswicker, which was better, and as an Arab sheik. Alsoshe had tried him as a dragoman and as a gendarme, which seemed the mostsuitable of all to his severely handsome, immobile profile. She felthe would tell people the way, control traffic, and refuse admissionto public buildings with invincible correctness and the very finestexplicit feelings possible. For each costume she had devised a suitableform of matrimonial refusal. "Oh, Lord!" she said, discovering what shewas up to, and dropped lightly from the fence upon the turf and went onher way toward the crest.

  "I shall never marry," said Ann Veronica, resolutely; "I'm not the sort.That's why it's so important I should take my own line now."

  Part 4

  Ann Veronica's ideas of marriage were limited and unsystematic. Herteachers and mistresses had done their best to stamp her mind with anineradicable persuasion that it was tremendously important, and on noaccount to be thought about. Her first intimations of marriage as a factof extreme significance in a woman's life had come with the marriage ofAlice and the elopement of her second sister, Gwen.

  These convulsions occurred when Ann Veronica was about twelve. Therewas a gulf of eight years between her and the youngest of her brace ofsisters--an impassable gulf inhabited chaotically by two noisy brothers.These sisters moved in a grown-up world inaccessible to Ann Veronica'ssympathies, and to a large extent remote from her curiosity. She gotinto rows through meddling with their shoes and tennis-rackets, and hadmoments of carefully concealed admiration when she was privileged to seethem just before her bedtime, rather radiantly dressed in white or pinkor amber and prepared to go out with her mother. She thought Alice a bitof a sneak, an opinion her brothers shared, and Gwen rather a snatchat meals. She saw nothing of their love-making, and came home from herboarding-school in a state of decently suppressed curiosity for Alice'swedding.

  Her impressions of this cardinal ceremony were rich and confused,complicated by a quite transitory passion that awakened no reciprocalfire for a fat curly headed cousin in black velveteen and a lacecollar, who assisted as a page. She followed him about persistently, andsucceeded, after a brisk, unchivalrous struggle (in which he pinched andasked her to "cheese it"), in kissing him among the raspberries behindthe greenhouse. Afterward her brother Roddy, also strange in velveteen,feeling rather than knowing of this relationship, punched this Adonis'shead.

  A marriage in the house proved to be exciting but extremelydisorganizing. Everything seemed designed to unhinge the mind andmake the cat wretched. All the furniture was moved, all the meals weredisarranged, and everybody, Ann Veronica included, appeared in new,bright costumes. She had to wear cream and a brown sash and a shortfrock and her hair down, and Gwen cream and a brown sash and a longskirt and her hair up. And her mother, looking unusually alert andhectic, wore cream and brown also, made up in a more complicated manner.

  Ann Veronica was much impressed by a mighty trying on and altering andfussing about Alice's "things"--Alice was being re-costumed from garretto cellar, with a walking-dress and walking-boots to measure, and abride's costume of the most ravishing description, and stockings andsuch like beyond the dreams of avarice--and a constant and increasingdripping into the house of irrelevant remarkable objects, such as--

  Real lace bedspread;

  Gilt travelling clock;

  Ornamental pewter plaque;

  Salad bowl (silver mounted) and servers;

  Madgett's "English Poets" (twelve volumes), bound purple morocco;

  Etc., etc.

  Through all this flutter of novelty there came and went a solicitous,preoccupied, almost depressed figure. It was Doctor Ralph, formerlythe partner of Doctor Stickell in the Avenue, and now with a thrivingpractice of his own in Wamblesmith. He had shaved his side-whiskers andcome over in flannels, b
ut he was still indisputably the same personwho had attended Ann Veronica for the measles and when she swallowedthe fish-bone. But his role was altered, and he was now playing thebridegroom in this remarkable drama. Alice was going to be Mrs. Ralph.He came in apologetically; all the old "Well, and how ARE we?" notegone; and once he asked Ann Veronica, almost furtively,

  "How's Alice getting on, Vee?" Finally, on the Day, he appeared likehis old professional self transfigured, in the most beautiful light graytrousers Ann Veronica had ever seen and a new shiny silk hat with a mostbecoming roll....

  It was not simply that all the rooms were rearranged and everybodydressed in unusual fashions, and all the routines of life abolished andput away: people's tempers and emotions also seemed strangely disturbedand shifted about. Her father was distinctly irascible, and disposedmore than ever to hide away among the petrological things--the study wasturned out. At table he carved in a gloomy but resolute manner. On theDay he had trumpet-like outbreaks of cordiality, varied by a watchfulpreoccupation. Gwen and Alice were fantastically friendly, which seemedto annoy him, and Mrs. Stanley was throughout enigmatical, with ananxious eye on her husband and Alice.

  There was a confused impression of livery carriages and whips with whitefavors, people fussily wanting other people to get in before them,and then the church. People sat in unusual pews, and a wide margin ofhassocky emptiness intervened between the ceremony and the walls.

  Ann Veronica had a number of fragmentary impressions of Alice strangelytransfigured in bridal raiment. It seemed to make her sister downcastbeyond any precedent. The bridesmaids and pages got rather jumbledin the aisle, and she had an effect of Alice's white back andsloping shoulders and veiled head receding toward the altar. In someincomprehensible way that back view made her feel sorry for Alice. Alsoshe remembered very vividly the smell of orange blossom, and Alice,drooping and spiritless, mumbling responses, facing Doctor Ralph, whilethe Rev. Edward Bribble stood between them with an open book. DoctorRalph looked kind and large, and listened to Alice's responses as thoughhe was listening to symptoms and thought that on the whole she wasprogressing favorably.

  And afterward her mother and Alice kissed long and clung to each other.And Doctor Ralph stood by looking considerate. He and her father shookhands manfully.

  Ann Veronica had got quite interested in Mr. Bribble's rendering of theservice--he had the sort of voice that brings out things--and was stillteeming with ideas about it when finally a wild outburst from the organmade it clear that, whatever snivelling there might be down in thechancel, that excellent wind instrument was, in its Mendelssohnianway, as glad as ever it could be. "Pump, pump, per-um-pump, Pum, Pump,Per-um...."

  The wedding-breakfast was for Ann Veronica a spectacle of the unrealconsuming the real; she liked that part very well, until she wascarelessly served against her expressed wishes with mayonnaise. Shewas caught by an uncle, whose opinion she valued, making faces at Roddybecause he had exulted at this.

  Of the vast mass of these impressions Ann Veronica could make nothingat the time; there they were--Fact! She stored them away in a mindnaturally retentive, as a squirrel stores away nuts, for furtherdigestion. Only one thing emerged with any reasonable clarity in hermind at once, and that was that unless she was saved from drowning byan unmarried man, in which case the ceremony is unavoidable, or totallydestitute of under-clothing, and so driven to get a trousseau, in whichhardship a trousseau would certainly be "ripping," marriage was anexperience to be strenuously evaded.

  When they were going home she asked her mother why she and Gwen andAlice had cried.

  "Ssh!" said her mother, and then added, "A little natural feeling,dear."

  "But didn't Alice want to marry Doctor Ralph?"

  "Oh, ssh, Vee!" said her mother, with an evasion as patent as anadvertisement board. "I am sure she will be very happy indeed withDoctor Ralph."

  But Ann Veronica was by no means sure of that until she went overto Wamblesmith and saw her sister, very remote and domestic andauthoritative, in a becoming tea-gown, in command of Doctor Ralph'shome. Doctor Ralph came in to tea and put his arm round Alice and kissedher, and Alice called him "Squiggles," and stood in the shelter of hisarms for a moment with an expression of satisfied proprietorship. SheHAD cried, Ann Veronica knew. There had been fusses and scenes dimlyapprehended through half-open doors. She had heard Alice talking andcrying at the same time, a painful noise. Perhaps marriage hurt. But nowit was all over, and Alice was getting on well. It reminded Ann Veronicaof having a tooth stopped.

  And after that Alice became remoter than ever, and, after a time, ill.Then she had a baby and became as old as any really grown-up person, orolder, and very dull. Then she and her husband went off to a Yorkshirepractice, and had four more babies, none of whom photographed well, andso she passed beyond the sphere of Ann Veronica's sympathies altogether.

  Part 5

  The Gwen affair happened when she was away at school atMarticombe-on-Sea, a term before she went to the High School, and wasnever very clear to her.

  Her mother missed writing for a week, and then she wrote in an unusualkey. "My dear," the letter ran, "I have to tell you that your sisterGwen has offended your father very much. I hope you will always loveher, but I want you to remember she has offended your father and marriedwithout his consent. Your father is very angry, and will not have hername mentioned in his hearing. She has married some one he could notapprove of, and gone right away...."

  When the next holidays came Ann Veronica's mother was ill, and Gwen wasin the sick-room when Ann Veronica returned home. She was in one of herold walking-dresses, her hair was done in an unfamiliar manner, she worea wedding-ring, and she looked as if she had been crying.

  "Hello, Gwen!" said Ann Veronica, trying to put every one at their ease."Been and married?... What's the name of the happy man?"

  Gwen owned to "Fortescue."

  "Got a photograph of him or anything?" said Ann Veronica, after kissingher mother.

  Gwen made an inquiry, and, directed by Mrs. Stanley, produced a portraitfrom its hiding-place in the jewel-drawer under the mirror. It presenteda clean-shaven face with a large Corinthian nose, hair tremendouslywaving off the forehead and more chin and neck than is good for a man.

  "LOOKS all right," said Ann Veronica, regarding him with her head firston one side and then on the other, and trying to be agreeable. "What'sthe objection?"

  "I suppose she ought to know?" said Gwen to her mother, trying to alterthe key of the conversation.

  "You see, Vee," said Mrs. Stanley, "Mr. Fortescue is an actor, and yourfather does not approve of the profession."

  "Oh!" said Ann Veronica. "I thought they made knights of actors?"

  "They may of Hal some day," said Gwen. "But it's a long business."

  "I suppose this makes you an actress?" said Ann Veronica.

  "I don't know whether I shall go on," said Gwen, a novel note oflanguorous professionalism creeping into her voice. "The other womendon't much like it if husband and wife work together, and I don't thinkHal would like me to act away from him."

  Ann Veronica regarded her sister with a new respect, but the traditionsof family life are strong. "I don't suppose you'll be able to do itmuch," said Ann Veronica.

  Later Gwen's trouble weighed so heavily on Mrs. Stanley in her illnessthat her husband consented to receive Mr. Fortescue in the drawing-room,and actually shake hands with him in an entirely hopeless manner andhope everything would turn out for the best.

  The forgiveness and reconciliation was a cold and formal affair, andafterwards her father went off gloomily to his study, and Mr. Fortescuerambled round the garden with soft, propitiatory steps, the Corinthiannose upraised and his hands behind his back, pausing to look long andhard at the fruit-trees against the wall.

  Ann Veronica watched him from the dining-room window, and after somemoments of maidenly hesitation rambled out into the garden in a reversedirection to Mr. Fortescue's steps, and encountered him with an air ofartless surprise.


  "Hello!" said Ann Veronica, with arms akimbo and a careless, breathlessmanner. "You Mr. Fortescue?"

  "At your service. You Ann Veronica?"

  "Rather! I say--did you marry Gwen?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  Mr. Fortescue raised his eyebrows and assumed a light-comedy expression."I suppose I fell in love with her, Ann Veronica."

  "Rum," said Ann Veronica. "Have you got to keep her now?"

  "To the best of my ability," said Mr. Fortescue, with a bow.

  "Have you much ability?" asked Ann Veronica.

  Mr. Fortescue tried to act embarrassment in order to conceal itsreality, and Ann Veronica went on to ask a string of questions aboutacting, and whether her sister would act, and was she beautiful enoughfor it, and who would make her dresses, and so on.

  As a matter of fact Mr. Fortescue had not much ability to keep hersister, and a little while after her mother's death Ann Veronicamet Gwen suddenly on the staircase coming from her father's study,shockingly dingy in dusty mourning and tearful and resentful, and afterthat Gwen receded from the Morningside Park world, and not even thebegging letters and distressful communications that her father and auntreceived, but only a vague intimation of dreadfulness, a leakage ofincidental comment, flashes of paternal anger at "that blackguard," cameto Ann Veronica's ears.