H. Wells - Ann Veronica

like his old professional self transfigured, in the most

beautiful light gray trousers Ann Veronica had ever seen and a

new shiny silk hat with a most becoming roll. . . .

It was not simply that all the rooms were rearranged and

everybody dressed in unusual fashions, and all the routines of

life abolished and put away: people's tempers and emotions also

seemed strangely disturbed and shifted about. Her father was

distinctly irascible, and disposed more than ever to hide away

among the petrological things--the study was turned out. At

table he carved in a gloomy but resolute manner. On the Day he

had trumpet-like outbreaks of cordiality, varied by a watchful

preoccupation. Gwen and Alice were fantastically friendly, which

seemed to annoy him, and Mrs. Stanley was throughout enigmatical,

with an anxious eye on her husband and Alice.

There was a confused impression of livery carriages and whips

with white favors, people fussily wanting other people to get in

before them, and then the church. People sat in unusual pews, and

a wide margin of hassocky emptiness intervened between the

ceremony and the walls.

Ann Veronica had a number of fragmentary impressions of Alice

strangely transfigured in bridal raiment. It seemed to make her

sister downcast beyond any precedent. The bridesmaids and pages

got rather jumbled in the aisle, and she had an effect of Alice's

white back and sloping shoulders and veiled head receding toward

the altar. In some incomprehensible way that back view made her

feel sorry for Alice. Also she remembered very vividly the smell

of orange blossom, and Alice, drooping and spiritless, mumbling

responses, facing Doctor Ralph, while the Rev. Edward Bribble

stood between them with an open book. Doctor Ralph looked kind

and large, and listened to Alice's responses as though he was

listening to symptoms and thought that on the whole she was

progressing 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 shook hands manfully.

Ann Veronica had got quite interested in Mr. Bribble's rendering

of the service--he had the sort of voice that brings out

things--and was still teeming with ideas about it when finally a

wild outburst from the organ made it clear that, whatever

snivelling there might be down in the chancel, that excellent

wind instrument was, in its Mendelssohnian way, 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

unreal consuming the real; she liked that part very well, until

she was carelessly served against her expressed wishes with

mayonnaise. She was caught by an uncle, whose opinion she

valued, making faces at Roddy because he had exulted at this.

Of the vast mass of these impressions Ann Veronica could make

nothing at the time; there they were--Fact! She stored them away

in a mind naturally retentive, as a squirrel stores away nuts,

for further digestion. Only one thing emerged with any

reasonable clarity in her mind at once, and that was that unless

she was saved from drowning by an unmarried man, in which case

the ceremony is unavoidable, or totally destitute of under-

clothing, and so driven to get a trousseau, in which hardship a

trousseau would certainly be "ripping," marriage was an

experience to be strenuously evaded.

When they were going home she asked her mother why she and Gwen

and Alice 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 an

advertisement board. "I am sure she will be very happy indeed

with Doctor Ralph."

But Ann Veronica was by no means sure of that until she went over

to Wamblesmith and saw her sister, very remote and domestic and

authoritative, in a becoming tea-gown, in command of Doctor

Ralph's home. Doctor Ralph came in to tea and put his arm round

Alice and kissed her, and Alice called him "Squiggles," and stood

in the shelter of his arms for a moment with an expression of

satisfied proprietorship. She HAD cried, Ann Veronica knew.

There had been fusses and scenes dimly apprehended through

half-open doors. She had heard Alice talking and crying at the

same time, a painful noise. Perhaps marriage hurt. But now it

was all over, and Alice was getting on well. It reminded Ann

Veronica of 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, or older, and very dull. Then she and her

husband went off to a Yorkshire practice, and had four more

babies, none of whom photographed well, and so she passed beyond

the sphere of Ann Veronica's sympathies altogether.

Part 5

The Gwen affair happened when she was away at school at

Marticombe-on-Sea, a term before she went to the High School, and

was never very clear to her.

Her mother missed writing for a week, and then she wrote in an

unusual key. "My dear," the letter ran, "I have to tell you that

your sister Gwen has offended your father very much. I hope you

will always love her, but I want you to remember she has offended

your father and married without his consent. Your father is very

angry, and will not have her name mentioned in his hearing. She

has married some one he could not approve of, and gone right

away. . . ."

When the next holidays came Ann Veronica's mother was ill, and

Gwen was in the sick-room when Ann Veronica returned home. She

was in one of her old walking-dresses, her hair was done in an

unfamiliar manner, she wore a 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

kissing her mother.

Gwen made an inquiry, and, directed by Mrs. Stanley, produced a

portrait from its hiding-place in the jewel-drawer under the

mirror. It presented a clean-shaven face with a large Corinthian

nose, hair tremendously waving 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

first on one side and then on the other, and trying to be

agreeable. "What's the objection?"

"I suppose she ought to know?" said Gwen to her mother, trying to

alter the key of the conversation.

"You see, Vee," said Mrs. Stanley, "Mr. Fortescue is an actor,

and your father 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 of

languorous professionalism creeping into her voice. "The other

women don't much like it if husband and wife work together, and I

don't think Hal would like me to act away from him."

Ann Veronica regarded her sister with a new respect, but the

traditions of family life are strong. "I don't suppose you'll be

able to do it much," said Ann Veronica.