H. Wells - Ann Veronica

a class apart. After the first onset several of the women who

had apartments to let said she would not do for them, and in

effect dismissed her. This also struck her as odd.

About many of these houses hung a mysterious taint as of

something weakly and commonly and dustily evil; the women who

negotiated the rooms looked out through a friendly manner as

though it was a mask, with hard, defiant eyes. Then one old

crone, short-sighted and shaky-handed, called Ann Veronica

"dearie," and made some remark, obscure and slangy, of which the

spirit rather than the words penetrated to her understanding.

For a time she looked at no more apartments, and walked through

gaunt and ill-cleaned streets, through the sordid under side of

life, perplexed and troubled, ashamed of her previous obtuseness.

She had something of the feeling a Hindoo must experience who has

been into surroundings or touched something that offends his

caste. She passed people in the streets and regarded them with a

quickening apprehension, once or twice came girls dressed in

slatternly finery, going toward Regent Street from out these

places. It did not occur to her that they at least had found a

way of earning a living, and had that much economic superiority

to herself. It did not occur to her that save for some accidents

of education and character they had souls like her own.

For a time Ann Veronica went on her way gauging the quality of

sordid streets. At last, a little way to the northward of Euston

Road, the moral cloud seemed to lift, the moral atmosphere to

change; clean blinds appeared in the windows, clean doorsteps

before the doors, a different appeal in the neatly placed cards

bearing the word

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| APARTMENTS |

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in the clear bright windows. At last in a street near the

Hampstead Road she hit upon a room that had an exceptional

quality of space and order, and a tall woman with a kindly face

to show it. "You're a student, perhaps?" said the tall woman.

"At the Tredgold Women's College," said Ann Veronica. She felt

it would save explanations if she did not state she had left her

home and was looking for employment. The room was papered with

green, large-patterned paper that was at worst a trifle dingy,

and the arm-chair and the seats of the other chairs were covered

with the unusual brightness of a large-patterned chintz, which

also supplied the window-curtain. There was a round table

covered, not with the usual "tapestry" cover, but with a plain

green cloth that went passably with the wall-paper. In the

recess beside the fireplace were some open bookshelves. The

carpet was a quiet drugget and not excessively worn, and the bed

in the corner was covered by a white quilt. There were neither

texts nor rubbish on the walls, but only a stirring version of

Belshazzar's feast, a steel engraving in the early Victorian

manner that had some satisfactory blacks. And the woman who

showed this room was tall, with an understanding eye and the

quiet manner of the well-trained servant.

Ann Veronica brought her luggage in a cab from the hotel; she

tipped the hotel porter sixpence and overpaid the cabman

eighteenpence, unpacked some of her books and possessions, and so

made the room a little homelike, and then sat down in a by no

means uncomfortable arm-chair before the fire. She had arranged

for a supper of tea, a boiled egg, and some tinned peaches. She

had discussed the general question of supplies with the helpful

landlady. "And now," said Ann Veronica surveying her apartment

with an unprecedented sense of proprietorship, "what is the next

step?"

She spent the evening in writing--it was a little difficult--to

her father and--which was easier--to the Widgetts. She was

greatly heartened by doing this. The necessity of defending

herself and assuming a confident and secure tone did much to

dispell the sense of being exposed and indefensible in a huge

dingy world that abounded in sinister possibilities. She

addressed her letters, meditated on them for a time, and then

took them out and posted them. Afterward she wanted to get her

letter to her father back in order to read it over again, and, if

it tallied with her general impression of it, re-write it.

He would know her address to-morrow. She reflected upon that

with a thrill of terror that was also, somehow, in some faint

remote way, gleeful.

"Dear old Daddy," she said, "he'll make a fearful fuss. Well, it

had to happen somewhen. . . . Somehow. I wonder what he'll say?"

CHAPTER THE SIXTH

EXPOSTULATIONS

Part 1

The next morning opened calmly, and Ann Veronica sat in her own

room, her very own room, and consumed an egg and marmalade, and

read the advertisements in the Daily Telegraph. Then began

expostulations, preluded by a telegram and headed by her aunt.

The telegram reminded Ann Veronica that she had no place for

interviews except her bed-sitting-room, and she sought her

landlady and negotiated hastily for the use of the ground floor

parlor, which very fortunately was vacant. She explained she was

expecting an important interview, and asked that her visitor

should be duly shown in. Her aunt arrived about half-past ten,

in black and with an unusually thick spotted veil. She raised

this with the air of a conspirator unmasking, and displayed a

tear-flushed face. For a moment she remained silent.

"My dear," she said, when she could get her breath, "you must

come home at once."

Ann Veronica closed the door quite softly and stood still.

"This has almost killed your father. . . . After Gwen!"

"I sent a telegram."

"He cares so much for you. He did so care for you."

"I sent a telegram to say I was all right."

"All right! And I never dreamed anything of the sort was going

on. I had no idea!" She sat down abruptly and threw her wrists

limply upon the table. "Oh, Veronica!" she said, "to leave your

home!"

She had been weeping. She was weeping now. Ann Veronica was

overcome by this amount of emotion.

"Why did you do it?" her aunt urged. "Why could you not confide

in us?"

"Do what?" said Ann Veronica.

"What you have done."

"But what have I done?"

"Elope! Go off in this way. We had no idea. We had such a

pride in you, such hope in you. I had no idea you were not the

happiest girl. Everything I could do! Your father sat up all

night. Until at last I persuaded him to go to bed. He wanted to

put on his overcoat and come after you and look for you--in

London. We made sure it was just like Gwen. Only Gwen left a

letter on the pincushion. You didn't even do that Vee; not even

that."

"I sent a telegram, aunt," said Ann Veronica.

"Like a stab. You didn't even put the twelve words."

"I said I was all right."

"Gwen said she was happy. Before that came your father didn't

even know you were gone. He was just getting cross about your

being late for dinner--you know his way--when it came. He opened

it--just off-hand, and then when he saw what it was he hit at the

table and sent his soup spoon flying and splashing on to the

tablecloth. 'My God!' he said, 'I'll go after them and kill him.

I'll go after them and kill him.' For the moment I thought it

was a telegram from Gwen."

"But what did father imagine?"

"Of course he imagined! Any one would! 'What has happened,