H. Wells - Ann Veronica

He had a wild impulse to shout. "Agreed," he said with queer

exaltation, and his grip tightened on her hand. "And to-night we

are friends?"

"We are friends," said Ann Veronica, and drew her hand quickly

away from him.

"To-night we are as we have always been. Except that this music

we have been swimming in is divine. While I have been pestering

you, have you heard it? At least, you heard the first act. And

all the third act is love-sick music. Tristan dying and Isolde

coming to crown his death. Wagner had just been in love when he

wrote it all. It begins with that queer piccolo solo. Now I

shall never hear it but what this evening will come pouring back

over me."

The lights sank, the prelude to the third act was beginning, the

music rose and fell in crowded intimations of lovers

separated--lovers separated with scars and memories between them,

and the curtain went reefing up to display Tristan lying wounded

on his couch and the shepherd crouching with his pipe.

Part 2

They had their explanations the next evening, but they were

explanations in quite other terms than Ann Veronica had

anticipated, quite other and much more startling and illuminating

terms. Ramage came for her at her lodgings, and she met him

graciously and kindly as a queen who knows she must needs give

sorrow to a faithful liege. She was unusually soft and gentle in

her manner to him. He was wearing a new silk hat, with a

slightly more generous brim than its predecessor, and it suited

his type of face, robbed his dark eyes a little of their

aggressiveness and gave him a solid and dignified and benevolent

air. A faint anticipation of triumph showed in his manner and a

subdued excitement.

"We'll go to a place where we can have a private room," he said.

"Then--then we can talk things out."

So they went this time to the Rococo, in Germain Street, and

up-stairs to a landing upon which stood a bald-headed waiter with

whiskers like a French admiral and discretion beyond all limits

in his manner. He seemed to have expected them. He ushered them

with an amiable flat hand into a minute apartment with a little

gas-stove, a silk crimson-covered sofa, and a bright little

table, gay with napery and hot-house flowers.

"Odd little room," said Ann Veronica, dimly apprehending that

obtrusive sofa.

"One can talk without undertones, so to speak," said Ramage.

"It's--private." He stood looking at the preparations before

them with an unusual preoccupation of manner, then roused himself

to take her jacket, a little awkwardly, and hand it to the waiter

who hung it in the corner of the room. It appeared he had

already ordered dinner and wine, and the whiskered waiter waved

in his subordinate with the soup forthwith.

"I'm going to talk of indifferent themes," said Ramage, a little

fussily, "until these interruptions of the service are over.

Then--then we shall be together. . . . How did you like Tristan?"

Ann Veronica paused the fraction of a second before her reply

came.

"I thought much of it amazingly beautiful."

"Isn't it. And to think that man got it all out of the poorest

little love-story for a respectable titled lady! Have you read of

it?"

"Never."

"It gives in a nutshell the miracle of art and the imagination.

You get this queer irascible musician quite impossibly and

unfortunately in love with a wealthy patroness, and then out of

his brain comes THIS, a tapestry of glorious music, setting out

love to lovers, lovers who love in spite of all that is wise and

respectable and right."

Ann Veronica thought. She did not want to seem to shrink from

conversation, but all sorts of odd questions were running through

her mind. "I wonder why people in love are so defiant, so

careless of other considerations?"

"The very hares grow brave. I suppose because it IS the chief

thing in life." He stopped and said earnestly: "It is the chief

thing in life, and everything else goes down before it.

Everything, my dear, everything! . . . But we have got to talk

upon indifferent themes until we have done with this blond young

gentleman from Bavaria. . . ."

The dinner came to an end at last, and the whiskered waiter

presented his bill and evacuated the apartment and closed the

door behind him with an almost ostentatious discretion. Ramage

stood up, and suddenly turned the key in the door in an off-hand

manner. "Now," he said, "no one can blunder in upon us. We are

alone and we can say and do what we please. We two." He stood

still, looking at her.

Ann Veronica tried to seem absolutely unconcerned. The turning of

the key startled her, but she did not see how she could make an

objection. She felt she had stepped into a world of unknown

usages.

"I have waited for this," he said, and stood quite still, looking

at her until the silence became oppressive.

"Won't you sit down," she said, "and tell me what you want to

say?" Her voice was flat and faint. Suddenly she had become

afraid. She struggled not to be afraid. After all, what could

happen?

He was looking at her very hard and earnestly. "Ann Veronica," he

said.

Then before she could say a word to arrest him he was at her

side. "Don't!" she said, weakly, as he had bent down and put one

arm about her and seized her hands with his disengaged hand and

kissed her--kissed her almost upon her lips. He seemed to do ten

things before she could think to do one, to leap upon her and

take possession.

Ann Veronica's universe, which had never been altogether so

respectful to her as she could have wished, gave a shout and

whirled head over heels. Everything in the world had changed for

her. If hate could kill, Ramage would have been killed by a

flash of hate. "Mr. Ramage!" she cried, and struggled to her

feet.

"My darling!" he said, clasping her resolutely in his arms, "my

dearest!"

"Mr. Ramage!" she began, and his mouth sealed hers and his breath

was mixed with her breath. Her eye met his four inches away, and

his was glaring, immense, and full of resolution, a stupendous

monster of an eye.

She shut her lips hard, her jaw hardened, and she set herself to

struggle with him. She wrenched her head away from his grip and

got her arm between his chest and hers. They began to wrestle

fiercely. Each became frightfully aware of the other as a

plastic energetic body, of the strong muscles of neck against

cheek, of hands gripping shoulder-blade and waist. "How dare

you!" she panted, with her world screaming and grimacing insult

at her. "How dare you!"

They were both astonished at the other's strength. Perhaps Ramage

was the more astonished. Ann Veronica had been an ardent hockey

player and had had a course of jiu-jitsu in the High School. Her

defence ceased rapidly to be in any sense ladylike, and became

vigorous and effective; a strand of black hair that had escaped

its hairpins came athwart Ramage's eyes, and then the knuckles of

a small but very hardly clinched fist had thrust itself with

extreme effectiveness and painfulness under his jawbone and ear.

"Let go!" said Ann Veronica, through her teeth, strenuously

inflicting agony, and he cried out sharply and let go and receded

a pace.

"NOW!" said Ann Veronica. "Why did you dare to do that?"

Part 3

Each of them stared at the other, set in a universe that had

changed its system of values with kaleidoscopic completeness.