H. Wells - Ann Veronica

window, folded his arms, and stared straight before him for a

long time over the wilderness of tiles and chimney-pots into a

sky that was blue and empty. He was not addicted to monologue,

and the only audible comment he permitted himself at first upon a

universe that was evidently anything but satisfactory to him that

afternoon, was one compact and entirely unassigned "Damn!"

The word must have had some gratifying quality, because he

repeated it. Then he stood up and repeated it again. "The fool

I have been!" he cried; and now speech was coming to him. He

tried this sentence with expletives. "Ass!" he went on, still

warming. "Muck-headed moral ass! I ought to have done anything.

I ought to have done anything!

"What's a man for?

"Friendship!"

He doubled up his fist, and seemed to contemplate thrusting it

through the window. He turned his back on that temptation. Then

suddenly he seized a new preparation bottle that stood upon his

table and contained the better part of a week's work--a displayed

dissection of a snail, beautifully done--and hurled it across the

room, to smash resoundingly upon the cemented floor under the

bookcase; then, without either haste or pause, he swept his arm

along a shelf of re-agents and sent them to mingle with the

debris on the floor. They fell in a diapason of smashes. "H'm!"

he said, regarding the wreckage with a calmer visage. "Silly!" he

remarked after a pause. "One hardly knows--all the time."

He put his hands in his pockets, his mouth puckered to a whistle,

and he went to the door of the outer preparation-room and stood

there, looking, save for the faintest intensification of his

natural ruddiness, the embodiment of blond serenity.

"Gellett," he called, "just come and clear up a mess, will you?

I've smashed some things."

Part 3

There was one serious flaw in Ann Veronica's arrangements for

self-rehabilitation, and that was Ramage. He hung over her--he

and his loan to her and his connection with her and that terrible

evening--a vague, disconcerting possibility of annoyance and

exposure. She could not see any relief from this anxiety except

repayment, and repayment seemed impossible. The raising of

twenty-five pounds was a task altogether beyond her powers. Her

birthday was four months away, and that, at its extremist point,

might give her another five pounds.

The thing rankled in her mind night and day. She would wake in

the night to repeat her bitter cry: "Oh, why did I burn those

notes?"

It added greatly to the annoyance of the situation that she had

twice seen Ramage in the Avenue since her return to the shelter

of her father's roof. He had saluted her with elaborate

civility, his eyes distended with indecipherable meanings.

She felt she was bound in honor to tell the whole affair to

Manning sooner or later. Indeed, it seemed inevitable that she

must clear it up with his assistance, or not at all. And when

Manning was not about the thing seemed simple enough. She would

compose extremely lucid and honorable explanations. But when it

came to broaching them, it proved to be much more difficult than

she had supposed.

They went down the great staircase of the building, and, while

she sought in her mind for a beginning, he broke into

appreciation of her simple dress and self-congratulations upon

their engagement.

"It makes me feel," he said, "that nothing is impossible--to have

you here beside me. I said, that day at Surbiton, 'There's many

good things in life, but there's only one best, and that's the

wild-haired girl who's pulling away at that oar. I will make her

my Grail, and some day, perhaps, if God wills, she shall become

my wife!' "

He looked very hard before him as he said this, and his voice was

full of deep feeling.

"Grail!" said Ann Veronica, and then: "Oh, yes--of course!

Anything but a holy one, I'm afraid."

"Altogether holy, Ann Veronica. Ah! but you can't imagine what

you are to me and what you mean to me! I suppose there is

something mystical and wonderful about all women."

"There is something mystical and wonderful about all human

beings. I don't see that men need bank it with the women."

"A man does," said Manning--"a true man, anyhow. And for me there

is only one treasure-house. By Jove! When I think of it I want

to leap and shout!"

"It would astonish that man with the barrow."

"It astonishes me that I don't," said Manning, in a tone of

intense self-enjoyment.

"I think," began Ann Veronica, "that you don't realize--"

He disregarded her entirely. He waved an arm and spoke with a

peculiar resonance. "I feel like a giant! I believe now I shall

do great things. Gods! what it must be to pour out strong,

splendid verse--mighty lines! mighty lines! If I do, Ann

Veronica, it will be you. It will be altogether you. I will

dedicate my books to you. I will lay them all at your feet."

He beamed upon her.

"I don't think you realize," Ann Veronica began again, "that I am

rather a defective human being."

"I don't want to," said Manning. "They say there are spots on

the sun. Not for me. It warms me, and lights me, and fills my

world with flowers. Why should I peep at it through smoked glass

to see things that don't affect me?" He smiled his delight at

his companion.

"I've got bad faults."

He shook his head slowly, smiling mysteriously.

"But perhaps I want to confess them."

"I grant you absolution."

"I don't want absolution. I want to make myself visible to you."

"I wish I could make you visible to yourself. I don't believe in

the faults. They're just a joyous softening of the outline--more

beautiful than perfection. Like the flaws of an old marble. If

you talk of your faults, I shall talk of your splendors."

"I do want to tell you things, nevertheless."

"We'll have, thank God! ten myriad days to tell each other

things. When I think of it--"

"But these are things I want to tell you now!"

"I made a little song of it. Let me say it to you. I've no name

for it yet. Epithalamy might do.

"Like him who stood on Darien

I view uncharted sea

Ten thousand days, ten thousand nights

Before my Queen and me.

"And that only brings me up to about sixty-five!

"A glittering wilderness of time

That to the sunset reaches

No keel as yet its waves has ploughed

Or gritted on its beaches.

"And we will sail that splendor wide,

From day to day together,

From isle to isle of happiness

Through year's of God's own weather."

"Yes," said his prospective fellow-sailor, "that's very pretty."

She stopped short, full of things un-said. Pretty! Ten

thousand days, ten thousand nights!

"You shall tell me your faults," said Manning. "If they matter

to you, they matter."

"It isn't precisely faults," said Ann Veronica. "It's something

that bothers me." Ten thousand! Put that way it seemed so

different.

"Then assuredly!" said Manning.

She found a little difficulty in beginning. She was glad when he

went on: "I want to be your city of refuge from every sort of

bother. I want to stand between you and all the force and

vileness of the world. I want to make you feel that here is a

place where the crowd does not clamor nor ill-winds blow."

"That is all very well," said Ann Veronica, unheeded.

"That is my dream of you," said Manning, warming. "I want my life