H. Wells - Ann Veronica

ANN VERONICA

A MODERN LOVE STORY

BY H. G. WELLS

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. ANN VERONICA TALKS TO HER FATHER

II. ANN VERONICA GATHERS POINTS OF VIEW

III. THE MORNING OF THE CRISIS

IV. THE CRISIS

V. THE FLIGHT TO LONDON

VI. EXPOSTULATIONS

VII. IDEALS AND A REALITY

VIII. BIOLOGY

IX. DISCORDS

X. THE SUFFRAGETTES

XI. THOUGHTS IN PRISON

XII. ANN VERONICA PUTS THINGS IN ORDER

XIII. THE SAPPHIRE RING

XIV. THE COLLAPSE OF THE PENITENT

XV. THE LAST DAYS AT HOME

XVI. IN THE MOUNTAINS

XVII. IN PERSPECTIVE

"The art of ignoring is one of the accomplishments of every

well-bred girl, so carefully instilled that at last she can even

ignore her own thoughts and her own knowledge."

ANN VERONICA

CHAPTER THE FIRST

ANN VERONICA TALKS TO HER FATHER

Part 1

One Wednesday afternoon in late September, Ann Veronica Stanley

came down from London in a state of solemn excitement and quite

resolved to have things out with her father that very evening.

She had trembled on the verge of such a resolution before, but

this time quite definitely she made it. A crisis had been

reached, and she was almost glad it had been reached. She made

up her mind in the train home that it should be a decisive

crisis. It is for that reason that this novel begins with her

there, and neither earlier nor later, for it is the history of

this crisis and its consequences that this novel has to tell.

She had a compartment to herself in the train from London to

Morningside Park, and she sat with both her feet on the seat in

an attitude that would certainly have distressed her mother to

see, and horrified her grandmother beyond measure; she sat with

her knees up to her chin and her hands clasped before them, and

she was so lost in thought that she discovered with a start, from

a lettered lamp, that she was at Morningside Park, and thought

she was moving out of the station, whereas she was only moving

in. "Lord!" she said. She jumped up at once, caught up a

leather clutch containing notebooks, a fat text-book, and a

chocolate-and-yellow-covered pamphlet, and leaped neatly from the

carriage, only to discover that the train was slowing down and

that she had to traverse the full length of the platform past it

again as the result of her precipitation. "Sold again," she

remarked. "Idiot!" She raged inwardly while she walked along

with that air of self-contained serenity that is proper to a

young lady of nearly two-and-twenty under the eye of the world.

She walked down the station approach, past the neat, obtrusive

offices of the coal merchant and the house agent, and so to the

wicket-gate by the butcher's shop that led to the field path to

her home. Outside the post-office stood a no-hatted, blond young

man in gray flannels, who was elaborately affixing a stamp to a

letter. At the sight of her he became rigid and a singularly

bright shade of pink. She made herself serenely unaware of his

existence, though it may be it was his presence that sent her by

the field detour instead of by the direct path up the Avenue.

"Umph!" he said, and regarded his letter doubtfully before

consigning it to the pillar-box. "Here goes," he said. Then he

hovered undecidedly for some seconds with his hands in his

pockets and his mouth puckered to a whistle before he turned to

go home by the Avenue.

Ann Veronica forgot him as soon as she was through the gate, and

her face resumed its expression of stern preoccupation. "It's

either now or never," she said to herself. . . .

Morningside Park was a suburb that had not altogether, as people

say, come off. It consisted, like pre-Roman Gaul, of three

parts. There was first the Avenue, which ran in a consciously

elegant curve from the railway station into an undeveloped

wilderness of agriculture, with big, yellow brick villas on

either side, and then there was the pavement, the little clump of

shops about the post-office, and under the railway arch was a

congestion of workmen's dwellings. The road from Surbiton and

Epsom ran under the arch, and, like a bright fungoid growth in

the ditch, there was now appearing a sort of fourth estate of

little red-and-white rough-cast villas, with meretricious gables

and very brassy window-blinds. Behind the Avenue was a little

hill, and an iron-fenced path went over the crest of this to a

stile under an elm-tree, and forked there, with one branch going

back into the Avenue again.

"It's either now or never," said Ann Veronica, again ascending

this stile. "Much as I hate rows, I've either got to make a

stand or give in altogether."

She seated herself in a loose and easy attitude and surveyed the

backs of the Avenue houses; then her eyes wandered to where the

new red-and-white villas peeped among the trees. She seemed to

be making some sort of inventory. "Ye Gods!" she said at last.

"WHAT a place!

"Stuffy isn't the word for it.

"I wonder what he takes me for?"

When presently she got down from the stile a certain note of

internal conflict, a touch of doubt, had gone from her

warm-tinted face. She had now the clear and tranquil expression

of one whose mind is made up. Her back had stiffened, and her

hazel eyes looked steadfastly ahead.

As she approached the corner of the Avenue the blond, no-hatted

man in gray flannels appeared. There was a certain air of forced

fortuity in his manner. He saluted awkwardly. "Hello, Vee!" he

said.

"Hello, Teddy!" she answered.

He hung vaguely for a moment as she passed.

But it was clear she was in no mood for Teddys. He realized that

he was committed to the path across the fields, an uninteresting

walk at the best of times.

"Oh, dammit!" he remarked, "dammit!" with great bitterness as he

faced it.

Part 2

Ann Veronica Stanley was twenty-one and a half years old. She

had black hair, fine eyebrows, and a clear complexion; and the

forces that had modelled her features had loved and lingered at

their work and made them subtle and fine. She was slender, and

sometimes she seemed tall, and walked and carried herself lightly

and joyfully as one who commonly and habitually feels well, and

sometimes she stooped a little and was preoccupied. Her lips

came together with an expression between contentment and the

faintest shadow of a smile, her manner was one of quiet reserve,

and behind this mask she was wildly discontented and eager for

freedom and life.

She wanted to live. She was vehemently impatient--she did not

clearly know for what--to do, to be, to experience. And

experience was slow in coming. All the world about her seemed to

be--how can one put it? --in wrappers, like a house when people

leave it in the summer. The blinds were all drawn, the sunlight

kept out, one could not tell what colors these gray swathings

hid. She wanted to know. And there was no intimation whatever

that the blinds would ever go up or the windows or doors be

opened, or the chandeliers, that seemed to promise such a blaze

of fire, unveiled and furnished and lit. Dim souls flitted about

her, not only speaking but it would seem even thinking in

undertones. . . .

During her school days, especially her earlier school days, the

world had been very explicit with her, telling her what to do,

what not to do, giving her lessons to learn and games to play and