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Ann Veronica Chapter 15 - The last days at home · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter fifteen of Anne Veronica. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Joy Chan and Veronica by H. G. Wells, Chapter fifteenth,
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  Speaker 1: The Last Days at Home, Part one. They decided to
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  Speaker 1: go to Switzerland at the session's end. We'll clean up
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  Speaker 1: everything tidy, said Capes, for her pride's sake, and to
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  Speaker 1: save herself from long day dreams and an unappeasable longing
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  Speaker 1: for her lover. Anne Veronica worked hard at her biology
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  Speaker 1: during those closing weeks. She was, as Capes had said,
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  Speaker 1: a hard young woman. She was keenly resolved to do
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  Speaker 1: well in the school examination and not to be drowned
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  Speaker 1: in the seas of emotion that threatened to submerge her
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  Speaker 1: intellectual being. Nevertheless, she could not prevent a rising excitement
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  Speaker 1: as the dawn of the new life drew near to her,
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  Speaker 1: a thrilling of the nerves, a secret and delicious exaltation
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  Speaker 1: above the common circumstances of existence. Sometimes her straying mind
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  Speaker 1: would become astonishingly active, embroidering bright and decorative things that
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  Speaker 1: she could say to capes. Sometimes it passed into a
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  Speaker 1: state of passive acquiescence, into a radiant, formless, golden joy.
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  Speaker 1: She was aware of people, her aunt, her father, her
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  Speaker 1: fellow students, friends, and neighbors moving about outside this glowing secret,
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  Speaker 1: very much as an actor is aware of the dim
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  Speaker 1: audience beyond the barrier of the footlights. They might applaud
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  Speaker 1: or object or interfere, but the drama was her very own.
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  Speaker 1: She was going through with that. Anyhow. The feeling of
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  Speaker 1: last days grew stronger with her as their number diminished.
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  Speaker 1: She went about the familiar home with a clearer and
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  Speaker 1: clearer sense of inevitable conclusions. She became exceptionally considerate and
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  Speaker 1: affairate with her father and aunt, and more and more
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  Speaker 1: concerned about the coming catastrophe that she was about to
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  Speaker 1: precipitate upon them. Her aunt had a once exasperating habit
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  Speaker 1: of interrupting her work with demands for small household services,
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  Speaker 1: but now Anne Veronica rendered them with a queer readiness
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  Speaker 1: of anticipatory propitiation. She was greatly exercised by the problem
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  Speaker 1: of confiding the widgets they were DearS, and she talked
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  Speaker 1: away two evenings with constance without aproaching the topic. She
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  Speaker 1: made some vague intimations and letters to Miss Minerva that
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  Speaker 1: Miss Minerva failed to mark. But she did not bother
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  Speaker 1: her head very much about her relations with these sympathizers,
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  Speaker 1: and at length her penultimate day, Morningside Park dawned for her.
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  Speaker 1: She got up early and walked about the garden in
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  Speaker 1: the dewy June sunshine and revived her childhood. She was
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  Speaker 1: saying good bye to childhood and home and her making.
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  Speaker 1: She was going out into the great multitudinous world. This
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  Speaker 1: time there would be no returning. She was at the
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  Speaker 1: end of girlhood and on the eve of a woman's
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  Speaker 1: crowning experience. She visited the corner that had been her
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  Speaker 1: own little garden, Her forget me nots and candy toff
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  Speaker 1: had long since been elbowed into insignificance by weeds. She
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  Speaker 1: visited the raspberry canes that had sheltered that first love
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  Speaker 1: affair with the little boy in Velvet, and the greenhouse
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  Speaker 1: where she had been wont to read her secret letters.
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  Speaker 1: Here was the place behind the shed where she had
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  Speaker 1: used to hide from Roddy's persecutions. And here the boarder
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  Speaker 1: of herbaceous perennials, under whose stems was fairy land. The
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  Speaker 1: back of the house had been the alps for climbing,
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  Speaker 1: and the shrubs in front of it are to rye.
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  Speaker 1: The knots and broken pail that made the garden fence
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  Speaker 1: scalable and gave access to the fields behind was still
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  Speaker 1: to be traced. And here against a wall were the
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  Speaker 1: plum trees. In spite of God and Wasps and her father,
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  Speaker 1: she had stolen plums, and once because of discovered misdeeds,
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  Speaker 1: and once because she had realized that her mother was dead.
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  Speaker 1: She had lain on her face in the unmown grass
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  Speaker 1: beneath the elm trees that came beyond the vegetables, and
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  Speaker 1: poured out her soul in weeping remote Little and Veronica.
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  Speaker 1: She would never know the heart of that child again.
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  Speaker 1: That child had loved fairy princes with velvet suits and
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  Speaker 1: golden locks, And she was in love with a real
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  Speaker 1: man named Capes, with little gleams of gold on his
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  Speaker 1: cheek and a pleasant voice, in firm and shapely hands.
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  Speaker 1: She was going to him soon, and certainly going to
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  Speaker 1: his strong, embracing arms. She was going through a new
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  Speaker 1: world with him side by side. She had been so
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  Speaker 1: busy with life that, for a vast gulf of time,
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  Speaker 1: as it seemed, she had given no thought to those ancient,
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  Speaker 1: imagined things of her childhood. Now abruptly they were real again,
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  Speaker 1: though very distant, and she had come to say farewell
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  Speaker 1: to them. Across one sundering year. She was unusually helpful
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  Speaker 1: at breakfast and unselfish about the eggs, and then she
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  Speaker 1: went off to catch the train before her father's. She
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  Speaker 1: did this to please him. He hated traveling second class
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  Speaker 1: with her, indeed he never did, but he also disliked
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  Speaker 1: traveling in the same train when his daughter was in
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  Speaker 1: an inferior class because of the look of the thing,
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  Speaker 1: So he liked to go by a different train. And
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  Speaker 1: in the avenue she had an encounter with Rammage. It
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  Speaker 1: was an odd little encounter that left vague and dubtable
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  Speaker 1: impressions in her mind. She was aware of him, a
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  Speaker 1: silk hattered, shiny black figure on the opposite side of
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  Speaker 1: the avenue, and then abruptly and startlingly, he crossed the
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  Speaker 1: road and saluted and spoke to her. I must speak
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  Speaker 1: to you, he said, I can't keep away from you.
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  Speaker 1: She made some inane response. She was struck by a
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  Speaker 1: change in his appearance. His eyes looked a little bloodshot
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  Speaker 1: to her, his face had lost something of its ready freshness.
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  Speaker 1: He began a jerky, broken conversation that lasted until they
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  Speaker 1: reached the station, and left her puzzled at its drift
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  Speaker 1: and meaning. She quickened her pace, and so did he.
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  Speaker 1: Talking at her slightly adverted ear, she made lumpish and
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  Speaker 1: inadequate interruptions rather than replies. At times he seemed to
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  Speaker 1: be claiming pity from her. At times he was threatening
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  Speaker 1: her with her check and exposure. At times he was
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  Speaker 1: boasting of his inflexible will and how, in the end
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  Speaker 1: he always got what he wanted. He said that his
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  Speaker 1: life was boring and stupid without her something or other.
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  Speaker 1: She did not catch what he was damned if he
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  Speaker 1: could stand. He was evidently nervous and very anxious to
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  Speaker 1: be impressive. His projecting eyes sought to dominate. The crowning
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  Speaker 1: aspect of the instant for her mind was the discovery
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  Speaker 1: that he had. Her indiscretion with him no longer mattered
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  Speaker 1: very much. Its importance had vanished with her abandonment of compromise.
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  Speaker 1: Even her debt to him was a triviality now, and
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  Speaker 1: of course she had a brilliant idea. It surprised her
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  Speaker 1: she hadn't thought of it before. She tried to explain
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  Speaker 1: that she was going to pay him forty pounds without
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  Speaker 1: fail next week. She said as much to him. She
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  Speaker 1: repeated this breathlessly. I was glad you did not send
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  Speaker 1: it back again, he said. He touched a long standing sore,
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  Speaker 1: and Ann Veronica found herself vainly trying to explain the inexplicable.
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  Speaker 1: It's because I mean to send it back altogether, she said.
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  Speaker 1: He ignored her protests in order to pursue some impressive
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  Speaker 1: line of his own. Here we are living in the
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  Speaker 1: same suburb, he began. We have to be modern. Her
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  Speaker 1: heart leapt within her as she caught that phrase that
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  Speaker 1: knot also would be cut modern. Indeed, she was going
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  Speaker 1: to be as primordial as chipped flint. Part two. In
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  Speaker 1: the late afternoon, as Anne Veronica was gathering flowers for
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  Speaker 1: the dinner table, her father came strolling across the lawn
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  Speaker 1: to toward her with an affectation of great deliberation. I
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  Speaker 1: want to speak to you about a little thing, v
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  Speaker 1: said mister Stanley. Ann Veronica's tense nerves started, and she
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  Speaker 1: stood still with her eyes upon him, wondering what it
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  Speaker 1: might be that impended you were talking to that fellow
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  Speaker 1: Rammage to day in the avenue, walking to the station
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  Speaker 1: with him. So that was it? He came and talked
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  Speaker 1: to me, Yes, mister Stanley considered, Well, I don't want
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  Speaker 1: you to talk to him, he said, very firmly, and
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  Speaker 1: Veronica paused before she answered. Don't you think I ought to?
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  Speaker 1: She asked, very submissively. No, mister Stanley coughed and faced
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  Speaker 1: toward the house. He is not. I don't like him.
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  Speaker 1: I think it inadvisable. I don't want an intimacy to
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  Speaker 1: spring up between you and a man of that type.
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  Speaker 1: And Veronica reflected, I have had one or two talks
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  Speaker 1: with him, Daddy, don't let there be any more. I
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  Speaker 1: in fact, I dislike him extremely Suppose he comes and
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  Speaker 1: talks to me. A girl can always keep a man
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  Speaker 1: at a distance. If she cares to do it, she
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  Speaker 1: she can snub him. And Veronica picked a corn flower.
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  Speaker 1: I wouldn't make this objection, mister Stanley went on, But
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  Speaker 1: there are things. There are stories about Rummage. He's he
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  Speaker 1: lives in a world of possibilities outside your imagination. His
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  Speaker 1: treatment of his wife is most unsatisfactory, most unsatisfactory. A
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  Speaker 1: bad man, in fact, a dissipated, loose living man. I'll
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  Speaker 1: try not to see him again, said Anne Veronica. I
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  Speaker 1: didn't know you objected to him, Daddy strongly, said mister Stanley,
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  Speaker 1: very strongly. The conversation hung. Ann Veronica wondered what her
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  Speaker 1: father would do if she were to tell him the
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  Speaker 1: full story of her relations with Rammage. A man like
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  Speaker 1: that taints a girl by looking at her by his
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  Speaker 1: mere conversation. He adjusted his glasses on his nose. There
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  Speaker 1: was another little thing he had to say. One has
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  Speaker 1: to be so careful of one's friends and acquaintances, he remarked.
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  Speaker 1: By way of transition, they moored one insensibly. His voice
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  Speaker 1: assumed an easy, detached tone. I suppose, Vee, you don't
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  Speaker 1: see much of those widgets now. I go in and
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  Speaker 1: talk to Constance sometimes, do you? We were great friends
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  Speaker 1: at school, no doubt. Still, I don't know whether I
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  Speaker 1: quite like something ramshackle about those people. V While I
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  Speaker 1: am talking about your friends, I feel I think you
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  Speaker 1: ought to know how I look at it. His voice
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  Speaker 1: conveyed studied moderation. I don't mind, of course, you're seeing
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  Speaker 1: her sometimes. Still, there are differences, differences in social atmospheres.
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  Speaker 1: One gets drawn into things before you know where you are.
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  Speaker 1: You find yourself in a complication. I don't want to
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  Speaker 1: influence you unduly. But they are artistic people, V. That's
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  Speaker 1: the fact about them. We're different. I suppose we are,
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  Speaker 1: said V, rearranging the flowers in her hand. Friendships that
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  Speaker 1: are all very well between schoolgirls don't always go on
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  Speaker 1: into later life. It's it's a social difference. I like
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  Speaker 1: constance very much, no doubt. Still, one has to be reasonable,
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  Speaker 1: as you admitted to me. One has to square one's
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  Speaker 1: self with the world you don't know, with people of
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  Speaker 1: that sort, all sorts of things may happen. We don't
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  Speaker 1: want things to happen, and Veronica made no answer. A
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  Speaker 1: vague desire to justify himself ruffled her father. I may
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  Speaker 1: seem unduly anxious. I can't forget about your sister. It's
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  Speaker 1: that has always made me. She you know, was drawn
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  Speaker 1: into a set didn't discriminate private theatricals, and Veronica remained
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  Speaker 1: anxious to hear more of her sister's story from her
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  Speaker 1: father's point of view, But he did not go on
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  Speaker 1: even so much allusion as this to that family shadow
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  Speaker 1: she felt was an immense recognition of her ripening years.
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  Speaker 1: She glanced at him, he stood a little anxious and fussy,
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  Speaker 1: bothered by the responsibility of her, entirely careless of what
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  Speaker 1: her life was or was likely to be, ignoring her
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  Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings, ignorant of every fact of importance in
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  Speaker 1: her life, explaining everything he could not understand her as
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  Speaker 1: nonsense and perversity, concerned only with a terror of bothers
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  Speaker 1: and undesirable situations. We don't want things to happen. Never
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  Speaker 1: had he shown his daughter so clearly that the womenkind
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  Speaker 1: he was persuaded he had to protect and control could
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  Speaker 1: please him in one way, and in one way only,
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  Speaker 1: and that was by doing nothing except the punctural domestic
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  Speaker 1: duties and being nothing except RESTful appearances. He had quite
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  Speaker 1: enough to see to and worry about in the city
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  Speaker 1: without their doing things. He had no use for Anne Veronica.
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  Speaker 1: He had never had a use for her, since she
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  Speaker 1: had been too old to sit upon his knee. Nothing
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  Speaker 1: but the constraint of social usage now linked him to her,
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  Speaker 1: and the less anything happened the better. The less she lived,
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  Speaker 1: In fact, the better. These realizations rushed into Anne Veronica's
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  Speaker 1: mind and hardened her heart against him. She spoke slowly.
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  Speaker 1: I may not see the widgets for someas little time, father,
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  Speaker 1: she said, I don't think I shall some little tiff, No,
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  Speaker 1: but I don't think I shall see them. Suppose you
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  Speaker 1: were to add, I am going away. I'm glad to
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  Speaker 1: hear you say it, said mister Stanley, and was so
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  Speaker 1: evidently pleased that Anne Veronica's heart smote her. I am
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  Speaker 1: very glad to hear you say it, he repeated, and
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  Speaker 1: refrained from further inquiry. I think we are growing sensible,
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  Speaker 1: he said. I think you are getting to understand me better.
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  Speaker 1: He hesitated and walked away from her towards the house.
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  Speaker 1: Her eyes followed him, the curve of his shoulders, the
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  Speaker 1: very angle of his feet. Expressed relief at her apparent obedience.
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  Speaker 1: Thank goodness, said that retreating aspect that said, an over
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  Speaker 1: these all right, There's nothing happened at all. She didn't mean,
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  Speaker 1: he concluded, to give him any more trouble, ever, and
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  Speaker 1: he was free to begin a fresh chromatic novel. He
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  Speaker 1: had just finished The Blue lagoon, which he thought very
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  Speaker 1: beautiful and tender and absolutely relevant to Morningside Park, or
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  Speaker 1: work in peace at his microtome without bothering her in
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  Speaker 1: the least the immense disillusionment that awaited him, the devastating disillusionment.
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  Speaker 1: She had a vague desire to run after him, to
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  Speaker 1: state her case to him, to wring some understanding from
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  Speaker 1: him of what life was to her. She felt a
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  Speaker 1: cheat and a sneak to his unsuspecting retreating back. But
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  Speaker 1: what can one do, asked Anne Veronica. Part three. She
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  Speaker 1: dressed carefully for dinner, in a black dress that her
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  Speaker 1: father liked and that made her look serious and responsible.
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  Speaker 1: Dinner was quite uneventful. Her father read a draft prospectus warily,
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  Speaker 1: and her aunt dropped fragments of her projects were managing
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  Speaker 1: while the cook had a holiday. After dinner, Anne Veronica
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  Speaker 1: went into the drawing room with Miss Stanley, and her
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  Speaker 1: father went up to his den for his pipe and
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  Speaker 1: pensive petrography. Later in the evening, she heard him whistling
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  Speaker 1: poor Man. She felt very restless and excited. She refused coffee,
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  Speaker 1: though she knew that anyhow she was doomed to a
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  Speaker 1: sleepless night. She took up one of her father's novels
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  Speaker 1: and put it down again. Fretted up to her own
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  Speaker 1: room for some work, sat on her bed and meditated
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  Speaker 1: upon the room that she was now really abandoning forever,
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  Speaker 1: and returned at length with the stocking to darn. Her
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  Speaker 1: aunt was making herself cuffs out of little slips of
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  Speaker 1: insertion under the newly lit lamp. Anne Veronica sat down
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  Speaker 1: in the other arm chair and dined badly for a
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  Speaker 1: minute or so. Then she looked at her aunt and
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  Speaker 1: traced with a curious eye the careful arrangement of her hair,
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  Speaker 1: her sharp nose, the little drooping lines of mouth and
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  Speaker 1: chin and cheek. Her thoughts spoke aloud. Were you ever
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  Speaker 1: in love? Aunt? She asked. Her aunt glanced up, startled,
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  Speaker 1: and then sat very still, with hands that had ceased
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  Speaker 1: to work. What makes you ask such a question, vie,
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  Speaker 1: she said, I wondered. Her aunt answered in a low voice.
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  Speaker 1: I was engaged to him, dear for seven years, and
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  Speaker 1: then he died. Ann Veronica made a sympathetic little murmur.
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  Speaker 1: He was in holy orders, and we were to have
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  Speaker 1: been married when he got a living. He was a
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  Speaker 1: wiltshair edmonshaw, a very old family. She sat very still.
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  Speaker 1: Anne Veronica hesitated with a question that had leapt up
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  Speaker 1: in her mind and that she felt was cruel. Are
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  Speaker 1: you sorry you waited, aunt, she said. Her aunt was
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  Speaker 1: a long time before she answered. His stipend forbade it,
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  Speaker 1: she said, and seen to fall into a train of thought.
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  Speaker 1: It would have been rash and unwise, she said. At
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  Speaker 1: the end of a meditation, what he had was altogether insufficient,
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  Speaker 1: And Veronica looked at the mildly pensive gray eyes and
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  Speaker 1: the comfortable, rather refined face with a penetrating curiosity. Presently,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: her aunt sighed deeply and looked at the clock. Time
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  Speaker 1: for my patience, she said. She got up, put the
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  Speaker 1: neat cuffs she had made into her work basket and
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: went to the bureau for the little cards in the
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Morocco case, and Veronica jumped up to get her the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: card table. I haven't seen the new patients, dear, she said.
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  Speaker 1: May I sit beside you. It's a very difficult one,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: said her aunt. Perhaps you will help me shuffle, and
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  Speaker 1: Veronica did, and also assisted nimbly with the arrangements of
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: the rows of eight with which the struggle began. Then
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: she sat watching the play, sometimes offering a helpful suggestion,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes letting her attention wander to the smoothly shining arms
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  Speaker 1: she had folded across her knees, just below the edge
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  Speaker 1: of the table. She was feeling extraordinarily well that night,
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  Speaker 1: so that the sense of her body was a deep delight,
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  Speaker 1: a realization of a gentle warmth and strength and elastic firmness.
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  Speaker 1: Then she glanced at the cards again, over which her
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  Speaker 1: aunt's many ringed hand played, and then at the rather weak,
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  Speaker 1: rather plump face that surveyed its operations. It came to
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  Speaker 1: Anne Veronica that life was wonderful beyond measure. It seems
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  Speaker 1: incredible that she and her aunt were indeed creatures of
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  Speaker 1: the same blood, only by a birth or so, different beings,
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  Speaker 1: and part of that same broad, interlating stream of human
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  Speaker 1: life that has invented the fawns and nymphs, astarte Aphrodite, Freyer,
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  Speaker 1: and all the twining beauty of the gods. The love
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  Speaker 1: songs of all the ages were singing in her blood.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: The scent of night stock from the garden filled the air,
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  Speaker 1: and the moths that beat upon the closed frames of
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  Speaker 1: the window next to the lamp set her mind dreaming
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  Speaker 1: of kisses in the dusk. Yet her aunt, with a
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  Speaker 1: ringed hand flitting to her lips and a puzzled, worried
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  Speaker 1: look in her eyes, deaf to all this riot of
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  Speaker 1: warmth and flitting desire, was playing patience, playing patience, as
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  Speaker 1: if Dionysius and her curate had died together. A faint
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  Speaker 1: buzz above the sealing witness that pedrography too was active,
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  Speaker 1: gray and tranquil world, amazing, passionless world, a world in
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  Speaker 1: which days without meaning, days in which we don't want
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  Speaker 1: things to happen, followed days without meaning, until the last
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: thing happened, the ultimate, unavoidable, coarse, disagreeable. It was her
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: last evening in that rapid life against which she had rebelled.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Warm reality was now so near her she could hear
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: it beating in her ears. Away in London, even now
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: came was packing and preparing capes, the magic man whose
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: touch turned one to trembling fire. What was he doing?
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: What was he thinking? It was less than a day, now,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: less than twenty hours, seventeen hours, sixteen hours. She glanced
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: at the soft chicken clock with the exposed brass pendulum
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: upon the white marble mantle and made a rapid calculation
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: to be exact, it was just sixteen hours and twenty minutes.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: The slow stars circled on to the moment of their meeting,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: the softly glittering summer stars. She saw them shining over
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: mountains of snow, over valleys of haze and warm darkness.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: There would be no moon. I believe, after all, it's
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: coming out, said Miss Stanley. The aces made it easy,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: and Veronica started from her reverie, sat up in her chair,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: became attentive. Look, dear, she said, presently you can put
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: the ten on the jack. End of Chapter fifteen.