Ann Veronica (23 page)

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.

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?"

Each of them stared at the other, set in a universe that had changed its
system of values with kaleidoscopic completeness. She was flushed, and
her eyes were bright and angry; her breath came sobbing, and her hair
was all abroad in wandering strands of black. He too was flushed and
ruffled; one side of his collar had slipped from its stud and he held a
hand to the corner of his jaw.

"You vixen!" said Mr. Ramage, speaking the simplest first thought of his
heart.

"You had no right—" panted Ann Veronica.

"Why on earth," he asked, "did you hurt me like that?"

Ann Veronica did her best to think she had not deliberately attempted to
cause him pain. She ignored his question.

"I never dreamt!" she said.

"What on earth did you expect me to do, then?" he asked.

Interpretation came pouring down upon her almost blindingly; she
understood now the room, the waiter, the whole situation. She
understood. She leaped to a world of shabby knowledge, of furtive base
realizations. She wanted to cry out upon herself for the uttermost fool
in existence.

"I thought you wanted to have a talk to me," she said.

"I wanted to make love to you.

"You knew it," he added, in her momentary silence.

"You said you were in love with me," said Ann Veronica; "I wanted to
explain—"

"I said I loved and wanted you." The brutality of his first astonishment
was evaporating. "I am in love with you. You know I am in love with you.
And then you go—and half throttle me.... I believe you've crushed a
gland or something. It feels like it."

"I am sorry," said Ann Veronica. "What else was I to do?"

For some seconds she stood watching him and both were thinking very
quickly. Her state of mind would have seemed altogether discreditable to
her grandmother. She ought to have been disposed to faint and scream at
all these happenings; she ought to have maintained a front of outraged
dignity to veil the sinking of her heart. I would like to have to tell
it so. But indeed that is not at all a good description of her attitude.
She was an indignant queen, no doubt she was alarmed and disgusted
within limits; but she was highly excited, and there was something, some
low adventurous strain in her being, some element, subtle at least if
base, going about the rioting ways and crowded insurgent meeting-places
of her mind declaring that the whole affair was after all—they are the
only words that express it—a very great lark indeed. At the bottom
of her heart she was not a bit afraid of Ramage. She had unaccountable
gleams of sympathy with and liking for him. And the grotesquest fact
was that she did not so much loathe, as experience with a quite critical
condemnation this strange sensation of being kissed. Never before had
any human being kissed her lips....

It was only some hours after that these ambiguous elements evaporated
and vanished and loathing came, and she really began to be thoroughly
sick and ashamed of the whole disgraceful quarrel and scuffle.

He, for his part, was trying to grasp the series of unexpected reactions
that had so wrecked their tete-a-tete. He had meant to be master of his
fate that evening and it had escaped him altogether. It had, as it were,
blown up at the concussion of his first step. It dawned upon him that he
had been abominably used by Ann Veronica.

"Look here," he said, "I brought you here to make love to you."

"I didn't understand—your idea of making love. You had better let me go
again."

"Not yet," he said. "I do love you. I love you all the more for the
streak of sheer devil in you.... You are the most beautiful, the most
desirable thing I have ever met in this world. It was good to kiss you,
even at the price. But, by Jove! you are fierce! You are like those
Roman women who carry stilettos in their hair."

"I came here to talk reasonably, Mr. Ramage. It is abominable—"

"What is the use of keeping up this note of indignation, Ann Veronica?
Here I am! I am your lover, burning for you. I mean to have you! Don't
frown me off now. Don't go back into Victorian respectability and
pretend you don't know and you can't think and all the rest of it. One
comes at last to the step from dreams to reality. This is your moment.
No one will ever love you as I love you now. I have been dreaming of
your body and you night after night. I have been imaging—"

"Mr. Ramage, I came here—I didn't suppose for one moment you would
dare—"

"Nonsense! That is your mistake! You are too intellectual. You want to
do everything with your mind. You are afraid of kisses. You are afraid
of the warmth in your blood. It's just because all that side of your
life hasn't fairly begun."

He made a step toward her.

"Mr. Ramage," she said, sharply, "I have to make it plain to you. I
don't think you understand. I don't love you. I don't. I can't love you.
I love some one else. It is repulsive. It disgusts me that you should
touch me."

He stared in amazement at this new aspect of the situation. "You love
some one else?" he repeated.

"I love some one else. I could not dream of loving you."

And then he flashed his whole conception of the relations of men and
women upon her in one astonishing question. His hand went with an almost
instinctive inquiry to his jawbone again. "Then why the devil," he
demanded, "do you let me stand you dinners and the opera—and why do you
come to a cabinet particuliar with me?"

He became radiant with anger. "You mean to tell me" he said, "that you
have a lover? While I have been keeping you! Yes—keeping you!"

This view of life he hurled at her as if it were an offensive missile.
It stunned her. She felt she must fly before it and could no longer do
so. She did not think for one moment what interpretation he might put
upon the word "lover."

"Mr. Ramage," she said, clinging to her one point, "I want to get out of
this horrible little room. It has all been a mistake. I have been stupid
and foolish. Will you unlock that door?"

"Never!" he said. "Confound your lover! Look here! Do you really think
I am going to run you while he makes love to you? No fear! I never heard
of anything so cool. If he wants you, let him get you. You're mine. I've
paid for you and helped you, and I'm going to conquer you somehow—if
I have to break you to do it. Hitherto you've seen only my easy, kindly
side. But now confound it! how can you prevent it? I will kiss you."

"You won't!" said Ann Veronica; with the clearest note of determination.

He seemed to be about to move toward her. She stepped back quickly, and
her hand knocked a wine-glass from the table to smash noisily on the
floor. She caught at the idea. "If you come a step nearer to me," she
said, "I will smash every glass on this table."

"Then, by God!" he said, "you'll be locked up!"

Ann Veronica was disconcerted for a moment. She had a vision of
policemen, reproving magistrates, a crowded court, public disgrace. She
saw her aunt in tears, her father white-faced and hard hit. "Don't come
nearer!" she said.

There was a discreet knocking at the door, and Ramage's face changed.

"No," she said, under her breath, "you can't face it." And she knew that
she was safe.

He went to the door. "It's all right," he said, reassuringly to the
inquirer without.