 CHAPTER XVI. PART ONE Last day Anne Veronica and Capes felt like newborn things. It seemed to them they could never have been really alive before, but only dimly anticipating existence. They sat face to face beneath an experience-looking rucksack, and a brand-new portmanteau, and a leather handbag, in the afternoon boat-train that goes from Charing Cross to Folkstone for Belong. They tried to read illustrated papers in an unconcerned manner, and with forced attention, lest they should catch the leaping exultation in each other's eyes, and they admired Kent sigilously from the windows. They crossed the channel in sunshine and debris that just ruffled the sea to glittering scales of silver. Some of the people who watched them standing side by side thought they must be newly wedded because of their happy faces, and others that they were an old established couple because of their easy confidence in each other. That Belong they took train to Basel. Next morning they breakfasted together in the buffet of that station, and thence they caught the interlaken express, and so went by way of spese to Frutigen. There was no railway beyond Frutigen in those days. They sent their baggage by post to Cundersteg, and walked along the mule path to the left of the stream, to that queer hollow among the precipices, Blau Sea, where the petrifying branches of trees lie in the blue deeps of an icy lake, and pine trees clamber among gigantic boulders. A little in flying a Swiss flag nestles under a great rock, and there they put aside their knapsacks and lunched and rested in the midday shadow of the gorge in the centre of resin. And later they paddled in a boat above the mysterious deeps of the sea, and peered down into the green blues and the blue greens together. By that time it seemed to them they had lived together twenty years. Except for one memorable school excursion to Paris, Anne Veronica had never yet been outside England, so that it seemed to her the whole world had changed, the very light of it had changed. Instead of English villas and cottages there were chalets and Italian-built houses shining white. There were lakes of emerald and sapphire, and clustering castles, and such sweeps of hill and mountain, such shining uplands of snow as she had never seen before. Everything was fresh and bright from the kindly manners of the frutigate cobbler who hammered mountain nails into her boots, to the unfamiliar wild flowers that spangled the wayside, and capes had changed into the easiest and jolliest companion in the world. The mere fact that he was there in the train alongside her, helping her, sitting opposite to her in the dining-car, presently sleeping on a seat within a yard of her, made her heart sing until she was afraid their fellow passengers would hear it. It was too good to be true. She would not sleep for fear of losing a moment of that sense of his proximity. To walk beside him, dressed akin to him, rucksacked and companiable, was bliss in itself. Each step she took was like stepping once more across the threshold of heaven. One trouble, however, shot at slanting bolts of thwart the shining warmth of that opening day, and marred its perfection. And that was the thought of her father. She had treated him badly. She had hurt him and her aunt. She had done wrong by their standards, and she would never persuade them that she had done right. She thought of her father in the garden, and of her aunt with her patience, as she had seen them. How many ages was it ago? Just one day intervened. She felt as if she had struck them unawares. The thought of them distressed her without subtracting at all from the oceans of happiness in which she swam. But she wished she could put the things she had done in some way to them, so that it would not hurt them so much as the truth would certainly do. The thought of their faces, and particularly of her aunts, as it would meet the fact, was concerted, unfriendly, condemning, pained. Occurred to her again and again. Oh, I wish, she said, that people thought alike about these things. Capes watched the limpid water dripping from his oar. I wish they did, he said, but they don't. I feel all this is the rightest of all conceivable things. I want to tell everyone, I want to boast to myself. I know. I told them a lie. I told them lies. I wrote three letters yesterday and tore them up. It was so hopeless to put it to them. At last I told a story. You didn't tell them our position. I implied we'd get married. They'll find out. They'll know. Not yet. Sooner or later. Only bit by bit. But it was hopelessly hard to put. I said I knew he disliked and distrusted you and your work, that you shared all Russell's opinions. He hates Russell beyond measure, and that we couldn't possibly face a conventional marriage. What else could one say? I left him to suppose a registry perhaps. Capes let his oar smack on the water. Do you mind very much? He shook his head. But it makes me feel inhuman, he added. And me. It's the perpetual trouble, he said, of parent and child. They can't help seeing things in the way they do. Nor can we. We don't think they're right, but they don't think we are. A deadlock. In a very definite sense we are in the wrong. Hopelessly in the wrong. It's just this. Who was to be hurt? I wish no one had to be hurt, said Anne Veronica. When one is happy, I don't like to think of them. Last time I left home I felt as hard as nails. But this is all different. It is different. There's a sort of instinct of rebellion, said Capes. It isn't anything to do with our times particularly. People think it is, but they are wrong. It's to do with adolescence. Long before religion and society heard of doubt, girls were all for midnight coaches in Gretna Green. It's a sort of home-leaving instinct. He followed up a line of thought. There's another instinct too, he went on, in a state of suppression, unless I'm very much mistaken. A child-expelling instinct. I wonder. There's no family-uniting instinct anyhow. It's habit and sentiment and material convenience hold families together after adolescence. There's always friction, conflict, unwilling concessions. Always. I don't believe there is any strong natural affection at all between parents and growing up children. There wasn't I know between myself and my father. I didn't allow myself to see things as they were in those days. Now I do. I bored him. I hated him. I suppose that shocks one's ideas. It's true. There are sentimental and traditional differences and reverences I know between father and son. But that's just exactly what prevents the development of an easy friendship. Father worshiping sons are abnormal. And they're no good. No good at all. One's got to be a better man than one's father. Or what is the good of successive generations? Life is rebellion or nothing. He rode a stroke and watched the swirl of water from his ore broaden and die away. At last he took up his thoughts again. I wonder if, someday, one won't need to rebel against customs and laws. If this discord will have gone. Someday, perhaps. Who knows? The old won't coddle and hamper the young, and the young won't need to fly in the faces of the old. They'll face facts as facts and understand. Oh, to face facts. Gods, what a world it might be if people faced facts. Understanding. Understanding. There is no other salvation. Someday older people, perhaps, will trouble to understand younger people, and there won't be these fierce disruptions. There won't be barriers one must defy or perish. That's really our choice now. Defy. Or futility. The world, perhaps, will be educated out of its idea of fixed standards. I wonder, Anne Veronica, if when our time comes we shall be any wiser. Anne Veronica watched a water beetle fussing across the green depths. One can't tell. I'm a female thing at bottom. I'm like high-tone for a flourish, and stars and ideas. But I want my things. Part two. Cape's thought. It's odd. I have no doubt in my mind that what we are doing is wrong, he said, and yet I do it without compunction. I never felt so absolutely right, said Anne Veronica. You are a female thing at bottom, he admitted. I'm not nearly so sure as you. As for me, I looked twice at it. Life is two things, that's how I see it. Two things mixed and muddled up together. Life is morality. Life is adventure. Squire and master. Adventure rules and morality. Looks up the trains in the bread shore. Morality tells you what is right, and adventure moves you. If morality means anything, it means keeping bounds, respecting implications, respecting implicit bounds. If individuality means anything, it means breaking bounds, adventure. Would you be moral and your species, or immoral and yourself? We've decided to be immoral. We needn't try and give ourselves airs. We've deserted the posts in which we found ourselves, cut our duties, exposed ourselves to risks that may destroy any sort of social usefulness in us. I don't know. One keeps rules in order to be oneself. One studies nature in order not to be blindly ruled by her. There's no sense in morality, I suppose, unless you are fundamentally immoral. She watched his face as he traced his way through the speculative thickets. Look at our fare, he went on looking up at her. No power on earth will persuade me we're not two rather disreputable persons. You desert your home, I throw up useful teaching, risk every hope in your career. Here we are absconding, pretending to be what we are not. Shady, to say the least of it. It's not a bit of good pretending there's any higher truth or wonderful principle in this business. There isn't. We never started out in any high-browed manner to scandalize and shellify. When first you left your home, you had no idea that I was the hidden impulse. I wasn't. You came out like an ant for your nuptial flight. It was just a chance that we in particular hit against each other. Nothing predestined about it. We just hit against each other, and here we are flying off at a tangent, a little surprise at what we are doing. All our principles abandoned, and tremendously and quite unreasonably proud of ourselves. Out of all this we have struck a sort of harmony, and it's gorgeous. Glorious, said Andronica. Would you like us, if someone told you the bare outline of our story, and what we are doing? I shouldn't mind, said Andronica. But if someone else asked your advice, if someone else said, here is my teacher. A jaded married man on the verge of middle age, and he and I have a violent passion for one another. We propose to disregard all our ties, all our obligations, all the established prohibitions of society, and begin life together afresh. What would you tell her? If she asked advice, I should say she wasn't fit to do anything of the sort. I should say that having a doubt was enough to condemn it. But wave that point. It would be different or the same. It wouldn't be you. It wouldn't be you either. I suppose that's the gist of the whole thing. He stared at a little eddy. The rules are right, so long as there isn't a case. Rules are for established things, like the pieces and positions of a game. Men and women are not established things. They're experiments, all of them. Every human being is a new thing. Exists to do new things. Find the thing you want to do most intensely. Make sure that's it, and do it with all your might. If you live well and good, if you die well and good, your purpose is done. Well, this is our thing. He woke the glassy water to swirling activity again, and made the deep blue shapes below writhe and shiver. This is my thing, said Anne Veronica softly, with thoughtful eyes upon him. Then she looked up the sweep of pine trees to the towering sunlit cliffs and the high heaven above, and then back to his face. She drew in a deep breath of the sweet mountain air. Her eyes were soft and grave, and there was the faintest of smiles upon her resolute lips. Part 3 Later they loitered along a winding path above the inn and made love to one another. Their journey had made them indolent. The afternoon was warm, and it seemed impossible to breathe a sweeter air. The flowers and turf, a wild strawberry, a rare butterfly, and such like little intimate things had become more interesting than mountains. Their flitting hands were always touching. Deep silences came between them. I had thought to go on to candlestick, said Capes. But this is a pleasant place. There is not a soul in the inn but ourselves. Let us stay the night here. Then we can loiter and gossip to our heart's content. Agreed, said Anne Veronica. After all at Delhoney Moon. Always shall get, said Anne Veronica. This place is very beautiful. Any place would be beautiful, said Anne Veronica, in a low voice. For a time they walked in silence. I wonder, she began presently, Why I love you, and love you so much. I know now what it is to be an abandoned female. I am an abandoned female. I'm not ashamed of the things I'm doing. I want to put myself into your hands. You know, I wish I could roll my little body up small and squeeze it into your hand and grip your fingers upon it. Tight. I want you to hold me and have me so... everything. Everything. It's a pure joy of giving. Giving to you. I have never spoken of these things to any human being. Just dreamed, and ran away even from my dreams. It is as if my lips had been sealed about them. And now I break the seals. For you. Only I wish. I wish today I was a thousand times, ten thousand times more beautiful. Capes lifted her hand and kissed it. You are a thousand times more beautiful. He said, than anything else could be. You are you. You are all the beauty in the world. Beauty doesn't mean, never has meant anything, anything at all but you. It heralded you, promised you. Part four They lay side by side in a shallow nest of turf and mosses among boulders and stunted bushes on a high rock, and watched the day sky deep into evening between the vast precipices overhead, and looked over the treetops down the widening gorge. A distant suggestion of chalets and a glimpse of the road set them talking for a time of the world they had left behind. Capes spoke casually of their plans for work. It's a flabby, loose-willed world we have to face. It won't even know whether to be scandalised at us or forgiving. It will hold aloof, a little undecided whether to pelt or not. That depends whether we carry ourselves as though we expected pelting, said Anne Veronica. We won't. No fear. Then, as we succeed, it will begin to siddle back to us. It will do its best to overlook things. If we let it, poor dear, that's if we succeed. If we fail, said Capes, then we aren't going to fail, said Anne Veronica. Life seemed a very brave and glorious enterprise to Anne Veronica that day. She was quivering with the sense of capes at her side and glowing with heroic love. It seemed to her that if they put their hands jointly against the alps and pushed, they would be able to push them aside. She lay and nibbled at a sprig of dwarf-rodered engine. Fail, she said. Part 5 Presently it occurred to Anne Veronica to ask about the journey he had planned. He had his sections of the Siegfried map folded in his pocket, and he squatted up with his legs crossed like an Indian idol, while she lay prone beside him and followed every movement of his indicator-y finger. Here, he said, is this Blau Si, and here we rest until tomorrow. I think we rest here until tomorrow. There was a brief silence. It is a very pleasant place, said Anne Veronica, biting a rodered engine's torque through, and with that faint shadow of a smile returning to her lips. And then, said Anne Veronica. Then we go on to this place, the ocean in sea. It's a lake among precipices, and there is a little inn where we can stay and sit and eat our dinner at a pleasant table that looks upon the lake. For some days we shall be very idle there among the trees and rocks. There are boats on the lake in shady depths and wildernesses of Pinewood. After a day or so, perhaps, we will go on one or two little excursions and see how good your head is, a mild scramble or so, and then up to a hut on a pass just here, and out upon the bloomless Alp Glacier that spreads out so and so. She rouse herself from some dream at the word. Glaciers, she said. Under the wild froal, which was named after you, he bent and kissed her hair and paused, and then forced his attention back to the map. One day, he resumed, we will start off early and come down at a candlestick, and up these zigzags and here and here, and so pass this Dolben Sea to a tiny inn. It won't be busy yet, though. We may get it all to ourselves. On the brim of the steepest zigzag you can imagine, thousands of feet of zigzag, and you will sit and eat lunch with me and look out across the Roan Valley and over blue distances beyond blue distances, to the Matterhorn and Monty Rosa, and a long regiment of sunny, snowy mountains, and when we see them we shall at once want to go to them. That's the way with beautiful things, and down we shall go like flies down a wall, to look about, and so to look station here, and then by train up the Roan Valley, and this little side valley to Stalden. And there, in the cool of the afternoon, we shall start off up a gorge, torrents and cliffs below us and above us, to sleep in a half-way inn, and go on next day to Sars Fee, Sars of the Magic, Sars of the Pagan people. And there, about Sars, are ice and snows again, and sometimes we will loiter among the rocks and trees about Sars, or peep into Samuel Butler's chapels, and sometimes we will climb up out of the way of the other people onto the glaciers and snow. And from one expedition at least, we will go up this desolate valley here to Matmark, and so on to Montimora. There indeed you see Monti Rosa, almost the best of all. Is it very beautiful? When I saw it there it was very beautiful. It was wonderful. It was the crowned queen of mountains and her robes of shining white. It towered up high above the level of the pass, thousands of feet still, shiny and white, and below, thousands of feet below, was the floor of little woolly clouds. And then presently these clouds began to wear thin and expose steep, deep slopes going down and down, with grass and pine trees down and down, and at last, through a great rent in the clouds, bare roofs, shining like very minute pinheads, and a road like a fibre of white silk, Macugnana in Italy. It will be a fine day. It will have to be when you first set eyes on Italy. That's as far as we go. Can't we go down into Italy? No, he said. It won't run to that now. We must wave our hands at the blue hills far away there, and go back to London and work. But Italy. Italy's for a good girl, he said, and laid his hand for a moment on her shoulder. She must look forward to Italy. I say, she reflected, you are rather the master, you know. The idea struck him as novel. Of course I'm manager for this expedition, he said, after an interval of self-examination. She slid her cheek down the tweed sleeve of his coat. Nice sleeve, she said, and came to his hand and kissed it. I say, he cried, look here, aren't you going a little too far? This, this is degradation, making a fuss with sleeves. You mustn't do things like that. Why not? Free woman and equal. I do it, of my own free will, said Ann Veronica, kissing his hand again. It's nothing to what I will do. Oh well, he said a little doubtfully. It's just a phase. And bent down and rested his hand on her shoulder for a moment, with his heart beating and his nerves acquiver. Then as she lay very still, with her hands clenched and her black hair tumult about her face, he came still closer and softly kissed the nape of her neck. Part 6 Most of the things that he had planned, they did, but they climbed more than he had intended, because Ann Veronica proved rather a good climber, steady-headed and plucky, rather daring, but quite willing to be cautious at his command. One of the things that most surprised him in her was her capacity for blind obedience. She loved to be told to do things. He knew the circle of mountains about Sars-Fee fairly well. He had been there twice before, and it was fine to get away from the straggling pedestrians into their high, lonely places, and sit and munch sandwiches and talk together and do things together, that were just a little difficult and dangerous. And they could talk, they found, and never once it seemed that their meaning and intention hitch. They were enormously pleased with one another. They found each other beyond measure better than they had expected, if only because of the want of substance in mere expectation. Their conversation degenerated again and again into a strain of self-congratulation that would have irked an eavesdropper. You're—I don't know, said Ann Veronica. You're splendid. It isn't that you're splendid or I, said Capes, but we satisfy one another. Heaven alone knows why. So completely. The oddest fitness. What is it made of? Texture of skin and texture of mind? Complexion and voice. I don't think I've got illusions, nor you. If I had never met anything of you at all but a scrap of your skin binding a book, Ann Veronica, I know I would have kept that somewhere near to me. All your faults are just jolly modelling to make you real and solid. The faults are the best part of it, said Ann Veronica. Why, even our little vicious strains run the same way. Even our coarseness. Course, said Capes. We're not coarse. But if we were, said Ann Veronica. I can talk to you anew to me without a scrap of effort, said Capes. That's the essence of it. It's made up of things as small as the diameter of hairs and biggest life and death. One always dreamed of this and never believed it. It's the rarest luck, the wildest, most impossible accident. Most people, everyone I know else, seem to have mated with foreigners and to talk uneasily in unfamiliar tongues. To be afraid of the knowledge the other one has of the other one's perpetual misjudgment and misunderstandings. Why don't they wait? he added. Ann Veronica had one of her flashes of insight. One doesn't wait, said Ann Veronica. She expanded that. I shouldn't have waited, she said. I might have muddled for a time. But it's as you say, I've had the rarest luck and fallen on my feet. We've both fallen on our feet. We're the rarest of mortals, the real thing. There's not a compromise, nor a sham, nor a concession between us. We aren't afraid. We don't bother. We don't consider each other. We need it. That rapid life, as you call it. We've burned the confounded rags, danced out of it. We're stuck. Stuck! echoed Ann Veronica. Part 7 As they came back from that day's climb, it was up the Mitagon. They had to cross a shining space of wet, steep rocks between two grass slopes that needed a little care. There were a few loose, broken fragments of rock to reckon with upon the ledges, and one place where hands did as much work as toes. They used the rope—not that a rope was at all necessary—but because Ann Veronica's exalted state of mind made the fact of the rope agreeably symbolical, and anyhow it did ensure a joint death in the event of some remotely possible mischance. Capes went first, finding footholds, and, where the drops in the strata edges came like long, awkward steps, placing Ann Veronica's feet. About halfway across this interval, when everything seemed going well, Capes had a shock. Heavens! exclaimed Ann Veronica with extraordinary passion. My God!—and ceased to move. Capes became rigid and adhesive. Nothing ensued. All right, he asked. I'll have to pay it. Eh? I've forgotten something. Oh, cuss it! Eh? He said I would. What? That's the devil of it. Devil of what? You do use foul language. Forget about it like this. Forget what? And I said I wouldn't. I said I'd do anything. I said I'd make shirts. Shirts? Shirts at one, and something a dozen. Oh goodness! Bilking! Ann Veronica, you're Bilker! Pause. Will you tell me what all this is about? said Capes. It's about forty pounds. Capes waited patiently. Gee, I'm sorry, but you've got to lend me forty pounds. It's some sort of delirium, said Capes, the rarefied heir. I thought you had a better head. No, I'll explain lower. It's all right. Let's go on climbing now. It's a thing I've unaccountably overlooked. All right, really. It can wait a bit longer. I borrowed forty pounds from Mr. Rammage. Thank goodness you'll understand. That's why I chucked manning. All right, I'm coming. But all this business has driven it clean out of my head. That's why he was so annoyed, you know. Who was annoyed? Mr. Rammage, about the forty pounds. She took a step. My dear, she added by way of afterthought. You do obliterate things. Part 8 They found themselves next day talking love to one another high up on some rocks above a steep bank of snow that overhung a precipice on the eastern side of the Fee Galatia. By this time Cape's hair had bleached nearly white and his skin had become a skin of red copper shot with gold. They were now both in a state of unprecedented physical fitness, and such skirts as Anne Veronica had had when she entered the Valley of Sars were safely packed away in the hotel, and she wore leather belt and loose knickerbockers and putties, a costume that suited the fine long lines of her limbs far better than any feminine walking dress could do. Her complexion had resisted the snow glare wonderfully, her skin had only deepened its natural warmth a little under the alpine sun. She had pushed aside her azure veil, taken off her snow-glasses, and sat smiling under her hand at the shining glories, the lit cornices, the blue shadows, the softly rounded enormous snow masses, the deep places full of quivering luminosity, of the tashorn and dome. The sky was cloudless if fulgent blue. Cape sat watching and admiring her, and then he fell praising the day and fortune and their love for each other. Here we are, he said, shining through each other like light through a stained glass window, with this air in our blood, the sunlight soaking us. Life is so good. Can it ever be so good again? Anne Veronica put out a firm hand and squeezed his arm. It's very good, she said. It's glorious good. Suppose now, look at this long snow slope and then that blue deep beyond. Do you see that round pool of colour in the ice, a thousand feet or more below? Yes? Well, think. We've got to go about ten steps and lie down and put our arms about each other. See? Down we should rush in a foam, in a cloud of snow, to flight and a dream. All the rest of our lives would be together then, Anne Veronica, every moment and no ill chances. If you tempt me too much, she said after a silence, I shall do it. I need only just jump up and throw myself upon you. I'm a desperate young woman. And then as we went down you'd try to explain and that would spoil it. You know you don't mean it. No, I don't. But I like to say it. Rather, but I wonder why you don't mean it. Because I suppose the other thing is better. What other reason could there be? It's more complex, but it's better. This, this glissade would be damned scaldronism. You know that and I know that. Though we might be put to it to find a reason why. It would be swindling, drawing the pay of life and then not living. And besides, we're going to live, Anne Veronica. Oh, the things we'll do, the life we'll lead. There'll be trouble in it at times. You and I aren't going to run without friction. But we've got the brains to get over that and tongues in our heads to talk to each other. We shan't hang up on any misunderstanding, not us. And we're going to fight that old world down there. That old world that had shoved up that silly old hotel and all the rest of it. If we don't live it, we'll think we are afraid of it. Die indeed. We're going to do work. We're going to unfold about each other. We're going to have children. Girls, said Anne Veronica. Boys, said Capes. Both, said Anne Veronica. Lots of them. Capes chuckled. You delicate female. Who cares, said Anne Veronica, seeing it's you. Warm, soft little wonders. Of course I want them. Part nine. All sorts of things we're going to do, said Capes. All sorts of times we're going to have. Sooner or later we'll certainly do something to clean those prisons you told me about. Lime wash the underside of life. You and I. We can love on the snow corners. We can love over a pail of whitewash. Love anywhere. Anywhere. Moonlight and music. Pleasing, you know, but quite unnecessary. We met dissecting dogfish. Do you remember your first day with me? Do you indeed remember? The smell of decay and cheap methylated spirit. My dear, we've had so many moments. I used to go over the times we'd had together. The things we'd said, like a rosary of beads. But now it's beads by the cask, like the hold of a West African trader. It feels like too much gold dust clutched in one's hand. One doesn't want to lose a grain. And one must. Some of it must slip through one's fingers. I don't care if it does, said Anne Veronica. I don't care rap for remembering. I care for you. This moment couldn't be better until the next moment comes. That's how it takes me. Why should we hoard? We aren't going out presently like Japanese lanterns in a gale. It's the poor deers who do, who know they will, know they can't keep it up, who need to clutch at wayside flowers, and put them in little books for remembrance. Flattened flowers aren't for the likes of us. Moments indeed. We like each other fresh and fresh. It isn't illusions, for us. We too just love each other, the real identical other, all the time. The real identical other, said Capes, and took and bit the tip of her little finger. There's no delusion so far as I know, said Anne Veronica. I don't believe there is one. If there is, it's a mere rapping. There's better underneath. It's only as if I'd begun to know you the day before yesterday or thereabouts. You keep on coming truer after you have seemed to come all together true. You brick. Part 10. To think, he cried, you are ten years younger than I. There are times when you make me feel a little thing at your feet, a young, silly, protected thing. Do you know, Anne Veronica, it is all a lie about your birth certificate, a forgery and fooling at that. You are one of the immortals. Immortal! You were in the beginning, and all the men in the world who have known what love is have worshipped at your feet. You have converted me to, lest the ward, you are my dear friend. You are a slip of a girl. But there are moments when my head has been on your breast, when your heart has been beating close to my ears, when I have known you for the goddess, when I have wished myself your slave, when I have wished that you could kill me for the joy of being killed by you. You are the high priestess of life. Your priestess, whispered Anne Veronica softly. A silly little priestess who knew nothing of life at all until she came to you. Part eleven. They sat for a time without speaking a word in an enormous shining glow of mutual satisfaction. Well, said Capes at length, we've got to go down, Anne Veronica. Life waits for us. He stood up and waited for her to move. God's! cried Anne Veronica, and kept him standing. And to think that it's not a full year ago since I was a black-hearted rebel schoolgirl, distressed, puzzled, perplexed, not understanding that this great force of love was bursting its way through me. All those nameless discontents, they were no more than love's birth pangs. I felt, I felt living in a masked world. I felt as though I had bandaged eyes. I felt wrapped in thick cobwebs. They blinded me. They got in my mouth, and now, dear, dear, the dayswing from on high had visited me. I love. I am loved. I want to shout. I want to sing. I am glad. I am glad to be alive, because you are alive. I am glad to be a woman, because you are a man. I am glad. I am glad. I am glad. I thank God for life in you. I thank God for his sunlight on your face. I thank God for the beauty you love and the faults you love. I thank God for the very skin that is peeling from your nose, for all things great and small that make us what we are. This is grace, I am saying. Oh, my dear, all the joy and weeping of life are mixed in me now, and all the gratitude, never a new-born dragonfly that spread its wings in the morning, has felt as glad as I. CHAPTER XVII Part I. About four years and a quarter later. To be exact, it was four years and four months. Mr. and Mrs. Capes stood side by side upon an old Persian carpet, that did duty as a hearth rug in the dining-room of their flat, and surveyed a shining dinner-table set for four people, lit by skilfully shaded electric lights, brightened by frequent gleams of silver, and carefully and simply adorned with sweet pea blossom. Capes had altered scarcely at all during the interval, except for a new quality of smartness in the cut of his clothes. But Anne Veronica was nearly half an inch taller, her face was at once stronger and softer, her neck firmer and rounder, and her carriage definitely more womanly than it had been in the days of her rebellion. She was a woman now to the tips of her fingers. She had said good-bye to her girlhood in the old garden four years and a quarter ago. She was dressed in a simple evening gown of soft, creamy silk, with a yoke of dark old embroidery that enhanced the gentle gravity of her style, and her black hair flowed off her open forehead to pass under the control of a simple ribbon of silver. A silver necklace enhanced the dusky beauty of her neck. Both husband and wife affected an unnatural ease of manner for the benefit of the efficient parlor maid, who was putting the finishing touches to the sideboard arrangements. It looks all right, said Capes. I think everything's right, said Anne Veronica, with the roaming eye of a capable but not devoted house mistress. I wonder if they will seem altered, she remarked for the third time. There I can't help, said Capes. He walked through a wide open archway, curtain with deep blue curtains, into the apartment that served as a reception room, and Veronica, after a last survey of the dinner appointments, followed him, rustling, came to his side by the high brass fender, and touched two or three ornaments on the mantle above the cheerful fireplace. It's still a marvel to me that we are to be forgiven, she said, turning. My charm of manner, I suppose, but indeed he's very human. Did you tell him of the registry office? No, certainly not so emphatically as I did about the play. It was an inspiration. You're speaking to him. I felt impudent. I believe I am getting impudent, had not been near the royal society since, since you disgraced me. What's that? They both stood listening. It was not the arrival of the guests, but merely the maid moving about in the hall. Wonderful man, said Anne Veronica reassured, and stroking his cheek with her finger. Capes made a quick movement as if to bite that aggressive digit, but it withdrew to Anne Veronica's side. I was really interested in his stuff. I was talking to him before I saw his name on the card beside the row of microscopes. Then naturally I went on talking. He, he has rather a poor opinion of his contemporaries. Of course he had no idea who I was. But how did you tell him? You've never told me. Wasn't it a little bit of a scene? Oh, let me see. I said I hadn't been at the royal society soiree for four years, and got him to tell me about some of the fresh Mendelian work. He loves the Mendelians because he hates all the big names of the 80s and 90s. Then I think I remarked that science was disgracefully under-endowed, and confessed I'd had to take to more profitable courses. The fact of it is, I said, I'm the new playwright, Thomas Moore. Perhaps you've heard. Well, you know he had. Fame, isn't it? I've not seen your play, Mr. Moore, he said. But I'm told it's the most amusing thing in London at the present time. A friend of mine, Old Javie—I suppose that's Old Javie and Old Javie who do so many divorces, V—was speaking very highly of it—very highly. He smiled into her eyes. You are developing far too retentive a memory for praises, said Anne Veronica. I'm still new to them. But after that it was easy. I told him instantly and shamelessly that the play was going to be worth ten thousand pounds. He agreed it was disgraceful. Then I sued a rather potentious man to prepare him. How? Show me. I can't be potentious dear when you're about. It's my other side of the moon. But I was potentious, I can assure you. My name's not Moore, Mr. Stanley, I said. That's my pet name. Yes? I think—yes, I went on an appleasing blend of the casual and soto voce. The fact of it is, sir, I happen to be your son-in-law, Capes. I do wish you could come and dine with us some evening. It would make my wife very happy. What did he say? What does anyone say to an invitation to dinner point blank? One tries to collect one's wits. She is constantly thinking of you, I said. And he accepted meekly. Practically. What else could he do? You can't kick up a scene on the spur of the moment in the face of such conflicting values as he had before him. With me behaving as if everything was infinitely matter of fact, what could he do? And just then, Heaven sent old Manningtree. I didn't tell you before the fortunate intervention of Manningtree, did I? He was looking quite infernally distinguished, with a wide crimson ribbon across him. What is a wide crimson ribbon? Some sort of knight, I suppose. He is a knight. Well, young man, he said. We haven't seen you lately. And something about Bateson and Co. He's frightfully anti-Mendelian, having it all their own way. So I introduced him to my father-in-law like a shot. I think that was the decision. Yes, it was Manningtree really secured your father. He— Here they are! said Anne Veronica, as the bell sounded. Part II They received the guests in their pretty little hall with genuine effusion. Miss Stanley threw aside a black cloak to reveal a discreet and dignified arrangement of brown silk, and then embraced Anne Veronica with warmth. So very clear and cold, she said, I feared we might have a fog. The housemaid's presence acted as a useful restraint. Anne Veronica passed from her aunt to her father, and put her arms about him and kissed his cheek. Dear old daddy, she said, and was amazed to find herself shedding tears. She veiled her immersion by taking off his overcoat. And this is Mr. Capes! she heard her aunt saying. All four people moved a little nervously into the drawing-room, maintaining a sort of fluttered amiability of sound and movement. Mr. Stanley professed a great solicitude to warm his hands. Quite unusually cold for the time of year, he said. Everything very nice I am sure! Miss Stanley murmured to Capes as he steered her to a place upon the little sofa before the fire. Also she made little pussy-like sounds of a reassuring nature. And let's have a look at you, V! said Mr. Stanley, standing up with a sudden geniality and rubbing his hands together. Anne Veronica, who knew her dress, became her, dropped a curtsy to her father's regard. Happily they had no one else to wait for, and it heartened her mightily to think that she had ordered the promptest possible service of the dinner. Capes stood beside Miss Stanley, who was beaming unnaturally, and Mr. Stanley, in his effort to seem at ease, took entire possession of the hearth rug. You found the flat easily, said Capes, in the pause. The numbers are a little difficult to see in the archway. They ought to put a lamp. Her father declared there had been no difficulty. "'Dinner has served them,' said the efficient parlor maid in the archway, and the worst was over. "'Come, Daddy,' said Anne Veronica, following her husband and Miss Stanley, and in the fullness of her heart she gave a friendly squeeze to the parental arm. "'Excellent fellow,' he answered a little relevantly. "'I didn't understand, V.' "'Quite charming apartments,' Miss Stanley admired. "'Charming! Everything is so pretty and convenient!' The dinner was admirable as a dinner. Nothing went wrong, from the golden and excellent clear soup, to the delightful iced marins and a cream, and Miss Stanley's praises died away to an appreciative acquiescence. A brisk talk sprang up between Capes and Mr. Stanley, to which the two ladies subordinated themselves intelligently. The burning topic of the Mendelian controversy was approached on one or two occasions, but avoided dexterously, and they talked chiefly of letters and art and the censorship of the English stage. Mr. Stanley was inclined to think the censorship should be extended to the supply of what he starred latter-day fiction. Good wholesome stories were being ousted, he said, by vicious corrupting stuff that left a bad taste in the mouth. He declared that no book would be satisfactory that left a bad taste in the mouth, however much it seized and interested the reader at the time. He did not like it, he said, with a significant look, to be reminded of either his books or his dinners after he had done with them. Capes agreed with the utmost cordiality. Life is upsetting enough without the novels taking a share, said Mr. Stanley. For a time Anne Veronica's attention was diverted by her aunt's interest in the salted almonds. Quite particularly nice, said her aunt, exceptionally so. When Anne Veronica could attend again she found the men were discussing the ethics of the depreciation of house property through the increasing tumult of traffic in the West End, and agreeing with each other to a devastating extent. It came into her head with real emotional force that this must be some particularly fantastic sort of dream. It seemed to her that her father was in some inexplicable way meaner looking than she had supposed, and yet also, as unaccountably, appealing. His tie had demanded a struggle. He ought to have taken a clean one after his first failure. Why was she noting things like this? Capes seemed self-possessed and elaborately genial and commonplace, but she knew him to be nervous by a little occasional clumsiness, but the faintest shadow of vulgarity in the urgency of his hospitality. She wished he could smoke and dull his nerves a little. A gust of irrational impatience blew through her being. Well, they'd got to the pheasants, and in a little while he would smoke. What was it she had expected? Surely her moods were getting a little out of hand. She wished her father and aunt would not enjoy their dinner with such quiet determination. Her father and her husband, who had both been a little pale at their first encounter, were growing now just faintly flushed. It was a pity people had to eat food. I suppose, said her father, I have read at least half the novels that have been at all successful during the last twenty years. Three a week is my allowance, and if I get short ones, four. I change them in the morning at Cannon Street, and take my book as I come down. It occurred to her that she had never seen her father dining out before. Never watched him critically as an equal. To Capes he was almost deferential, and she had never seen him deferential in the old time. Never. The dinner was stranger than she had ever anticipated. It was as if she had grown right past her father into something older and of infinitely wider outlook. As if he had always been unsuspectingly a flattened figure, and now she had discovered him from the other side. It was a great relief to arrive at last at that pause when she could say to her aunt, now dear, and rise and hold back the curtain through the archway. Capes at her father stood up, and her father made a belated movement toward the curtain. She realised that he was the sort of man one does not think much about at dinners, and Capes was thinking that his wife was a supremely beautiful woman. He reached a silver cigar-cigarette box on the sideboard, and put it before his father-in-law, and for a time the preliminaries of smirking occupied them both. Then Capes flitted to the hearth rug and poked the fire, stood up and turned about. And Veronica's looking very well, don't you think? he said, a little awkwardly. Very, said Mr. Stanley, very, and cracked a walnut appreciatively. Life, things, I don't think it prospects now. Hope for outlook! You were in a difficult position, Mr. Stanley pronounced, and seemed to hesitate whether he had not gone too far. He looked at his port wine as though that Tawny Ruby contained the solution of the matter. All's well that ends well, he said, and the less one says about things the better. Of course, said Capes, and through a newly lit cigar to the fire through sheer nervousness, have some more port wine, sir. It's a very sound wine, said Mr. Stanley, consenting with dignity. And Veronica has never looked quite so well, I think, said Capes, clinging because of a preconceived plan to the suppressed topic. Part 3 At last the evening was over, and Capes and his wife had gone down to see Mr. Stanley and his sister into a taxicab, and had waved an amiable farewell from the pavement steps. Great dears! said Capes as the vehicle passed out of sight. Yes, aren't they? said Anne Veronica after a thoughtful pause, and then they seemed changed. Coming out of the cold, said Capes, and took her arm. They seemed smaller, you know, even physically smaller, she said. You've grown out of them. You aren't like the pheasant. She liked everything. Did you hear us through the archway talking cookery? They went up by the lift in silence. It's odd, said Anne Veronica, re-entering the flat. What's odd? Oh, everything! She shivered and went to the fire and poked it. Capes sat down in the armchair beside her. Life so queer, she said, kneeling and looking into the flames. I wonder—I wonder if we shall ever get like that. She turned a firelit face to her husband. Did you tell him? Capes smiled faintly. Yes. How? Well, a little clumsily. But how? I poured him out some port wine, and I said, let me see. Oh, you're going to be a grandfather. Yes, was he pleased? Calmly, he said. You won't mind my telling you. Not a bit. He said, poor Alice has got no end. Alice is a different, said Anne Veronica, after an interval. Quite different. She didn't choose her man. Well, I told Aunt. Husband of mine, I think we have rather overrated the emotional capacity of those—those dears. What did your aunt say? She didn't even kiss me. She said, Anne Veronica, shivered again. I hope it won't make you uncomfortable, my dear. Like that. And whatever you do, do be careful of your hair. I think, I judge from her manner, that she thought it was just a little indelicate of us, considering everything. But she tried to be practical and sympathetic, and lived down through our standards. Capes looked at his wife's unsmiling face. Your father, he said, remarked that all's well that ends well, and that he was disposed to let bygones be bygones. He then spoke with a certain fatherly kindness of the past. And my heart has ached for him. Oh, no doubt it cut him at the time. It must have cut him. We might even have given it up for them. I wonder if we could. I suppose all is well that ends well. Somehow tonight, I don't know. I suppose so. I'm glad the old scores assuaged. Very glad. But if we had gone under. They regarded one another silently, and Anne Veronica had one of her penetrating flashes. We are not the sort that goes under, said Anne Veronica, holding her hands so that the red reflections vanish from her eyes. We settled long ago. We're hard stuff. We're hard stuff. Then she went on. To think that is my father. Oh, my dear. He stood over me like a cliff. The thought of him nearly turned me aside from everything we have done. He was the social order. He was law and wisdom. And they come here, and they look at our furniture to see if it is good. And they are not glad. It does not stir them. That at last, at last, we can dare to have children. She dropped back into a crouching attitude and began to weep. Oh, my dear. She cried, and suddenly flung herself kneeling into her husband's arms. Do you remember the mountains? Do you remember how we loved one another? How intensely we loved one another? Do you remember the light on things and the glory of things? I'm greedy. I'm greedy. I want children like the mountains and life like the sky. Oh, and love. Love. We've had so splendid a time and fought our fight and won. And it's like the petals falling from a flower. Oh, I've loved, loved, dear. I've loved love and you and the glory of you. And the great time is over. And I have to go carefully and bear children and take care of my hair. And when I am done with that, I shall be an old woman. The petals have fallen. The red petals we loved so. We're hedged about with discresions and all this furniture and successes. We are successful at last. Successful. But the mountains, dear. We won't forget the mountains, dear, ever. The shining slope of snow and how we talked of death. We might have died, even when we are old, when we are rich as we may be. We won't forget the time when we cared nothing for anything but the joy of one another. When we risked everything for one another. When all the wrappings and coverings seem to have fallen from life and left light and fire, stark and stark, do you remember it all? Say you will never forget that these common things and secondary things shan't overwhelm us. These petals, I've been wanting to cry all the evening, cry here on your shoulder for my petals. Petals! Silly woman, I've never had these crying fits before. Blood of my heart, whispered capes, holding her close to him. I know. I understand. End of Chapter Seventeen. End of Anne Veronica.