Part 6
These were Ann Veronica’s leading cases in the question of marriage.
They were the only real marriages she had seen clearly. For the rest,
she derived her ideas of the married state from the observed behavior of
married women, which impressed her in Morningside Park as being tied and
dull and inelastic in comparison with the life of the young, and from a
remarkably various reading among books. As a net result she had come to
think of all married people much as one thinks of insects that have
lost their wings, and of her sisters as new hatched creatures who had
scarcely for a moment had wings. She evolved a dim image of herself
cooped up in a house under the benevolent shadow of Mr. Manning.
Who knows?--on the analogy of “Squiggles” she might come to call him
“Mangles!”
“I don’t think I can ever marry any one,” she said, and fell suddenly
into another set of considerations that perplexed her for a time. Had
romance to be banished from life?...
It was hard to part with romance, but she had never thirsted so keenly
to go on with her University work in her life as she did that day. She
had never felt so acutely the desire for free initiative, for a life
unhampered by others. At any cost! Her brothers had it practically--at
least they had it far more than it seemed likely she would unless she
exerted herself with quite exceptional vigor. Between her and the fair,
far prospect of freedom and self-development manoeuvred Mr. Manning, her
aunt and father, neighbors, customs, traditions, forces. They seemed to
her that morning to be all armed with nets and prepared to throw them
over her directly her movements became in any manner truly free.
She had a feeling as though something had dropped from her eyes, as
though she had just discovered herself for the first time--discovered
herself as a sleep-walker might do, abruptly among dangers, hindrances,
and perplexities, on the verge of a cardinal crisis.
The life of a girl presented itself to her as something happy and
heedless and unthinking, yet really guided and controlled by others, and
going on amidst unsuspected screens and concealments.
And in its way it was very well. Then suddenly with a rush came reality,
came “growing up”; a hasty imperative appeal for seriousness, for
supreme seriousness. The Ralphs and Mannings and Fortescues came down
upon the raw inexperience, upon the blinking ignorance of the newcomer;
and before her eyes were fairly open, before she knew what had
happened, a new set of guides and controls, a new set of obligations and
responsibilities and limitations, had replaced the old. “I want to be
a Person,” said Ann Veronica to the downs and the open sky; “I will not
have this happen to me, whatever else may happen in its place.”
Ann Veronica had three things very definitely settled by the time when,
a little after mid-day, she found herself perched up on a gate between a
bridle-path and a field that commanded the whole wide stretch of country
between Chalking and Waldersham. Firstly, she did not intend to marry at
all, and particularly she did not mean to marry Mr. Manning; secondly,
by some measure or other, she meant to go on with her studies, not at
the Tredgold Schools but at the Imperial College; and, thirdly, she was,
as an immediate and decisive act, a symbol of just exactly where she
stood, a declaration of free and adult initiative, going that night to
the Fadden Ball.
But the possible attitude of her father she had still to face. So far
she had the utmost difficulty in getting on to that vitally important
matter. The whole of that relationship persisted in remaining obscure.
What would happen when next morning she returned to Morningside Park?
He couldn’t turn her out of doors. But what he could do or might do she
could not imagine. She was not afraid of violence, but she was afraid of
something mean, some secondary kind of force. Suppose he stopped all her
allowance, made it imperative that she should either stay ineffectually
resentful at home or earn a living for herself at once.... It
appeared highly probable to her that he would stop her allowance.
What can a girl do?
Somewhere at this point Ann Veronica’s speculations were interrupted
and turned aside by the approach of a horse and rider. Mr. Ramage, that
iron-gray man of the world, appeared dressed in a bowler hat and a suit
of hard gray, astride of a black horse. He pulled rein at the sight of
her, saluted, and regarded her with his rather too protuberant eyes. The
girl’s gaze met his in interested inquiry.
“You’ve got my view,” he said, after a pensive second. “I always get off
here and lean over that rail for a bit. May I do so to-day?”
“It’s your gate,” she said, amiably; “you got it first. It’s for you to
say if I may sit on it.”
He slipped off the horse. “Let me introduce you to Caesar,” he said;
and she patted Caesar’s neck, and remarked how soft his nose was, and
secretly deplored the ugliness of equine teeth. Ramage tethered the
horse to the farther gate-post, and Caesar blew heavily and began to
investigate the hedge.
Ramage leaned over the gate at Ann Veronica’s side, and for a moment
there was silence.
He made some obvious comments on the wide view warming toward its
autumnal blaze that spread itself in hill and valley, wood and village,
below.
“It’s as broad as life,” said Mr. Ramage, regarding it and putting a
well-booted foot up on the bottom rail.