Part 7
The steps by which Ann Veronica determined to engage herself to marry
Manning were never very clear to her. A medley of motives warred in her,
and it was certainly not one of the least of these that she knew herself
to be passionately in love with Capes; at moments she had a giddy
intimation that he was beginning to feel keenly interested in her.
She realized more and more the quality of the brink upon which she
stood--the dreadful readiness with which in certain moods she
might plunge, the unmitigated wrongness and recklessness of such a
self-abandonment. “He must never know,” she would whisper to herself,
“he must never know. Or else--Else it will be impossible that I can be
his friend.”
That simple statement of the case was by no means all that went on in
Ann Veronica’s mind. But it was the form of her ruling determination; it
was the only form that she ever allowed to see daylight. What else was
there lurked in shadows and deep places; if in some mood of reverie it
came out into the light, it was presently overwhelmed and hustled back
again into hiding. She would never look squarely at these dream forms
that mocked the social order in which she lived, never admit she
listened to the soft whisperings in her ear. But Manning seemed more and
more clearly indicated as a refuge, as security. Certain simple purposes
emerged from the disingenuous muddle of her feelings and desires. Seeing
Capes from day to day made a bright eventfulness that hampered her in
the course she had resolved to follow. She vanished from the laboratory
for a week, a week of oddly interesting days....
When she renewed her attendance at the Imperial College the third finger
of her left hand was adorned with a very fine old ring with dark blue
sapphires that had once belonged to a great-aunt of Manning’s.
That ring manifestly occupied her thoughts a great deal. She kept
pausing in her work and regarding it, and when Capes came round to her,
she first put her hand in her lap and then rather awkwardly in front of
him. But men are often blind to rings. He seemed to be.
In the afternoon she had considered certain doubts very carefully,
and decided on a more emphatic course of action. “Are these ordinary
sapphires?” she said. He bent to her hand, and she slipped off the ring
and gave it to him to examine.
“Very good,” he said. “Rather darker than most of them. But I’m
generously ignorant of gems. Is it an old ring?” he asked, returning it.
“I believe it is. It’s an engagement ring....” She slipped it on her
finger, and added, in a voice she tried to make matter-of-fact: “It was
given to me last week.”
“Oh!” he said, in a colorless tone, and with his eyes on her face.
“Yes. Last week.”
She glanced at him, and it was suddenly apparent for one instant of
illumination that this ring upon her finger was the crowning blunder
of her life. It was apparent, and then it faded into the quality of an
inevitable necessity.
“Odd!” he remarked, rather surprisingly, after a little interval.
There was a brief pause, a crowded pause, between them.
She sat very still, and his eyes rested on that ornament for a moment,
and then travelled slowly to her wrist and the soft lines of her
forearm.
“I suppose I ought to congratulate you,” he said. Their eyes met, and
his expressed perplexity and curiosity. “The fact is--I don’t know
why--this takes me by surprise. Somehow I haven’t connected the idea
with you. You seemed complete--without that.”
“Did I?” she said.
“I don’t know why. But this is like--like walking round a house that
looks square and complete and finding an unexpected long wing running
out behind.”
She looked up at him, and found he was watching her closely. For some
seconds of voluminous thinking they looked at the ring between them,
and neither spoke. Then Capes shifted his eyes to her microscope and
the little trays of unmounted sections beside it. “How is that carmine
working?” he asked, with a forced interest.
“Better,” said Ann Veronica, with an unreal alacrity. “But it still
misses the nucleolus.”
CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH
THE SAPPHIRE RING