Part 5
The Gwen affair happened when she was away at school at
Marticombe-on-Sea, a term before she went to the High School, and
was never very clear to her.
Her mother missed writing for a week, and then she wrote in an
unusual key. "My dear," the letter ran, "I have to tell you that
your sister Gwen has offended your father very much. I hope you
will always love her, but I want you to remember she has offended
your father and married without his consent. Your father is very
angry, and will not have her name mentioned in his hearing. She
has married some one he could not approve of, and gone right
away. . . ."
When the next holidays came Ann Veronica's mother was ill, and
Gwen was in the sick-room when Ann Veronica returned home. She
was in one of her old walking-dresses, her hair was done in an
unfamiliar manner, she wore a wedding-ring, and she looked as if
she had been crying.
"Hello, Gwen!" said Ann Veronica, trying to put every one at
their ease. "Been and married? . . . What's the name of the
happy man?"
Gwen owned to "Fortescue."
"Got a photograph of him or anything?" said Ann Veronica, after
kissing her mother.
Gwen made an inquiry, and, directed by Mrs. Stanley, produced a
portrait from its hiding-place in the jewel-drawer under the
mirror. It presented a clean-shaven face with a large Corinthian
nose, hair tremendously waving off the forehead and more chin and
neck than is good for a man.
"LOOKS all right," said Ann Veronica, regarding him with her head
first on one side and then on the other, and trying to be
agreeable. "What's the objection?"
"I suppose she ought to know?" said Gwen to her mother, trying to
alter the key of the conversation.
"You see, Vee," said Mrs. Stanley, "Mr. Fortescue is an actor,
and your father does not approve of the profession."
"Oh!" said Ann Veronica. "I thought they made knights of
actors?"
"They may of Hal some day," said Gwen. "But it's a long
business."
"I suppose this makes you an actress?" said Ann Veronica.
"I don't know whether I shall go on," said Gwen, a novel note of
languorous professionalism creeping into her voice. "The other
women don't much like it if husband and wife work together, and I
don't think Hal would like me to act away from him."
Ann Veronica regarded her sister with a new respect, but the
traditions of family life are strong. "I don't suppose you'll be
able to do it much," said Ann Veronica.
Later Gwen's trouble weighed so heavily on Mrs. Stanley in her
illness that her husband consented to receive Mr. Fortescue in
the drawing-room, and actually shake hands with him in an
entirely hopeless manner and hope everything would turn out for
the best.
The forgiveness and reconciliation was a cold and formal affair,
and afterwards her father went off gloomily to his study, and Mr.
Fortescue rambled round the garden with soft, propitiatory steps,
the Corinthian nose upraised and his hands behind his back,
pausing to look long and hard at the fruit-trees against the
wall.
Ann Veronica watched him from the dining-room window, and after
some moments of maidenly hesitation rambled out into the garden
in a reverse direction to Mr. Fortescue's steps, and encountered
him with an air of artless surprise.
"Hello!" said Ann Veronica, with arms akimbo and a careless,
breathless manner. "You Mr. Fortescue?"
"At your service. You Ann Veronica?"
"Rather! I say--did you marry Gwen?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Mr. Fortescue raised his eyebrows and assumed a light-comedy
expression. "I suppose I fell in love with her, Ann Veronica."
"Rum," said Ann Veronica. "Have you got to keep her now?"
"To the best of my ability," said Mr. Fortescue, with a bow.
"Have you much ability?" asked Ann Veronica.
Mr. Fortescue tried to act embarrassment in order to conceal its
reality, and Ann Veronica went on to ask a string of questions
about acting, and whether her sister would act, and was she
beautiful enough for it, and who would make her dresses, and so
on.
As a matter of fact Mr. Fortescue had not much ability to keep
her sister, and a little while after her mother's death Ann
Veronica met Gwen suddenly on the staircase coming from her
father's study, shockingly dingy in dusty mourning and tearful
and resentful, and after that Gwen receded from the Morningside
Park world, and not even the begging letters and distressful
communications that her father and aunt received, but only a
vague intimation of dreadfulness, a leakage of incidental
comment, flashes of paternal anger at "that blackguard," came to
Ann Veronica's ears.
