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.
