Part 4
At eight that evening Miss Stanley tapped at Ann Veronica's
bedroom door.
"I've brought you up some dinner, Vee," she said.
Ann Veronica was lying on her bed in a darkling room staring at
the ceiling. She reflected before answering. She was frightfully
hungry. She had eaten little or no tea, and her mid-day meal had
been worse than nothing.
She got up and unlocked the door.
Her aunt did not object to capital punishment or war, or the
industrial system or casual wards, or flogging of criminals or
the Congo Free State, because none of these things really got
hold of her imagination; but she did object, she did not like,
she could not bear to think of people not having and enjoying
their meals. It was her distinctive test of an emotional state,
its interference with a kindly normal digestion. Any one very
badly moved choked down a few mouthfuls; the symptom of supreme
distress was not to be able to touch a bit. So that the thought
of Ann Veronica up-stairs had been extremely painful for her
through all the silent dinner-time that night. As soon as dinner
was over she went into the kitchen and devoted herself to
compiling a tray --not a tray merely of half-cooled dinner
things, but a specially prepared "nice" tray, suitable for
tempting any one. With this she now entered.
Ann Veronica found herself in the presence of the most
disconcerting fact in human experience, the kindliness of people
you believe to be thoroughly wrong. She took the tray with both
hands, gulped, and gave way to tears.
Her aunt leaped unhappily to the thought of penitence.
"My dear," she began, with an affectionate hand on Ann Veronica's
shoulder, "I do SO wish you would realize how it grieves your
father."
Ann Veronica flung away from her hand, and the pepper-pot on the
tray upset, sending a puff of pepper into the air and instantly
filling them both with an intense desire to sneeze.
"I don't think you see," she replied, with tears on her cheeks,
and her brows knitting, "how it shames and, ah!--disgraces me--AH
TISHU!"
She put down the tray with a concussion on her toilet-table.
"But, dear, think! He is your father. SHOOH!"
"That's no reason," said Ann Veronica, speaking through her
handkerchief and stopping abruptly.
Niece and aunt regarded each other for a moment over their
pocket-handkerchiefs with watery but antagonistic eyes, each far
too profoundly moved to see the absurdity of the position.
"I hope," said Miss Stanley, with dignity, and turned doorward
with features in civil warfare. "Better state of mind," she
gasped. . . .
Ann Veronica stood in the twilight room staring at the door that
had slammed upon her aunt, her pocket-handkerchief rolled tightly
in her hand. Her soul was full of the sense of disaster. She
had made her first fight for dignity and freedom as a grown-up
and independent Person, and this was how the universe had treated
her. It had neither succumbed to her nor wrathfully overwhelmed
her. It had thrust her back with an undignified scuffle, with
vulgar comedy, with an unendurable, scornful grin.
"By God!" said Ann Veronica for the first time in her life. "But
I will! I will!"
