CHAPTER THE SIXTH
EXPOSTULATIONS
Part 1
The next morning opened calmly, and Ann Veronica sat in her own
room, her very own room, and consumed an egg and marmalade, and
read the advertisements in the Daily Telegraph. Then began
expostulations, preluded by a telegram and headed by her aunt.
The telegram reminded Ann Veronica that she had no place for
interviews except her bed-sitting-room, and she sought her
landlady and negotiated hastily for the use of the ground floor
parlor, which very fortunately was vacant. She explained she was
expecting an important interview, and asked that her visitor
should be duly shown in. Her aunt arrived about half-past ten,
in black and with an unusually thick spotted veil. She raised
this with the air of a conspirator unmasking, and displayed a
tear-flushed face. For a moment she remained silent.
"My dear," she said, when she could get her breath, "you must
come home at once."
Ann Veronica closed the door quite softly and stood still.
"This has almost killed your father. . . . After Gwen!"
"I sent a telegram."
"He cares so much for you. He did so care for you."
"I sent a telegram to say I was all right."
"All right! And I never dreamed anything of the sort was going
on. I had no idea!" She sat down abruptly and threw her wrists
limply upon the table. "Oh, Veronica!" she said, "to leave your
home!"
She had been weeping. She was weeping now. Ann Veronica was
overcome by this amount of emotion.
"Why did you do it?" her aunt urged. "Why could you not confide
in us?"
"Do what?" said Ann Veronica.
"What you have done."
"But what have I done?"
"Elope! Go off in this way. We had no idea. We had such a
pride in you, such hope in you. I had no idea you were not the
happiest girl. Everything I could do! Your father sat up all
night. Until at last I persuaded him to go to bed. He wanted to
put on his overcoat and come after you and look for you--in
London. We made sure it was just like Gwen. Only Gwen left a
letter on the pincushion. You didn't even do that Vee; not even
that."
"I sent a telegram, aunt," said Ann Veronica.
"Like a stab. You didn't even put the twelve words."
"I said I was all right."
"Gwen said she was happy. Before that came your father didn't
even know you were gone. He was just getting cross about your
being late for dinner--you know his way--when it came. He opened
it--just off-hand, and then when he saw what it was he hit at the
table and sent his soup spoon flying and splashing on to the
tablecloth. 'My God!' he said, 'I'll go after them and kill him.
I'll go after them and kill him.' For the moment I thought it
was a telegram from Gwen."
"But what did father imagine?"
"Of course he imagined! Any one would! 'What has happened,
Peter?' I asked. He was standing up with the telegram crumpled
in his hand. He used a most awful word! Then he said, 'It's Ann
Veronica gone to join her sister!' 'Gone!' I said. 'Gone!' he
said. 'Read that,' and threw the telegram at me, so that it went
into the tureen. He swore when I tried to get it out with the
ladle, and told me what it said. Then he sat down again in a
chair and said that people who wrote novels ought to be strung
up. It was as much as I could do to prevent him flying out of
the house there and then and coming after you. Never since I was
a girl have I seen your father so moved. 'Oh! little Vee!' he
cried, 'little Vee!' and put his face between his hands and sat
still for a long time before he broke out again."
Ann Veronica had remained standing while her aunt spoke.
"Do you mean, aunt," she asked, "that my father thought I had
gone off--with some man?"
"What else COULD he think? Would any one DREAM you would be so
mad as to go off alone?"
"After--after what had happened the night before?"
"Oh, why raise up old scores? If you could see him this morning,
his poor face as white as a sheet and all cut about with shaving!
He was for coming up by the very first train and looking for you,
but I said to him, 'Wait for the letters,' and there, sure
enough, was yours. He could hardly open the envelope, he trembled
so. Then he threw the letter at me. 'Go and fetch her home,' he
said; 'it isn't what we thought! It's just a practical joke of
hers.' And with that he went off to the City, stern and silent,
leaving his bacon on his plate--a great slice of bacon hardly
touched. No breakfast, he's had no dinner, hardly a mouthful of
soup--since yesterday at tea."
She stopped. Aunt and niece regarded each other silently.
"You must come home to him at once," said Miss Stanley.
Ann Veronica looked down at her fingers on the claret-colored
table-cloth. Her aunt had summoned up an altogether too vivid
picture of her father as the masterful man, overbearing,
emphatic, sentimental, noisy, aimless. Why on earth couldn't he
leave her to grow in her own way? Her pride rose at the bare
thought of return
"I don't think I CAN do that," she said. She looked up and said,
a little breathlessly, "I'm sorry, aunt, but I don't think I
can."
