Part 4
Interpretation came pouring down upon her almost blindingly; she
understood now the room, the waiter, the whole situation. She
understood. She leaped to a world of shabby knowledge, of
furtive base realizations. She wanted to cry out upon herself for
the uttermost fool in existence.
"I thought you wanted to have a talk to me," she said.
"I wanted to make love to you.
"You knew it," he added, in her momentary silence.
"You said you were in love with me," said Ann Veronica; "I wanted
to explain--"
"I said I loved and wanted you." The brutality of his first
astonishment was evaporating. "I am in love with you. You know
I am in love with you. And then you go--and half throttle me. .
. . I believe you've crushed a gland or something. It feels
like it."
"I am sorry," said Ann Veronica. "What else was I to do?"
For some seconds she stood watching him. and both were thinking
very quickly. Her state of mind would have seemed altogether
discreditable to her grandmother. She ought to have been disposed
to faint and scream at all these happenings; she ought to have
maintained a front of outraged dignity to veil the sinking of her
heart. I would like to have to tell it so. But indeed that is
not at all a good description of her attitude. She was an
indignant queen, no doubt she was alarmed and disgusted within
limits; but she was highly excited, and there was something, some
low adventurous strain in her being, some element, subtle at
least if base, going about the rioting ways and crowded insurgent
meeting-places of her mind declaring that the whole affair was
after all--they are the only words that express it--a very great
lark indeed. At the bottom of her heart she was not a bit afraid
of Ramage. She had unaccountable gleams of sympathy with and
liking for him. And the grotesquest fact was that she did not so
much loathe, as experience with a quite critical condemnation
this strange sensation of being kissed. Never before had any
human being kissed her lips. . . .
It was only some hours after that these ambiguous elements
evaporated and vanished and loathing came, and she really began
to be thoroughly sick and ashamed of the whole disgraceful
quarrel and scuffle.
He, for his part, was trying to grasp the series of unexpected
reactions that had so wrecked their tete-a-tete. He had meant to
be master of his fate that evening and it had escaped him
altogether. It had, as it were, blown up at the concussion of
his first step. It dawned upon him that he had been abominably
used by Ann Veronica.
"Look here," he said, "I brought you here to make love to you."
"I didn't understand--your idea of making love. You had better
let me go again."
"Not yet," he said. "I do love you. I love you all the more for
the streak of sheer devil in you. . . . You are the most
beautiful, the most desirable thing I have ever met in this
world. It was good to kiss you, even at the price. But, by
Jove! you are fierce! You are like those Roman women who carry
stilettos in their hair."
"I came here to talk reasonably, Mr. Ramage. It is abominable--"
"What is the use of keeping up this note of indignation, Ann
Veronica? Here I am! I am your lover, burning for you. I mean
to have you! Don't frown me off now. Don't go back into
Victorian respectability and pretend you don't know and you can't
think and all the rest of it. One comes at last to the step from
dreams to reality. This is your moment. No one will ever love
you as I love you now. I have been dreaming of your body and you
night after night. I have been imaging--"
"Mr. Ramage, I came here-- I didn't suppose for one moment you
would dare--"
"Nonsense! That is your mistake! You are too intellectual. You
want to do everything with your mind. You are afraid of kisses.
You are afraid of the warmth in your blood. It's just because
all that side of your life hasn't fairly begun."
He made a step toward her.
"Mr. Ramage," she said, sharply, "I have to make it plain to you.
I don't think you understand. I don't love you. I don't. I
can't love you. I love some one else. It is repulsive. It
disgusts me that you should touch me."
He stared in amazement at this new aspect of the situation. "You
love some one else?" he repeated.
"I love some one else. I could not dream of loving you."
And then he flashed his whole conception of the relations of men
and women upon her in one astonishing question. His hand went
with an almost instinctive inquiry to his jawbone again. "Then
why the devil," he demanded, "do you let me stand you dinners and
the opera--and why do you come to a cabinet particulier with me?"
He became radiant with anger. "You mean to tell me" he said,
"that you have a lover? While I have been keeping you!
Yes--keeping you!"
This view of life he hurled at her as if it were an offensive
missile. It stunned her. She felt she must fly before it and
could no longer do so. She did not think for one moment what
interpretation he might put upon the word "lover."
"Mr. Ramage," she said, clinging to her one point, "I want to get
out of this horrible little room. It has all been a mistake. I
have been stupid and foolish. Will you unlock that door?"
"Never!" he said. "Confound your lover! Look here! Do you
really think I am going to run you while he makes love to you?
No fear! I never heard of anything so cool. If he wants you,
let him get you. You're mine. I've paid for you and helped you,
and I'm going to conquer you somehow--if I have to break you to
do it. Hitherto you've seen only my easy, kindly side. But now
confound it! how can you prevent it? I will kiss you."
"You won't!" said Ann Veronica; with the clearest note of
determination.
He seemed to be about to move toward her. She stepped back
quickly, and her hand knocked a wine-glass from the table to
smash noisily on the floor. She caught at the idea. "If you
come a step nearer to me," she said, "I will smash every glass on
this table."
"Then, by God!" he said, "you'll be locked up!"
Ann Veronica was disconcerted for a moment. She had a vision of
policemen, reproving magistrates, a crowded court, public
disgrace. She saw her aunt in tears, her father white-faced and
hard hit. "Don't come nearer!" she said.
There was a discreet knocking at the door, and Ramage's face
changed.
"No," she said, under her breath, "you can't face it." And she
knew that she was safe.
He went to the door. "It's all right," he said, reassuringly to
the inquirer without.
Ann Veronica glanced at the mirror to discover a flushed and
dishevelled disorder. She began at once a hasty readjustment of
her hair, while Ramage parleyed with inaudible interrogations.
"A glass slipped from the table," he explained. . . . "Non. Fas
du tout. Non. . . . Niente. . . . Bitte! . . . Oui, dans la
note. . . . Presently. Presently." That conversation ended and
he turned to her again.
"I am going," she said grimly, with three hairpins in her mouth.
She took her hat from the peg in the corner and began to put it
on. He regarded that perennial miracle of pinning with wrathful
eyes.
"Look here, Ann Veronica," he began. "I want a plain word with
you about all this. Do you mean to tell me you didn't understand
why I wanted you to come here?"
"Not a bit of it," said Ann Veronica stoutly.
"You didn't expect that I should kiss you?"
"How was I to know that a man would--would think it was
possible--when there was nothing--no love?"
"How did I know there wasn't love?"
That silenced her for a moment. "And what on earth," he said,
"do you think the world is made of? Why do you think I have been
doing things for you? The abstract pleasure of goodness? Are
you one of the members of that great white sisterhood that takes
and does not give? The good accepting woman! Do you really
suppose a girl is entitled to live at free quarters on any man
she meets without giving any return?"
"I thought," said Ann Veronica, "you were my friend."
"Friend! What have a man and a girl in common to make them
friends? Ask that lover of yours! And even with friends, would
you have it all Give on one side and all Take on the other? . . .
Does HE know I keep you? . . . You won't have a man's lips near
you, but you'll eat out of his hand fast enough."
Ann Veronica was stung to helpless anger.
"Mr. Ramage," she cried, "you are outrageous! You understand
nothing. You are--horrible. Will you let me go out of this
room?"
"No," cried Ramage; "hear me out! I'll have that satisfaction,
anyhow. You women, with your tricks of evasion, you're a sex of
swindlers. You have all the instinctive dexterity of parasites.
You make yourself charming for help. You climb by disappointing
men. This lover of yours--"
"He doesn't know!" cried Ann Veronica.
"Well, you know."
Ann Veronica could have wept with vexation. Indeed, a note of
weeping broke her voice for a moment as she burst out, "You know
as well as I do that money was a loan!"
"Loan!"
"You yourself called it a loan!"
"Euphuism. We both understood that."
"You shall have every penny of it back."
"I'll frame it--when I get it."
"I'll pay you if I have to work at shirt-making at threepence an
hour."
"You'll never pay me. You think you will. It's your way of
glossing over the ethical position. It's the sort of way a woman
always does gloss over her ethical positions. You're all
dependents--all of you. By instinct. Only you good ones--shirk.
You shirk a straightforward and decent return for what you get
from us--taking refuge in purity and delicacy and such-like when
it comes to payment."
"Mr. Ramage," said Ann Veronica, "I want to go--NOW!"
