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.