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 inde-
pendent 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!”
