jewels in the handle, that reposed in a drawer in her room.
She was to be a Corsair's Bride. "Fancy stabbing a man for jealousy!"
she thought. "You'd have to think how to get in between his bones."
She thought of her father, and with an effort dismissed him from her
mind.
She tried to imagine the collective effect of the Fadden Ball; she had
never seen a fancy-dress gathering in her life. Mr. Manning came into
her thoughts again, an unexpected, tall, dark, self-contained presence
at the Fadden. One might suppose him turning up; he knew a lot of clever
people, and some of them might belong to the class. What would he come
as?
Presently she roused herself with a guilty start from the task of
dressing and re-dressing Mr. Manning in fancy costume, as though he
was a doll. She had tried him as a Crusader, in which guise he seemed
plausible but heavy—"There IS something heavy about him; I wonder if
it's his mustache?"—and as a Hussar, which made him preposterous, and
as a Black Brunswicker, which was better, and as an Arab sheik. Also
she had tried him as a dragoman and as a gendarme, which seemed the most
suitable of all to his severely handsome, immobile profile. She felt
he would tell people the way, control traffic, and refuse admission
to public buildings with invincible correctness and the very finest
explicit feelings possible. For each costume she had devised a suitable
form of matrimonial refusal. "Oh, Lord!" she said, discovering what she
was up to, and dropped lightly from the fence upon the turf and went on
her way toward the crest.
"I shall never marry," said Ann Veronica, resolutely; "I'm not the sort.
That's why it's so important I should take my own line now."
Part 4
Ann Veronica's ideas of marriage were limited and unsystematic. Her
teachers and mistresses had done their best to stamp her mind with an
ineradicable persuasion that it was tremendously important, and on no
account to be thought about. Her first intimations of marriage as a fact
of extreme significance in a woman's life had come with the marriage of
Alice and the elopement of her second sister, Gwen.
These convulsions occurred when Ann Veronica was about twelve. There
was a gulf of eight years between her and the youngest of her brace of
sisters—an impassable gulf inhabited chaotically by two noisy brothers.
These sisters moved in a grown-up world inaccessible to Ann Veronica's
sympathies, and to a large extent remote from her curiosity. She got
into rows through meddling with their shoes and tennis-rackets, and had
moments of carefully concealed admiration when she was privileged to see
them just before her bedtime, rather radiantly dressed in white or pink
or amber and prepared to go out with her mother. She thought Alice a bit
of a sneak, an opinion her brothers shared, and Gwen rather a snatch
at meals. She saw nothing of their love-making, and came home from her
boarding-school in a state of decently suppressed curiosity for Alice's
wedding.
Her impressions of this cardinal ceremony were rich and confused,
complicated by a quite transitory passion that awakened no reciprocal
fire for a fat curly headed cousin in black velveteen and a lace
collar, who assisted as a page. She followed him about persistently, and
succeeded, after a brisk, unchivalrous struggle (in which he pinched and
asked her to "cheese it"), in kissing him among the raspberries behind
the greenhouse. Afterward her brother Roddy, also strange in velveteen,
feeling rather than knowing of this relationship, punched this Adonis's
head.
A marriage in the house proved to be exciting but extremely
disorganizing. Everything seemed designed to unhinge the mind and
make the cat wretched. All the furniture was moved, all the meals were
disarranged, and everybody, Ann Veronica included, appeared in new,
bright costumes. She had to wear cream and a brown sash and a short
frock and her hair down, and Gwen cream and a brown sash and a long
skirt and her hair up. And her mother,
She was to be a Corsair's Bride. "Fancy stabbing a man for jealousy!"
she thought. "You'd have to think how to get in between his bones."
She thought of her father, and with an effort dismissed him from her
mind.
She tried to imagine the collective effect of the Fadden Ball; she had
never seen a fancy-dress gathering in her life. Mr. Manning came into
her thoughts again, an unexpected, tall, dark, self-contained presence
at the Fadden. One might suppose him turning up; he knew a lot of clever
people, and some of them might belong to the class. What would he come
as?
Presently she roused herself with a guilty start from the task of
dressing and re-dressing Mr. Manning in fancy costume, as though he
was a doll. She had tried him as a Crusader, in which guise he seemed
plausible but heavy—"There IS something heavy about him; I wonder if
it's his mustache?"—and as a Hussar, which made him preposterous, and
as a Black Brunswicker, which was better, and as an Arab sheik. Also
she had tried him as a dragoman and as a gendarme, which seemed the most
suitable of all to his severely handsome, immobile profile. She felt
he would tell people the way, control traffic, and refuse admission
to public buildings with invincible correctness and the very finest
explicit feelings possible. For each costume she had devised a suitable
form of matrimonial refusal. "Oh, Lord!" she said, discovering what she
was up to, and dropped lightly from the fence upon the turf and went on
her way toward the crest.
"I shall never marry," said Ann Veronica, resolutely; "I'm not the sort.
That's why it's so important I should take my own line now."
Part 4
Ann Veronica's ideas of marriage were limited and unsystematic. Her
teachers and mistresses had done their best to stamp her mind with an
ineradicable persuasion that it was tremendously important, and on no
account to be thought about. Her first intimations of marriage as a fact
of extreme significance in a woman's life had come with the marriage of
Alice and the elopement of her second sister, Gwen.
These convulsions occurred when Ann Veronica was about twelve. There
was a gulf of eight years between her and the youngest of her brace of
sisters—an impassable gulf inhabited chaotically by two noisy brothers.
These sisters moved in a grown-up world inaccessible to Ann Veronica's
sympathies, and to a large extent remote from her curiosity. She got
into rows through meddling with their shoes and tennis-rackets, and had
moments of carefully concealed admiration when she was privileged to see
them just before her bedtime, rather radiantly dressed in white or pink
or amber and prepared to go out with her mother. She thought Alice a bit
of a sneak, an opinion her brothers shared, and Gwen rather a snatch
at meals. She saw nothing of their love-making, and came home from her
boarding-school in a state of decently suppressed curiosity for Alice's
wedding.
Her impressions of this cardinal ceremony were rich and confused,
complicated by a quite transitory passion that awakened no reciprocal
fire for a fat curly headed cousin in black velveteen and a lace
collar, who assisted as a page. She followed him about persistently, and
succeeded, after a brisk, unchivalrous struggle (in which he pinched and
asked her to "cheese it"), in kissing him among the raspberries behind
the greenhouse. Afterward her brother Roddy, also strange in velveteen,
feeling rather than knowing of this relationship, punched this Adonis's
head.
A marriage in the house proved to be exciting but extremely
disorganizing. Everything seemed designed to unhinge the mind and
make the cat wretched. All the furniture was moved, all the meals were
disarranged, and everybody, Ann Veronica included, appeared in new,
bright costumes. She had to wear cream and a brown sash and a short
frock and her hair down, and Gwen cream and a brown sash and a long
skirt and her hair up. And her mother,
Similar Books
