第42章

In the beginning of December Ann Veronica began to speculate privately upon the procedure of pawning. She had decided that she would begin with her pearl necklace. She spent a very disagreeable afternoon and evening--it was raining fast outside, and she had very unwisely left her soundest pair of boots in the boothole of her father's house in Morningside Park--thinking over the economic situation and planning a course of action. Her aunt had secretly sent on to Ann Veronica some new warm underclothing, a dozen pairs of stockings, and her last winter's jacket, but the dear lady had overlooked those boots.

These things illuminated her situation extremely. Finally she decided upon a step that had always seemed reasonable to her, but that hitherto she had, from motives too faint for her to formulate, refrained from taking. She resolved to go into the City to Ramage and ask for his advice. And next morning she attired herself with especial care and neatness, found his address in the Directory at a post-office, and went to him.

She had to wait some minutes in an outer office, wherein three young men of spirited costume and appearance regarded her with ill-concealed curiosity and admiration. Then Ramage appeared with effusion, and ushered her into his inner apartment. The three young men exchanged expressive glances.

The inner apartment was rather gracefully furnished with a thick, fine Turkish carpet, a good brass fender, a fine old bureau, and on the walls were engravings of two young girls' heads by Greuze, and of some modern picture of boys bathing in a sunlit pool.

"But this is a surprise!" said Ramage. "This is wonderful! I've been feeling that you had vanished from my world. Have you been away from Morningside Park?""I'm not interrupting you?"

"You are. Splendidly. Business exists for such interruptions.

There you are, the best client's chair."

Ann Veronica sat down, and Ramage's eager eyes feasted on her.

"I've been looking out for you," he said. "I confess it."She had not, she reflected, remembered how prominent his eyes were.

"I want some advice," said Ann Veronica.

"Yes?"

"You remember once, how we talked--at a gate on the Downs? We talked about how a girl might get an independent living.""Yes, yes."

"Well, you see, something has happened at home."She paused.

"Nothing has happened to Mr. Stanley?"

"I've fallen out with my father. It was about--a question of what I might do or might not do. He--In fact, he--he locked me in my room. Practically."Her breath left her for a moment.

"I SAY!" said Mr. Ramage.

"I wanted to go to an art-student ball of which he disapproved.""And why shouldn't you?"

"I felt that sort of thing couldn't go on. So I packed up and came to London next day.""To a friend?"

"To lodgings--alone."

"I say, you know, you have some pluck. You did it on your own?"Ann Veronica smiled. "Quite on my own," she said.

"It's magnificent!" He leaned back and regarded her with his head a little on one side. "By Jove!" he said, "there is something direct about you. I wonder if I should have locked you up if I'd been your father. Luckily I'm not. And you started out forthwith to fight the world and be a citizen on your own basis?"He came forward again and folded his hands under him on his desk.

"How has the world taken it?" he asked. "If I was the world Ithink I should have put down a crimson carpet, and asked you to say what you wanted, and generally walk over me. But the world didn't do that.""Not exactly."

"It presented a large impenetrable back, and went on thinking about something else.""It offered from fifteen to two-and-twenty shillings a week--for drudgery.""The world has no sense of what is due to youth and courage. It never has had.""Yes," said Ann Veronica. "But the thing is, I want a job.""Exactly! And so you came along to me. And you see, I don't turn my back, and I am looking at you and thinking about you from top to toe.""And what do you think I ought to do?"

"Exactly!" He lifted a paper-weight and dabbed it gently down again. "What ought you to do?""I've hunted up all sorts of things."

"The point to note is that fundamentally you don't want particularly to do it.""I don't understand."

"You want to be free and so forth, yes. But you don't particularly want to do the job that sets you free--for its own sake. I mean that it doesn't interest you in itself.""I suppose not."

"That's one of our differences. We men are like children. We can get absorbed in play, in games, in the business we do.

That's really why we do them sometimes rather well and get on.

But women--women as a rule don't throw themselves into things like that. As a matter of fact it isn't their affair. And as a natural consequence, they don't do so well, and they don't get on--and so the world doesn't pay them. They don't catch on to discursive interests, you see, because they are more serious, they are concentrated on the central reality of life, and a little impatient of its--its outer aspects. At least that, Ithink, is what makes a clever woman's independent career so much more difficult than a clever man's.""She doesn't develop a specialty." Ann Veronica was doing her best to follow him.

"She has one, that's why. Her specialty is the central thing in life, it is life itself, the warmth of life, sex--and love."He pronounced this with an air of profound conviction and with his eyes on Ann Veronica's face. He had an air of having told her a deep, personal secret. She winced as he thrust the fact at her, was about to answer, and checked herself. She colored faintly.

"That doesn't touch the question I asked you," she said. "It may be true, but it isn't quite what I have in mind.""Of course not," said Ramage, as one who rouses himself from deep preoccupations And he began to question her in a business-like way upon the steps she had taken and the inquiries she had made.

He displayed none of the airy optimism of their previous talk over the downland gate. He was helpful, but gravely dubious.