THE COLLAPSE OF THE PENITENT
Part 1
Spring had held back that year until the dawn of May, and then spring and summer came with a rush together. Two days after this conversation between Manning and Ann Veronica, Capes came into the laboratory at lunch-time and found her alone there standing by the open window, and not even pretending to be doing anything.
He came in with his hands in his trousers pockets and a general air of depression in his bearing. He was engaged in detesting Manning and himself in almost equal measure. His face brightened at the sight of her, and he came toward her.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Nothing," said Ann Veronica, and stared over her shoulder out of the window.
"So am I. . . . Lassitude?"
"I suppose so."
"_I_ can't work."
"Nor I," said Ann Veronica.
Pause.
"It's the spring," he said. "It's the warming up of the year, the coming of the light mornings, the way in which everything begins to run about and begin new things. Work becomes distasteful; one thinks of holidays. This year--I've got it badly. I want to get away. I've never wanted to get away so much.""Where do you go?"
"Oh!--Alps."
"Climbing?"
"Yes."
"That's rather a fine sort of holiday!"
He made no answer for three or four seconds.
"Yes," he said, "I want to get away. I feel at moments as though I could bolt for it. . . . Silly, isn't it? Undisciplined."He went to the window and fidgeted with the blind, looking out to where the tree-tops of Regent's Park showed distantly over the houses. He turned round toward her and found her looking at him and standing very still.
"It's the stir of spring," he said.
"I believe it is."
She glanced out of the window, and the distant trees were a froth of hard spring green and almond blossom. She formed a wild resolution, and, lest she should waver from it, she set about at once to realize it. "I've broken off my engagement," she said, in a matter-of-fact tone, and found her heart thumping in her neck. He moved slightly, and she went on, with a slight catching of her breath: "It's a bother and disturbance, but you see--"She had to go through with it now, because she could think of nothing but her preconceived words. Her voice was weak and flat.
"I've fallen in love."
He never helped her by a sound.
"I--I didn't love the man I was engaged to," she said. She met his eyes for a moment, and could not interpret their expression.
They struck her as cold and indifferent.
Her heart failed her and her resolution became water. She remained standing stiffly, unable even to move. She could not look at him through an interval that seemed to her a vast gulf of time. But she felt his lax figure become rigid.
At last his voice came to release her tension.
"I thought you weren't keeping up to the mark. You-- It's jolly of you to confide in me. Still--" Then, with incredible and obviously deliberate stupidity, and a voice as flat as her own, he asked, "Who is the man?"Her spirit raged within her at the dumbness, the paralysis that had fallen upon her. Grace, confidence, the power of movement even, seemed gone from her. A fever of shame ran through her being. Horrible doubts assailed her. She sat down awkwardly and helplessly on one of the little stools by her table and covered her face with her hands.
"Can't you SEE how things are?" she said.
Part 2
Before Capes could answer her in any way the door at the end of the laboratory opened noisily and Miss Klegg appeared. She went to her own table and sat down. At the sound of the door Ann Veronica uncovered a tearless face, and with one swift movement assumed a conversational attitude. Things hung for a moment in an awkward silence.
"You see," said Ann Veronica, staring before her at the window-sash, "that's the form my question takes at the present time."Capes had not quite the same power of recovery. He stood with his hands in his pockets looking at Miss Klegg's back. His face was white. "It's--it's a difficult question." He appeared to be paralyzed by abstruse acoustic calculations. Then, very awkwardly, he took a stool and placed it at the end of Ann Veronica's table, and sat down. He glanced at Miss Klegg again, and spoke quickly and furtively, with eager eyes on Ann Veronica's face.
"I had a faint idea once that things were as you say they are, but the affair of the ring--of the unexpected ring--puzzled me.
Wish SHE"--he indicated Miss Klegg's back with a nod--"was at the bottom of the sea. . . . I would like to talk to you about this--soon. If you don't think it would be a social outrage, perhaps I might walk with you to your railway station.""I will wait," said Ann Veronica, still not looking at him, "and we will go into Regent's Park. No--you shall come with me to Waterloo.""Right!" he said, and hesitated, and then got up and went into the preparation-room.
Part 3
For a time they walked in silence through the back streets that lead southward from the College. Capes bore a face of infinite perplexity.
"The thing I feel most disposed to say, Miss Stanley," he began at last, "is that this is very sudden.""It's been coming on since first I came into the laboratory.""What do you want?" he asked, bluntly.
"You!" said Ann Veronica.
The sense of publicity, of people coming and going about them, kept them both unemotional. And neither had any of that theatricality which demands gestures and facial expression.
"I suppose you know I like you tremendously?" he pursued.
"You told me that in the Zoological Gardens."She found her muscles a-tremble. But there was nothing in her bearing that a passer-by would have noted, to tell of the excitement that possessed her.
"I"--he seemed to have a difficulty with the word--"I love you.
I've told you that practically already. But I can give it its name now. You needn't be in any doubt about it. I tell you that because it puts us on a footing. . . ."They went on for a time without another word.
"But don't you know about me?" he said at last.
"Something. Not much."
