Ann Veronica. H. G. Wells
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“I want a vote,” said Ann Veronica.
“Really!” said Mr. Manning, in an earnest voice, and waved his hand to the alley of mauve and purple. “I wish you didn’t.”
“Why not?” She turned on him.
“It jars. It jars with all my ideas. Women to me are something so serene, so fine, so feminine, and politics are so dusty, so sordid, so wearisome and quarrelsome. It seems to me a woman’s duty to be beautiful, to BE beautiful and to behave beautifully, and politics are by their very nature ugly. You see, I—I am a woman worshipper. I worshipped women long before I found any woman I might ever hope to worship. Long ago. And—the idea of committees, of hustings, of agenda-papers!”
“I don’t see why the responsibility of beauty should all be shifted on to the women,” said Ann Veronica, suddenly remembering a part of Miss Miniver’s discourse.
“It rests with them by the nature of things. Why should you who are queens come down from your thrones? If you can afford it, WE can’t. We can’t afford to turn our women, our Madonnas, our Saint Catherines, our Mona Lisas, our goddesses and angels and fairy princesses, into a sort of man. Womanhood is sacred to me. My politics in that matter wouldn’t be to give women votes. I’m a Socialist, Miss Stanley.”
“WHAT?” said Ann Veronica, startled.
“A Socialist of the order of John Ruskin. Indeed I am! I would make this country a collective monarchy, and all the girls and women in it should be the Queen. They should never come into contact with politics or economics—or any of those things. And we men would work for them and serve them in loyal fealty.”
“That’s rather the theory now,” said Ann Veronica. “Only so many men neglect their duties.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Manning, with an air of emerging from an elaborate demonstration, “and so each of us must, under existing conditions, being chivalrous indeed to all women, choose for himself his own particular and worshipful queen.”
“So far as one can judge from the system in practice,” said Ann Veronica, speaking in a loud, common-sense, detached tone, and beginning to walk slowly but resolutely toward the lawn, “it doesn’t work.”
“Every one must be experimental,” said Mr. Manning, and glanced round hastily for further horticultural points of interest in secluded corners. None presented themselves to save him from that return.
“That’s all very well when one isn’t the material experimented upon,” Ann Veronica had remarked.
“Women would—they DO have far more power than they think, as influences, as inspirations.”
Ann Veronica said nothing in answer to that.
“You say you want a vote,” said Mr. Manning, abruptly.
“I think I ought to have one.”
“Well, I have two,” said Mr. Manning—“one in Oxford University and one in Kensington.” He caught up and went on with a sort of clumsiness: “Let me present you with them and be your voter.”
There followed an instant’s pause, and then Ann Veronica had decided to misunderstand.
“I want a vote for myself,” she said. “I don’t see why I should take it second-hand. Though it’s very kind of you. And rather unscrupulous. Have you ever voted, Mr. Manning? I suppose there’s a sort of place like a ticket-office. And a ballot-box—” Her face assumed an expression of intellectual conflict. “What is a ballot-box like, exactly?” she asked, as though it was very important to her.
Mr. Manning regarded her thoughtfully for a moment and stroked his mustache. “A ballot-box, you know,” he said, “is very largely just a box.” He made quite a long pause, and went on, with a sigh: “You have a voting paper given you—”
They emerged into the publicity of the lawn.
“Yes,” said Ann Veronica, “yes,” to his explanation, and saw across the lawn Lady Palsworthy talking to her aunt, and both of them staring frankly across at her and Mr. Manning as they talked.
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