Ann Veronica. H. G. Wells
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out his hand to the papers in the pink tape.
“Well, I do. It’s just that I want to say. I want to be a human being; I want to learn about things and know about things, and not to be protected as something too precious for life, cooped up in one narrow little corner.”
“Cooped up!” he cried. “Did I stand in the way of your going to college? Have I ever prevented you going about at any reasonable hour? You’ve got a bicycle!”
“H’m!” said Ann Veronica, and then went on “I want to be taken seriously. A girl—at my age—is grown-up. I want to go on with my University work under proper conditions, now that I’ve done the Intermediate. It isn’t as though I haven’t done well. I’ve never muffed an exam yet. Roddy muffed two. …”
Her father interrupted. “Now look here, Veronica, let us be plain with each other. You are not going to that infidel Russell’s classes. You are not going anywhere but to the Tredgold College. I’ve thought that out, and you must make up your mind to it. All sorts of considerations come in. While you live in my house you must follow my ideas. You are wrong even about that man’s scientific position and his standard of work. There are men in the Lowndean who laugh at him—simply laugh at him. And I have seen work by his pupils myself that struck me as being—well, next door to shameful. There’s stories, too, about his demonstrator, Capes Something or other. The kind of man who isn’t content with his science, and writes articles in the monthly reviews. Anyhow, there it is: YOU ARE NOT GOING THERE.”
The girl received this intimation in silence, but the face that looked down upon the gas fire took an expression of obstinacy that brought out a hitherto latent resemblance between parent and child. When she spoke, her lips twitched.
“Then I suppose when I have graduated I am to come home?”
“It seems the natural course—”
“And do nothing?”
“There are plenty of things a girl can find to do at home.”
“Until some one takes pity on me and marries me?”
He raised his eyebrows in mild appeal. His foot tapped impatiently, and he took up the papers.
“Look here, father,” she said, with a change in her voice, “suppose I won’t stand it?”
He regarded her as though this was a new idea.
“Suppose, for example, I go to this dance?”
“You won’t.”
“Well”—her breath failed her for a moment. “How would you prevent it?” she asked.
“But I have forbidden it!” he said, raising his voice.
“Yes, I know. But suppose I go?”
“Now, Veronica! No, no. This won’t do. Understand me! I forbid it. I do not want to hear from you even the threat of disobedience.” He spoke loudly. “The thing is forbidden!”
“I am ready to give up anything that you show to be wrong.”
“You will give up anything I wish you to give up.”
They stared at each other through a pause, and both faces were flushed and obstinate.
She was trying by some wonderful, secret, and motionless gymnastics to restrain her tears. But when she spoke her lips quivered, and they came. “I mean to go to that dance!” she blubbered. “I mean to go to that dance! I meant to reason with you, but you won’t reason. You’re dogmatic.”
At the sight of her tears his expression changed to a mingling of triumph and concern. He stood up, apparently intending to put an arm about her, but she stepped back from him quickly. She produced a handkerchief, and with one sweep of this and a simultaneous gulp had abolished her fit of weeping. His voice now had lost its ironies.
“Now, Veronica,” he pleaded, “Veronica, this is most unreasonable. All we do is for your good. Neither your aunt nor I have any other thought but what is best for you.”
“Only you won’t let me live. Only you won’t let me exist!”
Mr. Stanley lost patience. He bullied frankly.
“What nonsense is this? What raving! My dear child, you DO live, you DO exist! You have this home. You have friends, acquaintances, social standing, brothers and sisters, every advantage! Instead of which, you want to go to some mixed classes or other and cut up rabbits and dance about at nights in wild costumes with casual art student friends and God knows who. That—that isn’t living! You are beside yourself. You don’t know what you ask nor what you say. You have neither reason nor logic. I am sorry to seem to hurt you, but all I say is for your good. You MUST not, you SHALL not go. On this I am resolved. I put my foot down like—like adamant. And a time will come, Veronica, mark my words, a time will come when you will bless me for my firmness to-night. It goes to my heart to disappoint you, but this thing must not be.”
He sidled toward her, but she recoiled from him, leaving him in possession of the hearth-rug.
“Well,” she said, “good-night, father.”
“What!” he asked; “not a kiss?”
She affected not to hear.
The door closed softly upon her. For a long time he remained standing before the fire, staring at the situation. Then he sat down and filled his pipe slowly and thoughtfully. …
“I don’t see what else I could have said,” he remarked.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
ANN VERONICA GATHERS POINTS OF VIEW
Part 1
“Are you coming to the Fadden Dance, Ann Veronica?” asked Constance Widgett.
Ann Veronica considered her answer. “I mean to,” she replied.
“You are making your dress?”
“Such as it is.”
They were in the elder Widgett girl’s bedroom; Hetty was laid up, she said, with a sprained ankle, and a miscellaneous party was gossiping away her tedium. It was a large, littered, self-forgetful apartment, decorated with unframed charcoal sketches by various incipient masters; and an open bookcase, surmounted by plaster casts and the half of a human skull, displayed an odd miscellany of books—Shaw and Swinburne, Tom Jones, Fabian Essays, Pope and Dumas, cheek by jowl. Constance Widgett’s abundant copper-red hair was bent down over some dimly remunerative work—stencilling in colors upon rough, white material—at a kitchen table she had dragged up-stairs for the purpose, while on her bed there was seated a slender lady of thirty or so in a dingy green dress, whom Constance had introduced with a wave of her hand as Miss Miniver. Miss Miniver looked out on the world through large emotional blue eyes that were further magnified by the glasses she wore, and her nose was pinched and pink, and her mouth was whimsically petulant. Her glasses moved quickly as her glance travelled from face to face. She seemed bursting with the desire to talk, and watching for her opportunity. On her lapel was an ivory button, bearing the words “Votes for Women.” Ann Veronica sat at the foot of the sufferer’s bed, while Teddy Widgett, being something of an athlete, occupied the only bed-room chair—a decadent piece, essentially