Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story Read online

  "Now," he said, quietly, "it's time we stopped this nonsense."

  Ann Veronica was about to reply, when he went on, with a still moredeadly quiet: "I am not here to bandy words with you. Let us have nomore of this humbug. You are to come home."

  "I thought I explained--"

  "I don't think you can have heard me," said her father; "I have told youto come home."

  "I thought I explained--"

  "Come home!"

  Ann Veronica shrugged her shoulders.

  "Very well," said her father.

  "I think this ends the business," he said, turning to his sister.

  "It's not for us to supplicate any more. She must learn wisdom--as Godpleases."

  "But, my dear Peter!" said Miss Stanley.

  "No," said her brother, conclusively, "it's not for a parent to go onpersuading a child."

  Miss Stanley rose and regarded Ann Veronica fixedly. The girl stood withher hands behind her back, sulky, resolute, and intelligent, a strandof her black hair over one eye and looking more than usuallydelicate-featured, and more than ever like an obdurate child.

  "She doesn't know."

  "She does."

  "I can't imagine what makes you fly out against everything like this,"said Miss Stanley to her niece.

  "What is the good of talking?" said her brother. "She must go her ownway. A man's children nowadays are not his own. That's the fact of thematter. Their minds are turned against him.... Rubbishy novels andpernicious rascals. We can't even protect them from themselves."

  An immense gulf seemed to open between father and daughter as he saidthese words.

  "I don't see," gasped Ann Veronica, "why parents and children...shouldn't be friends."

  "Friends!" said her father. "When we see you going through disobedienceto the devil! Come, Molly, she must go her own way. I've tried to use myauthority. And she defies me. What more is there to be said? She defiesme!"

  It was extraordinary. Ann Veronica felt suddenly an effect of tremendouspathos; she would have given anything to have been able to frame andmake some appeal, some utterance that should bridge this bottomlesschasm that had opened between her and her father, and she could findnothing whatever to say that was in the least sincere and appealing.

  "Father," she cried, "I have to live!"

  He misunderstood her. "That," he said, grimly, with his hand on thedoor-handle, "must be your own affair, unless you choose to live atMorningside Park."

  Miss Stanley turned to her. "Vee," she said, "come home. Before it istoo late."

  "Come, Molly," said Mr. Stanley, at the door.

  "Vee!" said Miss Stanley, "you hear what your father says!"

  Miss Stanley struggled with emotion. She made a curious movement towardher niece, then suddenly, convulsively, she dabbed down something lumpyon the table and turned to follow her brother. Ann Veronica stared for amoment in amazement at this dark-green object that clashed as it wasput down. It was a purse. She made a step forward. "Aunt!" she said, "Ican't--"

  Then she caught a wild appeal in her aunt's blue eye, halted, and thedoor clicked upon them.

  There was a pause, and then the front door slammed....

  Ann Veronica realized that she was alone with the world. And this timethe departure had a tremendous effect of finality. She had to resist animpulse of sheer terror, to run out after them and give in.

  "Gods," she said, at last, "I've done it this time!"

  "Well!" She took up the neat morocco purse, opened it, and examined thecontents.

  It contained three sovereigns, six and fourpence, two postage stamps, asmall key, and her aunt's return half ticket to Morningside Park.

  Part 5

  After the interview Ann Veronica considered herself formally cut offfrom home. If nothing else had clinched that, the purse had.

  Nevertheless there came a residuum of expostulations. Her brother Roddy,who was in the motor line, came to expostulate; her sister Alice wrote.And Mr. Manning called.

  Her sister Alice seemed to have developed a religious sense away therein Yorkshire, and made appeals that had no meaning for Ann Veronica'smind. She exhorted Ann Veronica not to become one of "those unsexedintellectuals, neither man nor woman."

  Ann Veronica meditated over that phrase. "That's HIM," said AnnVeronica, in sound, idiomatic English. "Poor old Alice!"

  Her brother Roddy came to her and demanded tea, and asked her to statea case. "Bit thick on the old man, isn't it?" said Roddy, who haddeveloped a bluff, straightforward style in the motor shop.

  "Mind my smoking?" said Roddy. "I don't see quite what your game is,Vee, but I suppose you've got a game on somewhere.

  "Rummy lot we are!" said Roddy. "Alice--Alice gone dotty, and all overkids. Gwen--I saw Gwen the other day, and the paint's thicker than ever.Jim is up to the neck in Mahatmas and Theosophy and Higher Thought androt--writes letters worse than Alice. And now YOU'RE on the war-path. Ibelieve I'm the only sane member of the family left. The G.V.'s as madas any of you, in spite of all his respectability; not a bit of himstraight anywhere, not one bit."

  "Straight?"

  "Not a bit of it! He's been out after eight per cent. since thebeginning. Eight per cent.! He'll come a cropper one of these days,if you ask me. He's been near it once or twice already. That's got hisnerves to rags. I suppose we're all human beings really, but what pricethe sacred Institution of the Family! Us as a bundle! Eh?... I don'thalf disagree with you, Vee, really; only thing is, I don't seehow you're going to pull it off. A home MAY be a sort of cage, butstill--it's a home. Gives you a right to hang on to the old man until hebusts--practically. Jolly hard life for a girl, getting a living. Not MYaffair."

  He asked questions and listened to her views for a time.

  "I'd chuck this lark right off if I were you, Vee," he said. "I'm fiveyears older than you, and no end wiser, being a man. What you're afteris too risky. It's a damned hard thing to do. It's all very handsomestarting out on your own, but it's too damned hard. That's my opinion,if you ask me. There's nothing a girl can do that isn't sweated to thebone. You square the G.V., and go home before you have to. That's myadvice. If you don't eat humble-pie now you may live to fare worselater. _I_ can't help you a cent. Life's hard enough nowadays for anunprotected male. Let alone a girl. You got to take the world as it is,and the only possible trade for a girl that isn't sweated is to get holdof a man and make him do it for her. It's no good flying out at that,Vee; _I_ didn't arrange it. It's Providence. That's how things are;that's the order of the world. Like appendicitis. It isn't pretty, butwe're made so. Rot, no doubt; but we can't alter it. You go home andlive on the G.V., and get some other man to live on as soon as possible.It isn't sentiment but it's horse sense. All this Woman-who-Diddery--nodamn good. After all, old P.--Providence, I mean--HAS arranged it sothat men will keep you, more or less. He made the universe on thoselines. You've got to take what you can get."

  That was the quintessence of her brother Roddy.

  He played variations on this theme for the better part of an hour.

  "You go home," he said, at parting; "you go home. It's all very fine andall that, Vee, this freedom, but it isn't going to work. The world isn'tready for girls to start out on their own yet; that's the plain fact ofthe case. Babies and females have got to keep hold of somebody or gounder--anyhow, for the next few generations. You go home and wait acentury, Vee, and then try again. Then you may have a bit of a chance.Now you haven't the ghost of one--not if you play the game fair."

  Part 6

  It was remarkable to Ann Veronica how completely Mr. Manning, in hisentirely different dialect, indorsed her brother Roddy's view of things.He came along, he said, just to call, with large, loud apologies,radiantly kind and good. Miss Stanley, it was manifest, had given himAnn Veronica's address. The kindly faced landlady had failed to catchhis name, and said he was a tall, handsome gentleman with a great blackmustache. Ann Veronica, with a sigh at the cost of hospitality, made ahasty negotiation for an extra tea and for a
fire in the ground-floorapartment, and preened herself carefully for the interview. In thelittle apartment, under the gas chandelier, his inches and his stoopwere certainly very effective. In the bad light he looked at oncemilitary and sentimental and studious, like one of Ouida's guardsmenrevised by Mr. Haldane and the London School of Economics and finishedin the Keltic school.

  "It's unforgivable of me to call, Miss Stanley," he said, shaking handsin a peculiar, high, fashionable manner; "but you know you said we mightbe friends."

  "It's dreadful for you to be here," he said, indicating the yellowpresence of the first fog of the year without, "but your aunt told mesomething of what had happened. It's just like your Splendid Pride to doit. Quite!"

  He sat in the arm-chair and took tea, and consumed several of theextra cakes which she had sent out for and talked to her and expressedhimself, looking very earnestly at her with his deep-set eyes, andcarefully avoiding any crumbs on his mustache the while. Ann Veronicasat firelit by her tea-tray with, quite unconsciously, the air of anexpert hostess.

  "But how is it all going to end?" said Mr. Manning.

  "Your father, of course," he said, "must come to realize just howSplendid you are! He doesn't understand. I've seen him, and he doesn'ta bit understand. _I_ didn't understand before that letter. It makes mewant to be just everything I CAN be to you. You're like some splendidPrincess in Exile in these Dreadful Dingy apartments!"

  "I'm afraid I'm anything but a Princess when it comes to earning asalary," said Ann Veronica. "But frankly, I mean to fight this throughif I possibly can."

  "My God!" said Manning, in a stage-aside. "Earning a salary!"

  "You're like a Princess in Exile!" he repeated, overruling her. "Youcome into these sordid surroundings--you mustn't mind my calling themsordid--and it makes them seem as though they didn't matter.... Idon't think they do matter. I don't think any surroundings could throw ashadow on you."

  Ann Veronica felt a slight embarrassment. "Won't you have some more tea,Mr. Manning?" she asked.

  "You know--," said Mr. Manning, relinquishing his cup without answeringher question, "when I hear you talk of earning a living, it's as if Iheard of an archangel going on the Stock Exchange--or Christ sellingdoves.... Forgive my daring. I couldn't help the thought."

  "It's a very good image," said Ann Veronica.

  "I knew you wouldn't mind."

  "But does it correspond with the facts of the case? You know, Mr.Manning, all this sort of thing is very well as sentiment, but does itcorrespond with the realities? Are women truly such angelic things andmen so chivalrous? You men have, I know, meant to make us Queens andGoddesses, but in practice--well, look, for example, at the stream ofgirls one meets going to work of a morning, round-shouldered, cheap, andunderfed! They aren't queens, and no one is treating them as queens.And look, again, at the women one finds letting lodgings.... I waslooking for rooms last week. It got on my nerves--the women I saw. Worsethan any man. Everywhere I went and rapped at a door I found behind itanother dreadful dingy woman--another fallen queen, I suppose--dingierthan the last, dirty, you know, in grain. Their poor hands!"

  "I know," said Mr. Manning, with entirely suitable emotion.

  "And think of the ordinary wives and mothers, with their anxiety, theirlimitations, their swarms of children!"

  Mr. Manning displayed distress. He fended these things off from him withthe rump of his fourth piece of cake. "I know that our social order isdreadful enough," he said, "and sacrifices all that is best and mostbeautiful in life. I don't defend it."

  "And besides, when it comes to the idea of queens," Ann Veronica wenton, "there's twenty-one and a half million women to twenty million men.Suppose our proper place is a shrine. Still, that leaves over a millionshrines short, not reckoning widows who re-marry. And more boys die thangirls, so that the real disproportion among adults is even greater."

  "I know," said Mr Manning, "I know these Dreadful Statistics. I knowthere's a sort of right in your impatience at the slowness of Progress.But tell me one thing I don't understand--tell me one thing: How can youhelp it by coming down into the battle and the mire? That's the thingthat concerns me."

  "Oh, I'm not trying to help it," said Ann Veronica. "I'm only arguingagainst your position of what a woman should be, and trying to getit clear in my own mind. I'm in this apartment and looking for workbecause--Well, what else can I do, when my father practically locks meup?"

  "I know," said Mr. Manning, "I know. Don't think I can't sympathize andunderstand. Still, here we are in this dingy, foggy city. Ye gods! whata wilderness it is! Every one trying to get the better of every one,every one regardless of every one--it's one of those days when every onebumps against you--every one pouring coal smoke into the air and makingconfusion worse confounded, motor omnibuses clattering and smelling,a horse down in the Tottenham Court Road, an old woman at the cornercoughing dreadfully--all the painful sights of a great city, and hereyou come into it to take your chances. It's too valiant, Miss Stanley,too valiant altogether!"

  Ann Veronica meditated. She had had two days of employment-seeking now."I wonder if it is."

  "It isn't," said Mr. Manning, "that I mind Courage in a Woman--I loveand admire Courage. What could be more splendid than a beautiful girlfacing a great, glorious tiger? Una and the Lion again, and all that!But this isn't that sort of thing; this is just a great, ugly, endlesswilderness of selfish, sweating, vulgar competition!"

  "That you want to keep me out of?"

  "Exactly!" said Mr. Manning.

  "In a sort of beautiful garden-close--wearing lovely dresses and pickingbeautiful flowers?"

  "Ah! If one could!"

  "While those other girls trudge to business and those other women letlodgings. And in reality even that magic garden-close resolves itselfinto a villa at Morningside Park and my father being more and morecross and overbearing at meals--and a general feeling of insecurity andfutility."

  Mr. Manning relinquished his cup, and looked meaningly at Ann Veronica."There," he said, "you don't treat me fairly, Miss Stanley. Mygarden-close would be a better thing than that."

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

  IDEALS AND A REALITY

  Part 1

  And now for some weeks Ann Veronica was to test her market value in theworld. She went about in a negligent November London that had becomevery dark and foggy and greasy and forbidding indeed, and tried to findthat modest but independent employment she had so rashly assumed. Shewent about, intent-looking and self-possessed, trim and fine, concealingher emotions whatever they were, as the realities of her position openedout before her. Her little bed-sitting-room was like a lair, and shewent out from it into this vast, dun world, with its smoke-gray houses,its glaring streets of shops, its dark streets of homes, its orange-litwindows, under skies of dull copper or muddy gray or black, much as ananimal goes out to seek food. She would come back and write letters,carefully planned and written letters, or read some book she had fetchedfrom Mudie's--she had invested a half-guinea with Mudie's--or sit overher fire and think.

  Slowly and reluctantly she came to realize that Vivie Warren was whatis called an "ideal." There were no such girls and no such positions. Nowork that offered was at all of the quality she had vaguely postulatedfor herself. With such qualifications as she possessed, two chiefchannels of employment lay open, and neither attracted her, neitherseemed really to offer a conclusive escape from that subjection tomankind against which, in the person of her father, she was rebelling.One main avenue was for her to become a sort of salaried accessory wifeor mother, to be a governess or an assistant schoolmistress, or a veryhigh type of governess-nurse. The other was to go into business--into aphotographer's reception-room, for example, or a costumer's or hat-shop.The first set of occupations seemed to her to be altogether too domesticand restricted; for the latter she was dreadfully handicapped by herwant of experience. And also she didn't like them. She didn't like theshops, she didn't like the other women's faces; she thought thesmirking men in frock-coats
who dominated these establishments themost intolerable persons she had ever had to face. One called her verydistinctly "My dear!"

  Two secretarial posts did indeed seem to offer themselves in which, atleast, there was no specific exclusion of womanhood; one was undera Radical Member of Parliament, and the other under a Harley Streetdoctor, and both men declined her proffered services with the utmostcivility and admiration and terror. There was also a curious interviewat a big hotel with a middle-aged, white-powdered woman, all coveredwith jewels and reeking of scent, who wanted a Companion. She did notthink Ann Veronica would do as her companion.

  And nearly all these things were fearfully ill-paid. They carried nomore than bare subsistence wages; and they demanded all her time andenergy. She had heard of women journalists, women writers, and soforth; but she was not even admitted to the presence of the editors shedemanded to see, and by no means sure that if she had been she couldhave done any work they might have given her. One day she desisted fromher search and went unexpectedly to the Tredgold College. Her placewas not filled; she had been simply noted as absent, and she did acomforting day of admirable dissection upon the tortoise. She was sointerested, and this was such a relief from the trudging anxiety of hersearch for work, that she went on for a whole week as if she was stillliving at home. Then a third secretarial opening occurred and renewedher hopes again: a position as amanuensis--with which some of thelighter duties of a nurse were combined--to an infirm gentleman of meansliving at Twickenham, and engaged upon a great literary research toprove that the "Faery Queen" was really a treatise upon molecularchemistry written in a peculiar and picturesquely handled cipher.