H. Wells - Ann Veronica

disentangled the vicar's aunt.

"I love this warm end of summer more than words can tell," he

said. "I've tried to make words tell it. It's no good. Mild,

you know, and boon. You want music."

Ann Veronica agreed, and tried to make the manner of her assent

cover a possible knowledge of a probable poem.

"Splendid it must be to be a composer. Glorious! The Pastoral.

Beethoven; he's the best of them. Don't you think? Tum, tay,

tum, tay."

Ann Veronica did.

"What have you been doing since our last talk? Still cutting up

rabbits and probing into things? I've often thought of that talk

of ours--often."

He did not appear to require any answer to his question.

"Often," he repeated, a little heavily.

"Beautiful these autumn flowers are," said Ann Veronica, in a

wide, uncomfortable pause.

"Do come and see the Michaelmas daisies at the end of the

garden," said Mr. Manning, "they're a dream." And Ann Veronica

found herself being carried off to an isolation even remoter and

more conspicuous than the corner of the lawn, with the whole of

the party aiding and abetting and glancing at them. "Damn!" said

Ann Veronica to herself, rousing herself for a conflict.

Mr. Manning told her he loved beauty, and extorted a similar

admission from her; he then expatiated upon his own love of

beauty. He said that for him beauty justified life, that he

could not imagine a good action that was not a beautiful one nor

any beautiful thing that could be altogether bad. Ann Veronica

hazarded an opinion that as a matter of history some very

beautiful people had, to a quite considerable extent, been bad,

but Mr. Manning questioned whether when they were bad they were

really beautiful or when they were beautiful bad. Ann Veronica

found her attention wandering a little as he told her that he was

not ashamed to feel almost slavish in the presence of really

beautiful people, and then they came to the Michaelmas daisies.

They were really very fine and abundant, with a blaze of

perennial sunflowers behind them.

"They make me want to shout," said Mr. Manning, with a sweep of

the arm.

"They're very good this year," said Ann Veronica, avoiding

controversial matter.

"Either I want to shout," said Mr. Manning, "when I see beautiful

things, or else I want to weep." He paused and looked at her,

and said, with a sudden drop into a confidential undertone, "Or

else I want to pray."

"When is Michaelmas Day?" said Ann Veronica, a little abruptly.

"Heaven knows!" said Mr. Manning; and added, "the twenty-ninth."

"I thought it was earlier," said Ann Veronica. "Wasn't

Parliament to reassemble?"

He put out his hand and leaned against a tree and crossed his

legs. "You're not interested in politics?" he asked, almost with

a note of protest.

"Well, rather," said Ann Veronica. "It seems-- It's

interesting."

"Do you think so? I find my interest in that sort of thing

decline and decline."

"I'm curious. Perhaps because I don't know. I suppose an

intelligent person OUGHT to be interested in political affairs.

They concern us all."

"I wonder," said Mr. Manning, with a baffling smile.

"I think they do. After all, they're history in the making."

"A sort of history," said Mr. Manning; and repeated, "a sort of

history. But look at these glorious daisies!"

"But don't you think political questions ARE important?"

"I don't think they are this afternoon, and I don't think they

are to you."

Ann Veronica turned her back on the Michaelmas daisies, and faced

toward the house with an air of a duty completed.

"Just come to that seat now you are here, Miss Stanley, and look

down the other path; there's a vista of just the common sort.

Better even than these."

Ann Veronica walked as he indicated.

"You know I'm old-fashioned, Miss Stanley. I don't think women

need to trouble about political questions."

"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