H. Wells - Ann Veronica

Peter?' I asked. He was standing up with the telegram crumpled

in his hand. He used a most awful word! Then he said, 'It's Ann

Veronica gone to join her sister!' 'Gone!' I said. 'Gone!' he

said. 'Read that,' and threw the telegram at me, so that it went

into the tureen. He swore when I tried to get it out with the

ladle, and told me what it said. Then he sat down again in a

chair and said that people who wrote novels ought to be strung

up. It was as much as I could do to prevent him flying out of

the house there and then and coming after you. Never since I was

a girl have I seen your father so moved. 'Oh! little Vee!' he

cried, 'little Vee!' and put his face between his hands and sat

still for a long time before he broke out again."

Ann Veronica had remained standing while her aunt spoke.

"Do you mean, aunt," she asked, "that my father thought I had

gone off--with some man?"

"What else COULD he think? Would any one DREAM you would be so

mad as to go off alone?"

"After--after what had happened the night before?"

"Oh, why raise up old scores? If you could see him this morning,

his poor face as white as a sheet and all cut about with shaving!

He was for coming up by the very first train and looking for you,

but I said to him, 'Wait for the letters,' and there, sure

enough, was yours. He could hardly open the envelope, he trembled

so. Then he threw the letter at me. 'Go and fetch her home,' he

said; 'it isn't what we thought! It's just a practical joke of

hers.' And with that he went off to the City, stern and silent,

leaving his bacon on his plate--a great slice of bacon hardly

touched. No breakfast, he's had no dinner, hardly a mouthful of

soup--since yesterday at tea."

She stopped. Aunt and niece regarded each other silently.

"You must come home to him at once," said Miss Stanley.

Ann Veronica looked down at her fingers on the claret-colored

table-cloth. Her aunt had summoned up an altogether too vivid

picture of her father as the masterful man, overbearing,

emphatic, sentimental, noisy, aimless. Why on earth couldn't he

leave her to grow in her own way? Her pride rose at the bare

thought of return

"I don't think I CAN do that," she said. She looked up and said,

a little breathlessly, "I'm sorry, aunt, but I don't think I

can."

Part 2

Then it was the expostulations really began.

From first to last, on this occasion, her aunt expostulated for

about two hours. "But, my dear," she began, "it is Impossible!

It is quite out of the Question. You simply can't." And to that,

through vast rhetorical meanderings, she clung. It reached her

only slowly that Ann Veronica was standing to her resolution.

"How will you live?" she appealed. "Think of what people will

say!" That became a refrain. "Think of what Lady Palsworthy

will say! Think of what"--So-and-so--"will say! What are we to

tell people?

"Besides, what am I to tell your father?"

At first it had not been at all clear to Ann Veronica that she

would refuse to return home; she had had some dream of a

capitulation that should leave her an enlarged and defined

freedom, but as her aunt put this aspect and that of her flight

to her, as she wandered illogically and inconsistently from one

urgent consideration to another, as she mingled assurances and

aspects and emotions, it became clearer and clearer to the girl

that there could be little or no change in the position of things

if she returned. "And what will Mr. Manning think?" said her

aunt.

"I don't care what any one thinks," said Ann Veronica.

"I can't imagine what has come over you," said her aunt. "I

can't conceive what you want. You foolish girl!"

Ann Veronica took that in silence. At the back of her mind, dim

and yet disconcerting, was the perception that she herself did

not know what she wanted. And yet she knew it was not fair to

call her a foolish girl.

"Don't you care for Mr. Manning?" said her aunt.

"I don't see what he has to do with my coming to London?"

"He--he worships the ground you tread on. You don't deserve it,

but he does. Or at least he did the day before yesterday. And

here you are!"

Her aunt opened all the fingers of her gloved hand in a

rhetorical gesture. "It seems to me all madness--madness! Just

because your father--wouldn't let you disobey him!"

Part 3

In the afternoon the task of expostulation was taken up by Mr.

Stanley in person. Her father's ideas of expostulation were a

little harsh and forcible, and over the claret-colored

table-cloth and under the gas chandelier, with his hat and

umbrella between them like the mace in Parliament, he and his

daughter contrived to have a violent quarrel. She had intended

to be quietly dignified, but he was in a smouldering rage from

the beginning, and began by assuming, which alone was more than

flesh and blood could stand, that the insurrection was over and

that she was coming home submissively. In his desire to be

emphatic and to avenge himself for his over-night distresses, he

speedily became brutal, more brutal than she had ever known him

before.

"A nice time of anxiety you've given me, young lady," he said, as

he entered the room. "I hope you're satisfied."

She was frightened--his anger always did frighten her--and in her

resolve to conceal her fright she carried a queen-like dignity to

what she felt even at the time was a preposterous pitch. She

said she hoped she had not distressed him by the course she had

felt obliged to take, and he told her not to be a fool. She

tried to keep her side up by declaring that he had put her into

an impossible position, and he replied by shouting, "Nonsense!

Nonsense! Any father in my place would have done what I did."

Then he went on to say: "Well, you've had your little adventure,

and I hope now you've had enough of it. So go up-stairs and get

your things together while I look out for a hansom."

To which the only possible reply seemed to be, "I'm not coming

home."

"Not coming home!"

"No!" And, in spite of her resolve to be a Person, Ann Veronica

began to weep with terror at herself. Apparently she was always

doomed to weep when she talked to her father. But he was always

forcing her to say and do such unexpectedly conclusive things.

She feared he might take her tears as a sign of weakness. So she

said: "I won't come home. I'd rather starve!"

For a moment the conversation hung upon that declaration. Then

Mr. Stanley, putting his hands on the table in the manner rather

of a barrister than a solicitor, and regarding her balefully

through his glasses with quite undisguised animosity, asked, "And

may I presume to inquire, then, what you mean to do?--how do you

propose to live?"

"I shall live," sobbed Ann Veronica. "You needn't be anxious

about that! I shall contrive to live."

"But I AM anxious," said Mr. Stanley, "I am anxious. Do you

think it's nothing to me to have my daughter running about London

looking for odd jobs and disgracing herself?"

"Sha'n't get odd jobs," said Ann Veronica, wiping her eyes.

And from that point they went on to a thoroughly embittering

wrangle. Mr. Stanley used his authority, and commanded Ann

Veronica to come home, to which, of course, she said she

wouldn't; and then he warned her not to defy him, warned her very

solemnly, and then commanded her again. He then said that if she