H. Wells - Ann Veronica

had finally put aside The Lilac Sunbonnet, gone into his study,

lit the gas fire, and written the letter that had brought these

unsatisfactory relations to a head.

Part 4

MY DEAR VEE, he wrote.

These daughters! He gnawed his pen and reflected, tore the sheet

up, and began again.

"MY DEAR VERONICA,--Your aunt tells me you have involved yourself

in some arrangement with the Widgett girls about a Fancy Dress

Ball in London. I gather you wish to go up in some fantastic

get-up, wrapped about in your opera cloak, and that after the

festivities you propose to stay with these friends of yours, and

without any older people in your party, at an hotel. Now I am

sorry to cross you in anything you have set your heart upon, but

I regret to say--"

"H'm," he reflected, and crossed out the last four words.

"--but this cannot be."

"No," he said, and tried again: "but I must tell you quite

definitely that I feel it to be my duty to forbid any such

exploit."

"Damn!" he remarked at the defaced letter; and, taking a fresh

sheet, he recopied what he had written. A certain irritation

crept into his manner as he did so.

"I regret that you should ever have proposed it," he went on.

He meditated, and began a new paragraph.

"The fact of it is, and this absurd project of yours only brings

it to a head, you have begun to get hold of some very queer ideas

about what a young lady in your position may or may not venture

to do. I do not think you quite understand my ideals or what is

becoming as between father and daughter. Your attitude to me--"

He fell into a brown study. It was so difficult to put

precisely.

"--and your aunt--"

For a time he searched for the mot juste. Then he went on:

"--and, indeed, to most of the established things in life is,

frankly, unsatisfactory. You are restless, aggressive, critical

with all the crude unthinking criticism of youth. You have no

grasp upon the essential facts of life (I pray God you never

may), and in your rash ignorance you are prepared to dash into

positions that may end in lifelong regret. The life of a young

girl is set about with prowling pitfalls."

He was arrested for a moment by an indistinct picture of Veronica

reading this last sentence. But he was now too deeply moved to

trace a certain unsatisfactoriness to its source in a mixture of

metaphors. "Well," he said, argumentatively, "it IS. That's all

about it. It's time she knew."

"The life of a young girl is set about with prowling pitfalls,

from which she must be shielded at all costs."

His lips tightened, and he frowned with solemn resolution.

"So long as I am your father, so long as your life is entrusted

to my care, I feel bound by every obligation to use my authority

to check this odd disposition of yours toward extravagant

enterprises. A day will come when you will thank me. It is not,

my dear Veronica, that I think there is any harm in you; there is

not. But a girl is soiled not only by evil but by the proximity

of evil, and a reputation for rashness may do her as serious an

injury as really reprehensible conduct. So do please believe

that in this matter I am acting for the best."

He signed his name and reflected. Then he opened the study door

and called "Mollie!" and returned to assume an attitude of

authority on the hearthrug, before the blue flames and orange

glow of the gas fire.

His sister appeared.

She was dressed in one of those complicated dresses that are all

lace and work and confused patternings of black and purple and

cream about the body, and she was in many ways a younger feminine

version of the same theme as himself. She had the same sharp

nose--which, indeed, only Ann Veronica, of all the family, had

escaped. She carried herself well, whereas her brother slouched,

and there was a certain aristocratic dignity about her that she

had acquired through her long engagement to a curate of family, a

scion of the Wiltshire Edmondshaws. He had died before they

married, and when her brother became a widower she had come to

his assistance and taken over much of the care of his youngest

daughter. But from the first her rather old-fashioned conception

of life had jarred with the suburban atmosphere, the High School

spirit and the memories of the light and little Mrs. Stanley,

whose family had been by any reckoning inconsiderable--to use the

kindliest term. Miss Stanley had determined from the outset to

have the warmest affection for her youngest niece and to be a

second mother in her life--a second and a better one; but she had

found much to battle with, and there was much in herself that Ann

Veronica failed to understand. She came in now with an air of

reserved solicitude.

Mr. Stanley pointed to the letter with a pipe he had drawn from

his jacket pocket. "What do you think of that?" he asked.

She took it up in her many-ringed hands and read it judicially.

He filled his pipe slowly.

"Yes," she said at last, "it is firm and affectionate."

"I could have said more."

"You seem to have said just what had to be said. It seems to me

exactly what is wanted. She really must not go to that affair."

She paused, and he waited for her to speak.

"I don't think she quite sees the harm of those people or the

sort of life to which they would draw her," she said. "They

would spoil every chance."

"She has chances?" he said, helping her out.

"She is an extremely attractive girl," she said; and added, "to

some people. Of course, one doesn't like to talk about things

until there are things to talk about."

"All the more reason why she shouldn't get herself talked about."

"That is exactly what I feel."

Mr. Stanley took the letter and stood with it in his hand

thoughtfully for a time. "I'd give anything," he remarked, "to

see our little Vee happily and comfortably married."

He gave the note to the parlormaid the next morning in an

inadvertent, casual manner just as he was leaving the house to

catch his London train. When Ann Veronica got it she had at

first a wild, fantastic idea that it contained a tip.

Part 5

Ann Veronica's resolve to have things out with her father was not

accomplished without difficulty.

He was not due from the City until about six, and so she went and

played Badminton with the Widgett girls until dinner-time. The

atmosphere at dinner was not propitious. Her aunt was blandly

amiable above a certain tremulous undertow, and talked as if to a

caller about the alarming spread of marigolds that summer at the

end of the garden, a sort of Yellow Peril to all the smaller

hardy annuals, while her father brought some papers to table and

presented himself as preoccupied with them. "It really seems as

if we shall have to put down marigolds altogether next year,"

Aunt Molly repeated three times, "and do away with marguerites.

They seed beyond all reason." Elizabeth, the parlormaid, kept

coming in to hand vegetables whenever there seemed a chance of

Ann Veronica asking for an interview. Directly dinner was over

Mr. Stanley, having pretended to linger to smoke, fled suddenly

up-stairs to petrography, and when Veronica tapped he answered

through the locked door, "Go away, Vee! I'm busy," and made a

lapidary's wheel buzz loudly.

Breakfast, too, was an impossible occasion. He read the Times

with an unusually passionate intentness, and then declared