H. Wells - Ann Veronica

"I am the prodigal daughter. I will arise and go to my father,

and will say unto him--

"I suppose pride and self-assertion are sin? Sinned against

heaven-- Yes, I have sinned against heaven and before thee. . . .

"Poor old daddy! I wonder if he'll spend much on the fatted

calf? . . .

"The wrappered life-discipline! One comes to that at last. I

begin to understand Jane Austen and chintz covers and decency and

refinement and all the rest of it. One puts gloves on one's

greedy fingers. One learns to sit up . . .

"And somehow or other," she added, after a long interval, "I must

pay Mr. Ramage back his forty pounds."

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

ANN VERONICA PUTS THINGS IN ORDER

Part 1

Ann Veronica made a strenuous attempt to carry out her good

resolutions. She meditated long and carefully upon her letter to

her father before she wrote it, and gravely and deliberately

again before she despatched it.

"MY DEAR FATHER," she wrote,--"I have been thinking hard about

everything since I was sent to this prison. All these experiences

have taught me a great deal about life and realities. I see that

compromise is more necessary to life than I ignorantly supposed

it to be, and I have been trying to get Lord Morley's book on

that subject, but it does not appear to be available in the

prison library, and the chaplain seems to regard him as an

undesirable writer."

At this point she had perceived that she was drifting from her

subject.

"I must read him when I come out. But I see very clearly that as

things are a daughter is necessarily dependent on her father and

bound while she is in that position to live harmoniously with his

ideals."

"Bit starchy," said Ann Veronica, and altered the key abruptly.

Her concluding paragraph was, on the whole, perhaps, hardly

starchy enough.

"Really, daddy, I am sorry for all I have done to put you out.

May I come home and try to be a better daughter to you?

"ANN VERONICA."

Part 2

Her aunt came to meet her outside Canongate, and, being a little

confused between what was official and what was merely a

rebellious slight upon our national justice, found herself

involved in a triumphal procession to the Vindicator Vegetarian

Restaurant, and was specifically and personally cheered by a

small, shabby crowd outside that rendezvous. They decided quite

audibly, "She's an Old Dear, anyhow. Voting wouldn't do no 'arm

to 'er." She was on the very verge of a vegetarian meal before

she recovered her head again. Obeying some fine instinct, she

had come to the prison in a dark veil, but she had pushed this up

to kiss Ann Veronica and never drawn it down again. Eggs were

procured for her, and she sat out the subsequent emotions and

eloquence with the dignity becoming an injured lady of good

family. The quiet encounter and home-coming Ann Veronica and she

had contemplated was entirely disorganized by this misadventure;

there were no adequate explanations, and after they had settled

things at Ann Veronica's lodgings, they reached home in the early

afternoon estranged and depressed, with headaches and the trumpet

voice of the indomitable Kitty Brett still ringing in their ears.

"Dreadful women, my dear!" said Miss Stanley. "And some of them

quite pretty and well dressed. No need to do such things. We

must never let your father know we went. Why ever did you let me

get into that wagonette?"

"I thought we had to," said Ann Veronica, who had also been a

little under the compulsion of the marshals of the occasion. "It

was very tiring."

"We will have some tea in the drawing-room as soon as ever we

can--and I will take my things off. I don't think I shall ever

care for this bonnet again. We'll have some buttered toast.

Your poor cheeks are quite sunken and hollow. . . ."

Part 3

When Ann Veronica found herself in her father's study that

evening it seemed to her for a moment as though all the events of

the past six months had been a dream. The big gray spaces of

London, the shop-lit, greasy, shining streets, had become very

remote; the biological laboratory with its work and emotions, the

meetings and discussions, the rides in hansoms with Ramage, were

like things in a book read and closed. The study seemed

absolutely unaltered, there was still the same lamp with a little

chip out of the shade, still the same gas fire, still the same

bundle of blue and white papers, it seemed, with the same pink

tape about them, at the elbow of the arm-chair, still the same

father. He sat in much the same attitude, and she stood just as

she had stood when he told her she could not go to the Fadden

Dance. Both had dropped the rather elaborate politeness of the

dining-room, and in their faces an impartial observer would have

discovered little lines of obstinate wilfulness in common; a

certain hardness--sharp, indeed, in the father and softly rounded

in the daughter --but hardness nevertheless, that made every

compromise a bargain and every charity a discount.

"And so you have been thinking?" her father began, quoting her

letter and looking over his slanting glasses at her. "Well, my

girl, I wish you had thought about all these things before these

bothers began."

Ann Veronica perceived that she must not forget to remain

eminently reasonable.

"One has to live and learn," she remarked, with a passable

imitation of her father's manner.

"So long as you learn," said Mr. Stanley.

Their conversation hung.

"I suppose, daddy, you've no objection to my going on with my

work at the Imperial College?" she asked.

"If it will keep you busy," he said, with a faintly ironical

smile.

"The fees are paid to the end of the session."

He nodded twice, with his eyes on the fire, as though that was a

formal statement.

"You may go on with that work," he said, "so long as you keep in

harmony with things at home. I'm convinced that much of

Russell's investigations are on wrong lines, unsound lines.

Still--you must learn for yourself. You're of age--you're of

age."

"The work's almost essential for the B.Sc. exam."

"It's scandalous, but I suppose it is."

Their agreement so far seemed remarkable, and yet as a

home-coming the thing was a little lacking in warmth. But Ann

Veronica had still to get to her chief topic. They were silent

for a time. "It's a period of crude views and crude work," said

Mr. Stanley. "Still, these Mendelian fellows seem likely to give

Mr. Russell trouble, a good lot of trouble. Some of their

specimens--wonderfully selected, wonderfully got up."

"Daddy," said Ann Veronica, "these affairs--being away from home

has--cost money."

"I thought you would find that out."

"As a matter of fact, I happen to have got a little into debt."

"NEVER!"

Her heart sank at the change in his expression.

"Well, lodgings and things! And I paid my fees at the College."

"Yes. But how could you get--Who gave you credit?

"You see," said Ann Veronica, "my landlady kept on my room while

I was in Holloway, and the fees for the College mounted up pretty

considerably." She spoke rather quickly, because she found her

father's question the most awkward she had ever had to answer in

her life.

"Molly and you settled about the rooms. She said you HAD some

money."

"I borrowed it," said Ann Veronica in a casual tone, with white

despair in her heart.