H. Wells: Ann Veronica

self-reliance that seemed to intimate her sense of absolute

independence of him, her absolute security without him. After

all, she only LOOKED a woman. She was rash and ignorant,

absolutely inexperienced. Absolutely. He began to think of

speeches, very firm, explicit speeches, he would make.

He lunched in the Legal Club in Chancery Lane, and met Ogilvy.

Daughters were in the air that day. Ogilvy was full of a client's

trouble in that matter, a grave and even tragic trouble. He told

some of the particulars.

"Curious case," said Ogilvy, buttering his bread and cutting it

up in a way he had. "Curious case--and sets one thinking."

He resumed, after a mouthful: "Here is a girl of sixteen or

seventeen, seventeen and a half to be exact, running about, as

one might say, in London. Schoolgirl. Her family are solid West

End people, Kensington people. Father--dead. She goes out and

comes home. Afterward goes on to Oxford. Twenty-one, twenty-two.

Why doesn't she marry? Plenty of money under her father's will.

Charming girl."

He consumed Irish stew for some moments.

"Married already," he said, with his mouth full. "Shopman."

"Good God!" said Mr. Stanley.

"Good-looking rascal she met at Worthing. Very romantic and all

that. He fixed it."

"But--"

"He left her alone. Pure romantic nonsense on her part. Sheer

calculation on his. Went up to Somerset House to examine the

will before he did it. Yes. Nice position."

"She doesn't care for him now?"

"Not a bit. What a girl of sixteen cares for is hair and a high

color and moonlight and a tenor voice. I suppose most of our

daughters would marry organ-grinders if they had a chance--at

that age. My son wanted to marry a woman of thirty in a

tobacconist's shop. Only a son's another story. We fixed that.

Well, that's the situation. My people don't know what to do.

Can't face a scandal. Can't ask the gent to go abroad and

condone a bigamy. He misstated her age and address; but you

can't get home on him for a thing like that. . . . There you

are! Girl spoilt for life. Makes one want to go back to the

Oriental system!"

Mr. Stanley poured wine. "Damned Rascal!" he said. "Isn't there

a brother to kick him?"

"Mere satisfaction," reflected Ogilvy. "Mere sensuality. I

rather think they have kicked him, from the tone of some of the

letters. Nice, of course. But it doesn't alter the situation."

"It's these Rascals," said Mr. Stanley, and paused.

"Always has been," said Ogilvy. "Our interest lies in heading

them off."

"There was a time when girls didn't get these extravagant ideas."

"Lydia Languish, for example. Anyhow, they didn't run about so

much."

"Yes. That's about the beginning. It's these damned novels. All

this torrent of misleading, spurious stuff that pours from the

press. These sham ideals and advanced notions. Women who Dids,

and all that kind of thing. . . ."

Ogilvy reflected. "This girl--she's really a very charming,

frank person--had had her imagination fired, so she told me, by a

school performance of Romeo and Juliet."

Mr. Stanley decided to treat that as irrelevant. "There ought to

be a Censorship of Books. We want it badly at the present time.

Even WITH the Censorship of Plays there's hardly a decent thing

to which a man can take his wife and daughters, a creeping taint

of suggestion everywhere. What would it be without that

safeguard?"

Ogilvy pursued his own topic. "I'm inclined to think, Stanley,

myself that as a matter of fact it was the expurgated Romeo and

Juliet did the mischief. If our young person hadn't had the

nurse part cut out, eh? She might have known more and done less.

I was curious about that. All they left it was the moon and

stars. And the balcony and 'My Romeo!' "

"Shakespeare is altogether different from the modern stuff.

Altogether different. I'm not discussing Shakespeare. I don't

want to Bowdlerize Shakespeare. I'm not that sort I quite agree.

But this modern miasma--"

Mr. Stanley took mustard savagely.

"Well, we won't go into Shakespeare," said Ogilvy "What interests

me is that our young women nowadays are running about as free as

air practically, with registry offices and all sorts of

accommodation round the corner. Nothing to check their

proceedings but a declining habit of telling the truth and the

limitations of their imaginations. And in that respect they stir

up one another. Not my affair, of course, but I think we ought

to teach them more or restrain them more. One or the other.

They're too free for their innocence or too innocent for their

freedom. That's my point. Are you going to have any apple-tart,

Stanley? The apple-tart's been very good lately--very good!"

Part 7

At the end of dinner that evening Ann Veronica began: "Father!"

Her father looked at her over his glasses and spoke with grave

deliberation; "If there is anything you want to say to me," he

said, "you must say it in the study. I am going to smoke a

little here, and then I shall go to the study. I don't see what

you can have to say. I should have thought my note cleared up

everything. There are some papers I have to look through

to-night--important papers."

"I won't keep you very long, daddy," said Ann Veronica.

"I don't see, Mollie," he remarked, taking a cigar from the box

on the table as his sister and daughter rose, "why you and Vee

shouldn't discuss this little affair--whatever it is--without

bothering me."

It was the first time this controversy had become triangular, for

all three of them were shy by habit.

He stopped in mid-sentence, and Ann Veronica opened the door for

her aunt. The air was thick with feelings. Her aunt went out of

the room with dignity and a rustle, and up-stairs to the fastness

of her own room. She agreed entirely with her brother. It

distressed and confused her that the girl should not come to her.

It seemed to show a want of affection, to be a deliberate and

unmerited disregard, to justify the reprisal of being hurt.

When Ann Veronica came into the study she found every evidence of

a carefully foreseen grouping about the gas fire. Both

arm-chairs had been moved a little so as to face each other on

either side of the fender, and in the circular glow of the

green-shaded lamp there lay, conspicuously waiting, a thick

bundle of blue and white papers tied with pink tape. Her father

held some printed document in his hand, and appeared not to

observe her entry. "Sit down," he said, and perused--"perused"

is the word for it--for some moments. Then he put the paper by.

"And what is it all about, Veronica?" he asked, with a deliberate

note of irony, looking at her a little quizzically over his

glasses.

Ann Veronica looked bright and a little elated, and she

disregarded her father's invitation to be seated. She stood on

the mat instead, and looked down on him. "Look here, daddy," she

said, in a tone of great reasonableness, "I MUST go to that

dance, you know."

Her father's irony deepened. "Why?" he asked, suavely.

Her answer was not quite ready. "Well, because I don't see any

reason why I shouldn't."

"You see I do."

"Why shouldn't I go?"

"It isn't a suitable place; it isn't a suitable gathering."

"But, daddy, what do you know of the place and the gathering?"

"And it's entirely out of order; it isn't right, it isn't

correct; it's impossible for you to stay in an hotel in