H. Wells - Ann Veronica

WE don't think they're right, but they don't think we are. A

deadlock. In a very definite sense we are in the

wrong--hopelessly in the wrong. But--It's just this: who was to

be hurt?"

"I wish no one had to be hurt," said Ann Veronica. "When one is

happy--I don't like to think of them. Last time I left home I

felt as hard as nails. But this is all different. It is

different."

"There's a sort of instinct of rebellion," said Capes. "It isn't

anything to do with our times particularly. People think it is,

but they are wrong. It's to do with adolescence. Long before

religion and Society heard of Doubt, girls were all for midnight

coaches and Gretna Green. It's a sort of home-leaving instinct."

He followed up a line of thought.

"There's another instinct, too," he went on, "in a state of

suppression, unless I'm very much mistaken; a child-expelling

instinct. . . . I wonder. . . . There's no family uniting

instinct, anyhow; it's habit and sentiment and material

convenience hold families together after adolescence. There's

always friction, conflict, unwilling concessions. Always! I

don't believe there is any strong natural affection at all

between parents and growing-up children. There wasn't, I know,

between myself and my father. I didn't allow myself to see

things as they were in those days; now I do. I bored him. I

hated him. I suppose that shocks one's ideas. . . . It's true.

. . . There are sentimental and traditional deferences and

reverences, I know, between father and son; but that's just

exactly what prevents the development of an easy friendship.

Father-worshipping sons are abnormal--and they're no good. No

good at all. One's got to be a better man than one's father, or

what is the good of successive generations? Life is rebellion,

or nothing."

He rowed a stroke and watched the swirl of water from his oar

broaden and die away. At last he took up his thoughts again: "I

wonder if, some day, one won't need to rebel against customs and

laws? If this discord will have gone? Some day, perhaps--who

knows?--the old won't coddle and hamper the young, and the young

won't need to fly in the faces of the old. They'll face facts as

facts, and understand. Oh, to face facts! Gods! what a world it

might be if people faced facts! Understanding! Understanding!

There is no other salvation. Some day older people, perhaps,

will trouble to understand younger people, and there won't be

these fierce disruptions; there won't be barriers one must defy

or perish. . . . That's really our choice now, defy--or

futility. . . . The world, perhaps, will be educated out of its

idea of fixed standards. . . . I wonder, Ann Veronica, if, when

our time comes, we shall be any wiser?"

Ann Veronica watched a water-beetle fussing across the green

depths. "One can't tell. I'm a female thing at bottom. I like

high tone for a flourish and stars and ideas; but I want my

things."

Part 2

Capes thought.

"It's odd--I have no doubt in my mind that what we are doing is

wrong," he said. "And yet I do it without compunction."

"I never felt so absolutely right," said Ann Veronica.

"You ARE a female thing at bottom," he admitted. "I'm not nearly

so sure as you. As for me, I look twice at it. . . . Life is

two things, that's how I see it; two things mixed and muddled up

together. Life is morality--life is adventure. Squire and

master. Adventure rules, and morality--looks up the trains in the

Bradshaw. Morality tells you what is right, and adventure moves

you. If morality means anything it means keeping bounds,

respecting implications, respecting implicit bounds. If

individuality means anything it means breaking bounds--adventure.

Will you be moral and your species, or immoral and yourself?

We've decided to be immoral. We needn't try and give ourselves

airs. We've deserted the posts in which we found ourselves, cut

our duties, exposed ourselves to risks that may destroy any sort

of social usefulness in us. . . . I don't know. One keeps rules

in order to be one's self. One studies Nature in order not to be

blindly ruled by her. There's no sense in morality, I suppose,

unless you are fundamentally immoral."

She watched his face as he traced his way through these

speculative thickets.

"Look at our affair," he went on, looking up at her. "No power on

earth will persuade me we're not two rather disreputable persons.

You desert your home; I throw up useful teaching, risk every hope

in your career. Here we are absconding, pretending to be what we

are not; shady, to say the least of it. It's not a bit of good

pretending there's any Higher Truth or wonderful principle in

this business. There isn't. We never started out in any

high-browed manner to scandalize and Shelleyfy. When first you

left your home you had no idea that _I_ was the hidden impulse.

I wasn't. You came out like an ant for your nuptial flight. It

was just a chance that we in particular hit against each

other--nothing predestined about it. We just hit against each

other, and here we are flying off at a tangent, a little

surprised at what we are doing, all our principles abandoned, and

tremendously and quite unreasonably proud of ourselves. Out of

all this we have struck a sort of harmony. . . . And it's

gorgeous!"

"Glorious!" said Ann Veronica.

"Would YOU like us--if some one told you the bare outline of our

story?--and what we are doing?"

"I shouldn't mind," said Ann Veronica.

"But if some one else asked your advice? If some one else said,

'Here is my teacher, a jaded married man on the verge of middle

age, and he and I have a violent passion for one another. We

propose to disregard all our ties, all our obligations, all the

established prohibitions of society, and begin life together

afresh.' What would you tell her?"

"If she asked advice, I should say she wasn't fit to do anything

of the sort. I should say that having a doubt was enough to

condemn it."

"But waive that point."

"It would be different all the same. It wouldn't be you."

"It wouldn't be you either. I suppose that's the gist of the

whole thing." He stared at a little eddy. "The rule's all right,

so long as there isn't a case. Rules are for established things,

like the pieces and positions of a game. Men and women are not

established things; they're experiments, all of them. Every

human being is a new thing, exists to do new things. Find the

thing you want to do most intensely, make sure that's it, and do

it with all your might. If you live, well and good; if you die,

well and good. Your purpose is done. . . . Well, this is OUR

thing."

He woke the glassy water to swirling activity again, and made the

deep-blue shapes below writhe and shiver.

"This is MY thing," said Ann Veronica, softly, with thoughtful

eyes upon him.

Then she looked up the sweep of pine-trees to the towering

sunlit cliffs and the high heaven above and then back to his

face. She drew in a deep breath of the sweet mountain air. Her

eyes were soft and grave, and there was the faintest of smiles

upon her resolute lips.

Part 3

Later they loitered along a winding path above the inn, and made

love to one another. Their journey had made them indolent, the

afternoon was warm, and it seemed impossible to breathe a sweeter

air. The flowers and turf, a wild strawberry, a rare butterfly,