H. Wells - Ann Veronica

gossiping away her tedium. It was a large, littered,

self-forgetful apartment, decorated with unframed charcoal

sketches by various incipient masters; and an open bookcase,

surmounted by plaster casts and the half of a human skull,

displayed an odd miscellany of books--Shaw and Swinburne, Tom

Jones, Fabian Essays, Pope and Dumas, cheek by jowl. Constance

Widgett's abundant copper-red hair was bent down over some dimly

remunerative work--stencilling in colors upon rough, white

material--at a kitchen table she had dragged up-stairs for the

purpose, while on her bed there was seated a slender lady of

thirty or so in a dingy green dress, whom Constance had

introduced with a wave of her hand as Miss Miniver. Miss Miniver

looked out on the world through large emotional blue eyes that

were further magnified by the glasses she wore, and her nose was

pinched and pink, and her mouth was whimsically petulant. Her

glasses moved quickly as her glance travelled from face to face.

She seemed bursting with the desire to talk, and watching for her

opportunity. On her lapel was an ivory button, bearing the words

"Votes for Women." Ann Veronica sat at the foot of the

sufferer's bed, while Teddy Widgett, being something of an

athlete, occupied the only bed-room chair--a decadent piece,

essentially a tripod and largely a formality--and smoked

cigarettes, and tried to conceal the fact that he was looking all

the time at Ann Veronica's eyebrows. Teddy was the hatless young

man who had turned Ann Veronica aside from the Avenue two days

before. He was the junior of both his sisters, co-educated and

much broken in to feminine society. A bowl of roses, just

brought by Ann Veronica, adorned the communal dressing-table, and

Ann Veronica was particularly trim in preparation for a call she

was to make with her aunt later in the afternoon.

Ann Veronica decided to be more explicit. "I've been," she said,

"forbidden to come."

"Hul-LO!" said Hetty, turning her head on the pillow; and Teddy

remarked with profound emotion, "My God!"

"Yes," said Ann Veronica, "and that complicates the situation."

"Auntie?" asked Constance, who was conversant with Ann Veronica's

affairs.

"No! My father. It's--it's a serious prohibition."

"Why?" asked Hetty.

"That's the point. I asked him why, and he hadn't a reason."

"YOU ASKED YOUR FATHER FOR A REASON!" said Miss Miniver, with

great intensity.

"Yes. I tried to have it out with him, but he wouldn't have it

out. "Ann Veronica reflected for an instant "That's why I think

I ought to come."

"You asked your father for a reason!" Miss Miniver repeated.

"We always have things out with OUR father, poor dear!" said

Hetty. "He's got almost to like it."

"Men," said Miss Miniver, "NEVER have a reason. Never! And they

don't know it! They have no idea of it. It's one of their worst

traits, one of their very worst."

"But I say, Vee," said Constance, "if you come and you are

forbidden to come there'll be the deuce of a row."

Ann Veronica was deciding for further confidences. Her situation

was perplexing her very much, and the Widgett atmosphere was lax

and sympathetic, and provocative of discussion. "It isn't only

the dance," she said.

"There's the classes," said Constance, the well-informed.

"There's the whole situation. Apparently I'm not to exist yet.

I'm not to study, I'm not to grow. I've got to stay at home and

remain in a state of suspended animation."

"DUSTING!" said Miss Miniver, in a sepulchral voice.

"Until you marry, Vee," said Hetty.

"Well, I don't feel like standing it."

"Thousands of women have married merely for freedom," said Miss

Miniver. "Thousands! Ugh! And found it a worse slavery."

"I suppose," said Constance, stencilling away at bright pink

petals, "it's our lot. But it's very beastly."

"What's our lot?" asked her sister.

"Slavery! Downtroddenness! When I think of it I feel all over

boot marks--men's boots. We hide it bravely, but so it is.

Damn! I've splashed."

Miss Miniver's manner became impressive. She addressed Ann

Veronica with an air of conveying great open secrets to her. "As

things are at present," she said, "it is true. We live under

man-made institutions, and that is what they amount to. Every

girl in the world practically, except a few of us who teach or

type-write, and then we're underpaid and sweated--it's dreadful

to think how we are sweated!" She had lost her generalization,

whatever it was. She hung for a moment, and then went on,

conclusively, "Until we have the vote that is how things WILL

be."

"I'm all for the vote," said Teddy.

"I suppose a girl MUST be underpaid and sweated," said Ann

Veronica. "I suppose there's no way of getting a decent

income--independently."

"Women have practically NO economic freedom," said Miss Miniver,

"because they have no political freedom. Men have seen to that.

The one profession, the one decent profession, I mean, for a

woman--except the stage--is teaching, and there we trample on one

another. Everywhere else--the law, medicine, the Stock

Exchange--prejudice bars us."

"There's art," said Ann Veronica, "and writing."

"Every one hasn't the Gift. Even there a woman never gets a fair

chance. Men are against her. Whatever she does is minimized.

All the best novels have been written by women, and yet see how

men sneer at the lady novelist still! There's only one way to

get on for a woman, and that is to please men. That is what they

think we are for!"

"We're beasts," said Teddy. "Beasts!"

But Miss Miniver took no notice of his admission.

"Of course," said Miss Miniver--she went on in a regularly

undulating voice--"we DO please men. We have that gift. We can

see round them and behind them and through them, and most of us

use that knowledge, in the silent way we have, for our great

ends. Not all of us, but some of us. Too many. I wonder what

men would say if we threw the mask aside--if we really told them

what WE thought of them, really showed them what WE were." A

flush of excitement crept into her cheeks.

"Maternity," she said, "has been our undoing."

From that she opened out into a long, confused emphatic discourse

on the position of women, full of wonderful statements, while

Constance worked at her stencilling and Ann Veronica and Hetty

listened, and Teddy contributed sympathetic noises and consumed

cheap cigarettes. As she talked she made weak little gestures

with her hands, and she thrust her face forward from her bent

shoulders; and she peered sometimes at Ann Veronica and sometimes

at a photograph of the Axenstrasse, near Fluelen, that hung upon

the wall. Ann Veronica watched her face, vaguely sympathizing

with her, vaguely disliking her physical insufficiency and her

convulsive movements, and the fine eyebrows were knit with a

faint perplexity. Essentially the talk was a mixture of

fragments of sentences heard, of passages read, or arguments

indicated rather than stated, and all of it was served in a sauce

of strange enthusiasm, thin yet intense. Ann Veronica had had

some training at the Tredgold College in disentangling threads

from confused statements, and she had a curious persuasion that

in all this fluent muddle there was something--something real,

something that signified. But it was very hard to follow. She

did not understand the note of hostility to men that ran through