H. Wells: Ann Veronica

it all, the bitter vindictiveness that lit Miss Miniver's cheeks

and eyes, the sense of some at last insupportable wrong slowly

accumulated. She had no inkling of that insupportable wrong.

"We are the species," said Miss Miniver, "men are only incidents.

They give themselves airs, but so it is. In all the species of

animals the females are more important than the males; the males

have to please them. Look at the cock's feathers, look at the

competition there is everywhere, except among humans. The stags

and oxen and things all have to fight for us, everywhere. Only in

man is the male made the most important. And that happens

through our maternity; it's our very importance that degrades us.

While we were minding the children they stole our rights and

liberties. The children made us slaves, and the men took

advantage of it. It's --Mrs. Shalford says--the accidental

conquering the essential. Originally in the first animals there

were no males, none at all. It has been proved. Then they

appear among the lower things"--she made meticulous gestures to

figure the scale of life; she seemed to be holding up specimens,

and peering through her glasses at them--"among crustaceans and

things, just as little creatures, ever so inferior to the

females. Mere hangers on. Things you would laugh at. And among

human beings, too, women to begin with were the rulers and

leaders; they owned all the property, they invented all the arts.

The primitive government was the Matriarchate. The Matriarchate!

The Lords of Creation just ran about and did what they were

told."

"But is that really so?" said Ann Veronica.

"It has been proved," said Miss Miniver, and added, "by American

professors."

"But how did they prove it?"

"By science," said Miss Miniver, and hurried on, putting out a

rhetorical hand that showed a slash of finger through its glove.

"And now, look at us! See what we have become. Toys! Delicate

trifles! A sex of invalids. It is we who have become the

parasites and toys."

It was, Ann Veronica felt, at once absurd and extraordinarily

right. Hetty, who had periods of lucid expression, put the thing

for her from her pillow. She charged boldly into the space of

Miss Miniver's rhetorical pause.

"It isn't quite that we're toys. Nobody toys with me. Nobody

regards Constance or Vee as a delicate trifle."

Teddy made some confused noise, a thoracic street row; some

remark was assassinated by a rival in his throat and buried

hastily under a cough.

"They'd better not," said Hetty. "The point is we're not toys,

toys isn't the word; we're litter. We're handfuls. We're

regarded as inflammable litter that mustn't be left about. We

are the species, and maternity is our game; that's all right, but

nobody wants that admitted for fear we should all catch fire, and

set about fulfilling the purpose of our beings without waiting

for further explanations. As if we didn't know! The practical

trouble is our ages. They used to marry us off at seventeen,

rush us into things before we had time to protest. They don't

now. Heaven knows why! They don't marry most of us off now

until high up in the twenties. And the age gets higher. We have

to hang about in the interval. There's a great gulf opened, and

nobody's got any plans what to do with us. So the world is

choked with waste and waiting daughters. Hanging about! And they

start thinking and asking questions, and begin to be neither one

thing nor the other. We're partly human beings and partly

females in suspense."

Miss Miniver followed with an expression of perplexity, her mouth

shaped to futile expositions. The Widgett method of thought

puzzled her weakly rhetorical mind. "There is no remedy, girls,"

she began, breathlessly, "except the Vote. Give us that--"

Ann Veronica came in with a certain disregard of Miss Miniver.

"That's it," she said. "They have no plans for us. They have no

ideas what to do with us."

"Except," said Constance, surveying her work with her head on one

side, "to keep the matches from the litter."

"And they won't let us make plans for ourselves."

"We will," said Miss Miniver, refusing to be suppressed, "if some

of us have to be killed to get it." And she pressed her lips

together in white resolution and nodded, and she was manifestly

full of that same passion for conflict and self-sacrifice that

has given the world martyrs since the beginning of things. "I

wish I could make every woman, every girl, see this as clearly as

I see it--just what the Vote means to us. Just what it means. .

. ."

Part 2

As Ann Veronica went back along the Avenue to her aunt she became

aware of a light-footed pursuer running. Teddy overtook her, a

little out of breath, his innocent face flushed, his

straw-colored hair disordered. He was out of breath, and spoke in

broken sentences.

"I say, Vee. Half a minute, Vee. It's like this: You want

freedom. Look here. You know--if you want freedom. Just an

idea of mine. You know how those Russian students do? In

Russia. Just a formal marriage. Mere formality. Liberates the

girl from parental control. See? You marry me. Simply. No

further responsibility whatever. Without hindrance--present

occupation. Why not? Quite willing. Get a license--just an

idea of mine. Doesn't matter a bit to me. Do anything to please

you, Vee. Anything. Not fit to be dust on your boots.

Still--there you are!"

He paused.

Ann Veronica's desire to laugh unrestrainedly was checked by the

tremendous earnestness of his expression. "Awfully good of you,

Teddy." she said.

He nodded silently, too full for words.

"But I don't see," said Ann Veronica, "just how it fits the

present situation."

"No! Well, I just suggested it. Threw it out. Of course, if at

any time--see reason--alter your opinion. Always at your service.

No offence, I hope. All right! I'm off. Due to play hockey.

Jackson's. Horrid snorters! So long, Vee! Just suggested it.

See? Nothing really. Passing thought."

"Teddy," said Ann Veronica, "you're a dear!"

"Oh, quite!" said Teddy, convulsively, and lifted an imaginary

hat and left her.

Part 3

The call Ann Veronica paid with her aunt that afternoon had at

first much the same relation to the Widgett conversation that a

plaster statue of Mr. Gladstone would have to a carelessly

displayed interior on a dissecting-room table. The Widgetts

talked with a remarkable absence of external coverings; the

Palsworthys found all the meanings of life on its surfaces. They

seemed the most wrapped things in all Ann Veronica's wrappered

world. The Widgett mental furniture was perhaps worn and shabby,

but there it was before you, undisguised, fading visibly in an

almost pitiless sunlight. Lady Palsworthy was the widow of a

knight who had won his spurs in the wholesale coal trade, she was

of good seventeenth-century attorney blood, a county family, and

distantly related to Aunt Mollie's deceased curate. She was the

social leader of Morningside Park, and in her superficial and

euphuistic way an extremely kind and pleasant woman. With her

lived a Mrs. Pramlay, a sister of the Morningside Park doctor,

and a very active and useful member of the Committee of the

Impoverished Gentlewomen's Aid Society. Both ladies were on easy

and friendly terms with all that was best in Morningside Park

society; they had an afternoon once a month that was quite well