Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story

A GATHERS P

rt

dden Dance, Ann Veronica?

red her answer. "I m

making yo

as i

-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,

ore explicit. "I've been," s

ead on the pillow; and Teddy remark

ica, "and that compli

e, who was conversant wi

It's-it's a seri

asked

asked him why, and

A REASON!" said Miss Mini

uldn't have it out." Ann Veronica reflected for

er for a reason!" Mi

OUR father, poor dear!" said Het

! And they don't know it! They have no idea of it. It

f you come and you are forbidden to

rplexing her very much, and the Widgett atmosphere was lax and sympathe

s," said Constance,

t yet. I'm not to study, I'm not to grow. I've got to st

iss Miniver, in a

marry, Vee,

't feel like

for freedom," said Miss Miniver. "Thousa

lling away at bright pink petals, "

lot?" aske

feel all over boot marks-men's boots. We hide

an-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

r the vote,

ed," said Ann Veronica. "I suppose there's no

ve seen to that. The one profession, the one decent profession, I mean, for a woman-except the stage-is teaching

aid Ann Veronica

is minimized. All the best novels have been written by women, and yet see how men sneer at the lady novelist s

s," said Ted

took no notice

rough 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 woul

e said, "has be

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

han 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 thing

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

te. The Matriarchate! The Lords of Creation

eally so?" sai

d Miss Miniver, and added

did they

d a slash of finger through its glove. "And now, look at us! See what we have become. Toy

y, who had periods of lucid expression, put the thing for her from her pi

ody toys with me. Nobody regards Con

et row; some remark was assassinated by a rival

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. W

expositions. The Widgett method of thought puzzled her weakly rhetorical mind. "T

ss Miniver. "That's it," she said. "They have no pl

her work with her head on one side,

let us make plan

olution and nodded, and she was manifestly full of that same passion for conflict and self-sacrifice that has given the world martyrs since the begi

rt

d pursuer running. Teddy overtook her, a little out of breath, his innocent face flushed

st a formal marriage. Mere formality. Liberates the girl from parental control. See? You marry me. Simply. No further responsibility whatever. Without hindrance-present occupation. Wh

pau

s checked by the tremendous earnestness of his e

ently, too fu

n Veronica, "just how it f

pinion. Always at your service. No offence, I hope. All right! I'm off. Due to play hockey. Jac

Ann Veronica,

onvulsively, and lifted an

rt

ou, 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

icacy was very great; over and above coarse or sexual matters it covered religion and politics and any mention of money matters or crime, and Ann Veronica found herself wondering whether these exclusions represented, after all, anything more than suppressions. Was there anything at all in those locked rooms of her aunt's mind? Were they fully furnished and only a little dusty and cobwebby and in need of an airing, or were they stark vaca

aunt's own personal past, which was apparently just that curate and almost incredibly jejune, but an ancestral past with all sorts of scandalous things in it: fire and slaughterings, exogamy, marriage by capture, corroborees, cannibalism! Ancestresses with perhaps dim anticipatory likenesses to her aunt, their hair less neatly done, no doubt, their manners and

unt were near reverting to the primitive and passionate and entirely indecorous arboreal-were swinging from branches by the arms, and really going on quite dr

d failed to observe that the graceful figure was a natural one and not due to ably chosen stays. She took it for granted Ann Veronica wore stays-mild stays, perhaps, but stays, and thought no more of the matter. She had seen her really only at teas, with the Stanley strain in her uppermost. There are so many girls nowadays who are quite unpresentable at tea, with their untrimmed laughs, their awful dispositions of their legs when they sit down, their slangy disrespect; they no longer smoke, it is true, like the girls of the eighties and nineties, nevertheless to a fine

te in her greeting to Ann Veronica. Then Ann Veronica passed on toward the tea in the garden, which was dotted with the elite of Morningside Park society, and there she was pounced upon by Lady Palsworthy and given tea and led about. Across the lawn and hovering indecisively, Ann Veronica saw and immediately affected not to see Mr. Manning,

ure and which was as a matter of fact rather carefully finished verse. It dealt with fine aspects of Mr. Manning's feelings, and as Ann Veronica's mind was still largely engaged with fundamentals and found no pleasure in metrical forms, she had not as yet cut its pages. So that as she saw him she remarked to herself very faintly but defini

iable intention. "Splendid you are looking to-day, Miss St

th effusion, and Lady Palsworthy suddenly appeared a

ell," he said. "I've tried to make words tell it. It'

ke the manner of her assent cover a

ous! The Pastoral. Beethoven; he's the best

eroni

till cutting up rabbits and probing into things?

to require any ans

epeated, a li

rs are," said Ann Veronica, i

und herself being carried off to an isolation even remoter and more conspicuous than the corner of the lawn, with the whole

altogether bad. Ann Veronica hazarded an opinion that as a matter of history some very beautiful people had, to a quite considerable extent, been bad, but Mr. Manning questioned whether when they were bad they were really beautiful or when they were beautiful bad. Ann Veronica

out," said Mr. Manning,

ar," said Ann Veronica, av

s, or else I want to weep." He paused and looked at her, and said, with

ay?" said Ann Veronic

Mr. Manning; and adde

said Ann Veronica. "Wasn't

d crossed his legs. "You're not interested in po

Ann Veronica. "It see

y interest in that sort of

uppose an intelligent person OUGHT to be intere

Mr. Manning, with

ter all, they're his

g; and repeated, "a sort of history.

nk political quest

his afternoon, and I don'

chaelmas daisies, and faced toward the

nley, and look down the other path; there's a vist

walked as h

tanley. I don't think women need to

ote," said

t voice, and waved his hand to the alley

" She tur

me. It seems to me a woman's duty to be beautiful, to BE beautiful and to behave beautifully, and politics are by their very nature ugly. You see, I-I am a woma

all be shifted on to the women," said Ann Veronica, s

We can't afford to turn our women, our Madonnas, our Saint Catherines, our Mona Lisas, our goddesses and angels and fairy princesses, in

Ann Veronic

and all the girls and women in it should be the Queen. They should never come into contact with politi

" said Ann Veronica. "Only so

ion, "and so each of us must, under existing conditions, being chivalrous ind

onica, speaking in a loud, common-sense, detached tone, and beginni

und hastily for further horticultural points of interest in seclud

sn't the material experimented u

more power than they think, as

aid nothing in

a vote," said Mr.

ought to

and one in Kensington." He caught up and went on with a sort

pause, and then Ann Veronica

upulous. Have you ever voted, Mr. Manning? I suppose there's a sort of place like a ticket-office. And a ballot-box-" Her face assu

"A ballot-box, you know," he said, "is very largely just a box." He made quit

nto the public

oss the lawn Lady Palsworthy talking to her aunt, and both of th