Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story

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inded Ann Veronica that she had no place for interviews except her bed-sitting-room, and she sought her landlady and negotiated hastily for the use of the ground floor parlor, which very fortunately was vacant. She explained she was expecting an important interview,

he could get her breath, "y

the door quite sof

killed your fathe

t a te

for you. He did

gram to say I

. I had no idea!" She sat down abruptly and threw her wrists limp

eeping now. Ann Veronica was ov

r aunt urged. "Why coul

" said An

ou have

at have

g I could do! Your father sat up all night. Until at last I persuaded him to go to bed. He wanted to put on his overcoat and come after you and l

ram, aunt," sai

didn't even put

I was al

his way-when it came. He opened it-just off-hand, and then when he saw what it was he hit at the table and sent his soup spoon flying and splashing on to t

did father

and threw the telegram at me, so that it went into the tureen. He swore when I tried to get it out with the ladle, and told me what it said. Then he sat down again in a chair and said that people who wrote novels ought to be strung up. It was as much as I could do to

emained standing w

ed, "that my father thought

uld any one DREAM you would b

t had happened t

for the letters,' and there, sure enough, was yours. He could hardly open the envelope, he trembled so. Then he threw the letter at me. 'Go and fetch her home,' he said; 'it isn't what we thought! It's just a practical jok

nd niece regarded e

e to him at once,"

ether too vivid picture of her father as the masterful man, overbearing, emphatic, sentimental, noisy, aimle

e looked up and said, a little breathlessly

rt

e expostulatio

can't." And to that, through vast rhetorical meanderings, she clung. It reached her only slowly that Ann Veronica was standing to her resolution. "How will you live?" sh

t am I to tel

but as her aunt put this aspect and that of her flight to her, as she wandered illogically and inconsistently from one urgent consideration to another, as she mingled assurances and aspect

any one thinks,"

you," said her aunt. "I can't concei

disconcerting, was the perception that she herself did not know what s

for Mr. Manning?

e has to do with my

on't deserve it, but he does. Or at least he d

rhetorical gesture. "It seems to me all madness-madness!

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tween them like the mace in Parliament, he and his daughter contrived to have a violent quarrel. She had intended to be quietly dignified, but he was in a smouldering rage from the beginning, and began by assuming, which alone was more than flesh and

me, young lady," he said, as he enter

preposterous pitch. She said she hoped she had not distressed him by the course she had felt obliged to take, and he told her not to be a fool. She tried to keep her s

ure, and I hope now you've had enough of it. So go up-stairs

ble reply seemed to be,

oming

always doomed to weep when she talked to her father. But he was always forcing her to say and do such unexpectedly conclu

e manner rather of a barrister than a solicitor, and regarding her balefully through his glasses with quite undi

ca. "You needn't be anxious about

ou think it's nothing to me to have my daughter running a

bs," said Ann Veron

er again. He then said that if she would not obey him in this course she should "never darken his doors again," and was, indeed, frightfully abusive. This threat terrified Ann Veronica so much that she declared with sobs and vehemence that she would never come home again,

he infinite folly of these proceedings? Think! Think of the love and affection you aba

d, deepl

ive," sobbed Ann Veronic

tagonism to her father, quarrelling with him, wrangling with him, thinking of repartees-almost as if he was a brother. It was horrible, but what could she do? She meant

explanation. Instead had come this storm, this shouting, this weeping, this confusion of threats and irrelevant appeals. It was not only that her father had said all sorts of inconsistent and unreasonable things, but that by some incomprehensible infection she herself had replied in the same vein. He had assumed that her leaving home was

doorway, giving her a last chance, his hat in one hand, his

hen," he was sayin

but standing up to him with an equality that amazed even herself, "I understand." S

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s "an unheard-of thing" for a girl to leave her home as Ann Veronica had don

t down his hat and umbrella, rested his hands

tly, "it's time we s

ll more deadly quiet: "I am not here to bandy words with you

ht I exp

eard me," said her father; "I

ht I exp

e ho

shrugged he

l," said

e business," he said,

cate any more. She must le

Peter!" said

sively, "it's not for a parent

d her back, sulky, resolute, and intelligent, a strand of her black hair over one eye an

oesn't

e d

y out against everything like this

n nowadays are not his own. That's the fact of the matter. Their minds are turned against

pen between father and daug

onica, "why parents and child

o the devil! Come, Molly, she must go her own way. I've tried to use my a

ave been able to frame and make some appeal, some utterance that should bridge this bottomless chasm that had opene

e cried, "I

his hand on the door-handle, "must be your own aff

. "Vee," she said, "come h

said Mr. Stanle

anley, "you hear wh

d down something lumpy on the table and turned to follow her brother. Ann Veronica stared for a moment in amazement at th

n her aunt's blue eye, halted,

and then the fron

ime the departure had a tremendous effect of finality. She had to r

at last, "I've d

t morocco purse, opened it,

nce, two postage stamps, a small key, and her

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herself formally cut off from home. If not

r brother Roddy, who was in the motor line, came to expo

e, and made appeals that had no meaning for Ann Veronica's mind. She exhorted Ann

"That's HIM," said Ann Veronica, in sou

state a case. "Bit thick on the old man, isn't it?" said Roddy, w

see quite what your game is, Vee, but

to the neck in Mahatmas and Theosophy and Higher Thought and rot-writes letters worse than Alice. And now YOU'RE on the war-path. I believe I'm the on

rai

to rags. I suppose we're all human beings really, but what price the sacred Institution of the Family! Us as a bundle! Eh?... I don't half disagree with you, Vee, really; only thing is, I don't see how you're

and listened to h

you don't eat humble-pie now you may live to fare worse later. I can't help you a cent. Life's hard enough nowadays for an unprotected male. Let alone a girl. You got to take the world as it is, and the only possible trade for a girl that isn't sweated is to get hold of a man and make him do it for her. It's no good flying out at that, Vee; I didn't arrange it. It's Providence. That's how things are; that's the order of the world

intessence of h

n this theme for the b

o start out on their own yet; that's the plain fact of the case. Babies and females have got to keep hold of somebody or go under-anyhow, for the next few generati

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ndly faced landlady had failed to catch his name, and said he was a tall, handsome gentleman with a great black mustache. Ann Veronica, with a sigh at the cost of hospitality, made a hasty negotiation for an extra tea and for a fire in the ground-floor apartment, and preened herself carefully for the interv

said, shaking hands in a peculiar, high, fashionable

ce of the first fog of the year without, "but your aunt told me something

her and expressed himself, looking very earnestly at her with his deep-set eyes, and carefully avoiding any crumbs on h

l going to end?"

e seen him, and he doesn't a bit understand. I didn't understand before that letter. It makes me want to be ju

s to earning a salary," said Ann Veronica. "But fran

ng, in a stage-aside

undings-you mustn't mind my calling them sordid-and it makes them seem as though they didn't matt

rassment. "Won't you have some m

n I hear you talk of earning a living, it's as if I heard of an archangel going on the St

ood image," sa

ou wouldn

d Goddesses, but in practice-well, look, for example, at the stream of girls one meets going to work of a morning, round-shouldered, cheap, and underfed! They aren't queens, and no one is treating them as queens. And look, again, at the women one finds letting lodgings.... I

Manning, with entir

mothers, with their anxiety, their li

f his fourth piece of cake. "I know that our social order is dreadful enough," he s

to twenty million men. Suppose our proper place is a shrine. Still, that leaves over a million shrines short, not rec

impatience at the slowness of Progress. But tell me one thing I don't understand-tell me one thing:

f what a woman should be, and trying to get it clear in my own mind. I'm in this apartment an

one regardless of every one-it's one of those days when every one bumps against you-every one pouring coal smoke into the air and making confusion worse confounded, motor omnibuses clattering and smelling, a horse down

d had two days of employment-s

endid than a beautiful girl facing a great, glorious tiger? Una and the Lion again, and all that! But this isn'

ant to keep

" said Mr

-close-wearing lovely dresses

f one

ven that magic garden-close resolves itself into a villa at Morningside Park and my father being

Veronica. "There," he said, "you don't treat me fairly, Miss