ANN VERONICA. H. G. Wells

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      CHAPTER THE SECOND

       ANN VERONICA GATHERS POINTS OF VIEW

       Table of Contents

      PART 1

      “Are you coming to the Fadden Dance, Ann Veronica?” asked Constance Widgett.

      Ann Veronica considered her answer. “I mean to,” she replied.

      “You are making your dress?”

      “Such as it is.”

      They were in the elder Widgett girl’s bedroom; Hetty was laid up, she said, with a sprained ankle, and a miscellaneous party was 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 upstairs 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 bedroom 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, coeducated 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 typewrite, 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.