"A nice time of anxiety you've given me, young lady," he said, as he
entered the room. "I hope you're satisfied."
She was frightened—his anger always did frighten her—and in her
resolve to conceal her fright she carried a queen-like dignity to what
she felt even at the time was a 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 side up by
declaring that he had put her into an impossible position, and he
replied by shouting, "Nonsense! Nonsense! Any father in my place would
have done what I did."
Then he went on to say: "Well, you've had your little adventure, and I
hope now you've had enough of it. So go up-stairs and get your things
together while I look out for a hansom."
To which the only possible reply seemed to be, "I'm not coming home."
"Not coming home!"
"No!" And, in spite of her resolve to be a Person, Ann Veronica began
to weep with terror at herself. Apparently she was always doomed to weep
when she talked to her father. But he was always forcing her to say and
do such unexpectedly conclusive things. She feared he might take her
tears as a sign of weakness. So she said: "I won't come home. I'd rather
starve!"
For a moment the conversation hung upon that declaration. Then Mr.
Stanley, putting his hands on the table in the manner rather of a
barrister than a solicitor, and regarding her balefully through his
glasses with quite undisguised animosity, asked, "And may I presume to
inquire, then, what you mean to do?—how do you propose to live?"
"I shall live," sobbed Ann Veronica. "You needn't be anxious about that!
I shall contrive to live."
"But I AM anxious," said Mr. Stanley, "I am anxious. Do you think it's
nothing to me to have my daughter running about London looking for odd
jobs and disgracing herself?"
"Sha'n't get odd jobs," said Ann Veronica, wiping her eyes.
And from that point they went on to a thoroughly embittering wrangle.
Mr. Stanley used his authority, and commanded Ann Veronica to come home,
to which, of course, she said she wouldn't; and then he warned her not
to defy him, warned her very solemnly, and then commanded her 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, and for a time both
talked at once and very wildly. He asked her whether she understood what
she was saying, and went on to say still more precisely that she should
never touch a penny of his money until she came home again—not one
penny. Ann Veronica said she didn't care.
Then abruptly Mr. Stanley changed his key. "You poor child!" he said;
"don't you see the infinite folly of these proceedings? Think! Think of
the love and affection you abandon! Think of your aunt, a second mother
to you. Think if your own mother was alive!"
He paused, deeply moved.
"If my own mother was alive," sobbed Ann Veronica, "she would
understand."
The talk became more and more inconclusive and exhausting. Ann Veronica
found herself incompetent, undignified, and detestable, holding on
desperately to a hardening antagonism 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 to live
her own life, and he meant, with contempt and insults, to prevent her.
Anything else that was said she now regarded only as an aspect of or
diversion from that.
In the retrospect she was amazed to think how things had gone to pieces,
for at the outset she had been quite prepared to go home again upon
terms. While waiting for his coming she had stated her present
and future relations with him with what had seemed to her the most
satisfactory lucidity and completeness. She had looked forward to an
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 the point at
issue, that everything turned on that, and that the sole alternative was
obedience, and she had fallen in with that assumption until rebellion
seemed a sacred principle. Moreover, atrociously and inexorably, he
allowed it to appear ever and again in horrible gleams that he suspected
there was some man in the case.... Some man!
And to conclude it all was the figure of her father in the doorway,
giving her a last chance, his hat in one hand, his umbrella in the
other, shaken at her to emphasize his point.
"You understand, then," he was saying, "you understand?"
"I understand," said Ann Veronica, tear-wet and flushed with a
reciprocal passion, but standing up to him with an equality that amazed
even herself, "I understand." She controlled a sob. "Not a penny—not
one penny—and never darken your doors again!"
The next day her aunt came again and expostulated, and was just saying
it was "an unheard-of thing" for a girl to leave her home as Ann
Veronica had done, when her father arrived, and was shown in by the
pleasant-faced landlady.
Her father had determined on a new line. He put down his hat and
umbrella, rested his hands on his hips, and regarded Ann Veronica
firmly.
"Now," he said, quietly, "it's time we stopped this nonsense."
Ann Veronica was about to reply, when he went on, with a still more
deadly quiet: "I am not here to bandy words with you. Let us have no
more of this humbug. You are to come home."
"I thought I explained—"
"I don't think you can have heard me," said her father; "I have told you
to come home."
"I thought I explained—"
"Come home!"
Ann Veronica shrugged her shoulders.
"Very well," said her father.
"I think this ends the business," he said, turning to his sister.
"It's not for us to supplicate any more. She must learn wisdom—as God
pleases."
"But, my dear Peter!" said Miss Stanley.
"No," said her brother, conclusively, "it's not for a parent to go on
persuading a child."
Miss Stanley rose and regarded Ann Veronica fixedly. The girl stood with
her hands behind her back, sulky, resolute, and intelligent, a strand
of her black hair over one eye and looking more than usually
delicate-featured, and more than ever like an obdurate child.
"She doesn't know."
"She does."
"I can't imagine what makes you fly out against everything like this,"
said Miss Stanley to her niece.
"What is the good of talking?" said her brother. "She must go her own
way. A man's children nowadays are not his own. That's the fact of the
matter. Their minds are turned against him.... Rubbishy novels and
pernicious rascals. We can't even protect them from themselves."
An immense gulf seemed to open between father and daughter as he said
these words.
"I don't see," gasped Ann Veronica, "why parents and children...
shouldn't be friends."
"Friends!" said her father. "When we see you going through disobedience
to the devil! Come, Molly, she must go her own way. I've tried to use my
authority. And she defies me. What more is there to be said? She defies
me!"
It was extraordinary. Ann Veronica felt suddenly an effect of tremendous
pathos; she would have given anything to have been able to frame and
make some appeal, some utterance that should bridge this bottomless
chasm that had opened between her and her father, and she could find
nothing whatever to say that was in the least sincere and appealing.
"Father," she cried, "I have to live!"
He misunderstood her. "That," he said, grimly, with his hand on the
door-handle, "must be your own affair, unless you choose to live at
Morningside Park."
Miss Stanley turned to her. "Vee," she said, "come home. Before it is
too late."
"Come, Molly," said Mr. Stanley, at the door.
"Vee!" said Miss Stanley, "you hear what your father says!"
Miss Stanley struggled with emotion. She made a curious movement toward
her niece, then suddenly, convulsively, she dabbed down something lumpy
on the table and turned to follow her brother. Ann Veronica stared for a
moment in amazement at this dark-green object that clashed as it was
put down. It was a purse. She made a step forward. "Aunt!" she said, "I
can't—"
Then she caught a wild appeal in her aunt's blue eye, halted, and the
door clicked upon them.
There was a pause, and then the front door slammed....
Ann Veronica realized that she was alone with the world. And this time
the departure had a tremendous effect of finality. She had to resist an
impulse of sheer terror, to run out after them and give in.
"Gods," she said, at last, "I've done it this time!"
"Well!" She took up the neat morocco purse, opened it, and examined the
contents.
It contained three sovereigns, six and fourpence, two postage stamps, a
small key, and her aunt's return half ticket to Morningside Park.
After the interview Ann Veronica considered herself formally cut off
from home. If nothing else had clinched that, the purse had.
Nevertheless there came a residuum of expostulations. Her brother Roddy,
who was in the motor line, came to expostulate; her sister Alice wrote.
And Mr. Manning called.
Her sister Alice seemed to have developed a religious sense away there
in Yorkshire, and made appeals that had no meaning for Ann Veronica's
mind. She exhorted Ann Veronica not to become one of "those unsexed
intellectuals, neither man nor woman."
Ann Veronica meditated over that phrase. "That's HIM," said Ann
Veronica, in sound, idiomatic English. "Poor old Alice!"
Her brother Roddy came to her and demanded tea, and asked her to state
a case. "Bit thick on the old man, isn't it?" said Roddy, who had
developed a bluff, straightforward style in the motor shop.
"Mind my smoking?" said Roddy. "I don't see quite what your game is,
Vee, but I suppose you've got a game on somewhere.
"Rummy lot we are!" said Roddy. "Alice—Alice gone dotty, and all over
kids. Gwen—I saw Gwen the other day, and the paint's thicker than ever.
Jim is up 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 only sane member of the family left. The G.V.'s as mad
as any of you, in spite of all his respectability; not a bit of him
straight anywhere, not one bit."
"Straight?"
"Not a bit of it! He's been out after eight per cent. since the
beginning. Eight per cent.! He'll come a cropper one of these days,
if you ask me. He's been near it once or twice already. That's got his
nerves 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 going to pull it off. A home MAY be a sort of cage, but
still—it's a home. Gives you a right to hang on to the old man until he
busts—practically. Jolly hard life for a girl, getting a living. Not MY
affair."
He asked questions and listened to her views for a time.
"I'd chuck this lark right off if I were you, Vee," he said. "I'm five
years older than you, and no end wiser, being a man. What you're after
is too risky. It's a damned hard thing to do. It's all very handsome
starting out on your own, but it's too damned hard. That's my opinion,
if you ask me. There's nothing a girl can do that isn't sweated to the
bone. You square the G.V., and go home before you have to. That's my
advice. If 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. Like appendicitis. It isn't pretty, but
we're made so. Rot, no doubt; but we can't alter it. You go home and
live on the G.V., and get some other man to live on as soon as possible.
It isn't sentiment but it's horse sense. All this Woman-who-Diddery—no
damn good. After all, old P.—Providence, I mean—HAS arranged it so
that men will keep you, more or less. He made the universe on those
lines. You've got to take what you can get."
That was the quintessence of her brother Roddy.
He played variations on this theme for the better part of an hour.
"You go home," he said, at parting; "you go home. It's all very fine and
all that, Vee, this freedom, but it isn't going to work. The world isn't
ready for girls to 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 generations. You go home and wait a
century, Vee, and then try again. Then you may have a bit of a chance.
Now you haven't the ghost of one—not if you play the game fair."
It was remarkable to Ann Veronica how completely Mr. Manning, in his
entirely different dialect, indorsed her brother Roddy's view of things.
He came along, he said, just to call, with large, loud apologies,
radiantly kind and good. Miss Stanley, it was manifest, had given him
Ann Veronica's address. The kindly 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 interview. In the
little apartment, under the gas chandelier, his inches and his stoop
were certainly very effective. In the bad light he looked at once
military and sentimental and studious, like one of Ouida's guardsmen
revised by Mr. Haldane and the London School of Economics and finished
in the Keltic school.