Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story

by H. G. Wells

  "I'm all for the vote," said Teddy.

  "I suppose a girl MUST be underpaid and sweated," said Ann Veronica. "Isuppose there's no way of getting a decent income--independently."

  "Women have practically NO economic freedom," said Miss Miniver,"because they have no political freedom. Men have seen to that. The oneprofession, the one decent profession, I mean, for a woman--except thestage--is teaching, and there we trample on one another. Everywhereelse--the law, medicine, the Stock Exchange--prejudice bars us."

  "There's art," said Ann Veronica, "and writing."

  "Every one hasn't the Gift. Even there a woman never gets a fair chance.Men are against her. Whatever she does is minimized. All the bestnovels have been written by women, and yet see how men sneer at the ladynovelist still! There's only one way to get on for a woman, and that isto please men. That is what they think we are for!"

  "We're beasts," said Teddy. "Beasts!"

  But Miss Miniver took no notice of his admission.

  "Of course," said Miss Miniver--she went on in a regularly undulatingvoice--"we DO please men. We have that gift. We can see round them andbehind them and through them, and most of us use that knowledge, in thesilent way we have, for our great ends. Not all of us, but some of us.Too many. I wonder what men would say if we threw the mask aside--ifwe really told them what WE thought of them, really showed them what WEwere." A flush of excitement crept into her cheeks.

  "Maternity," she said, "has been our undoing."

  From that she opened out into a long, confused emphatic discourse on theposition of women, full of wonderful statements, while Constance workedat her stencilling and Ann Veronica and Hetty listened, and Teddycontributed sympathetic noises and consumed cheap cigarettes. As shetalked she made weak little gestures with her hands, and she thrust herface forward from her bent shoulders; and she peered sometimes at AnnVeronica and sometimes at a photograph of the Axenstrasse, nearFluelen, that hung upon the wall. Ann Veronica watched her face, vaguelysympathizing with her, vaguely disliking her physical insufficiency andher convulsive movements, and the fine eyebrows were knit with a faintperplexity. Essentially the talk was a mixture of fragments of sentencesheard, of passages read, or arguments indicated rather than stated, andall of it was served in a sauce of strange enthusiasm, thin yetintense. Ann Veronica had had some training at the Tredgold College indisentangling threads from confused statements, and she had a curiouspersuasion that in all this fluent muddle there was something--somethingreal, something that signified. But it was very hard to follow. She didnot understand the note of hostility to men that ran through it all, thebitter vindictiveness that lit Miss Miniver's cheeks and eyes, thesense of some at last insupportable wrong slowly accumulated. She had noinkling 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 animalsthe females are more important than the males; the males have to pleasethem. Look at the cock's feathers, look at the competition there iseverywhere, except among humans. The stags and oxen and things allhave to fight for us, everywhere. Only in man is the male made themost important. And that happens through our maternity; it's our veryimportance 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. Ithas been proved. Then they appear among the lower things"--she mademeticulous gestures to figure the scale of life; she seemed to beholding up specimens, and peering through her glasses at them--"amongcrustaceans and things, just as little creatures, ever so inferior tothe females. Mere hangers on. Things you would laugh at. And among humanbeings, too, women to begin with were the rulers and leaders; they ownedall the property, they invented all the arts.

  "The primitive government was the Matriarchate. The Matriarchate! TheLords 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 Americanprofessors."

  "But how did they prove it?"

  "By science," said Miss Miniver, and hurried on, putting out arhetorical hand that showed a slash of finger through its glove. "Andnow, look at us! See what we have become. Toys! Delicate trifles! A sexof 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 herfrom her pillow. She charged boldly into the space of Miss Miniver'srhetorical pause.

  "It isn't quite that we're toys. Nobody toys with me. Nobody regardsConstance or Vee as a delicate trifle."

  Teddy made some confused noise, a thoracic street row; some remark wasassassinated 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, toysisn't the word; we're litter. We're handfuls. We're regarded asinflammable litter that mustn't be left about. We are the species, andmaternity is our game; that's all right, but nobody wants that admittedfor fear we should all catch fire, and set about fulfilling the purposeof our beings without waiting for further explanations. As if we didn'tknow! The practical trouble is our ages. They used to marry us off atseventeen, rush us into things before we had time to protest. They don'tnow. Heaven knows why! They don't marry most of us off now until high upin the twenties. And the age gets higher. We have to hang about in theinterval. There's a great gulf opened, and nobody's got any plans whatto do with us. So the world is choked with waste and waiting daughters.Hanging about! And they start thinking and asking questions, and beginto be neither one thing nor the other. We're partly human beings andpartly females in suspense."

  Miss Miniver followed with an expression of perplexity, her mouth shapedto futile expositions. The Widgett method of thought puzzled her weaklyrhetorical 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'sit," she said. "They have no plans for us. They have no ideas what to dowith 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 ushave to be killed to get it." And she pressed her lips together in whiteresolution and nodded, and she was manifestly full of that same passionfor conflict and self-sacrifice that has given the world martyrs sincethe 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. Justwhat it means...."

  Part 2

  As Ann Veronica went back along the Avenue to her aunt she became awareof a light-footed pursuer running. Teddy overtook her, a little out ofbreath, his innocent face flushed, his straw-colored hair disordered. Hewas out of breath, and spoke in broken sentences.

  "I say, Vee. Half a minute, Vee. It's like this: You want freedom. Lookhere. You know--if you want freedom. Just an idea of mine. You knowhow those Russian students do? In Russia. Just a formal marriage. Mereformality. Liberates the girl from parental control. See? You marry me.Simply. No further responsibility whatever. Without hindrance--presentoccupation. 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 thetremendous 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 presentsituation."

  "No! Well, I just suggested it. Threw it out. Of course, if at anytime--see reason--
alter your opinion. Always at your service. Nooffence, 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 andleft her.

  Part 3

  The call Ann Veronica paid with her aunt that afternoon had at firstmuch the same relation to the Widgett conversation that a plaster statueof Mr. Gladstone would have to a carelessly displayed interior on adissecting-room table. The Widgetts talked with a remarkable absence ofexternal coverings; the Palsworthys found all the meanings of life onits surfaces. They seemed the most wrapped things in all Ann Veronica'swrappered world. The Widgett mental furniture was perhaps worn andshabby, but there it was before you, undisguised, fading visibly in analmost pitiless sunlight. Lady Palsworthy was the widow of a knightwho had won his spurs in the wholesale coal trade, she was of goodseventeenth-century attorney blood, a county family, and distantlyrelated to Aunt Mollie's deceased curate. She was the social leader ofMorningside Park, and in her superficial and euphuistic way an extremelykind and pleasant woman. With her lived a Mrs. Pramlay, a sister ofthe Morningside Park doctor, and a very active and useful member of theCommittee of the Impoverished Gentlewomen's Aid Society. Both ladieswere on easy and friendly terms with all that was best in MorningsidePark society; they had an afternoon once a month that was quite wellattended, they sometimes gave musical evenings, they dined out and gavea finish to people's dinners, they had a full-sized croquet lawn andtennis beyond, and understood the art of bringing people together.And they never talked of anything at all, never discussed, never evenencouraged gossip. They were just nice.

  Ann Veronica found herself walking back down the Avenue that had justbeen the scene of her first proposal beside her aunt, and speculatingfor the first time in her life about that lady's mental attitudes. Herprevailing effect was one of quiet and complete assurance, as though sheknew all about everything, and was only restrained by her instinctivedelicacy from telling what she knew. But the restraint exercised by herinstinctive delicacy was very great; over and above coarse or sexualmatters it covered religion and politics and any mention of moneymatters or crime, and Ann Veronica found herself wondering whether theseexclusions represented, after all, anything more than suppressions. Wasthere anything at all in those locked rooms of her aunt's mind? Werethey fully furnished and only a little dusty and cobwebby and in need ofan airing, or were they stark vacancy except, perhaps, for a cockroachor so or the gnawing of a rat? What was the mental equivalent of a rat'sgnawing? The image was going astray. But what would her aunt think ofTeddy's recent off-hand suggestion of marriage? What would she think ofthe Widgett conversation? Suppose she was to tell her aunt quietlybut firmly about the parasitic males of degraded crustacea. The girlsuppressed a chuckle that would have been inexplicable.

  There came a wild rush of anthropological lore into her brain, a flareof indecorous humor. It was one of the secret troubles of her mind, thisgrotesque twist her ideas would sometimes take, as though they rebelledand rioted. After all, she found herself reflecting, behind her aunt'scomplacent visage there was a past as lurid as any one's--not, ofcourse, her aunt's own personal past, which was apparently just thatcurate and almost incredibly jejune, but an ancestral past with allsorts of scandalous things in it: fire and slaughterings, exogamy,marriage by capture, corroborees, cannibalism! Ancestresses with perhapsdim anticipatory likenesses to her aunt, their hair less neatly done,no doubt, their manners and gestures as yet undisciplined, but stillancestresses in the direct line, must have danced through a brief andstirring life in the woady buff. Was there no echo anywhere in MissStanley's pacified brain? Those empty rooms, if they were empty, werethe equivalents of astoundingly decorated predecessors. Perhaps it wasjust as well there was no inherited memory.

  Ann Veronica was by this time quite shocked at her own thoughts, and yetthey would go on with their freaks. Great vistas of history opened, andshe and her aunt were near reverting to the primitive and passionate andentirely indecorous arboreal--were swinging from branches by thearms, and really going on quite dreadfully--when their arrival atthe Palsworthys' happily checked this play of fancy, and brought AnnVeronica back to the exigencies of the wrappered life again.

  Lady Palsworthy liked Ann Veronica because she was never awkward,had steady eyes, and an almost invariable neatness and dignity in herclothes. She seemed just as stiff and shy as a girl ought to be, LadyPalsworthy thought, neither garrulous nor unready, and free from nearlyall the heavy aggressiveness, the overgrown, overblown quality, theegotism and want of consideration of the typical modern girl. But thenLady Palsworthy had never seen Ann Veronica running like the windat hockey. She had never seen her sitting on tables nor heard herdiscussing theology, and had failed to observe that the graceful figurewas a natural one and not due to ably chosen stays. She took it forgranted Ann Veronica wore stays--mild stays, perhaps, but stays, andthought no more of the matter. She had seen her really only at teas,with the Stanley strain in her uppermost. There are so many girlsnowadays who are quite unpresentable at tea, with their untrimmedlaughs, their awful dispositions of their legs when they sit down, theirslangy disrespect; they no longer smoke, it is true, like the girls ofthe eighties and nineties, nevertheless to a fine intelligence they havethe flavor of tobacco. They have no amenities, they scratch themellow surface of things almost as if they did it on purpose; andLady Palsworthy and Mrs. Pramlay lived for amenities and the mellowedsurfaces of things. Ann Veronica was one of the few young people--andone must have young people just as one must have flowers--one could askto a little gathering without the risk of a painful discord. Then thedistant relationship to Miss Stanley gave them a slight but pleasantsense of proprietorship in the girl. They had their little dreams abouther.

  Mrs. Pramlay received them in the pretty chintz drawing-room, whichopened by French windows on the trim garden, with its croquet lawn, itstennis-net in the middle distance, and its remote rose alley linedwith smart dahlias and flaming sunflowers. Her eye met Miss Stanley'sunderstandingly, and she was if anything a trifle more affectionate inher greeting to Ann Veronica. Then Ann Veronica passed on toward thetea in the garden, which was dotted with the elite of Morningside Parksociety, and there she was pounced upon by Lady Palsworthy and given teaand led about. Across the lawn and hovering indecisively, Ann Veronicasaw and immediately affected not to see Mr. Manning, Lady Palsworthy'snephew, a tall young man of seven-and-thirty with a handsome,thoughtful, impassive face, a full black mustache, and a certain heavyluxuriousness of gesture. The party resolved itself for Ann Veronicainto a game in which she manoeuvred unostentatiously and finallyunsuccessfully to avoid talking alone with this gentleman.

  Mr. Manning had shown on previous occasions that he found Ann Veronicainteresting and that he wished to interest her. He was a civil servantof some standing, and after a previous conversation upon aesthetics ofa sententious, nebulous, and sympathetic character, he had sent her asmall volume, which he described as the fruits of his leisure and whichwas as a matter of fact rather carefully finished verse. It dealt withfine aspects of Mr. Manning's feelings, and as Ann Veronica's mindwas still largely engaged with fundamentals and found no pleasure inmetrical forms, she had not as yet cut its pages. So that as she saw himshe remarked to herself very faintly but definitely, "Oh, golly!" andset up a campaign of avoidance that Mr. Manning at last broke down bycoming directly at her as she talked with the vicar's aunt about some ofthe details of the alleged smell of the new church lamps. He did not somuch cut into this conversation as loom over it, for he was a tall, ifrather studiously stooping, man.

  The face that looked down upon Ann Veronica was full of amiableintention. "Splendid you are looking to-day, Miss Stanley," he said."How well and jolly you must be feeling."

  He beamed over the effect of this and shook hands with effusion, andLady Palsworthy suddenly appeared as his confederate a
nd disentangledthe vicar's aunt.

  "I love this warm end of summer more than words can tell," he said."I've tried to make words tell it. It's no good. Mild, you know, andboon. You want music."

  Ann Veronica agreed, and tried to make the manner of her assent cover apossible knowledge of a probable poem.

  "Splendid it must be to be a composer. Glorious! The Pastoral.Beethoven; he's the best of them. Don't you think? Tum, tay, tum, tay."

  Ann Veronica did.

  "What have you been doing since our last talk? Still cutting uprabbits and probing into things? I've often thought of that talk ofours--often."

  He did not appear to require any answer to his question.

  "Often," he repeated, a little heavily.

  "Beautiful these autumn flowers are," said Ann Veronica, in a wide,uncomfortable pause.

  "Do come and see the Michaelmas daisies at the end of the garden," saidMr. Manning, "they're a dream." And Ann Veronica found herself beingcarried off to an isolation even remoter and more conspicuous than thecorner of the lawn, with the whole of the party aiding and abetting andglancing at them. "Damn!" said Ann Veronica to herself, rousing herselffor a conflict.

  Mr. Manning told her he loved beauty, and extorted a similar admissionfrom her; he then expatiated upon his own love of beauty. He said thatfor him beauty justified life, that he could not imagine a good actionthat was not a beautiful one nor any beautiful thing that could bealtogether bad. Ann Veronica hazarded an opinion that as a matter ofhistory some very beautiful people had, to a quite considerable extent,been bad, but Mr. Manning questioned whether when they were bad theywere really beautiful or when they were beautiful bad. Ann Veronicafound her attention wandering a little as he told her that he was notashamed to feel almost slavish in the presence of really beautifulpeople, and then they came to the Michaelmas daisies. They were reallyvery fine and abundant, with a blaze of perennial sunflowers behindthem.