7
At the end of dinner that evening Ann Veronica
began: “Father!”
Her father looked at her over his glasses and spoke
with grave deliberation; “If there is anything you
want to say to me,” he said, “you must say it in the
study. I am going to smoke a little here, and then I
shall go to the study. I don't see what you can have
to say. I should have thought my note cleared up
everything. There are some papers I have to look
through to-night —important papers.”
“I won't keep you very long, daddy,” said Ann Veronica.
“I don't see, Mollie,” he remarked, taking a cigar from
the box on the table as his sister and daughter rose,
“why you and Vee shouldn't discuss this little affair —
whatever it is —without bothering me.”
It was the first time this controversy had become
triangular, for all three of them were shy by habit.
He stopped in mid-sentence, and Ann Veronica opened
the door for her aunt. The air was thick with feelings.
Her aunt went out of the room with dignity and a rustle,
and up-stairs to the fastness of her own room. She
agreed entirely with her brother. It distressed and
confused her that the girl should not come to her. It
seemed to show a want of affection, to be a deliberate
and unmerited disregard, to justify the reprisal of being
hurt.
When Ann Veronica came into the study she found
every evidence of a carefully foreseen grouping about
the gas fire. Both arm-chairs had been moved a little
so as to face each other on either side of the fender, and
in the circular glow of the green-shaded lamp there
lay, conspicuously waiting, a thick bundle of blue and
white papers tied with pink tape. Her father held some
printed document in his hand, and appeared not to
observe her entry. “Sit down,” he said, and perused —
“perused” is the word for it —for some moments. Then
he put the paper by. “And what is it all about,
Veronica?” he asked, with a deliberate note of irony,
looking at her a little quizzically over his glasses.
Ann Veronica looked bright and a little elated, and
she disregarded her father's invitation to be seated.
She stood on the mat instead, and looked down on him.
“Look here, daddy,” she said, in a tone of great
reasonableness, “I must go to that dance,
you know.”
Her father's irony deepened. “Why?” he asked,
suavely.
Her answer was not quite ready. “Well, because I
don't see any reason why I shouldn't.”
“You see I do.”
“Why shouldn't I go?”
“It isn't a suitable place; it isn't a suitable gathering.”
“But, daddy, what do you know of the place and the
gathering?”
“And it's entirely out of order; it isn't right, it isn't
correct; it's impossible for you to stay in an hotel in
London —the idea is preposterous. I can't imagine
what possessed you, Veronica.”
He put his head on one side, pulled down the corners
of his mouth, and looked at her over his glasses.
“But why is it preposterous?” asked Ann Veronica,
and fiddled with a pipe on the mantel.
“Surely!” he remarked, with an expression of worried
appeal.
“You see, daddy, I don't think it is
preposterous.
That's really what I want to discuss. It comes to this —
am I to be trusted to take care of myself, or am I not?”
“To judge from this proposal of yours, I should say
not.”
“I think I am.”
“As long as you remain under my roof —” he began,
and paused.
“You are going to treat me as though I wasn't.
Well, I don't think that's fair.”
“Your ideas of fairness —” he remarked, and discontinued
that sentence. “My dear girl,” he said, in a
tone of patient reasonableness, “you are a mere child.
You know nothing of life, nothing of its dangers, nothing
of its possibilities. You think everything is harmless and
simple, and so forth. It isn't. It isn't. That's where you
go wrong. In some things, in many things, you must
trust to your elders, to those who know more of life than
you do. Your aunt and I have discussed all this
matter. There it is. You can't go.”
The conversation hung for a moment. Ann Veronica
tried to keep hold of a complicated situation and not
lose her head. She had turned round sideways, so as
to look down into the fire.
“You see, father,” she said, “it isn't only this affair
of the dance. I want to go to that because it's a new
experience, because I think it will be interesting and give
me a view of things. You say I know nothing. That's
probably true. But how am I to know of things?”
“Some things I hope you may never know,” he said.
“I'm not so sure. I want to know —just as much
as I can.”
“Tut!” he said, fuming, and put out his hand to the
papers in the pink tape.
“Well, I do. It's just that I want to say. I want
to be a human being; I want to learn about things
and know about things, and not to be protected as
something too precious for life, cooped up in one narrow
little corner.”
“Cooped up!” he cried. “Did I stand in the way of
your going to college? Have I ever prevented you
going about at any reasonable hour? You've got a
bicycle!”
“H'm!” said Ann Veronica, and then went on
“I want to be taken seriously. A girl —at my age —
is grown-up. I want to go on with my University work
under proper conditions, now that I've done the
Intermediate. It isn't as though I haven't done well. I've
never muffed an exam. yet. Roddy muffed two. . . .”
Her father interrupted. “Now look here, Veronica,
let us be plain with each other. You are not going
to that infidel Russell's classes. You are not going
anywhere but to the Tredgold College. I've thought
that out, and you must make up your mind to it. All
sorts of considerations come in. While you live in my
house you must follow my ideas. You are wrong even
about that man's scientific position and his standard of
work. There are men in the Lowndean who laugh at
him —simply laugh at him. And I have seen work by
his pupils myself that struck me as being —well, next
door to shameful. There's stories, too, about his
demonstrator, Capes. Something or other. The kind
of man who isn't content with his science, and writes
articles in the monthly reviews. Anyhow. there it is:
you are not going there.”
The girl received this intimation in silence. but the
face that looked down upon the gas fire took an
expression of obstinacy that brought out a hitherto latent
resemblance between parent and child. When she
spoke, her lips twitched.
“Then I suppose when I have graduated I am to come
home?”
“It seems the natural course ”
“And do nothing?”
“There are plenty of things a girl can find to do at
home.”
“Until some one takes pity on me and marries me?”
He raised his eyebrows in mild appeal. His foot
tapped impatiently, and he took up the papers.
“Look here, father,” she said, with a change in her
voice, “suppose I won't stand it?”
He regarded her as though this was a new idea.
“Suppose, for example, I go to this dance?”
“You won't.”
“Well” —her breath failed her for a moment. “How
would you prevent it?” she asked.
“But I have forbidden it!” he said, raising his
voice.
“Yes, I know. But suppose I go?”
“Now, Veronica! No, no. This won't do. Understand
me! I forbid it. I do not want to hear from you
even the threat of disobedience.” He spoke loudly.
“The thing is forbidden!”
“I am ready to give up anything that you show to be
wrong.”
“You will give up anything I wish you to give up.”
They stared at each other through a pause, and
both faces were flushed and obstinate.
She was trying by some wonderful, secret, and motionless
gymnastics to restrain her tears. But when she
spoke her lips quivered, and they came. “I mean to go
to that dance!” she blubbered. “I mean to go to that
dance! I meant to reason with you, but you won't
reason. You're dogmatic.”
At the sight of her tears his expression changed to a
mingling of triumph and concern. He stood up,
apparently intending to put an arm about her, but she
stepped back from him quickly. She produced a handkerchief,
and with one sweep of this and a simultaneous
gulp had abolished her fit of weeping. His voice now
had lost its ironies.
“Now, Veronica,” he pleaded, “Veronica, this is
most unreasonable. All we do is for your good. Neither
your aunt nor I have any other thought but what is
best for you.”
“Only you won't let me live. Only you won't let me
exist!”
Mr. Stanley lost patience. He bullied frankly.
“What nonsense is this? What raving! My dear
child, you do live, you
do exist! You have this home.
You have friends, acquaintances, social standing,
brothers and sisters, every advantage! Instead of which,
you want to go to some mixed classes or other and cut
up rabbits and dance about at nights in wild costumes
with casual art student friends and God knows who.
That —that isn't living! You are beside yourself. You
don't know what you ask nor what you say. You have
neither reason nor logic. I am sorry to seem to hurt you,
but all I say is for your good. You must
not, you shall
not go. On this I am resolved. I put my foot down
like —like adamant. And a time will come, Veronica,
mark my words, a time will come when you will bless
me for my firmness to-night. It goes to my heart to
disappoint you, but this thing must not be.”
He sidled toward her, but she recoiled from him,
leaving him in possession of the hearth-rug.
“Well,” she said, “good-night, father.”
“What!” he asked; “not a kiss?”
She affected not to hear.
The door closed softly upon her. For a long time he
remained standing before the fire, staring at the
situation. Then he sat down and filled his pipe slowly and
thoughtfully. . . .
“I don't see what else I could have said,” he remarked.
