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Ann Veronica Chapter 4 - The crisis · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter four of Anne Veronica. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Joy Chan Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells. Chapter
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  Speaker 1: the fourth the Crisis, Part one. We left Miss Stanley
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  Speaker 1: with Anne Veronica's fancy dress in her hands and her
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  Speaker 1: eyes directed to Anne Veronica's pseudo Turkish slippers. When mister
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  Speaker 1: Stanley came home at a quarter to six, an earlier,
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  Speaker 1: trained by fifteen minutes than he affected, his sister met
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  Speaker 1: him in the hall with a hushed expression. I'm so
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  Speaker 1: glad you'll hear, Peter, She said, she means to go go,
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  Speaker 1: He said, where to that ball? What ball was rhetorical,
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  Speaker 1: he knew. I believe she's dressing up stairs now, then
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  Speaker 1: tell her to undress. Confound her. The city had been
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  Speaker 1: thoroughly annoying that day, and he was angry from the outset.
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  Speaker 1: Miss Stanley reflected on this proposal for a moment. I
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  Speaker 1: don't think she will, she said. She must, said mister Stanley,
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  Speaker 1: and went into his study. His sister followed, she can't
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  Speaker 1: go now, She'll have to wait for dinner, he said, uncomfortably.
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  Speaker 1: She's going to have some sort of meal with the
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  Speaker 1: widgets down the avenue and go up with them. She
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  Speaker 1: told you that, yes, when at tea, But why didn't
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  Speaker 1: you prohibit once for all the whole thing? How dared
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  Speaker 1: she tell you that? Out of defiance? She just sat
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  Speaker 1: and told me that was her arrangement. I've never seen
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  Speaker 1: her quite so sure of herself. What did you say?
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  Speaker 1: I said, my dear Veronica, how can you think of
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  Speaker 1: such things? And then she had two more cups of
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  Speaker 1: tea and some cake and told me of her walk.
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  Speaker 1: She'll meet somebody one of these days walking about like that.
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  Speaker 1: She didn't say she'd met any one. But didn't you
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  Speaker 1: say some more about that ball? I said everything I
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  Speaker 1: could say. As soon as I realized she was trying
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  Speaker 1: to avoid the topic, I said, it's no use your
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  Speaker 1: telling me about this walk and pretend I've been told
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  Speaker 1: about the ball, because you haven't. Your father has forbidden
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  Speaker 1: you to go. Well, she said, I hate being horrid
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  Speaker 1: to you and father, but I feel it my duty
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  Speaker 1: to go to that ball. Felt it her duty very well,
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  Speaker 1: I said, Then I washed my hands of the whole business.
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  Speaker 1: Your disobedience be upon your own head. But that is
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  Speaker 1: flat rebellion, said mister Stanley, standing on her throg with
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  Speaker 1: his back to the unlit gas fire. You ought at once,
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  Speaker 1: you ought at once to have told her that what
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  Speaker 1: duty does a girl owe to any one before her father?
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  Speaker 1: Obedience to him? That is surely the first law? What
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  Speaker 1: can she put before that? His voice began to rise.
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  Speaker 1: One would think I had said nothing about the matter.
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  Speaker 1: One would think I had agreed to her going. I
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  Speaker 1: suppose this is what she learns in her infernal London colleges.
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  Speaker 1: I suppose this is the sort of damned rubbish. Oh sh, Peter,
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  Speaker 1: cried Miss Stanley. He stopped abruptly. In the pause, a
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  Speaker 1: door could be heard opening and closing on the landing
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  Speaker 1: up stairs. Then light footsteps became audible, descending the staircase
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  Speaker 1: with a certain deliberation and a faint rustle of skirts.
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  Speaker 1: Tell her, said mister Stanley, with an imperious gesture to
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  Speaker 1: come in here. Part two. Miss Stanley emerged from the
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  Speaker 1: study and stood watching Anne Veronica descend. The girl was
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  Speaker 1: flushed with excitement, bright eyed, and braced for a struggle.
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  Speaker 1: Her aunt had never seen her looking so fine or
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  Speaker 1: so pretty. Her fancy dress, save for the green gray stockings,
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  Speaker 1: the pseudo Turkish slippers, and baggy silk trousered ends natural
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  Speaker 1: to a Corsair's bride, was hidden in a large black
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  Speaker 1: silk hooded opera cloak. Beneath the hood, it was evident
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  Speaker 1: that her rebellious hair was bound up with red silk
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  Speaker 1: and fastened by some device. In her ears, unless she
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  Speaker 1: had them pierced, which was too dreadful a thing to suppose,
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  Speaker 1: were long brass filigrey earrings. I'm just off, aunt, said
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  Speaker 1: Anne Veronica. Your father is in the study and wishes
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  Speaker 1: to speak to you. Anne Veronica hesitated, and then stood
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  Speaker 1: in the open doorway and regarded her father's stern presence.
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  Speaker 1: She spoke with an entirely false note of cheerful off handedness.
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  Speaker 1: I'm just in time to say good bye before I go. Father.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going up to London with the widgets to that ball.
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  Speaker 1: Now look here, Anne Veronica said, mister Stanley, just a moment.
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  Speaker 1: You are not going to that ball. And Veronica tried
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  Speaker 1: a less genial, more dignified note. I thought we had
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  Speaker 1: discussed that, father. You are not going to that ball.
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  Speaker 1: You are not going out of this house in that
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  Speaker 1: get up, and Veronica tried yet more earnestly to treat
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  Speaker 1: him as she would treat any man with an insistence
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  Speaker 1: upon her due of vascular respect. You see, she said,
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  Speaker 1: very gently, I am going. I am sorry to seem
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  Speaker 1: to disobey you, but I am. I wish she found
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  Speaker 1: she had embarked on a bad sentence. I wish we
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  Speaker 1: needn't have quarreled. She stopped abruptly and turned about toward
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  Speaker 1: the front door. In a moment, he was beside her.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think you can have heard me, Vee, he said,
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  Speaker 1: with intensely controlled fury. I said you were, He shouted.
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  Speaker 1: Not to go, She made, and overdid an immense effort
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  Speaker 1: to be a princess. She tossed her head, and, having
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  Speaker 1: no further words, moved toward the door. Her father intercepted her,
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  Speaker 1: and for a moment she and he struggled with their
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  Speaker 1: hands upon the latch. A common rage flushed their faces.
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  Speaker 1: Let go, she gasped at him, a blaze of anger.
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  Speaker 1: Veronica cried Miss Stanley, warningly, and Peter. For a moment
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  Speaker 1: they seemed on the Vergin altogether desperate scuffle, never for
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  Speaker 1: a moment had violence come between these two since long ago,
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  Speaker 1: He had, in spite of her mother's protest in the background,
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  Speaker 1: carried her, kicking and scrawling to the nursery for some
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  Speaker 1: forgotten crime. With something near to horror. They found them
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  Speaker 1: thus confronted. The door was fastened by a catch and
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  Speaker 1: a latch with an inside key, to which at night,
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  Speaker 1: a chain and two bolts were added. Carefully abstaining from
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  Speaker 1: thrusting against each other, Anne Veronica and her father began
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  Speaker 1: an absurdly desperate struggle, the one to open the door,
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  Speaker 1: the other to keep it fastened. She seized the key,
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  Speaker 1: and he grasped her hand and squeezed it roughly and
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  Speaker 1: painfully between the handle and the ward. As she tried
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  Speaker 1: to turn it, his grip twisted her wrist. She cried
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  Speaker 1: out with the pain of it. A wild passion of
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  Speaker 1: shame and self disgust swept over her. Her spirit awoke
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  Speaker 1: in dismay to an affection in ruins, to the immense,
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  Speaker 1: undignified disaster that had come to them. Abruptly. She desisted, recoiled,
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  Speaker 1: and turned and fled upstairs. She made noises between weeping
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  Speaker 1: and laughter as she went. She gained her room and
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  Speaker 1: slammed her door and locked it, as though she feared
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  Speaker 1: violence and pursuit. Oh God, she cried, Oh God, and
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  Speaker 1: flung aside her opera cloak, and for a time walked
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  Speaker 1: about the room or Corsair's bride. At a crisis of emotion.
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  Speaker 1: Why can't he reason with me, she said, again and again.
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  Speaker 1: Instead of doing this part three, there presently came a
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  Speaker 1: phase in which she said, I won't stance at even now,
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  Speaker 1: I will go to night. She went as far as
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  Speaker 1: her door, then turned to the window. She opened this
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  Speaker 1: and scrambled out a thing she had not done for
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  Speaker 1: five long years of adolescence, upon the leaded space above
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  Speaker 1: the built out bathroom on the first floor. Once upon
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  Speaker 1: a time she and Roddy had descended, thence by the
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  Speaker 1: drain pipe. But things that a girl of sixteen may
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  Speaker 1: do in short skirts are not things to be done
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  Speaker 1: by a young lady of twenty one in fancy dress
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  Speaker 1: and an opera cloak. And just as she was coming
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  Speaker 1: unaided to an adequate realization of this, she discovered mister Pragmar,
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  Speaker 1: the wholesale druggist who lived three gardens away and who
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  Speaker 1: had been mowing his lawn to get an appetite for dinner.
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  Speaker 1: Standing in a fascinated attitude beside the forgotten lawn mower
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  Speaker 1: and watching her intenterly, she found it extremely difficult to
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  Speaker 1: infuse an air of quiet correctitude into her return through
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  Speaker 1: the window, and when she was safely inside, she waved,
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  Speaker 1: clinched fists and executed a noiseless dance of rage. When
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  Speaker 1: she reflected that mister Pragmar probably knew mister Rammage and
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  Speaker 1: might describe the affair to him, she cried oh with
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  Speaker 1: renewed vexation, and repeated some steps of her dance in
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  Speaker 1: a new and more ecstatic measure. Part four. At eight
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  Speaker 1: that evening, Miss Stanley tapped at Anne Veronica's bedroom door.
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  Speaker 1: I've brought you up some dinner, v she said. Anne
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  Speaker 1: Veronica was lying ying on her bed in a darkling room,
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  Speaker 1: staring at the ceiling. She reflected, before answering, she was
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  Speaker 1: frightfully hungry. She had eaten little or no tea, and
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  Speaker 1: her midday meal had been worse than nothing. She got
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  Speaker 1: up and unlocked the door. Her aunt did not object
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  Speaker 1: to capital punishment or war, or the industrial system, or
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  Speaker 1: casual wards or flogging of criminals. Or the congo free state.
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  Speaker 1: Because none of these things really got hold of her imagination,
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  Speaker 1: but she did object. She did not like. She could
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  Speaker 1: not bear to think of people not having and enjoying
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  Speaker 1: their meals. It was her distinctive test of an emotional state,
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  Speaker 1: its interference with a kindly normal digestion. Anyone very badly
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  Speaker 1: moved choked down a few mouthfuls. The symptom of supreme
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  Speaker 1: distress was not to be able to touch a bit.
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  Speaker 1: So that the thought of Anne Veronica upstairs had been
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  Speaker 1: extremely painful for her through all the silent dinner time
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  Speaker 1: that night. As soon as dinner was over, she went
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  Speaker 1: into the kitchen and devoted herself to compiling a tray,
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  Speaker 1: not a tray merely of half cooled dinner things, but
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  Speaker 1: especially prepared nice tray suitable for tempting any one. With
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  Speaker 1: this she now entered, Anne Veronica found herself in the
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  Speaker 1: presence of the most disconcerting fact and human experience, the
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  Speaker 1: kindliness of people you believed to be thoroughly wrong. She
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  Speaker 1: took the tray with both hands, gulped, and gave way
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  Speaker 1: to tears. Her aunt looked unhappily to the thought of
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  Speaker 1: penitence my dear, she began, with an affectionate hand on
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  Speaker 1: Anne Veronica's shoulder. I do so wish you would realize
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  Speaker 1: how it grieves your father. Anne Veronica flung away from
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  Speaker 1: her hand and the pepper pot on the tray, upset,
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  Speaker 1: sending a puff of pepper into the air and instantly
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  Speaker 1: filling them both with an intense desire to sneeze. I
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  Speaker 1: don't think you see, she replied, with tears on her
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  Speaker 1: cheeks and her brows knitting. How its shames and ah
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  Speaker 1: disgraces me too. She put down the tray with a
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  Speaker 1: concussion on her toilet table. But dear, think he is
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  Speaker 1: your father too. That's no reason, said Anne Veronica, speaking
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  Speaker 1: through her handkerchief and stopping abruptly. Niece and aunt regarded
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  Speaker 1: each other for a moment over their pocket handkerchiefs, with
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  Speaker 1: watery but antagonistic eyes, each far too profoundly moved to
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  Speaker 1: see the absurdity of the position. I hope, said Miss
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  Speaker 1: Stanley with dignity, and turned doorward with features and civil
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  Speaker 1: warfare better state of mind, she gasped aune Veronica stood
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  Speaker 1: in the twilight room, staring at the door that had
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  Speaker 1: slammed upon her. Aunt her pocket handkerchief rolled tightly in
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  Speaker 1: her hand. Her soul was full of the sense of disaster.
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  Speaker 1: She had made her first fight for dignity and freedom
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  Speaker 1: as a grown up and in dependent person, and this
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  Speaker 1: was how the universe had treated her. It had neither
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  Speaker 1: succumbed to her nor wrathfully overwhelmed her. It had thrust
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  Speaker 1: her back with an undignified scuffle, with vulgar comedy, with
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  Speaker 1: an unendurable scornful grin. By God, said Ann Veronica for
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  Speaker 1: the first time in her life. But I will, I will,
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  Speaker 1: end of Chapter four.