Ann Veronica Read Online Free PDF

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.