Ann Veronica Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.

Chapter the Second
— Ann Veronica Gathers Points of View
*
Part 1
    "Are you coming to the Fadden Dance, Ann Veronica?" asked Constance
Widgett.
    Ann Veronica considered her answer. "I mean to," she replied.
    "You are making your dress?"
    "Such as it is."
    They were in the elder Widgett girl's bedroom; Hetty was laid up, she
said, with a sprained ankle, and a miscellaneous party was gossiping
away her tedium. It was a large, littered, self-forgetful apartment,
decorated with unframed charcoal sketches by various incipient masters;
and an open bookcase, surmounted by plaster casts and the half of a
human skull, displayed an odd miscellany of books—Shaw and Swinburne,
Tom Jones, Fabian Essays, Pope and Dumas, cheek by jowl. Constance
Widgett's abundant copper-red hair was bent down over some dimly
remunerative work—stencilling in colors upon rough, white material—at
a kitchen table she had dragged up-stairs for the purpose, while on her
bed there was seated a slender lady of thirty or so in a dingy green
dress, whom Constance had introduced with a wave of her hand as Miss
Miniver. Miss Miniver looked out on the world through large emotional
blue eyes that were further magnified by the glasses she wore, and her
nose was pinched and pink, and her mouth was whimsically petulant. Her
glasses moved quickly as her glance travelled from face to face.
She seemed bursting with the desire to talk, and watching for her
opportunity. On her lapel was an ivory button, bearing the words "Votes
for Women." Ann Veronica sat at the foot of the sufferer's bed, while
Teddy Widgett, being something of an athlete, occupied the only
bed-room chair—a decadent piece, essentially a tripod and largely a
formality—and smoked cigarettes, and tried to conceal the fact that
he was looking all the time at Ann Veronica's eyebrows. Teddy was the
hatless young man who had turned Ann Veronica aside from the Avenue two
days before. He was the junior of both his sisters, co-educated and
much broken in to feminine society. A bowl of roses, just brought by
Ann Veronica, adorned the communal