Part 5
After the interview Ann Veronica considered herself formally cut off
from home. If nothing else had clinched that, the purse had.
Nevertheless there came a residuum of expostulations. Her brother Roddy,
who was in the motor line, came to expostulate; her sister Alice wrote.
And Mr. Manning called.
Her sister Alice seemed to have developed a religious sense away there
in Yorkshire, and made appeals that had no meaning for Ann Veronica’s
mind. She exhorted Ann Veronica not to become one of “those unsexed
intellectuals, neither man nor woman.”
Ann Veronica meditated over that phrase. “That’s HIM,” said Ann
Veronica, in sound, idiomatic English. “Poor old Alice!”
Her brother Roddy came to her and demanded tea, and asked her to state
a case. “Bit thick on the old man, isn’t it?” said Roddy, who had
developed a bluff, straightforward style in the motor shop.
“Mind my smoking?” said Roddy. “I don’t see quite what your game is,
Vee, but I suppose you’ve got a game on somewhere.
“Rummy lot we are!” said Roddy. “Alice--Alice gone dotty, and all over
kids. Gwen--I saw Gwen the other day, and the paint’s thicker than ever.
Jim is up to the neck in Mahatmas and Theosophy and Higher Thought and
rot--writes letters worse than Alice. And now YOU’RE on the war-path. I
believe I’m the only sane member of the family left. The G.V.’s as mad
as any of you, in spite of all his respectability; not a bit of him
straight anywhere, not one bit.”
“Straight?”
“Not a bit of it! He’s been out after eight per cent. since the
beginning. Eight per cent.! He’ll come a cropper one of these days,
if you ask me. He’s been near it once or twice already. That’s got his
nerves to rags. I suppose we’re all human beings really, but what price
the sacred Institution of the Family! Us as a bundle! Eh?... I don’t
half disagree with you, Vee, really; only thing is, I don’t see
how you’re going to pull it off. A home MAY be a sort of cage, but
still--it’s a home. Gives you a right to hang on to the old man until he
busts--practically. Jolly hard life for a girl, getting a living. Not MY
affair.”
He asked questions and listened to her views for a time.
“I’d chuck this lark right off if I were you, Vee,” he said. “I’m five
years older than you, and no end wiser, being a man. What you’re after
is too risky. It’s a damned hard thing to do. It’s all very handsome
starting out on your own, but it’s too damned hard. That’s my opinion,
if you ask me. There’s nothing a girl can do that isn’t sweated to the
bone. You square the G.V., and go home before you have to. That’s my
advice. If you don’t eat humble-pie now you may live to fare worse
later. _I_ can’t help you a cent. Life’s hard enough nowadays for an
unprotected male. Let alone a girl. You got to take the world as it is,
and the only possible trade for a girl that isn’t sweated is to get hold
of a man and make him do it for her. It’s no good flying out at that,
Vee; _I_ didn’t arrange it. It’s Providence. That’s how things are;
that’s the order of the world. Like appendicitis. It isn’t pretty, but
we’re made so. Rot, no doubt; but we can’t alter it. You go home and
live on the G.V., and get some other man to live on as soon as possible.
It isn’t sentiment but it’s horse sense. All this Woman-who-Diddery--no
damn good. After all, old P.--Providence, I mean--HAS arranged it so
that men will keep you, more or less. He made the universe on those
lines. You’ve got to take what you can get.”
That was the quintessence of her brother Roddy.
He played variations on this theme for the better part of an hour.
“You go home,” he said, at parting; “you go home. It’s all very fine and
all that, Vee, this freedom, but it isn’t going to work. The world isn’t
ready for girls to start out on their own yet; that’s the plain fact of
the case. Babies and females have got to keep hold of somebody or go
under--anyhow, for the next few generations. You go home and wait a
century, Vee, and then try again. Then you may have a bit of a chance.
Now you haven’t the ghost of one--not if you play the game fair.”