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."
