Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story

by H. G. Wells

  "I want to know more about this movement," said Ann Veronica.

  "Are you with us?" said the tired woman.

  "I don't know," said Ann Veronica; "I think I am. I want very much to dosomething for women. But I want to know what you are doing."

  The tired woman sat still for a moment. "You haven't come here to make alot of difficulties?" she asked.

  "No," said Ann Veronica, "but I want to know."

  The tired woman shut her eyes tightly for a moment, and then looked withthem at Ann Veronica. "What can you do?" she asked.

  "Do?"

  "Are you prepared to do things for us? Distribute bills? Write letters?Interrupt meetings? Canvass at elections? Face dangers?"

  "If I am satisfied--"

  "If we satisfy you?"

  "Then, if possible, I would like to go to prison."

  "It isn't nice going to prison."

  "It would suit me."

  "It isn't nice getting there."

  "That's a question of detail," said Ann Veronica.

  The tired woman looked quietly at her. "What are your objections?" shesaid.

  "It isn't objections exactly. I want to know what you are doing; how youthink this work of yours really does serve women."

  "We are working for the equal citizenship of men and women," said thetired woman. "Women have been and are treated as the inferiors of men,we want to make them their equals."

  "Yes," said Ann Veronica, "I agree to that. But--"

  The tired woman raised her eyebrows in mild protest.

  "Isn't the question more complicated than that?" said Ann Veronica.

  "You could have a talk to Miss Kitty Brett this afternoon, if you liked.Shall I make an appointment for you?"

  Miss Kitty Brett was one of the most conspicuous leaders of themovement. Ann Veronica snatched at the opportunity, and spent mostof the intervening time in the Assyrian Court of the British Museum,reading and thinking over a little book upon the feminist movement thetired woman had made her buy. She got a bun and some cocoa in the littlerefreshment-room, and then wandered through the galleries up-stairs,crowded with Polynesian idols and Polynesian dancing-garments, and allthe simple immodest accessories to life in Polynesia, to a seat amongthe mummies. She was trying to bring her problems to a head, and hermind insisted upon being even more discursive and atmospheric thanusual. It generalized everything she put to it.

  "Why should women be dependent on men?" she asked; and the question wasat once converted into a system of variations upon the theme of "Whyare things as they are?"--"Why are human beings viviparous?"--"Why arepeople hungry thrice a day?"--"Why does one faint at danger?"

  She stood for a time looking at the dry limbs and still human face ofthat desiccated unwrapped mummy from the very beginnings of social life.It looked very patient, she thought, and a little self-satisfied. Itlooked as if it had taken its world for granted and prospered on thatassumption--a world in which children were trained to obey theirelders and the wills of women over-ruled as a matter of course. It waswonderful to think this thing had lived, had felt and suffered. Perhapsonce it had desired some other human being intolerably. Perhaps some onehad kissed the brow that was now so cadaverous, rubbed that sunken cheekwith loving fingers, held that stringy neck with passionately livinghands. But all of that was forgotten. "In the end," it seemed to bethinking, "they embalmed me with the utmost respect--sound spices chosento endure--the best! I took my world as I found it. THINGS ARE SO!"

  Part 3

  Ann Veronica's first impression of Kitty Brett was that she wasaggressive and disagreeable; her next that she was a person of amazingpersuasive power. She was perhaps three-and-twenty, and very pink andhealthy-looking, showing a great deal of white and rounded neck aboveher business-like but altogether feminine blouse, and a good deal ofplump, gesticulating forearm out of her short sleeve. She had animateddark blue-gray eyes under her fine eyebrows, and dark brown hair thatrolled back simply and effectively from her broad low forehead. And shewas about as capable of intelligent argument as a runaway steam-roller.She was a trained being--trained by an implacable mother to one end.

  She spoke with fluent enthusiasm. She did not so much deal with AnnVeronica's interpolations as dispose of them with quick and use-hardenedrepartee, and then she went on with a fine directness to sketch the casefor her agitation, for that remarkable rebellion of the women that wasthen agitating the whole world of politics and discussion. She assumedwith a kind of mesmeric force all the propositions that Ann Veronicawanted her to define.

  "What do we want? What is the goal?" asked Ann Veronica.

  "Freedom! Citizenship! And the way to that--the way to everything--isthe Vote."

  Ann Veronica said something about a general change of ideas.

  "How can you change people's ideas if you have no power?" said KittyBrett.

  Ann Veronica was not ready enough to deal with that counter-stroke.

  "One doesn't want to turn the whole thing into a mere sex antagonism."

  "When women get justice," said Kitty Brett, "there will be no sexantagonism. None at all. Until then we mean to keep on hammering away."

  "It seems to me that much of a woman's difficulties are economic."

  "That will follow," said Kitty Brett--"that will follow."

  She interrupted as Ann Veronica was about to speak again, with a brightcontagious hopefulness. "Everything will follow," she said.

  "Yes," said Ann Veronica, trying to think where they were, trying toget things plain again that had seemed plain enough in the quiet of thenight.

  "Nothing was ever done," Miss Brett asserted, "without a certain elementof Faith. After we have got the Vote and are recognized as citizens,then we can come to all these other things."

  Even in the glamour of Miss Brett's assurance it seemed to Ann Veronicathat this was, after all, no more than the gospel of Miss Miniver witha new set of resonances. And like that gospel it meant something,something different from its phrases, something elusive, and yetsomething that in spite of the superficial incoherence of its phrasing,was largely essentially true. There was something holding women down,holding women back, and if it wasn't exactly man-made law, man-madelaw was an aspect of it. There was something indeed holding the wholespecies back from the imaginable largeness of life....

  "The Vote is the symbol of everything," said Miss Brett.

  She made an abrupt personal appeal.

  "Oh! please don't lose yourself in a wilderness of secondaryconsiderations," she said. "Don't ask me to tell you all that women cando, all that women can be. There is a new life, different from the oldlife of dependence, possible. If only we are not divided. If only wework together. This is the one movement that brings women of differentclasses together for a common purpose. If you could see how it givesthem souls, women who have taken things for granted, who have giventhemselves up altogether to pettiness and vanity...."

  "Give me something to do," said Ann Veronica, interrupting herpersuasions at last. "It has been very kind of you to see me, but Idon't want to sit and talk and use your time any longer. I want to dosomething. I want to hammer myself against all this that pens women in.I feel that I shall stifle unless I can do something--and do somethingsoon."

  Part 4

  It was not Ann Veronica's fault that the night's work should have takenupon itself the forms of wild burlesque. She was in deadly earnest ineverything she did. It seemed to her the last desperate attack upon theuniverse that would not let her live as she desired to live, that pennedher in and controlled her and directed her and disapproved of her, thesame invincible wrappering, the same leaden tyranny of a universe thatshe had vowed to overcome after that memorable conflict with her fatherat Morningside Park.

  She was listed for the raid--she was informed it was to be a raid uponthe House of Commons, though no particulars were given her--and told togo alone to 14, Dexter Street, Westminster, and not to ask any policemanto direct her. 14, Dexter Street, Westminster, she found was not a housebut a ya
rd in an obscure street, with big gates and the name of Podgers& Carlo, Carriers and Furniture Removers, thereon. She was perplexed bythis, and stood for some seconds in the empty street hesitating, untilthe appearance of another circumspect woman under the street lamp at thecorner reassured her. In one of the big gates was a little door, and sherapped at this. It was immediately opened by a man with light eyelashesand a manner suggestive of restrained passion. "Come right in," hehissed under his breath, with the true conspirator's note, closed thedoor very softly and pointed, "Through there!"

  By the meagre light of a gas lamp she perceived a cobbled yard with fourlarge furniture vans standing with horses and lamps alight. A slenderyoung man, wearing glasses, appeared from the shadow of the nearest van."Are you A, B, C, or D?" he asked.

  "They told me D," said Ann Veronica.

  "Through there," he said, and pointed with the pamphlet he was carrying.

  Ann Veronica found herself in a little stirring crowd of excited women,whispering and tittering and speaking in undertones.

  The light was poor, so that she saw their gleaming faces dimly andindistinctly. No one spoke to her. She stood among them, watchingthem and feeling curiously alien to them. The oblique ruddy lightingdistorted them oddly, made queer bars and patches of shadow upon theirclothes. "It's Kitty's idea," said one, "we are to go in the vans."

  "Kitty is wonderful," said another.

  "Wonderful!"

  "I have always longed for prison service," said a voice, "always.From the beginning. But it's only now I'm able to do it."

  A little blond creature close at hand suddenly gave way to a fit ofhysterical laughter, and caught up the end of it with a sob.

  "Before I took up the Suffrage," a firm, flat voice remarked, "I couldscarcely walk up-stairs without palpitations."

  Some one hidden from Ann Veronica appeared to be marshalling theassembly. "We have to get in, I think," said a nice little old lady ina bonnet to Ann Veronica, speaking with a voice that quavered a little."My dear, can you see in this light? I think I would like to get in.Which is C?"

  Ann Veronica, with a curious sinking of the heart, regarded the blackcavities of the vans. Their doors stood open, and placards with bigletters indicated the section assigned to each. She directed the littleold woman and then made her way to van D. A young woman with a whitebadge on her arm stood and counted the sections as they entered theirvans.

  "When they tap the roof," she said, in a voice of authority, "you are tocome out. You will be opposite the big entrance in Old Palace Yard. It'sthe public entrance. You are to make for that and get into the lobby ifyou can, and so try and reach the floor of the House, crying 'Votes forWomen!' as you go."

  She spoke like a mistress addressing school-children.

  "Don't bunch too much as you come out," she added.

  "All right?" asked the man with the light eyelashes, suddenly appearingin the doorway. He waited for an instant, wasting an encouraging smilein the imperfect light, and then shut the doors of the van, leaving thewomen in darkness....

  The van started with a jerk and rumbled on its way.

  "It's like Troy!" said a voice of rapture. "It's exactly like Troy!"

  Part 5

  So Ann Veronica, enterprising and a little dubious as ever, mingled withthe stream of history and wrote her Christian name upon the police-courtrecords of the land.

  But out of a belated regard for her father she wrote the surname of someone else.

  Some day, when the rewards of literature permit the arduous researchrequired, the Campaign of the Women will find its Carlyle, and theparticulars of that marvellous series of exploits by which Miss Brettand her colleagues nagged the whole Western world into the discussion ofwomen's position become the material for the most delightful and amazingdescriptions. At present the world waits for that writer, and theconfused record of the newspapers remains the only resource of thecurious. When he comes he will do that raid of the pantechnicons thejustice it deserves; he will picture the orderly evening scene about theImperial Legislature in convincing detail, the coming and going of cabsand motor-cabs and broughams through the chill, damp evening into NewPalace Yard, the reinforced but untroubled and unsuspecting police aboutthe entries of those great buildings whose square and panelled VictorianGothic streams up from the glare of the lamps into the murkiness ofthe night; Big Ben shining overhead, an unassailable beacon, and theincidental traffic of Westminster, cabs, carts, and glowing omnibusesgoing to and from the bridge. About the Abbey and Abingdon Street stoodthe outer pickets and detachments of the police, their attention alldirected westward to where the women in Caxton Hall, Westminster, hummedlike an angry hive. Squads reached to the very portal of that centre ofdisturbance. And through all these defences and into Old PalaceYard, into the very vitals of the defenders' position, lumbered theunsuspected vans.

  They travelled past the few idle sightseers who had braved theuninviting evening to see what the Suffragettes might be doing; theypulled up unchallenged within thirty yards of those coveted portals.

  And then they disgorged.

  Were I a painter of subject pictures, I would exhaust all my skillin proportion and perspective and atmosphere upon the august seatof empire, I would present it gray and dignified and immense andrespectable beyond any mere verbal description, and then, in vividblack and very small, I would put in those valiantly impertinentvans, squatting at the base of its altitudes and pouring out a swift,straggling rush of ominous little black objects, minute figures ofdetermined women at war with the universe.

  Ann Veronica was in their very forefront.

  In an instant the expectant calm of Westminster was ended, and the verySpeaker in the chair blenched at the sound of the policemen's whistles.The bolder members in the House left their places to go lobbyward,grinning. Others pulled hats over their noses, cowered in their seats,and feigned that all was right with the world. In Old Palace Yardeverybody ran. They either ran to see or ran for shelter. Even twoCabinet Ministers took to their heels, grinning insincerely. At theopening of the van doors and the emergence into the fresh air AnnVeronica's doubt and depression gave place to the wildest exhilaration.That same adventurousness that had already buoyed her through crisesthat would have overwhelmed any normally feminine girl with shame andhorror now became uppermost again. Before her was a great Gothic portal.Through that she had to go.

  Past her shot the little old lady in the bonnet, running incrediblyfast, but otherwise still alertly respectable, and she was making astrange threatening sound as she ran, such as one would use in drivingducks out of a garden--"B-r-r-r-r-r--!" and pawing with black-glovedhands. The policemen were closing in from the sides to intervene. Thelittle old lady struck like a projectile upon the resounding chestof the foremost of these, and then Ann Veronica had got past and wasascending the steps.

  Then most horribly she was clasped about the waist from behind andlifted from the ground.

  At that a new element poured into her excitement, an element of wilddisgust and terror. She had never experienced anything so disagreeablein her life as the sense of being held helplessly off her feet. Shescreamed involuntarily--she had never in her life screamed before--andthen she began to wriggle and fight like a frightened animal against themen who were holding her.

  The affair passed at one leap from a spree to a nightmare of violenceand disgust. Her hair got loose, her hat came over one eye, and she hadno arm free to replace it. She felt she must suffocate if these men didnot put her down, and for a time they would not put her down. Then withan indescribable relief her feet were on the pavement, and she wasbeing urged along by two policemen, who were gripping her wrists in anirresistible expert manner. She was writhing to get her hands looseand found herself gasping with passionate violence, "It'sdamnable!--damnable!" to the manifest disgust of the fatherly policemanon her right.

  Then they had released her arms and were trying to push her away.

  "You be off, missie," said the fatherly policeman. "This ain't no placefor
you."

  He pushed her a dozen yards along the greasy pavement with flat,well-trained hands that there seemed to be no opposing. Before herstretched blank spaces, dotted with running people coming toward her,and below them railings and a statue. She almost submitted to thisending of her adventure. But at the word "home" she turned again.

  "I won't go home," she said; "I won't!" and she evaded the clutch of thefatherly policeman and tried to thrust herself past him in the directionof that big portal. "Steady on!" he cried.

  A diversion was created by the violent struggles of the little oldlady. She seemed to be endowed with superhuman strength. A knot ofthree policemen in conflict with her staggered toward Ann Veronica'sattendants and distracted their attention. "I WILL be arrested! I WON'Tgo home!" the little old lady was screaming over and over again. Theyput her down, and she leaped at them; she smote a helmet to the ground.

  "You'll have to take her!" shouted an inspector on horseback, and sheechoed his cry: "You'll have to take me!" They seized upon her andlifted her, and she screamed. Ann Veronica became violently excited atthe sight. "You cowards!" said Ann Veronica, "put her down!" and toreherself from a detaining hand and battered with her fists upon the bigred ear and blue shoulder of the policeman who held the little old lady.

  So Ann Veronica also was arrested.

  And then came the vile experience of being forced and borne along thestreet to the police-station. Whatever anticipation Ann Veronica hadformed of this vanished in the reality. Presently she was going througha swaying, noisy crowd, whose faces grinned and stared pitilessly in thelight of the electric standards. "Go it, miss!" cried one. "Kick aht at'em!" though, indeed, she went now with Christian meekness, resentingonly the thrusting policemen's hands. Several people in the crowd seemedto be fighting. Insulting cries became frequent and various, but for themost part she could not understand what was said. "Who'll mind the babynar?" was one of the night's inspirations, and very frequent. A leanyoung man in spectacles pursued her for some time, crying "Courage!Courage!" Somebody threw a dab of mud at her, and some of it got downher neck. Immeasurable disgust possessed her. She felt draggled andinsulted beyond redemption.