H. Wells - Ann Veronica

suddenly from the infinite in the neighborhood of the Burlington

Arcade, crossing the pavement toward her and with his eyes upon

her. He seemed to her indistinguishably about her father's age.

He wore a silk hat a little tilted, and a morning coat buttoned

round a tight, contained figure; and a white slip gave a finish

to his costume and endorsed the quiet distinction of his tie.

His face was a little flushed perhaps, and his small, brown eyes

were bright. He stopped on the curb-stone, not facing her but as

if he was on his way to cross the road, and spoke to her suddenly

over his shoulder.

"Whither away?" he said, very distinctly in a curiously wheedling

voice. Ann Veronica stared at his foolish, propitiatory smile,

his hungry gaze, through one moment of amazement, then stepped

aside and went on her way with a quickened step. But her mind

was ruffled, and its mirror-like surface of satisfaction was not

easily restored.

Queer old gentleman!

The art of ignoring is one of the accomplishments of every

well-bred girl, so carefully instilled that at last she can even

ignore her own thoughts and her own knowledge. Ann Veronica

could at the same time ask herself what this queer old gentleman

could have meant by speaking to her, and know--know in general

terms, at least--what that accosting signified. About her, as

she had gone day by day to and from the Tredgold College, she had

seen and not seen many an incidental aspect of those sides of

life about which girls are expected to know nothing, aspects that

were extraordinarily relevant to her own position and outlook on

the world, and yet by convention ineffably remote. For all that

she was of exceptional intellectual enterprise, she had never yet

considered these things with unaverted eyes. She had viewed them

askance, and without exchanging ideas with any one else in the

world about them.

She went on her way now no longer dreaming and appreciative, but

disturbed and unwillingly observant behind her mask of serene

contentment.

That delightful sense of free, unembarrassed movement was gone.

As she neared the bottom of the dip in Piccadilly she saw a woman

approaching her from the opposite direction--a tall woman who at

the first glance seemed altogether beautiful and fine. She came

along with the fluttering assurance of some tall ship. Then as

she drew nearer paint showed upon her face, and a harsh purpose

behind the quiet expression of her open countenance, and a sort

of unreality in her splendor betrayed itself for which Ann

Veronica could not recall the right word --a word, half

understood, that lurked and hid in her mind, the word

"meretricious." Behind this woman and a little to the side of

her, walked a man smartly dressed, with desire and appraisal in

his eyes. Something insisted that those two were mysteriously

linked--that the woman knew the man was there.

It was a second reminder that against her claim to go free and

untrammelled there was a case to be made, that after all it was

true that a girl does not go alone in the world unchallenged, nor

ever has gone freely alone in the world, that evil walks abroad

and dangers, and petty insults more irritating than dangers,

lurk.

It was in the quiet streets and squares toward Oxford Street that

it first came into her head disagreeably that she herself was

being followed. She observed a man walking on the opposite side

of the way and looking toward her.

"Bother it all!" she swore. "Bother!" and decided that this was

not so, and would not look to right or left again.

Beyond the Circus Ann Veronica went into a British Tea-Table

Company shop to get some tea. And as she was yet waiting for her

tea to come she saw this man again. Either it was an unfortunate

recovery of a trail, or he had followed her from Mayfair. There

was no mistaking his intentions this time. He came down the shop

looking for her quite obviously, and took up a position on the

other side against a mirror in which he was able to regard her

steadfastly.

Beneath the serene unconcern of Ann Veronica's face was a boiling

tumult. She was furiously angry. She gazed with a quiet

detachment toward the window and the Oxford Street traffic, and

in her heart she was busy kicking this man to death. He HAD

followed her! What had he followed her for? He must have

followed her all the way from beyond Grosvenor Square.

He was a tall man and fair, with bluish eyes that were rather

protuberant, and long white hands of which he made a display. He

had removed his silk hat, and now sat looking at Ann Veronica

over an untouched cup of tea; he sat gloating upon her, trying to

catch her eye. Once, when he thought he had done so, he smiled an

ingratiating smile. He moved, after quiet intervals, with a

quick little movement, and ever and again stroked his small

mustache and coughed a self-conscious cough.

"That he should be in the same world with me!" said Ann Veronica,

reduced to reading the list of good things the British Tea-Table

Company had priced for its patrons.

Heaven knows what dim and tawdry conceptions of passion and

desire were in that blond cranium, what romance-begotten dreams

of intrigue and adventure! but they sufficed, when presently Ann

Veronica went out into the darkling street again, to inspire a

flitting, dogged pursuit, idiotic, exasperating, indecent.

She had no idea what she should do. If she spoke to a policeman

she did not know what would ensue. Perhaps she would have to

charge this man and appear in a police-court next day.

She became angry with herself. She would not be driven in by

this persistent, sneaking aggression. She would ignore him.

Surely she could ignore him. She stopped abruptly, and looked in

a flower-shop window. He passed, and came loitering back and

stood beside her, silently looking into her face.

The afternoon had passed now into twilight. The shops were

lighting up into gigantic lanterns of color, the street lamps

were glowing into existence, and she had lost her way. She had

lost her sense of direction, and was among unfamiliar streets.

She went on from street to street, and all the glory of London

had departed. Against the sinister, the threatening, monstrous

inhumanity of the limitless city, there was nothing now but this

supreme, ugly fact of a pursuit--the pursuit of the undesired,

persistent male.

For a second time Ann Veronica wanted to swear at the universe.

There were moments when she thought of turning upon this man and

talking to him. But there was something in his face at once

stupid and invincible that told her he would go on forcing

himself upon her, that he would esteem speech with her a great

point gained. In the twilight he had ceased to be a person one

could tackle and shame; he had become something more general, a

something that crawled and sneaked toward her and would not let

her alone. . . .

Then, when the tension was getting unendurable, and she was on

the verge of speaking to some casual passer-by and demanding

help, her follower vanished. For a time she could scarcely

believe he was gone. He had. The night had swallowed him up,

but his work on her was done. She had lost her nerve, and there

was no more freedom in London for her that night. She was glad to

join in the stream of hurrying homeward workers that was now

welling out of a thousand places of employment, and to imitate