H. Wells - Ann Veronica

feels, in ideas that achieve persistently a successful

resurrection. What Miss Miniver would have called the Higher

Truth supervenes.

Yet through these talks, these meetings and conferences, these

movements and efforts, Ann Veronica, for all that she went with

her friend, and at times applauded with her enthusiastically, yet

went nevertheless with eyes that grew more and more puzzled, and

fine eyebrows more and more disposed to knit. She was with these

movements--akin to them, she felt it at times intensely--and yet

something eluded her. Morningside Park had been passive and

defective; all this rushed about and was active, but it was still

defective. It still failed in something. It did seem germane to

the matter that so many of the people "in the van" were plain

people, or faded people, or tired-looking people. It did affect

the business that they all argued badly and were egotistical in

their manners and inconsistent in their phrases. There were

moments when she doubted whether the whole mass of movements and

societies and gatherings and talks was not simply one coherent

spectacle of failure protecting itself from abjection by the

glamour of its own assertions. It happened that at the extremest

point of Ann Veronica's social circle from the Widgetts was the

family of the Morningside Park horse-dealer, a company of

extremely dressy and hilarious young women, with one equestrian

brother addicted to fancy waistcoats, cigars, and facial spots.

These girls wore hats at remarkable angles and bows to startle

and kill; they liked to be right on the spot every time and up to

everything that was it from the very beginning and they rendered

their conception of Socialists and all reformers by the words

"positively frightening" and "weird." Well, it was beyond

dispute that these words did convey a certain quality of the

Movements in general amid which Miss Miniver disported herself.

They WERE weird. And yet for all that--

It got into Ann Veronica's nights at last and kept her awake, the

perplexing contrast between the advanced thought and the advanced

thinker. The general propositions of Socialism, for example,

struck her as admirable, but she certainly did not extend her

admiration to any of its exponents. She was still more stirred

by the idea of the equal citizenship of men and women, by the

realization that a big and growing organization of women were

giving form and a generalized expression to just that personal

pride, that aspiration for personal freedom and respect which had

brought her to London; but when she heard Miss Miniver

discoursing on the next step in the suffrage campaign, or read of

women badgering Cabinet Ministers, padlocked to railings, or

getting up in a public meeting to pipe out a demand for votes and

be carried out kicking and screaming, her soul revolted. She

could not part with dignity. Something as yet unformulated

within her kept her estranged from all these practical aspects of

her beliefs.

"Not for these things, O Ann Veronica, have you revolted," it

said; "and this is not your appropriate purpose."

It was as if she faced a darkness in which was something very

beautiful and wonderful as yet unimagined. The little pucker in

her brows became more perceptible.

Part 5

In the beginning of December Ann Veronica began to speculate

privately upon the procedure of pawning. She had decided that she

would begin with her pearl necklace. She spent a very

disagreeable afternoon and evening--it was raining fast outside,

and she had very unwisely left her soundest pair of boots in the

boothole of her father's house in Morningside Park--thinking over

the economic situation and planning a course of action. Her aunt

had secretly sent on to Ann Veronica some new warm underclothing,

a dozen pairs of stockings, and her last winter's jacket, but the

dear lady had overlooked those boots.

These things illuminated her situation extremely. Finally she

decided upon a step that had always seemed reasonable to her, but

that hitherto she had, from motives too faint for her to

formulate, refrained from taking. She resolved to go into the

City to Ramage and ask for his advice. And next morning she

attired herself with especial care and neatness, found his

address in the Directory at a post-office, and went to him.

She had to wait some minutes in an outer office, wherein three

young men of spirited costume and appearance regarded her with

ill-concealed curiosity and admiration. Then Ramage appeared

with effusion, and ushered her into his inner apartment. The

three young men exchanged expressive glances.

The inner apartment was rather gracefully furnished with a thick,

fine Turkish carpet, a good brass fender, a fine old bureau, and

on the walls were engravings of two young girls' heads by Greuze,

and of some modern picture of boys bathing in a sunlit pool.

"But this is a surprise!" said Ramage. "This is wonderful! I've

been feeling that you had vanished from my world. Have you been

away from Morningside Park?"

"I'm not interrupting you?"

"You are. Splendidly. Business exists for such interruptions.

There you are, the best client's chair."

Ann Veronica sat down, and Ramage's eager eyes feasted on her.

"I've been looking out for you," he said. "I confess it."

She had not, she reflected, remembered how prominent his eyes

were.

"I want some advice," said Ann Veronica.

"Yes?"

"You remember once, how we talked--at a gate on the Downs? We

talked about how a girl might get an independent living."

"Yes, yes."

"Well, you see, something has happened at home."

She paused.

"Nothing has happened to Mr. Stanley?"

"I've fallen out with my father. It was about--a question of

what I might do or might not do. He--In fact, he--he locked me

in my room. Practically."

Her breath left her for a moment.

"I SAY!" said Mr. Ramage.

"I wanted to go to an art-student ball of which he disapproved."

"And why shouldn't you?"

"I felt that sort of thing couldn't go on. So I packed up and

came to London next day."

"To a friend?"

"To lodgings--alone."

"I say, you know, you have some pluck. You did it on your own?"

Ann Veronica smiled. "Quite on my own," she said.

"It's magnificent!" He leaned back and regarded her with his

head a little on one side. "By Jove!" he said, "there is

something direct about you. I wonder if I should have locked you

up if I'd been your father. Luckily I'm not. And you started out

forthwith to fight the world and be a citizen on your own basis?"

He came forward again and folded his hands under him on his desk.

"How has the world taken it?" he asked. "If I was the world I

think I should have put down a crimson carpet, and asked you to

say what you wanted, and generally walk over me. But the world

didn't do that."

"Not exactly."

"It presented a large impenetrable back, and went on thinking

about something else."

"It offered from fifteen to two-and-twenty shillings a week--for

drudgery."

"The world has no sense of what is due to youth and courage. It

never has had."

"Yes," said Ann Veronica. "But the thing is, I want a job."

"Exactly! And so you came along to me. And you see, I don't

turn my back, and I am looking at you and thinking about you from

top to toe."

"And what do you think I ought to do?"