H. Wells - Ann Veronica

living interests and current controversies; it drew its

illustrations and material from Russell's two great

researches--upon the relation of the brachiopods to the

echinodermata, and upon the secondary and tertiary mammalian and

pseudo-mammalian factors in the free larval forms of various

marine organisms. Moreover, a vigorous fire of mutual criticism

was going on now between the Imperial College and the Cambridge

Mendelians and echoed in the lectures. From beginning to end it

was first-hand stuff.

But the influence of the science radiated far beyond its own

special field--beyond those beautiful but highly technical

problems with which we do not propose for a moment to trouble the

naturally terrified reader. Biology is an extraordinarily

digestive science. It throws out a number of broad experimental

generalizations, and then sets out to bring into harmony or

relation with these an infinitely multifarious collection of

phenomena. The little streaks upon the germinating area of an

egg, the nervous movements of an impatient horse, the trick of a

calculating boy, the senses of a fish, the fungus at the root of

a garden flower, and the slime upon a sea-wet rock--ten thousand

such things bear their witness and are illuminated. And not only

did these tentacular generalizations gather all the facts of

natural history and comparative anatomy together, but they seemed

always stretching out further and further into a world of

interests that lay altogether outside their legitimate bounds.

It came to Ann Veronica one night after a long talk with Miss

Miniver, as a sudden remarkable thing, as a grotesque, novel

aspect, that this slowly elaborating biological scheme had

something more than an academic interest for herself. And not

only so, but that it was after all, a more systematic and

particular method of examining just the same questions that

underlay the discussions of the Fabian Society, the talk of the

West Central Arts Club, the chatter of the studios and the deep,

the bottomless discussions of the simple-life homes. It was the

same Bios whose nature and drift and ways and methods and aspects

engaged them all. And she, she in her own person too, was this

eternal Bios, beginning again its recurrent journey to selection

and multiplication and failure or survival.

But this was but a momentary gleam of personal application, and

at this time she followed it up no further.

And now Ann Veronica's evenings were also becoming very busy.

She pursued her interest in the Socialist movement and in the

Suffragist agitation in the company of Miss Miniver. They went

to various central and local Fabian gatherings, and to a number

of suffrage meetings. Teddy Widgett hovered on the fringe of all

these gatherings, blinking at Ann Veronica and occasionally

making a wildly friendly dash at her, and carrying her and Miss

Miniver off to drink cocoa with a choice diversity of other

youthful and congenial Fabians after the meetings. Then Mr.

Manning loomed up ever and again into her world, full of a futile

solicitude, and almost always declaring she was splendid,

splendid, and wishing he could talk things out with her. Teas he

contributed to the commissariat of Ann Veronica's campaign--quite

a number of teas. He would get her to come to tea with him,

usually in a pleasant tea-room over a fruit-shop in Tottenham

Court Road, and he would discuss his own point of view and hint

at a thousand devotions were she but to command him. And he

would express various artistic sensibilities and aesthetic

appreciations in carefully punctuated sentences and a large,

clear voice. At Christmas he gave her a set of a small edition

of Meredith's novels, very prettily bound in flexible leather,

being guided in the choice of an author, as he intimated, rather

by her preferences than his own.

There was something markedly and deliberately liberal-minded in

his manner in all their encounters. He conveyed not only his

sense of the extreme want of correctitude in their unsanctioned

meetings, but also that, so far as he was concerned, this

irregularity mattered not at all, that he had flung--and kept on

flinging --such considerations to the wind.

And, in addition, she was now seeing and talking to Ramage almost

weekly, on a theory which she took very gravely, that they were

exceptionally friends. He would ask her to come to dinner with

him in some little Italian or semi-Bohemian restaurant in the

district toward Soho, or in one of the more stylish and

magnificent establishments about Piccadilly Circus, and for the

most part she did not care to refuse. Nor, indeed, did she want

to refuse. These dinners, from their lavish display of ambiguous

hors d'oeuvre to their skimpy ices in dishes of frilled paper,

with their Chianti flasks and Parmesan dishes and their polyglot

waiters and polyglot clientele, were very funny and bright; and

she really liked Ramage, and valued his help and advice. It was

interesting to see how different and characteristic his mode of

approach was to all sorts of questions that interested her, and

it was amusing to discover this other side to the life of a

Morningside Park inhabitant. She had thought that all

Morningside Park householders came home before seven at the

latest, as her father usually did. Ramage talked always about

women or some woman's concern, and very much about Ann Veronica's

own outlook upon life. He was always drawing contrasts between a

woman's lot and a man's, and treating her as a wonderful new

departure in this comparison. Ann Veronica liked their

relationship all the more because it was an unusual one.

After these dinners they would have a walk, usually to the Thames

Embankment to see the two sweeps of river on either side of

Waterloo Bridge; and then they would part at Westminster Bridge,

perhaps, and he would go on to Waterloo. Once he suggested they

should go to a music-hall and see a wonderful new dancer, but Ann

Veronica did not feel she cared to see a new dancer. So,

instead, they talked of dancing and what it might mean in a human

life. Ann Veronica thought it was a spontaneous release of

energy expressive of well-being, but Ramage thought that by

dancing, men, and such birds and animals as dance, come to feel

and think of their bodies.

This intercourse, which had been planned to warm Ann Veronica to

a familiar affection with Ramage, was certainly warming Ramage to

a constantly deepening interest in Ann Veronica. He felt that he

was getting on with her very slowly indeed, but he did not see

how he could get on faster. He had, he felt, to create certain

ideas and vivify certain curiosities and feelings in her. Until

that was done a certain experience of life assured him that a

girl is a locked coldness against a man's approach. She had all

the fascination of being absolutely perplexing in this respect.

On the one hand, she seemed to think plainly and simply, and

would talk serenely and freely about topics that most women have

been trained either to avoid or conceal; and on the other she was

unconscious, or else she had an air of being unconscious--that

was the riddle--to all sorts of personal applications that almost

any girl or woman, one might have thought, would have made. He

was always doing his best to call her attention to the fact that

he was a man of spirit and quality and experience, and she a