H. Wells - Ann Veronica

instantly she got out of bed and proceeded to dress.

She did not start for the Imperial College. She spent the

morning up to ten in writing a series of unsuccessful letters to

Ramage, which she tore up unfinished; and finally she desisted

and put on her jacket and went out into the lamp-lit obscurity

and slimy streets. She turned a resolute face southward.

She followed Oxford Street into Holborn, and then she inquired

for Chancery Lane. There she sought and at last found 107A, one

of those heterogeneous piles of offices which occupy the eastern

side of the lane. She studied the painted names of firms and

persons and enterprises on the wall, and discovered that the

Women's Bond of Freedom occupied several contiguous suites on the

first floor. She went up-stairs and hesitated between four doors

with ground-glass panes, each of which professed "The Women's

Bond of Freedom" in neat black letters. She opened one and found

herself in a large untidy room set with chairs that were a little

disarranged as if by an overnight meeting. On the walls were

notice-boards bearing clusters of newspaper slips, three or four

big posters of monster meetings, one of which Ann Veronica had

attended with Miss Miniver, and a series of announcements in

purple copying-ink, and in one corner was a pile of banners.

There was no one at all in this room, but through the half-open

door of one of the small apartments that gave upon it she had a

glimpse of two very young girls sitting at a littered table and

writing briskly.

She walked across to this apartment and, opening the door a

little wider, discovered a press section of the movement at work.

"I want to inquire," said Ann Veronica.

"Next door," said a spectacled young person of seventeen or

eighteen, with an impatient indication of the direction.

In the adjacent apartment Ann Veronica found a middle-aged woman

with a tired face under the tired hat she wore, sitting at a desk

opening letters while a dusky, untidy girl of eight-or

nine-and-twenty hammered industriously at a typewriter. The

tired woman looked up in inquiring silence at Ann Veronica's

diffident entry.

"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 do something 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 a lot 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 with them 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?" she said.

"It isn't objections exactly. I want to know what you are doing;

how you think this work of yours really does serve women."

"We are working for the equal citizenship of men and women," said

the tired 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 the

movement. Ann Veronica snatched at the opportunity, and spent

most of the intervening time in the Assyrian Court of the British

Museum, reading and thinking over a little book upon the feminist

movement the tired woman had made her buy. She got a bun and

some cocoa in the little refreshment-room, and then wandered

through the galleries up-stairs, crowded with Polynesian idols

and Polynesian dancing-garments, and all the simple immodest

accessories to life in Polynesia, to a seat among the mummies.

She was trying to bring her problems to a head, and her mind

insisted upon being even more discursive and atmospheric than

usual. It generalized everything she put to it.

"Why should women be dependent on men?" she asked; and the

question was at once converted into a system of variations upon

the theme of "Why are things as they are?"--"Why are human beings

viviparous?"--"Why are people hungry thrice a day?"--"Why does

one faint at danger?"

She stood for a time looking at the dry limbs and still human

face of that desiccated unwrapped mummy from the very beginnings

of social life. It looked very patient, she thought, and a

little self-satisfied. It looked as if it had taken its world

for granted and prospered on that assumption--a world in which

children were trained to obey their elders and the wills of women

over-ruled as a matter of course. It was wonderful to think this

thing had lived, had felt and suffered. Perhaps once it had

desired some other human being intolerably. Perhaps some one had

kissed the brow that was now so cadaverous, rubbed that sunken

cheek with loving fingers, held that stringy neck with

passionately living hands. But all of that was forgotten. "In

the end," it seemed to be thinking, "they embalmed me with the

utmost respect--sound spices chosen to 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 was

aggressive and disagreeable; her next that she was a person of

amazing persuasive power. She was perhaps three-and-twenty, and

very pink and healthy-looking, showing a great deal of white and

rounded neck above her business-like but altogether feminine

blouse, and a good deal of plump, gesticulating forearm out of

her short sleeve. She had animated dark blue-gray eyes under her

fine eyebrows, and dark brown hair that rolled back simply and

effectively from her broad low forehead. And she was 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

Ann Veronica's interpolations as dispose of them with quick and

use-hardened repartee, and then she went on with a fine

directness to sketch the case for her agitation, for that

remarkable rebellion of the women that was then agitating the

whole world of politics and discussion. She assumed with a kind

of mesmeric force all the propositions that Ann Veronica wanted

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--is the Vote."

Ann Veronica said something about a general change of ideas.

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

Kitty Brett.

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 sex