H. Wells - Ann Veronica

Imperial Legislature in convincing detail, the coming and going

of cabs and motor-cabs and broughams through the chill, damp

evening into New Palace Yard, the reinforced but untroubled and

unsuspecting police about the entries of those great buildings

whose square and panelled Victorian Gothic streams up from the

glare of the lamps into the murkiness of the night; Big Ben

shining overhead, an unassailable beacon, and the incidental

traffic of Westminster, cabs, carts, and glowing omnibuses going

to and from the bridge. About the Abbey and Abingdon Street

stood the outer pickets and detachments of the police, their

attention all directed westward to where the women in Caxton

Hall, Westminster, hummed like an angry hive. Squads reached to

the very portal of that centre of disturbance. And through all

these defences and into Old Palace Yard, into the very vitals of

the defenders' position, lumbered the unsuspected vans.

They travelled past the few idle sightseers who had braved the

uninviting evening to see what the Suffragettes might be doing;

they pulled 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

skill in proportion and perspective and atmosphere upon the

august seat of empire, I would present it gray and dignified and

immense and respectable beyond any mere verbal description, and

then, in vivid black and very small, I would put in those

valiantly impertinent vans, squatting at the base of its

altitudes and pouring out a swift, straggling rush of ominous

little black objects, minute figures of determined 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 very Speaker 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 Yard everybody ran. They either

ran to see or ran for shelter. Even two Cabinet Ministers took

to their heels, grinning insincerely. At the opening of the van

doors and the emergence into the fresh air Ann Veronica's doubt

and depression gave place to the wildest exhilaration. That same

adventurousness that had already buoyed her through crises that

would have overwhelmed any normally feminine girl with shame and

horror 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

incredibly fast, but otherwise still alertly respectable, and she

was making a strange threatening sound as she ran, such as one

would use in driving ducks out of a garden--"B-r-r-r-r-r--!" and

pawing with black-gloved hands. The policemen were closing in

from the sides to intervene. The little old lady struck like a

projectile upon the resounding chest of the foremost of these,

and then Ann Veronica had got past and was ascending the steps.

Then most horribly she was clasped about the waist from behind

and lifted from the ground.

At that a new element poured into her excitement, an element of

wild disgust and terror. She had never experienced anything so

disagreeable in her life as the sense of being held helplessly

off her feet. She screamed involuntarily--she had never in her

life screamed before --and then she began to wriggle and fight

like a frightened animal against the men who were holding her.

The affair passed at one leap from a spree to a nightmare of

violence and disgust. Her hair got loose, her hat came over one

eye, and she had no arm free to replace it. She felt she must

suffocate if these men did not put her down, and for a time they

would not put her down. Then with an indescribable relief her

feet were on the pavement, and she was being urged along by two

policemen, who were gripping her wrists in an irresistible expert

manner. She was writhing to get her hands loose and found

herself gasping with passionate violence, "It's

damnable!--damnable!" to the manifest disgust of the fatherly

policeman on 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 place for you."

He pushed her a dozen yards along the greasy pavement with flat,

well-trained hands that there seemed to be no opposing. Before

her stretched blank spaces, dotted with running people coming

toward her, and below them railings and a statue. She almost

submitted to this ending 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 the fatherly policeman and tried to thrust herself past him in

the direction of that big portal. "Steady on!" he cried.

A diversion was created by the violent struggles of the little

old lady. She seemed to be endowed with superhuman strength. A

knot of three policemen in conflict with her staggered toward Ann

Veronica's attendants and distracted their attention. "I WILL be

arrested! I WON'T go home!" the little old lady was screaming

over and over again. They put 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

she echoed his cry: "You'll have to take me!" They seized upon

her and lifted her, and she screamed. Ann Veronica became

violently excited at the sight. "You cowards!" said Ann

Veronica, "put her down!" and tore herself from a detaining hand

and battered with her fists upon the big red 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

the street to the police-station. Whatever anticipation Ann

Veronica had formed of this vanished in the reality. Presently

she was going through a swaying, noisy crowd, whose faces grinned

and stared pitilessly in the light of the electric standards.

"Go it, miss!" cried one. "Kick aht at 'em!" though, indeed, she

went now with Christian meekness, resenting only the thrusting

policemen's hands. Several people in the crowd seemed to be

fighting. Insulting cries became frequent and various, but for

the most part she could not understand what was said. "Who'll

mind the baby nar?" was one of the night's inspirations, and very

frequent. A lean young man in spectacles pursued her for some

time, crying "Courage! Courage!" Somebody threw a dab of mud at

her, and some of it got down her neck. Immeasurable disgust

possessed her. She felt draggled and insulted beyond redemption.

She could not hide her face. She attempted by a sheer act of

will to end the scene, to will herself out of it anywhere. She

had a horrible glimpse of the once nice little old lady being

also borne stationward, still faintly battling and very

muddy--one lock of grayish hair straggling over her neck, her

face scared, white, but triumphant. Her bonnet dropped off and

was trampled into the gutter. A little Cockney recovered it, and

made ridiculous attempts to get to her and replace it.

"You must arrest me!" she gasped, breathlessly, insisting

insanely on a point already carried; "you shall!"