H. Wells - Ann Veronica

with a foolish smile, a still more foolish expression of

earnestness, and a throaty contralto voice. She was noisy and

hilarious and enthusiastic, and her hair was always abominably

done. In the chapel she sang with an open-lunged gusto that

silenced Ann Veronica altogether, and in the exercising-yard

slouched round with carelessly dispersed feet. Ann Veronica

decided that "hoydenish ragger" was the only phrase to express

her. She was always breaking rules, whispering asides,

intimating signals. She became at times an embodiment for Ann

Veronica of all that made the suffrage movement defective and

unsatisfying.

She was always initiating petty breaches of discipline. Her

greatest exploit was the howling before the mid-day meal. This

was an imitation of the noises made by the carnivora at the

Zoological Gardens at feeding-time; the idea was taken up by

prisoner after prisoner until the whole place was alive with

barkings, yappings, roarings, pelican chatterings, and feline

yowlings, interspersed with shrieks of hysterical laughter. To

many in that crowded solitude it came as an extraordinary relief.

It was better even than the hymn-singing. But it annoyed Ann

Veronica.

"Idiots!" she said, when she heard this pandemonium, and with

particular reference to this young lady with the throaty

contralto next door. "Intolerable idiots! . . ."

It took some days for this phase to pass, and it left some scars

and something like a decision. "Violence won't do it," said Ann

Veronica. "Begin violence, and the woman goes under. . . .

"But all the rest of our case is right. . . . Yes."

As the long, solitary days wore on, Ann Veronica found a number

of definite attitudes and conclusions in her mind.

One of these was a classification of women into women who are and

women who are not hostile to men. "The real reason why I am out

of place here," she said, "is because I like men. I can talk

with them. I've never found them hostile. I've got no feminine

class feeling. I don't want any laws or freedoms to protect me

from a man like Mr. Capes. I know that in my heart I would take

whatever he gave. . . .

"A woman wants a proper alliance with a man, a man who is better

stuff than herself. She wants that and needs it more than

anything else in the world. It may not be just, it may not be

fair, but things are so. It isn't law, nor custom, nor masculine

violence settled that. It is just how things happen to be. She

wants to be free--she wants to be legally and economically free,

so as not to be subject to the wrong man; but only God, who made

the world, can alter things to prevent her being slave to the

right one.

"And if she can't have the right one?

"We've developed such a quality of preference!"

She rubbed her knuckles into her forehead. "Oh, but life is

difficult!" she groaned. "When you loosen the tangle in one

place you tie a knot in another. . . . Before there is any

change, any real change, I shall be dead--dead--dead and

finished--two hundred years! . . ."

Part 5

One afternoon, while everything was still, the wardress heard her

cry out suddenly and alarmingly, and with great and unmistakable passion,

"Why in the name of goodness did I burn that twenty pounds?"

Part 6

She sat regarding her dinner. The meat was coarse and

disagreeably served.

"I suppose some one makes a bit on the food," she said. . . .

"One has such ridiculous ideas of the wicked common people and

the beautiful machinery of order that ropes them in. And here

are these places, full of contagion!

"Of course, this is the real texture of life, this is what we

refined secure people forget. We think the whole thing is

straight and noble at bottom, and it isn't. We think if we just

defy the friends we have and go out into the world everything

will become easy and splendid. One doesn't realize that even the

sort of civilization one has at Morningside Park is held together

with difficulty. By policemen one mustn't shock.

"This isn't a world for an innocent girl to walk about in. It's

a world of dirt and skin diseases and parasites. It's a world in

which the law can be a stupid pig and the police-stations dirty

dens. One wants helpers and protectors--and clean water.

"Am I becoming reasonable or am I being tamed?

"I'm simply discovering that life is many-sided and complex and

puzzling. I thought one had only to take it by the throat.

"It hasn't GOT a throat!"

Part 7

One day the idea of self-sacrifice came into her head, and she

made, she thought, some important moral discoveries.

It came with an extreme effect of re-discovery, a remarkable

novelty. "What have I been all this time?" she asked herself,

and answered, "Just stark egotism, crude assertion of Ann

Veronica, without a modest rag of religion or discipline or

respect for authority to cover me!"

It seemed to her as though she had at last found the touchstone

of conduct. She perceived she had never really thought of any

one but herself in all her acts and plans. Even Capes had been

for her merely an excitant to passionate love--a mere idol at

whose feet one could enjoy imaginative wallowings. She had set

out to get a beautiful life, a free, untrammelled life,

self-development, without counting the cost either for herself or

others.

"I have hurt my father," she said; "I have hurt my aunt. I have

hurt and snubbed poor Teddy. I've made no one happy. I deserve

pretty much what I've got. . . .

"If only because of the way one hurts others if one kicks loose

and free, one has to submit. . . .

"Broken-in people! I suppose the world is just all egotistical

children and broken-in people.

"Your little flag of pride must flutter down with the rest of

them, Ann Veronica. . . .

"Compromise--and kindness.

"Compromise and kindness.

"Who are YOU that the world should lie down at your feet?

"You've got to be a decent citizen, Ann Veronica. Take your half

loaf with the others. You mustn't go clawing after a man that

doesn't belong to you--that isn't even interested in you. That's

one thing clear.

"You've got to take the decent reasonable way. You've got to

adjust yourself to the people God has set about you. Every one

else does."

She thought more and more along that line. There was no reason

why she shouldn't be Capes' friend. He did like her, anyhow; he

was always pleased to be with her. There was no reason why she

shouldn't be his restrained and dignified friend. After all,

that was life. Nothing was given away, and no one came so rich

to the stall as to command all that it had to offer. Every one

has to make a deal with the world.

It would be very good to be Capes' friend.

She might be able to go on with biology, possibly even work upon

the same questions that he dealt with. . . .

Perhaps her granddaughter might marry his grandson. . . .

It grew clear to her that throughout all her wild raid for

independence she had done nothing for anybody, and many people

had done things for her. She thought of her aunt and that purse

that was dropped on the table, and of many troublesome and

ill-requited kindnesses; she thought of the help of the Widgetts,

of Teddy's admiration; she thought, with a new-born charity, of

her father, of Manning's conscientious unselfishness, of Miss

Miniver's devotion.

"And for me it has been Pride and Pride and Pride!