Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story

UFFRA

rt

id Ann Veronica, sitting up in her little b

Park and father, but it's the whole order of

her knees very tightly. Her mind developed into sava

artificially chance. Find your man, that's the rule. All the rest is humbug and de

it be a

an actress

of the Socialists, on the vague intimations of an Endowment of Motherhood, of a complete relaxation of that intense individual dependence for women which is woven into the existing social order. At the back of her mind there seemed alway

be even respected, there must be a generation of martyrs.... Why shouldn't we be martyrs? There's no

answered an objector:

blackleggi

ther aspects, and anot

cause she states her case in a tangle, drags it through swam

as his, she seemed to fall through a thin surface, as one might fall through the crust of a lava into glowing depths. Sh

wment of Motherhood." Suppose in some complex yet conceivable way women were endowed, were no longer economically and socially dependent on men. "If one was free," she said, "one could go to him.... This vile

es. She floundered deep. She wanted to kiss his fee

t. "I will not have this slavery," she

are! I will not be slave to the thought of any man, slave to the customs of any time. Co

the cold blackn

igure of inaggressive persistence. "No!"

ey mean something. They mean everything that women can mean-except submission

of bed, smoothed her sheet and straightened her pil

rt

ca woke rather later than usual, and lay awake for some minutes before she remembered a certain res

successful letters to Ramage, which she tore up unfinished; and finally she desisted and put on her j

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 po

opening the door a little wider, discover

quire," said

erson of seventeen or eighteen, with a

wore, sitting at a desk opening letters while a dusky, untidy girl of eight-or nine-and-twenty hammered ind

about this movement

us?" said th

I am. I want very much to do something for w

ent. "You haven't come here to make

Veronica, "but

a moment, and then looked with them at A

D

tribute bills? Write letters? Interrupt me

am sat

satis

le, I would like

nice going

uld su

nice getti

on of detail," s

ietly at her. "What are y

now what you are doing; how you think thi

," said the tired woman. "Women have been and are treated

Veronica, "I agr

aised her eyebrow

re complicated than th

Brett this afternoon, if you liked.

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 si

into a system of variations upon the theme of "Why are things as they are?"-"Why are human

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 cadavero

rt

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

e, 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 agitat

What is the goal?"

the way to that-the way t

mething about a gene

e's ideas if you have no

eady enough to deal wi

rn the whole thing into

there will be no sex antagonism. None at all.

uch of a woman's diffi

" said Kitty Brett

o speak again, with a bright contagious hop

hey were, trying to get things plain again that h

in element of Faith. After we have got the Vote and are recogn

thing, something different from its phrases, something elusive, and yet something that in spite of the superficial incoherence of its phrasing, was largely essentially true. There was something holding

ymbol of everythin

abrupt per

e, different from the old life of dependence, possible. If only we are not divided. If only we work together. This is the one movement that brings women of different classes toge

see me, but I don't want to sit and talk and use your time any longer. I want to do something. I want to hammer mys

rt

o her the last desperate attack upon the universe that would not let her live as she desired to live, that penned her in and controlled her and directed her and disapproved

an obscure street, with big gates and the name of Podgers & Carlo, Carriers and Furniture Removers, thereon. She was perplexed by this, and stood for some seconds in the empty street hesitating, until the appearance of another circumspect woman under the street lamp at the corner reassured her. In on

iture vans standing with horses and lamps alight. A slender young man, wearing glas

e D," said A

, and pointed with the p

irring crowd of excited women, whispering

mong them, watching them and feeling curiously alien to them. The oblique ruddy lighting distorted them oddly, ma

onderful,"

derf

" said a voice, "always. From the beginni

enly gave way to a fit of hysterical laugh

, flat voice remarked, "I could scarcel

think," said a nice little old lady in a bonnet to Ann Veronica, speaking with a voice that qua

d placards with big letters indicated the section assigned to each. She directed the little old woman and then made he

the big entrance in Old Palace Yard. It's the public entrance. You are to make for that and get into t

mistress addressi

much as you com

doorway. He waited for an instant, wasting an encouraging smile in the imperf

ith a jerk and ru

a voice of rapture. "

rt

ver, mingled with the stream of history and wrote her C

for her father she wrote t

that raid of the pantechnicons the justice it deserves; he will picture the orderly evening scene about the 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 be

nviting evening to see what the Suffragettes might be doing; they

they di

nd 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, sq

was in their

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 de

he 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 int

sped about the waist from behi

o disagreeable in her life as the sense of being held helplessly off her feet. She screamed involuntarily-she had never in he

id 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 a

d her arms and were t

the fatherly policeman. "Th

opposing. Before her stretched blank spaces, dotted with running people coming toward her, and below them raili

tch of the fatherly policeman and tried to thrust herself past

e policemen in conflict with her staggered toward Ann Veronica's attendants and distracted their attention. "I WILL be arrested! I WON'T g

ted her, and she screamed. Ann Veronica became violently excited at the sight. "You cowards!" said Ann Veronica, "put her down!" and tore he

nica also w

. "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

ce 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,

reathlessly, insisting insanely on

rom unnamable disgraces. She hesitated about her name, and, being pr

ion that opened upon a cell too unclean for occupation, and most of them spent the night standing. Hot coffee and cakes were sent in to them in the morning by some i

me demur to his jurisdiction that had ruffled him. He resented being regarded as irregular. He felt he was human wisdom prudentially interpolated.... "You silly wimmin," he said over and over again throughout the hearing, plucking at his blo

at a black table littered with papers, of policemen standing about stiffly with expressions of conscious integrity, and a murmuring background of the heads and shoulders of spectators close behind her. On a high chair beh

of the book struck her as particularly odd, and then the police

ask the witness?" aske

s facetious interrogations upon her, as, for example, where the witness had

rong, respectable gell, and it's a pity you silly young wimmin can't find something better to do with your exube

as filled with confus

, have no idea whatever of their nature. I don't suppose you could tell me even the derivation of su

scolding. One with the appearance of a bald little gnome yawned agonizingly. They had got all this down already-t

the alternative of being bound over in one surety for the sum of

first and second were all alike t

owless van, she reached Canongate Prison-for Holloway h

She was not allowed to bathe herself: another prisoner, with a privileged manner, washed her. Conscientious objectors to that process are not permitted, she found, in Canongate. Her hair was washed for her also. Then they dressed her in a dirty dress of coarse serge and a cap, and took away her own clothes. The dress came to her only too manifestly unwashed from its former wearer; even the under-linen they gave her seemed unclean. Horrible memories of things seen beneath the microscope of the baser forms of life crawled across her mind and set he

ersonal affairs and her personal problem resumed possession