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Ann Veronica Chapter 11 - Thoughts in prison · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eleven of Anne Veronica. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information on to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Joy Chan and Veronica by H. G. Wells. Chapter
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  Speaker 1: the Eleventh Thoughts in Prison, Part one. The first night
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  Speaker 1: in prison, she found it impossible to sleep. The bed
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  Speaker 1: was hard, beyond any experience of hers, the bedclothes coarse
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  Speaker 1: and insufficient, the cell at once cold and stuffy, the
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  Speaker 1: little grating in the door, the sense of constant inspection
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  Speaker 1: worried her. She kept opening her eyes and looking at it.
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  Speaker 1: She was fatigued physically and mentally, and neither mind nor
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  Speaker 1: body could rest. She became aware that at regular intervals
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  Speaker 1: a light flashed upon her face, and a bodiless eye
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  Speaker 1: regarded her, And this, as the night wore on, became
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  Speaker 1: a torment. Capes came back into her mind. He haunted
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  Speaker 1: a state between hectic dreaming and mild delirium, and she
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  Speaker 1: found herself talking aloud to him all through the night,
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  Speaker 1: and entirely impossible and monumental. Capes confronted her, and she
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  Speaker 1: argued with him about men and women. She visualized him
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  Speaker 1: as in a policeman's uniform and quite impassive on some
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  Speaker 1: insane score. She fancied she had to state her case
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  Speaker 1: in verse. We are the music and you are the instrument,
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  Speaker 1: she said. We are verse and you are prose. For
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  Speaker 1: men have reason, women rhyme. A man scores always all
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  Speaker 1: the time. This couplet sprang into her mind from nowhere,
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  Speaker 1: and immediately forgot an endless series of similar couplets that
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  Speaker 1: she began to compose and address the capes they came
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  Speaker 1: teeming distressfully through her aching brain. A man can kick
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  Speaker 1: his skirtston't tear. A man scilles always everywhere his dress,
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  Speaker 1: for no man lays a snare. And man scores always everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: For hats that fail and hats that flare top as
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  Speaker 1: their universal wear. A man scores always everywhere. Men's ways
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  Speaker 1: are neither here nor there. A man scores always everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: A man can manage without hair, A man scores always everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: There are no males at men to stare. A man
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  Speaker 1: scores always everywhere, And children must be women bare. Oh damn,
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  Speaker 1: she cried, as the hundred and first couplet or so
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  Speaker 1: presented itself in her unwilling brain. For a time she
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  Speaker 1: worried about that compulsory bath and cutaneous diseases. Then she
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  Speaker 1: fell into a fever of remorse for the habit of
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  Speaker 1: bad language she had acquired. A man can smoke, a
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  Speaker 1: man can swear. A man scores always everywhere. She rolled
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  Speaker 1: over on her face and stuffed her fingers in her
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  Speaker 1: ears to shut out the rhythm from her mind. She
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  Speaker 1: lay still for a long time. Her mind resumed at
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  Speaker 1: a more tolerable pace. She found herself talking to Capes
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  Speaker 1: in an undertone of rational admission. There is something to
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  Speaker 1: be said for the ladylike theory, after all, she admitted,
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  Speaker 1: wemen ought to be gentle and submissive persons, strong only
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  Speaker 1: in virtue and in resistance to evil compulsion. My dear,
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  Speaker 1: I can call you that here. Anyhow, I know that
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  Speaker 1: the Victorians overdid it a little. I admit their idea
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  Speaker 1: of maidenly innocence was just a blank white, the sort
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  Speaker 1: of flat white that doesn't shine. But that doesn't alter
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  Speaker 1: the fact that there is innocence. And I've read and
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  Speaker 1: thought and guessed and looked until my innocence it's smirched. Smirched,
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  Speaker 1: you see, dear one, is passionately anxious for something. What
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  Speaker 1: is it? One wants to be clean? You want me
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  Speaker 1: to be clean? You would want me to be clean
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  Speaker 1: if you gave me a thought, that is, I wonder
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  Speaker 1: if you give me a thought. I'm not a good woman.
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  Speaker 1: I don't mean I'm not a good woman. I mean
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  Speaker 1: that I'm not a good woman. My poor brain is
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  Speaker 1: so mixed, dear, I hardly know what I'm saying. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not a good specimen of a woman. I've got
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  Speaker 1: a streak of male. Things happen to women, proper women,
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  Speaker 1: and all they have to do is to take them well.
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  Speaker 1: They've just got to keep white. But I'm always trying
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  Speaker 1: to make things happen, and I get myself dirty. It's
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  Speaker 1: all dirt that washes off, dear. But it's dirt. The white,
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  Speaker 1: unaggressive woman who corrects and nurses and serves and is
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  Speaker 1: worshiped and betrayed, the martyr, queen of men, the white mother.
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  Speaker 1: You can't do that sort of thing unless you do
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  Speaker 1: it over religion, And there's no religion in me of
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  Speaker 1: that sort worth a rap. I'm not gentle, certainly not
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  Speaker 1: a gentlewoman. I'm not coarse, No, But I've got no
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  Speaker 1: purity of mind, no real purity of mind. A good
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  Speaker 1: woman's mind has angels with flaming swords at the portals
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  Speaker 1: to keep out fallen thoughts. I wonder if there are
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  Speaker 1: any good women. Really. I wish I didn't swear. I
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  Speaker 1: do swear. It began as a joke. It developed into
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  Speaker 1: a sort of secret and private bad manners. It's got
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  Speaker 1: to be at last, like tobacco ash over all my
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  Speaker 1: sayings and doings go it, missy, they said, kick up.
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  Speaker 1: I saw at that policeman and disgusted him. Disgusted him
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  Speaker 1: for men, policemen never blush. A man in all things
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  Speaker 1: scores so much. Damn things are getting plainer. It must
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  Speaker 1: be the dawn creeping in now here. Hath been dawning
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  Speaker 1: another blue day. I'm just a poor woman. Please take
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  Speaker 1: it away. Oh, sleep, Sleep, Sleep, Sleep Part two now,
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  Speaker 1: said Anne Veronica, after the half hour of exercise and
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  Speaker 1: sitting on the uncomfortable wooden seat without a back that
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  Speaker 1: was her perch by day. It's no good staying here
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  Speaker 1: in a sort of maze. I've got nothing to do
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  Speaker 1: for a month, but think I may as well. Think
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  Speaker 1: I ought to be able to think things out? How
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  Speaker 1: shall I put the question? What am I? What have
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  Speaker 1: I got to do with myself? I wonder if many
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  Speaker 1: people have thought things out? Are we all just seizing
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  Speaker 1: hold of phrases and obeying moods. It wasn't so with
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  Speaker 1: old fashioned people. They knew right from wrong. They had
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  Speaker 1: a clear cut religious faith that seemed to explain everything
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  Speaker 1: and give a rule for everything. We haven't. I haven't anyhow,
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  Speaker 1: And it's no good pretending there is one when there isn't.
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  Speaker 1: I suppose I believe in God, never really thought about him,
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  Speaker 1: people don't I suppose my creed is I believe rather
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  Speaker 1: indistinctly in God the Father Almighty, the substratum of the
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  Speaker 1: evolutionary process, and in a vein of vagues andce mentality
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  Speaker 1: that doesn't give a datum for anything at all in
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  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ his Son. It's no sort of good and
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  Speaker 1: veronica pretending one does believe when one doesn't. And as
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  Speaker 1: we're praying for faith, this sort of monologue is about
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  Speaker 1: as near as any one of my sort ever gets
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  Speaker 1: to prayer. Aren't I asking? Asking? Plainly? Now? We've all
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  Speaker 1: been mixing our ideas, and we've got that intellectual hot
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  Speaker 1: Copper's every blessed one of us. A confusion of motives,
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  Speaker 1: That's what I am. There is this absurd craving from
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  Speaker 1: mister Capes. The capes crave, they would call them in America.
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  Speaker 1: Why do I want him so badly? Why do I
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  Speaker 1: want him and think about him and fail to get
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  Speaker 1: away from him? It isn't all of me. The first
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  Speaker 1: person you love and Veronica's yourself. Get hold of that.
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  Speaker 1: The soul you have to save is Anne, Veronica's soul.
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  Speaker 1: She knelt upon the floor of her cell and clasped
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  Speaker 1: her hands and remained for a long time as silence.
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  Speaker 1: Oh God, she said, at last, How I wish I
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  Speaker 1: had been taught to pray? Part three. She had some
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  Speaker 1: idea of putting these subtle and difficult issues to the
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  Speaker 1: chaplain when she was warned of his advent, but she
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  Speaker 1: had not reckoned with the etiquette of canongate. She got up,
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  Speaker 1: as she had been told to do at his appearance,
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  Speaker 1: and he amazed her by sitting down according to custom,
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  Speaker 1: on her stool. He still wore his hat to show
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  Speaker 1: that the days of miracles in Christ being civil to
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  Speaker 1: Sinnis are over forever. She perceived that his countenance was
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  Speaker 1: only composed by a great effort, his features severely compressed.
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  Speaker 1: He was ruffled that his ears were red, no doubt
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  Speaker 1: from some adjacent controversy. He classified her as he seated himself.
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  Speaker 1: Another young woman, I suppose, he said, who knows better
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  Speaker 1: than her maker about her place in the world. Have
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  Speaker 1: you anything to ask me? Anne Veronica readjusted her mind hastily,
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  Speaker 1: her back stiffened. She produced from the depths of her
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  Speaker 1: pride the ugly investigatory note of the modern district visitor.
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  Speaker 1: Are you a special sort of clergyman, she said, after
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  Speaker 1: a pause and looking down her nose at him. Or
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  Speaker 1: do you go to the universities? Ah? He said profoundly.
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  Speaker 1: He panted for a moment with unuttered replies, and then,
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  Speaker 1: with a scornful gesture, got up and left the cell,
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  Speaker 1: so that Anne Veronica was not able to get the
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  Speaker 1: expert advice she certainly needed upon her spiritual state. Part four.
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  Speaker 1: After a day or so, she thought more steadily, she
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  Speaker 1: found herself in a phase of violent reaction against the
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  Speaker 1: suffrage movement, a phase greatly promoted by one of those
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  Speaker 1: unreasonable objections. People of Anne Veronica's temperament take at times
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  Speaker 1: to the girl in the next cell to her own.
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  Speaker 1: She was a large, resilient girl with a foolish smile,
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  Speaker 1: a still more foolish expression of earnestness, and a throat
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  Speaker 1: to controlt her voice. She was noisy and hilarious and enthusiastic,
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  Speaker 1: and her hair was always abominably done. In the chapel
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  Speaker 1: she sang with an open lunged gusto that silenced Anne
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  Speaker 1: Veronica altogether, and in the exercising yards luched round with
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  Speaker 1: carelessly dispersed feet. Anne Veronica decided that hoydenish ragga was
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  Speaker 1: the only phrase to express her. She was always breaking brules,
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  Speaker 1: whispering asides, intimating signals. She became at times an embodiment
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  Speaker 1: for Anne Veronica of all that made the suffrage movement
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  Speaker 1: defective and unsatisfying. She was always initiating petty breaches of discipline.
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  Speaker 1: Her greatest exploit was the howling before the midday meal.
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  Speaker 1: This was an imitation of the noises made by the
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  Speaker 1: carnivora at the zoological gardens at feeding time. Their idea
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  Speaker 1: was taken up by prisoner after prisoner, and to the
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  Speaker 1: whole place was alive with barkings, yappings, roarings, pelican chatterings,
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  Speaker 1: and feline yowlings interspersed with shrieks of hysterical laughter. To
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  Speaker 1: many in that crowded solitude, it came as an extraordinary relief.
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  Speaker 1: It was better even than the hymn singing. But it
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  Speaker 1: annoyed Anne Veronica. Idiots, she said when she heard this pandemonium,
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  Speaker 1: and with particular reference to this young lady with the
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  Speaker 1: throaty contralto next door intolerable idiots. It took some days
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  Speaker 1: for this phase to pass, and had left some scars
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  Speaker 1: and something like a decision. Violence won't do it, said
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  Speaker 1: Anne Veronica. Begin violence and the woman goes under. But
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  Speaker 1: all the rest of our case is right. Yes. As
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  Speaker 1: the long solitary days wore on, Anne Veronica found a
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  Speaker 1: number of definite attitudes and conclusions in her mind. One
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  Speaker 1: of these was a classification of women into women you
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  Speaker 1: are and women who are not hostile to men. The
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  Speaker 1: real reason why I am out of place here, she said,
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  Speaker 1: is because I like men. I can talk with them.
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  Speaker 1: I've never found them hostile. I've got no feminine class feeling.
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  Speaker 1: I don't want any laws or freedoms to protect me
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  Speaker 1: from a man like mister Capes, I know that in
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  Speaker 1: my heart I would take whatever he gave. A woman
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  Speaker 1: wants a proper alliance with a man, a man who
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  Speaker 1: is better stuff than herself. She wants that and needs
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  Speaker 1: it more than anything else in the world. It may
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  Speaker 1: not be just, it may not be fair, but things
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  Speaker 1: are so. It isn't law, nor custom, nor masculine violence.
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  Speaker 1: Settled that, it is just how things happen to me.
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  Speaker 1: She wants to be free. She wants to be legally
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  Speaker 1: and economically free, so as not to be subject to
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  Speaker 1: the wrong man. But only God who made the world
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  Speaker 1: can order things to prevent her being slave to the
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  Speaker 1: right one. And if she can't have the right one,
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  Speaker 1: we've developed such a quality of preference. She rubbed her
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  Speaker 1: knuckles into her forehead. Oh but life is difficult, she groaned.
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  Speaker 1: When you loosen the tangle in one place, you tie
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  Speaker 1: a knot in another. Before there is any change, any
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  Speaker 1: real change, I shall be dead, dead, dead, and finished.
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  Speaker 1: Two hundred Years, Part five, One afternoon, while everything was still,
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  Speaker 1: the wargers heard her cry out, suddenly and alarmingly, and
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  Speaker 1: with great and unmistakable passion, Why in the name of
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  Speaker 1: goodness did I burn that twenty pounds. Part six. She
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  Speaker 1: sat regarding her dinner. The meat was coarse and disagreeably served.
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  Speaker 1: I suppose some one makes a bit on the food,
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  Speaker 1: she said. One has such ridiculous ideas of the wicked
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  Speaker 1: common people and the beauty machinery of order that ropes
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  Speaker 1: them in. And here are these places full of contagion.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, this is the real texture of life. This
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  Speaker 1: is what we refine to cure. People forget. We think
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  Speaker 1: the whole thing is straight and noble at bottom, And
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  Speaker 1: it Isn't We think if we just defy the friends
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  Speaker 1: we have and go out into the world, everything will
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  Speaker 1: become easy and splendid. One doesn't realize that even the
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  Speaker 1: sort of civilization one has at Morningside Park is held
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  Speaker 1: together with difficulty by policemen. One mustn't shock. This isn't
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  Speaker 1: a world for an innocent girl to walk about it.
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  Speaker 1: It's a world of dirt and skin diseases and parasites.
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  Speaker 1: It's a world in which the law can be a
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  Speaker 1: stupid pig and the police station's dirty dens. One wants
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  Speaker 1: helpers and protectors and clean water. Am I becoming reasonable
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  Speaker 1: or am I being tamed? I'm simply discovering that life
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  Speaker 1: is many sided and complex and puzzling. I thought one
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  Speaker 1: had only to take it by the throat. It hasn't
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  Speaker 1: got a throat. Part seven. One day the idea of
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  Speaker 1: self sacrifice came into her head, and she made he
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  Speaker 1: thought some important moral discoveries. It came with an extreme
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  Speaker 1: effect of rediscovery, a remarkable novelty. What have I been
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  Speaker 1: all this time? She asked herself, and answered, just stark egotism,
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  Speaker 1: crude assertion of Anne Veronica, without a modest rag of
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  Speaker 1: religion or discipline, or respect for authority to cover me.
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  Speaker 1: It seemed to her as though she had at last
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  Speaker 1: found the touchstone of conduct. She perceived she had never
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  Speaker 1: really thought of any one but herself, and all her
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  Speaker 1: acts and plans, even capes, had been for her merely
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  Speaker 1: an excitant to passionate love, a mere idol at whose
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  Speaker 1: feet one could enjoy imaginative wallowings. She had set out
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  Speaker 1: to get a beautiful life, a free, untrammeled life, self development,
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  Speaker 1: without counting the cost, either for herself or others. I've
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  Speaker 1: hurt my father, she said, I have hurt my aunt.
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  Speaker 1: I have hurt and snubbed poor Teddy. I've made no
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  Speaker 1: one happy. I deserve pretty much what I've got, if
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  Speaker 1: only because of the way one hurts others. If one
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  Speaker 1: kicks loose and free, one has to submit broken in people.
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  Speaker 1: I suppose the world is just all egotistical children and
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  Speaker 1: broken in people. Your little flag of pride was fluttered
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  Speaker 1: down with the rest of them, Ann Veronica. Compromise and kindness.
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  Speaker 1: Compromise and kindness. Who are you that the world should
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  Speaker 1: lie down at your feet? You've got to be a
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  Speaker 1: decent citizen, Ann Veronica, take your half loaf with the others.
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  Speaker 1: You mustn't go chloring after a man that doesn't belong
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  Speaker 1: to you, that isn't even interested in you. That's one
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  Speaker 1: thing clear. You've got to take the decent, reasonable way.
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  Speaker 1: You've got to adjust yourself to the people God has
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  Speaker 1: set about you. Every one else does. She thought more,
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  Speaker 1: more and more along that line. There was no reason
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  Speaker 1: why she shouldn't be Cape's friend. He did like her anyhow,
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  Speaker 1: he was always pleased to be with her. There was
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  Speaker 1: no reason why she shouldn't be his restrained and dignified friend.
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  Speaker 1: After all, that was life. Nothing was given away, and
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  Speaker 1: no one came so rich to the stall as to
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  Speaker 1: command all that it had to offer. Everyone has to
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  Speaker 1: make a deal with the world. It would be very
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  Speaker 1: good to be Cape's friend. She might be able to
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  Speaker 1: go on with biology, possibly even work upon the same
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  Speaker 1: questions that he dealt with. Perhaps her granddaughter might marry
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  Speaker 1: his grandson. It grew clear to her that throughout all
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  Speaker 1: her wild raid for independence, she had done nothing for anybody,
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  Speaker 1: and many people had done things for her. She thought
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  Speaker 1: of her aunt, and that purse that was dropped on
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  Speaker 1: the table, of the many troublesome and ill requited kindnesses,
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  Speaker 1: the thought of the help of the widgets, of Teddy's admiration,
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  Speaker 1: She thought with the new born charity of her father,
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  Speaker 1: of Manning's conscientious, unselfishness, of Miss Miniver's devotion. And for
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  Speaker 1: me it has been pride and pride and pride. I
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  Speaker 1: am the prodigal daughter. I will arise and go to
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  Speaker 1: my father and will say unto him, I suppose pride
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  Speaker 1: and self assertion a sin sinned against heaven. Yes, I
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  Speaker 1: have sinned against Heaven. And before thee poor old daddy,
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  Speaker 1: I wonder if he'll spend much on the fatted calf.
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  Speaker 1: The rapid life discipline one comes of that at last
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  Speaker 1: I begin to understand Jane Orson. In Chintz covers and
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  Speaker 1: decency and refinement and all the rest of it. One
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  Speaker 1: puts gloves on one's greedy fingers, one learns to sit up,
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  Speaker 1: and somehow or other, she added, after a long interval,
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  Speaker 1: I must pay mister Rammage back his forty pounds end
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  Speaker 1: of chapter eleven.