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Ann Veronica Chapter 10 - The Suffragettes · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter ten 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 or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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Speaker 1: by Joy Chan Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells, Chapter
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Speaker 1: the tenth The Suffragettes, Part one. There is only one
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Speaker 1: way out of all this, said Anne Veronica, sitting up
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Speaker 1: in her little bed in the darkness and biting at
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Speaker 1: her nails. I thought I was just up against Morningside
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Speaker 1: Park and father. But it's the whole order of things,
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Speaker 1: the whole blessed order of things. She shivered. She frowned,
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Speaker 1: and gripped her hands about her knees very tightly. Her
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Speaker 1: mind developed into savage wrath at the present conditions of
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Speaker 1: a woman's life. I suppose all life is an affair
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Speaker 1: of chances. But a woman's life is all chance. It's
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Speaker 1: artificially chance, and your man that's the rule. All the
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Speaker 1: rest is humbug and delicacy. He's the handle of life
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Speaker 1: for you. He will let you live if it pleases him.
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Speaker 1: Can't it be altered? I suppose an actress is free.
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Speaker 1: She tried to think of some altered state of affairs.
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Speaker 1: In which these monstrous limitations would be alleviated, in which
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Speaker 1: women would stand on their own feet in equal citizenship
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Speaker 1: with men. For a time, she brooded on the ideals
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Speaker 1: and suggestions of the socialists, on the vague intimations of
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Speaker 1: an endowment of motherhood, of a complete relaxation of that
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Speaker 1: intense individual dependence for women which is woven into the
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Speaker 1: existing social order. At the back of her mind there
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Speaker 1: seemed always one irrelevant, qualifying spectator whose presence she sought
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Speaker 1: to disregard. She would not look at him, she would
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Speaker 1: not think of him. When her mind wavered. Then she
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Speaker 1: muttered to herself in the darkness, so as to keep
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Speaker 1: hold of her generalizations. It is true. It is no
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Speaker 1: good waving the thing. It is true. Unless women are
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Speaker 1: never to be free, never to be even respected, there
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Speaker 1: must be a generation of martyrs. Why shouldn't we be martyrs?
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Speaker 1: There's nothing else for most of us anyhow. It's a
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Speaker 1: sort of black legging to want to have a life
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Speaker 1: of one's own, she repeated, as if she answered an
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Speaker 1: objector a sort of black legging, a sex of black
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Speaker 1: legging clients. Her mind diverged to other aspects, and another
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Speaker 1: type of womanhood, poor little minever. What can she be
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Speaker 1: but what she is? Because she states her case in
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Speaker 1: a tangle, drags it through swamps of nonsense, it doesn't
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Speaker 1: alter the fact that she is right. That phrase about
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Speaker 1: dragging the truth through swamps of nonsense. She remembered from
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Speaker 1: Capes at the recollection that it was his. She seemed
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Speaker 1: to fall through a thin surface, as one might fall
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Speaker 1: through the crust of a lava, into glowing depths. She
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Speaker 1: wallowed for a time in the thought of Cape, Unable
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Speaker 1: to escape from his image and the idea of his
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Speaker 1: presence in her life. She let her mind run into
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Speaker 1: dreams of that cloud paradise, of an altered world in
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Speaker 1: which the goops and minevers, the fabians and reforming people
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Speaker 1: believed across that world was written in letters of light
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Speaker 1: endowment of motherhood. Suppose in some complex yet conceivable way,
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Speaker 1: women were endowed, were no longer economically and socially dependent
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Speaker 1: on men. If one was free, she said, one could
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Speaker 1: go to him. There's vile hovering to catch a man's eye.
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Speaker 1: One could go to him and tell him one loved him.
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Speaker 1: I want to love him. A little love from him
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Speaker 1: would be enough. It would hurt no one. It would
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Speaker 1: not burden him with any obligation. She groaned aloud and
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Speaker 1: bowed her forehead to her knees. She floundered deep. She
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Speaker 1: wanted to kiss his feet. His feet would have the
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Speaker 1: firm texture of his hands. Then suddenly her spirit rose
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Speaker 1: in revolt. I will not have the slavery, she said,
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Speaker 1: I will not have this slavery. She shook her fist, sealingward.
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Speaker 1: Do you hear, she said, Whatever you are, wherever you are,
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Speaker 1: I will not be slave to the thought of any man,
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Speaker 1: slave to the customs of any time confound the slavery
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Speaker 1: of sex. I am a man. I will get this
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Speaker 1: under if I am killed in doing it. She scowled
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Speaker 1: into the cold blacknesses about her manning, she said, and
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Speaker 1: contemplated a figure of inaggressive persistence. No, her thoughts had
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Speaker 1: turned in a new direction. It doesn't matter, she said,
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Speaker 1: after a long interval. If they are absurd, they mean something.
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Speaker 1: They mean everything that women can mean, except submission. The
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Speaker 1: vote is only the beginning, the necessary beginning. If we
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Speaker 1: do not begin, she had come to a resolution. Abruptly,
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Speaker 1: she got out of bed and smooth her sheet, and
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Speaker 1: straightened her pillow, and lay down and fell almost instantly asleep.
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Speaker 1: Part two. The next morning was as dark and foggy
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Speaker 1: as if it was mid November instead of early March.
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Speaker 1: Anne Veronica woke rather later than usual and lay awake
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Speaker 1: for some minutes before she remembered a certain resolution she
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Speaker 1: had taken in the small hours. Then instantly she got
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Speaker 1: out of bed and proceeded to dress. She did not
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Speaker 1: start for the Imperial College. She spent the morning up
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Speaker 1: to ten in writing a series of unsuccessful letters to Ramage,
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Speaker 1: which she tore up unfinished, and finally she desisted and
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Speaker 1: put on her jacket and went out into the lamp
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Speaker 1: lit obscurity and slimy streets. She turned her resolute face southward.
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Speaker 1: She followed Oxford Street into Holborne, and there she inquired
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Speaker 1: for Chancery Lane. There she sought and at last found
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Speaker 1: one hundred and seven a one of those had a
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Speaker 1: rodgersness piles of offices which occupied the eastern side of
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Speaker 1: the lane. She studied the painted names of firms and
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Speaker 1: persons and enterprises on the wall, and discovered that the
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Speaker 1: Women's Bond of Freedom occupied several contiguous suites on the
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Speaker 1: first floor. She went upstairs and hesitated between four doors
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Speaker 1: with ground glass panes, each of which professed the Women's
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Speaker 1: Bond of Freedom in neat black letters. She opened one
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Speaker 1: and found herself in a large, untidy room, set with
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Speaker 1: chairs that were a little disarranged, as if by an
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Speaker 1: overnight meeting. On the walls were notice boards wearing clusters
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Speaker 1: of newspaper slips, three or four big posters of monster meetings,
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Speaker 1: one of which Anne Ronica had attended with Miss Miniver,
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Speaker 1: and a series of announcements in purple copying ink. And
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Speaker 1: in one corner was a pile of banners. There was
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Speaker 1: no one at all in this room, but through the
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Speaker 1: half open door of one of the small apartments that
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Speaker 1: gave upon it, she had a glimpse of two very
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Speaker 1: young girls sitting at a little table and writing briskly.
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Speaker 1: She walked across to this apartment, and opening the door
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Speaker 1: a little wider, discovered a press section of the movement
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Speaker 1: at work. I want to inquire, said Anne Veronica. Next door,
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Speaker 1: said a spectacled young person of seventeen or eighteen, with
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Speaker 1: an impatient indication of the direction. In the adjacent apartment,
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Speaker 1: Ann Veronica found a middle aged woman with a tired
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Speaker 1: face under the tired hat. She wore sitting at a
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Speaker 1: desk opening letters, while the dusky, untied girl of eight
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Speaker 1: or nine and twenty hammered industriously at a typewriter. The
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Speaker 1: tired woman looked up in inquiring silence at Anne Veronica's
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Speaker 1: diffident entry. I want to know more about this movement,
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Speaker 1: said Anne Veronica. Are you with us, said the tired woman.
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Speaker 1: I don't know, said Anne Veronica. I think I am.
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Speaker 1: I want very much to do something for women, but
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Speaker 1: I want to know what you are doing. The tired
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Speaker 1: woman sat still for a moment. You haven't come here
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Speaker 1: to make a lot of difficulties, she asked. No, said
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Speaker 1: Anne Veronica, but I want to know. The tired woman
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Speaker 1: shut her eyes tightly for a moment and then looked
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Speaker 1: with them at Anne Veronica. What can you do, she
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Speaker 1: asked do? Are you prepared to do things for us?
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Speaker 1: Distribute bills, write letters, interrupt meetings, canvas at elections, face dangers.
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Speaker 1: If I am satisfied, If we satisfy you, then if possible,
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Speaker 1: I would like to go to prison. It isn't nice
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Speaker 1: going to prison. It would suit me. It isn't nice
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Speaker 1: getting there. That's a question of detail, said Anne Veronica.
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Speaker 1: The tired woman looked quietly at her. What are your objections,
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Speaker 1: she said. It isn't objections exactly. I want to know
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Speaker 1: what you are doing, how you think this work of
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Speaker 1: yours really does serve women. We are working for the
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Speaker 1: equal citizenship of men and women, said the tired woman.
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Speaker 1: Women have been and are treated as the inferiors of men.
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Speaker 1: We want to make them their equals. Yes, said Anne Veronica,
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Speaker 1: I agree to that, but the tired woman raised her
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Speaker 1: eyebrows in mild protest. Isn't the question more complicated than that?
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Speaker 1: Said Anne Veronica. You could have a talk to miss
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Speaker 1: Kitty Brett this afternoon if you liked, Shall I make
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Speaker 1: an appointment for you? Miss Kitty Brett was one of
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Speaker 1: the most conspicuous leaders of the movement. Anne Veronica snatched
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Speaker 1: at the opportunity and spent most of the intervening time
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Speaker 1: in the Assyrian court of the British Museum, reading and
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Speaker 1: thinking over a little book upon the feminist movement. The
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Speaker 1: tired woman had made her buy. She got a bun
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Speaker 1: and some cocoa in the little refreshment room, and then
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Speaker 1: wandered through the galleries upstairs, added with Polynesian idols and
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Speaker 1: Polynesian dancing garments, and all the simple, immodest accessories to
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Speaker 1: life in Polynesia, to a seat among the mummies. She
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Speaker 1: was trying to bring her problems to her head, and
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Speaker 1: her mind insisted upon being even more discursive and atmospheric
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Speaker 1: than usual. It generalized everything she put to it. Why
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Speaker 1: should women be dependent on men? She asked, and the
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Speaker 1: question was at once converted into a system of variations
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Speaker 1: upon the theme of why are things as they are? Why
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Speaker 1: are human beings viviparous? Why are people hungry thrice a day?
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Speaker 1: Why does one faint danger? She stood for a time
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Speaker 1: looking at the dry limbs and still human face of
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Speaker 1: that desiccated, unwrapped mummy. From the very beginnings of social life.
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Speaker 1: It looked very patient, she thought, and a little self satisfied.
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Speaker 1: It looked as if it had taken its world for
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Speaker 1: granted and prospered on that assumption, a world in which
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Speaker 1: children were trained to obey their elders and the wills
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Speaker 1: women overruled. As a matter of course, it was wonderful
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Speaker 1: to think this thing had lived, had felt and suffered.
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Speaker 1: Perhaps once it had desired some other human being intolerably,
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Speaker 1: Perhaps some one had kissed the brow that was now
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Speaker 1: so cadaverous, rubbed that sunken cheek with loving fingers, held
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Speaker 1: that stringy neck with passionately living hands. But all of
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Speaker 1: that was forgotten. In the end. It seemed to be thinking.
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Speaker 1: They embalmed me with the utmost respect, sound spices, chosen
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Speaker 1: to endure the best. I took my world as I
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Speaker 1: found it. Things are so Part three and Veronica's first
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Speaker 1: impression of Kitty Bread was that she was aggressive and disagreeable.
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Speaker 1: Her next was that she was a person of amazing
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Speaker 1: persuasive power. She was perhaps three and twenty and very
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Speaker 1: pink and healthy looking, showing a great deal of white
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Speaker 1: and rounded neck above her business like but altogether feminine blouse,
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Speaker 1: and a good deal of plump, gesticulating forearm out of
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Speaker 1: her short sleeve. She had animated dark blue gray eyes
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Speaker 1: under her fine eyebrows, and dark brown hair that rolled
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Speaker 1: back simply and effectively from her broad, low forehead. And
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Speaker 1: she was about as capable of intelligent argument as a
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Speaker 1: runaway steam roller. She was a trained being trained by
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Speaker 1: an implacable mother. To one end, she spoke with fluent enthusiasm.
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Speaker 1: She did not so much deal with Anne Veronica's interpolations
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Speaker 1: as dispose of them with quick and use, hardened repartee.
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Speaker 1: And then she went on with a fine directness to
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Speaker 1: sketch the case for her agitation, for that remarkable rebellion
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Speaker 1: of the women that was then agitating the whole world
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Speaker 1: of politics and discussion. She assumed with a kind of
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Speaker 1: mesmeric force, all the propositions that Ann Veronica wanted her
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Speaker 1: to define. What do we want? What is the goal,
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Speaker 1: asked Anne Veronica, Freedom, citizenship, and the way to that,
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Speaker 1: the way to everything is the vote. An Veronica said
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Speaker 1: something about a general change of ideas. How can you
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Speaker 1: change people's ideas if you have no power, said Kitty Brett,
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Speaker 1: and Veronica was not ready enough to deal with that
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Speaker 1: counter stroke. One doesn't want to turn the whole thing
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Speaker 1: into a mere sex antagonism. When women get justice, said
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Speaker 1: Kitty Brett, there will be no sex antagonism, none at all.
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Speaker 1: Until then, we mean to keep on hammering away. It
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Speaker 1: seems to me that much of a woman's difficulties are economic.
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Speaker 1: That will follow, said Kitty Brett. That will follow, she interrupted,
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Speaker 1: as Anne Veronica was about to speak again, with a bright,
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Speaker 1: contagious hopefulness. Everything will follow, She said, yes, said Anne Veronica,
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Speaker 1: Try to think where they were, Try to get things
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Speaker 1: plain again. That had seemed plain enough in the quiet
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Speaker 1: of the night. Nothing was ever done, Miss Brett asserted,
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Speaker 1: without a certain element of faith. After we have got
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Speaker 1: the vote and I recognize as citizens, then we can
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Speaker 1: come to all these other things. Even in the glamor
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Speaker 1: of Miss Brett's assurance, it seemed to Anne Veronica that
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Speaker 1: this was, after all, no more than the Gospel of
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Speaker 1: Miss minever with a new set of resonances. And like
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Speaker 1: that gospel, it meant something, something different from its phrases,
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Speaker 1: something elusive, and yet something that, in spite of the
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Speaker 1: superficial incoherence of its phrasing, was largely essentially true. There
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Speaker 1: were something holding women down, holding women back. And if
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Speaker 1: it wasn't exactly man made law, man made law was
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Speaker 1: an aspect of it. There was something indeed holding the
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Speaker 1: whole species back from the imaginable largeness of life. The
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Speaker 1: vote is the symbol of everything, said Miss Brett. She
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Speaker 1: made an abrupt personal appeal, Oh please, please, don't lose
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Speaker 1: yourself in a wilderness of secondary considerations, she said, don't
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Speaker 1: ask me to tell you all that women can do
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Speaker 1: all that women can be. There is a new life
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Speaker 1: different from the old life of dependence, possible if only
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Speaker 1: we are not divided, if only we work together. This
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Speaker 1: is the one movement that brings women of different classes
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Speaker 1: together for a common purpose. If you could see how
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Speaker 1: it gives them souls, women who have taken things for granted,
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Speaker 1: who have given themselves up altogether to pettiness and vanity,
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Speaker 1: Give me something to do, said Anne Veronica, interrupting her persuasions.
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Speaker 1: At last, it has been very kind of you to
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Speaker 1: see me, But I don't want to sit and talk
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Speaker 1: and use your time any longer. I want to do something.
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Speaker 1: I want to hammer myself against all this that pens
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Speaker 1: women in. I feel that I shall stifle unless I
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Speaker 1: can do something, and do something soon. Part four. It
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Speaker 1: was not Anne Veronica's fault that the Night's work should
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Speaker 1: have taken upon itself the forms of wild burlesque. She
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Speaker 1: was in deadly earnest in everything she did. It seemed
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Speaker 1: to her the last desperate attack upon the universe that
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Speaker 1: would not let her live as she desired to live,
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Speaker 1: that pent her in and controlled her, directed her, and
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Speaker 1: disapproved of her. The same invincible wrappering the same leaden
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Speaker 1: tyranny of a universe that she had vowed to overcome
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Speaker 1: after that memorable conflict with her father at Morningside Park.
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Speaker 1: She was listed for the raid. She was informed it
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Speaker 1: was to be arrayed upon the House of Commons, though
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Speaker 1: no particulars were given her, and told to go alone
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Speaker 1: to fourteen Dexter Street, Westminster, and not to ask any
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Speaker 1: policeman to direct her. Fourteen Dexter Street, Westminster, she found
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Speaker 1: was not a house, but a yard in an obscure street,
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Speaker 1: with big gates in the name of Podgus and Carlo,
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Speaker 1: carriers and furniture removers thereon. She was perplexed by this
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Speaker 1: and stood for some seconds in the empty street, hesitating,
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Speaker 1: and the appearance of another circumspect woman under the street
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Speaker 1: lamp at the corner reassured her. In one of the
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Speaker 1: big gates was a little door, and she rapped at this.
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Speaker 1: It was immediately opened by a man with light eyelashes
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Speaker 1: and a manner suggestive of restrained passion. Come right in,
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Speaker 1: he hissed under his breath with the drue conspirator's note,
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Speaker 1: closed the door very softly, and pointed through here by
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Speaker 1: the meager light of a gas lamp. She perceived a
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Speaker 1: cobbled yard with four large furniture vans standing with horses
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Speaker 1: and lamps alight. A slender young man wearing glasses appeared
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Speaker 1: from the shadow of the nearest van. Are you a B,
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Speaker 1: C Or D? He asked. They told me D, said
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Speaker 1: Anne Veronica. Through here, he said, and pointed with the
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Speaker 1: pamphlet he was carrying. Anne Veronica found herself in a little,
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Speaker 1: stirring crowd of excited women, whispering and tittering and speaking
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Speaker 1: in undertones. The light was poor, so that she saw
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Speaker 1: their gleaming faces dimly and indistinctly. No one spoke to her.
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Speaker 1: She stood among them, watching them, and feeling curiously alien
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Speaker 1: to them. The oblique, ruddy lighting distorted them oddly, made
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Speaker 1: queer bars and patches of shadow upon their clothes. It's
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Speaker 1: Kitty's idea, said one, We are to go in the vans.
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Speaker 1: Kitty is wonderful, said another. Wonderful. I have always longed
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Speaker 1: for prison service, said a woman, always from the beginning,
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Speaker 1: but it's only now I'm able to do it. A
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Speaker 1: little blond creature close at hand suddenly gave way to
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Speaker 1: a fit of hysterical laughter, and caught up the end
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Speaker 1: of it with a sob. Before I took up the subfrage,
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Speaker 1: a firm, flat voice remarked, I could scarcely walk up
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Speaker 1: stairs without palpitations. Some one hidden from Anne Veronica appeared
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Speaker 1: to be marchhaling the assembly. We have to get in,
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Speaker 1: I think, said a nice little old lady in a
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Speaker 1: bonnet to Anne Vera, speaking with a voice that quavered
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Speaker 1: a little, my dear, can you see in this light?
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Speaker 1: I think I would like to get in? Which is see?
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Speaker 1: And Veronica, with a curious sinking of the heart, regarded
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Speaker 1: the black cavities of the vans. Their doors stood open,
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Speaker 1: and placards with big letters indicated the section assigned to each.
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Speaker 1: She directed the little old woman and then made her
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Speaker 1: way to Van Dee, a young woman with a white
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Speaker 1: badge on her arms, stood and counted the sections as
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Speaker 1: they entered their vans. When they tapped the roof, she said,
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Speaker 1: in a voice of authority, you are to come out.
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Speaker 1: You'll be opposite the big entrance in old palace yard.
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Speaker 1: It's the public entrance. You are to make for that
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Speaker 1: and get into the lobby if you can, And so
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Speaker 1: try and reach the floor of the house, crying votes
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Speaker 1: for women. As you go, she spoke like a mistress,
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Speaker 1: addressing school children. Don't bunch too much as you come out,
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Speaker 1: she added, all right, asked the man with the light
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Speaker 1: eyelashes suddenly appearing the doorway. He waited for an instant,
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Speaker 1: wasting an encouraging smile in the imperfect light, and then
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Speaker 1: shut the doors of the van, leaving the women in darkness.
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Speaker 1: The van started with a jerk and rumbled on its way.
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Speaker 1: It's like Troy, said a voice of rapture. It's exactly
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Speaker 1: like Troy. Part five. So Anne Veronica, enterprising and a
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Speaker 1: little dubious as ever, mingled with the stream of history
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Speaker 1: and wrote her Christian name upon the police court records
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Speaker 1: of the land. But out of a belated regard for
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Speaker 1: her father, she wrote the surname of some one else.
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Speaker 1: Some day, when the rewards of literature permit the arduous
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Speaker 1: research required, the campaign of the Women will find its carlyle,
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Speaker 1: and the particulars of that marvelous series of exploits by
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Speaker 1: which Miss Brett and her colleagues nagged the whole Western
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Speaker 1: world into the discussion of women's busin become the material
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Speaker 1: for the most delightful and amazing descriptions. At present, the
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Speaker 1: world waits for that writer, and the confused record of
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Speaker 1: the newspapers remains the only resource of the curious. When
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Speaker 1: he comes, he will do that raid of the pantechnicons
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Speaker 1: the justice it deserves. He will picture the orderly evening
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Speaker 1: scene about the Imperial legislature in convincing detail, the coming
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Speaker 1: and going of cabs and motor cabs and brohms through
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Speaker 1: the chill, damp evening into New Palace Yard, the reinforced
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Speaker 1: but untroubled and unsuspecting police, about the entries of those
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Speaker 1: great buildings, whose square and paneled Victorian Gothic streams up
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Speaker 1: from the glare of the lamps into the murkiness of
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Speaker 1: the night, Big Ben shining overhead an unassailable beacon, and
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Speaker 1: the incidental traffic of Westminster cabs, carts and glowing omnibuses
21:51
Speaker 1: going to and from the bridge, about the abbey and
21:55
Speaker 1: Abingdon Street. Stood the outer pickets and detachments of the police.
22:00
Speaker 1: Our attention all directed westward to where the women in
22:02
Speaker 1: Caxton Hall, Westminster hummed like an angry hive. Squads reached
22:07
Speaker 1: the very portal of that center of disturbance, and through
22:10
Speaker 1: all these defenses, and into old palace yard, into the
22:14
Speaker 1: very vitals of the defender's position, lumbered the unsuspected vans.
22:19
Speaker 1: They traveled past the few idle sightseers who had braved
22:23
Speaker 1: the uninviting evening to see what the suffragettes might be doing.
22:27
Speaker 1: They pulled up, unchallenged, within thirty yards of those coveted portals,
22:31
Speaker 1: and then they disgorged. Were I a painter of subject pictures,
22:36
Speaker 1: I would exhaust all my skill in proportion and perspective
22:39
Speaker 1: and atmosphere upon the august seat of Empire, I would
22:43
Speaker 1: present it gray and dignified and immense and respectable, beyond
22:47
Speaker 1: any mere verbal description. And then in vivid, black and
22:51
Speaker 1: very small I would put in those valiantly impertinent vans
22:55
Speaker 1: squatting at the base of its altitudes, and pouring out
22:58
Speaker 1: a swift, straggling rush of ominous little black objects, minute
23:03
Speaker 1: figures of determined women at war with the universe, and
23:08
Speaker 1: Veronica was in their very forefront. In an instant, the
23:12
Speaker 1: expectant calm of Westminster was ended, and the very speaker
23:16
Speaker 1: in the chair blanched at the sound of the policeman's whistles.
23:20
Speaker 1: The bolder members in the house left their places to
23:22
Speaker 1: go lobbyward, grinning. Others pulled hats over their noses, cowered
23:27
Speaker 1: in their seats, and feigned that all was right with
23:30
Speaker 1: the world. In Old Palace Yard, everybody ran. They either
23:34
Speaker 1: ran to see or ran for shelter. Even two cabinet
23:38
Speaker 1: ministers took to their heels, grinning insincerely at the opening
23:42
Speaker 1: of the van doors and the emergence into the fresh air,
23:46
Speaker 1: and Veronica's doubt and depression gave place to the wildest exhilaration.
23:51
Speaker 1: That same adventurousness that had already buoyed her through crises
23:54
Speaker 1: that would have overwhelmed any normally feminine girl with shame
23:58
Speaker 1: and horror now became uppermost again. Before her was a
24:02
Speaker 1: great gothic portal through that she had to go past.
24:07
Speaker 1: Her shot the little old lady in the bonnet, running
24:09
Speaker 1: incredibly fast but otherwise still alertly respectable, and she was
24:14
Speaker 1: making a strange threatening sound as she ran, such as
24:17
Speaker 1: one would use in driving ducks out of a garden booh,
24:22
Speaker 1: and pouring with black gloved hands. The policemen were closing
24:26
Speaker 1: in from the signs to intervene the little old lady
24:29
Speaker 1: struck like a projectile upon the resounding chest of the
24:32
Speaker 1: foremost of these. And then Anne Veronica had got past
24:35
Speaker 1: and was ascending the steps. Then, most horribly, she was
24:39
Speaker 1: clasped about the waist from behind and lifted from the ground.
24:43
Speaker 1: At that a new element poured into her excitement, an
24:46
Speaker 1: element of wild disgust and terror. She had never experienced
24:51
Speaker 1: anything so disagreeable in her life as the sense of
24:53
Speaker 1: being held helplessly off her feet. She screamed involuntarily, she
24:58
Speaker 1: had never in her life's dreamed before. And then she
25:02
Speaker 1: began to wriggle and fight like a frightened animal against
25:05
Speaker 1: the men who were holding her. The affair passed at
25:09
Speaker 1: one leap from a spree to a nightmare of violence
25:11
Speaker 1: and disgust. Her hair got loose, her hat came over
25:15
Speaker 1: one eye, and she had no arm free to replace it.
25:19
Speaker 1: She felt she must suffocate if these men did not
25:21
Speaker 1: put her down, and for a time they would not
25:23
Speaker 1: put her down. Then, with an indescribable relief, her feet
25:27
Speaker 1: were on the pavement, and she was being urged along
25:30
Speaker 1: by two policemen who were gripping her wrists in an
25:33
Speaker 1: irresistible expert manner. She was writhing to get her hands loose,
25:38
Speaker 1: and found herself gasping with passionate violence. It's damnable, damnable,
25:43
Speaker 1: to the manifest disgust of the fatherly policeman on her right.
25:47
Speaker 1: Then they had released her arms and were trying to
25:49
Speaker 1: push her away. You be off, missy, said the fatherly policeman.
25:54
Speaker 1: This ain't no place for you. He pushed her a
25:58
Speaker 1: dozen yards along the greasy pavement with flat, well trained
26:01
Speaker 1: hands that there seemed to be no opposing before her
26:05
Speaker 1: stretched blank spaces dotted with running people coming toward her,
26:09
Speaker 1: and below them railings and a statue. She almost submitted
26:13
Speaker 1: to this ending of her adventure, but at the word
26:15
Speaker 1: home she turned again. I won't go home, she said,
26:19
Speaker 1: I won't, and she evaded the clutch of the fatherly
26:22
Speaker 1: policeman and tried to thrust herself past him in the
26:25
Speaker 1: direction of that big portal. Steady on, he cried. A
26:31
Speaker 1: diversion was created by the violent struggles of the little
26:33
Speaker 1: old lady. She seemed to be endowed with superhuman strength.
26:38
Speaker 1: A knot of three policemen in conflict with her staggered
26:40
Speaker 1: toward Anne Veronica's attendants and distracted their attention I will
26:45
Speaker 1: be arrested. I won't go home. The little old lady
26:48
Speaker 1: was screaming, over and over again. They put her down,
26:52
Speaker 1: and she leaped at them. She smote a helmet to
26:55
Speaker 1: the ground. You'll have to take her, shouted an inspector
26:59
Speaker 1: on horseback, and she echoed his cry. You'll have to
27:02
Speaker 1: take me. They seized upon her and lifted her, and
27:06
Speaker 1: she screamed. Anne Veronica became violently excited at the sight,
27:10
Speaker 1: you cowards, said. Anne Veronica put her down and tore
27:15
Speaker 1: herself from a detaining hand and battered with her fists
27:18
Speaker 1: upon the big red ear and blue shoulder of the
27:20
Speaker 1: policeman who held the little old lady. So Anne Veronica
27:25
Speaker 1: also was arrested, and then came the vile experience of
27:29
Speaker 1: being forced and borne along the street to the police station.
27:33
Speaker 1: Whatever anticipation Anne Veronica had formed of this vanished in
27:36
Speaker 1: their reality. Presently she was going through a swaying, noisy crowd,
27:41
Speaker 1: whose faces grinned and stared pitilessly in the light of
27:44
Speaker 1: the electric standards. Go it, miss, cried one gig out, Adam,
27:50
Speaker 1: though indeed she went now with Christian meekness, resenting only
27:54
Speaker 1: the thrusting policeman's hands. Several people on the crowd seemed
27:58
Speaker 1: to be fighting, resulting cries became frequent and various, but
28:02
Speaker 1: for the most part she could not understand what was said.
28:06
Speaker 1: He'll mind the baby now was one of the Knight's inspirations,
28:09
Speaker 1: and very frequent. A lean young man in spectacles pursued
28:13
Speaker 1: her for some time, crying courage, courage. Somebody threw a
28:18
Speaker 1: dab of mud at her, and some of it got
28:20
Speaker 1: down her neck. Immeasurable disgust possessed her. She felt draggled
28:25
Speaker 1: and insulted beyond redemption. She could not hide her face.
28:30
Speaker 1: She attempted, by a sheer act of will, to end
28:32
Speaker 1: the scene, to will herself out of it. Anywhere, she
28:36
Speaker 1: had a horrible glimpse of the once nice, little old
28:39
Speaker 1: lady being also born stationward, still faintly battling and very muddy,
28:44
Speaker 1: one lock of grayish hair straggling over her neck, her
28:47
Speaker 1: face scared white but triumphant. Her bonnet dropped off and
28:52
Speaker 1: was trampled into the gutter. A little cockney recovered it
28:56
Speaker 1: and made ridiculous attempts to get to her and replace it.
29:00
Speaker 1: You must arrest me, she gasped, breathlessly insisting insanely on
29:04
Speaker 1: a point already carried you shall the police station at
29:09
Speaker 1: the end seemed to ann Veronica like a refuge from
29:12
Speaker 1: unnameable disgraces. She hesitated about her name, and being prompted,
29:18
Speaker 1: gave it at last, as Anne Veronica Smith one hundred
29:21
Speaker 1: and seven. A chancery Lane indignation carried her through that
29:26
Speaker 1: night that men and the world could so entreat her.
29:30
Speaker 1: The arrested women were herded in a passage of the
29:32
Speaker 1: Panton Street police station that opened upon a cell too
29:35
Speaker 1: unclean for occupation, and most of them spent the night standing.
29:40
Speaker 1: Hot coffee and cakes were sent in to them in
29:42
Speaker 1: the morning by some intelligent sympathizer, or she would have
29:46
Speaker 1: starved all day. Submission to the inevitable carried her through
29:50
Speaker 1: the circumstances of her appearance before the magistrate. He was,
29:54
Speaker 1: no doubt doing his best to express the attitude of
29:57
Speaker 1: society toward these wearily heroic defants, but he seemed to
30:01
Speaker 1: be merely rude and unfair to Anne Veronica. He was not,
30:05
Speaker 1: it seemed, the proper stipendairy at all, and there had
30:09
Speaker 1: been some demur to his jurisdiction that raffled him. He
30:12
Speaker 1: resented being regarded as irregular. He felt he was human wisdom,
30:16
Speaker 1: prudentially interpolated. You silly women, he said, over and over
30:22
Speaker 1: again throughout the hearing, plucking at his blotting pad with
30:25
Speaker 1: busy hands, You silly creatures, ah fie upon you. The
30:31
Speaker 1: court was crowded with people, for the most part, supporters
30:34
Speaker 1: and admirers of the defendants, and the man with the
30:37
Speaker 1: light eyelashes was conspicuously active and omnipresent. Anne Veronica's appearance
30:43
Speaker 1: was brief and undistinguished. She had nothing to say for herself.
30:47
Speaker 1: She was guided into the dock and prompted by a
30:50
Speaker 1: helpful police inspector. She was aware of the body of
30:53
Speaker 1: the Court of Clerk, seated at a black table littered
30:57
Speaker 1: with papers, of policemen standing about stiffly with the expressions
31:00
Speaker 1: of conscious integrity, and a murmuring background of the heads
31:04
Speaker 1: and shoulders of spectators close behind her on a high
31:07
Speaker 1: chair behind the raised counter, the stipendary substitute regarded her
31:11
Speaker 1: malevolently over his glasses. A disagreeable young man with red
31:16
Speaker 1: hair and loose mouth, seated at the reporter's table, was
31:20
Speaker 1: only too manifestly sketching her. She was interested by the
31:26
Speaker 1: swearing of the witnesses. The kissing of the book struck
31:29
Speaker 1: her as particularly odd, and then the policeman gave their
31:32
Speaker 1: evidence in staccato jerks and stereotyped phrases. Have you anything
31:37
Speaker 1: to ask the witness asked the helpful inspector. The rubald
31:42
Speaker 1: demons that infested the back of Anne Veronica's mind urged
31:46
Speaker 1: various facetious interrogations upon her, as, for example, where the
31:50
Speaker 1: witness had acquired his pro style. She controlled herself and
31:54
Speaker 1: answered meekly, no, Well, Anne Veronica Smith, The magistrate remarked,
32:01
Speaker 1: when the case was all before him, you're good looking, strong,
32:04
Speaker 1: respectable gal, and it's a pity you see the young
32:07
Speaker 1: women can't find something better to do with your exuberance
32:10
Speaker 1: two and twenty. Can't imagine what your parents can be
32:13
Speaker 1: thinking about to let you get into these scrapes. And
32:17
Speaker 1: Veronica's mind was filled with confused, unutterable replies. You are
32:22
Speaker 1: persuaded to come and take part in these outrageous proceedings.
32:25
Speaker 1: Many of you, I am convinced, have no idea whatever
32:28
Speaker 1: of their nature. I don't suppose you could tell me
32:30
Speaker 1: even the derivation of suffrage if I asked you, no,
32:33
Speaker 1: not even the derivation. But the fashion's been set, and
32:37
Speaker 1: in it you must be. The men at the reporter's
32:41
Speaker 1: table lifted their eyebrows, smiled faintly, and leaned back to
32:44
Speaker 1: watch how she took her scolding. One with the appearance
32:48
Speaker 1: of a bold little gnome yawned agonizingly. They had got
32:51
Speaker 1: all this down already, they heard the substance of it.
32:54
Speaker 1: Now for the fourteenth time. The stipendary would have done
32:57
Speaker 1: it all very differently, she found. Presently she was out
33:01
Speaker 1: of the dock and confronted with the alternative of being
33:04
Speaker 1: bound over in one surety for the sum of forty pounds,
33:08
Speaker 1: whatever that might mean, or a month's imprisonment second class,
33:13
Speaker 1: said some one, But first and second were all alike
33:16
Speaker 1: to her. She elected to go to prison at last.
33:20
Speaker 1: After a long rumbling journey in a stuffy, windowless van,
33:24
Speaker 1: she reached Canongate Prison. For Holloway had its quota already,
33:28
Speaker 1: it was bad luck to go to Canongate Prison was beastly.
33:34
Speaker 1: Prison was bleak, without spaciousness, and pervaded by a faint,
33:37
Speaker 1: oppressive smell, and she had to wait two hours in
33:41
Speaker 1: the suddenly defiant company of two unclean women thieves before
33:45
Speaker 1: a cell could be assigned to her. Its dreariness, like
33:49
Speaker 1: the filthiness of the police cell, was a discovery for her.
33:53
Speaker 1: She had imagined that prisons were white, towled places, reeking
33:56
Speaker 1: of lime wash, and immaculately sanitary. Instead, they appeared to
34:01
Speaker 1: be at the hygienic level of tramps lodging houses. She
34:04
Speaker 1: was bathed in turbid water that had already been used.
34:08
Speaker 1: She was not allowed to bathe herself. Another prisoner with
34:11
Speaker 1: a privileged manner washed her. Conscientious objectors that process are
34:16
Speaker 1: not permitted, she found at Canongate her hair was washed
34:19
Speaker 1: for her also. Then they dressed her in a dirty
34:22
Speaker 1: dress of coarse surge and a cap, and took away
34:25
Speaker 1: her own clothes. The dress came to her only too
34:28
Speaker 1: manifestly unwashed from its former wearer. Even the under linen
34:32
Speaker 1: they gave her seemed unclean. Horrible memories of things seen
34:36
Speaker 1: beneath the microscope of the baser forms of life crawled
34:39
Speaker 1: across her mind and set her shuddering with imagined irritations.
34:45
Speaker 1: She sat on the edge of the bed. The wardress
34:47
Speaker 1: was too busy with the flood of arrivals that day
34:49
Speaker 1: to discover that she had it down and her skin
34:52
Speaker 1: was shivering from the contact of these garments. She surveyed
34:56
Speaker 1: accommodation that seemed at first merely austere, and became more
35:00
Speaker 1: and more manifestly inadequate as the moments fled by. She
35:04
Speaker 1: meditated profoundly through several enormous cold hours, and all that
35:07
Speaker 1: had happened, and all that she had done since the
35:10
Speaker 1: swirl of the suffrage movement had submerged her personal affairs.
35:15
Speaker 1: Very slowly. Emerging out of a phase of stupefaction, these
35:18
Speaker 1: personal affairs and her personal problem resumed possession of her mind.
35:23
Speaker 1: She had imagined she had drowned them altogether. End of
35:29
Speaker 1: Chapter ten.