Ann Veronica: A Modern Love StoryWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
General
Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Feminism -- Fiction; Great Britain -- Social conditions -- Fiction; Love stories; Sex role -- Fiction
The affair passed at one leap from a spree to a nightmare of violence
and disgust. Her hair got loose, her hat came over one eye, and she had
no arm free to replace it. She felt she must suffocate if these men did
not put her down, and for a time they would not put her down. Then with
an indescribable relief her feet were on the pavement, and she was
being urged along by two policemen, who were gripping her wrists in an
irresistible expert manner. She was writhing to get her hands loose
and found herself gasping with passionate violence, “It’s
damnable!--damnable!” to the manifest disgust of the fatherly policeman
on her right.
Then they had released her arms and were trying to push her away.
“You be off, missie,” said the fatherly policeman. “This ain’t no place
for you.”
He pushed her a dozen yards along the greasy pavement with flat,
well-trained hands that there seemed to be no opposing. Before her
stretched blank spaces, dotted with running people coming toward her,
and below them railings and a statue. She almost submitted to this
ending of her adventure. But at the word “home” she turned again.
“I won’t go home,” she said; “I won’t!” and she evaded the clutch of the
fatherly policeman and tried to thrust herself past him in the direction
of that big portal. “Steady on!” he cried.
A diversion was created by the violent struggles of the little old
lady. She seemed to be endowed with superhuman strength. A knot of
three policemen in conflict with her staggered toward Ann Veronica’s
attendants and distracted their attention. “I WILL be arrested! I WON’T
go home!” the little old lady was screaming over and over again. They
put her down, and she leaped at them; she smote a helmet to the ground.
“You’ll have to take her!” shouted an inspector on horseback, and she
echoed his cry: “You’ll have to take me!” They seized upon her and
lifted her, and she screamed. Ann Veronica became violently excited at
the sight. “You cowards!” said Ann Veronica, “put her down!” and tore
herself from a detaining hand and battered with her fists upon the big
red ear and blue shoulder of the policeman who held the little old lady.
So Ann Veronica also was arrested.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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