The Woman Who Did

Chapter 15

Not that Herminia had not at times hard struggles and sore

temptations. One of the hardest and sorest came when Dolly was

about six years old. And this was the manner of it.

One day the child who was to reform the world was returning from

some errand on which her mother had sent her, when her attention was

attracted by a very fine carriage, stopping at a door not far from

their lodgings. Now Dolly had always a particular weakness for

everything "grand;" and so grand a turn-out as this one was rare in

their neighborhood. She paused and stared hard at it. "Whose is it,

Mrs. Biggs?" she asked awe-struck of the friendly charwoman, who

happened to pass at the moment,--the charwoman who frequently came

in to do a day's cleaning at her mother's lodging-house. Mrs. Biggs

knew it well; "It's Sir Anthony Merrick's," she answered in that

peculiarly hushed voice with which the English poor always utter the

names of the titled classes. And so in fact it was; for the famous

gout doctor had lately been knighted for his eminent services in

saving a royal duke from the worst effects of his own

self-indulgence. Dolly put one fat finger to her lip, and elevated

her eyebrows, and looked grave at once. Sir Anthony Merrick! What a

very grand gentleman he must be indeed, and how nice it must seem to

be able to drive in so distinguished a vehicle with a liveried

footman.

As she paused and looked, lost in enjoyment of that beatific

vision, Sir Anthony himself emerged from the porch. Dolly took a

good stare at him. He was handsome, austere, close-shaven,

implacable. His profile was clear-cut, like Trajan's on an aureus.

Dolly thought that was just how so grand a gentleman ought to look;

and, so thinking, she glanced up at him, and with a flash of her

white teeth, smiled her childish approval. The austere old

gentleman, unwontedly softened by that cherub face,--for indeed she

was as winsome as a baby angel of Raphael's,--stooped down and

patted the bright curly head that turned up to him so trustfully.

"What's your name, little woman?" he asked, with a sudden wave of

gentleness.

And Dolly, all agog at having arrested so grand an old gentleman's

attention, spoke up in her clear treble, "Dolores Barton."

Sir Anthony started. Was this a trap to entangle him? He was born

suspicious, and he feared that woman. But he looked into Dolly's

blue eyes of wonder, and all doubt fled from him. Was it blood?

was it instinct? was it unconscious nature? At any rate, the

child seemed to melt the grandfather's heart as if by magic. Long

years after, when the due time came, Dolly remembered that melting.

To the profound amazement of the footman, who stood with the

carriage-door ready open in his hand, the old man bent down and

kissed the child's red lips. "God bless you, my dear!" he

murmured, with unwonted tenderness to his son's daughter. Then he

took out his purse, and drew from it a whole gold sovereign.

"That's for you, my child," he said, fondling the pretty golden

curls. "Take it home, and tell your mammy an old man in the street

gave it to you."

But the coachman observed to the footman, as they drove on together

to the next noble patient's, "You may take your oath on it, Mr.

Wells, that little 'un there was Mr. Alan's love-child!"

Dolly had never held so much money in her hand before; she ran

home, clutching it tight, and burst in upon Herminia with the

startling news that Sir Anthony Merrick, a very grand gentleman in

a very fine carriage, had given a gold piece to her.

Gold pieces were rare in the calm little attic, but Herminia caught

her child up with a cry of terror; and that very same evening, she

changed the tainted sovereign with Dolly for another one, and sent

Sir Anthony's back in an envelope without a word to Harley Street.

The child who was born to free half the human race from aeons of

slavery must be kept from all contagion of man's gold and man's

bribery. Yet Dolly never forgot the grand gentleman's name, though

she hadn't the least idea why he gave that yellow coin to her.

Out of this small episode, however, grew Herminia's great temptation.

For Sir Anthony, being a man tenacious of his purpose, went home

that day full of relenting thoughts about that girl Dolores. Her

golden hair had sunk deep into his heart. She was Alan's own

child, after all; she had Alan's blue eyes; and in a world where

your daughters go off and marry men you don't like, while your sons

turn out badly, and don't marry at all to vex you, it's something

to have some fresh young life of your blood to break in upon your

chilly old age and cheer you. So the great doctor called a few

days later at Herminia's lodgings, and having first ascertained

that Herminia herself was out, had five minutes' conversation alone

with her landlady.

There were times, no doubt, when Mrs. Barton was ill? The landlady

with the caution of her class, admitted that might be so. And

times no doubt when Mrs. Barton was for the moment in arrears with

her rent? The landlady, good loyal soul, demurred to that

suggestion; she knit her brows and hesitated. Sir Anthony hastened

to set her mind at rest. His intentions were most friendly. He

wished to keep a watch,--a quiet, well-meaning, unsuspected watch,--

over Mrs. Barton's necessities. He desired, in point of fact, if

need were, to relieve them. Mrs. Barton was distantly connected

with relations of his own; and his notion was that without seeming

to help her in obtrusive ways, he would like to make sure Mrs.

Barton got into no serious difficulties. Would the landlady be so

good--a half sovereign glided into that subservient palm--as to let

Sir Anthony know if she ever had reason to suspect a very serious

strain was being put on Mrs. Barton's resources?

The landlady, dropping the modern apology for a courtesy, promised

with effusion under pressure of hard cash, to accede to Sir

Anthony's benevolent wishes. The more so as she'd do anything to

serve dear Mrs. Barton, who was always in everything a perfect

lady, most independent, in fact; one of the kind as wouldn't be

beholden to anybody for a farthing.

Some months passed away before the landlady had cause to report to

Sir Anthony. But during the worst depths of the next London

winter, when gray fog gathered thick in the purlieus of Marylebone,

and shivering gusts groaned at the street corners, poor little

Dolly caught whooping-cough badly. On top of the whooping-cough

came an attack of bronchitis; and on top of the bronchitis a

serious throat trouble. Herminia sat up night after night, nursing

her child, and neglecting the work on which both depended for

subsistence. Week by week things grew worse and worse; and Sir

Anthony, kept duly informed by the landlady, waited and watched,

and bided his time in silence. At last the case became desperate.

Herminia had no money left to pay her bill or buy food; and one

string to her bow after another broke down in journalism. Her

place as the weekly lady's-letter writer to an illustrated paper

passed on to a substitute; blank poverty stared her in the face,

inevitable. When it came to pawning the type-writer, as the

landlady reported, Sir Anthony smiled a grim smile to himself. The

moment for action had now arrived. He would put on pressure to get

away poor Alan's illegitimate child from that dreadful woman.

Next day he called. Dolly was dangerously ill,--so ill that

Herminia couldn't find it in her heart to dismiss the great doctor

from her door without letting him see her. And Sir Anthony saw

her. The child recognized him at once and rallied, and smiled at

him. She stretched her little arms. She must surely get well if a

gentleman who drove in so fine a carriage, and scattered sovereigns

like ha'pennies, came in to prescribe for her. Sir Anthony was

flattered at her friendly reception. Those thin small arms touched

the grandfather's heart. "She will recover," he said; "but she

needs good treatment, delicacies, refinements." Then he slipped

out of the room, and spoke seriously to Herminia. "Let her come to

me," he urged. "I'll adopt her, and give her her father's name.

It will be better for herself; better for her future. She shall be

treated as my granddaughter, well-taught, well-kept; and you may

see her every six months for a fortnight's visit. If you consent,

I will allow you a hundred a year for yourself. Let bygones be

bygones. For the child's sake, say YES! She needs so much that

you can never give her!"

Poor Herminia was sore tried. As for the hundred a year, she

couldn't dream of accepting it; but like a flash it went through

her brain how many advantages Dolly could enjoy in that wealthy

household that the hard-working journalist could not possibly

afford her. She thought of the unpaid bills, the empty cupboard,

the wolf at the door, the blank outlook for the future. For a

second, she half hesitated. "Come, come!" Sir Anthony said; "for

the child's own sake; you won't be so selfish as to stand in her

way, will you?"

Those words roused Herminia to a true sense of her duty. "Sir

Anthony Merrick," she said holding her breath, "that child is my

child, and my dear dead Alan's. I owe it to Alan,--I owe it to

her,--to bring her up in the way that Alan would approve of. I

brought her into the world; and my duty is to do what I can to

discharge the responsibilities I then undertook to her. I must

train her up to be a useful citizen. Not for thousands would I

resign the delight and honor of teaching my child to those who

would teach her what Alan and I believed to be pernicious; who

would teach her to despise her mother's life, and to reject the

holy memory of her father. As I said to you before, that day at

Perugia, so I say to you now, 'Thy money perish with thee.' You

need never again come here to bribe me."

"Is that final?" Sir Anthony asked. And Herminia answered with a

bow, "Yes, final; quite final."

Sir Anthony bent his head and left. Herminia stood face to face

with abject poverty. Spurred by want, by indignation, by terror,

by a sense of the absolute necessity for action, she carried her

writing materials then and there into Dolly's sick-room, and

sitting by her child's cot, she began to write, she hardly knew

what, as the words themselves came to her. In a fever of

excitement she wrote and wrote and wrote. She wrote as one writes

in the silence of midnight. It was late before she finished. When

her manuscript was complete, she slipped out and posted it to a

weekly paper. It appeared that same Saturday, and was the

beginning of Herminia's most valuable connection.

But even after she had posted it the distracted mother could not

pause or rest. Dolly tossed and turned in her sleep, and Herminia

sat watching her. She pined for sympathy. Vague ancestral

yearnings, gathering head within her, made her long to pray,--if

only there had been anybody or anything to pray to. She clasped

her bloodless hands in an agony of solitude. Oh, for a friend to

comfort! At last her overwrought feelings found vent in verse.

She seized a pencil from her desk, and sitting by Dolly's side,

wrote down her heart-felt prayer, as it came to her that moment,--