The Woman Who Did

Chapter 19

When Dolly was seventeen, a pink wild rose just unrolling its

petals, a very great event occurred in her history. She received

an invitation to go and stop with some friends in the country.

The poor child's life had been in a sense so uneventful that the

bare prospect of this visit filled her soul beforehand with

tremulous anticipation. To be sure, Dolly Barton had always lived

in the midmost centre of the Movement in London; she had known

authors, artists, socialists, the cream of our race; she had been

brought up in close intercourse with the men and women who are

engaged in revolutionizing and remodelling humanity. But this very

fact that she had always lived in the Thick of Things made a change

to the Thin of Things only by so much the more delicious and

enchanting. Not that Dolores had not seen a great deal, too, of

the country. Poor as they were, her mother had taken her to cheap

little seaside nooks for a week or two of each summer; she had made

pilgrimages almost every Sunday in spring or autumn to Leith Hill

or Mapledurham; she had even strained her scanty resources to the

utmost to afford Dolly an occasional outing in the Ardennes or in

Normandy. But what gave supreme importance to this coming visit

was the special fact that Dolly was now for the first time in her

life to find herself "in society."

Among the friends she had picked up at her Marylebone day-school

were two west-country girls, private boarders of the

head-mistress's, who came from the neighborhood of Combe Neville in

Dorset. Their name was Compson, and their father was rector of their

native village, Upcombe. Dolly liked them very much, and was proud

of their acquaintance, because they were reckoned about the most

distinguished pupils in the school, their mother being the niece of

a local viscount. Among girls in middle-class London sets, even so

remote a connection with the title-bearing classes is counted for a

distinction. So when Winnie Compson asked Dolly to go and stop with

her at her father's rectory during three whole weeks of the summer

holidays, Dolly felt that now at last by pure force of native worth

she was rising to her natural position in society. It flattered her

that Winnie should select her for such an honor.

The preparations for that visit cost Dolly some weeks of thought

and effort. The occasion demanded it. She was afraid she had no

frocks good enough for such a grand house as the Compsons.

"Grand" was indeed a favorite epithet of Dolly's; she applied it

impartially to everything which had to do, as she conceived, with

the life of the propertied and privileged classes. It was a word

at once of cherished and revered meaning--the shibboleth of

her religion. It implied to her mind something remote and

unapproachable, yet to be earnestly striven after with all the

forces at her disposal. Even Herminia herself stretched a point in

favor of an occasion which she could plainly see Dolly regarded as

so important; she managed to indulge her darling in a couple of

dainty new afternoon dresses, which touched for her soul the very

utmost verge of allowable luxury. The materials were oriental; the

cut was the dressmaker's--not home-built, as usual. Dolly looked

so brave in them, with her rich chestnut hair and her creamy

complexion,--a touch, Herminia thought, of her Italian birthplace,--

that the mother's full heart leapt up to look at her. It almost

made Herminia wish she was rich--and anti-social, like the rich

people--in order that she might be able to do ample justice to the

exquisite grace of Dolly's unfolding figure. Tall, lissome,

supple, clear of limb and light of footstep, she was indeed a girl

any mother might have been proud of.

On the day she left London, Herminia thought to herself she had

never seen her child look so absolutely lovely. The unwonted union

of blue eyes with that olive-gray skin gave a tinge of wayward

shyness to her girlish beauty. The golden locks had ripened to

nut-brown, but still caught stray gleams of nestling sunlight.

'Twas with a foreboding regret that Herminia kissed Dolly on both

peach-bloom cheeks at parting. She almost fancied her child must

be slipping from her motherly grasp when she went off so blithely

to visit these unknown friends, away down in Dorsetshire. Yet

Dolly had so few amusements of the sort young girls require that

Herminia was overjoyed this opportunity should have come to her.

She reproached herself not a little in her sensitive heart for even

feeling sad at Dolly's joyous departure. Yet to Dolly it was a

delight to escape from the atmosphere of Herminia's lodgings.

Those calm heights chilled her.

The Compsons' house was quite as "grand" in the reality as Dolly

had imagined it. There was a man-servant in a white tie to wait at

table, and the family dressed every evening for dinner. Yet, much

to her surprise, Dolly found from the first the grandeur did not in

the least incommode her. On the contrary, she enjoyed it. She

felt forthwith she was to the manner born. This was clearly the

life she was intended by nature to live, and might actually have

been living--she, the granddaughter of so grand a man as the late

Dean of Dunwich--had it not been for poor Mamma's ridiculous

fancies. Mamma was so faddy! Before Dolly had spent three whole

days at the rectory, she talked just as the Compsons did; she

picked up by pure instinct the territorial slang of the county

families. One would have thought, to hear her discourse, she had

dressed for dinner every night of her life, and passed her days in

the society of the beneficed clergy.

But even that did not exhaust the charm of Upcombe for Dolly. For

the first time in her life, she saw something of men,--real men,

with horses and dogs and guns,--men who went out partridge shooting

in the season and rode to hounds across country, not the pale

abstractions of cultured humanity who attended the Fabian Society

meetings or wrote things called articles in the London papers. Her

mother's friends wore soft felt hats and limp woollen collars; these

real men were richly clad in tweed suits and fine linen. Dolly was

charmed with them all, but especially with one handsome and manly

young fellow named Walter Brydges, the stepson and ward of a

neighboring parson. "How you talked with him at tennis to-day!"

Winnie Compson said to her friend, as they sat on the edge of

Dolly's bed one evening. "He seemed quite taken with you."

A pink spot of pleasure glowed on Dolly's round cheek to think that

a real young man, in good society, whom she met at so grand a house

as the Compsons', should seem to be quite taken with her.

"Who is he, Winnie?" she asked, trying to look less self-conscious.

"He's extremely good-looking."

"Oh, he's Mr. Hawkshaw's stepson, over at Combe Mary," Winnie

answered with a nod. "Mr. Hawkshaw's the vicar there till Mamma's

nephew is ready to take the living--what they call a warming-pan.

But Walter Brydges is Mrs. Hawkshaw's son by her first husband.

Old Mr. Brydges was the squire of Combe Mary, and Walter's his only

child. He's very well off. You might do worse, dear. He's

considered quite a catch down in this part of the country."

"How old is he?" Dolly asked, innocently enough, standing up by the

bedside in her dainty white nightgown. But Winnie caught at her

meaning with the preternatural sharpness of the girl brought up in

immediate contact with the landed interest. "Oh, he's of age," she

answered quickly, with a knowing nod. "He's come into the

property; he has nobody on earth but himself to consult about his

domestic arrangements."

Dolly was young; Dolly was pretty; Dolly's smile won the world;

Dolly was still at the sweetest and most susceptible of ages.

Walter Brydges was well off; Walter Brydges was handsome; Walter

Brydges had all the glamour of a landed estate, and an Oxford

education. He was a young Greek god in a Norfolk shooting-jacket.

Moreover, he was a really good and pleasant young fellow. What

wonder, therefore, if before a week was out, Dolly was very really

and seriously in love with him? And what wonder if Walter Brydges

in turn, caught by that maiden glance, was in love with Dolly? He

had every excuse, for she was lithe, and beautiful, and a joyous

companion; besides being, as the lady's maid justly remarked, a

perfect lady.

One day, after Dolly had been a fortnight at Upcombe, the Compsons

gave a picnic in the wild Combe undercliff. 'Tis a broken wall of

chalk, tumbled picturesquely about in huge shattered masses, and

deliciously overgrown with ferns and blackthorn and golden clusters

of close-creeping rock-rose. Mazy paths thread tangled labyrinths of

fallen rock, or wind round tall clumps of holly-bush and bramble.

They lighted their fire under the lee of one such buttress of broken

cliff, whose summit was festooned with long sprays of clematis, or

"old man's beard," as the common west-country name expressively

phrases it. Thistledown hovered on the basking air. There they sat

and drank their tea, couched on beds of fern or propped firm against

the rock; and when tea was over, they wandered off, two and two,

ostensibly for nothing, but really for the true business of the

picnic--to afford the young men and maidens of the group some chance

of enjoying, unspied, one another's society.

Dolly and Walter Brydges strolled off by themselves toward the

rocky shore. There Walter showed her where a brook bubbled clear

from the fountain-head; by its brink, blue veronicas grew, and tall

yellow loosestrife, and tasselled purple heads of great English

eupatory. Bending down to the stream he picked a little bunch of

forget-me-nots, and handed them to her. Dolly pretended

unconsciously to pull the dainty blossoms to pieces, as she sat on

the clay bank hard by and talked with him. "Is that how you treat

my poor flowers?" Walter asked, looking askance at her.

Dolly glanced down, and drew back suddenly. "Oh, poor little

things!" she cried, with a quick droop of her long lashes. "I

wasn't thinking what I did." And she darted a shy glance at him.

"If I'd remembered they were forget-me-nots, I don't think I could

have done it."

She looked so sweet and pure in her budding innocence, like a

half-blown water-lily, that the young man, already more than

two-thirds in love, was instantly captivated. "Because they were

forget-me-nots, or because they were MINE, Miss Barton?" he asked

softly, all timorousness.

"Perhaps a little of both," the girl answered, gazing down, and

blushing at each word a still deeper crimson.

The blush showed sweet on that translucent skin. Walter turned to

her with a sudden impulse. "And what are you going to do with them

NOW?" he enquired, holding his breath for joy and half-suppressed

eagerness.

Dolly hesitated a moment with genuine modesty. Then her liking for

the well-knit young man overcame her. With a frightened smile her

hand stole to her bodice; she fixed them in her bosom. "Will that

do?" she asked timidly.

"Yes, that WILL do," the young man answered, bending forward and

seizing her soft fingers in his own. "That will do very well.

And, Miss Barton--Dolores--I take it as a sign you don't wholly

dislike me."

"I like you very much," Dolly answered in a low voice, pulling a

rock-rose from a cleft and tearing it nervously to pieces.

"Do you LOVE me, Dolly?" the young man insisted.

Dolly turned her glance to him tenderly, then withdrew it in haste.

"I think I MIGHT, in time," she answered very slowly.

"Then you will be mine, mine, mine?" Walter cried in an ecstasy.

Dolly bent her pretty head in reluctant assent, with a torrent of

inner joy. The sun flashed in her chestnut hair. The triumph of

that moment was to her inexpressible.

But as for Walter Brydges, he seized the blushing face boldly in

his two brown hands, and imprinted upon it at once three respectful

kisses. Then he drew back, half-terrified at his own temerity.