The Woman Who Did

Chapter 6

Thus, half against his will, Alan Merrick was drawn into this

irregular compact.

Next came that more difficult matter, the discussion of ways and

means, the more practical details. Alan hardly knew at first on

what precise terms it was Herminia's wish that they two should pass

their lives together. His ideas were all naturally framed on the

old model of marriage; in that matter, Herminia said, he was still

in the gall of bitterness, and the bond of iniquity. He took it

for granted that of course they must dwell under one roof with one

another. But that simple ancestral notion, derived from man's

lordship in his own house, was wholly adverse to Herminia's views

of the reasonable and natural. She had debated these problems at

full in her own mind for years, and had arrived at definite and

consistent solutions for every knotty point in them. Why should

this friendship differ at all, she asked, in respect of time and

place, from any other friendship? The notion of necessarily

keeping house together, the cramping idea of the family tie,

belonged entirely to the regime of the manmade patriarchate, where

the woman and the children were the slaves and chattels of the lord

and master. In a free society, was it not obvious that each woman

would live her own life apart, would preserve her independence, and

would receive the visits of the man for whom she cared,--the father

of her children? Then only could she be free. Any other method

meant the economic and social superiority of the man, and was

irreconcilable with the perfect individuality of the woman.

So Herminia reasoned. She rejected at once, therefore, the idea of

any change in her existing mode of life. To her, the friendship

she proposed with Alan Merrick was no social revolution; it was but

the due fulfilment of her natural functions. To make of it an

occasion for ostentatious change in her way of living seemed to her

as unnatural as is the practice of the barbarians in our midst who

use a wedding--that most sacred and private event in a young girl's

life--as an opportunity for display of the coarsest and crudest

character. To rivet the attention of friends on bride and

bridegroom is to offend against the most delicate susceptibilities

of modesty. From all such hateful practices, Herminia's pure mind

revolted by instinct. She felt that here at least was the one

moment in a woman's history when she would shrink with timid

reserve from every eye save one man's,--when publicity of any sort

was most odious and horrible.

Only the blinding effect of custom, indeed, could ever have shut

good women's eyes to the shameful indecorousness of wedding

ceremonial. We drag a young girl before the prying gaze of all the

world at the very crisis in her life, when natural modesty would

most lead her to conceal herself from her dearest acquaintance.

And our women themselves have grown so blunted by use to the

hatefulness of the ordeal that many of them face it now with

inhuman effrontery. Familiarity with marriage has almost killed

out in the maidens of our race the last lingering relics of native

modesty.

Herminia, however, could dispense with all that show. She had a

little cottage of her own, she told Alan,--a tiny little cottage,

in a street near her school-work; she rented it for a small sum,

in quite a poor quarter, all inhabited by work-people. There she

lived by herself; for she kept no servants. There she should

continue to live; why need this purely personal compact between

them two make any difference in her daily habits? She would go

on with her school-work for the present, as usual. Oh, no, she

certainly didn't intend to notify the head-mistress of the school

or any one else, of her altered position. It was no alteration of

position at all, so far as she was concerned; merely the addition

to life of a new and very dear and natural friendship. Herminia

took her own point of view so instinctively indeed,--lived so

wrapped in an ideal world of her own and the future's,--that Alan

was often quite alarmed in his soul when he thought of the rude

awakening that no doubt awaited her. Yet whenever he hinted it to

her with all possible delicacy, she seemed so perfectly prepared

for the worst the world could do, so fixed and resolved in her

intention of martyrdom, that he had no argument left, and could

only sigh over her.

It was not, she explained to him further, that she wished to

conceal anything. The least tinge of concealment was wholly alien

to that frank fresh nature. If her head-mistress asked her a

point-blank question, she would not attempt to parry it, but would

reply at once with a point blank answer. Still, her very views on

the subject made it impossible for her to volunteer information

unasked to any one. Here was a personal matter of the utmost

privacy; a matter which concerned nobody on earth, save herself and

Alan; a matter on which it was the grossest impertinence for any

one else to make any inquiry or hold any opinion. They two chose

to be friends; and there, so far as the rest of the world was

concerned, the whole thing ended. What else took place between

them was wholly a subject for their own consideration. But if ever

circumstances should arise which made it necessary for her to avow

to the world that she must soon be a mother, then it was for the

world to take the first step, if it would act upon its own hateful

and cruel initiative. She would never deny, but she would never go

out of her way to confess. She stood upon her individuality as a

human being.

As to other practical matters, about which Alan ventured delicately

to throw out a passing question or two, Herminia was perfectly

frank, with the perfect frankness of one who thinks and does

nothing to be ashamed of. She had always been self-supporting, she

said, and she would be self-supporting still. To her mind, that

was an essential step towards the emancipation of women. Their

friendship implied for her no change of existence, merely an

addition to the fulness of her living. He was the complement of

her being. Every woman should naturally wish to live her whole

life, to fulfil her whole functions; and that she could do only by

becoming a mother, accepting the orbit for which nature designed

her. In the end, no doubt, complete independence would be secured

for each woman by the civilized state, or in other words by the

whole body of men, who do the hard work of the world, and who would

collectively guarantee every necessary and luxury to every woman of

the community equally. In that way alone could perfect liberty of

choice and action be secured for women; and she held it just that

women should so be provided for, because the mothers of the

community fulfil in the state as important and necessary a function

as the men themselves do. It would be well, too, that the mothers

should be free to perform that function without preoccupation of

any sort. So a free world would order things. But in our present

barbaric state of industrial slavery, capitalism, monopoly,--in

other words under the organized rule of selfishness,--such a course

was impossible. Perhaps, as an intermediate condition, it might

happen in time that the women of certain classes would for the most

part be made independent at maturity each by her own father; which

would produce for them in the end pretty much the same general

effect of freedom. She saw as a first step the endowment of the

daughter. But meanwhile there was nothing for it save that as many

women as could should aim for themselves at economic liberty, in

other words at self-support. That was an evil in itself, because

obviously the prospective mothers of a community should be relieved

as far as possible front the stress and strain of earning a

livelihood; should be set free to build up their nervous systems to

the highest attainable level against the calls of maternity. But

above all things we must be practical; and in the practical world

here and now around us, no other way existed for women to be free

save the wasteful way of each earning her own livelihood.

Therefore she would continue her schoolwork with her pupils as long

as the school would allow her; and when that became impossible,

would fall back upon literature.

One other question Alan ventured gently to raise,--the question of

children. Fools always put that question, and think it a crushing

one. Alan was no fool, yet it puzzled him strangely. He did not

see for himself how easy is the solution; how absolutely Herminia's

plan leaves the position unaltered. But Herminia herself was as

modestly frank on the subject as on every other. It was a moral

and social point of the deepest importance; and it would be wrong

of them to rush into it without due consideration. She had duly

considered it. She would give her children, should any come, the

unique and glorious birthright of being the only human beings ever

born into this world as the deliberate result of a free union,

contracted on philosophical and ethical principles. Alan hinted

certain doubts as to their up-bringing and education. There, too,

Herminia was perfectly frank. They would be half hers, half his;

the pleasant burden of their support, the joy of their education,

would naturally fall upon both parents equally. But why discuss

these matters like the squalid rich, who make their marriages a

question of settlements and dowries and business arrangements?

They two were friends and lovers; in love, such base doubts could

never arise. Not for worlds would she import into their mutual

relations any sordid stain of money, any vile tinge of bargaining.

They could trust one another; that alone sufficed for them.

So Alan gave way bit by bit all along the line, overborne by

Herminia's more perfect and logical conception of her own

principles. She knew exactly what she felt and wanted; while he

knew only in a vague and formless way that his reason agreed with

her.

A week later, he knocked timidly one evening at the door of a

modest little workman-looking cottage, down a small side street in

the back-wastes of Chelsea. 'Twas a most unpretending street;

Bower Lane by name, full of brown brick houses, all as like as

peas, and with nothing of any sort to redeem their plain fronts

from the common blight of the London jerry-builder. Only a soft

serge curtain and a pot of mignonette on the ledge of the window,

distinguished the cottage at which Alan Merrick knocked from the

others beside it. Externally that is to say; for within it was as

dainty as Morris wall-papers and merino hangings and a delicate

feminine taste in form and color could make it. Keats and Shelley

lined the shelves; Rossetti's wan maidens gazed unearthly from the

over-mantel. The door was opened for him by Herminia in person;

for she kept no servant,--that was one of her principles. She was

dressed from head to foot in a simple white gown, as pure and sweet

as the soul it covered. A white rose nestled in her glossy hair;

three sprays of white lily decked a vase on the mantel-piece. Some

dim survival of ancestral ideas made Herminia Barton so array

herself in the white garb of affiance for her bridal evening. Her

cheek was aglow with virginal shrinking as she opened the door, and

welcomed Alan in. But she held out her hand just as frankly as

ever to the man of her free choice as he advanced to greet her.

Alan caught her in his arms and kissed her forehead tenderly. And

thus was Herminia Barton's espousal consummated.