The Woman Who Did

Chapter 1

PREFACE

"But surely no woman would ever dare to do so," said my friend.

"I knew a woman who did," said I; "and this is her story."

I.

Mrs. Dewsbury's lawn was held by those who knew it the loveliest in

Surrey. The smooth and springy sward that stretched in front of

the house was all composed of a tiny yellow clover. It gave

beneath the foot like the pile on velvet. One's gaze looked forth

from it upon the endless middle distances of the oak-clad Weald,

with the uncertain blue line of the South Downs in the background.

Ridge behind ridge, the long, low hills of paludina limestone stood

out in successive tiers, each thrown up against its neighbor by the

misty haze that broods eternally over the wooded valley; till,

roaming across them all, the eye rested at last on the rearing

scarp of Chanctonbury Ring, faintly pencilled on the furthest skyline.

Shadowy phantoms of dim heights framed the verge to east and

west. Alan Merrick drank it in with profound satisfaction. After

those sharp and clear-cut Italian outlines, hard as lapis lazuli,

the mysterious vagueness, the pregnant suggestiveness, of our

English scenery strikes the imagination; and Alan was fresh home

from an early summer tour among the Peruginesque solidities of the

Umbrian Apennines. "How beautiful it all is, after all," he said,

turning to his entertainer. "In Italy 'tis the background the

painter dwells upon; in England, we look rather at the middle

distance."

Mrs. Dewsbury darted round her the restless eye of a hostess, to

see upon whom she could socially bestow him. "Oh, come this way,"

she said, sweeping across the lawn towards a girl in a blue dress

at the opposite corner. "You must know our new-comer. I want to

introduce you to Miss Barton, from Cambridge. She's SUCH a nice

girl too,--the Dean of Dunwich's daughter."

Alan Merrick drew back with a vague gesture of distaste. "Oh,

thank you," he replied; "but, do you know, I don't think I like

deans, Mrs. Dewsbury." Mrs. Dewsbury's smile was recondite and

diplomatic. "Then you'll exactly suit one another," she answered

with gay wisdom. "For, to tell you the truth, I don't think SHE

does either."

The young man allowed himself to be led with a passive protest in

the direction where Mrs. Dewsbury so impulsively hurried him. He

heard that cultivated voice murmuring in the usual inaudible tone

of introduction, "Miss Barton, Mr. Alan Merrick." Then he raised

his hat. As he did so, he looked down at Herminia Barton's face

with a sudden start of surprise. Why, this was a girl of most

unusual beauty!

She was tall and dark, with abundant black hair, richly waved above

the ample forehead; and she wore a curious Oriental-looking navy-blue

robe of some soft woollen stuff, that fell in natural folds

and set off to the utmost the lissome grace of her rounded figure.

It was a sort of sleeveless sack, embroidered in front with

arabesques in gold thread, and fastened obliquely two inches below

the waist with a belt of gilt braid, and a clasp of Moorish jewel-work.

Beneath it, a bodice of darker silk showed at the arms and

neck, with loose sleeves in keeping. The whole costume, though

quite simple in style, a compromise either for afternoon or

evening, was charming in its novelty, charming too in the way it

permitted the utmost liberty and variety of movement to the lithe

limbs of its wearer. But it was her face particularly that struck

Alan Merrick at first sight. That face was above all things the

face of a free woman. Something so frank and fearless shone in

Herminia's glance, as her eye met his, that Alan, who respected

human freedom above all other qualities in man or woman, was taken

on the spot by its perfect air of untrammelled liberty. Yet it was

subtle and beautiful too, undeniably beautiful. Herminia Barton's

features, I think, were even more striking in their way in later

life, when sorrow had stamped her, and the mark of her willing

martyrdom for humanity's sake was deeply printed upon them. But

their beauty then was the beauty of holiness, which not all can

appreciate. In her younger days, as Alan Merrick first saw her,

she was beautiful still with the first flush of health and strength

and womanhood in a free and vigorous English girl's body. A

certain lofty serenity, not untouched with pathos, seemed to strike

the keynote. But that was not all. Some hint of every element in

the highest loveliness met in that face and form,--physical,

intellectual, emotional, moral.

"You'll like him, Herminia," Mrs. Dewsbury said, nodding. "He's

one of your own kind, as dreadful as you are; very free and

advanced; a perfect firebrand. In fact, my dear child, I don't

know which of you makes my hair stand on end most." And with that

introductory hint, she left the pair forthwith to their own

devices.

Mrs. Dewsbury was right. It took those two but little time to feel

quite at home with one another. Built of similar mould, each

seemed instinctively to grasp what each was aiming at. Two or

three turns pacing up and down the lawn, two or three steps along

the box-covered path at the side, and they read one another

perfectly. For he was true man, and she was real woman.

"Then you were at Girton?" Alan asked, as he paused with one hand

on the rustic seat that looks up towards Leith Hill, and the

heather-clad moorland.

"Yes, at Girton," Herminia answered, sinking easily upon the bench,

and letting one arm rest on the back in a graceful attitude of

unstudied attention. "But I didn't take my degree," she went on

hurriedly, as one who is anxious to disclaim some too great honor

thrust upon her. "I didn't care for the life; I thought it

cramping. You see, if we women are ever to be free in the world,

we must have in the end a freeman's education. But the education

at Girton made only a pretence at freedom. At heart, our girls

were as enslaved to conventions as any girls elsewhere. The whole

object of the training was to see just how far you could manage to

push a woman's education without the faintest danger of her

emancipation."

"You are right," Alan answered briskly, for the point was a pet one

with him. "I was an Oxford man myself, and I know that servitude.

When I go up to Oxford now and see the girls who are being ground

in the mill at Somerville, I'm heartily sorry for them. It's worse

for them than for us; they miss the only part of university life

that has educational value. When we men were undergraduates, we

lived our whole lives, lived them all round, developing equally

every fibre of our natures. We read Plato, and Aristotle, and John

Stuart Mill, to be sure,--and I'm not quite certain we got much

good from them; but then our talk and thought were not all of

books, and of what we spelt out in them. We rowed on the river, we

played in the cricket-field, we lounged in the billiard-rooms, we

ran up to town for the day, we had wine in one another's rooms

after hall in the evening, and behaved like young fools, and threw

oranges wildly at one another's heads, and generally enjoyed

ourselves. It was all very silly and irrational, no doubt, but it

was life, it was reality; while the pretended earnestness of those

pallid Somerville girls is all an affectation of one-sided

culture."

"That's just it," Herminia answered, leaning back on the rustic

seat like David's Madame Recamier. "You put your finger on the

real blot when you said those words, developing equally every fibre

of your natures. That's what nobody yet wants us women to do.

They're trying hard enough to develop us intellectually; but

morally and socially they want to mew us up just as close as ever.

And they won't succeed. The zenana must go. Sooner or later, I'm

sure, if you begin by educating women, you must end by emancipating

them."

"So I think too," Alan answered, growing every moment more

interested. "And for my part, it's the emancipation, not the mere

education, that most appeals to me."

"Yes, I've always felt that," Herminia went on, letting herself out

more freely, for she felt she was face to face with a sympathetic

listener. "And for that reason, it's the question of social and

moral emancipation that interests me far more than the mere

political one,--woman's rights as they call it. Of course I'm a

member of all the woman's franchise leagues and everything of that

sort,--they can't afford to do without a single friend's name on

their lists at present; but the vote is a matter that troubles me

little in itself, what I want is to see women made fit to use it.

After all, political life fills but a small and unimportant part in

our total existence. It's the perpetual pressure of social and

ethical restrictions that most weighs down women."

Alan paused and looked hard at her. "And they tell me," he said in

a slow voice, "you're the Dean of Dunwich's daughter!"

Herminia laughed lightly,--a ringing girlish laugh. Alan noticed

it with pleasure. He felt at once that the iron of Girton had not

entered into her soul, as into so many of our modern young women's.

There was vitality enough left in her for a genuine laugh of

innocent amusement. "Oh yes," she said, merrily; "that's what I

always answer to all possible objectors to my ways and ideas. I

reply with dignity, '_I_ was brought up in the family of a

clergyman of the Church of England.'"

"And what does the Dean say to your views?" Alan interposed

doubtfully.

Herminia laughed again. If her eyes were profound, two dimples

saved her. "I thought you were with us," she answered with a

twinkle; "now, I begin to doubt it. You don't expect a man of

twenty-two to be governed in all things, especially in the

formation of his abstract ideas, by his father's opinions. Why

then a woman?"

"Why, indeed?" Alan answered. "There I quite agree with you. I

was thinking not so much of what is right and reasonable as of what

is practical and usual. For most women, of course, are--well, more

or less dependent upon their fathers."

"But I am not," Herminia answered, with a faint suspicion of just

pride in the undercurrent of her tone. "That's in part why I went

away so soon from Girton. I felt that if women are ever to be

free, they must first of all be independent. It is the dependence

of women that has allowed men to make laws for them, socially and

ethically. So I wouldn't stop at Girton, partly because I felt the

life was one-sided,--our girls thought and talked of nothing else

on earth except Herodotus, trigonometry, and the higher culture,--

but partly also because I wouldn't be dependent on any man, not

even my own father. It left me freer to act and think as I would.

So I threw Girton overboard, and came up to live in London."

"I see," Alan replied. "You wouldn't let your schooling interfere

with your education. And now you support yourself?" he went on

quite frankly.

Herminia nodded assent.

"Yes, I support myself," she answered; "in part by teaching at a

high school for girls, and in part by doing a little hack-work for

newspapers."

"Then you're just down here for your holidays, I suppose?" Alan put

in, leaning forward.

"Yes, just down here for my holidays. I've lodgings on the

Holmwood, in such a dear old thatched cottage; roses peep in at the

porch, and birds sing on the bushes. After a term in London, it's

a delicious change for one."

"But are you alone?" Alan interposed again, still half hesitating.

Herminia smiled once more; his surprise amused her. "Yes, quite

alone," she answered. "But if you seem so astonished at that, I

shall believe you and Mrs. Dewsbury have been trying to take me in,

and that you're not really with us. Why shouldn't a woman come

down alone to pretty lodgings in the country?"

"Why not, indeed?" Alan echoed in turn. "It's not at all that I

disapprove, Miss Barton; on the contrary, I admire it; it's only

that one's surprised to find a woman, or for the matter of that

anybody, acting up to his or her convictions. That's what I've

always felt; 'tis the Nemesis of reason; if people begin by

thinking rationally, the danger is that they may end by acting

rationally also."

Herminia laughed. "I'm afraid," she answered, "I've already

reached that pass. You'll never find me hesitate to do anything on

earth, once I'm convinced it's right, merely because other people

think differently on the subject."

Alan looked at her and mused. She was tall and stately, but her

figure was well developed, and her form softly moulded. He admired

her immensely. How incongruous an outcome from a clerical family!

"It's curious," he said, gazing hard at her, "that you should be a

dean's daughter."

"On the contrary," Herminia answered, with perfect frankness, "I

regard myself as a living proof of the doctrine of heredity."

"How so?" Alan inquired.

"Well, my father was a Senior Wrangler," Herminia replied, blushing

faintly; "and I suppose that implies a certain moderate development

of the logical faculties. In HIS generation, people didn't apply

the logical faculties to the grounds of belief; they took those for

granted; but within his own limits, my father is still an acute

reasoner. And then he had always the ethical and social interests.

Those two things--a love of logic, and a love of right--are the

forces that tend to make us what we call religious. Worldly people

don't care for fundamental questions of the universe at all; they

accept passively whatever is told them; they think they think, and

believe they believe it. But people with an interest in

fundamental truth inquire for themselves into the constitution of

the cosmos; if they are convinced one way, they become what we call

theologians; if they are convinced the other way, they become what

we call free-thinkers. Interest in the problem is common to both;

it's the nature of the solution alone that differs in the two

cases."

"That's quite true," Alan assented. "And have you ever noticed

this curious corollary, that you and I can talk far more

sympathetically with an earnest Catholic, for example, or an

earnest Evangelical, than we can talk with a mere ordinary worldly

person."

"Oh dear, yes," Herminia answered with conviction. "Thought will

always sympathize with thought. It's the unthinking mass one can

get no further with."

Alan changed the subject abruptly. This girl so interested him.

She was the girl he had imagined, the girl he had dreamt of, the

girl he had thought possible, but never yet met with. "And you're

in lodgings on the Holmwood here?" he said, musing. "For how much

longer?"

"For, six weeks, I'm glad to say," Herminia answered, rising.

"At what cottage?"

"Mrs. Burke's,--not far from the station."

"May I come to see you there?"

Herminia's clear brown eyes gazed down at him, all puzzlement.

"Why, surely," she answered; "I shall be delighted to see you!"

She paused for a second. "We agree about so many things," she went

on; "and it's so rare to find a man who can sympathize with the

higher longings in women."

"When are you likeliest to be at home?" Alan asked.

"In the morning, after breakfast,--that is, at eight o'clock,"

Herminia answered, smiling; "or later, after lunch, say two or

thereabouts."

"Six weeks," Alan repeated, more to himself than to her. Those six

week were precious. Not a moment of them must be lost. "Then I

think," he went on quietly, "I shall call tomorrow."

A wave of conscious pleasure broke over Herminia's cheek, blush

rose on white lily; but she answered nothing. She was glad this

kindred soul should seem in such a hurry to renew her acquaintance.