The Changeling. Walter Besant
of song, a queen of the stage, a great painter, a great novelist, a great poet – great at artistic work of every kind. Or, again, while her brother is slowly and painfully working his way up, so that he will become a Q.C. at forty, a Judge at sixty, the girl steps at once by marriage into a position that dazzles her friends, and becomes a queen of society, a patron of Art, a power in politics. Far be it from me to suppose that the maidens of any college dream of possibilities such as these. Perhaps, however, the possibilities of maidenhood are never quite forgotten. There is another possibility also. Every great man has a mother. Do maidens ever dream of the supreme happiness of having a great man for a son? Which would a woman prefer, the greatest honour and glory and distinction ever won by woman for herself, or to be the mother of a Tennyson, a Gordon, a Huxley?
"Now, my cousin," said Hilarie. "The dinner is served."
So two by two they went into the old hall. It had been decorated since the summer. The lower part was covered with tapestry; the upper part was hung with armour and old weapons. There were also portraits, imaginary and otherwise, of women wise and women famous. Queen Elizabeth was there, Joan of Arc was there, George Sand, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jane Austen, Grace Darling, Rosa Bonheur, and many others. The male observer remarked, with a sense of omission, the absence of those queens of beauty whose lamentable lives make history so profoundly interesting. Where were Rosamond, Agnes Sorel, La Vallière, Nell Gwynne? Alas! they were not admitted.
"The house," said the president, taking her seat, "is much larger than it looks. With the solar and the lady's bower and the tower, we have arranged dormitories for forty and half a dozen sitting-rooms, besides this hall, which is used all day long."
The musicians' gallery had been rebuilt and painted. It contained an organ now and a piano, besides room for an orchestra. Six of the students were sitting there with violins and a harp, ready to discourse soft music during the banquet. There were three tables running down the hall, with the high table, and all were filled with an animated, joyous crowd of guests and residents.
"I want to interest you in my college," Hilarie began, when they were seated.
Humphrey examined the menu. He observed that it was an artistic attempt – an intelligent effort at a harmony. If only the execution should prove equal to the conception!
"At present, of course, we are only beginning. What are you yourself doing, however?"
"I follow – humbly – Art. There is nothing else. I paint, I write verse, I compose."
"Do you exhibit?"
"Exhibit? Court the empty praises or the empty sneers of an ignorant press? Never! I show my pictures to my friends. We confide our work to each other."
Hilarie smiled, and murmured something inaudible.
"And we keep the outer world outside. You, I fear" – he looked down the room – "admit the outer world. You lose a great deal. For instance, if this mob was out of your lovely house, I might bring my friends. It would be an ideal place for our pictures and our music, and for the acting of our plays."
"I fear the mob must remain." Hilarie began to doubt whether her college would appeal, after all, to this young man.
"What we should aim at in life," the artist continued, "is Art without Humanity."
"I should have said that Humanity is the basis of all Art."
Her cousin shook his head. "Not true Art – that is bodiless. I fear you do not yet belong to us."
"No; I belong to these girls, who are anything but bodiless."
"Your college, I take it, has something to do with helping people?"
"Certainly."
"My own view is that you cannot help people. You may give them things, but you only make them want more. People have got to help themselves."
"Did you help yourself?"
"Oh, I am born to what my forefathers acquired. As for these girls, to whom you are giving things, you will only make them discontented."
The president of the college looked round the hall. There were forty white frocks encasing as many girls, students at her college, and as many guests. There was a cheerful ripple of talk; one thought of a dancing sea in the sunlight. There were outbursts of laughter – light, musical; one thought of the white crests of the waves. In the music-gallery the girls played softly and continuously; one thought of the singing of birds in the coppice. The dinner was already half finished. There is a solid simplicity about these guest nights. A short dinner, with jellies, ices, and puddings, most commends itself to the feminine heart.
"Let me tell you my design, at least. I saw that in this revolution of society, going on so rapidly around us, all classes of women are rushing into work."
"A woman who works ceases to be a woman," Humphrey spoke and shuddered.
"I think of my great-grandmother Hilarie, wife of Robert, who lies buried in our church. She sat with her maids in the lady's bower and embroidered. She administered everything – the food and the drink and the raiment. She made them all behave with decency. She brought up the children, and taught them right and wrong. Above all, she civilized. To-day, as yesterday and to-morrow and always, it is the duty of woman to civilize. She is the everlasting priestess. This is therefore a theological college."
Her cheek flushed, her eye brightened. She turned her head, as if suspecting that she had said too much. Her cousin seemed not to have heard; he was, in fact, absorbed in partridge.
"Now that all women want to work, will they continue to civilize? I know not yet how things may go. They all want to work. They try to work, whether they are fit for it or not. They take men's work at a quarter the pay. I know not how it will end. They turn the men adrift; they drive them out of the country, and then congratulate themselves – poor fools! And for themselves, I chiefly dread their hardening. The woman who tries to turn herself into a man is a creature terrible – unnatural. I know the ideal woman of the past. I cannot find the ideal woman of the present."
"There isn't any."
"If we surrender the sacerdotal functions, what have we in exchange?"
"I don't know." The manner meant, "I don't care;" but Hilarie hardly observed the manner.
"I cannot alter the conditions, cousin. That is quite true. But there are some things which can be done."
Hilarie went on, at this point, to tell a story, for one who could read between the lines – which her cousin certainly could not – of a girl dominated partly by a sense of responsibility and duty; one who, being rich, must do something with her wealth, partly by that passion for power which is developed in some hearts – not all – by the possession of wealth; and partly by a deep sympathy with the sufferings and sorrows of her impecunious sisters.
There are always, as we know, at every moment of life, two courses open to us – the right and the wrong; or, if the choice is not so elementary, the better and the worse. But there comes to those of the better sort one supreme moment when we seem to choose the line which will lead to honour, or the line which will lead to obscurity. To the common sort the choice is only apparent, not real; men and women are pushed, pulled, dragged, shoved, either in the way of fortune or in the way of failure, by circumstances and conditions beyond our control. To them there is no free will. When the time of repentance arrives, we think that we choose freely. The majority cannot choose; their lives are ordered for them, with their sins and their follies. They might choose, but they are not able; they cannot see before them or around them. A fog lies about their steps; they stumble along with the multitude, getting now and then a pleasant bit, now and then a thorny bit. Some walk delicately along a narrow way, which is grassy and flowery, where the babbling brooks run with champagne, and the spicy breezes are laden with the fragrance of melons, peaches, and roast lamb. Some march and stagger along the broad way, thirsty and weary, where there is no refreshment of brooks or of breezes. It is an unequal world.
Such a supreme moment came to Hilarie after long consideration.
"I thought," she explained, "that if the Archbishop and his brethren were living to-day, they would do something for the women who work."
Her