It was a changed London to which Herminia returned. She was
homeless, penniless, friendless. Above all she was declassee.
The world that had known her now knew her no more. Women who had
smothered her with their Judas kisses passed her by in their
victorias with a stony stare. Even men pretended to be looking the
other way, or crossed the street to avoid the necessity for
recognizing her. "So awkward to be mixed up with such a scandal!"
She hardly knew as yet herself how much her world was changed
indeed; for had she not come back to it, the mother of an
illegitimate daughter? But she began to suspect it the very first
day when she arrived at Charing Cross, clad in a plain black dress,
with her baby at her bosom. Her first task was to find rooms; her
next to find a livelihood. Even the first involved no small
relapse from the purity of her principles. After long hours of
vain hunting, she found at last she could only get lodgings for
herself and Alan's child by telling a virtual lie, against which
her soul revolted. She was forced to describe herself as Mrs.
Barton; she must allow her landlady to suppose she was really a
widow. Woe unto you, scribes and hypocrites! in all Christian
London MISS Barton and her baby could never have found a
"respectable" room in which to lay their heads. So she yielded to
the inevitable, and took two tiny attics in a small street off the
Edgware Road at a moderate rental. To live alone in a cottage as
of yore would have been impossible now she had a baby of her own to
tend, besides earning her livelihood; she fell back regretfully on
the lesser evil of lodgings.
To earn her livelihood was a hard task, though Herminia's
indomitable energy rode down all obstacles. Teaching, of course,
was now quite out of the question; no English parent could intrust
the education of his daughters to the hands of a woman who has
dared and suffered much, for conscience' sake, in the cause of
freedom for herself and her sisters. But even before Herminia
went away to Perugia, she had acquired some small journalistic
connection; and now, in her hour of need, she found not a few of
the journalistic leaders by no means unwilling to sympathize and
fraternize with her. To be sure, they didn't ask the free woman to
their homes, nor invite her to meet their own women:--even an
enlightened journalist must draw a line somewhere in the matter of
society; but they understood and appreciated the sincerity of her
motives, and did what they could to find employment and salary for
her. Herminia was an honest and conscientious worker; she knew
much about many things; and nature had gifted her with the
instinctive power of writing clearly and unaffectedly the English
language. So she got on with editors. Who could resist, indeed,
the pathetic charm of that girlish figure, simply clad in
unobtrusive black, and sanctified in every feature of the shrinking
face by the beauty of sorrow? Not the men who stand at the head of
the one English profession which more than all others has escaped
the leprous taint of that national moral blight that calls itself
"respectability."