by Grant Allen
“It came to me all at once when I was about sixteen,” Herminia answered with quiet composure, like one who remarks upon some objective fact of external nature. “It came to me in listening to a sermon of my father’s, — which I always look upon as one more instance of the force of heredity. He was preaching on the text, ‘The Truth shall make you Free,’ and all that he said about it seemed to me strangely alive, to be heard from a pulpit. He said we ought to seek the Truth before all things, and never to rest till we felt sure we had found it. We should not suffer our souls to be beguiled into believing a falsehood merely because we wouldn’t take the trouble to find out the Truth for ourselves by searching. We must dig for it; we must grope after it. And as he spoke, I made up my mind, in a flash of resolution, to find out the Truth for myself about everything, and never to be deterred from seeking it, and embracing it, and ensuing it when found, by any convention or preconception. Then he went on to say how the Truth would make us Free, and I felt he was right. It would open our eyes, and emancipate us from social and moral slaveries. So I made up my mind, at the same time, that whenever I found the Truth I would not scruple to follow it to its logical conclusions, but would practise it in my life, and let it make me Free with perfect freedom. Then, in search of Truth, I got my father to send me to Girton; and when I had lighted on it there half by accident, and it had made me Free indeed, I went away from Girton again, because I saw if I stopped there I could never achieve and guard my freedom. From that day forth I have aimed at nothing but to know the Truth, and to act upon it freely; for, as Tennyson says, —
‘To live by law
Acting the law we live by without fear,
And because right is right to follow right,
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.’”
She broke off suddenly, and looking up, let her eye rest for a second on the dark thread of clambering pines that crest the down just above Brockham. “This is dreadfully egotistical,” she cried, with a sharp little start. “I ought to apologize for talking so much to you about my own feelings.”
Alan gazed at her and smiled. “Why apologize,” he asked, “for managing to be interesting? You, are not egotistical at all. What you are telling me is history, — the history of a soul, which is always the one thing on earth worth hearing. I take it as a compliment that you should hold me worthy to hear it. It is a proof of confidence. Besides,” he went on, after a second’s pause, “I am a man; you are a woman. Under those circumstances, what would otherwise be egotism becomes common and mutual. When two people sympathize with one another, all they can say about themselves loses its personal tinge and merges into pure human and abstract interest.”
Herminia brought back her eyes from infinity to his face. “That’s true,” she said frankly. “The magic link of sex that severs and unites us makes all the difference. And, indeed, I confess I wouldn’t so have spoken of my inmost feelings to another woman.”
III.
From that day forth, Alan and Herminia met frequently. Alan was given to sketching, and he sketched a great deal in his idle times on the common. He translated the cottages from real estate into poetry. On such occasions, Herminia’s walks often led her in the same direction. For Herminia was frank; she liked the young man, and, the truth having made her free, she knew no reason why she should avoid or pretend to avoid his company. She had no fear of that sordid impersonal goddess who rules Philistia; it mattered not to her what “people said,” or whether or not they said anything about her. “Aiunt: quid aiunt? aiant,” was her motto. Could she have known to a certainty that her meetings on the common with Alan Merrick had excited unfavorable comment among the old ladies of Holmwood, the point would have seemed to her unworthy of an emancipated soul’s consideration. She could estimate at its true worth the value of all human criticism upon human action.
So, day after day, she met Alan Merrick, half by accident, half by design, on the slopes of the Holmwood. They talked much together, for Alan liked her and understood her. His heart went out to her. Compact of like clay, he knew the meaning of her hopes and aspirations. Often as he sketched he would look up and wait, expecting to catch the faint sound of her light step, or see her lithe figure poised breezy against the sky on the neighboring ridges. Whenever she drew near, his pulse thrilled at her coming, — a somewhat unusual experience with Alan Merrick. For Alan, though a pure soul in his way, and mixed of the finer paste, was not quite like those best of men, who are, so to speak, born married. A man with an innate genius for loving and being loved cannot long remain single. He MUST marry young; or at least, if he does not marry, he must find a companion, a woman to his heart, a help that is meet for him. What is commonly called prudence in such concerns is only another name for vice and cruelty. The purest and best of men necessarily mate themselves before they are twenty. As a rule, it is the selfish, the mean, the calculating, who wait, as they say, “till they can afford to marry.” That vile phrase scarcely veils hidden depths of depravity. A man who is really a man, and who has a genius for loving, must love from the very first, and must feel himself surrounded by those who love him. ’Tis the first necessity of life to him; bread, meat, raiment, a house, an income, rank far second to that prime want in the good man’s economy.
But Alan Merrick, though an excellent fellow in his way, and of noble fibre, was not quite one of the first, the picked souls of humanity. He did not count among the finger-posts who point the way that mankind will travel. Though Herminia always thought him so. That was her true woman’s gift of the highest idealizing power. Indeed, it adds, to my mind, to the tragedy of Herminia Barton’s life that the man for whom she risked and lost everything was never quite worthy of her; and that Herminia to the end not once suspected it. Alan was over thirty, and was still “looking about him.” That alone, you will admit, is a sufficiently grave condemnation. That a man should have arrived at the ripe age of thirty and not yet have lighted upon the elect lady — the woman without whose companionship life would be to him unendurable is in itself a strong proof of much underlying selfishness, or, what comes to the same thing, of a calculating disposition. The right sort of man doesn’t argue with himself at all on these matters. He doesn’t say with selfish coldness, “I can’t afford a wife;” or, “If I marry now, I shall ruin my prospects.” He feels and acts. He mates, like the birds, because he can’t help himself. A woman crosses his path who is to him indispensable, a part of himself, the needful complement of his own personality; and without heed or hesitation he takes her to himself, lawfully or unlawfully, because he has need of her. That is how nature has made us; that is how every man worthy of the name of man has always felt, and thought, and acted. The worst of all possible and conceivable checks upon population is the vile one which Malthus glossed over as “the prudential,” and which consists in substituting prostitution for marriage through the spring-tide of one’s manhood.
Alan Merrick, however, was over thirty and still unmarried. More than that, he was heart-free, — a very evil record. And, like most other unmarried men of thirty, he was a trifle fastidious. He was “looking about him.” That means to say, he was waiting to find some woman who suited him. No man does so at twenty. He sees and loves. But Alan Merrick, having let slip the golden moment when nature prompts every growing youth to fling himself with pure devotion at the feet of the first good angel who happens to cross his path and attract his worship, had now outlived the early flush of pure passion, and was thinking only of “comfortably settling himself.” In one word, when a man is young, he asks himself with a thrill what he can do to make happy this sweet soul he loves; when he has let that critical moment flow by him unseized, he asks only, in cold blood, what woman will most agreeably make life run smooth for him. The first stage is pure love; the second, pure selfishness.
Still, Alan Merrick was now “getting on in his profession,” and, as people said, it was high time he should be settled. They said it as they might have said it was high time he should take a business part
ner. From that lowest depth of emotional disgrace Herminia Barton was to preserve him. It was her task in life, though she knew it not, to save Alan Merrick’s soul. And nobly she saved it.
Alan, “looking about him,” with some fine qualities of nature underlying in the background that mean social philosophy of the class from which he sprang, fell frankly in love almost at first sight with Herminia. He admired and respected her. More than that, he understood her. She had power in her purity to raise his nature for a time to something approaching her own high level. True woman has the real Midas gift: all that she touches turns to purest gold. Seeing Herminia much and talking with her, Alan could not fail to be impressed with the idea that here was a soul which could do a great deal more for him than “make him comfortable,” — which could raise him to moral heights he had hardly yet dreamt of, — which could wake in him the best of which he was capable. And watching her thus, he soon fell in love with her, as few men of thirty are able to fall in love for the first time, — as the young man falls in love, with the unselfish energy of an unspoilt nature. He asked no longer whether Herminia was the sort of girl who could make him comfortable; he asked only, with that delicious tremor of self-distrust which belongs to naive youth, whether he dare offer himself to one so pure and good and beautiful. And his hesitation was justified; for our sordid England has not brought forth many such serene and single-minded souls as Herminia Barton.
At last one afternoon they had climbed together the steep red face of the sandy slope that rises abruptly from the Holmwood towards Leith Hill, by the Robin Gate entrance. Near the top, they had seated themselves on a carpet of sheep-sorrel, looking out across the imperturbable expanse of the Weald, and the broad pastures of Sussex. A solemn blue haze brooded soft over the land. The sun was sinking low; oblique afternoon lights flooded the distant South Downs. Their combes came out aslant in saucer-shaped shadows. Alan turned and gazed at Herminia; she was hot with climbing, and her calm face was flushed. A town-bred girl would have looked red and blowsy; but the color and the exertion just suited Herminia. On that healthy brown cheek it seemed natural to discern the visible marks of effort. Alan gazed at her with a sudden rush of untrammelled feeling. The elusive outline of her grave sweet face, the wistful eyes, the ripe red mouth enticed him. “Oh, Herminia,” he cried, calling her for the first time by her Christian name alone, “how glad I am I happened to go that afternoon to Mrs. Dewsbury’s. For otherwise perhaps I might never have known you.”
Herminia’s heart gave a delicious bound. She was a woman, and therefore she was glad he should speak so. She was a woman, and therefore she shrank from acknowledging it. But she looked him back in the face tranquilly, none the less on that account, and answered with sweet candor, “Thank you so much, Mr. Merrick.”
“I said ‘Herminia,’” the young man corrected, smiling, yet aghast at his own audacity.
“And I thanked you for it,” Herminia answered, casting down those dark lashes, and feeling the heart throb violently under her neat bodice.
Alan drew a deep breath. “And it was THAT you thanked me for,” he ejaculated, tingling.
“Yes, it was that I thanked you for,” Herminia answered, with a still deeper rose spreading down to her bare throat. “I like you very much, and it pleases me to hear you call me Herminia. Why should I shrink from admitting it? ’Tis the Truth, you know; and the Truth shall make us Free. I’m not afraid of my freedom.”
Alan paused for a second, irresolute. “Herminia,” he said at last, leaning forward till his face was very close to hers, and he could feel the warm breath that came and went so quickly; “that’s very, very kind of you. I needn’t tell you I’ve been thinking a great deal about you these last three weeks or so. You have filled my mind; filled it to the brim, and I think you know it.”
Philosopher as she was, Herminia plucked a blade of grass, and drew it quivering through her tremulous fingers. It caught and hesitated. “I guessed as much, I think,” she answered, low but frankly.
The young man’s heart gave a bound. “And YOU, Herminia?” he asked, in an eager ecstasy.
Herminia was true to the Truth. “I’ve thought a great deal about you too, Mr. Merrick,” she answered, looking down, but with a great gladness thrilling her.
“I said ‘Herminia,’” the young man repeated, with a marked stress on the Christian name.
Herminia hesitated a second. Then two crimson spots flared forth on her speaking face, as she answered with an effort, “About you too, Alan.”
The young man drew back and gazed at her.
She was very, very beautiful. “Dare I ask you, Herminia?” he cried. “Have I a right to ask you? Am I worthy of you, I mean? Ought I to retire as not your peer, and leave you to some man who could rise more easily to the height of your dignity?”
“I’ve thought about that too,” Herminia answered, still firm to her principles. “I’ve thought it all over. I’ve said to myself, Shall I do right in monopolizing him, when he is so great, and sweet, and true, and generous? Not monopolizing, of course, for that would be wrong and selfish; but making you my own more than any other woman’s. And I answered my own heart, Yes, yes, I shall do right to accept him, if he asks me; for I love him, that is enough. The thrill within me tells me so. Nature put that thrill in our souls to cry out to us with a clear voice when we had met the soul she then and there intended for us.”
Alan’s face flushed like her own. “Then you love me,” he cried, all on fire. “And you deign to tell me so; Oh, Herminia, how sweet you are. What have I done to deserve it?”
He folded her in his arms. Her bosom throbbed on his. Their lips met for a second. Herminia took his kiss with sweet submission, and made no faint pretence of fighting against it. Her heart was full. She quickened to the finger-tips.
There was silence for a minute or two, — the silence when soul speaks direct to soul through the vehicle of touch, the mother-tongue of the affections. Then Alan leaned back once more, and hanging over her in a rapture murmured in soft low tones, “So Herminia, you will be mine! You say beforehand you will take me.”
“Not WILL be yours,” Herminia corrected in that silvery voice of hers. “AM yours already, Alan. I somehow feel as if I had always been yours. I am yours this moment. You may do what you would with me.”
She said it so simply, so purely, so naturally, with all the supreme faith of the good woman, enamoured, who can yield herself up without blame to the man who loves her, that it hardly even occurred to Alan’s mind to wonder at her self-surrender. Yet he drew back all the same in a sudden little crisis of doubt and uncertainty. He scarcely realized what she meant. “Then, dearest,” he cried tentatively, “how soon may we be married?”
At sound of those unexpected words from such lips as his, a flush of shame and horror overspread Herminia’s cheek. “Never!” she cried firmly, drawing away. “Oh, Alan, what can you mean by it? Don’t tell me, after all I’ve tried to make you feel and understand, you thought I could possibly consent to MARRY you?”
The man gazed at her in surprise. Though he was prepared for much, he was scarcely prepared for such devotion to principle. “Oh, Herminia,” he cried, “you can’t mean it. You can’t have thought of what it entails. Surely, surely, you won’t carry your ideas of freedom to such an extreme, such a dangerous conclusion!”
Herminia looked up at him, half hurt. “Can’t have thought of what it entails!” she repeated. Her dimples deepened. “Why, Alan, haven’t I had my whole lifetime to think of it? What else have I thought about in any serious way, save this one great question of a woman’s duty to herself, and her sex, and her unborn children? It’s been my sole study. How could you fancy I spoke hastily, or without due consideration on such a subject? Would you have me like the blind girls who go unknowing to the altar, as sheep go to the shambles? Could you suspect me of such carelessness? — such culpable thoughtlessness? — you, to whom I have spoken of all this so freely?”
Alan stared at her, disconcer
ted, hardly knowing how to answer. “But what alternative do you propose, then?” he asked in his amazement.
“Propose?” Herminia repeated, taken aback in her turn. It all seemed to her so plain, and transparent, and natural. “Why, simply that we should be friends, like any others, very dear, dear friends, with the only kind of friendship that nature makes possible between men and women.”
She said it so softly, with some womanly gentleness, yet with such lofty candor, that Alan couldn’t help admiring her more than ever before for her translucent simplicity, and directness of purpose. Yet her suggestion frightened him. It was so much more novel to him than to her. Herminia had reasoned it all out with herself, as she truly said, for years, and knew exactly how she felt and thought about it. To Alan, on the contrary, it came with the shock of a sudden surprise, and he could hardly tell on the spur of the moment how to deal with it. He paused and reflected. “But do you mean to say, Herminia,” he asked, still holding that soft brown hand unresisted in his, “you’ve made up your mind never to marry any one? made up your mind to brave the whole mad world, that can’t possibly understand the motives of your conduct, and live with some friend, as you put it, unmarried?”
“Yes, I’ve made up my mind,” Herminia answered, with a faint tremor in her maidenly voice, but with hardly a trace now of a traitorous blush, where no blush was needed. “I’ve made up my mind, Alan; and from all we had said and talked over together, I thought you at least would sympathize in my resolve.”
