The Woman Who Did

Chapter 2

Next afternoon, about two o'clock, Alan called with a tremulous

heart at the cottage. Herminia had heard not a little of him

meanwhile from her friend Mrs. Dewsbury. "He's a charming young

man, my dear," the woman of the world observed with confidence.

"I felt quite sure you'd attract one another. He's so clever and

advanced, and everything that's dreadful,--just like yourself,

Herminia. But then he's also very well connected. That's always

something, especially when one's an oddity. You wouldn't go down

one bit yourself, dear, if you weren't a dean's daughter. The

shadow of a cathedral steeple covers a multitude of sins. Mr.

Merrick's the son of the famous London gout doctor,--you MUST know

his name,--all the royal dukes flock to him. He's a barrister

himself, and in excellent practice. You might do worse, do you

know, than to go in for Alan Merrick."

Herminia's lip curled an almost imperceptible curl as she answered

gravely, "I don't think you quite understand my plans in life, Mrs.

Dewsbury. It isn't my present intention to GO IN for anybody."

But Mrs. Dewsbury shook her head. She knew the world she lived in.

"Ah, I've heard a great many girls talk like that beforehand," she

answered at once with her society glibness; "but when the right man

turned up, they soon forgot their protestations. It makes a lot of

difference, dear, when a man really asks you!"

Herminia bent her head. "You misunderstand me," she replied. "I

don't mean to say I will never fall in love. I expect to do that.

I look forward to it frankly,--it is a woman's place in life. I

only mean to say, I don't think anything will ever induce me to

marry,--that is to say, legally."

Mrs. Dewsbury gave a start of surprise and horror. She really

didn't know what girls were coming to nowadays,--which, considering

her first principles, was certainly natural. But if only she had

seen the conscious flush with which Herminia received her visitor

that afternoon, she would have been confirmed in her belief that

Herminia, after all, in spite of her learning, was much like other

girls. In which conclusion Mrs. Dewsbury would not in the end have

been fully justified.

When Alan arrived, Herminia sat at the window by the quaintly

clipped box-tree, a volume of verse held half closed in her hand,

though she was a great deal too honest and transparent to pretend

she was reading it. She expected Alan to call, in accordance with

his promise, for she had seen at Mrs. Dewsbury's how great an

impression she produced upon him; and, having taught herself that

it was every true woman's duty to avoid the affectations and

self-deceptions which the rule of man has begotten in women, she

didn't try to conceal from herself the fact that she on her side

was by no means without interest in the question how soon he would

pay her his promised visit. As he appeared at the rustic gate in

the privet hedge, Herminia looked out, and changed color with

pleasure when she saw him push it open.

"Oh, how nice of you to look me up so soon!" she cried, jumping

from her seat (with just a glance at the glass) and strolling out

bareheaded into the cottage garden. "Isn't this a charming place?

Only look at our hollyhocks! Consider what an oasis after six

months of London!"

She seemed even prettier than last night, in her simple white

morning dress, a mere ordinary English gown, without affectation of

any sort, yet touched with some faint reminiscence of a flowing

Greek chiton. Its half-classical drapery exactly suited the severe

regularity of her pensive features and her graceful figure. Alan

thought as he looked at her he had never before seen anybody who

appeared at all points so nearly to approach his ideal of

womanhood. She was at once so high in type, so serene, so

tranquil, and yet so purely womanly.

"Yes, it IS a lovely place," he answered, looking around at the

clematis that drooped from the gable-ends. "I'm staying myself

with the Watertons at the Park, but I'd rather have this pretty

little rose-bowered garden than all their balustrades and Italian

terraces. The cottagers have chosen the better part. What

gillyflowers and what columbines! And here you look out so

directly on the common. I love the gorse and the bracken, I love

the stagnant pond, I love the very geese that tug hard at the

silverweed, they make it all seem so deliciously English."

"Shall we walk to the ridge?" Herminia asked with a sudden burst of

suggestion. "It's too rare a day to waste a minute of it indoors.

I was waiting till you came. We can talk all the freer for the

fresh air on the hill-top."

Nothing could have suited Alan Merrick better, and he said so at

once. Herminia disappeared for a moment to get her hat. Alan

observed almost without observing it that she was gone but for a

second. She asked none of that long interval that most women

require for the simplest matter of toilet. She was back again

almost instantly, bright and fresh and smiling, in the most modest

of hats, set so artlessly on her head that it became her better

than all art could have made it. Then they started for a long

stroll across the breezy common, yellow in places with upright

spikes of small summer furze, and pink with wild pea-blossom. Bees

buzzed, broom crackled, the chirp of the field cricket rang shrill

from the sand-banks. Herminia's light foot tripped over the spongy

turf. By the top of the furthest ridge, looking down on North

Holmwood church, they sat side by side for a while on the close

short grass, brocaded with daisies, and gazed across at the cropped

sward of Denbies and the long line of the North Downs stretching

away towards Reigate. Tender grays and greens melted into one

another on the larches hard by; Betchworth chalk-pit gleamed dreamy

white in the middle distance. They had been talking earnestly all

the way, like two old friends together; for they were both of them

young, and they felt at once that nameless bond which often draws

one closer to a new acquaintance at first sight than years of

converse. "How seriously you look at life," Alan cried at last, in

answer to one of Herminias graver thoughts. "I wonder what makes

you take it so much more earnestly than all other women?"

"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 exernal 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 s*x 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."