The Woman Who Did

Chapter 3

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

partner. 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 s*x, 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, disconcerted, 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."

She spoke with a gentle tinge of regret, nay almost of disillusion.

The bare suggestion of that regret stung Alan to the quick. He

felt it was shame to him that he could not rise at once to the

height of her splendid self-renunciation. "You mistake me,

dearest," he answered, petting her hand in his own (and she allowed

him to pet it). "It wasn't for myself, or for the world I

hesitated. My thought was for you. You are very young yet. You

say you have counted the cost. I wonder if you have. I wonder if

you realize it."

"Only too well," Herminia replied, in a very earnest mood. "I have

wrought it all out in my mind beforehand,--covenanted with my soul

that for women's sake I would be a free woman. Alan, whoever would

be free must himself strike the blow. I know what you will say,--

what every man would say to the woman he loved under similar

circumstances,--'Why should YOU be the victim? Why should YOU be

the martyr? Bask in the sun yourself; leave this doom to some

other.' But, Alan, I can't. I feel _I_ must face it. Unless one

woman begins, there will be no beginning." She lifted his hand in

her own, and fondled it in her turn with caressing tenderness.

"Think how easy it would be for me, dear friend," she cried, with

a catch in her voice, "to do as other women do; to accept the

HONORABLE MARRIAGE you offer me, as other women would call it; to

be false to my s*x, a traitor to my convictions; to sell my kind

for a mess of pottage, a name and a home, or even for thirty pieces

of silver, to be some rich man's wife, as other women have sold it.

But, Alan, I can't. My conscience won't let me. I know what

marriage is, from what vile slavery it has sprung; on what unseen

horrors for my sister women it is reared and buttressed; by what

unholy sacrifices it is sustained, and made possible. I know it

has a history, I know its past, I know its present, and I can't

embrace it; I can't be untrue to my most sacred beliefs. I can't

pander to the malignant thing, just because a man who loves me

would be pleased by my giving way and would kiss me, and fondle me

for it. And I love you to fondle me. But I must keep my proper

place, the freedom which I have gained for myself by such arduous

efforts. I have said to you already, 'So far as my will goes, I am

yours; take me, and do as you choose with me.' That much I can

yield, as every good woman should yield it, to the man she loves,

to the man who loves her. But more than that, no. It would be

treason to my s*x; not my life, not my future, not my individuality,

not my freedom."

"I wouldn't ask you for those," Alan answered, carried away by the

torrent flood of her passionate speech. "I would wish you to guard

them. But, Herminia, just as a matter of form,--to prevent the

world from saying the cruel things the world is sure to say,--and

as an act of justice to you, and your children! A mere ceremony of

marriage; what more does it mean now-a-days than that we two agree

to live together on the ordinary terms of civilized society?"

Still Herminia shook her head. "No, no," she cried vehemently. "I

deny and decline those terms; they are part and parcel of a system

of slavery. I have learnt that the righteous soul should avoid all

appearance of evil. I will not palter and parley with the unholy

thing. Even though you go to a registry-office and get rid as far

as you can of every relic of the sacerdotal and sacramental idea,

yet the marriage itself is still an assertion of man's supremacy

over woman. It ties her to him for life, it ignores her

individuality, it compels her to promise what no human heart can be

sure of performing; for you can contract to do or not to do, easily

enough, but contract to feel or not to feel,--what transparent

absurdity! It is full of all evils, and I decline to consider it.

If I love a man at all, I must love him on terms of perfect

freedom. I can't bind myself down to live with him to my shame one

day longer than I love him; or to love him at all if I find him

unworthy of my purest love, or unable to retain it; or if I

discover some other more fit to be loved by me. You admitted the

other day that all this was abstractly true; why should you wish

this morning to draw back from following it out to its end in

practice?"

Alan was only an Englishman, and shared, of course, the inability

of his countrymen to carry any principle to its logical conclusion.

He was all for admitting that though things must really be so, yet

it were prudent in life to pretend they were otherwise. This is

the well-known English virtue of moderation and compromise; it has

made England what she is, the shabbiest, sordidest, worst-organized

of nations. So he paused for a second and temporized. "It's for

your sake, Herminia," he said again; "I can't bear to think of your

making yourself a martyr. And I don't see how, if you act as you

propose, you could escape martyrdom."

Herminia looked up at him with pleading eyes. Tears just trembled

on the edge of those glistening lashes. "It never occurred to me

to think," she said gently but bravely, "my life could ever end in

anything else but martyrdom. It MUST needs be so with all true

lives, and all good ones. For whoever sees the truth, whoever

strives earnestly with all his soul to be good, must be raised many

planes above the common mass of men around him; he must be a moral

pioneer, and the moral pioneer is always a martyr. People won't

allow others to be wiser and better than themselves, unpunished.

They can forgive anything except moral superiority. We have each

to choose between acquiescence in the wrong, with a life of ease,

and struggle for the right, crowned at last by inevitable failure.

To succeed is to fail, and failure is the only success worth aiming

at. Every great and good life can but end in a Calvary."

"And I want to save you from that," Alan cried, leaning over her

with real tenderness, for she was already very dear to him. "I

want to save you from yourself; I want to make you think twice

before you rush headlong into such a danger."

"NOT to save me from myself, but to save me from my own higher and

better nature," Herminia answered with passionate seriousness.

"Alan, I don't want any man to save me from that; I want you rather

to help me, to strengthen me, to sympathize with me. I want you to

love me, not for my face and form alone, not for what I share with

every other woman, but for all that is holiest and deepest within

me. If you can't love me for that, I don't ask you to love me; I

want to be loved for what I am in myself, for the yearnings I

possess that are most of all peculiar to me. I know you are

attracted to me by those yearnings above everything; why wish me

untrue to them? It was because I saw you could sympathize with me

in these impulses that I said to myself, Here, at last, is the man

who can go through life as an aid and a spur to me. Don't tell me

I was mistaken; don't belie my belief. Be what I thought you were,

what I know you are. Work with me, and help me. Lift me! raise

me! exalt me! Take me on the sole terms on which I can give myself

up to you."

She stretched her arms out, pleading; she turned those subtle eyes

to him, appealingly. She was a beautiful woman. Alan Merrick was

human. The man in him gave way; he seized her in his clasp, and

pressed her close to his bosom. It heaved tumultuously. "I could

do anything for you, Herminia," he cried, "and indeed, I do

sympathize with you. But give me, at least, till to-morrow to

think this thing over. It is a momentous question; don't let us be

precipitate."

Herminia drew a long breath. His embrace thrilled through her.

"As you will," she answered with a woman's meekness. "But

remember, Alan, what I say I mean; on these terms it shall be, and

upon none others. Brave women before me have tried for awhile to

act on their own responsibility, for the good of their s*x; but

never of their own free will from the very beginning. They have

avoided marriage, not because they thought it a shame and a

surrender, a treason to their s*x, a base yielding to the unjust

pretensions of men, but because there existed at the time some

obstacle in their way in the shape of the vested interest of some

other woman. When Mary Godwin chose to mate herself with Shelley,

she took her good name in her hands; but still there was Harriet.

As soon as Harriet was dead, Mary showed she had no deep principle

of action involved, by marrying Shelley. When George Eliot chose

to pass her life with Lewes on terms of equal freedom, she defied

the man-made law; but still, there was his wife to prevent the

possibility of a legalized union. As soon as Lewes was dead,

George Eliot showed she had no principle involved, by marrying

another man. Now, _I_ have the rare chance of acting otherwise; I

can show the world from the very first that I act from principle,

and from principle only. I can say to it in effect, 'See, here is

the man of my choice, the man I love, truly, and purely, the man

any one of you would willingly have seen offering himself in lawful

marriage to your own daughters. If I would, I might go the beaten

way you prescribe, and marry him legally. But of my own free will

I disdain that degradation; I choose rather to be free. No fear of

your scorn, no dread of your bigotry, no shrinking at your cruelty,

shall prevent me from following the thorny path I know to be the

right one. I seek no temporal end. I will not prove false to the

future of my kind in order to protect myself from your hateful

indignities. I know on what vile foundations your temple of

wedlock is based and built, what pitiable victims languish and die

in its sickening vaults; and I will not consent to enter it. Here,

of my own free will, I take my stand for the right, and refuse your

sanctions! No woman that I know of has ever yet done that. Other

women have fallen, as men choose to put it in their odious dialect;

no other has voluntarily risen as I propose to do.'" She paused a

moment for breath. "Now you know how I feel," she continued,

looking straight into his eyes. "Say no more at present; it is

wisest so. But go home and think it out, and talk it over with me

tomorrow."