The Woman Who Did (Feminist Classic). Allen Grant
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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 naïve 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 colour 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 candour, “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 monopolising him, when he is so great, and sweet, and true, and generous? Not monopolising, 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; O 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 realised 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